November 15th Reflection - Maya Thiart

All of the readings for today had a distinct and interesting theme of language, specifically that of the Japanese language and people’s relationship to it.

My favorite story of the week was “The Great Passage”. It was almost inspiring to know that there was someone so passionate about what people would largely consider a mundane topic and commonplace and yet still take great care in dealing with dictionaries. People who were seen as weird or strange by others found meaning and joy in the often  forgotten and everyday-ness of dictionaries, and how words are used in real life. I saw a lot of similarities between the protagonists of “War Bride” and “The Great Passage”. Both characters deeply care about words, although the one in War Bride holds them close to her chest, and is more fascinated in the actual sound of the word, rather than the meaning itself.

“Poor Aunt” is a bit of a confusing story, but I think its overall message is about how despite words being “just words”, their meanings and usages can manifest into real emotions and physical responses to people. The main character repeats again and again that the “thing” on their back was just a poor aunt, a concept of words, but people they encounter, from their real estate agent to their friend, visualized something tangible. There might be more to a hidden meaning of sorts— maybe the poor aunt represents what they pity or feel worst about, but it shows how people’s fears and desires can ascribe realness to simple words.

Mine Mizumura’s “The Fall of Language in the Age of English” was a fascinating read, albeit a bit sad to think about the future of literature. She propositions that non-English literature is not only at a disadvantage but actively discouraged in the time that English is being used as a lingua franca. Obviously scholars and writers want their works to be seen and reviewed my the most people, and the normalization of English on the online sphere and its dominance in media only further encourages that.

I wasn’t so much a fan of the story “The Emissary”, because I wasn’t sure how it related to the theme relative to the other stories of the week, although the naming conventions of locations certainly seemed to be key. The naïveté of the main character for some parts of the story were frustrating to read; rather than feeling curious he felt moreso ignorant.

11/15 - Miguel

I am glad there were fewer stories this week and the fact that the theme/topic for this week was language made me very excited. For “War Bride” it was a bit confusing to me in terms of the message of the story(?) I could tell the story itself was sad and that it was talking about words/language and how the protagonist basically doesn’t speak in order to not hurt others…or at least thats what I got. This is also is how I felt towards the next story, “A Poor Aunt Story” as in I was confused. The concept of what a “poor aunt” is, is what had me in a loop. Is a poor aunt just someone/something people avoid out of pity…? That’s what I got from the story at least, but also the way “poor aunt” transfers and all that just had me taking a step back and rereading parts. Now moving on from the confusion, “ The Great Passage”, I liked this story and the fact that it’s about dictionary making, like it’s a passion I wouldn’t expect someone to have. This story was also easier to read after the last two, it was also a different vibe from the pity and sad to a more lively and fun(?) feeling. “The Emissary” so this reading goes back to me being a bit confused, but I just think it was hard for me to wrap around this sort of world that the author had created like at times I was just lost in trying to grasp what exactly is happening to people here. “The Fall of The Language in the Age of English” at first when I saw the, not warning but the comment on it being written 16 years ago I thought it would be more about the kind of language used and not the kind of mindset of the author. But also the reading brings up points I agree with the change of the internet and its influence on people. I feel nowadays because the internet is so accessible and it’s just part of the modern life the change it brings will only keep coming. As technology advances it will bring newer experiences from older generations. It is sad to me how nowadays I feel people don’t really enjoy reading or at least from seeing all these IPad kids and all on the internet… 

Cindy's 11/15 blog post

Cindy/Jiahan's November 15th reading blog post:

War Bride: This is a melancholic, surrealistic and symbolic story (maybe symbolic?). And it is a difficult reading for me (◞‸◟) because I am uncertain about its message, so I could only guess: I don't know what exact meaning does the combo words "War Bride" have, but I come up with two possible interpretations: firstly, (I looked it up) the term "War Bride"(戦争の花嫁、ウォーブライド） usually refers to Japanese women who were married to American men and immigrated in the United States after the Pacific War, so maybe our female protagonist encountered it through a historical textbook while she's in school and adapted this word to herself as she liked it aesthetically, such that it then becomes symbolic throughout the entire narrative? (symbolic in the way that she marries to her lifelong ideal that she shall no longer utter a single word, by which she will never disrupts another's eternity by her speech, such that she alienates and makes herself a stranger to human society around her which relies on words and daily communication, and infuses herself spiritually to the entire world, the sun, the horizon, the sky, and the ground). Secondly, the combo "War Bride" could be chose and used simply because that there is no meaning to the word itself, and that's the best and crucial part because a word that has meanings are more likely to hurt people, or to impact people, on account of which, our protagonist prefers words that have no meanings to those that have. But should we take a critical view of the story or should we just feel it instead of understanding it? It is admittedly true that by keeping one's silence, nothing hurt could be inflicted, but on the other hand, word and languages themselves lose their meaning if people no longer talk to each other, furthermore, faithful emotions and love could not be conveyed, too. In this respect, it is sad to speak no more, but it is also extremely gentle（極めて優しい） to decide to hold one's tongue evermore. And her brittle eyes open more and more. She begins to focus more on the sight when she lets go of sound and speech. This transition is also quite interesting.☺️⊂((・x・))⊃

