Riya - Thoughts for October 28th Readings

 In Flying Tobita Sisters I interpreted it as a message about grounding yourself or being true to your roots or something. The cultural shift from walking to flying reminds me of technological advancement, or general human evolution where previous functions which may have seemed useful at the time are now obsolete. Applying this to this story, the Tobita Sisters and the main character using their feet could represent resisting these large cultural norms where literally everyone else is doing one thing by doing something they wanted to do. Despite being physically envied and having no trouble fitting in if they didn't run/jog everyday, them choosing against that is actively displaying their individuality in a world that basically expects conformity (judgment from peers, using feet/legs is not normalized in this society so them using theirs was considered weird).

In the Monkey short story, I interpreted it as a story about motherhood and identity, where the monkey could represent a baby. I noticed how when the narrator was going through their identity crisis and smashed the mirrors into fragments, the actual text (which was long run-on sentences before) got fragmented into shorter sentences. When she did this action for herself, her thoughts seemed more organized and put together, indicating a clearer mind/mindset, or a lack of franticness from before. 

In Mogera Wogura, I was wondering about the role of the main guy and why he provided sanctuary to all these people.. I wonder if this guy represents some kind of stage of death, something like a limbo where a person is not really dead or alive. Maybe the death does not need to be physical, but rather the death of these humans' will to live (or more specifically referring to the phrase "something died on the inside"). 

My Baby is a story that, to me, represents grief over the loss of a child, where the mother would spend years trying to piece (a memory of) their child back together but always missing something you can never get back. 

In Peddler of Tears, I felt bad for the main character. After falling in love and experiencing jealousy, the main character almost started spiraling and started sacrificing parts of her body just to make herself cry, eventually consuming herself until all that was left were their tear ducts, and all they could do was cry. I wonder if this is a message about letting emotions consume you, or maybe a story that cautions against letting yourself be consumed by relationships. She seemed to have a pretty successful side hustle where she was somewhat passioned about, but then when she fell in love she started going through many changes, some positive (falling in love, emotions and experiences associated with that), and some negative (losing her physical body). 

Paprika Jiro was the most confusing to me. The creatures that look like they have sunglasses and suits on represent some kind of destructive force tearing up a community, where the people in that community downplay the harm caused (by normalizing it). I have no idea. I was mostly shocked and wondered why the asian man and the white woman would purposefully target these stalls. What was their problem?

Readings for 10/28 - Kelley

 The Flying Tobita Sisters

I thought this story had an interesting commentary on how not all (technological) advancements are gifts. It felt slightly unsettling to see how everyone had wings and skinny legs and feet like birds and that no one even used their legs anymore. But when I think about it, this is how we as humans have evolved over time - once we find make a technological advancement and become dependent on it, why would we keep old methods of doing things in practice? We’ve got so many things like electricity and phones and the internet that we can’t imagine our life without, just like the people in the story can’t imagine not using their wings. It’s so interesting how we can see from the narrator’s perspective how society has shifted and adapted fully to a winged existence.

I Chase the Monkey…

I found this story to be kind of confusing, with how long and run-on the sentences were and how the topics seemed to switch from one to the next (a wooden chair to beetles to taking a bath etc). The writing felt very intense; the frustration was palpable across the page. I wonder if the story hints at trauma from sexual assault because it mentions the narrator being touched and uses rather vulgar imagery at times. The description of the monkey chasing the narrator and the narrator chasing the monkey, where both are simultaneously chasing and fleeing each other could point to how the narrator can’t avoid her trauma/psyche. The whole piece feels almost claustrophobic - the words are dense on the page and it goes in circles, sometimes mentioning the same things like the bath, the mirrors, and looking up her skirt.

Mogera Wogura

This story fascinated me. It was interesting reading from the perspective of the “mogera wogura” and how he views human society. The humans who have no more spirit to live and are “eating away” at their surroundings and themselves was a relatable concept. People can get so drained from their lives or a fear of the future that they become void of passion and drain out their surroundings in the process. It’s difficult for me to explain, but there are people who I’ve met (or even times I’ve done this myself) who are so drained and burnt out that they affect the people around them. People’s energies are contagious. I also found it interesting that the narrator mentions how the humans make such a big fuss over death and get really sad over it, but still toss out the babies who look like the mogera wogura without a second thought. Also interesting that the narrator describes how the only time he sees the humans “light up” is when they shed tears. It shows the paradox of human emotion, and it made me think: do we enjoy crying?

A Peddler of Tears

A Peddler of Tears was slightly unsettling because the narrator found so much gratification in sacrifice. Is it because she feels like her sacrifice is love? It was interesting yet uncomfortable to see the narrator go through pain and cry just to make the musicians sound better. Maybe this shows how emotions and grief are commodified in art - sob stories become bestsellers, and grief is considered high art.

My Baby

What stood out to me the most from this story was the question of “is it right to get rid of something we fear even if we don’t know if it’s malicious?” This is in reference to the Mies, whom the mother in the story worries incessantly about and wants them gone, even though the father reassures her that they don’t even know if the Mies are baby-eaters. I was a little confused what the “peeling” referred to. What does it mean to peel a cliff?

Paprika Jiro

The men-in-suit invaders felt cartoonish in this story, with the scale of destruction they cause. I also couldn’t really tell if the invaders were real or not, because it’s mentioned that after no one believes in them anymore, they kind of start disappearing. It was interesting how the marketplace just accepted the invaders as a part of daily life, accepting the destruction as ordinary.

Emily Kim 10/28 Readings

I saw The Flying Tobita Sisters as an allusion to the internet. In the story, because flying is more convenient, walking is almost nonexistent and even looked down upon. This reminded me of how people are becoming more and more reliant on AI, so human skills are becoming less needed. Flying even becomes genetic, with wings sprouting from people's backs and I wonder if our society will reach a point where these human skills are eliminated completely, similar to the story. Yet there are still characters who try to preserve walking, such as the Tobita sisters and the narrator’s mom. The mom leaving the house with the cat, a wingless animal, symbolizes this.

Although the run-on sentences in I Chase the Monkey made the story quite confusing, I thought it represented the constant battle she was having with the monkey inside of her. Maybe the monkey represents a bad anxiety she cannot let out, and she refuses to even face it because she breaks all the mirrors she sees to not see herself.

In Wogera Mogura, I found it super interesting that the story was from the perspective of a mole. At first, I thought the humans the mole collected were zombies. They had zombie-like habits like sliding off chairs, wobbling into walls, and just being emotionless. Then I realized they were alive, but they were just empty inside and lost their “spirit to live.” The mole can't relate to human emotions. The mole lives a repetitive lifestyle, has mundane conversations with his wife, and doesn’t feel strongly when somebody dies. He even says, “death is simply a fact of life, so it doesn’t make us sad.” At the end, the mole says humans are “unable to become Mogera wogura themselves” because they have to “wait for the time they will be able to go back aboveground.” The humans will only return to the surface once they find their will to live again. This suggests that humans are a lot more complex than moles, and it reminded me of how differently humans and animals are treated. The fact that the mole accepts death as normal suffests that their lives are not as valued compared to humans. Even in the beginning, he says, “Back in my ancestors’ time, no one could have imagined that the day would come when I would live my life like this, among humans.” Moles have only recently been accepted to society, but they are still less valued than humans.

In A Peddler of Tears, the main character seems to value purity, so much to the point she sacrifices her entire body at the end. I think the purity of the body band is what made her drawn to it, because she says, “Joint castanets are hidden in the body and amplified by lymph as meager as the tears behind your eyes. My tears were the perfect complement to such a precious instrument.” Instead of using actual instruments, the band uses pure, natural sounds of their bodies, and that's why she feels so connected to it. The main character also thinks that her sole purpose is shedding tears. That’s why she sacrifices her entire body at the end, so that all that’s left is her tears.

I was very confused by Mieko Kawakami’s My Baby because I did not understand the significance of peeling. Does peeling signify gaining more experiences, and the mother is just excited to watch her child grow? But the mother didn’t get the chance to even hear the baby utter a word or name the baby since the Mies got her. This signifies mothers’ immediate instinct to love their child. That’s why she was so paranoid and protective of her child, in contrast to her husband that didn’t worry so much about the Mies. The mother obviously couldn’t let go of her loss because she has been trying to collect all of her parts for 35 years.

