Shipwrecks

by Akira Yoshimura, 180 pages

Nine-year-old Isaku's isolated coastal village has for generations relied on the bounty and mercy of the sea. Faced with the perpetual threat of starvation, each villager contributes to the community's continued survival through fervent prayers and backbreaking labor. Some, like Isaku's father, sell themselves into years-long indentured servitude miles away, while those at home closely follow the seasons, harvesting seaweed, shellfish, squid, octopus, saury, and salt. As the weather turns cold and the sea treacherous, the villagers turn their hungry eyes to the churning waters just beyond their rock-strewn bay, bending all their prayers and efforts toward landing the greatest, most elusive catch of all.

Shipwrecks is a profoundly disturbing little novel. It shows, without making overt moral judgments, the effects of sustained privation and isolation on a population, illustrating how a society under pressure can convince itself that the ends justify even the most contemptible of means. Isaku works hard, loves his family, respects his elders--and accepts his people's traditions without question. It is with both pity and horror that the reader regards these otherwise decent human beings. But who and how is she to judge?

A tragedy not only in its conclusion but at its very core, Shipwrecks proves frighteningly relevant far beyond its story's borders of time and place.