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Great Translations: Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa
A heart-warming story of the evolving relationship between a 30-ish Japanese man and an elderly woman. The man runs a sweet-bean deli shop. He hires an elderly lady to help out, initially telling her to stay in the back because she has crippled fingers that might ‘scare customers away.’ It’s also a story of her disease and the impact it has had on her entire life.
The Setting: Most of the story takes place in the shop in a run-down strip plaza in contemporary Japan. But we also learn about the inhumane institutional setting that all people in Japan with the elderly lady’s disease lived under until 1996.
The Story: Sweet bean paste is a Japanese delicacy served rolled up in pancakes. The man has had a troubled life; he’s bored working by himself six days a week, morning until evening and he’s probably an alcoholic. The store’s owner is concerned about the woman’s appearance too.
The elderly lady shows the young man how to make real sweet bean paste from scratch, not from canned ingredients. She hand-picks the beans and ‘listens to them.’ She becomes like a grandmother figure to the high school girls who come in after school to hang…