It’s interesting how in Paprika Jiro, Jiro ended up exactly like his grandpa by the end of the story. Jiro couldn’t understand why his grandpa wouldn’t move when the wave would terrorize the marketplace. Jiro also began to realize that nothing could be done about them, and it’s inherent in them like how the suit and sunglasses of the men in black suits are just inherent parts of them.

10/28 Readings - Raian

 The Flying Tobita Sisters was a pretty interesting read, seeing how she ties together history and the fantastical with all humans growing wings. I like how she portrays how humans start to rediscover bipedal movement after growing so accustomed to flying. It was so interesting to see how something as common and factual like walking becomes spectacularized, and even divisive. 

I Chase the Monkey and the Monkey Flees from Me, The Monkey Chases Me and I Flee from the Monkey was a confusing read at first. The monkey’s identity remains unresolved by the end of the story, and is never actually separated from the main character. It was also quite unsettling, as I began to see how the monkey and the narrator’s joining symbolized trauma resulting from sexual violence.

Mogera Wogura was an engaging read for me, and it’s particularly interesting that we have yet another non-human main character who lives in human society. It was pretty depressing at the same time however, especially when thinking that the humans who wind up falling down perhaps did so in an attempt to take their own lives. It’s interesting to see how the main character and his wife help some of those humans recuperate and climb back up, however some still die. Perhaps the light that comes back in the faces of the humans once another one dies represents an appreciation for living. I’m interested to see what others think.

Paprika Jiro was a confusing story as well, but interesting in how the attackers are portrayed. They’re these movie-star like creatures that seem to exist because of an audience’s reaction, and their roles are inseparable from them. I find the messaging to be kind of similar to stories like The Little Woods in Fukushima in that it portrays the acceptance of tragedy as normalcy in a negative light. 

My Baby was a unique, yet sad read to me. The mother’s fears combined with the father’s skepticism, which results in the baby dying, was pretty heartbreaking. Maybe the mother’s protectiveness wouldn’t have amounted to much even without the father’s skepticism, but even that adds to the tragedy and irreversibility of the baby’s death.

A Peddler of Tears was a really unsettling story as well. Just the idea of a person’s tears, a tangible manifestation of someone’s emotions, being commodified is just awful. In the beginning, I felt like her rejection of the business man and insistence on supporting herself demonstrated a sense of freedom and independence, however it devolves into this literally self-destructive reduction of her identity to just what she could provide for a man. 

10/28 Jimmy

 Yukiko Motoya - “Paprika Jiro”

This felt like an action movie chase told from the view of the guy whose fruit stand gets wrecked. (Every movie has that guy.) I loved the ending, where Jiro fakes surprise out of respect because nobody believes in “them” anymore. 

Mieko Kawakami - “My Baby”

The bizarre details are played totally straight, which somehow makes the parenting anxiety feel more real. The father’s “you can’t punish a crime before it happens” sounds reasonable, but he’s the one who gets to leave the room. Then the baby gets eaten anyway. It made me think about how worry gets dismissed even when it’s right.

Yoko Ogawa - “A Peddler of Tears”

She talks about tears like a craftsperson grading material. That calm voice is what makes the ending so disturbing, since she cuts off her toes in the same tone. It’s a love story that turns into self-erasure.

Hiromi Kawakami - “Mogera Wogura”

Having a mole narrate makes the humans seem like the strange ones. The people he collects aren’t dead but aren’t really living either, which read to me like a comment on burnout and loneliness in Tokyo. The office workers are cold to him, but he and his wife are gentle with the lost ones.

Masatsugu Ono - “I Chase the Monkey and the Monkey Flees from Me, the Monkey Chases Me and I Flee from the Monkey”

This was the hardest one, mostly because it’s one giant looping sentence. The form fits, though. She can’t tell where she ends and the monkey begins, and neither can the sentences. Unlike the other stories, the surreal thing here lives inside someone, and you never get distance from it.

Erika Kobayashi - “The Flying Tobita Sisters”

This flips the “humans dream of flying” story. Everyone has wings, so running becomes the rebellious thing. I liked how the Wright brothers get told like ancient legends. It made me think about how big tech leaps eventually just become normal and kind of boring.

October 28th Michelle Chae

 Flying Tobita Sisters

I actually really like this story. I thought that the idea of the Tobita Sisters basically "rebelling" against the thought of always flying and no need for running had influenced the main character to try it was really nice since almost everyone around them didn't take the sisters seriously and were betting whether or not they were going to make it to the end. I wonder how a lot of sports had changed since it doesn't seem like everyone got the ability to fly and just the humans so they wouldn't be able to play soccer, swim, hockey, etc. Also I also wonder how they would fly in the rain since its known that for animals with wings its very hard for them to fly when their wings are wet. 

I chase the Monkey and the Monkey flees from me

I thought the title of this story was interesting because it doesn't seem like the main character was chasing the monkey throughout the story. It kinda felt more like she didn't have an option to have the monkey and the monkey kept on trying to leave but she couldn't even tell if the monkey was real or not. It was odd that she couldn't differentiate herself from the monkey. 

Mogera Wogura

This story made me realize and think about the negative impacts that humans have on animals. It shows in perspective of a species that had to change their habits due to humans. It also makes me think that humans have a lot more emotions than animals. For other animals it is normal to lose babies and they move on with their lives but for humans it isn't normal to lose babies and if that does happen it would impact the human greatly.

A peddler of Tears

I was really surprised with the dark twist of the story. The love that the main character had for the maestro is super obsessive. I wonder how the members of the bands reacted when they noticed him harming himself for the tears. It makes me think that the members actually didn't really care about the main character since I am assuming they didn't care about his self harm since they kept on using their tears. I also wonder if the obsessive trait come from the many different musicians that were obsessed with main character when they were a child.

My Baby

I thought this story was really sad. But it makes me wonder if the baby was actually taken by Miles. I wonder how the other parents found out that their child was "eaten" by the Miles cause when the main character's baby was stolen it doesn't seem to be actual proof that a creature came and ate the baby. What if someone just stole the baby? 

Paprika Jiro

The ending of this story made me confused because the story made it sound like they suddenly became less scary even though they all came in with alot of energy and guns. I am glad that he stood up for his stand in the beginning instead of being afraid just like everyone else.

kaya - 10/28 readings

 The Flying Tobita Sisters by Erika Kobayashi: This story was really interesting as it forces you to imagine a world that is simultaneously similar and very different to our own. Kobayashi writes about a world where, because of our obsession with the skies, humans begin to sprout wings and be able to fly. However in this evolution, we lose the ability to run as legs become more and more obsolete. I think this is a message to value the journey, and the curiosity within life rather than solely focusing on reaching a final destination or discovery. She seems to warn that upon reaching this ability to fly, we would be left with a sense of longing for what we had before, thus urging us to not take even the simple things for granted.

I Chase the Moneky… by Masatsugu Ono: Between the almost comically long sentences and the descriptions of breasts that were painfully obviously written by a man, this one was hard to read. While I wasn’t really a fan of Ono’s writing style, the story seems to have a very deep and convoluted meaning. To me it seemed as though the protagonist was a victim of some sort of sexual assault, and I wondered if the monkey was the representation of a baby that was the result of an assault, thus it being something that was inside of her but wasn’t really hers. The final scene in the train with the strange large women seemed like it might be a metaphor for an abortion. Overall I’m not really sure if what I gathered from this story makes any sense, and if this really was Ono’s intention I would be curious what grounds he has to write about a woman’s experience in this way. 

A Peddler of Tears by Yoko Ogawa: This story felt similar to some of the ones we had previously read about women who are expected to sacrifice something for their husbands. This is especially poignant towards the end when she is literally cutting herself up to produce the magic “tears of pain” that work the best on her lover’s joints. And throughout all of this, it seems like none of the band members, not even the maestro, offer any sort of thanks to her. The maestro doesn’t even speak to her. I feel like this story could also be about throwing yourself into your work without taking care of yourself, shown as the protagonist literally loses her body parts to perform as best as she can. 

