地球星人 🌏 Book Club ・ Week 5

[jhol]

地球星人 ・ Week 5

Week 5	1 January 2022
End page	87
End %	27
End phrase	見つめながら眠った。
Pages	19
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Please remember to set this thread to “watching” in order to stay abreast of the discussion.

• I’m reading along
• I’ll catch up soon
• I’ve read this already but I’m here for discussion
• I have no intention of catching up or the club has already finished, but I’m using the forums as reference

Vocab Sheet

Anybody should feel free to add to the vocab sheet. Read the guidelines on the first sheet- even if a word is not yet included you can use the spreadsheet as a tool to get help.

地球星人 🌏

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネトバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) need to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as such.

Discussion Questions

Feel free to use these questions as a framework or a starting point for responses. I also encourage people to post their own discussion questions!

1. What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!

2. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?

3. Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?

4. Describe how Natsuki’s habit of escapism escalates throughout this section

5. This section may have been difficult to read. Is there value in reading it anyway? Is it something that should be allowed in a WK bookclub?

[Phryne]

It breaks my heart that her own mother doesn’t believe her… And she even uses the same line of reasoning to discount Natsuki’s experiences as Natsuki herself had used to dissuade herself from telling anyone:

「そんなわけないでしょ。あんたみたいな未熟な身体の子、先生がそんな目で見るわけないでしょうが。あんたがいやらしいからそんな風に思うだけよ。汚らわしいのはあんたじゃないの、まったく」

It also makes me so sad to read how Natsuki’s ignoring her own alarm bells for fear of being ‘impolite’ or hurting his feelings.

Another thing that makes me sad is how Natsuki has framed her coping strategy of (what looks like) dissociation as ‘magic’. I can see how that notion makes sense to her, as it must feel empowering to her in the moment itself, but damn…

Just a whole lot of sadness all around

[omk3]

Glad to be back. Happy New Year, everyone!

I read the whole thing a week ago, as if we didn’t have a break, and then had to resist reading ahead - I didn’t want whatever I read next to influence this week’s discussions. I wrote down my comments right when I finished reading, when everything was still fresh (although it still is).

My thoughts on this week's reading

So I suppose I got my answer on what would happen if she told on Igasaki - I was surprised that Natsuki decided to confide to her mother (good for you Natsuki for trusting your instincts and not being fooled into thinking that that was normal teacher behaviour), and was really shocked by the mother’s reaction. Even if you place no trust on your child, even if you think the worst of them, how can you not even entertain the idea that they may actually be in danger? The mother’s reaction was the worst possible one. Not only did she make sure that Natsuki would never confide in her again, but she also made Natsuki doubt herself, thinking that she might be the one being dirty instead of the teacher, thus making her more vulnerable to further approaches. Just disgusting.

The はい、わかりました。ごめんなさい。repetition was so powerful and heartbreaking.

And of course the inevitable happened (not the best thing to be reading on Christmas). I had been expecting it more or less, but it was still dreadful, and very hard to read. The way he engineered her coming to his house showed him as a master manipulator. Natsuki believes herself to be strong (and she really is, and I hope she continues to be through all this, but she’s also a child and basically on her own), so naturally she’d step up to protect her friend. She could have run to the toilets to check on her friend of course, or alert someone else before going at least, but judging from the fact that she had been waiting for her friend alone I’m guessing she’s not really close to anyone else, and I’m sure the creep would have found a way to make sure she wouldn’t anyway.

And then, somehow even more shocking than that scene, was the family scene. What’s Japan’s stance on corporal punishment? It can’t be acceptable to keep kicking your child in the back even if she had done something worse than object to a change of holiday plans. I can see now that Kise is just copying the mother, at least as far as Natsuki is concerned. The two are too much alike. And my suspicions that the father is just a bystander in all this seem to be confirmed. He seems to get no say in anything, and to have accepted that role. Who knows, he may be leading an exciting double life that keeps him fulfilled. But in this family he seems to be nobody. Natsuki would probably get the same treatment if she just went along with the elder women of the clan, but since she occasionally makes her opinion known, she is bullied into submission. I’m sure there must be a story there to explain the horrible parenting, but I’m more interested in how Natsuki copes with all this. Will she really not get to see Yuu (who happily seems to be still doing okay despite my fears)? Will she stay around and keep being exposed to Igasaki’s advances? She really needs all the magic help she can get.

I wonder why she was prepared to hang up the phone when she called Yuu if his mother answered. Are the two families on bad terms? Why wouldn’t it be okay to be calling her cousin? There’s much we don’t know I feel.

@Phryne

It also makes me so sad to read how Natsuki’s ignoring her own alarm bells for fear of being ‘impolite’ or hurting his feelings.

I may be wrong/misremembering, but my impression was that Natsuki was scared of what he might do if she resisted him, rather than afraid of hurting his feelings. She did trust her alarm bells (most of the time, her mother had done enough damage by inserting some doubt in there), but her alarm bells were also telling her that not complying might be worse for her.

