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BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Keywords

war trauma, lost identity, memory and healing

Abstract

Amid a raging blizzard in the mountains of 1907 Hokkaido, Sugimoto Saichi shelters inside the still-warm carcass of a freshly killed deer, huddled beside his companion, Asirpa. As she asks if his wounds still hurt, he brushes it off, insisting that the man he killed earlier had no human heart and felt little pain. When Asirpa reprimands him, Sugimoto concedes—war has changed him. The person he once was had been left behind on the battlefield. Some men, he says, can return to their old lives, but others like him remain stuck in the past. Asirpa, only twelve years old, considers his words before asking a simple question: What was his favorite food? Sugimoto, caught off guard, answers—dried persimmons. He hasn’t eaten them since the beginning of the war. Asirpa suggests that if he ate them again, he could find his way back to the man he used to be. At her words, Sugimoto falls silent, eyes welling up as he remembers the taste of a world that no longer feels like his own.

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