Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age!

“K is a famous writer living in Tokyo with his wife and three children, the oldest of whom was born with a brain anomaly that has left him mentally disabled. A highly cerebral man who often retreats from real life into abstraction – in this case, the poetry of William Blake – K is confronted by his wife with the reality that this child, Eeyore, has been saying and doing disturbing things – behaving aggressively, asserting that he’s dead, even brandishing a knife at his mother. As the days pass, various events – K’s hapless attempts to communicate with his son, Eeyore’s near drowning during a father-son trip to the swimming pool, a terrible hurricane that nearly destroys the family’s mountain cottage and the family inside it – K is forced to question his fitness as a father.” K reconsiders his own life – his relationship with his father, his rural upbringing, his relationship with a well-known dissident writer who committed suicide, the responsibilities of artists and writers in Japan generally. In the end, in part through his obsessive rereading of Blake, K is able to see that things are not always what they seem, especially where his son is concerned, and to trust his heart as well as his mind.