A "Poor Aunt" Story: This is another Murakami Haruki's short story and I think that I like it as a whole, but the scenario that the weary mother reproaches her daughter and says in her fury that "you are not part of the family any more" lingers powerfully in my mind and makes me feel so sad. The nameless first-person narrator wants to write a story about a poor aunt, who is always there but being ignored all the time, seeming to have no business with her surrounding society at all. Lonely, and banal, to the extent of incurring others' impatience and dislike. But such people exist and the narrator wants to write about them as a group. By doing which, his friend suggests that it means to take up certain responsibility to help this specific group in his writing. (which I understand as making readers be aware of the "poor aunt" surrounding them and encouraging an effort to be more caring and patience towards them.) The enigmatic part is that the certain "poor aunt" that the narrator wants to write about begins to take up a form and literally, stays on the narrator's back but transforms into different things for different observers. What does this supposed to refer? I am not sure but in order to answer this, I regard it as a necessity to talk about the moment when this mysterious "poor aunt" suddenly disappears after the narrator gets off the train. When the narrator witnesses an unpleasant scenario occurs between a mother and her two children, he is glued to his spot, hesitant to offer help fearing an opposite outcome, and finds out how feeble he actually is with his two hands when someone is truly in need of a certain kind of comfort, he is much disturbed and gets off the train, finding suddenly that the "poor aunt" on his back has gone. This makes me feel that the "poor aunt" can never be a real existence and it is something as the narrator says, a "conceptual thing". I think that the "poor aunt" is an incarnation of a benevolent writer's mind which concerns about societal depression, loneliness, sadness, and inferior groups, wishing to offer certain help with his brush or pen, in other words, through the power of words and stories. But on finding out that he cannot even help to comfort a wounded elementary school girl, he began to be in doubt with himself and his ability of truly helping others with his literature. Thus this benevolent feeling or mind falls short due to his inconfidence, and never puts itself together into a story that could be circulated, hoping to make a change for a group identified as "poor aunt". But maybe he is talk about subconsciousness again? If that's the case, I am looking forward to hear more about it in class.(๑╹ω╹๑ )♡

The Great Passage: This is a really cute story! ( ＾∀＾)What a beautiful and warm team is the Dictionary Editorial Department! ( ^ ^ )/🍻I like how Akita finds real value in Majime as a born lexicographer and guides him into his most suitable vocation in life. I also begin to understand how passionate and hard-working dictionary contributors are as they develop, edit, and put together a dictionary through this story. And I think that this is really something valuable in today's world, where everything is so quick and people being impatient and anxious all the time, striving for living and being money-oriented. I remember when I was an elementary schooler in China, I really enjoyed looking up unfamiliar words in dictionaries by Chinese alphabet or by radicals and characters part, but how long have been since I last used a printed paper dictionary! And I am surprised to find out that I seemed to forget the way of how to use a Chinese dictionary, which makes me feel so nostalgic, shocked, and a little melancholic. Nowadays, we can simply look up words in google or by an online dictionary, such as merriam-webster. It almost seems like printed paper dictionary are disappearing in our lives. But this short story makes me think: Dictionary is not only used to explain the meaning of a word, but to help people stretch the limitation of a language and have a chance to express themselves in the clearest way. It is not only a tool, but also a guide that leads us among the deep ocean of words. But I never think in this respect before. I should start using printed dictionaries more!٩( 'ω' )و

The Fall of Language in the Age of English: This is the first treatise we read for the semester, written in 2008. But I resonate（すごく共感できる） with her arguments a lot and I think that they can be applied in 2024, too. She talks about that a computer translation will deprive the original fun of the text, which I strongly agree. When it was October back then and Mulgar Library in our school BU has a selection of spooky tales such as Lovecrafts and so on displayed as October reading. And me and my aunt frequented there, picking up a horror story to read during the nights. Nonetheless, since my aunt is not used to read in English, so she used a translation app to translate the whole page into Chinese as she read and she got bored within half an hour every time. On our way back home, as we shared our reading(our daily horror story hehe), she complains to me about how badly those computer-generated translations are, such that they lack any sense of beauty and make her reading absolutely boring, even intolerable. I feel sorry for her and reflect back on this, even 16 years has past after Mizumura wrote this treatise, yet machinery translations are still done badly nowadays. We might as well have some confident ground to be assured that there are human efforts in humanity studies that an ai or a computer cannot replace since they can not read in-between the lines. (文脈を読めない）。Another thing that I really agree with this treatise is the argument she made that it is not problematic about the simple fact that English has become the sole international language in the 21st century, but what is causing worries is that because of the popularity and universality of the English language in online library and the academia, bilingual scholars are inclined to write true literature only in English rather than write in their mother tongue, which causes a gradual deprivation of serious literature in those diverse national languages and produces a blank such that future generation of (let's say, Japan) lack an approach to the age before them, such as the effect that Natsume Sōseki's text have in bringing people back to the Meiji Period. Mizumura's mentioning of Natsume Sōseki reminds me of another Japanese author, Kafū Nagai, which I want to make a reference here, since he chooses to write about Old Edo period and buildings in his time deliberately in his novels, too.a( ´∀｀)

