Echo on the Bay
By Ono Matsusugo
Translated by Angus Turvill
(2015, trans. 2020)
Two Lines Press

Ono Matsusugo’s Echo on the Bay takes place in an isolated fishing village on the Japanese coast. From the very first lines, Ono floods us with local rumors, reports of uncanny events, inexplicable behaviors, and moral confusion. The narrator is a teenage girl who mostly encounters the mysteries of the land and the villagers through the eyes of her father, who has been sent to replace the lone police officer who recently retired from serving the role of the village peacekeeper. Locals introduce themselves, tell stories, and depart. Some boast, some complain. We meet the lowest and the highest. Patterns emerge in the stories, and clues rise to the surface of late-night confessions over drinks. There are teenage hijinks: kids launch fireworks almost nightly at a large house inhabited by a solitary old woman. Somebody might have killed somebody. There may be a body on the beach, and a mysterious fishing vessel–one that left and never came back–returns to the bay. The police officer and his associates pull at some of the dangling strings, but there is more armchair speculation than races to the crime scene; he is not in the business of making waves. Several mysteries are resolved, but others are not. Why are the origins of so many of the tales rooted in the Greater East Asia War? Ono also features commentary on the exploitation of foreigners by the fishing industry, as well as the negative ecological outcomes of commercial fish farming enterprises. Fog, mist, and twilight dominate the landscape in Echo on the Bay, often leaving the hapless policeman close to understanding what is happening around him but never quite grasping the truth. Perhaps the atmospheric and moral twilight that has stalled over the village is because the people refuse to accept any responsibility for their past actions Ono’s teen narrator is curious but not fully invested in her father or his work–she is not consumed by “detective fever.” She tells the story in an almost disinterested, remote tone, a passivity and neutrality that she also brings to her forbidden love with an older man. Having secrets herself, can she be trusted?

“The black vapor throws the bay into convulsions. The surface begins to murmur and moan, the bay squirms. Fish are jumping, breaking the surface all over the bay. They’re in pain. They cannot breathe. They fall, slapping back down against the water. The sound multiplies, grows louder. They’re in pain. To get away from the pain they coil their bodies with all their strength and leap as high as they can, but then fall back, striking even more heavily against the hard, black water.
Eventually, the rain begins to fall. It subdues the bay, like a lid coming down on the swirling water. The black cloud pelts down its malice, forcing the fish to abandon their useless resistance. Wounded, robbed of breath, stifled, something in the bay dies. Blood flows and turns foul. I can smell the stench of rotting. We keep the windows closed.”