45 pages • 1-hour read
Sweet Bean Paste
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Chapters 23-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, mental illness, and suicidal ideation.
Chapter 23 Summary
In late winter, Sentaro writes to Tokue, updating her on his failed attempts to create a salty dorayaki. He explains that his experiments with salt were unsuccessful and that the recipe requires a distinct ingredient. He also mentions the poor sales and his desire to visit with Wakana to release Marvy.
Tokue replies with encouragement. She reflects on her life, emphasizing the importance of dignity and endurance. She explains her philosophy of listening to nature, a practice that gives her strength. Urging him not to give up, she invites him and Wakana to visit when the weather is warmer.
Chapter 24 Summary
At the end of February, as the weather warms, sales at the shop slowly begin to recover. This hope ends when the owner arrives with her nephew Tanaka, whom she introduces as the shop’s future owner. She announces her decision to renovate Doraharu and sell okonomiyaki as well as dorayaki.
The owner instructs Sentaro to train Tanaka as the new manager and informs him that the dorayaki griddle will be moved to a back room. The owner ignores Sentaro’s objections. Shocked, Sentaro realizes that dorayaki will be sidelined and that his role will be eliminated.
Chapter 25 Summary
A month after quitting his job, Sentaro is dejected and isolated in his apartment. He searches a job magazine but finds no suitable work. He briefly considers death by suicide but dismisses the idea. He recalls the owner’s verbal abuse when he resigned; she had called him an “ungrateful dog” and an ex-con (172).
Sentaro’s gaze lands on a box of cooking tools he took from the shop. The tools trigger a flood of memories from his time with Tokue. Overcome with remorse and a loss of purpose, he cries. He closes his eyes and imagines the shop’s cherry tree in full bloom.
Chapter 26 Summary
One night, Sentaro has a vivid dream. He walks through a landscape of blooming cherry trees where a young Tokue calls to him from a teahouse. She serves him cherry-blossom tea, made from salt-pickled blossoms.
As he drinks, he tastes a perfect balance of salt and floral aroma. He has an epiphany: Pickled cherry blossoms are the missing ingredient for his salty dorayaki. He looks up to ask for more details, but Tokue and the teahouse are gone. He is left alone, calling for her.
Chapter 27 Summary
On a spring day, Sentaro and Wakana walk to Tenshoen Sanatorium to visit Tokue. Sentaro tells Wakana that Doraharu has closed. Wakana reveals that family financial trouble is forcing her to find work and that she had recently gone to Doraharu for a job, only to find it gone. They joke about opening their own shop someday.
At the sanatorium, they are met by Miss Moriyama. She sits them down and informs them that Tokue died from pneumonia 10 days ago. They are devastated. Miss Moriyama tells them that Tokue left a letter for Sentaro and invites them to see her room.
Chapter 28 Summary
Miss Moriyama leads them to Tokue’s small room. They see Marvy’s empty cage and photos of Tokue and her husband. Miss Moriyama offers Sentaro Tokue’s confectionery tools as a keepsake, and he accepts a few. She then gives him Tokue’s final, unfinished letter.
Sentaro reads it aloud to Wakana. In it, Tokue explains she set Marvy free and recounts her journey from despair to finding meaning, reassuring him that every life has value. Moved, Wakana places a new white blouse before Tokue’s photo and weeps. Miss Moriyama confirms Marvy is safe on the grounds and invites them for a walk to “chat with Toku” (207).
Chapter 29 Summary
As the sun sets, Miss Moriyama walks with Sentaro and Wakana toward the charnel house. She reveals that she once attempted to die by suicide and clarifies Tokue’s philosophy: Tokue could not literally hear the beans but chose to live as if she could do so in order to overcome hardship. After they pray, she leads them to the memorial woods, where a tree is planted for each resident who dies.
Miss Moriyama recounts that just before her death, Tokue claimed that the trees told her, “Good job, you did well” (212). Miss Moriyama then shows them a cherry sapling, Tokue’s memorial tree, next to her husband’s beech. As Sentaro touches the sapling, the full moon rises. He turns to the tree and whispers, “The moon has arrived” (213).
Chapters 23-29 Analysis
The novel’s resolution moves from linear narrative action to more abstract and contemplative forms of communication: epistolary correspondence, a surreal dream sequence, and posthumous testimony. This transition underscores the narrative’s ultimate concern with philosophical inheritance over material resolution. The letters exchanged between Sentaro and Tokue allow Tokue to codify her philosophy of endurance with authority, transforming her from a mentor into a spiritual guide. The subsequent dream in Chapter 26 journeys away from the material world into the realm of the subconscious. Sentaro’s logical experiments with the salty dorayaki fail, but the answer arrives effortlessly in a dream, delivered by a vision of a young Tokue. This suggests that true craftsmanship is a form of connection to memory and essence. The dream’s resolution, with the discovery of salt-pickled cherry blossoms, validates Tokue’s urging to listen, proving that inspiration comes from the combination of experience and rumination.
The final chapters crystallize The Inherent Value of Bearing Witness, positing that existence finds its meaning not in utility but in awareness. Tokue’s unfinished letter is the primary vehicle for this theme. Her declaration that “we [a]re born in order to see and listen to the world” is radically inclusive (199), assigning meaning to lives that society deems marginal: a person confined by illness, “a child whose life is over before he or she even turns two” (200), or an ex-convict trapped in a dead-end job. Tokue redefines purpose as an act of consciousness—bearing witness to ”wind, sky, and voices” (200). Miss Moriyama’s clarification that Tokue did not literally hear the beans but chose to live as if she could further refines this concept. It is not a supernatural ability but a poetic discipline, a way of re-enchanting a world that has been rendered sterile by hardship. This act of imaginative perception is presented as the ultimate tool for survival and the source of human dignity.
Sentaro’s character arc resolves through a confrontation with the motifs of imprisonment and freedom. He has faced a series of confinements: his past incarceration, his financial debt, and his psychological entrapment by shame. Doraharu, which briefly became a space of liberation through craft, reverts to a prison when the owner reasserts her authority. Sentaro’s subsequent resignation, though leading to psychological distress, is the necessary catalyst for his true emancipation from past obligations. The narrative juxtaposes his freedom with that of Marvy the canary. Tokue’s decision to let the bird go is rationalized by her own experience of confinement: “I felt there was no reason to keep a living creature with wings locked inside a cage” (196). Just as Marvy learns to thrive outside the cage, Sentaro must learn to exist outside the structures that have both sustained and imprisoned him. He must internalize Tokue’s philosophy to be free from the societal judgment and self-loathing that have caged his spirit.
The novel’s ending underscores legacy as a cyclical and spiritual transmission. The cherry tree, a constant presence outside the shop, evolves from a simple marker of the seasons into a monument to memory, impermanence, and rebirth. Its blossoms connect Sentaro’s dream of Tokue’s past to the present-day reality of her death, and its final form as a sapling planted at her memorial signifies that her life, and the values she represents, will continue to grow. Unlike the static, commercial legacy that the shop owner attempts to create—a soulless shop with generic food—the inheritance that Sentaro receives is personal and authentic. He is bequeathed Tokue’s worn confectionery tools and her unfinished letter. The tools physically embody Finding Dignity and Connection Through Craftsmanship, representing a history of care, community, and resilience. The unfinished letter, meanwhile, is a purely philosophical inheritance. Sentaro’s final act of whispering to the sapling, “The moon has arrived” (213), signifies his full acceptance of this legacy. He has learned to see the world through Tokue’s eyes, completing the cycle of teaching and ensuring that her way of being continues beyond her death.
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