Reddit reviews Namida no Kawa: River of Tears

I like books that tug at the emotions and play your heartstrings like it's a pair of bongos.

So when I saw a book called Namida no Kawa -River of Tears- (At the time I was looking for books written in simple Japanese in order to give me something to gauge my reading ability, but this ended up being a translated book. I ended up buying some childrens' books later for those reasons, but that's a different story.), I thought to myself "eh, might as well read the summary."

To sum it up, it basically said "Old man comes back to homeland after 67 years to die, but little girl trolls him by telling him it ain't his time."

So I'm thinking, maybe it's a supernatural heartwarming story that clears up his past and lets him die peacefully, I can get behind this.

...I wasn't ready for this. It's been 3 years and I'm STILL not ready for this.

Get a story about a bitter old man interspersed with memories of his past and his motivation to leaving Japan and why he eventually comes back 67 years later.

Long story short; parents dead at young age; last relative willing to take him in is his married cousin; who has a daughter. Dad is a messed up dude and doesn't want the boy around so he's like "yo he's your responsibility now." to the daughter.

So basically his 2nd cousin is raising him. And she's abusive as hell. Eventually it goes to show she's only like that because that's all she knows how to express in terms of loving someone. Like if this happened in modern day times that dad would've been arrested and social services called so fast the street would've been set on fire by those police car skid marks. Like, hitting a sick girl so hard she bounces off the wall abusive.

So the boy grows up with a twisted sense of hate and love for his cousin. And this is told between the present where this little girl in a kimono keeps telling him at night whenever he puts his hand in his pocket that she knows what he came back to Japan for and keeps telling him "not yet!" That is; don't go to where you promised to go yet, and don't die yet either. Also during the present, he meets a ragtag bunch of people kinda messed up just like he is.

A homeless girl with scars on her cheek that she's super self conscious about and gets explained in painful detail how she got them later on-, a woman who lost her daughter, went barren and her husband noped the hell out while blaming her all the while, a lady and her estranged grandmother- who refused to take her in when her mother died because her husband was dead and she couldn't bear to raise a 3 year old alone right after her daughter died- and another girl, super cheerful, super cute, super bubbly kawaii-desu but in an actually endearing way (believe it or not)....who is borderline suicidal and the borderline eventually stops being borderline because she can't take the sexual abuse from her uncle(?) anymore and she starts going through with it.

Of course the bubbly girl isn't the only one whose situation explodes; the homeless girl gets taken in by the barren lady and the house burns down, and the police drag her away because they found her carrying an empty gas can screaming "I didn't do it!" while the lady gets carted off on a gurney.

The grandmother is convinced by the old man (turns out the grandmother is the best friend of the old man's cousin from the flashbacks who knew about the abuse but never said anything), and the grand daughter who asked him to talk with the grandma get in a huge fight outside the apartment and she storms off.

So he's reminiscing about the past and how his last words to his cousin were a hearty "I hate you!" right when a car comes barreling down the road in the rain and the female cousin pushes him outta the way and gets killed for her troubles.

The worst part is, he had fallen in love with her after realizing all her abusiveness was because that's the only way she knew how to show affection- her dad wasn't a good role model and that's an understatement of the year if the earlier bit about him hitting her while she was sick wasn't a good enough indicator. But his sore point is her talking crap about his dead dad; and she knew this, and she knew he was gonna confess and she couldn't forgive herself for all the crap she put him through; so she wanted him to hate her and intentionally provoked him to stop him from saying that he loved her out loud.

So when he finally leaves that house, he decks that dad and tells him how much he sucks and says how the last words the girl he loved ever heard were "I hate you", words that he should have said to that dad, and never comes back. Plane ticket in hand off to America for the next 67 years where he marries a woman he doesn't love, has a child that dies; enlists in the war and watches all his friends die; having to put one out of their misery himself, and how he came back to Japan, got involved in other people's lives only to royally screw everything up all over again (Yes, he's blaming himself for things he can't control).

So the little girl trolling him telling him "Not yet" every night on the riverbank finally starts being serious; and tells him it wasn't his fault. That all these people in his life he got close enough to care about; that it hurts because he cares. She also says that she loved him; but she knew that he loved her too, but she couldn't bear the guilt after all the hell she put him through, so she couldn't forgive herself and couldn't let him say he loved her. And when he asks her if she's real; she says "who knows?" and says maybe she's the spirit of a girl trapped in this world by an old man's guilt, or maybe just a construct of his mind to ease his guilty heart. That either one was fine and she didn't care, but she didn't want him to think that he was the cause of their suffering and that it would be better if he never met any of them.

So he finally goes to finish his promise now that it's time- he goes to visit his cousin's grave. Breaks down crying admitting that he loved her and that he was sorry and this and that and has a heart attack right then and there.

Wakes up in the hospital. Ain't dead yet, ha. One by one the people whose lives he touched along the way during the present time come up to him and talk to him. The waitress and the scarred girl explain that the house caught fire due to some wiring fault or another; and the gas can the girl was carrying was filled with water; it was the only container she could find fast enough. The bubbly yet suicidal girl explains that when she cut herself, she thought about her "grandpa" (the old man) and how unfair it was she couldn't just go live with him and be happy, and she didn't wanna die because she wanted that so badly that the cut wasn't as deep as it would have been if she hadn't hesitated. So her sexual predator of a guardian gets arrested and she's gonna get some therapy and the lady offers to take her in along with the other girl, rather than have her end up at an orphanage or some other situation. And of course; last but not least the estranged grandmother and granddaughter explain that with a past like that, there's bound to be some harsh words that need to be said. But after they got it all out on the table they were able to talk it out and bond and start over.

So in the end all those people he thought he hurt, thanks to them they actually began to take steps towards a better tomorrow.

But the trip doesn't end there; he's still a super old man that just had a heart attack. After they leave the room he has another one; and he sees a redhead young woman at the foot of his bed as he finds his way to his eternal sleep. He can read her lips asking something to the effect of "what is the one thing you really wanted?" and he smiles.

RIP grandpa.

Next bit of the story it's raining; female cousin just talked shit about his dead dad; and when he flips his can she runs off like she did the first time; and as he starts to chase her he notices a girl sitting on the bridge; it throws him off and he forgets his anger momentarily. And instead of screaming that he hates her, he doesn't get the chance this time cause he hears the car screeching down the road in the slick rain. And like before, his cousin dives at him to push him out the way; but this time...this time.

He jumps towards her and pushes her out the way instead. They land on the side of the road and this jackass driver peels out driving like a crazy person. And they both survive; and she tries to get him to say that he hates her; that he has to hate her. But he won't, he can't, and he finally tells her that he loves her. And she just cries and cries as she clings onto him for dear life; as if he'll melt away in the rain- the two of them on the side of the road, for a while, just the two and their twisted love for each other.

-The End.

tl;dr-

I've probably got some kind of emotional masochism and a penchant for enjoying sad stories; bought a book that sounded sad but ultimately hopeful, got hit by a semi truck of feelings and then it backed up and did it again when I thought it was over.