The Cage of Zeus
The ending of the excerpt made me think a lot about how our binary gender system forms social rules. Tei brought up a point that the binary system intensified romantic feelings, which the Rounds didn’t have due to their sexual uniformity. Is this true? Do people love with greater passion because we have distinct concepts of gender? But then what about same-sex lovers? Don’t they essentially possess the “sexual uniformity” with their romantic partners like the Rounds do? Does this suggest their potential for passion is limited?
The Place of Shells
The writing felt very lyrical to me, and was interesting in that it talked about memory of places and people while activity walking around/exploring a place - Gottingen. I’m wondering what the significance of the story taking place in this city is. When the narrator explained that Nomiya had died from the 2011 tsunami, it suddenly made sense why the book is called The Place of Shells. He died from the ocean, and I’m guessing the place of shells is like the afterlife. The excerpt we read felt very suspended in time, which made it feel more like a mourning piece.
“Japanese” from Self-Reference Engine
I never realized how complicated Japanese and languages as a whole are prior to reading this. The narrator kept describing how it was impossible to decipher Japanese, and often questioned whether or not the language meant anything at all. I found it confusing at the end where the narrator admits that the very text we’re reading is written in Japanese. So it’s a text written in Japanese about how they can’t decipher Japanese? Confusion aside, I found myself thinking about the role of language in our thinking process. The text mentioned how Japanese as a language, with how scattered it is, felt more like the thinking process itself rather than the output of the thinking process. So does language and words construct our thoughts? Or do thoughts come before the words themselves, making the words the completed summary of our thinking?
On High and The Missing One
Both of these stories were about Himeji Castle which makes me wonder what the significance of this castle is in the context of ghost stories. The castle seems to possess some sort of other-worldly quality, with it being mentioned that you could see it from anywhere in town. In “On High,” it’s mentioned that the castle has a “reassuring presence,” acting like some sort of anchor or symbol of guardianship over the townspeople. “The Missing One” focuses more on the monorail and the ghost story of Okiku than the castle itself. There was this strange juxtaposition between life and death with how the monorails were being described - they were being demolished and the tracks were no longer used, but people planted herbs around them and relied on them as a guide for directions.
A First-Rate Material
At first, I felt it was highly disturbing that people were using human materials in their everyday lives for things like clothing and lampshades. It felt dystopian and creepy. Like knowing that the wedding veil being hung over my face was made from my father-in-law’s skin?? Thinking about the process of the skin being peeled back and it being made into this pretty product feels grotesque and inhumane. Does everything need to be commodified to have “value”? But then that raises the question of why it’s okay to do this with animals! But maybe because as humans ourselves, it feels more like cannibalism - and more inhumane - to do this to other humans. However, as the story went on, I started to understand why this could be seen as a moving gesture. The father’s dying wish to be made into a veil for his son’s wedding and how the narrator felt like her body wouldn’t be wasted after her death did have logic to it.
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