November 15 reading -Jaxon

 I didn't get what "War Bride" was trying to express. I found it a little hard to follow, and I only knew it was trying to discuss something with the power of words, which is also discussed in "A Poor Aunt Story." I don't see the type of people, "poor aunt," described in the story, but it seems the poor aunt on the back is kind of something that can trigger people's memory, which has similar traits to the poor aunt. They are not hated but avoided and don't want to face.  I wondered why his companion didn't see anything. Maybe it's because she already has a "poor aunt?" I really like the scenes on the suburban train. I felt so bad about the girl, and I wondered why the girl was blamed so hard. I don't like annoying kids and the boy who took the hat is almost exactly the typical figure I don't like.

I used a physical dictionary when I was in primary school, and I think I have never ever seen someone who is interested in making or editing a dictionary. When I started to learn English as my second language, I found good definitions of words are important for studying a language. I used an electronic dictionary in high school, and it provided very simple and one-sided explanations for the words I looked up, which made me misunderstand a lot of words in the past. I like the example of "dog" at the beginning, I wonder how is that part being translated from Japanese to English.

I can still see a strong Yoko Tawada's features from "The Emissary." There is a lot of emphasis on the change of language, like changes in expressions and the forbidden of English. The setting is interesting, as always. I think Tawada focuses a lot on the relationships between cities and the countryside. Tokyo became a city that not everyone dreams of moving to anymore, although it still keeps some features. Okinawa and Hokkaido seem to be more independent since the word "immigrant" was used.

The idea in "The Fall of the Language in the Age of English" is fascinating. I definitely feel kids in the next generation are not reading literature as we did in the past since they have more options. Especially in America, I can feel the power of English that helps connect all the people in the States together. The idea that Natsume Soseki will write in English is arguable. I agree with the part that says not everyone can have time and put effort into learning another specific language. 

November 15 Melissa LaRochelle

 War Bride: I'm not really into this story. It's a bit confusing to me so I don't really know what to make of it. At first I thought that her not wanting to speak was out of fear of hurting others with her words but then she shifted to not wanting to impact their "eternity" at all? I don't know, it was a tad too abstract for me to understand.

A Poor Aunt Story: Okay so the confusion continues. I guess I am mostly confused by this concept of a "poor aunt". I assume it is a person or thing that you feel sorry for but you kind of just don't want to deal with because it's a bummer? Still not understanding the attaching to his back though. I thought maybe he was slowly turning into this "poor aunt" type of existence. His friends didn't want to be around him anymore and strangers avoided him too. Then I thought the poor aunt being on his back was a symbol for writers block about the topic he wanted to write about. That she disappeared when he was ready to write about her. I don't know honestly haha.

The Great Passage: I liked this story a lot. I thought it was heartwarming to see the passion the speaker has for words and the life he created with it. And for him to find someone with that passion to carry on what he loved is also satisfying. It is a deal different from the previous two stories. It makes sense. We have a clear story about someone looking for a successor in a niche field. It was heartwarming.

The Emissary: Okay, back to being slightly confused. So is this a world where everyone lives very long or is it that people die and become ghosts and carry on as normal because they still interact with the world? The speaker mentioned he couldn't die and at one point, when buying postcards, talked about how he bought an umbrella to shield from the sun despite his transparent skin. I was wondering if they are just frozen in time at one point and carry on. But this is distressing because you have to deal with feeling left behind by the world as it continues to change. It can be lonely watching the world you know fade in to obsolescence.

The Fall of The Language in the Age of English: It is interesting how this was written 16 years ago. I wonder how the writer would feel about the fact I read it on my computer haha. The internet has certainly become a very important part of modern life. I also find it sad how physical books aren't the average preference but I personally do still prefer reading a physical book or textbook, as someone who grew up with technology. Speaking as someone who doesn't like change, I will admit that it is inevitable. While the rise of the internet has made a lot of thing convenient, I will admit it's made other tasks far too easy. There should be some encouragement to put in a little effort sometimes. 

November 15 Reading Reflection - Kaito

War Bride - I found this story very upsetting. The way the protagonist views words and language makes me think it stems from bad experiences and trauma, and the way loss, grief, change is an endless process. Parts of it made me think it was difficult for her to acknowledge this experience and that giving a name to it and speaking about it would make it too hard to confront. It was very sad to see how she made herself as non obtrusive as possible, always considering other people first, and ultimately being abandoned and lost inside of herself.

