Japan Earthquake Charity Literature

Aoko Matsuda

Planting
Translated by Angus Turvill

WasedaBungaku 2011

PlantingMarguerite planted. She planted roses. She planted violets.
She planted lilies of the valley. She planted clover ﬂowers.
And, of course, she planted marguerites. When marguerites
came out of the box, she would smile. ‘We meet again!’ shewould say softly. The gentle curves etched lightly by the years
around her mouth and eyes would dance. Marguerite planted.
She planted balloons of pretty colors. She planted lip cream,
its smell tingling in her nose. She planted thick ceramic
mugs. She planted cashmere socks. It was Marguerite’s job toplant. And so she planted. She planted lovely clothes, thoughnothing grand. She planted clothes one wouldn’t tire of. She
planted clothes that would make one feel happy all day. She
planted soft, gentle colors. She planted soft, gentle textures.
Marguerite planted every day. She planted a heart that knew
each day was precious. She planted a heart that kept things it
liked and used them time and again. She planted a heart thattreated things with care. Marguerite didn’t hurry. She planted
slowly. It was ﬁne to plant slowly here. How long had she beenplanting slowly? It was hard to say. Marguerite – her glasses,
unfashionable but delicate, cardigan and trousers of pure cotton, simple curls at the tips of her light brown hair. Marguerite and her garden, wrapped in the faint light of evening – toa passer-by it would have seemed like heaven.
2PlantingMarguerite was turning the pages of Townwork. She looked
tired. Her clothes itched. She didn’t care about them, didn’t
even notice the material was artiﬁcial. She was in a Doutor
coﬀee shop, upstairs, in the seat nearest the toilet. Normallyshe drank her iced coﬀee quickly. If she waited for the ice tomelt, the outside of the glass would become wet with condensation and droplets would seep down through the coasterto wet the table. She hated that. But on Mondays she let thewater spread messily on the table. Goodness knows how many
futile days she had spent waiting for the next issue of Townwork. She picked up a copy at the Family Mart convenience
store every Monday, crossed the road to Doutor and started
turning the pages. Before looking inside the thin magazine
she could never suppress a momentary hope – perhaps thisweek there would be the perfect job. But by the time she came
to close the magazine, this hope had always turned to disappointment, disappointment mixed with resignation. Every
single time. It was too much – Marguerite felt as though she
might faint. The jobs pages were updated every week. There
were always new positions advertised. What struck her mostwere the dental nurse ads. They gushed out of the pages likewater from a spring – it was hard to believe there could be so
3Plantingmany dental surgeries in the world. Looking through the ads
in Townwork was fun. But the fact was Marguerite never felt
like applying for any of the jobs. ‘A friendly workplace’ – thatwas no good. She didn’t feel she could work with friendly
people. ‘We’ll help your dream come true!’ declared a restaurant manager beside a photograph of cheerful part-timers,
bandanas around their heads. That was no good. She didn’t
think she could work with people who had dreams. And she
couldn’t work in a place where staﬀ would have to clap andsing if they found out it was a customer’s birthday. ‘Supportive
colleagues’ were no good either. Marguerite had never comeacross a colleague she could rely on. Basically, Marguerite
was tired. She was tired of involvement with people, tired ofworking with people. But she didn’t think she was yet tired ofwork itself. She wanted a job working alone, without having
to speak to anyone. There had never been any jobs like that.
But one week she found one – on a ﬂimsy page in a small
square framed ad.
The ﬁrst thing to come out of the box was a pure white
shirt. Marguerite planted the shirt nervously, but in accordance with the manual. She was relieved when she had successfully planted it. And after that she planted, carefully, one
by one, each of the other items that came out of the box.
4

