水たまりで息をする - Informal Reading Group

Hello and welcome to

水たまりで息をする

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We recently read another book by 高瀬隼子, おいしいごはんが食べられますように, and most of us really enjoyed it. This book was written before おいしいごはんが食べられますように, and had also been nominated for the Akutagawa price.

What is the book about?

Japanese summary

【第165回芥川賞候補作】ある日、夫が風呂に入らなくなったことに気づいた衣津実。夫は水が臭くて体につくと痒くなると言い、入浴を拒み続ける。彼女はペットボトルの水で体をすすぐように命じるが、そのうち夫は雨が降ると外に出て濡れて帰ってくるように。そんなとき、夫の体臭が職場で話題になっていると義母から聞かされ、「夫婦の問題」だと責められる。夫は退職し、これを機に二人は、夫がこのところ川を求めて足繁く通っていた彼女の郷里に移住する。川で水浴びをするのが夫の日課となった。豪雨の日、河川増水の警報を聞いた衣津実は、夫の姿を探すが――。

English summary (machine translation)

One day, Izumi notices that her husband has stopped taking baths. Her husband continues to refuse to bathe, saying that the water smells bad and gets itchy when it gets on his body. She orders him to rinse himself with bottled water, but eventually he goes outside when it rains and comes back wet. Then her mother-in-law tells her that her husband’s body odour has become a topic of conversation at work, and she blames it on ‘marital problems’. Her husband retires and they take this opportunity to move to her hometown, where he has recently been frequenting the river. Bathing in the river became his daily routine. On a day of heavy rain, Izumi hears a warning about the rising river and looks for her husband - but he is not to be found.

There are three large chapters in the book, but there seem to be multiple breaking points (blank lines). The table below lists those breaking points so that when we comment on the content, we can specify how far we’ve read by naming the section we’ve just finished. This will help other readers avoid inadvertent spoilers. Note that some breaks have been skipped when they were too close together.

Section no. Ends with BookWalker % Page no.
風呂
1 腕をからめた。 7%
2 飲めるわけがなかった。 13%
3 かゆくなるのだと思った。 16%
4 再生されたのだった。 19%
5 end of chapter 23%
ことを思い出す。 29%
と呼んだ。 31%
頭からかぶった。 33%
急に冷たい。 35%
10 覚えているだろう。 38%
11 音が挟まる。 41%
12 ありがとうね」 47%
13 ゴミ箱に捨てた。 51%
14 打ち始める。 55%
15 もとへ急ぐ。 57%
16 とてもきれいだ。 61%
17 夫が頷いた。 63%
18 富士山。 66%
19 には見えた。 68%
20 画面に映る。 71%
21 シャウアーを浴びた。 74%
22 息だけで笑う。 78%
23 end of chapter 81%
24 魚を探す。 85%
25 生きていける。 88%
26 と願っていた。 92%
27 end of book 97%

This is an informal reading group and as such, we don’t have a schedule nor weekly assignments. Please join whenever you like and read at your own pace!

Please feel free to comment on the book or ask questions while you read it. As we are reading at different paces, it is crucial that everybody generously applies spoiler tags. Discussion for the whole book will take place in this thread.

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4 Likes

I wasn’t planning to start reading immediately, but curiosity got the better of me.

So far it’s written in a similar style to おいしいごはん, casual and easy to read. It gets straight to the point with the very first sentence: 夫が風呂に入っていない。 :joy:

Section 1. Itsumi gets wind of her husband having stopped using the bath when she realizes the towel has been dry for several days, and still smells fresh and unused. She hilariously tried to get a sniff of him to see whether he stinks and remembers an incident about a month ago when she caught her husband by surprise as he returned from work drenched from the head down. He explained it as a prank from colleagues and never talked about it again. She now fake-casually asks him about having had a bath, and he simply answers “I decided not to”.

Section 2. We get a glimpse into their marriage, with Kenshi apparently being very respectful of his hardworking wife and not wanting to make her cook dinners on top of her full time job, so they decided early on that it’s okay to buy food instead, a lifestyle her mother-in-law pretends to approve of. Over such a dinner, Itsumi broaches the subject of bathing, and makes Kenshi take a shower. He tries but soon gives up, explaining that even the touch of tap water on his skin feels like dust from long neglected old books. He can’t drink it, and he can’t touch it. He’s been wiping his face with a towel he gets wet with bottled water, and that’s about it as far as personal hygiene goes, apparently.

