Erika Kobayashi
- Coco's Century
To be completely honest I found Kobayashi's work the hardest to interpret. Whilst the themes were quite simple, the underlying tension and feel of the works were all quite complex and I am having trouble figuring out why I feel this way.
Anyway, the first short story, "Coco," follows the character Ko along her time growing up in Japan. This story seems to focus on two important themes first. That of American and western influence on Japan post-war, the banality/normalization of the horrors of war, and finally the inevitable loss and purposeful preservation of memory/history. These were mainly done through the portrayal of her name against Coco Chanel, the constant loss of people to the war, and the preservation of Ko's story after her death by her daughter who wishes she would have asked more questions.
- His Last Bow
This is perhaps the story that threw me off the most. In essence it is a chronology of a family tree of male doctors that all participate in some way or another with the Japanese military except for the youngest child at the end of the story. Perhaps, this is a story about the radical shift of Japan post-war away from militarism due to American intervention and the way that this blocked the destiny of many people towards working, all whilst explaining the way in which the war and military themselves barred these people from achieving their dreams in the first place. Maybe this is a commentary on how malleable the Japanese are ideologically or socially to their state's political environment? I am not quite sure.
- Sunrise
Sunrise is a story depicting both the beauty and the greatly destructive nature of "light" or radiation in this case. It goes through all of the major radioactive incidents in Japan's history as well as the history of atomic bombs themselves. I found this interesting as it almost acts as a, "we should have known and we should have stopped it from happening" kind of story whilst keeping its motives quite obscure.
Haruki Murakami
- Abandoning a Cat, Memories of my Father
I quite liked this story, it was probably my favorite from the readings for this week. I found Abandoning a Cat to be a highly moving story. Murakami manages to present his father as both a patriot of the Japanese as well as a sort of conscientious collaborator. Forced into duty he did his best to support his country all whilst trying his best to uphold his principles, whether this came during his time in the army or after. Talking about think kind of topic, as far as I understand, in Japan is somewhat taboo and often leads to public shunning of the writer. I truly admire Murakami for coming out with such a blunt, direct and philosophically meaningful piece of writing. Even when its easier to go up than go down he doesn't seem to fear going up.
Aoko Matsuda
- Love isn't easy when you're the national anthem. This story stuck with me because I see a lot of myself in the character shown to be pressured into singing the anthem. Early in life I was often forced to sing the French anthem and often found myself either only lip-syncing the words or not singing at all. I was always uncomfortable with the idea that my identity was strongly dictated by my country of origin. I always saw nationality as more of a country accepting you as one of their own rather than you having to be one of them. Nationality can always be revoked but we stay the same person, we are not defined by the groups that we belong to but by the virtue of our character and the actions we portray to the world. Whilst less radical than my own thoughts on identity and nationalism, this story does seem to touch on the expectation of being prideful to be part of a country, and the social repercussions of not doing so.
Yu Miri
- "Tokyo Ueno Station"
This was my least liked story. Although it was good it felt a little drawn out. I did like the almost poetic style of the writing! In essence this is a story about how war always affects the layman the worst. The emperor displacing the homeless and the lack of infrastructure to help them meaning that the help had to come from individuals or stores instead of the government strongly emphasized this idea.
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