Akame 48 Waterfalls
赤目四十八瀧心中未遂
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A dropout skewers offal in Amagasaki and falls for the tattooed woman downstairs, whose yakuza brother has sold her to save himself.
Near the end of one winter, Yoichi Ikushima, a timid man who dropped out of a good university and left Tokyo for the day labourers' district of Kamagasaki in Osaka, is sent to a job in Amagasaki. Seiko Kishida, who runs a grilled offal shop, sets him to work in a room of a run-down apartment house, pushing raw offal onto skewers all day. The other tenants are hard to read: Aya, a prostitute downstairs whose brother is a yakuza, and Horimayu, an old tattooist who works by hand, among them. In spring, Aya's brother, Sanada, comes out of prison, and a message he leaves for her gives Yoichi his first conversation with her. Seiko and Horimayu start sending him on errands he knows better than to ask about, and he carries them out, frightened. Aya tells him he is not someone who can live here: they are not like him.
In August Aya seduces him. Then she stops coming home, and Seiko and Sanada ask him to tell them if he sees her. A letter comes: be on the platform at Tennoji station tomorrow at five. He leaves without a word to anyone. Aya tells him that Sanada, in trouble with his gang, has sold her for thirty million yen; unless she goes to Hakata by 20 August, or the money is paid, her brother will be killed. For a few days they wander Osaka, eating and making love in hotels. On the last day she asks him to take her away, out of this world, and because of a poster they saw in a station they set off for the forty-eight waterfalls of Akame, in the mountains of Mie.
They climb deeper into the gorge, past fall after fall. Aya tells him that Sanada was meant to go there on a school trip as a boy and never did. Then, at a waterfall, she tells him she had meant to die there with him, but that his coming this far is enough. On the train back, at a station in Nara, she says she is sorry, she will go to Hakata after all, and gets off alone. Yoichi stumbles, the doors close, and he can only watch her on the platform as the train pulls away.
Starring
Takijiro Onishias Yoichi Ikushima
A timid university dropout who has stepped out of ordinary life and ends up skewering offal in an Amagasaki backstreet flat.
Yoichi Ikushima’s story
Yoichi gave up writing in Tokyo and drifted to Kamagasaki with an old dictionary for company. In Amagasaki he skewers offal in his room and carries out, frightened, the errands Seiko and Horimayu give him: banknotes to fetch from a phone box, a parcel to keep, a box to deliver. An editor from Tokyo tells him he can still write. Aya tells him he is not someone who can live here. In August she seduces him, and when her letter comes he leaves without a word to meet her at Tennoji. Asked to take her out of this world, he goes with her into the gorge at Akame, where she tells him his coming this far is enough. On the way back she gets off alone, and he can only watch her from the carriage as it pulls away.
Shinobu Terajimaas Aya
A Zainichi Korean prostitute in the same building, with a tattooed back and a yakuza brother who sells her to save himself.
Aya’s story
For months Aya and Yoichi live in the same building without a word. A message from her brother, Sanada, just out of prison, starts them talking, and she tells Yoichi he is not someone who can live here; they are not like him. In August she seduces him. Then Sanada, in trouble with his gang, sells her for thirty million yen: unless she is in Hakata by 20 August, he will be killed. She sends for Yoichi, spends a few days with him in Osaka, and asks him to take her out of this world. At a waterfall in Akame she tells him she had meant to die there with him, but that his coming this far is enough. On the train back she says she is sorry, she will go to Hakata after all, and gets off alone.
Michiyo Okusuas Seiko Kishida
The owner of a grilled offal shop, once a prostitute herself, who hires Yoichi and keeps an eye on everyone in the building.
Yuya Uchidaas Horimayu
An old tattooist working by hand in an upstairs room, who sends Yoichi on errands he never explains.
Why it matters
Akame 48 Waterfalls takes one of the oldest forms in Japanese storytelling, the lovers' double suicide, walks it to the edge of the water and brings it back. Its world is the one a respectable city does not look at: day labourers, a back-alley offal trade, tattooists and gangsters, and a Zainichi Korean woman whose own brother sells her to get himself out of trouble. Yoichi goes there to disappear, and the people he meets see at once that he does not belong. Chokitsu Kurumatani's novel won the Naoki Prize; the film won the top prize at the Mainichi Film Awards, and Shinobu Terajima won the Japan Academy Prize for best actress. What stays is Aya's choice at the waterfall. She does not die for love. She goes back to being sold, and leaves the man who could always walk away on the train, alive.