When the Prayer Ends is a long speculative novel by Japanese writer Keigo Higashino, first published in September 2013. The novel won the 48th Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Prize in Japan.
Keigo Higashino was born in February 1958 in Osaka, Japan, and is good at creating speculative fiction, such as "After School", "Secret", "White Night", "Suspect X's Dedication" and other works.
Keigo Higashino's novels always want to express an ideal that belongs to all human beings who have a real sense of the dilemma of life, and his humble people are in opposition to modern society, and are good at expressing the unforgettable death anxiety of contemporary people, which is also the fundamental meaning of his literary creation.
"When the Prayer Ends" tells the story of Kyoichiro Kaga, a criminal police officer, who discovers the truth of the case and discovers the story of two families' sad past by investigating the murder of a woman in a cheap apartment. By showing the human tragedy of a father and daughter struggling in Japanese society and a woman running away for their son, the novel expresses the incredible bondage of family affection and the special love of parents for their children.
Usually, the love of parents for their children is reflected in companionship and care, but in this "When the Prayer Ends" novel, the love that parents give to their children in special circumstances is to leave and disappear, silently praying for their children in the distance.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > disappeared mom</h1>
A woman named Yuriko Tajima came to Sendai alone to make a living, working in a bar in Yasuyo with the help of Yasuyo Miyamoto, and she never wanted to mention her former family.
It turned out that Yuriko had accompanied the wine when she was young, and her inferiority complex was very serious, so she could not look up in front of her husband, and over time, she suffered from very serious depression, sometimes she would lose control of her emotions, and even inexplicably take a knife to her relatives. She knew that she would hurt her child by going on like this, so she resolutely ran away from home. Let her son, who is only 8 years old, shout at her everywhere in a hoarse voice.
Over the years, Yuriko restrained her thoughts on the one hand, and on the other hand, she wanted to know the news of her son, and she was in a very contradictory and painful state.
During this time, Yuriko and a nuclear power plant worker named Shunichi Mianbe came together, cotton cloth had many opportunities for business trips, he knew Yuriko's heart, he would bring Yuriko news about Kaga, when Yuriko knew that her son had won the national martial arts championship, she could not hide her inner joy, but soon she returned to her emotional state of restraint.
We know that when a child is 8 years old, it is the time to rely on the mother, and the mother also needs to accompany the growth of the child and give the child the care and warmth that he deserves. The reality is that Yuriko cannot complete the company of a mother, and the mother and son are separated by the reality of life, so that both mother and son are facing the pain of separation of tearing their hearts and lungs, and this pain, combined with the suppression of thoughts, makes Yuriko suffer even more.
More than ten years have passed, and Yuriko has quietly passed away in her humble apartment.
At this time, Yuriko's son, Kyoichiro Kaga, who had grown up, received a letter from Shunichi Nabe, and he learned that his mother had passed away.
In order not to harm her son, Yuriko chose to leave quietly and silently pray for her son in a distant place. And she herself was alone and devoured the loneliness and the pain of longing. Although Kaga can't touch and can't see This kind of love for Yuriko as a mother, I believe that Kaga will feel it after knowing the truth, and will also let go of her mother's walk.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > disappeared dad</h1>
Kyoichiro Kaga found two strange wall calendars with the name of a bridge written on each month. One was found in the apartment where his mother died, and the other was found at the scene of the woman's murder, which had to make Kaga think of the person of cotton.
So the question is, if the murderer is cotton, why did he kill this woman? What does his calendar mean?
Under Kaga's investigation and analysis, the mystery was finally solved, it turned out that Shunichi Naomibe was not his real name, his real name was Asakai Tadao, he had a daughter named Hiromi Asakai, and the name of the bridge every month was the day when the father and daughter met on the bridge, and the flow of people on the bridge was not easy to find.
So since it is a father and daughter, why do they meet in such a secret way? The fundamental reason is that fathers want to protect their daughters, and they do not know that they have a sad past.
When Asakai Hiromi was a teenager, her mother was out of tune, gambling outside to borrow money, the family was defeated and destitute, the creditor came to the house with thugs to ask for money, really had no money to take Hiromi to pay the debt, helplessly, the father fled with Hiromi that night. On the way, they met a man who worked at a nuclear power plant, and at night the man wanted to take advantage of Hiromi, but he did not expect that Hiromi had killed him by mistake.
In order to protect his daughter, the father, Tadao Asakai, put on his own clothes on the dead man and pushed him off the cliff, while he took the dead man's certificate and went to work at the nuclear power plant. Since then, there has been no such person as Asami Tadao. But there is a person who has been silently blessing her daughter Hiromi Asami from afar.
The woman that Hiromi's father killed was Hiromi's junior high school classmate, the reason was that it was just in time for Hiromi Asami's first performance as a director, Andromy's father couldn't help but come, just recognized by Hiromi's classmates, and killed him for Hiromi's future cotton cloth.
If Hiromi Asami's father, for the sake of his daughter, hid in Tibet, drifted away, and even did not hesitate to kill people, it is already surprising, then the behavior of Asakai father and son at the end of the novel is even more surprising:
The father who killed the man prepared to end his life by self-immolation in order not to burden his daughter and not to live a life of fear. And Hiromi loves her father deeply and tries to keep her father, but no matter how she blocks it, she can't save her father's determination to die. No way, In order to help her father eliminate the fear before he burned to death, Hiromi strangled his father with her own hands.
Seeing this, I believe that the reader's psychology is full of mixed feelings, for the sake of his daughter, Asakai Tadao can lose his name, can be displaced, and can also kill people, and even commit suicide, which is a kind of deep fatherly love. It cannot be denied that this is the most representative example of the failure of the lowly to confront society. The more he wanted to protect his daughter, he would continue to fall into one abyss after another, unable to extricate himself. In the end, only death can be used to reduce the trouble for the daughter. This kind of fatherly love is both touching, heart-wrenching, and even more helpless.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
The curtain of longing for happiness is repeated and repeated, but when the day comes when the truth is made public, the curtain of happiness will finally fall.
- Keigo Higashino, "When the Prayer Ends"
Whether it is Kaga's mother who ran away from home, or Tadao Asakai who sacrificed his life for his daughter, they all want their children to be happy. But when the truth is revealed, are they happy? Kaga did not receive the love of his mother, his father had died, his mother became an eternal pain in his heart, and Hiromi also broke his directorial career and faced the pain of imprisonment.
But is there really only tragedy at the end of prayer? No, absolutely not, like the line in the novel:
A lie is a shadow of the truth, and what will you see in that shadow? It's certainly not just a tragedy, because the lies project the human heart.
--Keigo Higashino, "When the Prayer Ends"
So what kind of human hearts do we see? deceit? struggle? Yes, and of course there is a lot of love.
(End of full text)
I am the fragrance of flowers and plants in Spring City, listening to the wind and rain, picking chrysanthemums on the South Mountain, hoping to send you a relaxing and interesting time.