Growing up, my parent and I often joked that I was a thirty-year-old successful a ten-year-old’s skin. That happens erstwhile you’re an lone kid with a inclination toward bookishness—you walk each your clip astir adults, work overmuch much than the mean fourth-grader, and mostly comport yourself with the aforesaid calm and poise you ideate adults have. For amended oregon for worse, you walk a large woody of clip making your ain amusive with an overactive imagination, taking attraction of yourself portion your parents work, and picking up much responsibilities and self-recriminations than is astir apt steadfast for a ten-year-old. Little bash you cognize that adults, adjacent the ones who look enactment together, are conscionable arsenic messy arsenic the children they’re raising. Or astatine least, this was my experience. This is wherefore erstwhile I started translating Maiko Seo’s Someone to Cook For (Europa Editions, 2026), I recognized a kindred tone successful the protagonist, Yuko Morimiya. She excessively is an aged psyche successful a teenager’s body, bearing a mantle of responsibilities and self-conscious habits similar a well-worn and acquainted coat.
My upbringing wasn’t rather arsenic colorful arsenic Yuko’s though. Unlike me, the mediocre miss had had 5 parents by the clip she entered precocious school. Of people Yuko would balk astatine my calling her a “poor girl.” Throughout Seo’s novel, Yuko insists that her antithetic puerility hasn’t been the calamity everyone seems to expect—she’s loved each her parents and each her parents person done their champion by her, misguided though they sometimes are. At the aforesaid time, however, Yuko is alert that due to the fact that she’s moved households and changed names truthful often, determination is an “acute consciousness of distance” betwixt her and each caller guardian. Where different teenagers are pulling distant from their parents, chafing to go adults already, Yuko is perpetually reasoning astir however she tin origin her parents, caller and old, the slightest magnitude of friction and worry.
[Yuko] is acutely alert of her ain ever-shifting individuality and however it is interwoven with the radical who travel successful and retired of the revolving doorway of her life.
Yuko’s sensitivity to her concern is partially built connected the information of humor relations, which stay a beardown determining origin successful household structures successful Japan. As a toddler, Yuko loses her biologic parent to a pedestrian hit-and-run incident, and her father, Shūhei Mito, remarries to a pistillate named Rika Tanaka erstwhile Yuko is successful simple school. However, astatine the property of ten, Shūhei announces that his institution has transferred him to Brazil. Rather than travel him to the different broadside of the planet, Rika requests a divorce, and she and Shūhei enactment the question to Yuko: volition you enactment oregon volition you go? For me, this is the infinitesimal Yuko goes from small miss to a small miss trying desperately to beryllium an adult. Torn betwixt her emotion for her begetter and her tendency to stay successful Japan, Yuko yet chooses Rika, and from that infinitesimal on, she ne'er lives with a biologic genitor oregon comparative again.
What this means legally speaking is that Yuko is removed from her father’s household registry (koseki) and placed connected Rika’s—she transforms from Yuko Mita to Yuko Tanaka, and arsenic a result, she is nary longer a ineligible subordinate of either of her biologic parents’ household units. Until April 2026, Japan did not person immoderate associated custody strategy successful place; anterior that change, children could not beryllium listed connected 2 household registries astatine once. Parents could, of course, negociate visitation rights and kid enactment successful a much informal manner, but dissimilar galore different affluent countries, until 2026, these parental enactment systems were not obligatory; children could lone ever legally beryllium a subordinate of 1 household, and the different household forfeited each rights and obligations to the child. For a ten-year-old similar Yuko, however, the nitty gritty details of visitation and finances are little important than the precise existent information of separation. It is evident successful the caller that Shūhei loves Yuko precise much, but his transportation to Brazil makes maintaining a beardown narration astir impossible.
Over the people of a year, Yuko ne'er hears from Shūhei astatine each and yet gives up connected their relationship. “We mightiness person been begetter and daughter, but present we were apart—our clip was over. My ain beingness was close determination successful beforehand of me, and I needed to absorption connected the radical astir me.” Yuko, aged psyche that she is, rapidly learns that Rika’s quality to negociate household finances is atrocious, truthful she takes it upon herself to marque definite she and Rika person nutrient and tin marque the rent connected time. Though she is the child, Yuko precise overmuch grows into a parent.
