Second World War

The Second World War is presented through the personal history of Soutaro, Teiji’s uncle, connecting Tokyo’s destruction and postwar rebuilding to the family and noodle shop that shape Teiji’s later life. Rather than narrating military events, the account follows one family’s evacuation, losses, and return to a changed city.

Before the War

Soutaro was born in northern Tokyo and grew up just outside the Yamanote Line. In his prewar childhood, that location made him feel almost provincial. The city later expanded so far that his address became metropolitan, but his pride in being from Tokyo remained central to how he understood himself and his home.

Evacuation and Loss

During the war, Soutaro was evacuated to the mountains of Gumma. The evacuation spared him from the firebombing that swept through Tokyo and took most of his family. His father and younger sister survived. The account makes the wartime rupture both intimate and geographical: Soutaro is away from the city when it is devastated, while the surviving members of his family form the small remainder to which he can return.

Rebuilding in Tokyo

Soutaro returned determined to take part in rebuilding the city. He and his father opened a small noodle restaurant in the Takadanobaba neighborhood, where Soutaro took pride in serving a basic meal to fellow Tokyo residents. The shop represents a concrete form of postwar reconstruction: not a grand civic project, but daily work and a place of service re-established in the city that had lost so much.

Family and the Later Generation

The war’s consequences extend into the family’s subsequent history. Soutaro’s sister married and moved to Kyushu; nineteen years later, she returned with her son, Teiji. After her death, Teiji remained at the restaurant, working there alongside Soutaro. The novel thus places Teiji’s later life within a household and business shaped by wartime survival and postwar rebuilding, even though the narrative’s account of the war itself centers on Soutaro’s earlier experience.