Thomas Weber - 10/29/25

 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.

Bin 10/28

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.

Sam Kraus - 10/29

The Flying Tobita Sisters was interesting as it begins with a romanticization of flying. The narrator expresses, "Our ancestors wanted so badly to fly in the air. I want to understand how they felt, looking up at the sky but unable to fly..." Everyone has wings, they eat flying fish, the narrator recounts the history of flight: Wright Brothers -> World Wars -> Space, etc. However, after that initial romanticization, in comes the Tobita sisters. These sisters are described as possessing enchanting bird-like features, yet there is another interesting aspect of them - they serve as an anomaly to this obsession with flight. For example, they wear colorful sneakers which is odd for this world, their dad tried to cut off his wings, the mom's ancestors were marathon runners, etc. Furthermore, the Tobita sisters plan to run to the sea on foot, something which is not done anymore. It's difficult to make sense of Japanese magical realism in comparison to western magical realism, as Japanese literature tends to be a lot less clear cut in terms of themes and messaging. And in saying that, I am implying that there is even distinct messaging at all. Still, I am noticing that flying is an aspect of humanity that we lack, and in this world, it is coveted by all. It is perceived as something that would enhance the human experience, and the narrator expresses, "So eventually we left our feet behind. No need to run when you can fly." However, the Tobita sisters represent an aversion to this sentiment, and our narrator seemingly concludes this as well, as at the end of the novel, she exits her classroom and begins running, an action that was shortly before, made out to be unthinkable. As for what all of this could mean, my mind leads toward technological advancement ≠ unquestionably benefiting humanity. The narrator also mentions at one point that the internet and telephone communication made the world feel too small and crowded. And with the development of wings, new problems arise - sleeping is difficult, new air traffic systems must be developed, etc. Therefore, I wonder if Erika Kobayashi is making a statement on technology and innovation. Although we desire progress and methods of making life easier, the true question is... will life really be easier? Along with that, what new problems will that technology or innovation bring with it? 

As for I Chase the Monkey..., I have two conflicting thoughts. Either I am missing something, and to better like this piece of work, I need to understand it better, or on the other hand, I just genuinely did not like this story at all (which is really rare for me). Ultimately, this story boils down to this for me - it feels like Masatsugu Ono took every terrible quality in a Murakami book and condensed it down into one story. To start, he writes many sentences that COULD ONLY come from a man. For example, "I wondered, placing my finger gently against my nipple, wiping a bead of milk onto the soft, full flesh and then slipping my finger into my mouth, licking the milk..." what? And if you read the story, you would know that there are plenty more examples. Furthermore, I feel as if the story is trying WAY too hard to be unique and experimental. Of course, one of the main gimmicks being the constant stream of thought, only concluding with a period at the end of the paragraph. But for me personally, instead of this being innovative or interesting, it just makes the story hard and even annoying to follow. It just feels like the story is trying to be super quirky, and for me, it falls flat. I tried re-reading it, but I quickly felt annoyed again and moved on. There is a major difference between magical realism being awe-inspiring and simply nonsensical. In this instance, for me, it came off more as nonsensical, rather than inspiring (such as The Ice Man, for example).

On a more positive note, I enjoyed Mogera Wogura. However, who knows how much of this might just be due to the fact that the bar was really low following the previous read. Still, I think the magical realism/surrealism worked in this story. As humans, we often collect and have dominance over other species - we keep pets, have zoos, domesticate farm animals, etc. However, in this story, we have the Japanese mole who has power over a bunch of humans. This mole collects them, takes care of them, discards them once their life is over, etc. In short, this Japanese mole and his wife have domesticated a bunch of humans. Still, this very mole participates in human society - he goes out to work, the bar, etc. We get to view human society through the eyes of a mole, and through this perspective, we come to understand that human life is quite dull. The humans in Tokyo are described as being very isolated and quiet, such as when the mole expresses, "sometimes I wonder why humans are so distant from one another." Some of the humans the mole collects are similarly described as, "People who don't die, but don't live." "Pretty much the only time they ever cry or blow their noses are otherwise express emotion is when one of their number dies." And lastly, "No more spirit to live." In essence, this story makes me think of modern, industrialized life. What does the mole do? It spends most of its life alone and underground, and very rarely comes out. As for the modern human? We spend most of our time working and communicating to and from. Furthermore, for job opportunities, we move far from home and into a city where we do not know anybody, are cramped into small apartments, etc. In this instance, I believe the mole was cleverly utilized to show how its lifestyle is not that different from a modern human. This modernization has stripped many of their humanity, and seemingly, just how farm animals are domesticated for resource production, we are too. That is why I enjoyed this story much more than the last - it utilizes magical realism, but uses it strategically and cleverly.

