“Hatagaya Lore”
by Bryan Washington
from the March 31, 2025 issue of The New Yorker
I‘ve enjoyed Bryan Washington’s work, and I’m excited to have another to read this week. Here is how “Hatagaya Lore” begins:
We moved to Tokyo from Dallas because of my husband’s job, an unexplainable tech gig. When Craig told me about the promotion, he swore it would change his life. I didn’t want anything to do with it—I had no interest in Japan. Couldn’t find the country on a map, couldn’t speak a lick of Japanese.
But I loved him.
Basically.
And he fielded most of our expenses.
It’ll be an adventure, Craig said.
Most travellers don’t survive their journeys, I said.
Let me know what you think in the comments below!
This story subtly discusses something that people never usually talk about which is how one can feel so alone no matter who they have relationships with in a big city. But even people living a smaller town possibly also might feel the same way.
Because even people who have very close relationships over a period of time might feel alone inside the relationship at times and especially after the relationship ends and partners drift out of touch or when one or the other passes away.
There is the concept of time passing or flowing forward and how could one be lucky enough to have the best sort of experience possible with the best sort of people no matter their gender, their age, their sexual orientation, their emotions, their sensibilities or everything?
Life could be thought of as a metaphoric really long airline flight when after you emerge from the narrower jetway of your mother’s womb, a kindly doctor aboard the aircraft/hospital, welcomes you aboard. They are like an on-call long-term medical flight attendant always making sure you’re comfortable no matter what happens to you physically or mentally over the duration of your life.
Who your parents are or the various friends, acquaintances, lovers or partners you meet are like seat assignments that continue to change over your hopefully very long, very extended flight.
How to sensitively capture those feelings when the short story spans over years and physically over about 4,500 words is quite amazing. And although quite poignant at various points, the protagonist seems appreciative of being gifted relatively much or somewhat, although that seems to indirectly emerge indirectly from the tone of the story.
That this all occurs in Japan is amazing and differences and similarities between American and Japanese sensibilities effectively convey how life and what one might experience in life is so random and so initially foreign but ultimately more satisfying and fulfilling than one might have originally expected.
Because the protagonist seems mildly happy to be gifted the ups and is accepting of the downs and mainly content with what he has experienced so far and seems gently optimistic for the future.
We live in turbulent times and stories like this are surprisingly hopeful. Some people might think of it as a West Indian perspective but any and all hopeful perspectives are always very welcome.