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.
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