The 50 Years of Endurance

Until she appeared in front of Naoko’s parents after decades of silence, Naoko had barely known Eiko, her maternal aunt, despite Eiko’s living next door to her home town before her birth. Eiko had lost her residence and contracted senile dementia. Responding to the crisis, Ryoko, Naoko’s mother, accepted to take care of Eiko and meanwhile, she began to speak about their maidenhood to Naoko who was in Tokyo and then New York.

Eiko ran away from home just after her graduating from high school. She reconnected with her family three years later, but it made them aware of that she was in a predicament. Despite their efforts, she could not let off the hook and over the years, the family gave her up for lost. Through Ryoko’s eyes as an attentive caregiver, the dark past of Eiko who had almost no memory is speculatively unveiled. It was an encounter with a rough life to Naoko. The story is set in a small town, eighty miles away from Tokyo, in Japan’s economic boom after World War II and is about the painful life of a woman who was kidnapped at the age of eighteen and sustained difficulties for half a century.