Strangers (Yamada novel)

First edition (publ. 新潮社)

Strangers (Japanese: 異人たちとの夏, Romanization: Ijintachi to no natsu, lit. Summer with the Strangers) is a novel by Taichi Yamada, published in 1987. The English translation by Wayne Lammers was published in 2003. The novel has also been translated into German as Sommer mit Fremden, French as Présences d'un été, and Swedish as Främlingar (2009).

The Japanese original won the 1988 Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize for best human-interest novel. The English translation was one of sixteen works long-listed for the 2006 Foreign Fiction prize awarded by The Independent.

A film based on the novel, The Discarnates, directed by Obayashi Nobuhiko, was released in 1988. The 2023 English-language film All of Us Strangers, directed by Andrew Haigh, is also based on the novel.

Plot

The narrator Hideo Harada, a 47-year-old TV scriptwriter in Tokyo, is lonely. He has moved to an apartment in a business building in a desolate area near the Tokyo ringway; he's recently divorced and his teenage son wants nothing to do with him. One day Harada visits Asakusa, his childhood home town until he lost his parents in an accident. A couple who resemble Harada's parents invite him to their home. Harada wonders if he is experiencing hallucinations, and eventually his health declines and he begins to look haggard. This is noticed by Kei, his only neighbour, a mysterious 33-years old woman living in his building. Eventually Harada realises that the couple are ghosts who are sapping his life-force.

External links

• Strangers – Yamada Taichi
• Ijin-tachi to no natsu – IMDb entry for the 1988 Japanese film version
• Review: Strangers by Taichi Yamada
• The Independent