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 Society in Kobayashi's story considers walking outdated, something ancient even.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.
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