Mogera Wogura by Hiromi Kawakami: The humans in this story are struggling from a very common dilemma of what it means to live vs to survive. I think Kawakami’s story depicts a capitalist society that is so far lost that people no longer have any sort of opinion or imagination or will to create anything. The line “humans no longer seem so sure of what they hate and what they like” was really interesting to me, as it is used in the context that the protagonist feels much less out of place in his workplace, but one would think that people not ostracizing others based on their looks would be a good thing. Overall the story seems to be urging us to have opinions and ideas and act on them, as inaction will result in a loss of the will to live. 

My Baby by Meiko Kawakami: The conversations between the wife and husband are based around the conflict of people who are stuck in anxiety about the past vs people who want to be living in the present. However, this idea is flipped on its head when it turns out the wife’s fears were actually correct. I thought that in this story, the baby hadn’t actually been born yet and the date where it received its “electrical current” was the actual due date. Thus the story is actually about a woman who has a miscarriage, and had anxieties about her pregnancy going awry, which ultimately end up being true as it unfortunately is for so many women. I really liked the imagery of the peeling. The protagonist kept talking about the baby’s teeth even though it would be very strange for a newborn to have teeth, another reason why I don’t think the baby was “real.” The idea of “peeling” to me seemed like a metaphor for gathering memories as we grow, but since babies don’t have teeth to start they aren’t able to gather their own memories, the parents will collect the memories for them until they are old enough to remember/have teeth and peel for themselves. 

Paprika Jiro by Yukiko Motoya: I found this story to be charming, it takes an unexpected perspective on a very common movie trope that makes you reconsider what kinds of consequences these movie star’s actions could have had. The absurdist tone of the story almost makes it seem like you shouldn't be  satisfied with the ending of the story. Paprika Jiro was only happy/satisfied when he accepted the situation he was in and enjoyed it in his own way. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however his grandfather was killed for having the same passiveness. I think the story could be about how we SHOULD question the things around us and take action on it, rather than being passive or “going with the flow” because  ultimately there could be terrible consequences.

10/28 Readings Alla

I found Yukiko Motoya's Paprika Jiro quite confusing. The story tells us about Paprika Jiro, a young market merchant who takes care of his family's stall along with his grandfather. Throughout the story, some creatures or people in black occasionally destroy the market and eventually kill the grandfather. We don't really learn who those "destroyers" are, as Motoya's description is quite vague. I think the most significant idea of this story is that people continue to live and adapt even after such major setbacks. "The whole market accepted them as a fact of life." Even when the world around them was so chaotic and destructive, people still managed to move on and continue living their lives. I think this is applicable to the world we live in right now.

In My Baby, Mieko Kawakami tells us about a woman raising her newborn child while fearing the Mies that wander through the forest she lives in. She also asks her husband to kill the Mies, scary creatures that have eaten babies in the past, so that their baby can be safe. Her husband refuses to do so and says that they shouldn't pass judgment in the present based on the crimes committed in the past. Unfortunately, Mies end up coming for the narrator's baby, and the mother ends up spending her whole life trying to bring the baby back to life. Through this story, Kawakami explores the themes of violence and forgiveness. I think this story suggests that the consequences of violence can't simply be undone. While life still goes on, it never becomes the same as it used to be. Kawakami also raises the question of whether we should separate the past from the present and whether our moral principles play a part in that. The narrator's husband prioritized the principle of fairness over his responsibility to protect his own child. I think the father's moral principles were quite abstract. I do agree that we can't let the past completely shape the future and the present, but the past shouldn't be overlooked or considered insignificant. 

Erika Kobayashi's The Flying Tobita Sisters explores the topic of what we consider normal and why. In the story, the Tobita Sisters seem to be the only ones in the city who can still walk instead of flying. Society in Kobayashi's story considers walking outdated, something ancient even. Flying, on the other hand, is the norm, as everyone has wings. I think that Kobayashi uses this situation to reflect on how humans lose touch with the past. It feels like people's memory was collectively erased. Something that used to feel so foreign has now become a routine action. Society has changed so much that flying is the only "right" way to move around, and people use that change to identify what is considered "normal" and what isn't. At some point in history, smoking was allowed on airplanes. Now, it's considered dangerous and is completely banned on commercial flights. After reading this story, I began to wonder: what are the things we will consider "weird" in the next 5 or 10 years?   

I found Masatsugu Ono's I Chase the Monkey to be quite intense. Ono never tells us what the monkey is, and I think the narrator is unsure, too. In the story, the narrator hints at being touched and looked at. Maybe the monkey symbolizes some sort of trauma the narrator can't separate herself from. I also noticed the mother-child relationship in this story. The narrator’s mother holds her tightly on the tram, but the pain can’t pass from one body into the other. I found the idea of taking someone else's pain onto yourself touching. In Armenian, one of the ways to show affection is to say "I will bear your pain," and I think this way of showing affection transcends any barriers. The most "challenging" part about this reading was the writing. It made me feel trapped. The sentences go on forever and keep doubling back, so reading them felt like being stuck in her head. Maybe that was Ono's goal: to keep the reader in a never-ending thought loop.

Yoko Ogawa's A Peddler of Tears tells us about a young protagonist who makes a living selling bottled tears to musicians. Her tears help the musicians to "fuel" their art. The "value" of her tears also depends on how she got them: the cheapest ones came from cutting onions and the most expensive ones came from pain. This shows how transactional empathy is in the story. The musicians don't want to experience the pain themselves; instead, it's the female protagonist who does all the work and helps them succeed. The ending highlights this idea the most. In the end, the protagonist begins "disassembling" her body to get the highest-quality tears for the maestro. She willingly gives up her body and, most importantly, her autonomy just to make sure the man's art remains perfect. The maestro is essentially profiting from a woman's pain. This leaves me wondering why she surrenders herself so easily.

In Mogera Wogura, Hiromi Kawakami tells us about a human-sized mole who works as a statistician in a Tokyo office while secretly rescuing lifeless humans from the city streets. Through this story, Kawakami explores the themes of alienation in modern society. I think this story suggests that the exhausting routine of today's society can drain a person's humanity to the point of emptiness. While these individuals appear physically well on the outside, they are completely empty on the inside. I think that it's essential to find a safe space to recover when life becomes overwhelming, but recovery does require an internal choice.

10/28 Wenzhuo Fei

 The Flying Tobita Sisters:

What this novel makes me think about is whether technological progress really means that humans have become freer. In the novel, humans finally have wings, but they have lost the ability to walk. In other words, when humans gain one new ability, they may also lose another ability. This makes me think of the development of human technology. So if a technology becomes something everyone must depend on, does it actually expand our freedom, or does it create a new kind of constraint? Take smartphones, for example. Smartphones allow us to communicate with anyone at any time and to obtain information. This is of course technological progress. But at the same time, it seems increasingly difficult for us to break away from smartphones. Many people cannot even tolerate several hours without internet access. Does this mean that we have gained the freedom to communicate, while at the same time losing the freedom not to communicate?

I Chase the Monkey:

This novel is too stream-of-consciousness. To be honest, I can't really understand it. My understanding of the story is probably that the protagonist may be a girl who has suffered assault and is experiencing severe psychological and physical pain. This kind of trauma leads to this stream-of-consciousness perspective.  

Mogera Wogura:

My understanding of the novel is that it discusses anthropocentrism — that is, a tendency to understand and evaluate the world with humans at the center. In this story, the moles have normal work, family, and social lives, while humans instead become objects that are captured, raised, and observed. In other words, it discusses that if we no longer look at the world from a human perspective, then the morality, emotions, and ways of life that we have always taken for granted may not be so taken for granted after all.  

A Peddler of Tears:

The first half of this novel feels quite normal, but the second half feels a bit creepy. However, I think if all those fantasy elements were removed, this would actually be a fairly easy story to understand.

1. A girl possesses a special talent and is able to live independently through her own abilities.

2. She meets a man and falls deeply in love with him.

3. She gradually places the entire meaning of her life in this man.

4. Because of jealousy and insecurity, she wants to be irreplaceable to this man.

5. She believes that only by constantly sacrificing herself can she provide him with the best things.

6. In the end, she is even willing to lose her entire body, just to retain the ability to keep devoting herself.

My Baby:

I didn't really understand this novel.

