The latest winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for promising new writers of literary fiction, Shu'ichi Yoshida (born 1968), is being lauded for his light touch in portraying the loneliness and isolation of urban life today. At the Akutagawa Prize press conference, Yoshida said that he wanted to portray the gap between the speed of changes in society and in people during the past five years; in particular he wants to capture the moment just before something starts.
His winning short story "Park life" (reprinted in the September issue of Bungei Shunju) deals with the budding relationship between the anonymous narrator "boku" and the "Starbucks woman" (so dubbed because she often has takeout coffee from Starbucks with her), a woman whom he occasionally runs into in Hibiya Park in Tokyo. Boku, a young salaryman working in public relations for a soap company with Ginza offices, is temporarily living in the apartment of divorcing friends and caring for their pet monkey. His mother, in from the provinces for a visit, is staying in his apartment.
The story alternates between meetings of the two in Hibiya Park and his nights in the apartment with the monkey Lagerfeld, plus visits with his mother, walks in a nearby park with Lagerfeld, drinking after work with coworkers and the like. He and the Starbucks woman start eating takeout lunches together in the park but hesitate to ask each other any personal questions, even their names. The story endswith their visiting a photo exhibition together and her saying, "Yoshi. Watashi ne, kimeta" (OK, I've decided now), but without making clear if she's resolved on a relationship with him or not.
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