A "Poor Aunt" Story - I really liked how this explored the topics of identity, recognition, and writing in such a surreal way. I particularly liked this line from the protagonists friend, "(...) taking on responsibility for something means offing it salvation. I wonder, though, whether you are capable of that just now. You don't even have a real poor aunt." That really struck me, as it can be difficult to find ways towards genuine understanding of other people's situations and realities. I think it's a good topic to be explored in the realm of writing from an author's point of view. It was clever that the "poor aunt" appeared differently to everyone who looked at it, and it being a reflection of pity. I wonder what happened on the train, if maybe the "poor aunt" somehow transferred to the little girl as it seemed the protagonist pitied her. I wonder why he called his companion to make sure she was alive.

The Great Passage - I think this was my favorite reading this week. I would love to read the rest of the book, but this beginning section was so fun. It is quite a niche interest to write about dictionary making, and I love seeing these characters who feel so strongly about it. I thought the bit about his name, "Majime", was fun, and I loved seeing all the different ways words could be interpreted. Particularly with the first paragraph I'm interested in the original Japanese, as I'm unsure if these same phrases exist or if the original had different sayings.

The Emissary - The idea of language throughout this whole reading was so interesting, and how it related to generations of families and environmental changes in the world as well. The connections between this and her other work we read, Scattered All Over the Earth, are very apparent, and I find the way she explores these topics really wonderful. In this one in particular there is a sense of lost hope and stagnation, particularly with the health problems of the children, while there are also light moments of connection we see between Yoshiro and Mumei. The idea of Japan having an isolation policy and the effects of that are really intriguing, and I can't help but wonder about the state of the rest of the world. I also wonder about why the English language is banned, as well as mentions of other countries and things along those lines. I guess to avoid the feeling of isolation as much as possible and not have people think about the outside world?

The Fall of Language in the Age of English - This is clearly a very different read than anything else we've read, and it took me a few tries to get into it just because of its non-fiction and academic nature. Once I was able to though, I thought a lot of what was said about languages and particularly English was very eye-opening. I think in some ways English is even more widespread in some ways than in 2008, while at the same time the prevalence of the Internet has provided connection to other languages in a way that hadn't before been possible. I think literature has remained highly lauded, in languages other than English too, but I can completely understand Mizumura's thoughts and it is possible it will continue down that path. One thing I kept wanting to ask while reading is what timeline she had in mind? When talking about the "fall of literature" in general and in other countries, how many years in the future was she thinking that would happen? I'm also really curious what her thoughts are on all of this now, in 2024.

 

Nov. 15 Reading Reflection - Shi Shi

I enjoyed this week’s reading and their attention to human language. Overall, they made me reflect a lot on my own connection to language and the kinds of interpretations and interactions that are informed by my own perception and experiences.

War Bride: This story was very intriguing in how cautiously the narrator dealt with words and their implications. I didn’t really like how intentionally passive the narrator was, as I personally feel that words/language are a privilege to be used for expression. While her main argument seemed to be centered around the negative and harmful effect words can carry, I also think that words contain the authority of inspiring and performing good. The fact that her eyes grow and widen further and further made me interpret that negatively, as they could be absorbing bad information and events instead of good. Her passivity is also problematic in the sense that she, as a woman, takes on a submissive role where she actively chooses not to use her own voice and words.

A Poor Aunt Story: I liked this story a lot and how it made me think about how meaning is created differently for everyone. Having a “poor aunt” on your back that is interpreted differently by different people was an interesting way of demonstrating this phenomenon, as it deals with independent histories as well as shared connotations (in this case pity). I also liked how it described meaning as coming from participation from the reader/whoever is engaged with the words.

The Great Passage: I loved this story! This felt very lighthearted, and I enjoyed reading about someone so passionate about a pretty niche topic: dictionary making/editing. I also thought that the metaphor describing a dictionary as a ship crossing a sea of words was imaginative and inspiring, as it kind of suggests how new words could be discovered along the way.

The Emissary: This story was a bit confusing for me to follow, but it reminded me of “Memory Police” and Yoko Tawada’s other story “Scattered All Over The Earth”. I think she constructs these dystopian futures very well, but it takes a while to fully see the world she creates clearly. It was also interesting how she considers how lack of foreign influence affects culture and national identity.

The Fall of Language in the Age of English: This was very philosophical and quite a different read than what we’ve read throughout the semester. It offers an interesting perspective on how human nature can be better understood, and how technology and language dominance affects our own perception of the world.

November 8th - Maya Thiart

This week’s readings had a much more puzzling theme than those of the previous weeks— the stories felt disjointed and not as connected to each other, but I found that a lot of them had a bit of bittersweet hope from a fantastical world not too dissimilar to our own.

I quite liked “The Flying Tobita Sisters”, as it reminded me of some of the messages of the stories from the week that we talked about environmentalism— the protagonist in this story learns to reconnect with nature and herself, and comes to learn just why her mother had a fascination with the time before flight. Just like humans in modern day have developed dependency on technology for their everyday, humans in this story have developed a dependency on wings so that they no longer can walk properly.

