The Sound of the Mountain
Vintage International · first published 1954 · 288 pages
An aging businessman begins to notice the signs of his own decline and the strains in his son's marriage.
Quiet and episodic, it gathers small moments, dreams, and flowers into a portrait of late life.
For a night when sleep comes slowly.
About this book
Ogata Shingo, a businessman in his sixties, lives in Kamakura after the war with his wife, his son Shūichi, and Shūichi's young wife, Kikuko. One night he hears a low rumbling from the mountain behind the house and takes it as a sign that his time is short. As his son strays and his daughter returns home with her children, he finds a quiet tenderness toward his daughter-in-law. What stays is the hush of memory pressing on ordinary days.