Excerpt from Mornings Without Mii by Mayumi Inaba, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Our first house had been on the banks of the Edogawa in eastern Tokyo. It was a new residential development in which all the houses were two stories, all the same shape with the same layout of rooms, all tightly packed together. The land had been carved up and sold off, with houses crammed in as tightly as possible with no space at all for anything like gardens, and so close together that if you put your ear against the wall you could hear the sound of the TV or voices next door.

Within a month of moving in, I realized the house was full of dust mixed with yellow sand. The sand relentlessly got into the cracks between the tatami mats, and in the rails of the sash window frames, and it turned my duster yellow in no time at all. After battling for weeks against this yellow dust brought on the breeze from goodness knows where, to counter it I finally decided to furnish the house with rugs made from yellow and orange fabrics, yellow curtains, and yellow and lemon-colored cushions. If I covered everything in the same color, the dust wouldn't be so visible anymore. As a result, our house was filled to the rafters with pop colors and just stepping inside it felt like being in a meadow of poppies. Yet even such desperate measures didn't solve the problem of the yellow sand.

I was only cured of this yellow sickness when we moved out west to Fuchu City. We were still living near a river here, but the breeze was completely different.

We had come to this house on the banks of the Tamagawa in the spring of 1975. It belonged to my husband's colleague A, who had been transferred by their company to another part of the country and had rented it to us so we could keep an eye on it. It was a comfortable house with a child's swing in the garden. It had a spacious south-facing living room separated from a bright kitchen by a counter, in addition to two Japanese-style rooms and a small storeroom.

All the rooms had windows with a good view outside. There was plenty of space between us and the surrounding houses, and you couldn't hear any noise through the walls.

Houses are strange. Inside they have voices, a sense of presence. Rooms have their own smell, but also air that is embracing and tender. Maybe the heart of the person who built a house permeates its every corner. Even though this house in Fuchu belonged to someone else, unlike our previous place it always had a pleasant aspect.

I stopped buying yellow fabrics. White suited our new place. The curtains were white, and the house looked prettiest with minimal furnishings. I didn't place any rugs on the floor. The sensation of bare feet on the wooden floors became the essence of home.

I grew accustomed to the sight of the swing swaying in the breeze and to the soft, warm touch of the grass in the garden. Even though the sofa and most of the tableware and other contents of the kitchen cupboards belonged to someone else, after six months I already felt as though we'd been living there for years. I loved strolling along the river embankment at dusk on my days off, gazing at the surface of the water.

In early spring dogwood bloomed white and pink outside the houses, and wooded areas here and there were full of the white flowers of robinia trees. We'd moved into this house in spring but, before we knew it, it was already autumn and the landscape was changing rapidly.

I only realized that the trees in front of our house were robinias when the white flowers came into bloom. When I opened the windows, the curtains puffed up in the breeze carrying their dense fragrance. The blossoms made the whole neighborhood feel cheerful. I had never lived anywhere with such a fragrant breeze before.

My days were now so peaceful I could scarcely believe I had once been possessed by the yellow sickness.

It was at this point that I met my cat. She would never have been able to sneak into my lightened heart the way she did had this place not been colorless and transparent. I was giddily happy, no longer irritated by the sand or continually running around with a duster. Maybe it was because my defenses were down that I readily welcomed her into my life after our eyes met, our skin came into contact, and I set off walking without a second thought.

Excerpted from Mornings Without Mii by Mayumi Inaba. Copyright © 2025 by Mayumi Inaba. Excerpted by permission of FSG Originals. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.