“Water is the origin of all things, and to water all things return.”
Chapter 1: The Return
Kogito Choko, an aging writer, returns to his childhood village in Shikoku after receiving news of his father’s unfinished research. His father drowned mysteriously during a flood, leaving behind a red leather trunk filled with cryptic notes. Kogito hopes to finally uncover the truth behind his father’s death and complete his abandoned work.
Chapter 2: The Red Trunk
Kogito examines the contents of the trunk, discovering fragmented manuscripts, wartime diaries, and disturbing accounts of a local uprising. His father, a right-wing activist, had been investigating a suppressed peasant rebellion. Kogito struggles with fragmented memories of his father’s erratic behavior and the trauma of his drowning.
Chapter 3: The Theater Troupe
Kogito reconnects with “The Caveman Group,” a radical theater collective from his youth now preparing a play about the drowning. Their leader, Unaiko, pushes Kogito to confront his past by dramatizing his father’s death. Tensions arise as artistic interpretation clashes with Kogito’s need for factual truth.
Chapter 4: The Drowning Play
The troupe stages a controversial performance blending the historical rebellion with Kogito’s personal trauma. Audience members, including survivors of the actual events, react violently to the fictionalized portrayal. Kogito realizes the impossibility of separating history from personal mythology.
Chapter 5: The Flood
A catastrophic flood mirrors the disaster that killed Kogito’s father. As waters rise, Kogito experiences visions blending past and present. He finally understands his father’s research was an attempt to atone for betraying the rebels during wartime interrogations.
Chapter 6: Release
Kogito lets the red trunk be swept away by floodwaters, symbolically accepting the irretrievability of absolute truth. He makes peace with his father’s ambiguous legacy and begins writing his own account, embracing the fluidity of memory over fixed narratives.
Key ideas
- The unreliability of memory and historical record
- Intergenerational trauma and guilt
- The cyclical nature of violence
- Art as both distortion and revelation
- Water as metaphor for unconscious forces
Who should read this book?
- Readers interested in postwar Japanese literature
- Those exploring themes of memory and historical trauma
- Fans of introspective, psychologically dense narratives
- Students of meta-fictional techniques