The Lost Ryū
What Philip Pullman did for adults and young adults with his concept of the “daemon,” a linked being that nourishes the human soul, Emi Watanabe Cohen has taken to gentler, more tender realms with the ryū—a personal dragon that supports each caring person in Japan.
Since World War II ended twenty years ago, the dragons in Japan have been very small, small enough to perch on someone’s outstretched hand or snuggle in the curve where one’s neck meets the shoulder. Yet Kohei Fujiwara has an impossible memory of big dragons that existed before the war, both beautiful and brutal in their way. He can’t actually have seen them, although his grandfather certainly did. But at this point, Ojiisan, Kohei’s grandfather, is “loud and bitter and numb, and he drank too much.” He also doesn’t have a ryū of his own, not even the tiny sort like Yuharu, who comforts Kohei and reminds him of obligations.
When a family from America becomes a new neighbor, and their half-Japanese daughter (who speaks only English) enters school with Kohei, he’s eager to discover whether she has a Western dragon. Somehow he’s convinced that those are large and potent, like the one his grandfather once had—and if he could just provide a ryū like that, Ojiisan could recover from illness, both physical and spiritual.
Complicating all this is the nature of new neighbor Isobel’s ryū: Not big after all, Cheshire speaks in Yiddish, a nearly lost language. Will he be of any help? Contrasting several kinds of historical loss and loss of home, Watanabe Cohen offers a contemporary fairy tale of journey and quest, with a youngster’s determined heroic stance on behalf of those he loves.