“Goodbye, Christopher Robin” was a sad story for me. I feel like there could be two possible interpretations of the story— one relating to loss of innocence/childhood, and the other about losing memories as we age. It made me think of “Scattered All Over the Earth” and “The Memory Police”, in dealings with memory and loss. The short story follows Pooh, a character from a children’s story, as he slowly loses everything and everyone in his life, eventually even the closest friend of his. Because of his status as a children’s story character, he could be emblematic of childlike wonder and innocence, a sense of imagination that dissipates as we mature and step into the “real” world. This lack of imagination would explain why the Alice character couldn’t find anything to do once she chased after the rabbit, and why what was happening in the “other world” had effects of within— the “internal world”.

“A First-Rate Material” was a story that both made me feel ill, but also introspective about the way people use and discard their own bodies. One thought I had was that the story could be symbolic of labor, that in order to produce the goods we take for granted (like furniture, technology and clothes), there are many workers toiling in horrific hours and conditions, often at the expense of their bodies and physical condition. While I do think the story is a commentary moreso on how we treat our bodies after we die, it does contain some interesting messaging for how we treat our bodies while alive.

“Paprika Jiro” was one that I couldn’t truly make sense of— while reading it, it felt like the market traders, like Paprika Jiro, were NPCs in a video game, and the men in suits were the people playing it—  their stalls were destined to be wrecked because it fit the storyline. It reminded me of a joke I’ve seen online that video game NPCs should just give up making pottery because their stuff will always be smashed— Paprika Jiro and his cart is similar.

November 8th - Miguel

There were a lot of stories this week. It was actually a quite a bit on me to read all of them. However I did like most of them, but a few of them had me confused as to what I was even reading. I think my favorite or at least the one I felt was the easiest to read was “First Rate Material”, I feel to me this story had my attention from start to finish. I could see what was gonna happen with the father at the end and I liked that I was able to pick up on that. The concept of humans being used as materials after dying is very disturbing to me, but I guess I could see why most of the characters view it as a “noble” act and why some would want for their own bodies to be used in that way after they pass. However, it just doesn’t feel right to me and I fear that is just how I will feel about it. “The Flying Tobita Sisters” was a slower read for me, but was still one I enjoyed for the most part. I was very confused as to whether or not the characters were humans or not cause of the wings, but then we learn people had developed a way to grow wings I guess and their feet/legs growing weaker as they rely on their wings more. I didn’t see the ending of this story, the fact that it was actually more of her wanting to be like the Tobita sisters and running as well. “A Peddler of Tears” this story was sad, the fact that the narrator was basically ruining herself for this man who wasn’t really even much to her if you think about it as they weren’t together and he didn’t even give much thought to her. What’s the worst part of this is the fact that she was happy doing this for this man. “Goodbye, Christopher Robin”  was one of the stories that had taken me a bit to read and to understand it. I feel like I get the theme of nothingness and all that, but the multiple stories within this one story had me rereading and trying to make sure I didn’t miss something. Don’t get me wrong I did like seeing characters I knew in this story, it was just a bit on my mind. “Meditations on Green” this is another story that had me questioning what I was reading. I think it was mostly because a lot of the stories I read prior to this had magic realism and then bam I’m hit with a more scientific and religious story. It just threw me off a little and there were terms I had to look up and lines I had to reread to make sure I wasn’t skipping lines or to make sure I was even reading it right. I think this might be my least favorite of this weeks readings just because it had me lost in a loop for a bit. 

 Cindy's 1108 blog post:

The Flying Tobita Sisters: I enjoy reading this short story because I always dream to fly, too. But before reading the story, I have never seriously considered that in order to fly, we have to make sacrifices, too, such that our feet will gradually lose its support and strength as a result of an overuse of the wing. Therefore, I like how this short story depicting winged humans in a very practical light. Also, I think that the structure of the story is well-arranged in the sense that we have dual narrative going on and converging in the end as our protagonist began to run. It is kind of ironic to think of that humans want to fly so bad when they can only walk, and people begin to want the feeling of walking on the ground when they are able to fly. Wishes carry us far and bring technological developments yet on the other hand, people are also nostalgic about the past and unwilling to lose certain things. It seems like we are always moving forward but also lingering behind at the same time.

Meditations on Green: This short story on paramecium is a little sophisticated and a bit dark, considering the nature of the nameless narrator's experiment, but the end is sweet. This short story talks about the religious and philosophical features in paramecium, but I towards to take this as a metaphor for humans, too. Paramecium can evolve into human after lots of mutations, according to the text, and in some sense, we are from the same root. And their "original sin" in the lab mimics ours in the real world to certain extent. "Short lived but enlightened" vs. "Long-life yet blunt". It is hard to say that which is better and which is worse. Characters in this short story seems to have a suspicious and critical view towards everything in the world, such that there are nothing we can say for granted.

Paprika Jiro: Our protagonist adopts a vegetable name paprika and he is a green grocer, which design I like a lot. This is a crazy story, those strange people who destroyed the peace of the market constantly I thought to be the absolute villains first but somehow it turns out in the end that they are in a desperate condition and due to lack of faith in them, their appearance decreases evidently. But who are they? I am so intrigued.

