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......