introduction / story

Like a wind in the trees,
unexpected events
shake a man’s placid life,
creating an interplay of
shadow and light.

Hirayama, a public toilet cleaner in Shibuya, Tokyo,
lives alone in an old apartment in Oshiage.
His days follow a strict pattern, and he seems to
be repeating the same things over and over again.
This routine could be his way of keeping loneliness at bay.
In any case, there is something different about him.
Before dawn, the sound of an elderly neighborhood woman
sweeping with a bamboo broom echoes down the street.
Upon hearing this, Hirayama opens his eyes.
After staring at the ceiling for a while,
he gets up, folds his thin sleeping mat, brushes his teeth,
trims his beard, and puts on his work uniform.
He grabs his car keys, some change, and his flip phone,
puts them in his pocket as usual, and leaves his apartment.

Opening the door, he looks up at the sky.
Is he looking at the Tokyo Sky Tree?
Or maybe at the light in the brightening sky?
This happens every day.
After buying a can of coffee from a vending machine,
he heads to work in a blue van packed with
homemade cleaning supplies.
He pops a cassette tape into
the car’s tape deck that the usual corner.
The music playing from his car stereo is from a bygone era.

He spends the day cleaning a number of unusual public toilets. Some days, he might not talk to a single person.
After work, in the evening, he returns to his apartment,
then rides his bike to the public bath.
He visits the same basement pub, where he orders the usual, then returns home to read a book until he falls asleep.
The next day, he awakens once again to the sound of
the bamboo broom. Hirayama’s life is like a tree –
immovable and rooted firmly to one spot.

Why is it impossible for him to hate his flighty,
careless colleague Takashi?
He’s curious about the homeless man he often sees and
loves the komorebi filtering through the trees while he works.
He wonders how long the shop that
develops film will stay in business and
finds old men at the public bath endearing.
He enjoys the insightful quips about books
from the woman at the used bookstore and is intrigued
when the woman who runs the bar he visits on Sundays
mutters comments under her breath.
He never deviates from his routine, even when it rains.
But unexpected things happen,
causing his quiet life to sway in the wind.