PlantingA box arrived every day. Some days from Yamato Transport,
some days from Sagawa Express. Working time was 9 to 6
– eight hours allowing for breaks – 900 yen an hour. No workat weekends. At ﬁrst she thought the rate of pay was rather
low, but she soon decided she couldn’t help that. After all, thejob was only planting. And she didn’t have to meet anyone or
speak to anyone apart from the delivery men who gave her
the boxes. There were no performance targets. If she couldn’t
plant everything in the box one day, she could plant them thenext. So Marguerite planted slowly. Lovely tinkling ceramic
bells. Macaroons of many colors. Figurines of ﬁghter girls.
Band T-shirts. One after another they came out of the box.
And Marguerite planted each one slowly, so that she would
not forget any of the wonderful objects, beautiful objects thatcame to her. Marguerite cherished everything that came outof the box. That above all was what made her happy.
Marguerite was surprised to see the dead rat that came outof the box. She planted the dead rat, holding it away from her
between thumb and ﬁngers. A screwed-up handkerchief cameout of the box. Marguerite planted the screwed-up handkerchief. Muddy water came out. Marguerite planted the muddy
water. She went to a nearby supermarket in her break and5Plantingbought some rubber gloves. Rubber gloves on, she planted.
She planted a soaking wet cuddly toy. She planted shriveled
vegetables. She planted a bird with its wings pulled oﬀ. She
planted a carpet stained red-black with blood. She could notstand to look at what came out of the box. She didn’t knowwhat had happened. As soon as a thought came out of thebox, the exact opposite thought would follow. As soon as afeeling came out, the exact opposite feeling would follow.
Marguerite was confused. Confused, she planted. She planted
a broken cup. She planted a tongue cut out from a mouth.
She planted a heart that could love nobody. She planted hatred. She planted anger. She planted, though she wanted tobury. She wanted to bury everything that came out of thebox. She wanted to bury them so deep in the earth that noshoot could ever reach the surface. Though only Marguerite here could bury them, Marguerite had to plant. So sheplanted. She wished what she planted would wither quickly
away. ‘Wither. Wither. Wither,’ she muttered. That is what
her job had become. She didn’t plant slowly any more. Her
heart sank when each new box arrived. She tried to deal with
it as quickly as she could. But however quickly she dealt with
it nothing wonderful now came out, nothing now to warm
her heart. Marguerite planted sadness. She planted anxiety.
6Planting

She planted regret. She planted fear. She planted fear. She
planted fear. She planted fear. She planted fear. Day after day
she planted fear, as though in a game of forfeit. Instead ofrelaxing with a home-made lunch, she now ate as she worked,
gnawing at a rice ball from a convenience store. Marguerite
stopped breathing deeply. Her ﬁeld of vision narrowed. She
took fear from the box and it slipped from her hands. She
gasped. As if waking from a trance, she picked up the fear andplanted it quickly. She noticed she was sticky with sweat. She
felt uncomfortable. She took oﬀ her wig, releasing trappedheat and stiﬀ black hair. She took oﬀ her plain-glass spectacles
and rubbed her face. Her wrinkles, drawn in eyebrow pencil, smudged diagonally and disappeared. What do you mean
‘Marguerite’? A stupid girl, not yet thirty, pretending to be
tired out. A girl who can only plant what she wants to bury. A
coward, incapable of anything. Makiko cried. Makiko stoodcrying stupidly in the middle of the garden.
(Some time ago here was an author called Mori Mari, whocalled herself Maria. Makiko loved Mori Mari. She thoughtthat if Mari could call herself Maria, then she, Makiko, could
call herself Marguerite. It wouldn’t harm anyone, would it?
She knew that the men who delivered the boxes looked at her
7Plantingwith mystiﬁed expressions, mystiﬁed feelings, but while she
worked here she would be ‘Marguerite’. She had decided thison that ﬁrst day, when she planted the shirt.)
Makiko looked around the garden as she cried. Fear hunglow in the air, like fog. The black garden was like a mire sucking Makiko down. Like a black hole. The place she stood wasnowhere. Where is this? she thought. Then she realized – she
had never had a choice. There was no way she could have chosen. Of course, there wasn’t. Makiko smiled faintly. Her tears
stopped. She put her wig back on. She put on her glasses. She
wiped her face with a towel handkerchief and took a make-up
pouch from her bag. Looking in her hand mirror she redrew
the wrinkles. I will plant. I will plant, she thought. She put
her hand in the box. Fear appeared. Marguerite did not lookaway. She ﬁxed her gaze on fear. Then she slowly planted it.
She planted it neatly. Marguerite resolved: I do not have theright to choose. But I can wait. If I carry on planting here
like this, one day wonderful things may come out of the box
again, things it warms the heart just to see. So I will wait here.
Keep planting and wait. Marguerite planted fear. She planted
fear. She took a deep breath. She planted fear. She stretcheda little to relieve the tension in her body. She relaxed for a8Plantingwhile with some nice smelling herb tea from her ﬂask. She
planted fear. She planted fear. The man from Yamato Transport brought the next box. Marguerite took it, smiling. The
man thought this was the ﬁrst time he had seen her smile.
She didn’t yet know what was inside the box. Her watch, amen’s style watch that would never go out of fashion, told her
it was time to stop work. She decided to open tomorrow’s box
tomorrow. Marguerite will be planting again tomorrow.