Paprika Jiro:

My understanding of this novel is that it turns the background normal people in action movies into protagonists. Behind grand battles like those of superheroes, there must be a large number of ordinary people. For example, a person opens a small restaurant in New York and runs it for ten years. Suddenly one day, a superhero and a villain start fighting and directly smash his restaurant. For the audience, this is just an exciting action scene. But for the restaurant owner, it may mean that ten years of hard work have been completely reduced to nothing. In other words: the same event, from the hero's perspective, is a thrilling performance, but from the ordinary person's perspective, it is a meaningless disaster. 

Furthermore, these movies all contain moral blind spots in storytelling. That is, we often decide how important a person's life and suffering are based on their position in the story. For example, when the protagonist's friend dies, the movie will spend a long time telling the protagonist's grief. But when a building collapses and dozens of ordinary people may die inside, the movie treats it merely as a visual spectacle. These two kinds of death should not be morally different, but in narrative they are given completely different weight. 

There is also an interesting point at the end of the story: after witnessing his home being destroyed and his grandfather being killed, Paprika Jiro still chooses to deliberately show exaggerated surprise to cooperate with those mysterious figures. I think there may be two explanations for this. One is that Jiro ultimately accepts that he is merely a background character. The other is that Jiro begins to realize that these so-called heroes actually depend on the reactions of ordinary people. That is, the reason heroes appear great, powerful, and shocking also requires background characters to set them off.

And in the final paragraph, "because no one really believes in them anymore," the "believe in them" here does not necessarily mean literally believing that they really exist; it may also mean that people no longer believe in, worship, or accept the heroic image they represent.

10/28/2026 Readings Keira Muselbeck

 The Flying Tobita Sisters was about a realistic fantasy world where humans had grown wings and gained the ability to fly. The story is told from the point of view of a teenager who has grown up her whole life in a world where wings were the only way to travel and no one walks or runs anymore. The main character discusses how her mother studies the history of flight for humans and how she eventually left. In the story the main character is fascinated by a pair of twins both for their perfect wings (pure white) and the fact that they where sneakers. The two sisters brag about how they are going to run from the school to the beach. All of the school children find this very exciting and are interested to see it happen. The main character of the story decides however instead of going to see them do so that they will try to learn how to walk and run themselves.

Chase the Monkey was hard from me to understand and felt like a large group of various metaphors directed at the narrators feelings towards themselves and I had a hard time understanding what was going on.

Mogera Wogura was about this magical mole man(?) and how he lived his life amongst humans. As well his habits of collecting the humans who found themselves lost and without a purpose in life to feed them and see if they will ever improve. It was a fascinating and almost otherworldly fantasy but in real life setting. That felt modern but also incredibly surreal.  

A Peddler of Tears was about a women who's tears made musicians better at performing. It started by talking of her past clients and how she was paid tons of money for her tears. Then she finds a street band and falls in love with one of its members. She gives them all tears for free but then grows jealous of how the one she loves rubs the tears on the whistlers lips. So she decides to get the best type of tears for him only. Tears of pain and she sacrifices all of herself to provide him with the best forever. But the real question is does he even care. 

My Baby felt very surrealist and unique in tone with it being about a mother's first baby. However I don't believe either the mother or the child was a human but rather an electric peeler as they frequently mention peeling and the importance of the baby receiving current. It quickly becomes quite a bit of a horror story as the beings known as the "Meis" are brought up and how they kill the babies and steal their gems as a delicacy. The mother's whose loose their children are said to sink into a depression and vanish as well. Of course her child passes away and of course she sinks into a depression trying to fix her baby for the next 30 years.

Paprika Jiro was a far more lighthearted in tone and was about a man who was raised by his grandfather who was a Greengrocer to take over his business in a market frequently attacked by strange people. The people turn out to not be human and rather just creatures who feed of memories and emotions and start to vanish as people forget about them.  

10/28 Readings - Brooke

     I thought that "The Flying Tobita Sisters" had a somewhat interesting premise. Though the evolution into this form of humans had little solid reasoning, it was still interesting to think about our everyday world surrounding walking, running, and generally being on the ground from the perspective of people who'd find that strange and difficult (perhaps the same way we view our hominidae ancestors who walked on all fours). I was a little confused by the main character's sudden change of heart at the end, where she had gone from thinking the Tobita sister's attempts to run were stupid, straight to trying out running herself. 

    There is a lot to unpack with "I Chase the Monkey and the Monkey Flees From Me, the Monkey Chases Me and I Flee From the Monkey", to say the least. The decision to use as little sentence-ending punctuation as possible made it much more difficult to read (especially late at night, when I was getting through it), but I felt it conveyed the rapid and ceaseless nature of her train of thought quite well, especially at the beginning and ending sections. The use of more standard punctuation during the section in the middle also helped me to slow down right there and process the scenery change without getting extreme whiplash. When it came to the full meaning of the text, I couldn't tell if I was getting the full memo. Towards the end, I thought there were fairly clear references to sexual assault, especially with the line “...I will no longer need to pretend that I believe it never happened, that my skirt was never lifted, my underpants never lowered, my genitals never exposed to anyone’s gaze, never touched in a way that left them covered in red…” (35). Also, the monkey, though it seems to cause her a lot of agony, could be some sort of coping mechanism, with her narrating directly after that “...I will no longer need to pretend that the monkey inside me is there, not to fend off all the things that try to enter my body, or rather, since it had already proved impossible to keep them out altogether, not to turn the key in the lock inside me so there would be no further incursions…” (35). There were also notes of general disgust towards others as well as oneself with the large woman and the mirrors, which can often happen in cases of trauma and/or extreme insecurity (though I couldn't put my finger on anything more specific than that), and a theme of anxieties during pregnancy and motherhood in quite a few instances. This was certainly a heavy read, but still a valuable one nonetheless.

    "Mogera Wogura" featured one of the more creative premises of our readings this week. I was curious about why Kawakami would choose moles in particular for this story, and with a quick Google search found that they're generally associated with the "hidden or unseen" parts of society, which would make a lot of sense for this story. To me, the story seemed to be speaking about the rising rates of depression and suicide, especially in members of the workforce in Japan, and could perhaps be saying that people struggling with their mental health should have caretaking resources to help them get back onto their feet.

    "A Peddler of Tears" turned from very wholesome to very gruesome in what seemed like a blink of an eye, and I certainly wasn't ready for that when I read it. I was pretty perplexed by the main character's decisions throughout the story, as well as how the maestro as well as the band members didn't seem to bat an eye at the main character dismembering themself right in front of them. I had a hard time connecting the story to a solid message, besides that you shouldn't objectify or ruin yourself in your professional or love life. 

    From beginning to end, I had a hard time fully picturing what the characters looked like in "My Baby" and making sense of what it means to "peel" a cliff or a movie. The Mies were also described as being "more beast than human" implying that "human" is the norm here and that the main family is not a completely different species from us. I was also concerned about the logistics of giving birth to something with extremely sharp edges, though that's a very far off side note. 

    After I finished reading "Paprika Jiro", I was still having trouble figuring out what exactly changed Jiro's opinion on the man. Perhaps upon learning that they weren't regular humans (and had built-in sunglasses and suits), he came to the assumption that they weren't making a conscious decision to wreck the market, but rather wrecking the market was exactly what they were made to do.     

Emily Kim 10/21 Readings

What all three of the short stories by Erika Kobayashi have in common is that the younger generation honors history by telling the stories of their ancestors. This was especially intriguing in Coco’s Century. The narrator is not related to Ko by blood, but she feels obligated to pass Ko’s story on. It was also interesting that Ko was 99 years old when she died, just one year from completing 100 years. This is significant especially because Ko always felt incomplete, due to her name or not feeling at home in Tokyo nor Niigata. It was very interesting how Kobayashi repeated the writing structure for every new generation born in His Last Bow. It emphasized the feeling that every son had to follow the same path of becoming a doctor. Yet the events unfolding around them are different with each generation. It’s interesting that the narrator breaks the pattern of becoming a doctor, and that even though the narrator is a woman, there is again a man holding the baby in the beginning of the last section. In Sunrise, I think the sun is juxtaposed with nuclear power. Nuclear power is like artificial sunlight. It was also interesting how the 10,000 yen note featured Prince Shotoku who was known as the “Heavenly-being-from-whence-the-sun-rise.” Then, the face of the bill changed and Yoko's interest in it vanishes. It seems like the sun is very important to her.

