Tokyo Ueno Station

The novel begins as a first-person narrator describes a sound they hear, and they can’t figure out where it is coming from. The narrator then talks about the exhaustion of life and reveals that everything is over, presumably meaning they are no longer living. They explain that they are standing outside the Ueno train station watching the throngs of people come and go. The mysterious sound haunts them; the narrator says it has “lived” with them since “back then.” They are caught by the word “lived,” but the scene cuts off with the announcement of a train arriving.

The narrator says they were born in 1933 in Fukushima Prefecture and were one of seven children. The narrator is at the park across from Ueno station and details the people who live in the park, including a man who is asleep with his legs around a collection of aluminum cans and a prostitute who has her child with her. At this point in the novel, the identity of the narrator is unknown, but it is later revealed that he is a man named Kazu. He discusses the unhoused lifestyle he was used to. He talks about how visits from the imperial family meant that those who lived in the park were driven away and how many of the unhoused people in the park came from northeastern Japan during the postwar period, initially looking for work.