Mieko Kawakami, "War Bride"
This story was perhaps the hardest to actually interpret in my opinion due to its short nature as well as the complexity of its ideas. In reading it the crux of the story that I understood was that of grief and or sorrow becoming integral in a person. Simply put, pain in any fashion becomes an intrinsic part of a person, whether this destroys them or cloaks them in some kind of protective sheath depends on the person. However, pain in this story is presented as an axiom of existence. One can avoid it for themselves by sheltering themselves but also causes pain in that sheltering. Finally the part about not wanting to impart pain onto others and the true consciousness of words was interesting. This in my opinion was a sort of commentary on modern Japanese society as being too focused on what affects others and not the self, as well as the ideas of the veil of language and how interpretation leads both to misunderstandings, pain, and remembrance.
I also briefly considered this story to be about sexual assault at the beginning which I do think still fits within the narrative as something that due to its lack of social status for women in Japan causes a shutting down of the individual to society.
Haruki Murakami, "A Poor Aunt Story"
This story was a lot of fun to read. It took me on a journey of sorts using what almost seemed like Murakami himself thinking out loud to the reader. It also brought about an interesting idea that remembrance does not always mean importance. What I mean by this is that all of the characters in the story directly remembered their version of the "poor aunt" yet the importance that was attached to these individuals did not stem just from them being remembered but from the lack of impact they had on their lives. I am probably not explaining this properly but what I mean to say that I found interesting is the idea that simply being remembered is not enough. One must be remembered for more than they were in a vacuum and as a part of society for them to avoid becoming a poor aunt.
Shion Miura, "The Great Passage"
This was my favorite passage from the readings for this week. Specifically because it acknowledges the shortcomings and beauties of language in its use and propagation between people. It really felt like language within the context of this story was a constantly evolving organism that absorbs everything around it to become universal all whilst keeping its context and interpretation incredibly individualistic. In this I am curious as to some of the challenges that the translator may have run into having to translate definitions of words in other languages, what a headache!
Yoko Tawada, "The Emissary"
The Emissary was a wild read to say the least. It brought in so many themes from isolationism to climate change to age as a burden and a curse. Not being able to focus on all of these aspects I will focus on what I personally found the most interesting. That was the way in which time and age was presented. Perhapse the most interesting of the examples in the story is the way in which (seemingly) gaining a longer lifespan and everything that was invested into making that happen has actually regressed the population to the point of losing basic living qualities that we take for granted today. Whether that is the internet, a stable climate, the unity of the country itself, or our understanding of language, the presentation of age and the passage of time as being fundamentally stretched seems to have a created a world of more division rather than unity. Something that we do not often consider when thinking of living longer. How would living longer actually separate society along generational and temporal lines rather than unifying it?
Minae Mizumura, "The Fall of the Language in the Age of English
This story was one of the most interesting readings that we have gone over so far. While I do not completely agree with what the writer is saying as to the nature of language and the "special" nature of the English language I do appreciate his view. What this language assumes that I do not completely agree with are two things. One is the strength of identity in determination of language and culture, and the second is relationships between languages not being able to evolve for mutual growth. For my first point I completely understand the idea that English has become an intellectual language internationally and is considered the diplomatic language of the world, leading to people associating their own languages with a certain lack of refinement, and therefore hurting nations that exist outside the direst sphere of English. However, this assumes multiple things. Firstly, that America and English speaking countries will remain the dominant economic (which is where most of the incentive for the intellectual nature of English comes from) and scientific centers of the world, something that has especially in recent years started to become challenged by China, as well as a lack of pride existing in the traditional texts in native languages around the world. If we take the middle east for example they have one of the most concentrated areas of intellectual prowess from anywhere in the world written entirely in Arabic and adjacent languages that have trouble being translated into English. Not only are these texts extremely highly regarded internationally but they form one of the backbones of scientific and cultural understandings of the world and religions of the world. Secondly, this assumes that languages do not grow in tandem with each other. Languages, in the way that I see them, are continually evolving and growing social organisms that absorb their environment and adapt to fit the scenarios around them. This idea assumes that English will not start to form direct relationships with other languages in ways that will integrate both into the English lexicon as well as the language itself. A perfect example of this is English and French. Both sharing similar roots they naturally share a lot of vocabulary, but in addition to this new vocabulary in English has imbedded itself into the English language and vice versa. This is seen even in languages as distant as Japanese and English where terms, expressions, and common phrases have broken the boundary between the two languages consistently. What an interesting reading!
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