Silence and Rebirth of Furyu Yumeya - 1977

Silence and Rebirth of Furyu Yumeya - 1977

Furyu Yumeya was a symbol of the silence of speech in Japanese society in the 1970s. Located in Matsubara Danchi in Soka City, Saitama Prefecture, this small dumpling shop was run by Fukazawa Shichiro, the author of "Narayama Bushiyo" and where he lived after leaving the literary world following the "Furyu Yume Tan Incident" in 1960. Because his works were associated with political murders, he was attacked by right-wingers, which disrupted the Chuo Koron-sha and exposed the fragility of freedom of speech. Fukazawa gave up writing and continued to express himself in silence in his daily routine of baking dumplings.

With the end of the student movement and the advance of commercialism in the 1970s, the publishing world prioritized safe and sellable works, and ideological dialogue receded. In this context, Furyu Yumeya was a place to engage with people while maintaining a distance from society, in other words, a form of resistance that transcended language. Its name, which embodies the intersection of dream and reality, elegance and worldliness, symbolized the power of human sincerity and silence at a time when postwar Japan's freedom was being lost in the system and its profits.