The Swan River Press - Postscripts

Ed Crandall presenting copies
of The Nanri Papers to Ms. Sayuri Tokunaga, head librarian of
Saga Women's Junior College.

POSTSCRIPTS

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Researching this tale gave me an opportunity to read up on a fascinating and tumultuous period of Japanese history: the 1910s and 20s, known in Japanese as the Taisho Period. The contradictions of that period--wild economic booms coupled with devastating crashes, newfound awareness of individual rights alongside deep-seated prejudices against some members of society, a new age of domestic peace peppered with bursts of violence--suggested many elements of my story.

I have never myself seen a ghost in Akamatsu Primary School. None of the students or teachers I interviewed when researching The Nanri Papers claimed to have seen one either. But the history of the building is, of course, well known. Both teachers and students are proud of the fact that their school was once the private quarters of the Lord of the Saga Han, or feudal domain, in what was then known as the province of Hizen. Few of them, however, were aware that the original structure was once used as the City Council building in the early twentieth century.

When I told them, I could see their eyes light up with the implications. "So, the mayor used to work here?" "The councilmen used to walk around in these halls, right?" "I wonder which classroom was the council chairman's office?" The children--with their natural curiosity and fervent imaginations--pretty much wrote the story for me. All I had to do was weave it all together.

As I wrote, I realized that the old rooms--those that existed when the building was used as the City Council Chamber--should make a ghostly appearance of their own. And so both a nameless young woman and the room in which she met her end are revenants of sorts in this tale.

Edward Crandall
August 2008