Japanese Reading Report: 10 November 2024

Verina raduga Nab. (1971) illustrated by Vladimir Nabokov.

This week included the tail end of my vacation to the countryside (it sounds so romantic when I put it that way). Just like last week, this week I was a bit disappointed by how little time I could actually find for input between other familial obligations. That said, there are more important things than reading, and I was able to spend some precious time with people I don't often see, so I'm not complaining.

Hey. Talk to your family.

ロリータ

Just like last week, this week was largely spent away from adequate note-taking resources and, as such, this report is a little bit more sparse than I'd otherwise like.

Resuming chapter 6, a chapter dedicated to explaining Humbert's perception of Gaston, a professor of Beardsley College (Beardsley surprised me. The phonetic translation, ビアズレー, made me think it was French) who plays chess with Humbert occasionally (Humbert can't stand him).

The college arc had two fun moments.
In chapter 11 Mrs Pratt, the headmistress, brings up a number of concerns from various professors of the school about Dolores' progress with the school. Her academics during elementary school were also notably lacking, so I was reminded of the moment towards the end of part one where Humbert provides Lolita's vitals. According to him, she has an IQ of 121 (Ch 25, p. 192). I came up with two possibilities to explain this (both or neither could be true and, as always, the 2nd language translation + non-comprehensive reading certainly doesn't help with my interpretation or grasping of details):

  • Lolita is really not all that smart (Humbert's methods to estimate her vitals were questionable at best). It's another way for Humbert to justify his behaviour. This would make her "smarter than the average girl" after all.
  • This is Nabokov's commentary about some way the educational system fails precocious, curious, or "gifted" children. Much of Dolores' academic issues seem to stem from the ways it doesn't serve her needs or give her a healthy place to explore herself, free of objectification.
Anyway, chapter 11 fits into the mould of "Humbert makes a list" except that he relays a list provided by Pratt. I enjoyed it. And it kind of leads into another thing I enjoyed in the Beardsley arc...

In Chapter 14, Humbert comments negatively about how Lo looks and acts. It was the first time (or at least the first time in a while) that I felt like I could see cracks in his constructed version of her and was confronted with the fact that she is a real person. Lo runs out of the house and flees into the town in this chapter, culminating with her begging Humbert to let her leave school. After he agrees they go home and she asks him to carry her up the staircase, because she's in a "romantic mood".

The pair stop at a motel and Humbert lists things wrong with the room: Humbert can hear another guest placing his coat on a hanger in another room (thin walls), the ash tray still has ash from a previous guest (gross), there is a woman's hair on the pillow (also gross), and then... (unsure if this is negative or neutral but,) there is artwork of identical twin girls hanging above the bed. It reminded me of the duality of Dolores and Lolita. Both share a body, but different places in Humbert's mind.
By total chance I went to an open gallery for a clay sculptor this week. The artist, Rowena Hannan, uses young girls as devices a lot in her artwork. Of a sculpture (you can see here) of two girls in a boat, she said it was inspired by Helen and Clytemnestra. Apparently, despite being of the same "stock", Helen and Clytemnestra are treated very differently by their society.
I don't know Greek mythology, and their entries on Wikipedia indicate that they aren't identical twins (though that may differ depending on the story). Either way, it sparked a thought about the way that children (often girls) can be put into categories before they're at an age to understand what it even means.

A more clear connection to the identical twins presented itself a little while later in the book. A "detective" who looks like Mr Trapp (トラップ), one of Humbert's relatives from Europe, follows the pair in a red convertible. That this man "looks like" another man fits into the twin angle (though I didn't make this connection at the time), but later, after feeling like he had finally lost Trapp, a red convertible appears to make Humbert doubt himself. The second convertible, referred to as an identical twin, is driven by a group of young men and women. So there's a sense when the second vehicle appears that Humbert is on edge at every turn. Perhaps it represents his anxiety about being caught.

Chapter 20 was quite pleasant. Humbert describes Lolita while she's dressed to play tennis. He writes:
年齢に加わっても、杏色の手足をして、ローティーン用のテニスウェアを着た彼女は、 以前にも増してニンフェットらしくなった。
He goes on, describing her body and outfit in more detail and wishing he had filmed her to savour the moment for later. I genuinely enjoy reading chapters like this. Maybe it's just because the difficult moments are too difficult for me to enjoy, or maybe because I'm absorbed in Humbert's world, but I just like to read Humbert's passionate poetry towards Lolita.
Another aspect that I related to was this wish to preserve moments. At the time of writing Lolita, technology like cameras would have been far less convenient or available, which kind shows that his desire to do so outweighed his concern about money or safety (recording pictures of your victim is certainly not rational behaviour). I'm not someone who often takes photographs but I still probably average a few pictures a week simply due to the lack of barriers — smart phones are extremely convenient. I often regret not preserving moments, but I'm also aware that the act of disconnecting myself from a moment in order to capture it inherently changes my relationship to that moment. There's not a simple way to simultaneously be "in the moment" and "frame a perfect shot".