I think there is a lot going on in A Peddler of Tears, but most notably to me, the protagonist gives up parts of herself to please others - especially the Maestro. From the beginning of her time, she has used her bodily tears as a commodity. For her customers, the low quality tears were sufficient. However, one day, she falls in love with the Maestro who she desperately wants to please. As we learn, the more pain/suffering she feels, the higher the quality of the tears. She wants only the best for the Maestro, so as she expresses herself, "I was prepared to give up everything else." And in fact, she does - she cuts off her toes, lips, calves, etc. Notably, she mentions cutting off parts of her womanly body - nipples, ovaries, urethra, etc. To please this one man she has fallen deeply in love with, she cuts herself apart, and metaphorically and physically loses what makes her her. And as this ends, we learn that only the tear ducts and tear sacs are left. Although there are many themes at play, I perceive this story as a commentary on giving yourself up and losing who you are for the sake of another person - in this instance, for a man. Although her life was fine before, long after this encounter with the Maestro, she is left with nearly nothing.

I was really excited to read My Baby, as well, I want to read anything with Mieko Kawakami's name on it. This story seems to tackles ideas of the patriarchy, motherhood, and fear as a commodity. To start, the mother's greatest fear is the Mies. She is terrified of them, and she desperately pleads to her husband to do something about them. However, the husband is extremely neglectful and dismissive. He tells her not to worry about them, and most notably, he ignores the emotional pain that she is experiencing. Given Kawakami's common feminist themes, I see this as a critique of a dismissive and belittling man that a patriarchy produces. Similarly, Kawakami often discusses themes of motherhood in her works, most notably, this and Breasts and Eggs, all of which deeply ties into her personal life as a mother. Therefore, although I have less of a complex analysis to lay out here, Kawakami relays the feelings of being a mother - always desperately attempting to protect your child and putting their safety above all. She keenly perceives the danger around her, of which, her husband is ignorant to. Lastly, fear is a prominent aspect of this story. As the narrator expresses, "The greatest human tragedy is worrying over the worst-case scenarios while missing out on the joys of the present." She is not even able to enjoy spending time with her child as she can only feel fear. And in fact, there appears to be a minor capitalist critique as this very fear is profited off of. As the story mentions, "People make a fortune off our fear of the Mies with these silly cribs..." Every emotion is a commodity under capitalism, and fear is no exception. We sell home safety systems, protection plans on items, insurances, etc. Therefore, getting rid of the "Mies" could be problematic for the very men in charge of these structures - without Mies, they would sell less cribs, of course meaning... less profit. 

Lastly, I do not have a lot to comment on Paprika Jiro, but I enjoyed it enough. It felt very comedic at times and cartoonish. The way Jiro sets up the trap and captures the man, riding him all the way into the desert, was quite funny. As tradition follows, he inherits the stall from his grandfather, and he carries on the family business. He is happy to do the job and dedicate himself to it without fear - as the narrator says in the last line, "As a mark of utmost respect, Paprika Jiro does his best to react in exaggerated astonishment as they careen through, fearlessly confronting obstacles head-on."  

Reading Reflection-Sylvia Chen

 

In The Flying Tobita Sisters, everyone can fly, but the sisters decide to run instead. It’s kind of ironic—people once
dreamed of flying, and now that it’s easy, they just take it for granted. The sisters run to remember what effort feels
like. It’s a quiet rebellion in a world that’s forgotten its struggle. Like Icarus, the story’s about freedom and falling,
but here the sisters choose the ground, not the sky. In the end, the narrator joined them, as if having grasped
something. Perhaps existence is not about running or flying, but remembering the efforts once made.

I Chase the Monkey and the Monkey Flees from me, I don't quite understand the story, but it seems like there is a
real chase happens inside the narrator’s body. And the monkey isn’t real( or it’s real, if getting schizophrenia), it’s
a part of the narrator’s emotional side. No matter how far the narrator runs, it always comes back. The author mixes
the human and animal and just feels like we can’t really separate the two. The harder the narrator tries to fight it,
the more the entanglement. Don’t quite get the theme, but seems to symbolise the inextricable entanglement　between reason and emotion, civilisation and primal nature.

Mogera Wogura is the story from a mole's perspective, a mole who tries to live in the human world. He follows human routine, but he does not really belong. The more he imitates people, the more he sees how empty life is. Wogura lives between two worlds. He seems to understand humans, but also doesn't know why people become numb. I feel really weird about the pocket and take-home part. It’s a symbol of compassion, I doubt. However, I do feel that people are more genuine when they become part of the underground. And it’s not death but the truth of the people's inner selves. 

A Peddler of Tears was my favorite story this week. It reminded me of a tale where tears turned into pearls, but this
story felt deeper—a devotion to art. It shows how emotions can be sold, turning sadness into something measurable
and controlled. When crying becomes a work, it loses its truth. The ending moved me most. The narrator cuts the
body for the musician, not from pain but from self-fulfilment. It becomes an act of creation. 

