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I’m intrigued and hope each story gives us some more details about these people (although since it’s short stories I’m not sure if we’ll get the same family or not). The unusual usage of words definitely caught me off guard once or twice, but I think I got my bearings with the metaphorical meanings in the end. I admit I’m still a little vague on what everyone’s powers are in the family and what mom and dad are doing so as to need some 虫干し time but the mystery is the fun part, right?
Man that first story was good. What a start to the book. I was actually emotionally touched by the story.
The setup of getting the 響 fragments from the old man before we met the rest of the family. All while having the intrigue of what the parents are actually doing while out of the house all day, the snooping 担任先生 that poses an unconcrete threat to the family and us trying to understand what しもう、響く、虫干し actually mean.
There was this one sentence regarding getting 他人の情報 and that becomming 飽和状態 and to 整理整頓 that information they have to sleep it off. Given that + the episode we witnessed from the boy it seems to me they could be doing some kind of shrink work but on crack. Helping people with their deeply held wishes or somesuch.
I am not sure how the しまう step fits into all of that though. Why do they have to learn so much and basically rote memorize whole fields to do that 響くstep is totally unclear to me
Since the family moved away at the end of the chapter I suspect we will be following different people in each of the stories. I would have liked to keep with the family for a little longer though. I quite liked all of them and would have loved for more poking and prodding by 今枝.
I’m looking forward to seeing if the next people we follow will also all be people from 常野 or if we will also see the “effect” of whatever the parents are doing in some of the short stories next?
If the book keeps up the level of the first story throughout, I think it has a high chance to become my favorite Japanese book I’ve read
I’ve been really looking forward to starting this, yay.
大きな引き出し
Really enjoyed this overall, very sweet story with some bits of intrigue to keep us curious for what comes next. The first part was especially charming just because 光紀 reminded me of my small nephew. That kid wants so badly to impress people and puts on such a grumpy attitude when it’s not happening.
So my understanding from what I read, しまう is the ability to store information in their mental/spiritual/magical “引き出し”, and 響く summons that information. It sounded like a strange way of describing perfect recall before the old neighbor incident happened and it became clear there was more to it. Between the secrecy and the way the parents’ powers are written later as 情報を吸収し続ける, the narrative makes them sound like spies or scouts or something for the place the kids kept referencing, 常野. Empire of light, 常野?? I say because the daughter had some strange ideas about 民主主義
The scene with the neighbor’s family was touching, but good grief the dad really should have reconciled with his son while he was alive if he was already open-minded enough to follow his career and go see all his movies!
Finished week 1! I really enjoyed this first short story, both in terms of content and ease of reading. I’ve only read one other 恩田陸 book before (木漏れ日に泳ぐ魚), but if 光の帝国 keeps up she’s definitely going to have to be one I keep an eye out for. Anyway, general thoughts on this week’s story:
I liked how the 春田 family’s names felt somewhat unusual from a kanji standpoint. Perhaps these are entirely normal spellings (or normal for the author), but they felt surprising enough to me that it really helped set the stage for a fantasy feel.
I thought it was interesting how important a person’s 書見台 was to them, to the point where the family kept ancestors’ and the 書見台 had people names. It sounded like they were actually imbued with souls, going back to check (“精魂込めて作られる”), and apparently this is a 春田 family thing. Makes me wonder what the 春田 family specialty/trade is known as in 常野, and what other “specialties” we might see from other residents.
We were told later on that the kids weren’t supposed to talk about their dad’s actual occupation, which makes me wonder what it was. He and the mom were apparently traveling around talking to people, at least; at first I thought he was a travel writer, but was having his stuff published in 常野 rather than Japan. Kimiko also mentions later on that he’s written books about 常野.
Speaking of which, quick grammar question: on my Kindle page 22, the teacher is doing a home visit and asking きみこ about the books her dad publishes, to which きみこ thinks, 父の書いた本はあるにはあるが…。Is she saying, “there are books here that Dad’s published, but…”?
Great first introduction, and looking forward to week 2!
For what it’s worth (which you talk a little bit more about as well), it did seem like 響く was marking a certain level of understanding, where the person would be able to interconnect what they’d rote learned with other things to really “get” it.
It’s from a book I like very much, the new Japanese version of
It doesn’t have much explanation for each point. There are always some example sentences and then a very short explanation like with the picture for VにはV that I attached earlier.
The good thing about the book is that it is pretty comprehensive (I don’t think it covers classical Japanese), containing some things that are arguably more words, rather than “real grammar”. Additionally, with around 600 pages it is reasonably sized. I often look first in this one before I open the Dictionary of BIA Grammar if I need more information (often not finding anything in there)
The grammar points are in 五十音 order, and you have 3 indices in the back, one in 五十音 order and the other in 末尾五逆引き ordered by common “endings” of grammar (e.g. all grammar points ending with ない) and one ordered by “meaning” (e.g. 否定、比較、範囲、etc.) in which not all grammar points appear. The last can be great if you want to work on your own writing.
With 3,600￥ it’s not super cheap. I’m old-school and like my physical books, so it was a no-brainer to pick up for myself. I have to say I’m pretty satisfied with it overall.
Yes, I have the first edition version of this and like it a lot. I think it makes a good companion with the Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Grammar series – those books have a lot of detail on the topics they cover, but as a result they have to skip the more “minor” or simpler grammar structures. The 日本語文型辞典 fills in the gaps because it has a lot more entries, and the various indexes are helpful for finding the right entry for structures that are a bit tricky to look up. So if you have both then you get the detailed explanations for the topics that need it plus the wider coverage. (Like you, I like paper based resources, so that’s also where I’m coming from on that recommendation.)
光の帝国 
week 1
