In the summer of 1964, as the Shinkansen's first bullet-blue cars are polished for their maiden run and cranes gnash at Tokyo's skyline, the Morioka family unlocks a cedar chest in their Asakusa dance studio and finds a charred score, a moth-eaten kimono, and a single notation card for a choreography everyone calls the Lost Dance. Before the war, Ayame and Haruto Morioka led Aoi-ryu, a celebrated school of classical dance whose students floated like paper lanterns along the Sumida River festivals and headlined revues at the Kabuki-za. Firebombing, hunger, and the dizzy new steps of occupation-era jitterbug swept their world away. Now NHK wants a live special on vanishing arts, and the producers promise the Moriokas a stage—if they can restore a masterpiece no one has performed since 1939.
Ayame, her toes gone cold inside white silk tabi, insists the steps live in her bones; Haruto keeps a locked drawer of folded letters that could unravel who first devised the dance; their steady son Keiji hides the truth of his after-hours life with a Ginza jazz pianist; and Sayo, who once charmed movie cameras at the Nikkatsu lot, limps after a rehearsal accident the doctors say was nothing. When Haruto is injured during a scaffolding collapse in a Shinjuku rehearsal hall, Ayame defies the elders of Aoi-ryu and hires Naho Ishii, a young folklorist from Waseda with a tape recorder, an opinion on everything, and a stubborn question: who gets to decide what tradition remembers?
From incense-thick backstage rooms to smoky coffeehouses along Kappabashi, Lost Dance traces a family stitching the past to the present, step by step. Funny, tender, and quietly defiant, it asks whether a choreography can hold a country's memory—and whether the Moriokas can shape a future before the cameras roll and the music starts again.
The NHK special hook feels engineered and the folklorist's cool voice flattens the family drama, leaving a graceful concept without enough heat to carry it.
As a portrait of 1964 Tokyo, this dazzles quietly. Polished train cars gleam bullet-blue, incense thickens backstage air, coffeehouses along Kappabashi murmur with student debates, and a dance studio feels like a shrine with scuffed floors. The festivals on the Sumida and the jitterbug echoes from occupation days create a layered soundscape, so when the Moriokas argue about steps, it reads like a city arguing with itself. The stakes aren't explosions; they're memory, language, breath. I loved being guided room to room and street to street until the past and present seemed to share the same mirror.
What lingered for me were the conversations that almost become duets. Ayame's voice keeps its formal cadence, but the cracks show when she bargains with her body's memory; Haruto deflects with etiquette until a glance at those folded letters betrays him. Keiji's scenes hum with the off-hours jazz he's hiding, and Sayo's clipped asides carry the weariness of someone told her pain is imaginary.
Naho could have been a device, but she argues and listens in equal measure, and her questions sharpen everyone else rather than flatten them. The family isn't warm and fuzzy; they're complicated, prickly, and believable, and their dialogue keeps testing how much truth tradition can carry.
If River Lanterns by J. K. Fujimoto felt like drifting past festival boats at dusk and The Seamstress of Kanda by Emi Shore stitched memory into daily work, Lost Dance sits between them. You get the same careful city textures and a patient attention to craft, plus a family archive vibe that will click for readers who like restoration plots. You also get long passages of process and a cool, academic angle when Naho is on the page. I admired much of it, but I read in sips rather than gulps.
Structure: the novel moves in clean, well-measured beats, each chapter a count-in that accumulates like layered rehearsal marks. The cedar chest, the charred score, the notation card recur as motifs rather than props, and the prose matches that restraint with precise, unfussy sentences. I admired how dialogue is trimmed to its rhythm and how scene transitions echo a dancer's bow. If the NHK broadcast finale tidies more than it should, the control up to that point is lovely to watch.
I came for a family rescuing a choreography from ash and soot, and instead felt cornered by a museum placard that keeps reading itself out loud.
The book asks, "who gets to decide what tradition remembers?" It raises that question again and again, then backs away whenever the scene heats up. Every time Naho lifts her tape recorder, the momentum stalls. I wanted sweat and breath; I got transcripts and hedging!
The pacing lurches. We linger forever in smoky rooms, then sprint past turning points. The scaffolding accident is telegraphed, then fades into tidy logistics. So many promising threads, so much circling.
Ayame repeats the same declaration that the steps live in her bones until the words go numb, Haruto's letters are coy to the point of irritation, and Keiji's truth is treated like a prop. Sayo's pain is waved off by doctors in the text and, too often, by the narrative itself. Where is the pulse?
By the time the cameras finally roll, the crescendo feels assigned rather than earned. I wanted the Lost Dance to blaze; instead it flickers behind glass. Frustrating, and not in a good way.
