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.
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