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Photo by Lilianne Dang

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I dig into my house-coat pocket and grab the slender, green fruit of a Japanese cucumber. What a beauty! Half the size of the grotesquely enlarged English variety, and a lovely curve in the tail. Shaped like an uppercase J. The bumpy skin tickles through the wool of my mittens and the green is bamboo-fresh. Bite off the bitter stem part and spit it toward my feet. Crunch. Chew. Wedge. Ahhh. The unexpected one is consoled.

The Kappa Child by Hiromi Goto

Photo by Lilianne Dang

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The Kappa Child’s narrator craves Japanese cucumbers – perhaps as a symptom of her pregnancy  – occasionally storing them in her house-coat pocket, or eating them while standing next to an open fridge door. They are expensive and hard to find, as much for the narrator as for photographer Lilianne Dang, who has set out to give us a glimpse of this tasty snack before they are . . . Crunch. Chew. Wedge. Ahhh.

Photo by Lilianne Dang

-> See the list of figures