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Lion Cross Point
When 10-year-old Takeru arrives at his mother's home village in the middle of a scorching summer, he's all alone and in possession of terrible memories. Unspeakable things have happened to his mother and his mentally disabled 12-year-old brother. As Takeru gets to know Mitsuko, his new caretaker, and Saki, his spunky neighbor, he meets more of his mother's old friends, discovering her history and confronting the terrible acts that have left him alone. All the while he begins to see a strange figure that calls himself Bunji—the same name of a delicate young boy who mysteriously vanished one day on the village's coastline at Lion's Cross Point.
At once the moving tale of a young boy forced to confront demons well beyond his age, a sensitive portrayal of a child's point of view, and a spooky Japanese ghost story, Lion's Cross Point is gripping and poignant. Acts of heartless brutality mix with surprising moments of pure kindness, creating this utterly truthful tale of an unforgettable young boy.
At once the moving tale of a young boy forced to confront demons well beyond his age, a sensitive portrayal of a child's point of view, and a spooky Japanese ghost story, Lion's Cross Point is gripping and poignant. Acts of heartless brutality mix with surprising moments of pure kindness, creating this utterly truthful tale of an unforgettable young boy.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published January 19, 2013
16 people are currently reading
684 people want to read
About the author
Masatsugu Ono
9 books83 followersMasatsugu Ono (in Japanese, 小野 正嗣) maintains a steady output of fiction while working as a professor and researcher of Francophone literature. After doing graduate work at the University of Tokyo, Ono earned his PhD at the University of Paris VIII. In 2001, he published his first novel, Mizu ni umoreru haka (The Water-Covered Grave), which won the Asahi Award for New Writers. His second novel, Nigiyakana wan ni seowareta fune (Boat on a Choppy Bay), won the Mishima Yukio Prize. In addition to writing other works of fiction such as Mori no hazure de (At the Edge of the Forest), Maikurobasu (Microbus) and Shishiwatari-bana (Lion’s Tread Point), he has also translated works by Èdouard Glissant and Marie NDiaye into Japanese. Ono received the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s highest literary honor, in 2015. He lives in Tokyo.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
December 30, 2021
This was a gift from someone who is involved in supporting independent publishing houses. Two Lines press specializes particularly in translations.
https://www.catranslation.org
The striking cover of the book, a free octopus moving with great vitality in the sea is a striking contrast with the novel. Animals, in particular maritime creatures such as the inviting dolphins, feature in the novella, but also monkeys and the disruptive and constant noise of the cicadas. There is an octopus in the novel too, but it is very different from the lively one on the cover.
The novel is set soon after the strong earthquake that shook Japan in 2011, although the novel was published in 2013 (translated in 2018). For a while, though, the reader cannot tell at what point in time the story takes place. Some singular references stand out, such as the caps that Takeru, the child in the story, wears: sometimes it is the FC Barcelona cap, sometimes the Manchester United. But more disconcerting is how the story unfolds as perceived by Takeru, for the reader sees the world mostly through him.
Not just the world, but also Takeru’s haunted memories – of his older but mentally disabled brother for whom he feels very protective, and of his mother, whose presence is enigmatic until we realize she is a victim of gender violence and her non presence is, if not explained, at least accepted. Takeru's very personal perception, in which ghostly presences and their eery voices, with their phantasmal associations and spectral premonitions, moves the story out of a real and identifiable world into an puzzling realm that mesmerises the reader. When she closes the book, she will feel that a child’s mind is as mysterious as the depths of the oceans.
April 10, 2019
Now deservedly longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Award
"I hated it. Detested it. I wanted to get away as soon as I could."
...
Takeru was still here, in this place his Mother hated, and his brother was not beside him.
Masatsugu Ono is one of the leading Japanese novelists of the 'post-Murakami' generation (a label he accepts) and, a very short work aside, this is his first novel to be translated into English. His other books have won the Asahi Award for New Writers, the Mishima Yukio Prize and the prestiguous Akutagawa Prize.
He is also - one thing that does seem to postively distinguish many overseas novelists from their often monolingual Anglophone peers - a literary translator, notably of the brilliant Marie NDiaye.
Lion Cross Point (originally 獅子渡り鼻) has been translated by Angus Turvill, who notably does an effective job of rendering the local dialect of the characters into a generic English-language unsophisticated dialect, which both enables the English reader to appreciate the difference between the sophisticated Tokyo Japanese and the local speech, but avoids the jarring of picking a particular English patios.
It is a short (just over 100 page) but powerful novella, deceptively simple but artfully constructed and very unsettling, one I immediately re-read on completion. Comparisons are always dangerous, but this could broadly be grouped with books such as The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse, Fever Dream and Such Small Hands.
The novel is narrated, in the limited third person, from the perspective of 10 year old Takeru, who has come, alone to his mother's small home fishing village (modelled on the author's own home village on Kyushu Island) from Tokyo, where he lived with his mother and elder brother, to stay with the elderly Mitsuko (Takeru himself is unclear of her relation to his mother).
