Unlike any violent connotations the title might conjure up in your mind, Nagasaki is a gently written story about a single man in his fifties called Shimura, living an uneventful existence in a swish apartment block amid a modern concrete jungle. The plot hooked me early on which I need if I'm to read a story to its end. Shimura starts to notice household items have moved since he last used them...or have they?...food goes missing...or did he eat it?...and when he returns from work personal effects have moved from where he'd left them, or is he being forgetful? So Shimura sets up a web-camera to keep vigilance on his home from his office computer.
I got this far in the story and was intrigued. Was Shimura's flat haunted? Was he slowly losing the plot? This was turning into a real mystery. Perhaps I was expecting too much, because it turns out some homeless woman had not only clocked that Shimura had a spare room he never used but also he wasn't the most observant or security conscious tenant. He'd go to work without locking the front door. Having adjusted my expectations away from deep intrigue and mystery, I was not at all disappointed by the rest of the story. It's a little window into the city of Nagasaki. And for someone like myself who hasn't visited it, the scenes came across clearly.