Tokyo Ueno Station

During this section, Kazu retells the story of the death of his wife, Setsuko. She had died in her sleep, next to Kazu, and when he woke up the next morning, he realized that she was dead. This has an especially devastating effect on Kazu, who is still struggling to cope with Koichi’s loss. To make matters worse, prior to her death, Setsuko had mentioned to Kazu, “I just have the feeling I’m gonna die when the cicadas are singing,” a comment that causes Kazu to drop to his knees and start crying (126). The mere thought of losing his wife was too much for Kazu to even consider. Thus, when these words come true, The Impact of Grief on Kazu becomes abundantly clear.

As Kazu reflects on the death of Setsuko, he says, “I didn’t realize that my wife, right next to me, was taking her last breath. It was the same as if I had killed her, I thought” (126-27). Kazu is racked with guilt. He feels that he could have done something to help her, and his failure to do so puts her death on his shoulders. For Kazu, the responsibility he feels for the death of his wife cannot be deflected as he is unable to remove himself from the situation. This is a common response to the death of loved ones: People feel that acting differently could have prevented their deaths, leading them to internalize it and irrationally assume culpability. Kazu sees himself as effectively killing his wife by not being awake to help her. Kazu internalizes his grief, and it is another example of how the novel extensively probes into the psyche when a person experiences the sudden death of a loved one.

Kazu hears cicadas when singing when he brings Setsuko’s ashes to the family resting place. This is, of course, a tragic reference to Setsuko’s comment about her impending death; however, it is also an example of the motif of noise that permeates the novel. The book opens and closes with Kazu fixated on an unidentifiable sound; at various points in the story, noise draws Kazu’s attention. When Kazu begins to spiral, his narrative thoughts trailing off or getting stuck on concepts of time and death, it is usually conversations from passersby that pull him back. He mentions birds, chainsaws, and all manner of natural and manufactured sounds; even when he is in the midst of panicking after discovering Setsuko’s body, he comments on the sound of the grandfather clock, the very same thing he thought about during Koichi’s funeral. Thus, the sound of cicadas supports this motif. Additionally, cicadas are symbolic in Japanese culture: Primarily, they represent summer, but their brief life cycle is also symbolic of the fleeting nature of life.

Kazu makes several comments in the section that reveal true existentialist dread. He says, “I was not afraid of ghosts. Nor was I afraid of death or dying. I was afraid of living this life not knowing when it might end. It did not seem possible to resist this weight pressing down on my entire body, nor to bear it” (128). Kazu’s anxiety over the unknowable abruptness of death makes living extremely difficult for him. This fear is driven by the deaths of his loved ones. His wife and son are two essential people in his life. The love that he has for them helped to provide his life with purpose. While he was actively providing for them, he could justify working himself to the bone, knowing that even though he was never around, he was still making their lives better. Their sudden loss causes Kazu to fixate on his own death, and without their presence, his life spirals into a crisis of meaning. He is both conscious of, and terrified of, his own mortality, and he is suddenly, viscerally aware of his absence in the lives of his loved ones. He mentions that he barely spent a total of a year in Setsuko’s presence, even though they had been married for decades. These heavy regrets tie The Influence of Poverty on Mental Health to The Impact of Grief, and both culminate in Kazu’s dread, sorrow, and ultimate choice to die by suicide.

When pondering the intersection of life, death, and time, Kazu mentions the Redouté display at the art museum:

Redouté, the man who painted these roses, died over a hundred seventy years ago. And the rose bushes that he studied are more than likely no longer living either. But once, somewhere, those roses were in bloom. And once, somewhere, a painter lived. And now, through these pieces of paper divorced from the reality of the past, like fantastical flowers that do not exist in our world, these roses bloom (132).

Kazu points out here that through art, one can go on living well after they die physically. It illustrates a fulfillment of the quest for permanence. Kazu himself, however, has no such outlet, and internally he recognizes it. He knows that when he dies, he will not live on; instead, he will simply disappear as though he never existed. This parallels Shige, who purposely chose to erase his identity so that his death would not burden his family.

This section briefly references another historical event in Japanese history: the bursting of the “bubble” economy. For a brief period in the late 1980s, Japan experienced an economic boom, particularly in stock and real estate assets. However, in early 1992, the bubble “burst.” Kazu overhears one such victim of the ensuing economic crash; the man talks about how he’d been sure the recession wouldn’t last and how that mindset cost him his home and family. Kazu notes that the man was likely murdered by violent youths and gets distracted describing the various attacks on unhoused people he’d heard about during that time period. This scene builds the theme of Invisible Classism in Japan, as the man’s story is only told after he has already died.

Lastly, this section of the book features yet another example of time parallels. Kazu describes the continuing pressure for unhoused people to leave Ueno Park, this time due to the park’s status as a future UNESCO World Heritage site. Kazu implies that, once again, the unhoused population is treated as an eyesore, something to be swept under the rug and hidden in favor of pleasing the wealthy—particularly, foreign—elite. Additionally, the sign for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics calls back the 1964 Tokyo Olympics for which Kazu originally came to the area to work. This cyclical nature of historical events will recur in the final section, which also solidifies the details of Kazu’s death by suicide.