A Crowded Nap

The Fluffy Futon – written and illustrated by Yuichi Kusano, translated from the Japanese by Cathy Hirano
Gecko Press, 2026

In Yuichi Kusano’s The Fluffy Futon, a grandmother takes a nap on the bedding of the title. What begins as a solitary rest soon becomes crowded with farm animals, who take up a great deal of physical space on the futon without disturbing the grandmother.  If the story is a fable, it is one without a simple and convenient moral. 

The pictures are quietly beautiful, and the grandmother is comforting. We never learn much about her, but we can infer some qualities from the simple text and subdued colors of the drawings.  As the story begins, she is airing the futon on the porch of her traditional Japanese home. The endpapers show her purposefully carrying the futon to the porch, with a smile on her face. She is followed by a parade of farm animals and a young boy, but it is not clear if she is aware of their presence or not. 

The first animal to arrive is a yawing cat, apparently ready for a rest.  The grandmother must be hardworking, as the house looks orderly from the outside. It is less certain why the cat is tired. The two-page spread positions three quarters of the futon on one page; it crosses the book’s gutter and is completed on the next page, along with the cat. White space surrounds the animal ,and its shadow is visible. The grandmother looks quizzically at the cat, but yawning is contagious. Soon she lies down and falls asleep. We don’t know if she is dreaming.

A mother hen and her chicks come along. Unlike the cat, they are a family. Then a pair arrive, a boy and his dog. A goat wearing a big, noisy, bell joins the nap, along with a pig and her piglets. Each page shows a different constellation of sleepers, moving and sharing their space. But the grandmother remains the central figure. She doesn’t need to assert her importance, but eventually her outstretched arms and relaxed body send the animals to the margins.

When the grandmother wakes up, her eyes still seeming half asleep, she pronounces that it has been a “lovely nap,” and that it is “time to get up.” The cat is still sleeping, but the grandmother must have more focused and productive labor in her tranquil home. In the last scene, the futon is the character, resting alone on the porch, with shoes neatly lined up below for anyone who wears them.