Among all these stories, The Flying Tobita Sisters was the easiest one to read. The others were written in such a heavy "stream-of-consciousness" style that it was honestly hard to stay focused—it felt kind of painful to get through them.
The Flying Tobita Sisters leans toward a dystopian vibe. By contrasting “flying” and “running,” it explores the tension between progress and return, freedom and restriction. The Tobita sisters seem to question what we take for granted in modern, “evolved” ways of living. Whether they choose to wear shoes or run barefoot, that choice can be seen as a kind of nostalgia for the past. In the ending, when the protagonist tries to run, it might suggest that even if humans gain “higher” abilities, we shouldn’t forget the raw, earthy experiences that connect us to the ground. With a light touch, the author raises a heavy question: has our so-called “evolution” made us lose something more precious?
I also noticed that this kind of reflection on history keeps showing up in Erika Kobayashi’s stories—whether it’s the strong emotions toward the past in A Tale of Burning Books, or the way family memories are passed down in Sunrise, Coco’s Century, and His Last Bow. It feels like there’s an invisible thread made of time, connecting everything. Paradoxically, that thread is both linear—guiding individuals toward the future—and almost circular, looping personal fates back into the tides of history.
In A Peddler of Tears, tears—which are supposed to be born from empathy—are turned into something that can be donated or sold. It seems to suggest that genuine emotion has been devalued in modern society. The heroine’s self-sacrifice comes from a kind of twisted, obsessive love. Honestly, I don’t really get why the characters in Japanese fiction are often so self-destructive—it’s hard for me to understand that impulse.
As for I Chase the Monkey... I didn’t understand it at all. So far, that’s been the hardest story for me to read.
My Baby was strange, but that’s exactly what made it interesting. It totally flips the usual idealized image of maternal love, looking at it instead through an abstract, almost cringe lens that exposes the possessiveness, anxiety, and fear behind it. The mother watches her baby like she’s viewing a jewel—there’s this sense of dominance and ownership, rather than real love. Then there’s mies. Maybe it’s a huge symbol—it seems to represent all the fears tied to motherhood: losing control of your child, your hopes for the future being crushed, seeing your own projections rejected, or watching everything you built in intimacy fall apart. Ironically, in the end, the baby is swallowed by mies, which might mean that we ultimately lose control no matter what.
For Mogera Wogura, I kept wondering: what’s the mole’s real purpose in raising a human? If its goal is to offer humans a kind of emotional refuge in a cold, alienating world, then maybe the story isn’t just about solitary and alienation—it’s actually really warm. The mole might represent a godlike compassion, embracing human flaws and stubbornly fighting against spiritual emptiness. That’s just my guess though because I definitely didn’t fully understand this story.
Paprika Jiro tells a story of oppression and resistance. What’s interesting is how quickly the oppressors’ power collapses—it only takes a moment, the moment people stop believing in it. It reminded me of leftist political thought, which often points out how absurd the dynamic between oppressors and the oppressed really is. The oppressors are actually afraid of the oppressed. In Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he says that once the oppressed stop following the oppressor’s “prescriptions,” their “fear of freedom” also disappears. That’s exactly what happens in this story—once Paprika Jiro becomes the first to rebel, authority immediately loses its hold.
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