We learn about the narraotr, Kazu, through a sequence of flashbacks interleaved between overheard conversations around the titular station. Parallels between the working class man and his family against the imperial family, the princess of which shares the name of Kazu's son.

The story is melancholic and remorseful:

I never took my children to the zoo.

It paints a picture of Japanese life post-WWII at which point it seems like the standard of living for the average citizen was pretty destitute. Hunger was the dominant driving force (consistent with other stories of similar profile e.g. No Longer Human). Understandable, but ill-informed resentment/blame for the state of affairs being US bombings rather than the imperial family, responsible for its subject, which remained decadent and well-nourished despite the war:

I got a room in a dormitory in Taishidō, Setagaya. The form was a prefab, and each man had a six-mat room with a shared toiley and bath. In the mornings and evenings, those of my colleagues who could cook made rice, miso soup, and some simple side dishes, which they shared with me Because of the heavy labor we had to do, if we didn't eat two bowls of rice a day, our bodies would simply have stopped functioning.

...

Our job was constructing athletics facilities–the track and baseball fields and the tennis and volleyball courts to be used in the Tokyo Olympics [1964], Although this was construction work, I never saw any heavy equipment like bulldozers or diggers, and we laborers down from the countryside wouldn't have been able to operate those machiens anyway, so everything was done by human force: we dug the earth with picks and shovels and carried the soil away in hand carts. Many of us were from farming families in Tōhoku. Everyone joked about how construction was just like plowing the fields.

It is not explicitly stated that the speaker is a ghost, though the meandering out-of-body perspectives give a personalized-but-third-person account of various personal sensations alongside public service announcements which achieve the effect nicely (as well as past tense mentions of being alive) e.g.:

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The current security protocols are based on the myth that nuclear power is completely safe, ....

I heard the sound of a lawn mower somewhere neabry.

The small of freshly cut grass hit me.

Then the smell of someone making instant ramen in their tent.

A sparrow startled at something and suddenly flew off, like a handful of beans scattered at Setsubun to cast out evil.

The hydrangeas were in bloom. The lighter blossom surrounding the smaller, darker center resembled a demon's face.

Things like that always made me feel lonely when I was alive.

Now noises, colors, and smells are all mixed up, gradually fading away, shrinking; I feel if I put my finger to touch it, everything will disappear, but I have no fingers to touch with. I can no longer touch, not even one hand to the other in prayer.

If I don't exist, I can't disappear either.

Narrator reports a sense of shame for his station in life, though it doesn't seem like he's flat broke or unable to provide. Certainly not able to live a "full" life with the people he's providing for on account of having to provide. Recalls having to lie to bill collectors as a child about his own father's absence:

I was relieved that he [Bill collector] left, of course, but at the same time I thought what a sin poverty was, that there could be nothing more sinful than forcing a small child to lie. The wages of that sin were poverty, a wage that one could not endure, leading one to sin again, and as long as one could not pull oneself out of poverty, the cycle would repeat until death.

And there was very little of an "American dream" in 1940-60s Japan–

If you fall into a pit, you can climb out, but once you slip from a sheer cliff, you cannot step firmly into a new life again. The only thing that can stop you from falling is the moment of your death. But nonetheless you have to keep living until you die, so there was nothing to do but continue working diligently for your reward.

buh. re: not spending time with those you provide for, too busy providing:

I think if one were to count all the days I had spent with my wife, Setsuko, after thirty-seven years of marriage with me mainly away from home, they would not even add up to a year.

Interesting cultural anecdotes about Pure Land Buddhist funerals:

Our people never worried whether a funeral would be on an auspicious day or an inauspicious one, because a funeral's something to celebrate. And we don't put a note on the house to warn people we're in mourning, 'cause death isn't an impurity, which is why we don't purify ourself with salt after a funeral either.

More meditations on ennui and passage of death to the next generation (conducted by the father regarding the untimely death of his son, Kōichi), mediated for us by the chief priest overseeing his son's funeral:

"Humanity's worst impulse is to imagine those final moments. Those of us left behind wonder whether it was a good death or a bad death. The judgement as to what kinds of deaths are good or bad is entirely our own. In Aizu, there is a statue of Kannon, the bodhisattva of mercy, dedicated to sudden deaths. It originates from when a son went to the templeasking for his parents to pass on without suffering. These days it is no longer sons and daughters who go there but parents. Old men and women pray that they die suddenly so they don;'t become a burden to their families. When they pass o na few years later from a cardiac arrest, their sons or daughts will always say that their parents had the best of it, that they went on to the Pure Land without becoming a burden to anyone, that there is no more perfect way to die, that they would like to go that way, too. And of course they say that this is a good death.

"But once the services on the seventh day, the forty-ninth day, the hundredth day, and the one-year anniversary have passed, they start saying, 'I wish I'd had one more week with them, just three or four days more, even, to hold their hand, to talk with them,' They come to think that perhaps a sudden death may not be such a good death after all. Nothing has changed about the death–only their judgement. So I cannot tell you what a good death looks like."