He befriends Saki a neighbouring girl, 2 years younger, but also sees and is talked to by Bunji, a ghost-like character that no one else acknowledges:
Takeru had been dreaming of his sleeping brother again, and again it was Bunji’s voice that brought him up from the depths of the dream, so when he opened his eyes he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Bunji’s face. But it was actually Saki who’d woken him, coming through the back door of Mitsuko’s house.
“Oh…Saki,” Takeru said, rubbing his eyes. “What’s up?”
“You promised to play today,” said Saki.
“Oh, I’m sorry!”
Saki smirked.
“What?” Takeru asked.
“Your cheek looks funny. Like it’s been pressed against a tatami mat.”
“I was fast asleep,” said Takeru, not really feeling like he had been.
“And ya got drool down your chin.”
“Do I?” he said, quickly wiping his mouth and chin with his hand.
He remembered that Mitsuko had gone out, leaving a five-hundred-yen coin on the table so that he and Saki could buy some drinks or ice cream. His mother had often left money for him like that when she was busy, back in Akeroma. But that hadn’t been for treats—it had been for meals.
Gripping the coin tight in one hand, Takeru took his FC Barcelona cap from the back of the chair and hurried out after Saki. Bunji shouted from behind, as though pushing him forward.
Get ice cream. Enough for two—for you and your big brother!
Takeru stopped and looked around. That’s nasty, he muttered. Did Bunji hear? Even if he had, he wouldn’t have understood what Takeru meant. But he must have sensed Takeru’s discomfort, because he put one of his big hands over his mouth, and the other went to the top of his head. I want to vanish, the gesture seemed to say. But he didn’t have to vanish. Takeru pulled down the brim of his cap. That always made things he didn’t want to see disappear.
In the review of such a brief book, one doesn't want to say too much about the plot, but we learn that Takeru's older brother had severe learning disabilities, and that his mother was the abused mistress of a low-life gangster.
Strikingly the author tells Takeru's story not simply in flashbacks, but rather in associations of memory that the boy draws from the people, places and events he encounters in his mother's village. For example, the ghost-like figure he labels Bunji after he spots his resemblance in a community photo, taken decades earlier at Mitsuko's house: he gradually learns that Bunji's situation was in fact very similar to his own brother's and that he also had a younger brother who looked after him, with a name very close to Takeru's own. And that Bunji mysteriously disappeared, assumed drowned, at the local beauty spot Lion Cross Point, potentially taken there by his brother.
Something traumatic has clearly happened in Takeru's past - the passage I quoted above concludes:
He pulled his cap down lower still so nobody would see his face. His vision blurred as sweat dripped relentlessly into his eyes. Saki’s gaze was itching on his face.
Though he could see nothing, because he could see nothing, he saw ants crawling up from somewhere, crawling around his brother’s cheek, arms, shoulders, calves. He didn’t know why he saw it. He knew, but he didn’t know.
But exactly why Takeru's mother hated the seemingly idyllic hamlet so much, and what happened so that Takeru is no longer with his mother and brother is never made explicit. As Ono has explained in interviews:
Author interview:
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/...
Excerpt:
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/d...
Reviews:
https://shigekuni.wordpress.com/categ...
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/throug...
"I hated it. Detested it. I wanted to get away as soon as I could."
...
Takeru was still here, in this place his Mother hated, and his brother was not beside him.
Masatsugu Ono is one of the leading Japanese novelists of the 'post-Murakami' generation (a label he accepts) and, a very short work aside, this is his first novel to be translated into English. His other books have won the Asahi Award for New Writers, the Mishima Yukio Prize and the prestiguous Akutagawa Prize.
He is also - one thing that does seem to postively distinguish many overseas novelists from their often monolingual Anglophone peers - a literary translator, notably of the brilliant Marie NDiaye.
Lion Cross Point (originally 獅子渡り鼻) has been translated by Angus Turvill, who notably does an effective job of rendering the local dialect of the characters into a generic English-language unsophisticated dialect, which both enables the English reader to appreciate the difference between the sophisticated Tokyo Japanese and the local speech, but avoids the jarring of picking a particular English patios.
It is a short (just over 100 page) but powerful novella, deceptively simple but artfully constructed and very unsettling, one I immediately re-read on completion. Comparisons are always dangerous, but this could broadly be grouped with books such as The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse, Fever Dream and Such Small Hands.
The novel is narrated, in the limited third person, from the perspective of 10 year old Takeru, who has come, alone to his mother's small home fishing village (modelled on the author's own home village on Kyushu Island) from Tokyo, where he lived with his mother and elder brother, to stay with the elderly Mitsuko (Takeru himself is unclear of her relation to his mother).
