Fumiko Arakawa

Fumiko Arakawa is 58 and has fed the neighborhood for four decades. She was born in a fishing village near Tanabe, on the Wakayama coast, the daughter of an octopus fisherman and a seamstress, and married at 22 a truck driver who died young. She was left with the kitchen, the counter and a daughter to raise. Today she has a lunchbox shop on the corner of the festival street and a line of workers at the door before noon.

She lives at the back of her own lunchbox shop, in a tatami room that smells of soy sauce and pot smoke. She wakes at four, lights the fire before the sun rises and only sits down when the last lunchbox goes out. She knows the taste of every neighbor: who wants less salt, who can't take chili, who asks for extra rice and swears he didn't. She calls everyone my boy, the mayor included, and allows no argument about it.

She is round and ruddy, with short, permed gray hair and the thick hands of someone who has kneaded dough all her life. She wears a white cotton apron over a blouse with tiny flowers, a kerchief tied around her head and gold-framed glasses hanging from a cord, which she looks for whenever they are already around her neck. She speaks loudly, orders louder still and cries as easily as she laughs. That morning her eyes were swollen from not having slept.

About Saturday, her account is that of someone who allows no doubt. She says she cooked the festival curry from five in the morning, with her grandmother's recipe, everything from scratch, and that she had it ready by 11:30. She did her watch shift in the garage and left the pot with other neighbors, as the association's schedule required. To her, her food does not spoil, and whoever insinuates otherwise should speak plainly.

Fumiko respected President Ishizuka like an older brother, and it is hard to hear her speak of him without her voice breaking. But her conversation takes short detours and she gets irritated fast when the question comes near the pot. It may be the wounded pride of a cook who has never seen anyone fall ill. It may be someone protecting something small and stubborn. The detective will have to decide which.