[Phryne]

@omk3

I may be wrong/misremembering, but my impression was that Natsuki was scared of what he might do if she resisted him, rather than afraid of hurting his feelings. She did trust her alarm bells (most of the time, her mother had done enough damage by inserting some doubt in there), but her alarm bells were also telling her that not complying might be worse for her.

Too many spoiler tags otherwise...

I reread the scene (woohoo ) and had a look at all the reasons Natsuki had for not resisting. I think there is an escalation going on:

ぞっとして、すぐにそばにいかなければと思った。私は魔法少女なのだ。困っている友達を魔法の力で救わなくてはならない。

➝ Natsuki wants to rescue her friend and feels confident that she will be safe, because of her magical powers.

先生の言い方は優しくて、授業中の先生とあまり変わらなかった。それなのに、なぜだかとても怖かった。変な風に警戒してしまうのは、母が私に言ったみたいに、私がいやらしいからそう思ってしまうだけなのかもしれない。目の前の快活な先生を怖く思ってしまう自分が、自意識過剰で恥ずかしいと思った。

➝ I read a concern for politeness into this (“I am the one who is dirty, it would be rude to treat him with suspicion when he is being so kind and cheerful”), even though her intuition tells her he’s dangerous. All that has happened at this point, is him telling her he would teach her a special lesson. The last time he did that was with the sanitary napkin; something her mother had specifically told her was ‘perfectly normal’. So I think at this point in the escalation she is mostly concerned with not making rash accusations.

ぞわりと鳥肌が立ったが、黙っていた。少し「へん」だと感じるとき、先生はとても優しいけれど、気に障ることをしたら何をされるかわからない雰囲気を纏っていた。

➝ What would happen if she ‘offended’ him? I thought this tied into the previous quote. If she assumes she is the one who is dirty (as she had been told by her mother), the act of rejecting him would be an implicit accusation that he had obscene intentions, which would be an insult to him if he turned out to be beyond reproach after all. This is the first hint we get that she is scared he may become violent, but I think she fears potential violence as a consequence of her insulting him through her non-compliance, not as a consequence of the non-compliance itself.

私は勉強をしたいだなんて言っただろうか。でも先生がこんなに怒っているのだから、何かの拍子に言ったことがあったのかもしれない。

➝ Here it starts to tip into outright fear of violence. He has started getting angry with her as opposed to being ‘kind’ and ‘cheerful’. She doesn’t quite see it for what it is yet (him dominating her into submission, to get what he wants); she still feels like she must have caused his anger by being rude (telling him she was keen to study, yet rejecting this ‘extra tuition’).

So at this point he has gone further than he had before. Up to now he had always been kind and cheerful in ‘teaching’ her, but this is the first time he has become openly threatening. He wraps his hands around her neck and says 真面目にお勉強しないと、先生、怒るかもしれないよ？ 先生のこと、怒らせたくないよね？

So at this point, Natsuki is driven purely by terror and self-preservation:

大人に逆らったら殺される。大人に捨てられたら私たちは死んでしまう。

③ なにがあってもいきのびること。

私は歯を必死でかくした。先生の教えに背いてうっかり歯を見せてしまったら何をされるかわからないと思った

And ultimately she completely shuts down emotionally and dissociates.

I think this is a really well-crafted scene in a really well-crafted larger narrative. It shows the ‘frog in the pan of boiling water’ effect that Igasaki makes use of to get Natsuki to comply. Over the course of many months he has slowly upped the ante, slowly becoming more and more threatening, but each step being small enough that Natsuki was going to be likely to chalk it down to “he has always been cheerful and friendly, so I must have been the one with a dirty mind” or “The only reason he is being angry/scary is because I have offended him”, etc. I imagine it is an accurate portrayal of how predators operate, in selecting their victims, in grooming them, in the threats they make to keep them quiet after the assault… It’s all very insidious.

[omk3]

Thank you for taking the trouble to reread and list all these quotes in order. Your analysis was excellent.
Something struck me as I read them again. By the end, the double damage her mother caused her is made painfully clear.
Yes, she made her doubt her own instincts by accusing her of having a dirty mind and defending the teacher’ actions. But there’s also damage that has been long in the making. With her constant criticism and disdain, she has made Natsuki feel in danger of being “discarded” if she doesn’t please adults. With the randomness of her explosions she has prepared Natsuki to regard strange and abusive behaviour from adults as a fact of life. So when Igasaki acts strangely, even though she does sense danger, she feels that the danger of displeasing him and being “discarded” is greater. She thinks of not angering adults as her survival strategy. It’s not politeness exactly, but it is going along for the sake of fitting in, and that’s not too different now that I think about it.

[Neba]

My thoughts on this week’s reading:

Natsuki's mother

The mother’s treatment towards Natsuki is slowly getting worse and now we can truly say that she is abusive. It started when the mother cared more about her sister and neglected Natsuki. Then we got to know that the mother is always talking bad about her in front of relatives and neighbours, and we found out that the mother often hits her in the head, saying things like “Since you’re so stupid, maybe it’ll make you smarter”, or “Because it’s empty, it makes a nice sound”. Then it escalates to this week’s reading where she got “excited” and kept hitting Natsuki with the slipper over and over.