Rika, done a bid of remarriages and divorces, shuffles Yuko on from household registry to household registry, and with each caller household, Yuko again calibrates herself to the adults astir her, a process she dilatory comes to recognize is not the norm successful different families. She is baffled by the mode her friends Moe and Fumina obstruction against their parents, particularly erstwhile Yuko is ever holding backmost astatine home, everlastingly walking connected eggshells. When she and Sōsuke Morimiya, her 3rd father, person a fight, she’s terrified of however to resoluteness the substance with him.
Maybe we should unfastened up and speech astir everything, explicate to each different what we believed a begetter and girl ought to be. The thought terrified me. I feared if we said everything we needed to say, we wouldn’t beryllium capable to basal each different anymore—neither of america really knew what it was to beryllium genitor and child.
Though she would balk astatine my words, again I accidental “poor Yuko.” Three fathers and 2 mothers deep, she is lone ever unsure astir what a genitor looks similar oregon however they are “supposed” to act. And due to the fact that Yuko is truthful self-sufficient and has grown up truthful overmuch faster than different teenagers, she ne'er reaches retired for help, adjacent to those who raised her before. She is convinced that to bash truthful would beryllium an unnecessary load connected her erstwhile parents, particularly erstwhile they nary longer person immoderate obligations to her.
Though she tries her champion to spell it alone, yet she learns she tin thin connected the radical who attraction for her and perceive to what they person to accidental astir her quality and her choices successful life.
In the process of editing this translation, 1 of my editors came backmost to maine with questions astir wherefore Yuko is truthful reluctant to support interaction with the parents who are nary longer successful her life. There is, of course, the ineligible argument; with each divorce, Yuko becomes portion of a caller household and sheds the old. More importantly, however, whether Yuko is conscious of the bureaucracy and paperwork down each these household ties binding and unbinding, she is acutely alert of her ain ever-shifting individuality and however it is interwoven with the radical who travel successful and retired of the revolving doorway of her life. Better to spell it unsocial than scope retired for idiosyncratic who mightiness beryllium gone successful a year, close Yuko? Again, I consciousness a kindred tone successful her; arsenic my friends and household tin attest, I besides person a hard clip asking for help, adjacent from those who would happily springiness it. Luckily for some Yuko and I, precise often assistance comes adjacent erstwhile neither of america question it.
In translating Someone to Cook For, I can’t adhd an full paragraph oregon adjacent a acceptable of small notes present and determination explaining the differences betwixt Japan’s divorcement strategy erstwhile compared to those successful the UK oregon the US. What I tin bash is ore connected my empathy with Yuko, connected the ways successful which her thought processes reflector my own. I finished translating the archetypal draught of this caller successful June of 2025 and instantly burst into tears. My begetter had passed unexpectedly lone a period prior, and the last country of the publication had touched that portion of maine that was inactive successful mourning disbelief. Rika besides reminded maine a batch of him—a small excessively focused connected buying implicit household finances, caring but impulsive. Unlike Yuko, my parents ne'er divorced, but inactive I felt her aforesaid uncertainty erstwhile faced with my caller fatherless spot successful the world, and I could bring that uncertainty to carnivore erstwhile I began editing and refining the translation.
Who are we erstwhile our parents are nary longer determination to service arsenic a guidepost for us? I deliberation the communal American mythos would person america spell connected a travel of self-discovery; we would onslaught retired alone, traveling oregon starting a caller business, trying to observe ourselves via “bootstraps” benignant independence. In Yuko’s communicative however, she discovers herself not done stubborn independence, but alternatively done locating caller family, caller parental figures and mentors. Though she tries her champion to spell it alone, yet she learns she tin thin connected the radical who attraction for her and perceive to what they person to accidental astir her quality and her choices successful life. I lone anticipation I tin beryllium arsenic fortunate erstwhile it comes to uncovering caller household successful my future.
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Someone to Cook For by Maiko Seo, translated by Laurel Taylor, is disposable from Europa Editions.
English (US) ·