4 Likes

Section 3. Itsumi is getting obsessed with her husband’s non-bathing. Even a woman crying in front of the station (discreetly avoided by everyone as if she doesn’t exist) must be taking baths, a homeless person looks painfully itchy, possibly because he isn’t taking baths. At her work, Itsumi idly calculates how many litres of mineral water there are in the company’s warehouses, and how many baths that would make. We get an interesting glimpse of both Tokyo and the countryside. In Tokyo any aberration gets ignored, like the woman in front of the station (and possibly an unwashed salaryman?). In the countryside where Itsumi grew up, men had never heard of respect, would make loud lewd comments in front of anyone, and even her grandfather casually beat his wife all the time. Growing up in this environment gave Itsumi the dubious superpower of being able to put up with the truck drivers at work. :eyes:

Section 4. In this episode, Itsumi doesn’t take a bath for three days as an experiment, then Kenshi takes a bottled shower. (sounds like a children’s show, but with more slightly disgusting details) :rofl:

4 Likes

Just finished the first section. I can see why you got hooked when you first had a look at it :grin: I like how forthcoming it is with the weirdness and I can’t wait to see how this develops!

3 Likes

Yay, welcome! :grin:

Finished the first chapter. Section 5. Is Itsumi coming to terms with her husband’s new hygiene habits? It’s fitting that she’s considering accepting him as a dog, I was actually thinking he was quite doglike in how he accepts her mild orders without protesting. :joy:

3 Likes

Section 2:

I don’t know what sounds like a more miserable marriage, fending for yourself for dinner every evening or having to wait God knows how long every night until your husband gets back.

How do you even begin to deal with it if your husband tells you he doesn’t want to shower anymore…? Call a doctor? Get him into therapy? How long would you put up with it?

3 Likes

Feeling like it’s somehow your duty to wait must be the worst alternative. A marriage is not all about food, regardless of what the Japanese books I’ve read so far seem to be telling me :joy:

I think it’s only been a few days by this point, so I’d just consider it a passing phase, at least until he explained. After that, yes, it looks like a therapist problem, if he was willing to work through it. Staying unwashed indefinitely can quickly turn into a social, work, and marriage issue, and I’m surprised he doesn’t seem aware of that. The feeling he describes (itchy like from the dust of old books) may be uncomfortable, but not unbearable enough to sacrifice life as he knows it. Unless his real problem is with that life itself, as I suspect.

3 Likes

Finished section 2.

Definitely this. I feel really bad for the husband. I can somehow relate to him even though 言われてみれば I can’t recall anything that makes me feel like that. He probably just needs some exposure therapy. But they need to find a workaround before that.

3 Likes

Section 4.

Ahh, imagining him “washing” his greasy hair with cold water and no shampoo makes me feel icky :sweat_smile:

2 Likes

Chapter 1 done.

I‘m always astounded by how little these people talk to each other. It’s been more than a week now, how do you just accept it like that without having a serious talk about the implications if this goes on? He’s your husband, do you want him to be belittled even further by his colleagues if this continues? The water bottle thing is also quite bizarre.

But the story also makes me think about all the people throughout human history that didn’t have the possibility to take a shower every day. Every time 衣津実 is like „it’s been almost a week, how will he survive??“ (hyperbolic) I’m reminded of that fact. Yes people survived for a long time without bathing every week.

I wonder if their sex life will come up at some point. Well, maybe it was nonexistent before, but it most definitely is now.

3 Likes

Re: whole of chapter 1

Right? Is it possibly a Japanese thing, that even between husband and wife you don’t make comments that could be considered too direct, or too personal? It constantly surprises me too. So many problems could have been solved with a proper conversation.

I was going to comment that too. In fact, I believe our bodies adapt to the way we treat them. We can definitely go a long time without a bath, animals certainly do, and people in the past or in different societies did too. However, changing your habits can be a problem initially. If your body is used to bathing every day, when you suddenly stop, it will show almost immediately, and you’ll probably feel (and possibly be?) dirtier than someone already showering much less frequently.

I’m surprised it hasn’t come up yet. It’s not like the author shies away from personal topics. They sleep in the same bed anyway, and she hasn’t even commented on how it feels sleeping next to him, she only takes the opportunity to smell him when he’s in the living room, it seems.

2 Likes

Section 10

Child 衣津実 is listening in on the parents‘ conversation. I don’t quite know what to make of it. Her dad seems nice, but this conversation was weird. I guess it’s not supposed to be black and white and a simple „well actually he‘s an asshole“. But poor mom, (presumably) having to take care of her mother-in-law. A recurring theme in Japanese society for sure, as we saw in the other book. And the whole „you’re not stressed enough to have burnout/depression, others have it worse“ is… not so cool, I guess.

Section 11

Man, talk to your husband, please. Toothpaste as well now.

