“You see, once you get here, it doesn’t matter how wealthy or important you were in life. All you’re left with are your memories.” —Hirasaka, photo studio guide
In The Lantern of Lost Memories, author Sanaka Hiiragi entwines her love of cameras with photography to create a story in which a lifetime of memories is recorded in photographs at the end of one’s life. These photos are delivered to one of many photo studios in a nondescript area that stands as a resting point between life and death.
Stationed in each studio is a guide who welcomes the recently deceased and helps them accept their newly acquired status. The guide achieves this by asking visitors to sift through the photos of their entire life, choosing one for each year. Once this is done, the guide attaches these photos to a spinning lantern as a final send-off, literally flashing visitors’ lives before their eyes.
On some occasions, a chosen photograph is unclear. In such cases, the visitor is given the chance to revisit this point in time to snap a clearer picture to add to the spinning lantern. Each visitor gets the luxury of choosing the camera right for them from the studio’s stunning collection that includes every model known to humankind.
The Lantern of Lost Memories contains the stories of three of these visitors: Hatsue Yagi, the nursery teacher who vowed to build a nursery in a war-torn city in post-war Japan; Shohei Waniguchi, the yakuza who used a repair shop as a front for criminal activity; and Mitsuru, a mysterious child who seems to frequently waver back and forth between the living and the dead.
But you might be asking yourself, who is Hirasaka, the guide? An angel? A god? A henchman? Scattered throughout the book are hints about Hirasaka. He is also human and dead, but unlike the visitors, he has no memories about his life. The only hint he has about his past is a photo taken of him, but he has no memory of when it was taken nor who took it.
The only hope he has is that one of his visitors will remember who he is and tell him what kind of person he was.
“I don’t really have any ties to the world of the living, so I wouldn’t mind moving on to the afterlife, even without my memory,” he tells Hatsue. “But it all just seems a little…sad. I find myself wondering what it even means for me to die if I don’t remember anything and nobody knows who I was. A boring life, a boring death, and no one to ever remember me. Is there any meaning or purpose to my existence that way? Why was I even alive in the first place?”
Readers will learn the answers to his questions about his existence and more. In a world oversaturated with egos and an obsession over leaving behind legacies, Hiiragi imbues this book with a message of persistence, courageousness, and a reminder to do what is right to help others in need. No matter how ordinary people are, she seems to be saying, they can be a hero.
