  Banana Yoshimoto’s Moonlight Shadow: When I came to the part of the story where Satsuki sees Hitoshi after his death, I felt—and knew—somehow, its inevitability. Satsuki’s suffering, her sadness, the emptiness she felt because of her loss: these pains had to lead her to some place in time where she would find what it was that she was searching for, what it was that she wanted most.
Things like this happen to us at some point in our lives, though the circumstances are seldom alike. It may take months, years, even decades before it reveals itself to us—the answer to a question, a long-lost person, a sought-after dream—but it is sure to come our way some time. At times, we don’t recognize the very thing we have been looking for even as it stares us in the face.
At other times, we don’t realize that we have already found it until much, much later. In Satsuki’s case, she was lucky to have seen come true at a sooner time the one wish that she had prayed for. Perhaps the intensity of her feelings made this possible; or the mysterious intervention of Urara; or simply chance with its seldom-discernible designs. Hiiragi’s experience echoes those of Satsuki’s. The part of the story that stirred me most was Satsuki’s coming upon the very place where Hitoshi died.
I was able to feel the impact that moment must have had for her. In places where a loved one has died, time stops for eternity: yes, that must be how it would feel like. It must be as if time freezes and we are confronted with a gamut of emotions; when the most intangible questions materialize in front of us. In that instance, Satsuki underwent an episode akin to stupor. Hiiragi had to give her a punch on the shoulder to rouse her from it.
As for Urara, I left her in the shadows on purpose. I felt that a character like her would best be perceived the way she must have been intended to be by the writer—enigmatic, half-concealed. To know that she was the bridge through which Satsuki could cross her wide river—that was all I needed. Attempting to figure her out would have meant softening her potency, depriving her of the veil of mist with which she is wrapped most becomingly. Jonathan Carroll’s A Wheel In The Desert, The Moon On Some Swings Norman Beizer’s passion for life can be construed quite consistently throughout the story. Not once does he falter in this zest, this energy, even as he knew he was already going blind, which is something remarkable in itself.
He was told he was going blind and what did he do? He marched into a shop and looked for a camera. His foremost concern was to be able to capture whatever it was in life that would help him remember when he could no longer see. Beizer was determined to remember, to hold on to the life he so lived with vitality, even—and especially—with the knowledge that a part of him was already starting to fail and will, eventually, cease altogether.
The idea of a camera being able to deliver images in the way Jeremy Flynn’s camera does is a fascinating and, at the same time, spooky one. I mean, if you knew a camera could do that, would you want your pictures to be taken with it? I certainly would have doubts before agreeing to that. What if my pictures tell me things I would not have wanted to know? The truth does hurt most of the time. But then again, it would be interesting to see in what images my soul will by rendered by such a camera.
In the story is a person who is looking for a way to “teach his memory to remember.” The images he sees in the pictures enlighten his mind and lead him to see those which would stay most clingingly in his recollections, “the part of him that was universal and curious.” 
