《泥河·萤川》萤火虫与泥河奏响夏夜交响曲

After the confluence of the Tangjiashan and Tosa-hori rivers, they were renamed as the Anji River, which flows into Osaka Bay. There are three bridges at the junction of the rivers: Showa Bridge, Tuanjian Zang Bridge, and Senzu Bridge.

In 1955, the year of Showa 30, the number of cars on the streets of Osaka increased rapidly, but one could still see men relying on horse-drawn carriages to make a living. Even after 10 years since Japans surrender, those who had participated in the war still could not shake off the shadows left by it.

The men who drove the horse-drawn carriages would talk about their near-death experiences, saying, "At that time, I only knew that my body kept sinking towards the darkness. Suddenly, I saw something like a butterfly dancing in front of my eyes, and I tried to grab it with my hand. Just at that moment, I woke up... Its a lie to say that everything ends after one dies."

Shinos father, Shinpei, would also, while drunk, take off his shirt to show the scars he got from the war.

"When I roast gingko nuts under the sunset, I cant help but think of the summer during the war. Why didnt I die then, and why do I still live now? Sometimes I suddenly wonder... There was also a comrade who didnt die, a guy named Murayama, his hometown was in Wakayama, he had two children. Despite being in the midst of gunfire, he didnt even get a scratch, but three months after getting discharged, he fell off a cliff and died. He fell from only five feet high, yet he died without hesitation. After countless close encounters with death, he finally managed to get a chance to live, and finally returned to his country filled with nostalgia, but he ended his life in an unexpected and unwanted way..."

Shino, at the age of eight, had never experienced the war, but he passively learned about it from the stories the older generation told him.

Shino had had a nightmare for a long time, dreaming that his chest was cut open, and there was a thick layer of mud membrane inside, with countless sandworms pouring out of it.

When the new family of the Funaya arrived, their son Kiichi and daughter Ginshi became friends with Shino. However, the term "yagi" (prostitute) seemed to shroud the childrens friendship with the same defeated atmosphere as that of the country. Although Shinos family gave special care to Kiichi and Ginshi, Shino could still hear the contempt of other adults towards their family. This brought him a kind of "unexplainable and homeless-like deeply rooted sorrow."

"Kiichi said, I really wish that I could live in a regular house like Shouko."

"In Hotaru River", the four of them go to see fireflies: Ginzo, who lost his son, Chiyoda, who lost her husband, Ryuho, who lost his father, and Eiko.

Chiyoda wanted to see beautiful fireflies once in her lifetime, and she gambled her future on whether she could witness the rare spectacle of fireflies in their prime.

I wonder if the other three also sealed their fate in their hearts.

Snow, cherry blossoms, and fireflies.

Since fourth grade, Ryuho had been looking forward to the heavy snow in April. Grandpa Ginzo said that only when it snows heavily in April, after years of long winters, will fireflies thrive in great numbers.

"It has to be heavy snow, the kind that makes your eyes unable to open." Thats how Grandpa Ginzo described it.

Thousands, tens of thousands of fireflies formed several waves, slowly undulating. Ryuho thought that fireflies were supposed to twinkle with their shining light, but what he saw was the opposite: they were exhausted, slowly dying and emitting light that was sometimes bright and sometimes weak. That scene created lifeless glimmers.

The flickering bodies of thousands or tens of thousands of fireflies, like a waterfall tossing about the lifeless bodies of microorganisms, were giving birth to an uncalculated amount of silence and death. On one side, they exposed the dense and faint light to the sky, and on the other side, they flew like cold, powdery fireworks.

The fireflies gathered into several undulating waves. He thought they would flicker with their lights, but they looked like they were tired, dying slowly, and flickering and dimming their lights continuously. The scene made up blocks of light that were bleak and lonely.

In Higashinihon Daishinsai, the confluence of two rivers signals death and destruction, but in these two works of Higuchi Ichiyo and Miyamoto Teru, river confluences also signal the confluence of life and death, beauty and decay. The protagonists in these stories are faced with death and destruction, but instead of becoming embittered and hopeless, they find wonder in the natural beauty that surrounds them, no matter how sorrowful it might be.