Exactly. Her logic is perfectly sound, it’s just that it’s child logic. Instead of sitting her down and teaching her “this is how you logic adultly”, they instead taught her to not logic at all.
The scene with the boys fighting is the same. The other kids go “get a teacher!” and “stop them!” but don’t do anything, so MC’s obvious reasoning is “(a) getting a teacher takes time (b) I’m too small to physically stop them, therefore (c) I must incapacitate at least one combatant, therefore (d) I require a weapon.”
One thing that I’m realizing now is that the way I wrote question 4 is a bit limited. Perhaps a better question might have been “Do you think Keiko’s childhood experiences were an indication of her personality, or a cause?” Keiko seems to take these incidents in her childhood as an indication that she is different, but the way the adults act shocked without ever really communicating to her why her behavior is unacceptable seems damaging. As you point out, her logic is sound, at least from a child’s limited perspective. When other people don’t make a genuine effort to communicate, it almost seems easier not to try to understand but instead to just write off society and act in a way that seems to make others comfortable.
I can’t speak to autism, which I would agree that Keiko is showing signs of in her childhood, but I can most definitely relate to implicit and explicit social expectations from your peers and elders. Seeing how they failed to reason with her was incredibly frustrating, especially with the mixed signals she constantly received.
Oscillating between “Don’t do this” (the bird, the fight, and pantsing her teacher) and “Why aren’t you doing this” (her high school report card) as the two extremes being given by adults is such a hugely destabilizing environment for a child to grow up in. My own upbringing skewed towards the conservative Filipino Catholic side, which left little-to-no room for arguments or explanations, just unquestioned obedience.
To address the question, I think the answer is both. As others have already said, the lack of feedback left Keiko without any way to make sense of her thoughts, which in turn pushed her to adopt survival mechanisms that effectively forced her to mold her identity around what she assumed would satisfy other people. She has a different way of viewing the world that was never given space to breathe, and as she got older she only ever viewed herself as anomalous, not unique. It’s a vicious cycle of self-suppression.
I appreciated the section with her sister, because it illustrates how Keiko still cares for her family, she just doesn’t really know how to express it.
I read this week’s part yesterday, and really enjoyed it. If you’re around level 26 (that’s around my level) and on the fence, do it! Reading is a little slow and I have to look up every ~7th kanji or so, so there’s no “immersing / losing myself in the plot”. But it’s very motivating. With a lot of kanji it feels like, “wow, I just learned this one”. A lot of words/kanji that seem pretty specific while learning actually do show up, for example 両替, 最善, or 崎 (yay I can read 川崎くん). It gives a feeling that every new kanji matters
The grammer is very gentle so far, no 固い N1 stuff.
My favorite word was アメリカンドッグ. You say “Oh yes, and one American dog, please” and they hand you a sausage on a stick
This interview is indeed very good, but it spoilers the whole plot of Earthlings, unfortunately
So I don’t recommend it to anyone who is considering reading it.
I think that the line between normalcy and disorder is blurry, and I agree with @mintyfresh that it’s a bit of both, but in my opinion the main difference between so-called normal children and Keiko is ability to pick up social cues automatically.
Even if all kids have some kind of kids logic, they are able to purge it during regular socialization even without detailed explanations.
Off topic, but I want to get another opinion about Filipino Catholic Church
So I heard from one person recently that in Philippines, Catholic Church is very much associated with charity work.
I was honestly surprised, because in Poland, where I live, Catholic Church is an institution you give money to, not the other way around. Like a bottomless well constantly demanding money.
I realize there are problems with said charity institutions in Philippines, and I realize they also ask for donations.
And of course, there are some charity organizations in Poland, it’s just… the first association with Catholic Church is more about giving money to them. It’s sort of hot topic for jokes, memes, discussions, rants and fights.
But, as I mentioned, I only heard about it from one Filipino person, so I want to compare more viewpoints, if you wouldn’t mind.
I was most displeased when I read that. What sort of idiot spoils the whole plot of a book that has just been released in the very article that is supposed to make you want to go out and buy it from the publication’s own bookshop?
Oh shoot, I’m sorry about that! In my initial reading of the interview I somehow managed to miss the last paragraph where the plot gets talked about. Apologies to anybody that I spoiled Earthlings for :<
Regarding your point about Keiko’s logic, if we’re digging deeper into it yes we could say that her “kid logic” is definitely atypical. However, normalization through social interactions can only go so far. In Keiko’s case, this normalization is what’s causing even more damage, especially with the lack of explanation or reasons for why she’s “wrong”. So while she might have always had those tendencies, it becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario as she grows older.
She has a different way of thinking that distresses her family and peers, who don’t try to understand her, which leaves her guessing what the right way to behave is, which then leads into a severely warped understanding of the way the world works, in turn giving her a different way of thinking that distresses her family and peers, and so on.
Unfortunately, I can’t speak to this much, as I’m a first-generation Filipino-American. My relationship with Catholicism is less about the institution itself and more about my family members who ascribed heavily to the dogmatic structure instilled by the church (absolute obedience to authority and rules, unquestioning faith with suppression of outside logic, total acceptance of family elders).
Religion was used as a tool of control in my childhood, which I think also speaks to the relationship and history that Catholicism has with the Philippines vs. the one it has with Europe. Filipino family dynamics are incredibly rigid, particularly between native-born Filipinos (like my parents) and the children of immigrants (myself).
Eh, it varies. Some countries are much more secular than others. And even within a country, there are more secular parts and more religious parts. Even if a Polish ruler willingly took Catholicism 1000 years ago, it does not mean it wasn’t used as a tool of control, both on country level and family level.
