The 2nd Selected Works
TITLE
Flowers in Limbo
(Chuin no hana)
(Chuin no hana)
AUTHOR
Translator
FRENCH / Corinne Quentin 
Originally Published by:
Bungeishunju (2001)
(2005) (pb)
KEY POINTS
- A controversial work written by a practicing Buddhist monk that examines life and death from a unique perspective
SYNOPSIS
A story by a practicing Buddhist monk that closes in on the fundamental question - ‘Where do people go when they die?
Ume, an old woman with supernatural powers including precognition, had prophesied the date of her own death. Sokudo, chief priest of a Zen Buddhist temple, is going to visit her hospital on that day when his wife Keiko asks him what happens to people after they die.
Sokudo did not know that Keiko had had such spiritual experiences as seeing mysterious lights at the temple or sensing the presence of people who had died. Nor did he know that Keiko continued to be preoccupied by thoughts of her baby that had died due to a miscarriage four years previously, deeply worried about whether the child had entered Nirvana, or heaven, and was able to rest in peace. When she asked Sokudo about the afterlife, he replied that it was not possible to know for sure whether there was one or not. In theory, "according to Buddhism, when people die they are thought to become gokumi (infinitesimal entities) that spread far and wide. The gokumi are the same size as neutrons." But this and other, similar, explanations failed to comfort Keiko's heart. Sokudo recalled that, despite his being the manager of a temple, he had not given his own child a posthumous name or performed sutras on the child's behalf.
Since losing her child, Keiko had been cutting wrapping paper into thin strips and twisting the strips into strands, as a kind of solitary memorial service, and she had continued the process to the point that her fingerprints were rubbing off. And it was only Ume who had understood her feelings. On the occasion of Ume's funeral, Keiko tells Sokudo that she would like some sutras to be chanted for the child.
The title piece of this book, Flowers in Limbo, discusses the afterlife and the process by which Sokudo and Keiko revise their relationship while proceeding to hold a memorial service for their child and make their own peace with the concept of death.
GENRE: Literary fiction
AWARDS: 125th Akutagawa Prize
(Given for the most excellent among outstanding short works of literary fiction)
