The Lost Ryū
Emi Watanabe Cohen
Levine Querido
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Historical Fiction
Themes: Bonded Companions, Cross-Genre, Diversity, Dragons, Seafaring Tales
****
Description
Kohei Fujiwara should not remember the big ryū - the large flying dragons of Japan, who disappeared after the end of World War II - but somehow he does: a clear vision of the creatures marching down the street while a great western dragon circles overhead. It's a memory that stands out clearly, because it's about the only time he has seen the face of his grandfather Ojiisan without anger clouding his features. The man he knows now is old, bitter, and often drunk, flying into rages and barely speaking two words to the boy, though his daughter, Kohei's mother, keeps trying to insist everything is fine. Maybe it's because old Ojiisan has no little ryū of his own. Most everyone has a tiny dragon companion, like Kohei's own little pink Yuharu, but Ojiisan's ryū is long gone. When his grandfather falls ill and looks to be dying, Kohei is determined to find the lost ryū and bring it home, in the hopes it will heal the bitter old man's heart. Enlisting the aid of his new neighbors, the American-born girl Isolde and her Yiddish-speaking little western dragon Cheshire, Kohei and Yuharu embark on a secret quest... but what they find changes everything Kohei thought he knew about his parents, his grandparents, and his vivid, impossible memory of the last big ryū of Japan.
Review
At first, this looks like a fairly straightforward alternate-historical fiction tale, one set in postwar Japan in
a world where little talking dragons are common family companions. Once, the tiny ryū had larger cousins, ones
big enough and powerful enough to fly; the household versions may speak and be very intelligent, but they can barely
even hover, even in the midst of a rainstorm - water being the source of ryū magic. When the big ryū
disappeared in the wake of the "atom dragon" attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seems that the greater part of
Kohei's grandfather's spirit left as well. Now, the old man barely talks except to complain and yell, and it only got
worse after Kohei's father drowned while away from home during a typhoon. Kohei understands the value of family and
family lore, and he feels keenly the holes in his heart where he should have stories of his parents and grandparents
and ancestors beyond, the anger radiating off Ojiisan and the sometimes perfunctory attention from his stressed and
grieving mother. He becomes convinced that finding one of the big ryū like the ones he remembers is the key to
unlocking the family secrets and his grandfather's withheld affection, but nobody will tell him where they went after
the war and why they never returned. Upon learning that the new renters in the family's building are from America,
with a western dragon companion, Kohei's hopes rise; his one memory of an American dragon was the great western flier
from his memory, and maybe even seeing a big American dragon will be close enough to a flying ryū for his
grandfather... only for hope to come crashing down almost immediately. Young Isolde speaks some Japanese, but not
much, and her dragon Cheshire is smaller even than little Yuharu, mostly speaking Yiddish (when the shy creature
speaks at all). Worse, Isolde carries her own burdens. The two don't get off on the best foot, but they soon become
friends through adversity, realizing that the other is their best and/or only hope of getting where they need to be
in life. When Ojiisan's health takes a sudden turn, the quest becomes more urgent... and, as the children seek a new
ryū for the old man (their next best hope if they can't figure out how to find the missing big ryū), the
story takes an interesting turn.
Throughout the tale, language and the words used (or not used) are a theme, particularly the often subtle variants on
Japanese phrases and written kanji (there is an afterword that goes into this in more detail). Kohei's mother's
favorite phrase tries to tell him everything is fine, a dismissal of adversity, as if broken hearts and broken
feelings can be swept away like the shattered glass left by Grandfather's tantrums... a lie Kohei comes to hate. One
of the last things his late father told him before disappearing was to never give up and keep trying... though for
what the boy doesn't understand at the time. A silver lighter that belongs to his father carries a kanji inscription
whose exact meaning has several interpretations, and may not mean what he thinks it means as he struggles to fill in
the missing pieces of the family puzzle on his own. And Cheshire's first language, Yiddish, ties into greater themes
that become more central to the story, wartime traumas and losses experienced by the parents of a generation that may
not have personally suffered the privations and faced the battles of a world war, but are living with the scars and
consequences nonetheless, anxieties and lost stories that warp their own young lives. In seeking the big ryū,
Kohei is inadvertently kicking over a stone and uncovering all manner of dark, scuttling shadows and truths about his
family, his country, and the world at large, making clear much of what confused him. In this, he and Isolde are closer
than he ever imagined. Ultimately, the parents who thought they could shelter children from the harsh truths of the
past end up doing more harm than good with their silence.
The story sometimes wanders a bit, and there are some elements that emerge out of the blue or are set up to have
greater importance than they ultimately do. I also thought there needed to be a little more follow-through and
ramifications of an Earth with dragons and hints of magic skewing history just a touch to the side, though I'm likely
overthinking the concept. Part of me wonders if Cohen intends a sequel to deal with some blatant loose threads, even
if the main plot wraps up here. Overall, though, for an impulse read, I was pleasantly surprised by this unexpected
tale.