Novelist Yu Miri: Olympics not helping Fukushima rebuilding Yu Miri, who won this year’s National Book Award for translated literature, says Tokyo's Ueno Park, where a homeless man kills himself in her award-winning book, “Tokyo Ueno Station,” looks clean ahead of the OlympicsTOKYO -- Yu Miri, who won this year’s National Book Award for translated literature, says Tokyo’s Ueno Park, where a homeless man kills himself in her award-winning story, looks very clean ahead of next summer's Olympics. Still, she says, that doesn't help to raise hope amid the coronavirus pandemic and the delayed recovery of the disaster-hit Fukushima region. The park is a main setting of Yu's award-winning novel, “Tokyo Ueno Station,” in which the protagonist, Kazu, a seasonal worker from Fukushima, ended up. The elderly man first came to the Japanese capital a year before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics for construction work. Yu remembered another thorn she has had in her chest from her past conversation with a homeless man.

Source: ABC News December 23, 2020 13:39 UTC