He befriends Saki a neighbouring girl, 2 years younger, but also sees and is talked to by Bunji, a ghost-like character that no one else acknowledges:
Takeru had been dreaming of his sleeping brother again, and again it was Bunji’s voice that brought him up from the depths of the dream, so when he opened his eyes he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Bunji’s face. But it was actually Saki who’d woken him, coming through the back door of Mitsuko’s house.
“Oh…Saki,” Takeru said, rubbing his eyes. “What’s up?”
“You promised to play today,” said Saki.
“Oh, I’m sorry!”
Saki smirked.
“What?” Takeru asked.
“Your cheek looks funny. Like it’s been pressed against a tatami mat.”
“I was fast asleep,” said Takeru, not really feeling like he had been.
“And ya got drool down your chin.”
“Do I?” he said, quickly wiping his mouth and chin with his hand.
He remembered that Mitsuko had gone out, leaving a five-hundred-yen coin on the table so that he and Saki could buy some drinks or ice cream. His mother had often left money for him like that when she was busy, back in Akeroma. But that hadn’t been for treats—it had been for meals.
Gripping the coin tight in one hand, Takeru took his FC Barcelona cap from the back of the chair and hurried out after Saki. Bunji shouted from behind, as though pushing him forward.
Get ice cream. Enough for two—for you and your big brother!
Takeru stopped and looked around. That’s nasty, he muttered. Did Bunji hear? Even if he had, he wouldn’t have understood what Takeru meant. But he must have sensed Takeru’s discomfort, because he put one of his big hands over his mouth, and the other went to the top of his head. I want to vanish, the gesture seemed to say. But he didn’t have to vanish. Takeru pulled down the brim of his cap. That always made things he didn’t want to see disappear.
In the review of such a brief book, one doesn't want to say too much about the plot, but we learn that Takeru's older brother had severe learning disabilities, and that his mother was the abused mistress of a low-life gangster.
Strikingly the author tells Takeru's story not simply in flashbacks, but rather in associations of memory that the boy draws from the people, places and events he encounters in his mother's village. For example, the ghost-like figure he labels Bunji after he spots his resemblance in a community photo, taken decades earlier at Mitsuko's house: he gradually learns that Bunji's situation was in fact very similar to his own brother's and that he also had a younger brother who looked after him, with a name very close to Takeru's own. And that Bunji mysteriously disappeared, assumed drowned, at the local beauty spot Lion Cross Point, potentially taken there by his brother.
Something traumatic has clearly happened in Takeru's past - the passage I quoted above concludes:
He pulled his cap down lower still so nobody would see his face. His vision blurred as sweat dripped relentlessly into his eyes. Saki’s gaze was itching on his face.
Though he could see nothing, because he could see nothing, he saw ants crawling up from somewhere, crawling around his brother’s cheek, arms, shoulders, calves. He didn’t know why he saw it. He knew, but he didn’t know.
But exactly why Takeru's mother hated the seemingly idyllic hamlet so much, and what happened so that Takeru is no longer with his mother and brother is never made explicit. As Ono has explained in interviews:
I wanted to write in such a way that the reader would understand that there were a lot of things about Takeru that not even the author could grasp. I didn’t feel like I was “creating” a character.Recommended.
...
This boy has been deeply traumatized, and the more I wrote, the more I realized that I couldn’t allow myself to go into his mind and touch on things he didn’t want to reveal, or reveal what he had forgotten and was meant to forget.”
Author interview:
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/...
Excerpt:
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/d...
Reviews:
https://shigekuni.wordpress.com/categ...
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/throug...
May 25, 2020
I received a copy of this author's newly translated novel yesterday and felt chagrined I had not yet read this one, so I remedied that last night.
I saw a review that referred to this as "post-Murakami" and it does feel like it goes along with the shorter, character-driven novels I've read from Japan in the last few years, more often by female writers. It's also post-Murakami in the sense that it's all very much about reality and perception, no bonus moons or mysterious creatures here. Just the weirdness of humanity and nature.
The entire novel is told through the perspective of ten year old Takeru, returning to his mother's home. The reader is never told directly what has happened, and some pieces fall into pieces through what Takeru observes or remembers even if he doesn't understand (some because of age, some because of trauma.)
I also learned from this novel that there is a Tokyo accent. There is an interesting town vs. rural dynamic going on here, but instead of it being people looking down on the small rural town, it's very much the small town people being a bit disdainful of those in Tokyo.
Support small presses! I subscribe to Two Lines Press and they send me books every year along the way so really we both benefit. They do important translation work and are able to bring attention to authors that we wouldn't know about otherwise. You can follow the link I already provided to just buy their books too; this is a terribly difficult time for our independent presses and we must do what we can.
I saw a review that referred to this as "post-Murakami" and it does feel like it goes along with the shorter, character-driven novels I've read from Japan in the last few years, more often by female writers. It's also post-Murakami in the sense that it's all very much about reality and perception, no bonus moons or mysterious creatures here. Just the weirdness of humanity and nature.
