Photo/Illutration Novelist Sonoko Machida at the awards ceremony of this year's Japan Booksellers' Award held in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward on April 14 (The Asahi Shimbun)

Kiko, a woman in her 20s and a survivor of prolonged child abuse, continues to struggle in her life.

Itoshi is a youth who was neglected as an infant and became unable to speak.

Both had lost their faith in humanity. But after they met, they began to find comfort in each other.

They are the protagonists of Sonoko Machida's novel, "52 Herutsu no Kujira tachi" (The 52-hertz whales), that won this year's Japan Booksellers' Award.

As a symbol of their isolation, the author refers to a whale, long believed to have been inhabiting an area off the U.S. West Coast.

Known as the "world's loneliest whale," it calls at a pitch of 52 Hz, which is too high a frequency to be heard by other whales.

Massive searches were mounted in the past to identify this cetacean.

Itoshi, whose mother called him "mushi" (bug) and treated him like dirt, stubbornly refuses to reveal his real name.

A bemused Kiko decides to call him 52.

"Hey, I'll listen to your 52 Hz voice that nobody can hear," she tells him. "I'll always try to listen, I promise."

Her words thaw his frozen heart, which starts resonating with Kiko's.

Hertz (Hz) is a unit of frequency in the International System of Units, named after German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894).

It increases in level, roughly, in the order from a dog's bark, to the human voice and then to a bird’s song.

The level of a normal human conversation ranges from 250 to 4,000 Hz.

Come to think of it, our conversations have diminished drastically over the last year or so.

We have been required to eat in silence at restaurants, and any raised voice on the train would immediately attract the stares of fellow passengers.

Even today, everyone still pipes down unconsciously, lowering the din.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, so many voices have become harder to hear than usual.

With distances between people continuing to grow, we should try to strain our ears harder to hear the feeble but desperate voices uttered by people whose loneliness has deepened.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 16

* * *

Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

Related News