Young teacher Fumi Kotani comes to work at an elementary school located in an industrial district of Osaka. In Fumi’s class, an orphan, Tetsuzō, studies—a silent and unfriendly boy who seems to be interested only in flies. Kotani’s patience, her willingness to understand and listen to the child, helps her find common ground with Tetsuzō. And it turns out that sometimes all it takes is for one person to look at the world without prejudice, so that the lives of many people change—for the better.
The novel by the well-known Japanese writer Kenjirō Hayashita “The Rabbit’s Gaze” (1974) has gone through many reissues (total circulation of over two million copies), has been translated into English, is widely known in the UK, the USA, and Canada, and was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal.