Readings 10/07 - Kelley

 Scattered All Over the Earth

This one made me appreciate languages and the study of them. The idea of Hiruko’s homemade language transforming and shifting with every place she moved to felt deeply human, and I liked the theme that language doesn’t need to be grammatically correct or follow strict rules to be understood. It’s beautiful that Hiruko’s language is a testament of the places and scenes she’s passed through as an immigrant. Like a representation of her identity and journey through life. The part about Hiruko translating tanuki as dog and manju as marzipan chocolate was interesting. It made me think about how often translations are made through finding cultural equivalents. In making the story more understandable to the foreign audience, is “faithfulness” to the original story sacrificed?

The Easy Life in Kamusari

I liked Yuki’s narration in this - it made it fun to read. I also thought the character dynamics between Yoki, Miho, and Granny Shige were fun. Even though this was only the first chapter, I liked the development and slow transformation that Yuki is going through! At first, it seemed he disliked Kamusari and looked down on it for being rural and inconvenient, but by the end of the excerpt, he began to even use Kamusari dialect.

The Memory Police

The world in The Memory Police reminded me of the surveillance society in Orwell’s 1984. There is something deeply disturbing about how the government is able to make people all collectively forget something. It made me think a lot about why memory is important, past the surface level of, like, needing short-term memory to complete tasks, for example. Why is it valuable to remember perfume or ribbon or roses? At first I thought it was about materialism, but I think objects have much more meaning than just their aesthetic or practical use. For example, for the protagonist’s mother, the perfume contained valuable memories of using it when meeting her would-be husband. We assign emotion and beauty to objects, and they become little things that give us joy, free expression, and reminders of our humanity.

The Little Woods in Fukushima

I think this was my favorite reading this week, if not all the reading we’ve done for class so far. The way Furukawa described the struggles of people - and his brother in particular - following 2011 and how they continued to live on was very touching. It made me believe in the power of human endurance. This quote from Hideo Furukawa’s brother stood out to me: “Mushrooms are a symbol of nuclear disasters, so there was no way that we could stop.” Totally second that! We can’t let a negative thing mean accepting defeat, no matter how devastating! I also found it very moving how the author cheers and roots for Fukushima despite leaving it (and wanting to leave it his own life).