Poland current status is “we should match the country’s law with Catholic law. Oh, and we should ask a priest to bless this new McDonald.”
And my own family is awfully orthodox, and so were the towns I grew up in and schools I went to.
I guess comparing how Catholic Church is functioning in different countries in an analytical way is my way of coping with my past. Because it makes Church less a scary supernatural sovereign and more just an institution. And countries such as the Philippines are much more interesting in that regard because the Church role is more prevalent.
But I don’t want to stretch this off-topic too far Thanks for an answer!
And I wish you all the best and I hope you manage somehow, despite your experiences ꙳virtual hug꙳
lol, I totally want to dig more into Catholicism and the role it plays in society and family dynamics but we should def stay on topic. I really appreciate your insight!
To bring this back to the book, I’m absolutely a fan of the prose here. It helps that Keiko is a very frank narrator, which makes it incredibly readable while also playing heavily into her character and the book’s themes. This week of reading was honestly easier than anything I did for Kiki. Also probably helps that I paced myself much better than I did with Kiki…
Woohoo! I made it to the end of this week’s reading. Glad I persevered - after the first couple of pages, things became much more managable. I think Keiko as a character is really interesting and I love how the author makes her slightly off logic feel at the same time a tad horrifying but also really understandable.
On to questions!
私は、父と母とまだ小さい妹が、喜んで小鳥を食べているところしか想像できなかった。I understand this sentence as something along the lines of “as for me, I couldn’t help but imagine my father, mother and still-small younger sister as eating the bird with great pleasure”. The things I am unsure of is what role ところ plays. Does it mean something like “scene”?
公園にいっぱいいるからたくさんとってかえればいいのに、何で食べないで埋めてしまうのか。Again, get the gist here (something along the lines of “seeing as there are so many birds in the parks, why would you not eat it and instead bury it?”), but I am struggling a bit with the part in bold. I found that ばいい means “can” or should, but I can’t work it together with the のに and とって
皆の真似をするか、誰かの指示に従うか、どちらかにして、自ら働くのは一切やめた。For the last part, is she saying “I completely stopped functioning on my own”?
私が母に質問したせいでお説教が終わると、庇われたと思うが、妹はいつも私ありがとうと言った。I’m having trouble understanding her why her sister is thanking her here - any insights as to what is happening in this scene?
たくさんとってかえれば ➝ ‘to take many and go home’, or ‘to take many home’
かえればいい ➝ 〜ばいい = ‘can’ or ‘should’
のに ➝ despite, indicates something is happening contrary to what is expected.
So while they can take a bunch home and eat yakitori, for some weird reason they are burying the bird.
That’s how I took it. She has found that when she makes her own decisions, people always end up being disappointed in her. So she decides no longer to make her own decisions and just do whatever keeps people happy.
Whenever her mother was scolding her little sister, she would ask her mother why she was angry. That would stop her mother from scolding her sister. Her sister thought that she was sticking up for her, but I don’t think it was her intention to stop her mother from her scolding, it’s just that she genuinely didn’t understand it and wanted to know what was going on.
So I’m just catching up with the first chapter and it’s going pretty smoothly but I can’t seem to figure something out
sorry for quoting you, my question just happened to relate this this exact sentence and I didn’t want to have to type it all out
What’s the purpose of this か? The only things I could think it would be is either an “or” or as an embedded question, both of which don’t seem to make the sentence make sense to me. Maybe I’m just forgetting a use or something.
Well I’m a bit behind but finally finished the first week. I found the initial description relatively easy and well written but didn’t pull me into reading more, definitely picked up in the later bit.
Hello everyone, I am rereading now the beginning of the book and suddenly focused on one passage that I like especially - and realized that perhaps I got it wrong all the time.
Have a look: 指紋がないように磨かれたガラスの外では、忙しく歩く人たちの姿が見える。一日の始まり。世界が目を覚まし、世界の中の歯車が回転し始める時間。その歯車の一つになって廻り続けている自分。(This 自分 is what puzzled me) 私は世界の部品になって、この「朝」という時間の中で回転し続けている。
At first I thought that 自分 refers to Keiko, but then the next sentence where she describes herself as one of the moving parts of this world - then this sentence practically repeats the same message. In this case, does the 自分 refer to “they, all those people behind the glass”? The ones that were mentioned in the previous sentence? Or she really says the same thing twice in a bit different manner?
How do you think?
I think it’s a case of 自分 kind of working like “one.” Like, “The time when the world wakes up and the cogs inside begin to turn. One becomes a part of those cogs that keep turning.” I interpret the sentence after that as her lumping herself in with 自分, almost like, “I’m a part of that, too,” perhaps as an emphasis.
Thank you a lot for picking up!
Past couple of days I have looked for some comparison articles between 私 and 自分 and got an understanding that 自分 is usualy pointing to someone already mentioned. Like そのとき refers to some specific point of time known from the context.
In this case an abstract “one” as “a person in general” becomes an unlikely variant I guess
I am itchy to cheat and check what the official translation says in this passage Even though there is no guarantee it is 100% correct
Reading is a little slow and I have to look up every ~7th kanji or so, so there’s no “immersing / losing myself in the plot”. But it’s very motivating. With a lot of kanji it feels like, “wow, I just learned this one”. A lot of words/kanji that seem pretty specific while learning actually do show up, for example 両替, 最善, or 崎 (yay I can read 川崎くん). It gives a feeling that every new kanji matters 
Thanks for an answer!
