Erika Kobayashi - The Flying Tobita Sisters
I greatly enjoyed this reading. It was interesting to see how Kobayashi went about constantly jumping between historical context and current time without it being jarring. To me, this story is an explanation of how we always seek what we do not have. How we will always strive for what we have yet to explore or lost in the process. This is clearly shown through the way in which the wings throughout the story go from being glorified as these great additions to the body to constantly being described as annoyances, like sleeping and standing. Yet another story seemingly anchored in the idea that in the pursuit of progress we lose important parts of ourselves and become "detached" from the earth. Although this story took quite a literal route to explaining this.
Masatsugu Ono - I Chase the Monkey...
What incredibly long sentences! This shocked me in a positive way and absolutely drove home the way in which the "monkey," or what I believe to be the main characters trauma around having been raped and maybe even possibly a child since we do not know the age of the main character," is ever relentless in its wanting to leave her body. This story was quite emotional for me. Reading it all in one setting I found myself engrossed by the writing style as well as the constant evolution of the characters understanding of her own body. It almost seems to me that the character has unconsciously regressed its primal mind into the image of a monkey so that she doesn't have to deal with the trauma that she has experienced. The monkey represents how her primal and natrual instincts are telling her that she was violated and taken advantage of, constantly wanting to come out and concretize the events of her trauma, whilst her conscious mind does not let this part take over for fear of losing her shape.
Hiromi Kawakami - Ugoromochi (Mogera Wogura)
This was an interesting story for me to read as it was constantly keeping me guessing at what everything in it meant whilst still keeping its shape. Perhaps my favorite part of this reading was the way in which the Mole interacted with the people around them. Whether in a tender, loving, way or in its inability to blend in. I also found it interesting, and made sure to look it up to double check this after reading the story, that whilst mole's have extremely bad eyesight, barely having functioning vision at all, their other senses are incredibly sharp. I thought that the main characters interaction with the bartender was a perfect insinuation that the mole had a sort of 5th sense which it used beyond simply its eyesight. Whilst I have been struggling to figure out exactly what I believe this story is meant to convey I do think that it must in large part be both a commentary on Japanese society as, "working people to the point of non-living," as well as how much we are molded by our environment and how we were brought up. This was shown though how the work culture and nightlife was portrayed as well as the healing process and the bringing up of Humans by the Moles.
Yoko Ogawa - A Peddler of Tears
This story was quite honestly disturbing. First, it seems like a commentary on the concept that for art to be true it needs to be filled with grief/trauma. I personally truly dislike this idea and find it somewhat repulsive. This story does a good job of, in my opinion, commenting on this fact and the nature of how we perceive art as needing to take to be heightened to a level above where it exists. Secondly, the story revolves around how unreciprocated relationships and obsession do not constitute love but only cause self-destruction. Whilst the emotions around them may be intense a certain loss of self occurs when one enters something unreciprocated, such as giving their tears away or tearing their body apart for the, "right person."
Mieko Kawakami - My Baby
Although some of the stories in this series made me emotional this one probably hit me the hardest. The mix between realism and magic in this story, in my opinion, blends perfectly to create characters that we can both relate to strongly on an emotional level but will never be able to truly understand and therefore exist with ambiguity in our minds and the analysis of the story. I thought that the concept of peeling as an action rather than seeing, grasping, or understanding was incredibly interesting. Although we never truly understand what peeling might mean in this context, to me, it is a comment on the deep complexity of the world around us and the way in which we understand something without "peeling" it ourselves. The concept that electricity also runs through each person and a certain vulnerability exists before that phase is also interesting to me. What does this electricity mean? and why does it protect against some mythical creature. Perhaps what they mean by electricity is some sort of consciousness where we suddenly develop that dictates both our status in society, hinted at by the line talking about how they were worried about how the electricity would develop for the child, and our ability to "peel" or understand the world around us. A truly interesting yet greatly moving story about loss, love, grief, and maternity.
Yukiko Motoya - Paprika Jiro
I did not understand this story in the slightest. and haven't the faintest idea as to what it may have been trying to convey. Maybe its a commentary on how the machine of society which is so much larger than ourselves is so out of the reach of the common layman that they have to simply accept their place as an insignificant cog in the machine. But this is just a guess. The story was fun to read and the pacing was good, but the contents themselves confuse me quite a bit.
My favorite readings out of all of the ones assigned definitely had to be My Baby and I Chase the Monkey... Both used extensive analogy and intense writing styles to bring out the atmosphere that would best convey their messages and portrayed their ideas using more of a hint or reference of magic rather than an overt and all encompassing idea.
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