Sweet Bean Paste

I started reading this book at least partly because I absolutely love Dorayaki (pancakes filled with sweet red bean paste). To be fair I love most sweets, so this is a low bar. And while it starts quite whimsically, the story soon changes and highlights something I never knew anything about - the treatment of Hansens's Disease (leprosy) sufferers in Japan.

Up until 1996 people that had suffered from the illness, even if they had been cured for decades with no risk of any transmission, were locked away in sanatoriums. This is a large part of what's behind this story, and it also serves as a way to more generally question the value of a life, and the notion that a life should or could be measured by its usefulness to society as a whole.