Journal Entry#6 Mikan
Class reflection:
This week’s class has started with “kindergarten” movement. It came across as one of the difficult movements I did in class to think about and dance to. In kindergarten movement, we focused on one arm and move from five fingers to armpit. Since I have never experienced focusing on one part of my body in movement, I felt a little uncomfortable and unstable at first. I felt a little strange and nervous to move my concentration on just my fingers and arm: my fingers and arm collected too much power and strength as my attention goes there. Therefore, it was hard to control five fingers moving around, as Eiko told us before we moved that fingers move like five lively kids because my fingers gained excessive power and attention compared to other parts of my body. But as I got used to the movement and the state of my body, where solely my fingers and arms movements and other pasts of my body sustained them, I came to feel more joy and curiosity in how my fingers and arms can move and make different movements. Although my fingers were just moving, when I looked at them or felt them, each finger move differently, corresponding to each other. At this moment, I felt a bit sorry about my fingers and appreciate them more. In daily life, I am dependent on them and asked them to be my tool to function in my daily life. But, when I was in this movement in class, I felt my fingers became independent from my body and duty as my “fingers.”They were dancing and enjoying their individuality. Come to think about it, fingers all look different by scale and shape, though they all are “fingers.” And when I looked at my arm, arm also looked happy and bouncy! As it were not my arm, I felt my arm being arm. But at the same time, they are part of my body. And, it does not change even during the movement. So, I was balancing between enjoying and appreciating their moves and individuality, at the same time controlling them not to fly so away and staying as my part of my body. It’s maybe similar to a relationship between body and soul.
After the movement, we talked about and shared our experience with last week's assignment (reading aloud sentences, tree movement, and op-ed) When we shared the experience of tree movement in our group, we talked about roots of a tree. Since it is hidden in the ground and we cannot actually see it, we are often prone to underestimate it. But, roots are actually part of the tree that supports the whole tree to stand and suck energy from the ground and sustain its life. And, when we move with trees, we can’t help feeling how powerful and majestic tree roots are. Annie’s childhood story of an apple tree in her house also stuck in my mind. She told a story that she was trying to save the dead apple tree backyard of her house. And, I felt my heart warm for how her memories and the apple tree are connected and tree movement can reconnect her with the apple tree again.
Reading reflection and engaging with readings:
I read Hayashi’s three pieces for the assignment in Japanese. I found Bhowmik’s guidance helpful to read and understand The Place of the Festival. I first read Hayashi’s work by myself and afterward, I read Bhowmik’s “Temporal Discontinuity in the Atomic Bomb Fiction of Hayashi Kyoko.” He gave us literal tools to understand more about Hayashi. Especially, I found helpful his writing about how Hayashi shifts between 1945 and 1975 when she wrote The Place of the Festival. I appreciate his words, “this thirty-year period is anything but void” and “the atomic bombing extends beyond its historical moment.” And, those words and his mentions about the malleability of time encourage me to take on to Hayashi’s irony and her wish and the reasons why she put “There is a beautiful line at the end of an American documentary film on the atomic bomb:… Thus, the destruction ended…” Bhowmik’s writing was also helpful to remind me of some scenes that struck me by, such as her mom washing black round spots on the clothes and thinking of the blood. I think that those scenes are poignant to me because they covey my emotions and thoughts that I could not imagine by myself: bottomless fear, sorrow, and dismay when her mom saw those stains. But, what we feel or think about Hayashi’s writings, of course, is not limited to Bhowmik’s thinking and writings. I think that we connected with our personal memories and experience to imagine what is told in Hayashi’s works. I shed tears when I read the scene when Wakako died at the end in Two Grave Markers. It was painful to think of Wakako and Tsune. It’s poignant to feel Wakako’s sufferings of her body and mind. Even at the sudden end of her life, she was suffering from survivor’s guilt, starting from when she left one person in the fire to Yoko in the mountain hollow. And, there’s no reason for Wakako to get through all of those physical pains and guilts and sufferings. This situation is really unfair and unjust to the point that makes me angry. It’s because of the war that the military started and the atomic bomb dropped on her city. So, I wrote 恨むなら、あの馬鹿でっかい火の玉を恨むがいい。“If she was to resent something, let it be the huge, monster ball of fire.” （「恨む」という文字を書くときに、とても緊張しました。「恨む」という言葉は、resentとは違う、実際には、何も行動にして雪辱は晴らすことはできないけれども、自分の気持ちだけでも、せめて、自分の正しいと思うこと・気持ちを貫きたいという、このあまりにも苦しく道理の通らない世界をもたらした原子爆弾への言葉にならない感情、若子への思いを、ギリギリ心の中で保つための最後の方法・言葉だと感じました。）
I drew two pictures. The first one is a picture of two grave markers of fresh wood in the mountain hollow, with branches of orange (mikan) hanging still hard and green fruit. This scene struck me because it comes right after Wakako’s death scene and it’s poignant and painful when I think about Tsune’s feelings when she takes care of two grave markers of her daughter and her childhood friend. And, I feel indignant against the atomic bomb dropped on them, the war, the Bockscar, the practice the pilots had done to escape Nagasaki at once after they drop the bomb, Truman’s announcement, …. I also drew a picture of the classroom with windows broken and chairs and desks scattered. In Hayashi’s writing, we read this week, there are a lot of scenes describing the situations of classrooms. One scene I struck by is a classroom of medical school, where all students and teachers at the front died with their bones. Connected with my emotions when I read Two Grave Markers, it makes me sad and indignant how the atomic bomb can take away so easily and disrespectfully the lives of numbers of citizens in one moment. And, Hayashi tells damage and sufferings by the atomic bombs are not just that moment. There is never to be an end of destruction by the atomic bombs: Wakako died 49 days after Yoko’s death and pieces of glass remain in bodies, and black rain survivors fight with the government, and there are still uncountable numbers of atomic bombs exist on the earth.
This week after I read Two Grave Markers, I thought about the mikan (orange) tree in my house. My parents bought the tree for me when I was 8 years old to feed a caterpillar. (back then, I was into breeding caterpillars of swallowtail. And, it’s still there after 14 years. And most of the year, the tree didn’t bear fruit, since it’s small and also put in a planter. But this year miraculously it is bearing four or five fruit. And I came to think that I dance to this mikan tree and its fruit. First, I touched the green fruit. It’s heavy. It’s been there for three or four months already now. But it’s still green and the skin is still hard. And, I imagined the mikan branches with fruit that Tsune placed in front of two grave markers. Those mikans were also green and firm and unripe: but they are heavy and drooping down from branches. And I felt that my head and body are similar to a mikan branch. I moved around my head slowly, thinking about its heaviness and different balance from other parts of my body. I touched my head and hair and ears nose. They have different texture and shapes. My head is not ripe yet. And my body tensed up thinking about two lives of 14-year-old girls, who had to get through all these pains and emotions and experience that Hayashi told us in the story. And I sat down on the ground, imagining there are two grave markers.