The entire novel is told through the perspective of ten year old Takeru, returning to his mother's home. The reader is never told directly what has happened, and some pieces fall into pieces through what Takeru observes or remembers even if he doesn't understand (some because of age, some because of trauma.)
I also learned from this novel that there is a Tokyo accent. There is an interesting town vs. rural dynamic going on here, but instead of it being people looking down on the small rural town, it's very much the small town people being a bit disdainful of those in Tokyo.
Support small presses! I subscribe to Two Lines Press and they send me books every year along the way so really we both benefit. They do important translation work and are able to bring attention to authors that we wouldn't know about otherwise. You can follow the link I already provided to just buy their books too; this is a terribly difficult time for our independent presses and we must do what we can.
June 18, 2022
3.5, rounded up.
I came to this both due to its BTBA Best Translated Book Award nomination, and a recommendation from a dear friend. A short novella that can easily be read in a single day (or indeed, one sitting), it has some lovely passages, and an intriguing premise ... it's just that it's intentionally elusive as to what is happening on a concrete basis, and I always have problems with such. :-( I am not quite sure not only what has happened, but what is intended on a thematic level.
I came to this both due to its BTBA Best Translated Book Award nomination, and a recommendation from a dear friend. A short novella that can easily be read in a single day (or indeed, one sitting), it has some lovely passages, and an intriguing premise ... it's just that it's intentionally elusive as to what is happening on a concrete basis, and I always have problems with such. :-( I am not quite sure not only what has happened, but what is intended on a thematic level.
June 3, 2019
I read this short book on the first flight of four on a recent trip. The book is about Takeru, a young boy who has left Tokyo to go to a small seaside village where his mother grew up. His mother hated the village but Takeru finds the village and its inhabitants comforting. The boy has been greatly traumatized. The details of what happened to his mother and his mentally-handicapped older brother are fuzzy to him (and to the reader) but enough information is given for one's imagination to come up with a number of unpleasant endings. The book tells us what is going on in Takeru's head, both in dream and when awake, as well as things he is doing. Thoughts and memories are triggered by things he sees and hears. I enjoyed the book.
January 1, 2020
[3.5] Lion Cross Point follows a 10-year-old boy who moves back to his family’s home village in coastal Kyushu. Masatsugu Ono’s storytelling (in Angus Turvill’s translation) is intentionally mysterious, as he slowly sheds light on the boy’s background. The author is adept at describing the interior traumatic experiences of a young boy, considering that the story is written in the usually distant third person. The landscapes as well as the characters (of which there are many) are visually so stirring that I could envision seeing this on screen, or perhaps I have seen too many Studio Ghibli films of late. A dynamic page-turner that I finished in a day without understanding everything, yet I believe that is deliberate in Ono’s enigmatic, atmospheric novel.
January 31, 2025
I randomly bought this from a local used bookstore because it was short and the author (who I hadn’t heard of) had won the Akutagawa Prize after some cursory googling.
This book made me so emotional I almost started crying. It’s about a 10 year old Takeru trying to make sense of very chaotic miserable life. It’s about how he experiences the kindness and care of others despite his unfortunate home situation. It’s incredibly bleak but still strangely hopeful.
This book reminded me a lot of A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe and Earthlings by Sayaka Murata.
This book made me so emotional I almost started crying. It’s about a 10 year old Takeru trying to make sense of very chaotic miserable life. It’s about how he experiences the kindness and care of others despite his unfortunate home situation. It’s incredibly bleak but still strangely hopeful.
This book reminded me a lot of A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe and Earthlings by Sayaka Murata.
April 11, 2019
3.5. Longlisted for the Best Translated Book Awards, this novel portrays the viewpoint of an 11 year old boy who has come to live with a relative in a seaside town. Using a non-linear approach, we are gradually led to an understanding of why he has come to live there and some of the trauma that existed in his former life. There were some spectral elements that also fit well into the story.
Though I am usually not able to comment on the translation quality, I did have a problem with some of the gerunds used in the characters speech, evidently to show a local accent. Words with an “ing” ending were changed to “in’. “resulting in goin’ , makin’ and doin’. Obviously meant to show some slightly improper grammar use, I found it very disconcerting and was unable to discern whether it implied 1. A local dialect or 2. A lower educational or social class of the speakers.
Should it be on the Shortlist? At this point I am giving it a MAYBE, subject to change when I have read more of the Longlist.
Though I am usually not able to comment on the translation quality, I did have a problem with some of the gerunds used in the characters speech, evidently to show a local accent. Words with an “ing” ending were changed to “in’. “resulting in goin’ , makin’ and doin’. Obviously meant to show some slightly improper grammar use, I found it very disconcerting and was unable to discern whether it implied 1. A local dialect or 2. A lower educational or social class of the speakers.
Should it be on the Shortlist? At this point I am giving it a MAYBE, subject to change when I have read more of the Longlist.
