I found the ending to be a bit anticlimactic/underwhelming for me. I think I wanted to enjoy these just a bit more than I did, but I’m glad for having read it!! Thanks for hosting
I read this last part of the story about ten days ago, but was travelling and didn’t get time for my usual second read through.
Like @jablekanji , I found this a bit of an anticlimax on first read. (From reading a number of books by 小川, I had not been expecting a neat wrap up or satisfying conclusion.) But on second read, I found a lot to enjoy here.
The scene with the family and the Japanese visitors all huddled around a radio was very sweet - with them all straining to hear despite the dodgy signal and overlapping translation, and obscure subject matter. The small children were amazingly patient and tolerant (I chuckled when our narrator - who we learn at the end is male after all - was secretly hoping for sweets or a toy from the visitors and is deeply disappointed when his grandmother settles for a Japanese text). And the precious gift of Japanese poetry travels on with the narrator - even to his duty as radio technician for the special forces.
The atmosphere of this scene is classic Ogawa - slightly whimsical and strange, but full of 懐かしさ
I did wonder whether the profession of the narrator of this last chapter was linked to this coincidental early childhood experience with strained listening to a crackling voice on a radio. There is a kind of echo with the outer story about the hostages and their stories that are captured on tape, and then shared with us (in a far distant country). But that is as much resolution as Ogawa is going to give us.
(The actual concluding sentence is very typical of an Ogawa ending. We have this image of the hostages’ stories processing out over the airwaves like the endless march of the ants through the forest. It made me think of an analogy that Ogawa doesn’t raise - about the way in which the little stories of our brief mortal lives stretch out in radio signals, telephone calls, internet messages. These might march out into the distant reaches ofspace [if transmitted by satellite] long after we ourselves have ceased to be. They might even one day reach the ears of an alien listener, who might try in vain to decipher some meaning or significance from them)
Couple of questions
I tried to work out which Japanese Nobel prize winner this might be, but the timing and subject matter (elementary particles??) didn’t work out clearly. [If the hostages in the story were contemporary with the Peru embassy hostage crisis, the Nobel prize ought to have been maybe 15 years earlier around 1980??]
Anyone try to work out what the book gift was? That was a bit easier my guess is that it is the Narrow Road to the deep North (by Matsuo Basho), which is the first thing that comes up when looking for 17th century poet travelogues. has anyone read it?
Was it just me, or did anyone else find the curious reference to an 小川 of sound/小川 of leaf cutter ants an amusing echo with the author’s name. Surely not a coincidence?
It was mentioned in the prologue as well, I just didn’t get around to posting here, sorry!
その一人とは、盗聴の現場でまさにヘッドフォンを耳に当てていた人物とされている。もちろん彼には、人質たちの語る言葉は何一つ理解できなかったのであるが。
I also found the previous section to be very atmospheric and liked it a lot! In particular, you can read it no matter whether you have the ants or the hostages in mind, and it is a perfect fit for both. I thought that was really beautiful.
So our storyteller is 22 at the time of telling the story, and was 7 when the Japanese came to visit, which means the nobel prize was awarded 15 years before the hostage. Now the real Lima hostage happened in 1996, but from the subject matter of the Nobel prize the most fitting laureate would be Shin'ichirō Tomonaga - Wikipedia I guess? He received the prize in 1965, which would put our hostage at 1980? That means many of the stories would have happened in the 60s and 70s - I think that’s quite fitting with their vibes. But maybe Ogawa took a lot of liberties regarding the timings here…
