BIn 11/5

 

The Place of Shells 

The first thing that came to my mind reading “The Place of Shells” was the movie Inception — that same blurry space where emotion and trauma start bending what we call “reality.”
In this story, the boundaries between past and present fade. The lines between perception and reality fade. Even life and death start bleeding into each other. Linear time feels fragile — easily shattered by broken memories and unstable moments.

I think the author wants us to feel that disorientation, like when a camera goes out of focus — a kind of dizziness where sight blurry to eyes and everything hums. You can really sense it in how the scenes and memories overlap. I even thought of Naoko in Norwegian Wood — maybe that same sense of “blur” is what she experienced after Kizuki’s death.

The truffle dog is such a cool symbol in this story. Sniffing for truffles is really about perception — about searching for something invisible but deeply present. Smell, time, memory — they all share that quality. They can’t be seen, they’re elusive, and they only reveal themselves when you pay attention.

“The forest was a symphony of scent: the verdure, and the water it contained; the fallen leaves that had turned to mulch, and the mold rotting the backs of the leaves…”

The beauty of the landscape is also the smell — and that smell is Agatha’s memory of her mother, her past all at once.

I think the place Planetenweg possesses an extremely important sacredness deliberately set by the author. It is a sacred space in this book.

My guess is based on religious scholar Mircea Eliade and his distinction between the sacred and the profane. In his view, the sacred is timeless and stable — something that gives life meaning — while the profane is just our ordinary world with linear timeline. Here we can see how author develops this interruption to the ordinary world by letting protagonist walking at Planetenweg :sacred breaks in the profane world (world where everything is what we familiar with and time is linear) and transforms ordinary space into a place where emotions, memories, nonlinear time, perception all flow in.

Göttingen, in the story, also feels like that kind of sacred space. It’s described as

“a city that blended over the seams in time.”

Its boundaries are unstable, the flow of memory and time constantly reshaping it. And Nomiya’s ghost-like presence and religious temperament  (“With the greenery flickering in the sun behind him, I thought
for a moment of the stained glass renditions of saints that one saw in tall church windows.”

) add that same sacred feeling — a sacred crack in an otherwise ordinary world, where all the existing boundaries dissolve, past and present, reality and perception, life and death, they all start to intertwine. 

Missing One

Compared to The Place of Shells, “Missing One” shows spatial imbalance in a much more physical way.

“The section of wall closest to the shop window jutted out slightly, offsetting the balance of the whole space.”

“The entire block on which Kikue's shop stood … was punctuated at regular intervals by monorail columns that poked up from the buildings like tall chimneys. Right there on the other side of the street was a block of slick-looking new apartments with auto-locking doors, but here, it was as if time had ground to a halt.”

“The idea that its destination was still standing while its midway section was gone struck Kikue as kind of sad. The monorail was like the town's phantom limb. Its loss was felt.”

“It was as though the city channeled every last drop of its sublime energy into Himeji Castle.”

The author may try to express the loss of personal value caused by spatial imbalance (such as abandoned railway tracks and old towns compared with the shining Himeji Castle).

“With lewd eyes, the man glared at her mockingly.”

Salamanders example

“Kikue could remember being entranced by the shy plants they had there in her childhood, which would shrink from her touch by curling up their leaves. The botanical gardens were far more run-down and neglected than she recalled.”

In this story the author rewrites the ending, giving Okiku warmth and closure. It fits that line perfectly:

“You had to give things some time before you could be really sure about them.”

On High

On High didn’t hit me as strongly story-wise, but I loved its idea — taking old legends and weaving them into modern settings. It gave me American Gods vibes, where the past and present overlap and old myths walk among us.
I’m drawn to that collision between fate and modern life — love, redemption, timeless emotions that connect ancient souls and us modern humans in the same fragile way.

First Rate Material

One big question in this story: Why do humans reject what’s made from themselves?

The disgust toward human hair or body-based materials feels symbolic — it’s about maintaining that line between life and death. Respecting the dead is part of what separates humans from animals. But logically, that boundary doesn’t always hold.

Naoki’s behavior captures this perfectly — rejecting human hair but wearing a goat wool sweater. He’s clear with the boundary between human and non-human, but maybe doesn’t care about the moral inconsistency of how he treats other species.

So what’s really the difference between human hair and animal hair — is it ethical, emotional, or just cultural?

The story’s ending, with the two characters holding hands, felt like the author’s quiet discussion about flesh and soul— that even if we exist in material form, it’s memory, emotion, and the pulse of shared life that truly last.

The Cage of Zeus

This one reminded me of the Isaac Asimov sci-fi stories I read in high school — even though I barely remember their plots. The style feels space-opera-like, slow but reflective. It seems to touch on queer existence in Japanese society, but the narrative didn’t leave an emotionally strong impression on me. Still, the theme fits the classic space-opera idea — using a futuristic setting to mirror real social contradictions.

Self-Reference Engine

This story hit me with a paradox: if language can expand infinitely, does that mean human understanding is limitless too? Or will we eventually create something so vast we can’t even comprehend it ourselves?

That question instantly made me think of the movie Her — that final moment when the AI evolves beyond human comprehension, leaving the protagonist behind.
It’s both terrifying and beautiful — that point where creation outgrows its creator.