Can a concrete hippopotamus in the corner of a children’s playground change people’s lives? In Michiko Aoyama’s “The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park,” some residents of a community near a condominium turn to a community superstition to help them find a cure for their ailments, both physical and psychological.
At the Advance Hill condo complex, the local legend says that if someone rubs Kabahiko, the hippo statue in the nearby playground, on the same body part where they’re experiencing a problem, it will cure it. The older woman who runs the dry cleaning store on the main floor of the complex swears by Kabahiko’s power, saying she rubbed the hippo’s back and it cured her hernia.
