Jiro Asada is my favourite writer. Unfortunately, only a handful of his books are translated into English. One of them is “The Stationmaster,” a collection of his short stories. It was also made into a film, The Railroad Man, in 1999.
I cringe when someone says, “You can do anything if you try hard enough.” It may sound good as a pep talk, but it’s unrealistic; there are so many things that personal efforts alone can’t change the outcomes. Asada’s stories resonate because his characters live the best they can.
While reading a book about writing decades ago (I wish I could recall the title), I came across a line, “no experience is useless for a writer.” Asada has a wide variety of experiences, which not many of us could go through even if we had nine lives. It probably took him a long time to digest and come to terms with what happened to him. It seems that he understands what hardship really is.
Noriko Hoshino was born and raised in Tokyo. She came to Canada in 1997 and now lives in Toronto. Her short story “Spring Snow” won University of Toronto’s 2017 Penguin Random House Canada Student Award for Fiction.
You can read Noriko Hoshino's story "Spring Migration" in Issue 294 of The Fiddlehead
