Middle-aged, jaded and divorced, TV scriptwriter Harada returns one night to the dilapidated downtown district of Tokyo where he grew up. There, at the theatre, he meets a likable man who looks exactly like his long-dead father. And so begins Harada’s ordeal, as he’s thrust into a reality where his parents appear to be alive at the exact age they had been when they had died so many years before.

Ijintachi to no natsu (異人たちとの夏), published in 1987, won the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize.It was translated into English, in 2004, as Strangers.

”Strangers" were translated into English, but also into many other languages thourgh out the world.