ワンちゃん

Back in China, Wan-chan built up a thriving clothes shop in a mid-sized city; when her marriage to an unfaithful husband collapsed, she came to Japan as a bride for a quiet factory hand in a small Shikoku town. Lonely, with only his bedbound mother for company, she sets up as a marriage broker, leading groups of local bachelors to China to meet prospective wives. The men are poor, ageing or unlucky: shopkeepers and farmers from emptying villages, one sickly, one whose wife walked out. The women have their own wounds, among them one cast off for bearing only daughters and another shunned at home as fatal to husbands. Scenes from the current tour alternate with Wan-chan's past, and the comic, sad business of arranged marriage across the sea gradually pulls her in too.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novella

Length

146 pages in the original

Genres

Migration (assigned by AI)

Set in

Japan, China

First published

2007 by Bungeishunju

Author's age

43 when first published

ISBN

9784163268804 (original)