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.