June 27, 2018
One of the most unique (strangest?) books I’ve ever read. I won this as part of an Independent Bookstore Day giveaway from Second Flight Books in Lafayette. (Thank you, Laura and Justin!) I give Mr. Ono credit for portraying the thought processes of a 10-year-old child in a very believable way. However, there isn’t much about this book that is uplifting or positive. It is bleak, to say the least. However, it is short. I was able to read it in one day while doing plenty of other stuff in that same day.
October 17, 2020
**********
This is achingly beautiful.
Masatsugu Ono is officially my new favorite author.
Please translate more Angus Turvill.
This is achingly beautiful.
Masatsugu Ono is officially my new favorite author.
Please translate more Angus Turvill.
January 22, 2023
i loved takeru’s story so much, it left me in such a tender spot 🥺 i only wish there was more bc in such a short book i grew very attached to him
December 31, 2019
Lion Cross Point by Masatsugu Ono was very brief, very good, and also vague in the best way. About a young boy slowly adjusting to life in his mother’s rural Japanese fishing community following a traumatic separation from her and his older, severely disabled, brother, this book shows the world through the eyes of a child slowly acclimating to a safe and loving environment while reckoning, with a child’s perspective, the enormous violence, neglect, and trauma he has left behind. There are ghosts, regrets, pain, and also hope in this book. A novella in length, but a novel in depth.
March 27, 2018
Abandoned by his mother, Takeru has to take care of an older brother who suffers from mental disability. Ono brings the reader right into the experience of the trauma. The language, as translated, is spare, and so gives lots of room for breathing and imagining. Not much happens, but what happens is elemental. The betrayal of loved ones. The kindness of strangers. And the enormous hope one can invest in a healing dolphin.
December 31, 2018
This is a really sad book, which makes it hard to recommend, but it is very well written. The story of a little boy who comes to stay at his mother's hometown in the aftermath of horrific tragedy, it is a delicate and tender exploration of childhood trauma. There is nothing saccharine or sentimental about it, but neither is it needlessly awful or punishing. A careful, melancholy work.
May 9, 2022
3.5 stars. What a strange and confusing little book. What was real and what was a dream for the young protagonist? It is somewhat clearer by the end, but Ono leaves you with a sense that there are still mysteries for him to resolve. The underlying reality of his life has been harsh up to the point where this story begins, and I interpret the events/dreams/memories we're presented are his way of climbing out of that pit of despair and coming to terms with a new reality.
January 14, 2020
This is a small Japanese book is a beautiful and wrenching tale about the lingering after-effects of domestic violence. What it does exceptionally well is create a sense of overwhelming dread without actually explicitly telling you very much about the trauma. It is strongly implied, from the very beginning, that Takeru's mother and older brother were killed by a violent boyfriend.
A book like this could have very easily dwelled voyeuristically on the violence. But it doesn't. Instead almost all of the book is taken up with the many genuinely decent people that Takeru meets along the way. Of these, the most poignant interlude with with Joel, the Haitian-immigrant who can barely speak Japanese. Joel who is terrified of what might happen to Takeru when he has to leave Japan as his visa expires.
Like real life, there's no sense of closure here. This isn't a story about how Takeru develops friendships around the small little seaside village and those friendships teach him to trust people and find joy in life again. This isn't some Oscar-bait movie. If anything, it is about how long the damage lingers. One small scene that is effective on many levels happens when they're driving back from the airport when Takeru first arrives:
It creates this sense of dread because you know that something horrible is associated with the dolphins. But it also shows how random things can be triggers for the trauma, especially for a child in a world where nothing makes sense.
Takeru didn’t feel confident to answer questions about his brother, but he always expected to be asked. But neither Mitsuko nor anyone else he met in the village ever mentioned him. They occasionally brought up his mother, but never his brother. It was strange. It was almost as if he’d never had a brother. Perhaps he hadn’t. Was that the truth of the matter? He wished it was.
A book like this could have very easily dwelled voyeuristically on the violence. But it doesn't. Instead almost all of the book is taken up with the many genuinely decent people that Takeru meets along the way. Of these, the most poignant interlude with with Joel, the Haitian-immigrant who can barely speak Japanese. Joel who is terrified of what might happen to Takeru when he has to leave Japan as his visa expires.
Joel had saved them. But how had he known Kazuhiro was looking for their mother? It all seemed odd to Takeru. But maybe for Joel the situation was quite simple. A young boy sat on the rusty old cast-iron bench reading manga, swinging his legs happily. Suddenly he froze. His face turned pale. He was looking at a man with spiky hair, precious metal adorning his neck and hands—a gangster, obviously. In just a glance Joel would have seen that Takeru was frightened, that he was trying to get away. But why would he want to protect Takeru? What made him do it?
