Sweet Bean Paste

Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste.

But everything is about to change.

Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape and Tokue’s dark secret is revealed,
with devastating consequences.

Sweet Bean Paste is a moving novel about the burden of the past and the redemptive power of friendship. Translated into English for the first time, Durian Sukegawa’s beautiful prose is capturing hearts all over the world.

Durian Sukegawa studied oriental philosophy at Waseda University, before going on to work as a reporter in Berlin and Cambodia in the early 1990s. He has written a number of books and essays, TV programmes and films. He lives in Tokyo.

Alison Watts is an Australian born freelance literary translator and longtime resident of Japan who has translated novels by Durian Sukegawa, Naoki Matayoshi, Riku Onda and Shusei Hase, as well as a travel memoir TAO: On the Road and On the Run in Outlaw China (Portobello) by Aya Goda. Read LessShe has also translated Durian Sukegawa’s reporting on Fukushima for Asymptote and was awarded the Kyoko Selden Memorial Prize for Translation in 2021 for an excerpt from Sukegawa’s travel memoir A Dosimeter on The Narrow Road to Oku.

どら焼き店の求人をみてやってきた徳江という高齢の女性。彼女が「あん」づくりに託した人生とは? 深い余韻が残る現代の名作。