五つ数えれば三日月が

The narrator, a lesbian from Taiwan, came to Tokyo for graduate school in spring 2011, just after the earthquake, and now works at a bank there. With the entrance ceremony called off, she met Mio, a Japanese student who had lived in China and whose eyes turn into crescents when she laughs. Five years after they last saw each other, in the final summer of the Heisei era, the two catch up over dinner in Chinatown. Mio teaches Japanese in Taichung, has married a former pupil with a child and lives with four generations of his family. His grandfather once learned Japanese under colonial rule but can no longer find the words; Mio's own Chinese, picked up in the north, earns her teasing. The narrator listens and carries her friend's loneliness, saying nothing of her own.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novella

Length

134 pages in the original

Genres

Love, Migration (assigned by AI)

Set in

Japan, 2018

First published

2019 by Bungeishunju

Author's age

30 when first published

ISBN

9784163910871 (original)