9

Aoko MATSUDA
Aoko Matsuda was born in Hyogo in 1979.
She graduated from Doshisha University
Faculty of Letters, Department of English.
She published her ﬁrst novel in 2007. Her
keen mixture of rhythmical spoken language and bookish sensibility suggests fresh possibilities forJapanese literature. Of her small number of publications todate, the short story in this collection is the ﬁrst to be translated into foreign languages. She looks set to become one ofJapan’s leading young authors.

Angus Turvill
A graduate of Edinburgh and London universities, Angus Turvill
is Grand Prize winner of the 5th Shizuoka International Translation Competition. He is also a prize-winner in the John Dryden
competition, the UKs leading literary translation competition.
Translated authors include Kaori Ekuni, Natsuki Ikezawa, Kuniko
Mukoda, Kiwao Nomura, and Osamu Dazai. He taught Japanesetranslation at Newcastle University in the UK for seven years.

Waseda Bungaku’s charity project:
Japan Earthquake Charity Literature

The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11,2011 claimed the lives of more than 15,000 people, displaced
many more times that number from their homes, schools
and workplaces, and triggered a nuclear accident whose
effects are sure to last for decades. These unprecedented
events have forced people in Japan to think and act in new
ways. We recognize our responsibility to mourn the deadand do what we can to help the people whose lives havebeen turned upside down. We realize that we are victims
ourselves – both of the short to mid-term damage from theearthquake and the long-term damage from the nuclear accident. We cannot escape the fact that we are somehowresponsible for the effects that the contamination from thenuclear accident will have on current and future generations
both at home and abroad.
In towns where street lights and neon signs have been
dimmed and where air-conditioning and the number oftrains running have been reduced, everyone – regardless ofwhether they were directly affected or not – has been thinking about what they can do as well as what it means to use
nuclear energy. Writers are no exception. Jean-Paul Sartre
once famously asked what literature can do for starving children. Each one of us began to ask ourselves similar questions: What can we write or not write? What can and should
we be doing other than writing? What is it that we really haveto offer? The damage wrought by the disaster and the reconstruction process that followed on the one hand, and theaccident at the nuclear power plant on the other, each raised
issues that had to be thought about quite separately.
In responding to the ﬁrst, we searched for words to mournthe dead and encourage survivors who were trying to getback on their feet. Some tried to write pieces that would
bring solace to these survivors, while others composed re-quiems, just as Shoyo Tsubouchi, one of the founders ofModern Japanese literature, did in 1923 following the Great
Kanto Earthquake. It is often said that “authors always arrivelast”. Some made a conscious decision not to write, choosing instead to write about these events as history one day.
There were those who questioned the value of writing ﬁction, while others did not hesitate to write when asked to doso. Some considered it their duty as a writer not to be moved
by it all and chose to go on as always with daily life.
It was (and continues be) terribly difﬁcult to ﬁnd the words
to offer those who have been directly affected by the disaster. Faced with the continuing effects of the nuclear accident, some shed tears thinking of the people in Fukushima
they had grown up with; others joined demonstrations calling for the government and the electricity company to beheld responsible for their mismanagement; still others began
to rethink the way they had lived, dependent on electricity
supplied by nuclear power; and some even called for theneed to reevaluate the modern era that had “progressed” inthat direction.
Such reactions naturally extended beyond the borders

of Japan. We all imagined, lamented, and felt anger at thethought of the many devastating disasters that have shaken
our world, the accidents that all kinds of technologies havecaused, and similar events that are sure to happen again in
the future, as if they were happening to our neighbors, ourfriends, and to ourselves. We think of Hemingway rushing to
Madrid with riﬂe in hand to report on the Spanish Civil War
as we head to Fukushima armed not with riﬂes, but buckets
and shovels.
But for those of us who make a living by writing, it is clearthat the biggest contribution we can make is through doing
what we do. (Standing in front of a mound of rubble anddebris with shovels, we are far less useful than local highschool students.) Although they have used different methods and approaches, all the authors who participated in thisproject chose to try to do something for the areas and people
affected through their writing. They all struggled in different ways as they wrote these short pieces that have been
made available in English through the efforts of a number oftranslators.
This program aims to give serious thought to the disasterand accident, then bring these words that were born, directly
or indirectly, through this thought process, to people acrossthe world. We hope that after reading these texts you will
choose to make a donation to the Red Cross in Japan or inyour country or to another charity.
We hope that these pieces, written for ourselves as muchas for anyone else, will reach people around the world, andeventually, in some small way, also serve to help the people
in northern Japan who are now working hard to rebuild theirlives.