The most interesting part of Abandoning a Cat to me was the execution scene. During WWII, Japanese soldiers were forced to execute Chinese prisoners. This was ironic especially because the narrator’s father was a priest but drafted into the war out of his will. I thought the quote, “the experience left feelings of anguish and torment that lingered for a long time in the soul of this priest turned soldier” represented this well. The narrator said at the end of the story that everything that happened in his and his father’s life was accidental. By telling his father’s story despite not having a close relationship with him, I think the narrator is realizing that everybody’s lives are more complex than they seem. He realizes this through the quote, “Still, that solitary raindrop has its own emotions, its own history, its own duty to carry on that history.” I related this with a quote in Tokio Ueno Station: “Each and every one with different minds, different faces, bodies, and hearts. I know that, of course. But seen from a distance, they all look just the same, or similar.” The narrator also describes everyone to look like the same pool of water, similar to the raindrop reference in Abandoning a Cat. The raindrop motif comes back at the end of the story, where the narrator’s son dies. It sort of signifies how everybody keeps moving on in life even if something as significant as a death occurs. Everybody goes through complex emotions and experiences that are not realized so many people around them.

Readings for 10/21 - Amelia Barbosa

For this week’s blog post, I wanted to write about Aoko Matsuda’s Love Isn’t Easy When You’re the National Anthem. What attracted me to this short story was the themes of forced patriotism and individual agency through the lens of an unrequited love. I was intrigued at how the personification of a national anthem revealed that states and their symbols can try to demand compulsory participation, but cannot command authentic love or affection. In this story, we follow the perspective of a national anthem that develops a deep and unrequited obsession towards a student who continuously refuses to sing the song, growing only more infatuated after three years. Eventually, the student’s classmates and teacher realize he isn’t singing along, and he is singled out, chastised, and laughed at. This reminded me of how people have acted and may still act in real life when someone refuses to sing the national anthem or participate in compulsory displays of nationalism. This, in turn, causes the musically personified national anthem to feel a deep guilt and sadness, as it realizes that its forced presence causes people to lie to avoid public shame or embarrassment. I found this component particularly intriguing, as instead of conforming to the state’s expectations that everyone should participate in these displays, instead of feeling angry that the boy refuses to sing along, and instead of having an inflated ego as a result, the song displays its regret and admiration for the independence of those who resist, even as it yearns. This feels like a sort of ironic political statement about forced patriotism, like a comeback, saying “Even the national anthem itself doesn’t support forced patriotism”, spiting the states that enforce it. I feel that the mentions of students, teachers, soldiers, and athletes enforce this story as a political statement, as those are representations of different kinds of people who, in real life, have simply personally resisted or publicly made statements about what they think of these ‘mandatory’ displays of nationalism. 

10/21 Jimmy BUI

 Erika Kobayashi - “Sunrise”

She tells a whole life almost like a timeline, with a nuclear event next to every age. Seems like normal nuclear stuff became in Japan. It goes from bombs to tests to power plants lighting up the cities, and Yōko just lives her life through it. The sun is used as both a nuclear thing and a hopeful thing (the title, the baby opening its eyes). It relates to Fukushima like the Furukawa reading did, but here Fukushima is just one more event in a long chain instead of the main focus.

Erika Kobayashi - “His Last Bow”

This reading uses repetition a lot. The same scene of a dad holding a baby happens three times, and each time it changes a little. That made me notice what gets lost between generations instead of what gets passed down. I thought it was interesting that X-rays, radioactivity, and Sherlock Holmes all show up around the same time, since they’re all about seeing what’s hidden. 

Erika Kobayashi - “Coco’s Century”

This is the Kobayashi story with the least nuclear stuff in it. It’s more about names and identity, since Ko feels like she’s “missing something” and her name literally means child. The war is in the background but it’s not the point. It’s more about how ordinary women’s lives got shaped by it.

Aoko Matsuda - “Love Isn’t Easy When You’re the National Anthem”

Making the anthem the narrator flips it around, so the “patriotic” thing is the insecure one and the kid refusing to sing is the strong one. Kinda weird at first when I didn't understand what was going on but it was a good way to talk about something pretty political in an odd way.

Yu Miri - “Tokyo Ueno Station”

What stood out to me is how it shows the side of Japan you don’t usually see. He built the Olympic stadiums, but he ends up homeless in a park that’s literally an “imperial gift.” There’s a lot of contrast between him and the imperial family, like his son being born the same day as the emperor’s grandson. IThe writing jumps around between past and present and random people talking, which makes it feel like how a ghost would experience time.

Haruki Murakami - “Abandoning a Cat”

What’s different about this one is that Murakami doesn’t try to sound like he has all the answers. He keeps saying he doesn’t remember or doesn’t know, and he even admits some of what he believed about his dad turned out to be wrong when he checked the records. It relates to the idea that people carry history they didn’t choose, since his dad’s war memory basically became his too. 

Readings for 10/21 - Kelley

 “Sunrise,” “Coco’s Century,” “His Last Bow”

The three of Kobayashi’s stories that we read were moving because they spanned generations. Kinda shows how the war and the atomic bomb didn’t just leave an impact on one generation of people, but every after too. The fact that the three stories collectively centered on both male and female protagonists shows that the war didn’t just affect men (who were drafted), but also women.

Abandoning a Cat

I think this one was my favorite out of the readings for this week. I liked the discussion on how stories and legacies are passed down from generation to generation, and how that transference is part of our “duty” to carry on history. But what does it mean to really perform this “duty”? Is the mere act of knowing our parents’ stories enough? Or do we ought to pass it on too? I was also thinking a lot about why the father decided to tell his son about the execution he was involved in when it wasn’t something he wanted to remember himself. Was it because he felt like he had to relieve the burden of the memory somehow? Of because he wanted someone to remember his experiences? Additionally, this quote stuck out to me: “All we can do is breathe the air of the period we live in, carry with us the special burdens of the time, and grow up within those confines. That’s just how things are” (8). To me, this means we can’t understand the struggles of a different generation, even if we attempt to. Every generation grows up with their unique set of circumstances - like in Murakami’s father’s case, the WWII, or like in our modern world, the digital age - that shape our burdens.

Tokyo Ueno Station

This story felt tragic with how we see the main character going through financial struggles. It was interesting that we get this perspective of an ordinary person going through and struggling through different events in history, like the war, the Tokyo Olympics, the Great Kanto earthquake, etc. But I also thought it was quite poetic how Ueno Park became a symbol of shelter, refuge and mercy.

Love Isn’t Easy When You’re the National Anthem

I liked the message of this story. I felt it was about silent rebellion, sticking to your individual thought and refusing to conform to mob mentality and government propaganda (which during wartime, was probably abundant). Refusing to sing the national anthem, the symbol of the country, could show protest again Japan’s wartime actions, and I think it speaks volumes to do that.

10/21 Readings - Raian

  Erika Kobayashi’s three short stories were all really impactful to me, and all shared a similar thread of the effects of nuclear powers on Japanese society. It was really interesting to see how the stories shifted and changed depending on what era or events were happening surrounding the narration. In that way, each story felt interconnected, each with its fair share of hope and tragedy.

Abandoning a Cat was especially sad to me, from the title coupled with the actual story of the cat being abandoned being especially saddening to me. It was really fitting to me though, to me it felt like abandoning the cat was a symbol of the father’s reluctance to give up his goals and aspirations. Although, that does kind of break when the cat comes back, as a reflection of that never really happens for the father. 

Tokyo Ueno Station was a really tragic story to me, to see how the main character struggled and lost so much throughout his life. It just felt brutally ironic in how he helped build the Olympic stadiums from the ground up, only to never actually see the game, or being a laborer witnessing the Emperor and the crowd’s cheers for him, lamenting how his life could have been with more luck. His son’s death was especially heartbreaking. Despite having been born on the same day as the crown prince, his family lead pretty much the opposite life in terms of status and comfort.

Love Isn’t Easy was pretty confusing for me in the beginning, but in the end I thought of it as a story portraying just how predatory nationalism can be. The anthem seems like an older person expressing their attraction towards a boy they've witnessed growing up, and to me that’s just really creepy. Especially with the description of the very minute details, like how the boy’s lips moved and whatnot.

