Kōhaku, the annual singing competition between the red and white teams, is a popular New Year’s event in Japan. In One Hundred Flowers, mother and son gather to celebrate the holiday at home by watching the program and eating dinner—a poignant reminder of how their relationship has changed over time. As a single mother, Yuriko was solely responsible for her son’s upbringing, but as the only child, Izumi increasingly finds himself taking care of his mother now as her memory begins to deteriorate.
Author Genki Kawamura, also an accomplished director, screenwriter and producer, drew on experiences with his own aging grandmother to craft the story. Originally published in Japanese in 2019, Kawamura himself directed the 2022 movie adaptation. One Hundred Flowers is translated by Cathy Hirano and follows the success of his debut novel, If Cats Disappeared from the World, which sold over two million copies worldwide and has also been adapted for the screen. Both stories are emotionally resonant, exploring the fragility of life and the fleeting beauty of each moment.
In One Hundred Flowers, this ephemeral beauty is captured through the quiet accumulation of ordinary days, and by Izumi regularly giving his mother cut flowers over the years.
The myriad flowers displayed in the single-flower vase of their little house. Tulips, cosmos, hydrangeas, sunflowers, gerberas, marguerites, camellias, roses, rapeseed blossoms.
These gifts speak to the tenderness between mother and son, but as Yuriko and Izumi spend time together, readers come to realize that his childhood memories are not all so rosy. Soon to become a parent himself, Izumi reconsiders the past, and although he cares for his mother deeply, he still struggles with the prickling weight of her previous decisions.
He was at a loss for how he should spend his time with her. When he was little, he’d done all the talking, but things had become reversed—ever since that year.
That year—the year everything changed—remains a mystery to Izumi. When he was just a child, his mother suddenly disappeared from his life and then reappeared twelve months later without explanation. Throughout the novel, his thoughts drift between his childhood recollections of that time and the resulting confusion of his mother’s secret, to the present where her memory is steadily fading.
Music is a thread that holds the narrative, and the family, together. Devoting her professional life to music, Yuriko teaches piano lessons to the neighborhood children. But lately, she becomes easily confused, and her fingers falter on the keys. Meanwhile, Izumi works with renowned, modern artists at a record label. And in a world where the boundaries between humans and machines are becoming increasingly blurred, one musician concludes that it is the ephemerality of memory which distinguishes talented artists from artificial intelligence.
“If you wanted to give AI a personality or ability, I guess you could have it forget something then. Such as the colour red, or the sea, or love”… Pictures painted by an artist with no memory of red or stories created by a writer with no memory of love would still be attractive.
Indeed, is Yuriko’s current incomplete rendition of Schumann’s Träumerei any less beautiful or heartfelt than her previous flawless performances? After all, she had always thought that music reflects the joys, sorrows, and even faults of those playing it. Although the missing notes mirror her lapsed memory, she can often recall details of Izumi’s childhood that he has long since forgotten.
His mother was in the process of forgetting, yet the vividness of the things she did remember constantly surprised him. Each time she corrected him, he realized how vague his own memories were; how often he’d rewritten them to suit himself.
One Hundred Flowers is a quiet novel that invites readers to reflect not only on the subjective nature of memory, but also on the struggle to age with dignity, and the challenges facing those like Izumi, who are caring for aging parents while looking toward their own children’s future. In these times, Kawamura offers a touching reminder that even incomplete melodies can still inspire.