My Baby seems to show ordinary maternal fear at first, but then slowly collapses. The Mies feels less like a literal monster and more like a projection of anxiety — a physical form of the mother’s deepest fear of losing control. It’s unclear whether the Mies truly exist or whether they represent an internal breakdown. But the mother keeps asking if they should kill the Mies. Her desperation made me reflect on the need for control in a world. After the child’s death, her fear transforms into obsession. She tries to reassemble the baby’s body piece by piece. Her actions are like a cycle where fear gives birth to creation, and creation leads to destruction.

10/22/25 - Thomas Weber

 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.

    

Bin 10/22

 “Every dust of the times falls on a person as a mountain” 

I don’t remember where I first saw this line, but it really fits the theme in this week’s readings. We can see this both in CoCo’s Century and Sunrise — how individuals live out their lives while standing in front of fate.

This idea shows up again and again in other readings too. Also by showing the weight of history, these writers all seem to share a similar attitude toward Japan’s wars of aggression and militarism.

In His Last Bow, heavy history, the vastness of the era, and family legacy are all intertwined — turning family expectations into something as heavy as that Japanese history itself. Luckily, the protagonist finds her own path. Choosing to become a writer instead of a doctor symbolizes her gradual rejection of those expectations, and maybe also a deeper reflection on history. Personally, I think the difference between a writer and a doctor, in the context of Japan’s fascist past, is that doctors were often participants in that dark history, accomplices to the crimes of the military. A writer, on the other hand, steps outside that weight and uses words to expose the pain of the past so that others won’t fall into the same historical loop. The final line — “Invisible light penetrates human flesh. All the things that could not be seen are now revealed, right before my eyes.” — also hints at the author’s view of Japan’s wartime past.

Abandoning a Cat reflects on the war too, but focuses more on the helplessness of the individual in the face of fate — a fate that can’t be controlled. The grandfather hit by a train, the uncle who has to inherit the temple, the father who was almost given away to a temple as a child, and all these lives swept up by war. In the hospital, death is inevitable; history itself is inescapable. Soldiers kill, monks save lives, but war turns good people into monsters. I think the cat represents both the father’s abandoned childhood and the history of violence and aggression. Abandoning the cat reminds the father of his own abandonment and hellish past — yet facing that pain, passing down the memory, becomes a kind of redemption. The family’s trauma has to be seen before it can be healed.

It’s also worth noting that Murakami seems to show his attitude in the ending through his description of the white cat — as if to say that the individual’s helplessness before fate never really goes away. And no matter how much people admit to past crimes, nothing can truly undo what was done. The trauma lingers as punishment for life. I really appreciate this kind of reflection — because if the trauma of committing crimes could be easily healed, then how could the suffering of the Chinese and all the other victims in Asia and Australia ever be healed?

Tokyo Ueno Station didn’t particularly grab me — the writing style felt a bit overworked and made it hard for me to fully get into it. Still, its reflections on the bubble economy, war, and militarism are quite solid. It might be the first Japanese novel I’ve read that includes such a sharp hint of criticism toward the imperial family. I’m not sure if the author’s Korean citizenship gave her the distance to express that attitude more freely in her writing, but it made me wonder.

In Love Isn’t Easy When You’re the National Anthem, I found it interesting that the requirement to “respect the national anthem” actually appears in so many countries — however in this case, I instantly linked it to Japan’s fascist past. Even though the story doesn’t reveal its setting, Japan’s history as an Axis power automatically shaped the context in my mind while I was reading.

May Inui 10/22/25

I really liked Ko. It was short and sweet, and I found myself very drawn to Ko’s character throughout. The idea of adoption was probably a little controversial back then. Her stories usually take place over different generations and focus a lot on family. She often uses a circular way of storytelling that makes her stories feel connected. A lot of her work also deals with the themes of war and the effects of nuclear events. I really liked Abandoning a Cat. It was very touching to me, and the line “It’s the accumulation of insignificant things like this that has made me the person I am” struck me, I think it’s a beautiful line. Like Kobayashi’s work, it touches on the circle of life: “Despite our differences, looking at my emaciated father I did feel a connection, a bond between us.” The story also reflects on the impact of war. I found “Love Isn’t Easy When You’re the National Anthem” very interesting, especially with the point of view coming from the Japanese national anthem itself. I’m curious about what motivated the author to write something like this, and I actually found it almost comedic. Reading the Japanese quote from the original made me want to read the full story in Japanese, since I really liked the tone of it. It also made me think more about the relevance of national anthems. I remembered how I always felt a bit uncomfortable singing the US national anthem in high school, compared to when I sang it in elementary school without giving it much thought. As for Tokyo Ueno Station, I really like the way Miri writes- her style feels very poetic. I felt a personal connection to the story when I read that the narrator was twelve when the war ended, just like my grandpa. It made me think that he might have gone through similar experiences and struggles during that time in Japan. I want to read the rest of the book and also see what led the narrator to become homeless.