Japanese Reading Report: 18 May 2025
母性
I don't know how, but I managed to finish this book
just in time. It was okay in the end, though I was a little
bit unimpressed by the overall story.
Following from last week, the scam storyline sort of goes
nowhere in particular. The fake medicine sold to the mother
to fix her relationship with the daughter is "secretly" given
to the daughter under the guise of an acne remedy, but it
actually aggravates the daughter's acne until eventually it just
stops being used. By this point there's just kind of a sense
that the family is in shambles, but kind of stable.
In the second-last chapter, the mother is up late at night and
the daughter comes home looking distressed. The daughter confronts
the mother, asking if it's true that the grandmother sacrificed
her own life to save hers back in the house fire. The mother has
a wave of memories in that moment, remembering once again the
words of her own dying mother about passing love from one
generation to the next. She breaks down and apologises and
repeats "I love you". The next morning the daughter attempts
suicide, but is saved just in time, and at that moment the
mother finally cries out her daughter's name: Sayaka.
Names in Japanese media are an interesting thing. I suppose I don't
read as much English literature as I should, but in my experience
it's far more common to withhold a character's name or gender in
Japanese media. Sometimes those reveals can be interesting, but in
this case my only take away from it was that, up to this point, it
represented the dehumanisation the mother inflicted on Sayaka. It
sort of highlighted how the mother only saw her daughter in terms
of function or relation, not as another human being. Perhaps it was
also a sign that the mother finally escaped her own delusions, which
you'll see going into the daughter's side of this same event...
So Sayaka's perspective of this chapter is much longer and
goes into her developing relationship with her father. At a
certain point her father directs her to his copy of Das Kapital to
help her understand his outlook on work. She doesn't really
understand the intricacies of the book, and while writing about
it, she wonders if she would have tried harder to "Get it" if
it was a recommendation from her mother and not her father. She
imagines that, even if she didn't understand everything, she
feels like she could have a proper conversation with her mother,
but she wouldn't expect the same from her father. In a quest
to understand him better, Sayaka goes back to the bookshelf to
read more books and she finds her father's old diary. It
recounts how his own father was abusive, how his life was devoid
of colour, but then it ends shortly after meeting the mother,
exclaiming that he can see vivid roses in her eyes.
One day while hanging out with her boyfriend, Sayaka sees her dad
just out and about. She sends her boyfriend home and goes to say
hi to her dad, but he's looking suspicious so she decides to
follow him instead. He heads to the grandmother's home (first of
all if you're wondering "Why didn't the family live here after
their house burnt down?" I'm still wondering the same thing. Maybe
it was explained, but I didn't notice a good reason for it). As
it turns out, the father is having an extramarital affair with
a previously-established woman called Hitomi. Sayaka confronts the
pair but the father does his typical thing and just shuts down,
sits in a lounge chair and smokes while Hitomi argues on his
behalf. In this moment we discover that the father did return on
the day of the typhoon and fire. He had a chance to save everyone,
but when he entered the house he saw the flowers he painted for
the mother when they first fell in love, and he first carried
that to safety before returning to the house. By the time he
was back it was too late. He lived with regret that his selfishness
caused the death of the grandmother and the grief of his wife.
So, much like the mother, the father let his own type of grief
control his life. He retreated from his duties as a father and
didn't support the family because he couldn't bear to accept
reality and move forwards.
Sayaka returns home, heartbroken, and we get a repeat of the
homecoming scene, except this time the description of the mother's
reaction is totally different. According to Sayaka her mother
attempts to strangle her, not hug her, and there was no exclamation
of love mentioned. Perhaps it was another reading comprehension fail,
or maybe the author didn't want to repeat things we already know,
but it seems to me like the mother is just repeatedly outed as being
a horrible person right to the end. Sayaka decides her death should be
on the sakura tree in the yard that the mother associates with the
grandmother, but as her consciousness fades she hears her own voice.
Finally, the last chapter is exclusively the domain of the "investigator"
character, revealed to be Sayaka years after the events of the story. She
has settled down with her highschool sweetheart and she has a baby of
her own on the way. When her mother finds out she's pregnant she remarks
that it would make the grandmother very happy, once again delegating her
feelings to her own mother.
Sayaka thinks about motherhood one last time, wondering if the true mark
of motherhood is striving to give your children what you wish you had.
So that was 母性. It had some cool themes of the
responsibilities of mothers and fathers, but I started to feel a bit
worn out by the back and forth structure between mother and daughter.
Perhaps it was a skill issue, but the difference of information between
the two really made me doubt my own reading of events. I also think the
mother is plenty bad enough without physically abusing her daughter,
so it's hard for me to empathise with Sayaka's kindness towards her
abusive mother right to the last moment. I will say, I felt a little bit
validated when the magnifying glass was directed towards the father.
Right from the start I called out that parenting ideally takes at least
two, and I felt that the father was getting off having any responsibilities
simply for his gender. Well, it turns out the author agrees. Neat.
彼氏彼女の事情
I feel like I barely had any time to watch anime this week. I only
watched 6 episodes — two days worth of viewing in seven days...
First I'll start with a lightning round of praise: I like that the
lead pair have established themselves as a couple early on, it's not
a "will they or won't they?" show. I love the music. While there are
some unique tracks, I love the use of some of music from Evangelion,
including some music which would later be used in the rebuild movies.
It adds this atmosphere of familiarity that makes this brand-new show
(to me) feel nostalgic. I also like many of the characters, like the
handsome but aloof Asaba, and the short and gremlin-like Tsubasa.
So I guess I don't have too much else to say apart from the
lightning round, but I guess I want to reflect on the last few
episodes I watched. Miyazawa gets snubbed by her female classmates
because of her relationship with Arima, and she has to navigate
becoming friends with them through honesty and compassion (and a
bit of combat). It made me think about anime where the plot is all
about a character, usually a shy girl, trying to make friends with
a varied cast of classmates. In those shows I think a big weakness
for me is that the main character's only "weakness" is that she's
shy and not good at human interactions. On the other hand, Miyazawa
is great at human interactions. Her whole deal is that she can
juggle multiple layers of her personality to please as many people
as possible. It reminds me of the issue of likeability in storytelling,
covered well in this section of a Ted talk by Andrew Stanton, writer for
Pixar. I think Miyazawa is a well-written, likeable character, but
she's written intentionally to be flawed and selfish and that actually
makes her more likeable. The shy porcelain girls, in
comparison, feel like they're missing the edge that makes them
feel truly relatable for me.
Anyway, I have a very busy week coming up but hopefully I can find a
way to do a little more than I managed this week. Looking forward
to starting a new book as well.