Going Home
Today is the day we return from Miss Kodo-oba’s grandparents’ house to our usual home. The Honored Mother sweeps with a broom and wipes down the plumbing fixtures, while the Honored Father gathers up the rubbish and closes the storm shutters. I watched from within the carrying-case into which Miss Kodo-oba had crammed me as the last of the shutters was drawn shut.
Their tasks all concluded, the three of them stood gazing at the house, which was now once again to belong to its ghosts. So much time had gone into tidying the interior that evening had already fully set in. A mere three days it had been, and yet I had grown quite accustomed to the cries of the insects. The surroundings were growing dim now—a matter of no trouble at all for us of the feline race, but likely making it difficult for human eyes to distinguish one thing from another.
“Ahh, back to reality, huh. I can’t believe I have work again tomorrow,” Miss Kodo-oba grumbled from the driver’s seat. “Must be nice for you, Dad—retiring soon. Every day a Sunday. I’m jealous.”
“Every day a Sunday.” The Honored Father made a sound as if to say hmph. “That’s true. But then I’d just turn into a couch potato. No, I ought to be doing something worthwhile.”
“Oh, it’s fine to take it easy for a while,” said the Honored Mother, smiling wryly in the passenger seat. “You’ve worked all this time, after all.”
“Well—that may be so, but still.”
The Honored Father’s eyes were fixed, with unusual intensity, upon the roof of the now thoroughly darkened house. The car pulled away quietly.
We of the feline race are no psychologists, yet we are adept at reading the moods of humans—and I am no exception. Hearing the tone of his voice, I was struck, of a sudden, by the realization that the Honored Father’s retirement was fast approaching, and I found myself growing concerned for his state of mind. While he continued to speak earnestly of how the future ought to be, the truth was that he harbored deep anxiety over the looming loss of his social identity.
Given this, the reason he had murmured “how nostalgic” at the cry of the higurashi, in this unfamiliar rural house, suddenly made sense to me. This, indeed, was the answer to the riddle of “summer nostalgia” I had set myself.
Mono no Aware
Here lies the core of my reasoning. First, there is a concept central to the way the people of these islands perceive the changing seasons: mono no aware.
I have already mentioned the following waka:
Aki kinu to me ni wa sayaka ni mienedomo kaze no oto ni zo odorokarenuru
秋来ぬと 目にはさやかに 見えねども 風の音にぞ 驚かれぬる
This verse is built upon a dual structure —a surface layer and a deeper one beneath. The surface is summer; the depth, autumn. In the phrase "though autumn has come," the poet’s mind is already tuned to autumn. Yet, wherever one looks, the surrounding scenery remains unmistakably summer—only for the mind to be pulled right back to autumn at the sound of the wind. It is a structure of back-and-forth movement between the two.
It is the depth of the shadow that makes the light shine all the brighter. By becoming conscious of autumn, the dazzle of the summer sun and the whiteness of the towering cumulonimbus clouds are impressed upon the mind all the more vividly. Thinking of the unavoidable autumn soon to come, one feels a faint touch of sorrow. This is a classic example of the concept the Japanese call mono no aware.
Mono no aware is an aesthetic sensibility that perceives the fleeting impermanence hidden within every kind of change—the turning of summer into autumn, a child growing into an adult, life moving inexorably toward death, or, more modestly—though far more critically to a feline like myself—the kibble I devoured with relish yesterday, today left entirely untouched—and finds within that transience a tangled sentiment of joy, anger, sorrow, and delight all at once.
Echoes of Stand by Me
Interestingly, there exists a film built upon the exact same dual structure as the waka above: that classic of the coming-of-age genre, Stand by Me. In this case, the surface layer is the summer vacation, while the depth is Labor Day—the definitive end of summer. Every one of the boys understands that Labor Day is looming, and that their vacation will soon draw to a close. There is no escaping it, no matter what they do. Precisely because of this, the adventure of their lone summer shines all the brighter, and they sense within it a weight far greater than the ordinary.
Losing an Identity
Now, let us turn our gaze once more upon the Honored Father. He remains, for the moment, a working man, holding fast to his role within the company. For now, at least. Yet, he is acutely aware that retirement is no longer a distant prospect. Here, too, a dual structure has taken shape: his present self, whose identity is bound up with his role at the company (the surface), and his post-retirement self who must one day forfeit that identity (the depth). And it was at this precise intersection that the Honored Father found himself utterly exposed to a symbolic system cultivated over more than a thousand years.
An Exquisite Evasion
Headlights cut through the gloom of a rural road, virtually untouched by streetlamps, as the car surged forward under Miss Kodo-oba’s steering. Anemoia, it seems, shares a common thread with the Honored Father’s present condition: it is a sanctuary sought in an unlived past. A soul reduced to anonymity, a self teetering beneath the weight of reality, yearns nostalgically for a faraway culture it has never known—such as these very islands. Yet, this is merely an exquisite evasion, a beautiful distraction from the immediacy of the now.
Fortunately, or otherwise, we felines are spared such intricate delusions. At this very moment, my sole desire is to be delivered, at once, from the confines of this stifling carrying-case and its relentless, trembling agitation.
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