Like real life, there's no sense of closure here. This isn't a story about how Takeru develops friendships around the small little seaside village and those friendships teach him to trust people and find joy in life again. This isn't some Oscar-bait movie. If anything, it is about how long the damage lingers. One small scene that is effective on many levels happens when they're driving back from the airport when Takeru first arrives:
“Ain’t no fish there,” said Hii-chan. “Well, there’s a lot of fish, actually,” he laughed, “but they’re just food for the dolphins. You can feed the dolphins yourself, and touch ’em.”
Takeru suddenly felt breathless. Though the air-conditioning was on, he was very hot. His heart was pounding.
“What’s the matter, Takeru?” asked Mitsuko, sitting next to him in the back seat of the car. She looked into his face anxiously. “Carsick?”
Takeru shook his head. “I’m okay,” he said. His voice was weak. “You can’t swim with the dolphins, can you?” he asked.
“Don’t think so,” said Hii-chan.
Takeru seemed relieved. Something that had been blocking his chest began to shrink.
He forced the air from his lungs, trying to get rid of the blockage altogether. But then Hii-chan changed his mind.
“No. Maybe you can…. Yes. You can if ya make a reservation.”
“Swim with dolphins?” said Takeru. “You can swim with the dolphins?”
The rearview mirror showed Hii-chan’s worried frown.
“What’s wrong, Takeru?” he said. “Why’re you cryin’?”
Mitsuko put her arm gently around Takeru’s quivering shoulders.
It creates this sense of dread because you know that something horrible is associated with the dolphins. But it also shows how random things can be triggers for the trauma, especially for a child in a world where nothing makes sense.
June 13, 2018
As sad a story as this is, the messages that are taken from it are of hope and resilience. Though not narrated, it is told beautifully from the point of view of a 10 year old boy, Takeru, who has gone to live with his grandmother on the coast after an abusive relationship with his mother’s boyfriend led to him and his physically disabled brother being abandoned. Takeru and his brother’s story emerges gradually, representing his memory untangling after tragedy and his inner toughness.
The novella has a dream-like quality as in between his painful memories his grandmother’s stories, the harsh coastal setting, and searching for dolphins with his new friends occupy his mind.
It’s a surprisingly upbeat short novel with a lot to say.
The novella has a dream-like quality as in between his painful memories his grandmother’s stories, the harsh coastal setting, and searching for dolphins with his new friends occupy his mind.
It’s a surprisingly upbeat short novel with a lot to say.
July 30, 2021
It took me three times to get into this book, but I'm glad I finally pushed through the first few pages to finish it. I can already tell that there is something about this book that will sit with me for a long time.
January 16, 2022
The 2nd Ono book I have read and consecutively at that. Truth be told I don't like both that much but there's something about Ono's writing that leaves a restless stirring in your soul. Like his other book, this also showed his signature of unsettling vivid imagery, blurring lines of altered memory and reality.
This book is told from the narrative of a 10-year old. The storytelling is a bit fuzzy, even lucid. It is told from a point of view of a kid who doesn't have the emotional maturity to process his feelings and to distinguish if he has wronged or being wronged at. As he progresses, his story reveals the horror and trauma he experienced, veiled under his childish understanding of the world. I think Ono did really great on this.
There are tender moments interspersed in between, mostly, glimpses of his new life under a gracious caretaker. But some of these moments take the readers back again to these recollections of trauma, triggered by seemingly harmless things within those moments.
While this book is heartachingly wonderful, I do feel the story is a bit overstretched. Too much fillers in my opinion. The ending seemed off. I had a struggle connecting it to the rest of the story.
This book is told from the narrative of a 10-year old. The storytelling is a bit fuzzy, even lucid. It is told from a point of view of a kid who doesn't have the emotional maturity to process his feelings and to distinguish if he has wronged or being wronged at. As he progresses, his story reveals the horror and trauma he experienced, veiled under his childish understanding of the world. I think Ono did really great on this.
There are tender moments interspersed in between, mostly, glimpses of his new life under a gracious caretaker. But some of these moments take the readers back again to these recollections of trauma, triggered by seemingly harmless things within those moments.
While this book is heartachingly wonderful, I do feel the story is a bit overstretched. Too much fillers in my opinion. The ending seemed off. I had a struggle connecting it to the rest of the story.
April 6, 2019
This was quite a strange little book. The young boy Takeru has been sent to live with Mitsuko, an older woman who is apparently some relation to Takeru's mother, though he's not entirely sure what the relationship is. After arriving in the small village where Mitsuko lives, we read flashbacks as Takeru remembers his older brother and his mother, and in a hallucinatory way we learn bits and pieces about what happened to them and how Takeru ended up with Mitsuko. We never, though, get the full story, and Takeru is at best an unreliable narrator. He sees visions of a relative from the past who died, or perhaps didn't... Takeru's life mixes with the imagined life of that past relative, while the dolphins at a nearby water park take on a mystical meaning... And the book comes to an end before we've really learned much at all, leaving the story a sort of inconclusive acid flashback. After starting the book, I considered not finishing it a few times but I'm glad I saw it through. I don't know that I could recommend it strongly, but the atmosphere it conjured with Takeru's strange viewpoint made it worthwhile even if I finished not much wiser than I was at the beginning.
