Despite this exhaustion, he just closes the shop for one day. One morning, he gets tired and can’t even move his hand. Working day and night nonstop wears Sentaro out. The situation gets Sentaro to add twice the quantity of adzuki beans for the next batch production. Unexpectedly, customers keep coming and eventually they run out of bean paste and have to close the shop earlier than usual. They make bean paste from scratch, from the bean-sorting until the process of sweetening the bean paste. But, after some persuasion with her homemade bean paste that tastes scrumptious-nothing like Sentaro had ever tasted, she is finally hired. One day, a woman in her seventies, named Tokue, comes to the shop, asking for a job. Working alone for four years, he decides to look for a coworker to accompany him and be someone he talks to, not necessarily because he needs help with the shop. Although it tastes average, he has never finished eating one piece of his own dorayaki because of the sweetness. He uses bought bean paste for the filling and homemade batter for the pancake. The book narrates a man named Sentaro, who sells dorayaki to pay off his debt to the late owner of Doraharu-the dorayaki shop’s name. It tells a heartwarming story that brings up leprosy or Hansen’s disease and a mundane life. First published in 2013, this Japanese novel has been translated into English by Alison Watts in 2017. Sweet Bean Paste is an international bestseller book written by a Japanese author Durian Sukegawa.

Sweet bean paste novel