Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness

“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

Chapter 1: The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away

The story follows a man confined to a hospital bed, reflecting on his traumatic childhood during World War II. His father, a nationalist fanatic, forced him to memorize the Emperor’s speeches. Now, as an adult, he grapples with his father’s legacy and his own fractured identity, oscillating between delusions of grandeur and crushing self-doubt.

Chapter 2: Prize Stock

A young boy in a rural village becomes fascinated with a captured African-American pilot during WWII. The villagers initially treat the prisoner as a curiosity, but tensions escalate as war conditions worsen. The boy forms an unexpected bond with the pilot, culminating in a shocking act of violence that leaves him permanently scarred.

Chapter 3: Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness

The protagonist, a writer, struggles to care for his brain-damaged son while confronting his own emotional instability. Through fragmented memories and present-day struggles, he examines his relationship with his alcoholic brother and deceased father. The narrative explores themes of paternal failure and the possibility of redemption through suffering.

Chapter 4: Aghwee the Sky Monster

A former musician turned insurance salesman recounts his bizarre experience caring for a composer who hallucinates an invisible baby monster named Aghwee. The story becomes a meditation on artistic genius, mental illness, and the narrator’s own suppressed creative desires, ending with a tragic yet transcendent moment of connection.

Key ideas

• The psychological scars of war and nationalism
• Father-son relationships and inherited trauma
• The thin line between genius and madness
• Disability as both burden and spiritual catalyst
• The search for meaning in postwar Japan