Riya - Thoughts on Readings for October 21st

In Erika Kobayashi's short stories, I feel like all of them are interconnected, with the guy from His Last Bow being the father of the narrator in Sunrise. This makes me wonder if somehow Coco's Century and His Last Bow are somehow connected. The time aspect within all these stories was interesting, and it was especially intriguing how modern pop culture references were used as comparison markers (lifespan of book series of Sherlock Holmes used as a marker in the timeline when the narrator was describing what was going on). All of these characters' lives have been impacted by war or nuclear energy in some way, as they have all lost loved ones or people they knew. Additionally, all those people had some kind of correlation or felt some kind of major impact regarding war or nuclear energy.

Abandoning a Cat: I wonder if the cat represents the father being forced to give up his life and career for this war (or at least his life plan was disrupted heavily by the war). In the beginning, the cat climbed up a tree with no way down, and in the morning vanished. The cat's experience kind of represents the narrator's father's experience in the sense that they were both trapped by their situations. The quote "going down is much harder than going up" kind of resonated with me especially because both the father and the cat had no easy way to avoid/get out of their circumstance. I found it sad how the father had his whole life disrupted for an administrative mistake. 

I love Aoko Matsuda, she is my favorite writer. Love Isn't Easy when you're a National Anthem is another great short story where the narrator is the national anthem of Japan. I really enjoyed this story, and its messages. My interpretation was that national anthem, which is symbolic of pride or general actions for one's country, is not celebrated by those who do not support Japan's actions regarding the wars. The soldiers and the student who do not celebrate the anthem are showcasing their silent rebellion and conflict with what their military is doing under the name of Japanese flag. This peace or anti-war sentiment is something that really puts it all into perspective, and I appreciate this albeit short yet engaging story from Matsuda. 

In Tokyo Ueno Station, I felt really bad for the main character and all the tragedies he had to face. I found it surprising that he was a ghost and wonder what implications that could have on the story (maybe this fact is used to highlight the lingering resentments/struggle of people in similar situations as the same character, and used to emphasize the unfairness of such circumstances). This was an interesting story not only because it discusses class (perspective of working laborers like Kazu and his struggles versus the extravagant emperor who kicked out homeless people from the area when he visited) but also because it included another perspective on the Fukushima (compared to The Little Woods in Fukushima). There seems to be a great financial impact on both narrators, and both experience some kind of significant change in living. 

Finally, while reading the first 2 stories, I realized that almost all of them were told from the perspective of other people, or namely their descendants/children.  This is interesting, and really puts everything into perspective on how their elders' or predecessors' actions/lives impacted their own, especially in wartime context. I feel like this way of storytelling serves as a great tool for these authors to pursue heavy topics such as the effects of wartime. I interpret this as a way to highlight how so many people's voices are lost to history and war, and having the descendants, or the people who are left, survive them is really impactful. Although told from the perspective of the aggrieved, in Tokyo Ueno Station, there is still something unique about the perspective in the case that the narrator is a ghost. 

Kaya - 10/21 Readings

Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri: This novel was a bit of a confusing read as the timeline was very loose. Like many of the other readings this week, it describes the afteraffects of the war on the lives of ordinary people. In this case, it is a man who was born shortly before the war, and as he grew up he experienced the economic ups and downs of Japan from a family in poverty. It seems like the protagonist is actually a ghost narrating memories from his past life, which he describes being incredibly unlucky. This idea of him being unlucky and not sharing in the economic advancement of the country (despite him getting his first job out of elementary school and working ever since) is reflected in the moment where he is literally building the olympic stadium from the ground up, but was never able to see any of the excitement himself. He also seems to compare himself to the emperor as he imagines what life could have been if he had more luck. Overall I think Miri is writing about the people on whom the economic rise of Japan was founded upon, but never received any credit. 

Abandoning a Cat by Haruki Murakami: Similar to Tokyo Ueno Station, this essay discusses the lives of ordinary people after the war, but specifically those who survived the battlefront. Murakami’s father seems to carry an immense guilt about how he was lucky enough to escape his own death but his friends were not. Seeing how often he was drafted or released from duty really shows how quickly and drastically your life can change, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The way Murakami writes about how his father would talk to him about the way goes to show that the trauma can pass through generations, but it is important to remember this history. 

Love Isn’t Easy When You’re the National Anthem by Aoko Matsuda: I really liked this short story. I think rather than being a “love story,” it symbolizes how the national anthem shouldn’t be used as a weapon of nationalism. The anthem being in love with the people who refuse to sing it is representative of the idea that anthems are meant to be for the people, thus it falls in love with those who are taking a stand and embodying the true meaning of a national anthem.

Short stories by Erika Kobayashi: I started by reading Coco’s Century, which, similar to Murakami’s essay, is about remembering people and passing on their stories. Ko ends up losing people due to the war, but not just people who were on the battlefront. Her granddaughter, although unconnected by blood, tells Ko’s story to her daughter, showing how we should continue to honor the legacy of those before us. I liked the use of names in the story, I thought her name being Ko kind of meant that she could have been anyone's child, that this was many people’s story. Next I read His Last Bow, which tracks moments in history through the generations of a family, tragedy, scientific discoveries, and the Sherlock Holmes books. It highlights how we can never truly predict the future, as scientific discoveries lead to great death and destruction. The repeating passage about the newborn seems to be each generation passing on their hope for a better future. Sunrise also follows a similar pattern where the protagonist’s life seems defined by the major events that are happening in the world, specifically surrounding nuclear testing and power. The story is shaped around Yoko’s very specific memories, which I felt were very realistic to the way we as people tend to remember important events, which is in relation to our own lives. The story also focused on the power of the sun, how it is beautiful yet dangerous, but also sustains life, just as nuclear power does. 

10/21 Wenzhuo Fei (Andy)

In this blog, I want to expand on the ideas I discussed at the end of my presentation, especially those related to World War II, since these works are all connected to that history in some way.

Readings 10/21 Alla

Erika Kobayashi's short stories give us a glimpse of life in Japan during some of its most significant historical shifts. In Coco's Century, we learn about Ko, the narrator's grandmother, and how the changes in the world around her collide with everyday moments of a person's life. The other two stories, His Last Bow and Sunrise, seem to have the same concept. What I liked about Kobayashi's writing is that she's able to take such massive events and portray them through the lens of domestic life. The way her stories reflect on the past helps understand the extent to which historical events affect the people of Japan, but not in a history-textbook way. For instance, in His Last Bow, the narrator was talking about becoming a writer in a family of doctors spanning several generations: "They all had been doctors, but I heal no one." I found this quote very interesting because it captures the way family history can shape one's identity, especially during times of change. Personally, I think the narrator can heal people through her writing. Of course, it's impossible to do so in a medical sense, but her storytelling does help. It keeps the memory of the past alive so that future generations can understand the emotional effects left behind by these massive global events. 

In Abandoning A Cat, Haruki Murakami tells us about the memories associated with his dad, a man whose life was also shaped by historical events. In the beginning Murakami talks about a situation in which he and his dad tried to abandon a cat but it ended up coming back. I found it really interesting that the dad seemed to be relieved about that. Maybe deep inside that was exactly what the dad wanted: to keep the cat? At the end of the story Murakami says that everything that had happened in his and in his father's lives was accidental. The dad being able to continue his studies because of some officer who let him go, his parents meeting each other (even though we don't know the full story): everything was a matter of luck. Maybe that's what Murakami's dad deeply hoped for when they tried to abandon the cat. Maybe he hoped that, just like how fate treated him, fate would also bring the cat and the dad back to each other? I think the fact that the dad served in the army and was traumatized by his experiences plays a big role in this case. Having been sent to war, being able to survive by luck, the dad could probably have developed a strong sense of the significance of fate. If the cat could defy the odds and find its way back home, then Murakami's dad's own survival and return from the war wasn't an anomaly, but destiny. 

