Territory of Light

Starred review from November 5, 2018
A young woman confronts life as a single mother in this graceful, eye-opening novel from Tsushima (1937–2016), one of the most influential feminists in Japanese literature. An unnamed radio archivist rents a light-filled Tokyo apartment with her unnamed two-year-old daughter after separating from her husband, Fujino, a deadbeat film student. Over the course of a year, the mother readjusts her routines, tentatively attempts to kindle a romance with one of her husband’s tutoring students, and, most challenging of all, transitions to single parenthood. She experiences nightmares about her daughter dying, then guilt that some part of her wishes it were so; she longs to have her “old life back,” yet does everything she can to make her daughter feel “keenly alive.” “Why were children the only ones who ever got to melt down?” she wonders. As the separation from her husband becomes a divorce, the mother begins to find her footing with the assistance of a friend who offers to babysit. But even once the mother has embarked on a spur-of-the-moment solo trip to the seaside, she can’t forget her daughter and finds “the physical distance between us allowed me a pillowy kind of peace.” Equal parts brutal and tender, Tsushima’s portrait of the strains and joys of motherhood is captivating.