Word: okies
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Oki Toshio, a successful but somewhat lonely novelist in his tifties, decides to visit one of the loves of his youth. Ueno Otoko. This visit awakens feelings of passion and remorse that had lain dormant through the 24 years since their separation; he had deserted the 16-year-old Otoko following her suicide attempt prompted by the death of their premature baby. During the visit, he meets Keiko, Otoko's young protege and lover, in whom he sees the full bloom of Otoko's lost beauty and passion. But aware of Otoko's past. Keiko sets out single mindedly...
...COMMON factor uniting all the characters in the story is itself an abstraction--a romantic novel, in which Oki had sought to immortalize his passion for Otoko. The novel was a work of love, and an immediate success. The book had made his career, had meant luxuries for the family and education for his children; but it nearly destroyed his marriage and later cast Otoko into the harsh glare of public curiosity...
...characters, however, are uncomfortable with their shared destiny. Oki wonders...
Without a misstep or a false line, the author ensnares his writer protagonist Oki Toshio in an old love. Without quite admitting to himself why he is making the trip, the hero journeys alone from Tokyo to Kyoto to hear the temple bells ring in the new year. In this city of shrines lives Otoko, with whom he had had a passionate affair 20 years earlier. She was a schoolgirl and he a young married man, and a child was stillborn from their love. For a time Otoko's grief unbalanced her. Toshio did not see her again...