Makoto ICHIKAWA (literary critic / director of The WASEDA
bungaku)
September 11, 2011

This story was written primarily for use in Waseda Bungaku’s charity project for the Great East Japan Earthquakeof March 2011 and for distribution via the Waseda Bungaku
website in PDF form. An e-book publication of this story will
also be made available in Japan. All proceeds from sales will
be donated to the families of victims and survivors in areas
affected by the disaster.
PDF ﬁles of all the stories in this collection will be available
to download from the website until March 2012. Sending
these PDFs to third parties via e-mail, and posting the URLs
to third-party sites, is permitted. (though Waseda Bungaku
will take no responsibility for the content of such third-party
sites). However, reproduction, in whole or in part, of the dataon these PDFs in any printed media by any unauthorized third
parties is strictly prohibited. Data alteration is likewise strictly
prohibited. We hope that after reading these texts you will
choose to make a donation to the Red Cross in Japan (details
below) or in your country or to another charity supporting
disaster relief. In case of data transfer, we suggest you send

us notiﬁcation beforehand.
Donation Bank Account 1
Name of Bank: Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
Name of Branch: Ginza
Account No.: 8047670 (Ordinary Account)
SWIFT Code: SMBC JP JT
Branch Number: 026
Address of Bank: Ginza Joint Building 6-10-15 Ginza Chuo-ku

Tokyo JAPAN
Payee Name: The Japanese Red Cross Society
Payee Address: 1-1-3 Shiba-Daimon Minato-ku, Tokyo JAPANDonation Bank Account 2Name of Bank: The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd.
Name of Branch: Tokyo Government and Public Institutions

Business Ofﬁce
Account No.: 0028706(Ordinary Account)
SWIFT Code: BOTKJPJT
Branch Number: 300
Address of Bank: 3-6-3 Kajicho Kanda Chiyoda-ku Tokyo JA-

PANPayee Name: The Japanese Red Cross Society
Payee Address: 1-1-3 Shiba-Daimon Minato-ku, Tokyo JAPANDonation Bank Account 3
Name of Bank: Mizuho Bank, LTD
Name of Branch: Shinbashi Chuo Branch
Account No.: 2188729 (Ordinary Account)
SWIFT Code: MHBK JP JT
Branch Number: 051
Address of Bank: 4-6-15 Shinbashi Minato-ku Tokyo JAPAN
Payee Name: The Japanese Red Cross Society
Payee Address: 1-1-3 Shiba-Daimon Minato-ku, Tokyo JAPAN(All bank accounts above are open until March 31, 2012.)

Participants of this charity project(*English translations will be made available):▷ Authors:
Hideo Furukawa*, Kazushige Abe*, Mieko Kawakami*, Toh
EnJoe*, Shin Fukunaga*, Yasuhisa Yoshikawa*, Jungo Aoki*, Aoko
Matsuda*, Sayaka Murata*, Fuminori Nakamura*, Akio Nakamori*,
Furukuri Kinoshita*, Mayuko Makita*, Maki Kashimada*, Kiyoshi
Shigematsu*, Mitsuyo Kakuta, Mariko Asabuki, Masahiko
Shimada, Hikaru Okuizumi, Hiroki Azuma, Toshiyuki Horie, Akiko
Akazome▷ Critics:
Minami Aoyama, Koji Toko, Shigehiko Hasumi, Naomi Watanabe,
Minako Saito▷ Translators:
Michael Emmerich, Satoshi Katagiri, Lucy North, Ginny Tapley
Takemori, Ian MacDonald, Jocelyne Allen, Allison Markin Powell,
Michael Staley, Angus Turvill, David Boyd, David Karashima▷ Staffs:Tatsuya Kuboki, Saki Fukui, Ayane Yokoyama, Takuya Sekiguchi,
Keisuke Ouchi, Mayako Tsuruoka, Kaede Ienaga, Kenichiro Tobaru, Hirotaka
Yamamoto, Moonsoon Park

Copyright by Aoko Matsuda 2011
Copyright by Angus Turvill 2011
Published by wasedabungaku 2011