Bin 9/24

 Sea Horse is a novel full of strong metaphors.

Here are my personal ideas: the female protagonist was originally a free creature of the sea, but she came ashore because of the charm displayed by men on land. This symbolizes the unique allure and deceptive power that patriarchy presents to women, causing them to gradually lose their judgment and subjectivity, drifting away from freedom (the sea). On land, the protagonist is continually “transferred” from one husband to another, locked up by them with chains. This suggests that once women become subordinates to patriarchal men, they are immediately imprisoned by this relationship. The protagonist’s eventual return to the sea and her daughter’s return symbolize liberation from patriarchal oppression.

There are a few noteworthy details in the text. The doctor says the daughter “was suffering from orthostatic something or other.” Right at the beginning, the author has already hinted to the reader that the protagonist and her daughter are of the same kind of being—for the seahorse is the only fish that swims in an upright position. However, although both mother and daughter are seahorses, the daughter embodies a stronger power to resist oppression (refusing marriage, rejecting sexual relations, ultimately returning to the sea). Unlike the protagonist, who is objectified in traditional society (treated as a collectible, a model, a reproductive tool—her body gazed at, used, passed along, even stuffed into a wooden crate and transported), the daughter subverts this fate.

I noticed several passages:

• “My first three children are all boys. Some resemble my husband, others don't. Not one of them looks like me. Only my daughter does.”
  
  

• “That fourth child has a name. I told her what it was on the occasion of her first period. It is not to be rashly spoken aloud. It can be used only when absolutely necessary.”
  
  

• “My first child has no name. Neither does the second or the third. They have human names of course, but not real names. Only the fourth child's name was given to me.”
  
  

I have no definitive proof, but perhaps the fact that the three sons have no “real” names means they are merely figures, symbols of the future inheritors of patriarchy. They are destined to be different from their mother’s identity as a woman; they do not resemble her, just as future oppressors will not resemble the oppressed.

When the protagonist says, “I told her what it was on the occasion of her first period,” she is giving her daughter a name at the very moment she faces a uniquely female bodily experience. This marks the awakening of identity, the return of female subjectivity. In this sense, the daughter’s eventual return to the sea is enabled by her mother’s spiritual support—for it was the mother who told her who she was.

The ending of Convenience Store Woman has something I don’t quite understand: Keiko gives up her job interview and chooses to remain a convenience store worker. Is this a kind of rebirth, or just a cycle where nothing changes? On the one hand, we might see her refusal to live under the scrutiny of family and friends, and her firm choice to continue working at the convenience store, as a rebellion against social institutionalization and discipline. But then again, isn’t the convenience store itself also a system of regulation and discipline?

Among these stories, what touched me most was Tomo-chan’s happiness. Her strength in the face of suffering and her defense against the cruelty of fate reminded me of Romain Rolland’s words: “There is only one true heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.”