In Shion Miura’s “The Easy Life in Kamusari,” Yuki Hirano is looking forward to relaxing, hanging out with his friends and focusing on his love life after graduating from high school in Yokohama. Leaving behind the rigors of the Japanese education system, he sees the attraction of a furītā (serial part-time worker) lifestyle. His parents, however, have other ideas, and enroll him in a forestry training program in Mie Prefecture.
From Yuki’s perspective, Miura’s novel, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, could almost be the opening of a horror story: Sent away by unloving parents, he is met by a complete stranger at a rural train station. This man, whose short, bleached blonde hair makes him look “every inch a gangster,” takes Yuki’s phone and throws its battery into the woods. He then drops him at another stranger’s house and leaves him there for the night.