Takeshita Demons (2 page)

is the winner of the inaugural 2009
Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices
Children's Book Award

The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children's Book Award
was founded jointly by Frances Lincoln Limited and
Seven Stories, in memory of Frances Lincoln (1945-2001)
to encourage and promote diversity in children's fiction.

The Award is for a manuscript that celebrates cultural
diversity in the widest possible sense, either in terms of its
story or the ethnic and cultural origins of its author.

The prize of £1500, plus the option for Frances Lincoln
Children's Books to publish the novel, is awarded to the best
work of unpublished fiction for 8-12-year-olds by a writer
aged 16 years or over, who has not previously published
a novel for children. The winner of the Award is chosen
by an independent panel of judges.

Please see the Frances Lincoln or Seven Stories website
for further details.

The running and administration of the Frances Lincoln
Diverse Voices Children's Book Award is led by Seven
Stories, in Newcastle upon Tyne. Seven Stories is Britain's
children's literature museum. It brings the wonderful
world of children's books to life through lively exhibitions
and inspiring learning and events programmes. Seven
Stories is saving Britain's children's literature by building
a unique archive that shows how authors and illustrators
turn their thoughts and ideas into finished books of stories,
poems and pictures.

Seven Stories believes that children should be able to
choose books that reflect the lives of children from different
cultures in the world today. Frances Lincoln, in whose
memory the Award was founded, had an unswerving
commitment to finding talented writers who brought new
voices, characters, places and plots to children's books.

Arts
&Business

Frances Lincoln Limited and Seven Stories gratefully
acknowledge the support of Arts & Business for the
Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children's Book Award.

Are you afraid of ghosts and evil spirits, or the
black space under your bed? If you are, then put this
book down right away and choose another. If I were
you, I would choose a book about teddy bears and
bunny rabbits, because then there's a good chance
that you won't be reading about floating heads or evil
spirits or any of the other things you'll find inside
this book. If I were you, I'd do that. But for me,
it's already too late.

I was born in a small town near Osaka,
in Japan. My family moved to England just over
a year ago, after my grandmother died. But our
troubles started long before that. Looking back,
I should have realised earlier.

My father worked long hours for his office job,
so he didn't realise either. He was never at home to see what was happening. My brother Kazu was too
little even to notice; he was still a baby back then.
And my mother was always busy with Kazu or her
English class, plus she didn't really believe. That just
left my grandmother, Baba. She understood better
than all of them.

Baba knew all there was to know about spirits and
demons, good and evil, and she took care to protect
our family from them. She kept a cedar leaf over our
front door to ward off evil, she always left toys and
games out for our house ghost, she even kept a pair
of shiisa lion-dogs on the mantelpiece, bought during
a beach holiday to Okinawa when my dad was just
a boy. She never got sick or forgetful or even caught
a cold, not in the whole time I'd known her, which
was all my life. But towards the end, when she got
really old, she walked with a stick and her hands
shook like leaves whenever she used her chopsticks.
She died when I was only eleven.

I cried and cried at her funeral, I didn't care
who saw me. People from all over Kawanishi sent
in envelopes of money and wreaths of flowers. The
entire room was filled with light, and the priest
was ringing his bell to keep out the bad spirits and
bid farewell to my grandmother on her journey
to her new place. Afterwards my family served a feast of noodles and tempura upstairs, but nobody ate.
Instead the rows of guests, all dressed in black, just
knelt on the tatami mats and made smalltalk about
the seasons. The noodles went cold and the tempura
went soggy. Baba would have thought it an awful
waste.

But what does all this have to do with floating
heads and evil spirits? I didn't know myself, not
back then. But Baba knew. So just remember: it's not
too late to close this book and read about something
safe instead, like teddy bears and bunny rabbits.
Don't say I didn't warn you.

Until we moved to London I'd lived in the same
house all my life, the same house Baba had lived in
when she was just a girl. It was the oldest house in
our street, wooden and two stories high. Its floors
were polished smooth from generations of feet, and
you could skid the entire length of the hallway if
you got up enough speed in your socks. It creaked
in the wind and was cold in the night, but it hid a
thousand secrets, most of which my Baba knew.
The biggest secret was our sakabashira pillar. That was the reason we had a house ghost watching
over us, the reason that nothing horrible had ever
happened to our family. Not yet.