July 15, 2018
Sad, yes, but also beautiful and haunting. It reminded me of the gritty realism found in the film "Shoplifters" -- a side of Japan that is often hidden from the rest of the world.
May 29, 2020
finished this in one sitting and ohhhh wow the way the ending hits was something else. This author does an amazing job of capturing the indecipherability of the world from the POV of a child (but also plays with a third person narration that’s both in and out of the child’s mind? Which is...hella cool?? what the heck???). The uncertainty of memory and of action (maybe Takeru did, maybe he didn’t) and the way that threads rose and fell in Takeru’s mind like waves and ripples felt so fluid and strange. And also: goddamn Takeru, mommy issues T-T and just ugh so much shit this little kid had to carry but also so much he’s lost and so much he’s seen to the point that the world /would/ seen this indecipherable to him, and he so clearly /wants/ and isn’t allowing himself to want, and it’s just. it does feel like a buildup and a fall. Plus the writing is really subtle and beautiful and fluid in this constant motion that forces you forward, like you’re being carried aloft by a stream of people even as you want to turn your head to see if what you saw at the side of the road was really there or if it was a trick of the light. !!!!!!!
November 24, 2019
This story takes place in a coastal village in Kyushu, called Takanoura. Ten-year-old Takeru moves in with Mitsuko, an old acquaintance of his mother and slowly gets to know the other villagers and the area. Before that, he lived in Tokyo with his mother and his older brother.
We follow the confusing account of a young boy who has been traumatized by being mistreated in the past and from seeing his mother mistreated by her dates. He links what he sees in daily life to what happened to him. When he sees a fish being gutted it reminds him of how he was held onto the ground when someone pushed a burning cigarette against his mouth. We follow this boy’s view of everyday life and revisit his past but never fully learn what happened in the past. This is the author’s intention as he chose to respect his character’s privacy.
Takeru thinks a lot about his older brother who has a mental disability, even though no one else seems to acknowledge his brother’s existence. We do see another boy: Bunji. Bunji is a ghost of the past with a story very similar to Takeru’s brother’s. One of them could be real though it is also possible neither of them ever existed. One thing is certain: something happened at Lion’s Cross Point (other than the car accident) and Takeru seems to know or feel something about it.
We also read about things that are part of everyday life in Japan: road closures due to typhoons and landslides, hanging out in convenience stores where it is warm and monkeys with red faces.
Through it all, you can feel Takeru’s pain without it being explicitly mentioned. This story is about a young boy who has known no love and doesn’t know what to do with himself in this world. The people around him aren’t the brightest and they seem unable to help him face the world, though I’d like to think he manages to turn his life around someday.
I recommend this book to those who want to see some strong character building in action. It is not a very exciting story but it excels at making you see and experience the world as Takeru does.
Find more interesting books by Japanese authors here: https://wheretokim.com/books-japan/
We follow the confusing account of a young boy who has been traumatized by being mistreated in the past and from seeing his mother mistreated by her dates. He links what he sees in daily life to what happened to him. When he sees a fish being gutted it reminds him of how he was held onto the ground when someone pushed a burning cigarette against his mouth. We follow this boy’s view of everyday life and revisit his past but never fully learn what happened in the past. This is the author’s intention as he chose to respect his character’s privacy.
Takeru thinks a lot about his older brother who has a mental disability, even though no one else seems to acknowledge his brother’s existence. We do see another boy: Bunji. Bunji is a ghost of the past with a story very similar to Takeru’s brother’s. One of them could be real though it is also possible neither of them ever existed. One thing is certain: something happened at Lion’s Cross Point (other than the car accident) and Takeru seems to know or feel something about it.
We also read about things that are part of everyday life in Japan: road closures due to typhoons and landslides, hanging out in convenience stores where it is warm and monkeys with red faces.
Through it all, you can feel Takeru’s pain without it being explicitly mentioned. This story is about a young boy who has known no love and doesn’t know what to do with himself in this world. The people around him aren’t the brightest and they seem unable to help him face the world, though I’d like to think he manages to turn his life around someday.
I recommend this book to those who want to see some strong character building in action. It is not a very exciting story but it excels at making you see and experience the world as Takeru does.
Find more interesting books by Japanese authors here: https://wheretokim.com/books-japan/
November 10, 2021
This book was a translated edition, but the words and images were still moving. By the winner of Jan's most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, this is a coming-of-ages story from a traumatized preadolescent boy's point of view, and the themes include domestic violence, child abuse by mother's lover, and neglect by a mother struggling to survive. It would be fine for older teens (say 15 and up) because the abuse is handled in a non-sensationalist way but there is also no "justice" resolution, so younger teens might have trouble with that. I wouldn't call this a YA book, but a literary fiction novella.
