Shiro Kikutani, a man who has just been released to a lifetime of parole after spending 16 years in prison for murdering his adulterous wife. Kikutani's time in jail has stunted his ability to act independently, so that the first chapter finds him in a halfway house, suffering abdominal pains because he is unable to walk from his room to the bathroom down the hall. He feels so weighed down by the weight of wearing clothes and leather shows. For 16 years he wore a scrub type outfit with paper slips.
But under the tutelage of his gentle parole officers, Kikutani gradually overcomes this fear and others, learning to walk out of lockstep and ride escalators, handle money, keep a job (once a teacher, he is demoted to working as a janitor in a chicken factory). But having the time to think during his commute allows him to slowly adjust. Some of these episodes are described in minute detail, weaving the story of man whose emotional life has been blighted by his imprisonment and whose hard-won equanimity unravels under the relentless demands of those around him. Through flashbacks we learn what happened to put him in prison, that upon finding the adulterous couple in bed, he violently stabs his wife to death and wounds her lover, follows the lover to his home, torches it, and accidentally kills the lover's mother in the fire.
This book covers 3 years of his life after he gets his parole. In their final acts his permanent parole officers pressure him to get married to a widow, but when his new wife insists he must repent of his crime, which he always considered inevitable and not his fault, he is unable to explain his true emotions. Under increasing stress, he snaps.
This was an intriguing and almost edge of your seat as the author really portrays the isolation and fear Kikutani feels from the beginning to the end of the story. But never will he admit to responsibility for his actions - rather he only seems to react to the situations given him. And as events move inexorably toward the novel's violent climax, it gives an eye opening look at a man no longer able to express his own will.
This book was recommended to me by my friend Teresa after I couldn't stop talking about "Devotion of Suspect X" that I read several months ago. Also set in Japan but more of psychological mystery On Parole is a look at a the Psyche of a man who is broken. This is not an easy book to read and it is deceiving as it is so short, barely 250 pages but so much is in it.