In Tokyo Ueno Station, Yu Miri seems to center the story around Ueno Imperial Gift Park and historical events. I found it interesting how Miri draws a parallel between the narrator's life and the Japanese Emperor. While the emperor lives in luxury, the narrator's life is defined by hard labor and tragedy. At some point the narrator gets a job building athletic facilities for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The Olympics were a symbol of modernization and global pride. Yet the narrator’s firsthand experience exposes the hidden, human cost of this glory. The facilities were built because of the hard work of migrant workers like the protagonist, who left their families in impoverished regions just to survive. I think that through this story Miri forces the reader to question the validity of "official" history itself. On paper, history is shaped by such massive events as the Olympic Games, but in reality, there were so many sacrifices made to make these achievements possible. And, unfortunately, those sacrifices seem to get omitted.

In Aoko Matsuda's Love Isn't Easy When You're the National Anthem, the protagonist is the Japanese national anthem. Matsuda makes a political symbol seem like a human figure with actual feelings and inner dialogue. Out of the whole group, one boy refuses to sing the anthem. I think it's pretty interesting how, even though the boy doesn't want to sing, he still considers the anthem as something that should be ignored. In other words, if the boy didn't care about the anthem at all, he would've joined the others and sung like everybody else. But he does quite the opposite: he chooses silence. In this sense, he does give the anthem the attention it's craving, but the protagonist considers such gesture to be a one-sided love.

October 21st Michelle Chae

 Abandoning a Cat

I think it was shocking to me that the main character and his dad didn't speak for over 20 years. It seemed like when he was young he wanted to learn stuff about his dad and his experiences during the war, but later on it was upsetting to hear that they didn't speak to each other until his dad was about to die. I wonder if his dad didn't want to tell the main character stories because he didn't want to talk to him or if he didn't want to tell him all the traumatic stuff that they had gone through.

Coco's Century

I really liked this story and I thought it was really cute. It made me sad when it kinda seemed like Misao didn't appreciate things that Ko did for her as much as she shoul've. I thought it was kinda rude how Misao didn't use the glass eye and said it was annoying instead of saying something like I'm too scared to scratch it or something. 

His Last Bow

While reading this I was shocked that the narrator had become a writer since I know that she had a lot of pressure from her family especially her dad to become a doctor. I was proud of her for being able to step up and pursue something that she really loved. 

Sunrise

When reading Sunrise I thought it was really cool that the mom had grown up and basically saw how nuclear explosions had developed. Seeing how the narrator is having a baby on her own it made me realize how different generations will experience different events as they grow up.

Tokyo Ueno Station

I felt really bad for the main character because he had sacrificed a lot for his family. He had to move around in different jobs and even had to move away from his family for his jobs as well. It was really heart breaking to think that he felt really upset that he couldn't afford the ride for his son as well.

Life isn't easy

I thought this story was really weird. I think the narrator is the Japanese anthem? And I didn't like the idea that the anthem had a crush on this guy because he refused to sing the anthem. I just thought it was weird how he wanted him to sing and felt unwanted whenever he didn't sing even though there were hundreds of other students that were singing.

Keira Muselbeck - 10/21/2026 Readings

     The three short stories by Erika Kobayashi all are similar in how they explore character stories with the narrator of each being connected of the person and tell of their life stories discussed in the writing so it shows a very unique point of view and way of thinking. Coco's Century is told from the point of view of the granddaught through adoption of Coco who is telling the life story of her grandmother to her very own child on the day in which she would have turned 100 years old. In His Last Bow the narrator is a father to his newborn sun and is holding him reflecting on past generations of men in his family and their histories and backstories exploring their professions and lifes motivations. The third short story Sunrise covers the life story of a woman from birth until the birth of her granddaughter and covers her life and observations as short snapshots growing up. 

    Abandoning a Cat is about the narrator and her relationship with her father as well as his life growing up. It covers a lot on how their father had a very different upbringing then them and his life in the miltary during World War 2 as well as his backround in religion and literature showing the stark contrast between the two aspects of his life and the turmoil that might entail. 

Ueno Station is about a character in an economic recession in Japan and his time spent in the Ueno park which has a large number of homeless and times before the situation got that finacially bad. It details his life growing up as well as his life with his family as an adult and the various jobs and life experiences he had. 

    Love Isn't Easy When You're the National Anthem was the most estoric of the peices covered this week and was told from the point of view of a nonhuman, the country of japan's national anthem. It was written as a love story of how it was interested and fascinated by the person who refused to sing it and thought that they as a person were unique for it.

10/21 Readings - Brooke

     I enjoyed the three short stories we read from Erika Kobayashi and appreciated how was able to both create both a family and historical memoir in each. Of the three, I liked the writing style "His Last Bow" with all of the parallel scenes. It's interesting to wonder about what life will be like for the next generation and how a newborn baby could end up studying or specializing in something completely out of our current working imaginations eventually. I was quite surprised by the commentary Kobayashi's father made on August 10th, given the absolute devastation of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki just having occurred and was curious as to why he was still feeling so optimistic. I also liked the small parallel in "Sunrise" where the Gadget is compared directly to the heat of the sun, putting into perspective how dangerous these relatively compact weapons can be. In "Coco's Century", what struck me the hardest was the ending scene where the importance of learning about and relaying family history across generations is emphasized, especially because there will always come a day when it's to late to ask about it.

    Abandoning a Cat was my favorite of our readings this week, mainly because the reflection at the end really stuck with me. It was interesting to hear about his father's direct involvement with the war and what it's like to be barely removed from an incident as big as the Rape of Nanjing and possibly know people who were directly involved. I also liked hearing about the observations he made about how the war had affecting his father emotionally, from the perspective of his son who sees and hears about multiple sides of him post-war. 

    I liked how Tokyo Ueno Station gave a perspective from someone who is houseless, which you don't usually see represented in media, and it left me curious to learn more about the main character's past. I really wanted to know what happened to Setsuko and where his daughter is as the story is taking place. I wasn't 100% sure whether the main character was metaphorically or literally dead (and just watching from the afterlife), but I'm not sure if I just missed some detail earlier on in the story. 

    I found "Love Isn't Easy When You're the National Anthem" to be slightly creepy, but still a very creative way of speaking about attitudes towards expressing pride in your country. We're seeing a similar thing of people electing to not participate in singing the national anthem happening here in America currently, and reading this story reminded me of that. I would never think about it from the perspective of the national anthem itself, but it does make me curious about the self-reflection (or maybe lack thereof) our country's leaders might have when they see someone refusing to sing.

Amelia Barbosa - Readings for 10/7

 Sensation is a highly vital component of human life and survival. We use our senses to detect danger, pain, to find balance, to know where our bodies are in space, and it doesn’t end there. Furthermore, sensation is fundamental to humans emotionally, as well. It’s a huge contributor to social bonding, such as how touch releases hormones that drive early childhood development, emotional health, and group cooperation. Yesterday in my Sensory Neurobiology course, we even talked about how the loss/damage of smell can cause depression. All of this to say, I was stricken by The Memory Police, as the systematic erasure of sensation is a niche, dystopian, and terrifyingly authoritarian concept that is so inhumane and cruel, in a way that strongly reminds me of George Orwell’s 1984. This also may be due to the concept of “Memory Police”, but the style of oppression taking place in the story felt eerily familiar. As birds, perfume, and ribbons “disappeared” from the island, the population suffers a sort of sensory atrophy, not just forgetting the items themselves, but the experiences and emotions attached to them, losing a large part of who they are and how they live or move in the world. The power in this world lies within the physical objects that remain, such as the weight of an emerald. With this piece, Ogawa has made a haunting allegory about the importance of art, tangible keepsakes, and sensory recall, both physically and emotionally. It was deeply engaging and troubling at the same time, which is one of my favorite forms of art/literature. 

Emily Kim 10/7 Readings

I found the theme of revival to be prevalent in this week’s texts. While researching Hideo Furukawa for my presentation, I learned he modernized old texts to preserve history. Similarly, in Scattered All Over the Earth, there is a quote, “Even when an empire sinks to the bottom of the sea,” he said, “it doesn’t disappear from history because it lives on in memory, from generation to generation, and then somebody decides they want to revive it.” The theme of revival is especially important in this story because Japan is being forgotten. But across everything we read, it seems like people only want to preserve things important to them. In The Memory Police, the main character feels zero attachment to birds, but felt very strongly about preserving evidence of her father. On the topic of familiarity, Hiruko in Scattered All Over the Earth compares the earth and the moon with her current home and original home: “Because she knows only life on earth, the moon seems dull and barren, with no grass, flowers, trees, swallows, or cats.” If the moon represents Japan and Earth represents Denmark, she might feel more connected to her new home. Even though she cares about learning more about Japan, she may be more focused on bringing people together through language rather  than defining herself by a specific culture.