Kazu is lonely and still keeps to himself:

I think he was looking for someone. Someone who would listen. If I had asked, I'm sure he would've told me anything. If I had shown him that I was ready to listen–or if we'd had one or two more cups of warm sake–he would have told me what a mistake he'd made, and something like friendship could have developed between us; but those who hear another's secrets are obliged to share on of their own. Secrets are not necessarily hidden things. Events that do not bear hiding become secrets when one chooses not to speak of them.

The book circles the moment of Kazu's suicide, beginning with it–

There's that sound again.

That sound–

I hear it.

But I don't know if it's in my ears or in my mind.

I don't know if it's inside me or outside.

I don't know when it was or who it was either.

Is that important?

Was it?

Who was it?

teasing it in the middle, broken up by descriptions of flowers for sale and mundane conversations from passersby in the station–

PLATFORM TWO: THE TRAIN NOW APPROACHING IS

FOR IKEBUKURO AND SHINJUKU. FOR YOUR SAFETY

PLEASE STAND BEHIND THE YELLOW LINE.

I took one step, then another. My hat was pulled down, so I don't think anyone could see that my eyes were closed. I stood on the yellow line, feeling the ridged paving blocks for the blind through the soles of my shoes, and in the darkness I felt the fear grow and expand. I distinctly heard all the noises around me: people walking in heels, sandals, and boots; people talking on phones as they walked down the platform; impatient murmurs of people waiting for the train; and the clatter from the tracks. . . .

"So I looked omn the back of the packaging, right, and saw that the best-before data was that same day. I was like, oh, no, but nobody else seemed to notice, so I didn't say anthyinh either."

"Right, yeah" ...

and arriving at the beginning again at the end.

**THE TRAIN NOW APPROACHING PLATFORM TWO IS BOUND FOR IKEBUKURO.

PLEASE STAND BEHIND THE YELLOW LINE.

I think that the whole story can pretty much be summed up by these three excerpts (additional surrounding fluff omitted, but most of the content in between, with the occasional morose insight into the human condition being a conscription to toiling and death, is just there to serve as fluff). I think perhaps more class-criticism along the lines of the parallels between Kōichi and the imperial prince would've made the story more "impactful," but at the same time I think that the passing comparisons also accomplish the effect of indicating that the average worker wasn't troubled by these problems (I'm speculating). The ruling class enjoyed celebrity, and the poverty of the working man is inevitable. That's the takeaway from this book...

Another quotable excerpt which is as-powerful as the whole rest of the book comes in the form of a sampling of some of the prayers offered at a shrine, written down in black ink on some wooden tablets:

THANK YOU GOD, I FINISHED THE MARATHON.

PLEASE CONTINUE TO LOOK AFTER ME.

...

PLEASE GIVE ME GUIDANCE ON HOW TO GET LOTS OF

STUDENTS IN MY ENGLISH CLASSES.

...

MAY WE GROW CLOSER AND BE HAPPY TOGETHER.

LET US ALWAYS BE THERE FOR EACH OTHER.

...

PRAYING FOR SUCCESS AT MY AUDITION ON JULY 6

...

IN THANKS FOR MY LOTTERY WIN.

...

PRAYING FOR A SAFE MOVE.

...

MAY MY FAMILY BE HEALTHY AND SAFE.

...

PRAYING FOR CERTAIN SUCCESS IN THE JAPANESE-

LANGUAGE EXAMINATION THIS YEAR.

I'LL STUDY HARD.

...

PRAYING FOR MY DAUGHTER TO WAKE UP.

...

TO CHANGE STRESS INTO A FORM OF ENRGY!

TO BECOME A REAL MAN WITH LEADERSHIP!

TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON MY INTENTIONS!

...

LET THE YAKULT SWALLOWS WIN THIS YEAR AT LEAST.

...

PRAYING FOR MOM AND DAD TO GET BETTER.

The in between cruft doesn't add much to the slice of life profiles of the problems facing the Japanese person in this time.

But before ending the book, Muri slips in another gutpunch as Kazu's granddaughter is swept away in her car fleeing a tsunami:

Mari gripped the wheel and stepped on the accelerator, sliding onto Highway 6 still in reverse, but the black wave chased the car and swallowed it up.

N.B. – When emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender on V-J day August 15, 1945, the Japanese public was stuck with disorientation due to the fact that, for generations, the emperor had been revered as a living deity. January 1 the following year, following "guidance" of the occupying allied forces, Hirohito issued the Ningen-sengen (Humanity Declaration) to dispel the mystical image of the monarchy, formally refuting the claim that he was a living god. MacArthur pushes to retain the emperor as rather than prosecute him as a war criminal, believing that vacating the Chrysanthemum Throne would spark civil unrest, guerrilla resistance, and the need for greater Allied occupation. To rebuild his image, the emperor embarked o na series of public tours (depicted in this book) across a devastated Japan in the coming years, meeting ordinary citizens face-to-face to transform his image from one of an untouchable figurehead into an approachable symbol of national endurance. According to QUORA (ymmv) "while many citizens gew to view the imperial family with affection or steady respect as a stabilizing force, opinions were not unanimous. Left-wing groups, labor unions, and some international Allied powers (AUS/SU) strongly favored abolishing the monarchy or holding the imperial household accountable for wartime atrocities." So maybe class-conscious criticism is appropriately absent from this "reconstruction"-era book, focusing instead on the day-to-day experiences of subsequent disorientation.

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