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.