In The Little Woods in Fukushima, it was evident to me that Hideo doesn’t like touching on his past. He even put off interviewing his older brother for a long time since he would be facing his past directly. I think the quote, “Something disastrous is more newsworthy and thrilling, but when the thrill crosses the line into actual fear, people’s minds snap shut,” represents his feelings. The events of 2011 were so traumatic that they shut down his mind and he stopped thinking about them. Hideo associates traumatic events that are “newsworthy” with the “non-everyday” or the “non-continuous.” This explains the gaps in his memory, the gaps he avoided filling until interviewing his brother. But he still defines himself “as a child who was raised by forest products, things that come from the trees, the groves, the woods,” even after the Fukushima disaster. The forest was like his sanctuary, so when it was destroyed by the natural disaster, a part of him was destroyed as well. He is still dealing with the aftermath, and says at the end of the story that some things will never be restored, like how his mother will never come back. 

I found a lot of similarities between The Easy Life in Kamusari and The Little Woods in Fukushima. In both stories, the forest and act of writing are the main characters’ source of calmness. Kamusari is known for its forests and the expression “naa-naa,” meaning “take it easy.” This shows that nature symbolizes tranquility. I also found it interesting that in both stories, the narrators are very conversational and speak directly to their reader.

Readings 10/07 - Kelley

 Scattered All Over the Earth

This one made me appreciate languages and the study of them. The idea of Hiruko’s homemade language transforming and shifting with every place she moved to felt deeply human, and I liked the theme that language doesn’t need to be grammatically correct or follow strict rules to be understood. It’s beautiful that Hiruko’s language is a testament of the places and scenes she’s passed through as an immigrant. Like a representation of her identity and journey through life. The part about Hiruko translating tanuki as dog and manju as marzipan chocolate was interesting. It made me think about how often translations are made through finding cultural equivalents. In making the story more understandable to the foreign audience, is “faithfulness” to the original story sacrificed?

The Easy Life in Kamusari

I liked Yuki’s narration in this - it made it fun to read. I also thought the character dynamics between Yoki, Miho, and Granny Shige were fun. Even though this was only the first chapter, I liked the development and slow transformation that Yuki is going through! At first, it seemed he disliked Kamusari and looked down on it for being rural and inconvenient, but by the end of the excerpt, he began to even use Kamusari dialect.

The Memory Police

The world in The Memory Police reminded me of the surveillance society in Orwell’s 1984. There is something deeply disturbing about how the government is able to make people all collectively forget something. It made me think a lot about why memory is important, past the surface level of, like, needing short-term memory to complete tasks, for example. Why is it valuable to remember perfume or ribbon or roses? At first I thought it was about materialism, but I think objects have much more meaning than just their aesthetic or practical use. For example, for the protagonist’s mother, the perfume contained valuable memories of using it when meeting her would-be husband. We assign emotion and beauty to objects, and they become little things that give us joy, free expression, and reminders of our humanity.

The Little Woods in Fukushima

I think this was my favorite reading this week, if not all the reading we’ve done for class so far. The way Furukawa described the struggles of people - and his brother in particular - following 2011 and how they continued to live on was very touching. It made me believe in the power of human endurance. This quote from Hideo Furukawa’s brother stood out to me: “Mushrooms are a symbol of nuclear disasters, so there was no way that we could stop.” Totally second that! We can’t let a negative thing mean accepting defeat, no matter how devastating! I also found it very moving how the author cheers and roots for Fukushima despite leaving it (and wanting to leave it his own life).

Jimmy Bui 10/7

 Hideo Furukawa - "The Little Woods in Fukushima"

This one is different from the others because it is real, not a story. He starts off carrying his mother's bones to the grave, which is a heavy way to start. She drove a forklift and worked from five in the morning to eleven at night (Kinda sad to see, hard working mom). He almost lost his thumb in a machine when he was in third grade, and his brother saved him. His brother was more like a father to him, which I thought was sweet. Then the earthquake and nuclear meltdown happen, and nobody wants to buy mushrooms anymore, even when there's no radiation on them. Even the sawdust they switched to ended up being radioactive. But his brother says, "Mushrooms are a symbol of nuclear disasters, so there was no way that we could stop."

Yoko Ogawa - "The Memory Police"

This one is a little creepy. Things just disappear on this island, and everyone forgets them, like ribbons, perfume, birds, and roses. Very odd concept, but it kind of makes you think about how much we just let go of without noticing. The mom hiding all the disappeared things in a cabinet. Sad that she got taken and "died of a heart attack". The roses disappearing at the end was weirdly beautiful, the whole river covered in petals. Even the narrator could not remember what a rose looked like after. Scary to think about.

Shion Miura - "The Easy Life in Kamusari"

Yuki's mom basically kicks him out after high school and blackmails him with his poetry book to go do forestry in the middle of nowhere. Then the first guy he meets throws his phone battery in a river. Kinda sad to see. He is honestly terrible at the job at first, falls down the mountain. But Seiichi gives him the house woods to prune so he can build some confidence, which I thought was kind. Nice to see someone actually believe in him. He was at a hostess bar, she leaves, and he punches through a paper door to get her back. Yuki ends up bowing on the floor too just because he's hungry. 

Yoko Tawada - "Scattered All Over the Earth"

Knut is just lying on his couch doing nothing and ends up finding this girl, Hiruko, on TV whose whole country disappeared. She made up her own language so people all over Scandinavia can understand her, which is honestly impressive. I'm a tad confused about the sushi being Finnish part. The part about her hometown with the heated roads and snowshoes that talk was cool. The second chapter is from Hiruko's side, and she tells folktales to immigrant kids with her own drawings. I liked that she changed the stories so the kids could understand them, like the crane making a down jacket. It shows she cares. Now they are going to Trier to find someone who speaks her language, and I am curious to see if they do.

Riya - Thoughts on Reading for October 7th

In Scattered All Over the Earth, the main character being a linguist was an interesting touch, and even though he used this to his advantage to meet Hiruko (which was very creepy). The switching perspectives was interesting (from chapter to chapter), and I wonder what Japan disappearing implies. Here, Japan has disappeared because of climate change and evil politicians, leaving little to no survivors save Hiruko. This was an interesting contrast to those who claimed their country disappeared (when really the borders on maps changed), as it really emphasizes/weighs the effects of climate change vs. regular politics (vastly different outcomes). I feel bad for the girl Hiruko, as all her friends and family disappeared, as she seems to be longing for a connecting to her old home again--it is very isolating. This world also seems to have a fantasy element, as apparently when you eat certain types of fish, you can get pregnant with 20+ fetuses. I wonder why this detail was added, or more so what this meant. 

In The Easy Life in Kamusari, Yuki was a little annoying at first, but I understood his general resentment, especially when acknowledging he is a teenager. It was fun seeing his character arc from blaming his mom and the world around him to acknowledging his own downfalls and growing his empathy as he learned hard work and immersed himself in nature. I liked that he acknowledged his change in attitude, and is becoming a better person by throwing himself into nature and growing his self esteem. It was also funny how Yoki chased Yuki around everywhere -- it was very entertaining (and I enjoyed their mentor-mentee relationship). 

In Memory Police, the mother carved figures called tapirs; assuming she carved the animals, after googling I found they have a very unique look to them! To me, this story overall seems to be about censorship and being complicit as everything people cherish/love gets taken away from them, and no one does (or maybe no one can do) anything about it. Another interpretation was the memory police could also represent some form of depression, as it takes the color out of the world, represses memories (avoidance), leaving her house as she left it, etc. -- but that is just a guess. 

In The Little Woods in Fukushima, it was informative learning about the mushroom business and also learning about the economic challenges for farms as a fallout to the nuclear testing nearby. I felt bad, as every single regulation or new news article regarding the radioactive infestation in the soil set Hideo's family's business back every single time. It was interesting how Hideo always wanted to escape, and how he eventually did escape.