Goodbye Christopher Robin: This is a really moving story, such that I am so happy to get a chance reading it! This surrealistic story combines many famous tales into it, Alice in wonderland, Little Red Riding Hood, Winnie the Pooh, Astor Boy, and so on, giving a dreamy feeling as I was reading it. I think that this is a story more to feel than to reason with. But what is Winnie the Pooh fighting against, what is this nothingness, the nothingness of the real world? or the nothingness of writing? Is he fighting back against the end of story-telling? In the end, with a little melancholy and faint hope, I feel a reluctance to let go of precious memories. This is a really beautiful story.

November 8 reading reflection -Jaxon

 I really enjoyed reading all of the stories except for the one about the monkey, which I tried hard to follow but was still not able to get what was happening in the story, what's even worse is that the story has super long paragraphs and super long sentences that almost made me can't breathe. 

Among all the stories, I like "Goodbye Christopher Robin" and "First Rate Material" the most. I like seeing all the famous fairy tales being told from another perspective and  the idea of "nothing" and "everyone is just a character in a story." The world has subtle changes in every moment, and they are valued differently by different people. Subtle changes happen every day, and they will eventually become some big changes that you can't ignore. That's kind of a butterfly effect, and it's interesting to see how people become more serious when they start to trace those big changes and realize that they are accumulated from small or subtle stuff.

"First Rate Material" has really interesting settings of "human products." I feel a little uncomfortable imagining nails and teeth being used as furniture. I actually thought the narrator and her friends were not human, so they were discussing "human products," and it turned out they are humans too, and they feel comfortable accepting that their bodies will be used as materials to build products. I don't really know why human materials are better since the products mentioned in the story are definitely not durable at all in reality.

I also like "Paprika Jiro." I don't have a theory of what "they" represent in the story. I thought of those action movies in which when someone gets chased in a market, they usually try to deal severe public damage to all the stalls, and even now, I feel that's very unfortunate if you are the one who is trading in the stalls. I think "they" might be something hard in life like difficulties people encounter because of their fate, and they come without reason, and no matter how hard you try to find the original, you just can't, and you will give up and learn to accept them.

I also like "Dugong" very much since I saw a lot of familiar names of people and places in Chinese. The whole story's pace was good until the anteater kicked in. I feel except the dugong talked, the story made sense until I became confused when the creature started to talk about Columbus. 

November 8 Reading Reflection - Kaito

The Flying Tobita Sisters - I have really enjoyed all the work we've read by Erika Kobayashi. She has this incredibly effective and condensed storytelling that immerses you in the world and characters so deeply. The final actions of her character, however innocuous, are still filled with so much purpose and emotion and meaning. I've been thinking a lot recently about societal ideology and how it infiltrates every facet of our lives without our knowing. I think particularly with technological advancement and general modern innovation we continue to lose parts of our past selves and the history of those who come before us. I really resonated with this story- it was so intriguing to witness a world in which walking and running is not only obsolete but a spectacle that ostracizes anyone who engages with it. I think that's why I was so moved by the ending. The main character has seen first-hand what this divide in thinking can do: her mother now separated from her family- and yet she still feels inspired and motivated to try it herself. Pushing against the status quo and attempting something new and foreign, even as simple as touching her feet to the ground and trying to walk, is radical.

A First-Rate Material - I loved this story as well. It has a similar setup as "The Flying Tobita Sisters" in that it is a future of a version of our world with one particularly strange detail that is treated as innocuous in the story. This in particular raised a lot of questions for me about morality, as well as the rules of this universe. Was this out of material necessity? Is this like an organ donor question on your driver's license, or does everyone get turned into furniture or jewelry or clothing no matter what? I would be so interested in the history of this, like who was the first to try this and if they became a famous artist. It's clearly high-end, so maybe it spawned in the fashion world in some way? Although my initial thought was that Nana and her boyfriend shouldn't even be together with such incompatible moral views, but I realized that sometimes this is the case with couples in real life. It was interesting to see the fiancé's reaction to the veil made out of his father. The idea of material consumption is itself is very divisive. Although the idea is shocking and dark, I feel like at a certain point some people in the top 1% might find it appealing...

A Peddler of Tears - I love the magical realism Ogawa uses in her work. I think her themes about self and self-worth are quite important, and I can see the parallels between this short story and The Memory Police. Her messages also emphasize bodily autonomy and the worth a woman has with the physical merits she might have to offer and how that determines her place in the world. Although the main character in this story seemingly sells her tears and ultimately destroys herself to produce the most favorable version of her body for someone else's benefit, it begs the question why she does so. I think her reasoning that she loves the joint-playing musician is only a face-value justification also asks the same question and furthermore why she feels she must use her body to perform for him.