In chapter 22, Lolita suddenly gets sick! Humbert rushes her to a hospital and is forced to spend his first night in two years without her. He spends two nights (that I could pinpoint) separated from Lolita and both times he's free to indulge in the fantasy of her without the inhibition of Dolores' presence. These moments sort of hammered home how much Humbert is in love with the idea of Lolita. He's definitely still interested in Dolores physically, and it's clear that he gets a lot of satisfaction from her presence, but beneath the anxiety of being separated from her it felt like there was some sense of relief in those nights.

Finally, at the end of the same chapter, Humbert returns to the hospital only to find that Lolita has checked out without him. A man directs a police officer towards him but, he once again seems to get out of facing any consequences. There were some details in this chapter that I look forward to clearing up in the English review.

フルーツバスケット 2nd Season

Oh no... just like every time, I got to the end of this season and just sort of felt very little. There were some great twists and turns I didn't expect at all, and some character moments were quite well done, but I really felt like I was going through the motions trying to finish this before Sunday. In fairness there were a few noteworthy episodes and characters to discuss.

I reassessed my feelings about 綾女 in episode 15 when he "saved" 由希 from their mother at school. I could finally see how his strong personality can be used for good and not simply as a tool for annoying others (though that was basically how it helped).

Episode 16 had a nice moment between 紅葉 and モモ, despite them not physically meeting for the episode. 透 acts as a vessel to understanding how each of them wants to connect with the other. モモ doesn't understand the tragedy of the situation and 紅葉 is unable to do anything to resolve it, so there is quite a powerful sense of yearning for familial love, a novel situation to be in.

依鈴's whole deal is... kind of fine but annoying. I really like that she struggled with abandonment and sees her own life as a resource to prevent the suffering of others, but she just feels a bit too tragic for no reason at times. I was really hoping she would actually die when pushed off the balcony , though in hindsight I can see how the story is better served by giving her and 透 some time to develop together.

One last element I did not expect, and which I'm not sure how to process yet (I'm currently just feeling like "how does this affect anything?") is (major spoilers, sort of) the revelation that 慊人 is a woman . I can see how it enables certain pairings to exist (in a kind of homophobic way) but... and maybe this is just because I'm based and open-minded but... I don't think this fact changes very much about that character at all, nor does it recontextualise anything up to this point. It's basically a lateral move that deserves heavy spoiler tags because it comes so late in the story and is unexpected.

I have a promise to watch Season 3 in the United States, so I'll be putting the series on hold for at least a few weeks. Perhaps the time will give space for this series' flame to grow hotter in the meantime.

ダンダダン

I worry that my lack of commentary about this show is taken as a lack of enthusiasm and I want to clarify that is not the case at all. Of all the anime I watched this week this was easily the most engaging, stylish, fun, and noteworthy. The only problem is that the weekly schedule gives me very little to discuss in the moment.

If you aren't watching ダンダダン you should be. I don't really watch much traditional 少年 genre media, but I believe that 龍幸伸 and 藤本タツキ (of Chainsaw Man, Look Back, and FIREPUNCH fame) are masters of the craft, weaving some of the strongest emotional writing into some absolutely gorgeous settings.

As a basic example of the strength of the writing. Even though I read the original volume in 2022, simply the preview of episode 7's material made me cry like having an old wound reopened. I hadn't thought about that particular story in two years, but its notes rested inside me waiting for this moment. I think that's pretty powerful.

かくしごと

Most episodes followed the same (not bad but not amazing) formula:

  1. 姫 engages in some new activity, expresses a new desire, or asks for something.
  2. It becomes a problem for 可久士 because complying could compromise his secret.
  3. 可久士 teams up with his assistants to satisfy 姫's needs with some tomfoolery.
  4. There is a punchline where 可久士 had somehow overblown 姫's request and could have resolved the situation more easily.

Despite everything, the visuals were great.

The final episode breaks the mould by being entirely set in the "flash forward", a point of time where 姫 has "grown up" (she's still young, but no longer 10 years old), which featured at the end of the other episodes to contextualise the main content of the episodes as memories. In this episode we finally find out the fate of 可久士 — he was working in a warehouse after his manga career ended, but lost his memory after piles of manga fell on him. The episode had some nice emotional moments. I liked that 可久士 calls out to 姫 as a "new assistant" and asks her to check on his daughter "back home" because he's worried about her.
It must be so difficult to be put in that situation by someone who doesn't know any better.

Overall I liked the show just okay. The gag format was fine but I was definitely craving the pathos of the final episode by the end. The wordplay (as mentioned last week) was definitely a strong point, and 姫 was super cute at all times. The dog was kind of annoying though (I think its voice was just too human... even if that was probably 90% of the point of its humour).