A Word from the Characters (1)

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Katsuren is a novel set in Okinawa, Japan. One of the characters is a man named Yu Ganaha. Here is one of his scenes, in which a young American woman asks him about his name.


"Which Yu are you?" I asked.

"I beg your pardon?" Yu said.

"I mean, how do you write your name in Japanese? Are you the Yu that means friendly, the one that means brave, or the Yu that stands for kind and gentle?"

"All of the above," he answered with a smug grin. "But if you really want to know which character I use to write my name, it's this one."

He took my hand and spelled out the strokes for warm, loving and tender with the tip of his finger. I blushed. And then I remembered. This was Okinawa. A man was expected to show his tender side. Yu wasn't setting me up; what he wrote in the palm of my hand was simply the truth.


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