It’s really weird that she trusts the teacher more than her own child, saying that it’s Natsuki who has a dirty mind. How does that even make sense? So then it made me think that, just like what other people have mentioned, maybe Natsuki is not her own child. If that’s true, it makes sense that she behaves this way towards Natsuki.

The scene

It’s so painful to read it.

Igasaki: “Shizuka-chan is at my house.”
Me: “Oh nononoono.”
Natsuki: “I have to be by Shizuka-chan’s side! I’ll be okay because I’m a mahou shoujo!”
Me: “Oh nonononono”
Narrator: “During summer, Igasaki’s parents is on overseas business trip.”
Me:

Murata did a good foreshadowing with the 「はい、わかりました。ごめんなさい。」because that mantra becomes the only thing she could say to Igasaki. At this point, I wish we can put a stop on this by having her telling the adults and let the adults take care of it. But she didn’t have any ally in the family. She did try to report it to an adult and it didn’t work.

And it’s so heartbreaking how the vow she made with Yuu became something like a curse.

The passage that left a deep impression on me:

私はいつまで生き延びればいいのだろう。いつか、生き延びなくても生きていられるようになるのだろうか。
母をみていても、篠塚先生をみていても、どうしてもそんなふうには思えない。永遠に生き延び続けなければいけない気がして気が遠くなる。

The official English translation is:
“How long did I have to survive for? Would I ever be able to live without constantly trying to survive?
Looking at Mom, looking at Mrs. Shinozaki, I couldn’t imagine it. The thought I would have to struggle for an eternity made me dizzy.”

I thought 生き延びる simply means “to survive”, but over here it’s being used to convey the “struggle to live”.

The darkness

It disturbs me how much Natsuki is obsessed with the darkness, and trying to look for it in her everyday life. She seeks comfort in the darkness created from clenching her thumb, from the back of her eyelids, etc. It almost feels like she actually wants to disappear into the darkness.

[wiersm]

About reading this in the book club

I did find this section very hard to read and I never would have expected that one of the first books that I read in Japanese would handle such serious subjects and go to such dark places, but I definitely believe books like this one should be allowed in the book club. These things happen in real life and discussion about them should not be blocked. It is good to talk with others about serious issues such as these. I hope that the warnings beforehand were clear enough to make reading books like this possible.

About Natsuki

After reading this section, I am starting to think that Natsuki’s strength might be working against her. I wonder if things would have gone differently if she hadn’t stayed calm at Igasaki’s house or if she had been more emotional with her mother. Maybe Igasaki would have aborted his plans if she had made a scene, or even if he had turned violent, it might have given Natsuki at least more ‘proof’ that she is being abused. And maybe her mother would have been less quick to dismiss her story if she had been in tears and emotional instead of trying to calmly describe what happened to her. Sometimes it is good to show your weakness and emotions.

It seems to me that the book even suggests this through Kise: she is more emotional and makes a huge scene when she is upset and she is treated much better and taken more seriously than Natsuki.

Someone suggested in an earlier week that Igasaki very specifically chose Natsuki and I was a little doubtful at that point, but I take that back now. Natsuki has a drive to be an obedient member of society and she is the strong and silent type. For Igasaki, obedient and silent is exactly what he needs

[DasOcean]

About Natsuki

@wiersm

And maybe her mother would have been less quick to dismiss her story if she had been in tears and emotional instead of trying to calmly describe what happened to her. Sometimes it is good to show your weakness and emotions.

I agree that showing emotions is very important, so that other people can understand you, but I kinda doubt that this would’ve worked with her mother. In the last scene of this part she actually showed some emotions by screaming at her family (which is something that Kise also did basically everytime she was part of a scene), but it backfired hard.
It might’ve worked better in Igasaki’s case, since he doesn’t seem as much like a ticking emotional time bomb, but on the other side he is way to calculated and knows, what he has to do/say to get what he wants.

Both her mother and sister and Igasaki are completely manipulating Natsuki, just in very different ways and sadly both of these “approaches” work.

This week

Whenever you think “oh, it can’t get worse than that, right?”, it immediately gets worse. Everything just kept on escalating. However this does raise the question whether it keeps on getting worse or (hopefully) some good things will happen to Natsuki. My hope is, that her dad will eventually help her out at least a bit but knowing Murata, that probably won’t happen.

@Neba summarized it pretty well:

@Neba

It’s so painful to read it.

[NicoleRauch]

@DasOcean

Whenever you think “oh, it can’t get worse than that, right?”, it immediately gets worse. Everything just kept on escalating.

I found this to be an amazing piece of artful writing. In the first week we got a little hunch of something being somewhat out of place, and then week after week it escalated and escalated and escalated… Just like you said, every time I thought “Now that must be the absolute worst”, it escalated more and faster. Painful to read, but a masterpiece in my opinion.

[Belerith]

I agree, the writing is great. Everything builds on top of what was to create a certain mood, feeling, impression.

After this section, I decided to forego the schedule and go at my own pace. The writing instilled such a sense of foreboding that I couldn’t bear the thought of dragging out watching things unfold over months.