Goodbye, Christopher Robin - This one took me some time to understand, although I’m unsure if I do fully understand it. I thought the disjointed but connected stories within the whole work was really interesting, I loved seeing the references within each even if characters or settings seemingly changed. I thought the whole premise was like the "What if this whole world/experience is a simulation?” phenomenon people have asked since more recent technological advancement. I’m interested in what other people thought about the universe disappearing into nothingness and why it matters to some characters but not others. I found this quote particularly interesting: "You & I will be swallowed up by nothingness long before the universe ever will."

Takaoka's Travels - This took me about halfway before I felt invested, it’s very dense and covers a lot of material and context in a short period. And it still has a lot more to expand on and explore. I'm not well versed in a lot of the topics that are talked about, but I loved the magical realism. The end of the chapter was so saddening - the folly of man broke a beautiful magic and returned the world back to a state of normalcy... He was so blinded by the past that he didn't have the strength to allow what was to come play out. He destroyed what magic there may have been, and in turn might have killed her before she could turn into a bird. I would be interested to know what happens and how the magical realism interacts with other historical elements. 

November 8, Melissa LaRochelle

 The flying Tobita sisters: I really liked this story. Once again with Kobayashi, we get a story with historical context and a narrator that keeps the ideas of their ancestors with me through their daily thoughts. It seems the whole time they may be strongly against the idea of the Tobita sister’s running while everyone else is morbidly curious. But it ends up not being disapproval, but envy. Our narrator is envious because she can’t physically do what the sisters are doing. Until she tries. It’s really lovely to see the breaking of norms. Just because your ancestors wanted something for you doesn’t mean you have to want it. Not even that you don’t want it, maybe you just don’t want to take the easy way out all of the time. Sometimes struggle can make you stronger. So we can appreciate things being made easier for us; planes, wings; we can still challenge ourselves to get on our feet and stand on our own.

Meditations on green: I liked this story a lot as well. We deal with the scientific and religious aspects of life and evolution. We see someone experimenting with these single cell organisms, questioning if they have souls or if they are still the same being when they split. I’m personally not religious because it gives me an existential crisis, but it’s more digestible when examining it in another species. The interesting thing though, is that since they’re examining a creature that can’t communicate, they don’t really have a way of knowing about it’s soul or it’s sense of enlightenment. One can’t trace these things through science. A more accurate summary of their work would be “shortening the lifespan of the unkillable” or something.

First Rate Material: Ewwww. I am curious how the fiance came to develop this idea of using human parts as material as “barbaric” when in their society, it is normal. I thought maybe his family would all feel the same but then they didn’t. It was kind of revolting to me, even when it was meant to sound beautiful.

Mogera Wogura: Okay so this is a world primarily of humans but we have these characters who are like magical japanese moles i guess? But it doesn’t seem like they’re the only animal-humanoid creatures because the mole man mentioned a mother having “puppies” and “barking” at his wife. Is there a separate animal world that functions like the human world? Also what’s with the shrinking humans?

A Peddler of Tears: Now this is “barbaric”. She is tearing herself apart for the benefit of a man who isn’t even with her. And he doesn’t even seem to notice, given the fact she is still doing this for him. She gave up her life for a random musician (honestly this seems to be a canon event for a woman in their 20s). It’s so sad. It’s even more sad that she’s so happy to do it.

November 8 Reading Reflections — Shi Shi

I enjoyed a portion of this week’s readings, but found some to be either too abstract or complex for me to fully engage with. For the most part, I think I enjoyed stories that took on ordinary events and applied fantastical elements.

The Flying Tobita Sisters: I enjoyed this story very much and how the world Erika Kobayashi constructed where people have wings is based on our own world and history. The ways in which her protagonists describe the past and bipedal life defamiliarizes what readers are accustomed to and turns the ordinary into a spectacle. It was refreshing to experience everyday occurrences, like school or listening to music, from an alternative and magical perspective.

First Rate Material: I also enjoyed Sayaka Murata’s story and her uncanny ability to portray the relationship between humans and their own bodies. Reading this was both intriguing and unsettling as it made me consider how human bodies differ from other animals in regards to their materiality. We as humans seem to hold an air of superiority over other beings, perhaps since we are the apex predator on Earth, and so we’ve collectively constructed social norms in how we “humanely” deal with death and the bodies of the deceased. While I don’t know if I personally would want my fingernails made into a chandelier, her writing made me reconsider how the life of a being can be remembered, celebrated, and also displaced from its human tier of authority.

I Chase the Monkey: This story was extremely difficult for me to follow along, so I’m looking forward to our discussion! It was pretty unsettling to read as I began to associate the monkey and the narrator with pregnancy and/or sexual assault. There is an apparent theme of bodily autonomy and also an interdependency between the body and mind (?) that will be interesting to analyze further.

Mogera Wogura: This was a pretty interesting read, and the protagonist reminded me a bit of the “Ice Man” and “Straw Husband” stories in how the figures surrounding them were ordinary humans. I think the story offers an interesting perspective on work culture and monotony, using the mole as a metaphor for not seeing the sunlight of the world. It was a little depressing to read, however, since the mole collects people who have lost their spirit to live, trying but not always successful in its attempts to recuperate their livelihoods.

