TAIHEN DAA
Chapter 1: Husband
Splash Page:
A weather satellite looks down on Japan as a typhoon off the coast draws closer to Tokyo.
The satellite’s sentience is symbolized with a red blinking light, and represents the Narrator (Endo).
NARRATOR: It was the day the typhoon was closing in [on Tokyo]. By evening, the weather had gone downhill. Maybe that’s why this bar had fewer customers than usual that night.
Chapter 1/Scene 1:
Inside a small bar in early 60s Tokyo.
A TV shows a weather report with the approaching typhoon. (not in book)
Satellite red light is seen through a window (not in book)
Two young “salarymen” relax in the corner.
A serious-looking older man (the protagonist, Gota Haga) reads the evening newpaper while slowly tilting a decanter of sake. With a practiced hand, he sips audibly while pinching some fish with chopsticks. It’s an ideal scene that could be a commercial for Japanese sake.
YOUNG SALARYMAN 1: Your wife is mad at you again?
YOUNG SALARYMAN 2: She hasn’t spoken for three days. I’m in trouble. I’m nervous even to go home.
YOUNG SALARYMAN 1: I guess we can’t play Mahjong at your place anymore.
The older man seems to overhear them. He puts his paper down and gives the younger men a sharp look, but they don’t notice, and continue.
YOUNG SALARYMAN 2: My missus is scary. I heard about this before I got married, but I didn’t believe it at first. At the beginning of the marriage, she was devoted.
YOUNG SALARYMAN 1: Yeah, it was the same for me.
YOUNG SALARYMAN 2 Not just that. Once we had the baby, [at some point] she started acting like her mother – preaching at me about things.
YOUNG SALARYMAN 1: She must have been [looking down on] us. It’s the same situation at my place.
What happens in the rest of the chapter (not translated yet): They get into a heated discussion with the older man about how to handle a wife. The bar’s owner and his wife get in on the conversation. The man takes the younger ones back to his house to show them how to treat a wife (e.g. only say three words to her: “food,” “bath,” “bed”).
The next scene is at the Haga’s home, where we meet Gota’s wife, Shizue.