3 Likes

Section 6

So it’s been a month and she’s started considering mental hospitals. It’s totally true about the anonymity of a big city - I usually love how everyone minds their own business instead of judging everyone else as people tend to do in small places, but when there’s a problem it’s easy to feel totally alone in a crowd of people. That said, I really don’t get why it’s so unheard of to get willingly wet in the rain. In every Japanese media I’ve seen so far, the rain is something to be avoided at all costs. If you have forgotten your umbrella, you either share or wait for the rain to stop. Why though? I get that some showers are strong enough to make you soaking wet in seconds, but if you’re returning home, you’re going to change out of the wet clothes soon anyway. And there’s something really pleasant about rain water hitting you, as long as it’s not freezing cold.
By the way, since he enjoys rainwater, maybe an onsen would be a good solution? Are there any near Tokyo?

Light 地球星人 spoiler: The husband having never moved out of Tokyo, yet being the one who wants to desperately escape the city (or in this case the city’s water) and move closer to nature (or natural water at least) seems to be a common theme between the books. I wonder if there are more similarities.

3 Likes

Okay, now this is a refreshingly easy read after having chewed on ユートロニカ for a while :joy_cat:

Finished section 1+2.

I am seriously impressed with how understanding she seems to be. Given how obsessed with body hygiene many Japanese appear to be, not having showered for 4 days should make her feel very uneasy in his presence… and not being willing to shower or bathe going forward would feel really weird to me.
I also think he probably needs a therapist if he cannot get over this soon.

Regarding their marriage, I thought it was so sad that they’d both buy and eat a takeaway meal or supermarket food separately. I mean, they work all day every day anyways, and my gut feeling is that eating together would be the last bit of “shared something” that would keep some kind of “relationship” going? And they even dropped this early on…
I wonder whether the mother-in-law is actually fake-enthusiastic about this, or whether she is genuinely jealous of her daughter-in-law having been able to get rid of this burden of waiting for her husband to return home in the middle of the night and to prepare a meal for him whenever he does.

3 Likes

Re: section 2

I guess that’s also a possibility, but this 作り物めいたきらきら瞳 makes me think she’s faking it. And it’s Itsumi’s mother who waited for her husband to come home before eating. We don’t know what her mother-in-law did.

1 Like

Section 7

I really liked the glimpse into her childhood, and the story about the one miraculous fish that survived. I felt the cold water and the mud in my fingers as I was reading. Sounds like a perfectly happy childhood. I wonder what other animals from that time she’ll get to compare her husband with!

Section 8

So the husband is now regularly singing showering in the rain. Not that it’s very effective in keeping him clean. At least in Tokyo no one cares about their neighbours, although I’m sure they can still notice there’s a weirdo living next door, just like Itsumi worries they will.

Section 9

Yep, he’s going happily crazy, and being creative with it. I’m surprised she’s “okay” with him showering with a bucket on the balcony, as long as he doesn’t bring rainwater into the bath. And since that bucket will permanently be there, there’s definitely going to be dust and insects mixed with the water. I wonder how they still share a bed.

3 Likes

Re: Section 1-2:

Oh, that’s another good point as well :woman_facepalming: Thank you for clarifying!

1 Like

Section 10

At first I thought it was the mother-in-law who had depression. Would he normally call his wife or his mother ママ? It did seem like he was (gently?) pressuring his wife to do something she didn’t like in any case. I wonder if we’ll get to learn more.

Section 11

Note to self: Don’t read this book while eating! Too many vivid details about the husband’s unwashed condition… Also, it’s funny but I would also hesitate to drink the bottled water after some of it has been used for a shower. It’s as if it’s suddenly not drinkable water any more, as if it’s somehow been dirtied in the process, even the part that remains in the bottle.

2 Likes

Section 12

In true Japanese spirit, the husband’s mother pays a surprise visit to check on her son, but not once does she even ask anything that might shed light on what’s going on with him. We assume that she’s sensed the smell (and may have noticed his unwashed hair, for example), but never as much as casually asks “how’s work”? Crazy how much they don’t talk.
I’m suspecting they must have had his home number at work, but chose to not call the wife on purpose. It’s the wife’s role to take care of her husband after all (ha), and she’s evidently not doing that, so better let the mother check on both of them. This again seems uniquely Japanese, though. In a Western company, I bet they’d just talk to him directly, give him a warning or even fire him. They wouldn’t involve family.

3 Likes

Section 4:

O man, she’s basically forcing him to shower as if he were a little child, right down to the ‘wash behind your ears!’. Except at least you put your children in a normal shower, while he is being doused with cold water. I have to admit I get a sense of satisfaction from the discomfort he must be feeling. The guy annoys me, he seems like a whiney manchild. Perhaps I will be proven wrong down the line, but he mostly seems selfish to me :woman_shrugging:t2: How can a marriage survive having to treat your spouse like a child…? I am not sure my sense of attraction could survive that, honestly.

2 Likes