Erika Kobayashi's works were my favorite of this week. They felt very lyrical and deliberate. The generational storytelling was really touching. In all three of the stories there was a historical context being told through the lens of a very personal story and self-contained life. The idea of professions, ideas, thoughts, trauma being passed down is very powerful and I think Kobayashi got those themes across in a beautiful way.
Aoko Matsuda's Love Isn't Easy When You're the National Anthem was a very strange read. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, I think there's something to be said about patriotism as a cover for controlling a population- "everyone must sing the national anthem"- which is what makes the people who don't sing so compelling for the national anthem. Maybe it is drawn to these people who don't automatically subscribe to the anthem because it's something unusual that the anthem can try to change and make conform. The vibe was very creepy.
Murakami's Abandoning a Cat was very jarring and difficult to read. The juxtaposition of soldier vs. priest was very interesting. Although they seem opposites, it can be argued they are both huge organizational structures that have the means to influence the culture. Japan's involvement in these crimes is often overlooked, and to see it written so explicitly from the son of someone who witnessed it first hand was surprising.
Yu Miri's The End of August was really interesting. I would be interested in what the formatting looks like in print. I thought the contrast between the young girls, particularly the one with the crush, and switching to Woo-gun's thoughts was really well done, and really highlighted the dissonance in experience of those living in South Korea during this time. The banning of Korean names is so insidious. The pain of Woo-cheol and Woo-gun and their family was extremely palpable.
I read Yu Miri's Tokyo Ueno Station last year, and the story is told in a very winding, sometimes confusing way. It’s very interesting to me how it mixes memory and present narratives. The first time I read it I felt a bit lost sometimes, but I also think this might be purposeful sometimes as are thrust into his perspective so immediately. The lens through a homeless person is something I feel we don’t give a lot of thought to in society in general, and experiencing this life in first person raises a lot of thoughts. It’s really interesting to see how the war has a direct or indirect impact on so many different people from different walks of life, and the ripples of the war that feel everlasting.
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