Taikan

TAIKAN

District 10 in the mid-2000s was quieter than the districts around it: mostly residential, market stalls, motorbike repair shops, not much foot traffic from outside the neighbourhood. This book turned up in a house that had, before 1975, belonged to a family with trading ties to Japan. It had sat on a high shelf for over thirty years, moved from room to room as the house changed hands within the family, never once mentioned to anyone outside it until an xe ôm driver, who’d grown up two doors down, suggested I ask.