Goodbye, Christopher Robin: This story was also difficult for me to understand and follow, but I was able to read the overall theme of existentialism through each “micro-story”. There were so many different narratives being stitched together that I found it hard to follow the overarching narrative of storytelling and existence. 

11/1 Blog Post - Miguel

    There were a lot of stories this week. Starting off with the first three by Kobayashi, similar to last week the first story sunrise talked about nuclear bomb but what I really liked was the comparison that the story made between the bomb and the sun. The second story to me was a lot more feeling, the fact Ko was forgetting her own past/youth, but there was still her family to tell her story for her. The last of the three really tied in the three stories, the three generations of this family and how their experiences/traumas build off onto their children. “Abandoning a Cat” we have another story in theme about family, this one was the telling of a father. This story honestly was a hard read due to its heavier content. “Uneno Station” had us look through the perspective of a homeless man and I feel this perspective isn’t really shown in other stories, at least not from the ones I can recall. The part where he only sees his fellow homeless people while other people to him are just puddles of water is very interesting to read, I think it’s more so because those other people aren’t really having an impact in his life(?) where as he interacts with the other homeless people thus even if there are people passing by he wouldn’t really take note of them as much. “Love Isn’t Easy…” I don’t know about this story, it just didn’t really leave an impact to me. Like I guess the part about loving those who won’t sing back to you was something that stuck with me but the whole anthem symbolism just didn’t do it for me. This week’s readings were filled with war and its effects on multiple generations. It showed more on how war isn’t just the fighting happening but its long term effects on people and how the memory and trauma of it passing on. 

 1101 Blog Post by Cindy

Abandoning a cat: I like this short autobiography and memoir reflecting on Murakami's father's life and his own. And I enjoyed reading his philosophy. The end ("To put it another way, imagine raindrops falling on a broad stretch of land. Each one of us is a nameless raindrop among countless drops. A discrete, individual drop, for sure, but one that’s entirely replaceable. Still, that solitary raindrop has its own emotions, its own history, its own duty to carry on that history. Even if it loses its individual integrity and is absorbed into a collective something. Or maybe precisely because it’s absorbed into a larger, collective entity.") makes me think of Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler's idea of "Gemeinschaftsgefühl" ("community feeling"), such that "Individuals develop character and emotions from childhood when they find their places in society. This search fosters a sense of belonging, empathy, and acceptance, leading to cooperation for the greater good. Subsequently, these individuals cultivate a feeling of social belongingness as a collective". To put it short, I feel a harmony between individuality and the sense of belonging for a greater project of human life, the process of history and the promotion of human goodness. By reading this end, I feel the idea that we are all connected with many things, such as kittens, natures, people, and the universe. Each of us bears our own history, the burden of the age and familial trauma, and then we come together, form a larger piece of history and push the world a step forward. And there is certain sacredness dwell in this thought. All things that happened to us are so coincidental and depending on chances, but we take these as the mere reality and live on and these mere realities constitute every parts of us. At which, I think that we can only feel awe on the wondrous of our world and minds. I take the image of that white kitten clinging to the pine tree as a hint of this collectiveness of everything around us. And I interpret the message that it's easy to climb up but difficult to climb down upon two layers. First of which, I think that Murakami is hinted at the graveness of historical procedure, including the brutality of war, which wipes out individuals from their life and generalizes into a larger chapter on the Book of Human History. The second of which, I am guessing that Murakami might also want to say that because he and his father cannot condescend to each other, abandoning pride, expectation, and mutual offenses behind, they get to a reconciliation point so late in their lives.

Erika Kobayashi

sunrise: I like the structure of this short story, which begins with looking into the sun and ends with an expectation of looking into the same sun. I also like the association between nuclear bomb and the sun, which all undergoes nuclear fusion, but one causes tremendous harm yet the other brings the world morning and light. There is an additional ironic touch of how nuclear functioned electricity both brings convenience to Japanese people's life but also causes radioactive threat after the Fukushima nuclear cores' meltdown. The accounts of the writer's mother's life makes me think of a movie called Rhapsody in August.

Coco's Century: The translation of Niigata dialect is fun and makes me think of the other ones we encountered in our last week readings. The story of her grandmother is bitter-sweet. On one hand, I like how Ko gets out of the snow village and lives her life, especially enjoys it by traveling at an old age. But it gives me a sorrowful vibe when Ko begins to forget things and the history of her own. The notion of life, death, memory, and familial history blended with each other in this story, and there is heaviness, and there is happiness.

His Last Bow: This is a tale of three generations. Nuclear bomb is also mentioned in this tale, too, pointing at the passage of time and rapid changes. I like the mentioning of the Yokshi Buddha, which gives me a sense of slight melancholy.

Love isn't easy when you are the national anthem: This article is so much fun to read but it is sad, telling the truth that sometimes love is one-arrowed and you just cannot get someone you love to love you back. But the fun part is that it is all told under the symbolism of a national anthem. But maybe national anthem means something more......