The Amazon synopsis says it is "At once a subtle portrayal of a child’s sense of memory and community, an empowering exploration of how we find the words to encompass our trauma, and a spooky Japanese ghost story" and although there is a supernatural element in the spirits of children Takeru sees, his growth and understanding are the focus. The spirits are handled in a magical realism way and not as a thriller subplot.
The Amazon synopsis says it is "At once a subtle portrayal of a child’s sense of memory and community, an empowering exploration of how we find the words to encompass our trauma, and a spooky Japanese ghost story" and although there is a supernatural element in the spirits of children Takeru sees, his growth and understanding are the focus. The spirits are handled in a magical realism way and not as a thriller subplot.
December 25, 2025
Kind of a mix between a Miyazaki film and maybe "The Sixth Sense." Essentially this slim novella is about the way a child copes with the trauma of his life, wondering if he'll ever be forgiven for things he was powerless to prevent happening because of his youth and circumstances. At the beginning of the work, ten-year old Takeru finds himself in the small Japanese seaside village where his mother grew up, cared for by an older woman named Mitsuko and befriended by kind locals who look out for him after he's arrived from the big city of Tokyo. He also continues to see an apparition he calls Bunji, a young boy who disappeared from the area about 100 years ago. Heartbreaking, awful things have happened to Takeru in the past that are gradually revealed to us (and remembered by him) as he begins to embrace life again and see the world as good and worth living.
January 5, 2019
The narrator is a traumatized little boy mysteriously without his mother and brother and visiting his mother's hometown. The reader must try to piece together broken bits of memory and sensory impressions from the little boy's disjointed account. I think I know what happened although the story ends with no clear resolution. It's a book that can be appreciated only by readers who do not mind ambiguity, and that does describe me, but I am not completely satisfied with the story. Though I really enjoy very short novels, I think this one could have been longer, and I think the translation was a little odd the way it tried to capture the townsfolk's dialogue. Honestly I picked it up because I loved the octopus cover, but it doesn't play into the story.
December 9, 2023
edit: im sitting with it a lot as one reviewer said the mind of a child is so precious and so obscure, like a rare pearl…. but im realizing it was also a book about our afterlives. we want to begin again but how can we let go of the pain and love and joy that was in our past lives? the big thing that follows us sometimes with succor sometimes with cruelty. in heaven do i forget the ant that crawled up my brother’s leg, the taste of mochi, my hope of swimming with a dolphin, how could i be happy in heaven when that time existed on earth?
quick sad read, wish for more to it but i think it will grow on me. control of mood and theme and general restraint was quite masterful. really beautiful at times. reminded me of koreeda’s nobody knows. ono is marie ndiaye’s translator so i love that obvi.
quick sad read, wish for more to it but i think it will grow on me. control of mood and theme and general restraint was quite masterful. really beautiful at times. reminded me of koreeda’s nobody knows. ono is marie ndiaye’s translator so i love that obvi.
September 12, 2018
Takes the form very seriously (art-novel).
Tells the after-events of the traumatic story of a 10-year old, and some fractured memory of the trauma.
The novel tries to depict as exactly as possible what the boy is going through afterward, hence, the parts of narration are juxtaposed in an unconventional way. Many disparate events mingle with each other.
Metaphysical elements are nice. The scenery of a rural village recalled my own memories of countrysides in Korea. (although this novel takes place in Japan.)
Tells the after-events of the traumatic story of a 10-year old, and some fractured memory of the trauma.
The novel tries to depict as exactly as possible what the boy is going through afterward, hence, the parts of narration are juxtaposed in an unconventional way. Many disparate events mingle with each other.
Metaphysical elements are nice. The scenery of a rural village recalled my own memories of countrysides in Korea. (although this novel takes place in Japan.)
May 15, 2019
Another from the BTBA longlist. This was an atmospheric novel of a boy who had experienced some sort of trauma related to his family which is not fully explained. Telling the story from the boy's perspective the author uses ellipsis to leave gaps which the reader fills with their imagination while at the same time the author raises the question of the narrator's reliability by demostrating that some of what is recounted is imagined or hallucinated. The psychological confusion of the narrator is contrasted by clear compassionate portraits of the villagers that engage him.
June 24, 2020
As is the case with many current Japanese stories, Ono mixes ghosts and kindness of strangers with unrelated clues and people, leaving the reader to puzzle over contemporary life in Japan in "Lion Cross Point." Takuro is a 10-year old orphan who has lost his older brother and mother. He comes back to perhaps-a-great aunt, and tries to piece together how his mother and brother died. Takuro has nothing. Food is difficult to come by. Warmth is found in stores. Ono highlights the extreme misery and sadness of life for outcasts in Japanese small-town society. The reader is left with the lesson that we must all help each other. We never know the true misery of our neighbors.
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