39 pages • 1 hour read
Kazuo IshiguroA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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While mother-daughter relations are at the heart of the novel, they are either paradoxically absent or hopelessly dysfunctional. The story centers on and simultaneously avoids Etsuko and Keiko’s failed relationship. Although their relationship serves as a bookend on either end of the narrative, the reader does not witness any direct interactions between the narrator and her older daughter. Additionally, Etsuko’s relationship with her deceased parents is absent, as is any mention of Sachiko’s mother.
Ishiguro depicts mother-daughter relationships with an entirely negative slant. The mother-daughter relationships depicted in the novel range from infanticide to neglect and estrangement. The most shocking of these relationships is the young mother and the baby she drowns in the river. The child’s gender is not explicitly mentioned, but it is likely a girl, as a baby boy would have been easier to place in a home or give to a relative. Sachiko’s relationship to Mariko is one of utter indifference or even resentment. Etsuko’s relationship with Keiko, although never witnessed, is similarly one of indifference: Etsuko recognizes the negative impact immigrating will have on Keiko, but does so anyway, and then leaves her in detrimental solitude without any intervention. Her relationship with her younger daughter, Niki, is the most positive mother-daughter relationship, but it lacks any sense of mutual understanding.
Readers can trace the troubled relationship between mothers and daughters to the historically gendered nature of Japanese society. A daughter was a burden or a commodity that would eventually leave the parents’ home to join her husband’s. An unmarried single mother with a daughter had virtually no hope of finding a husband and a difficult time supporting herself, since women were discouraged from having jobs. Consequently, the practice of murder-suicide comes out of desperation and hopelessness; when a woman has no means of supporting herself and society ostracized her and her children, the choice of murder or suicide seems like the only one. Additionally, in Japanese Buddhism and Shintoism, suicide is an ambivalent act and not necessarily condemned as a sin. The belief that people are reborn also makes it seem less final than suicide in the Abrahamic religions.
The problematic mother-daughter relationships depicted in the novel could also be the result of war trauma. The bombing of Nagasaki left many women orphans or single mothers, violently disrupting and destroying mother-daughter relationships. Etsuko, like so many other young women, loses everything in the war. It is possible she anticipates and fears motherhood in equal measure, as it is a way to create a new family, but her lack of emotional engagement would make it difficult to care for a child. There was also a pervasive pressure in post-war Japan for women to give birth and repopulate the nation. In strong-willed women like Sachiko, this could engender resentment and desire for something more in life.
One of the novel’s main devices is doubling and mirroring. This is a popular theme in Western culture that we can trace back to Greek and Roman mythology. During the Romantic period, it acquired a demonic or threatening element and was often interpreted as an expression of subconscious fears, repressed emotions, or destructive impulses. Many famous writers used doubling, such as E.T.A. Hoffman, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Oscar Wilde, and Robert Louis Stevenson.
The reader may see Sachiko as Etsuko’s distorted double. Etsuko does not remember how they met, only that they already know each other’s names during the first meeting Etsuko recounts. We can interpret this detail as proof that Sachiko is an imaginary double or the embodiment of Etsuko’s repressed desires. Both are orphaned young women who depend on older men outside of their direct families. While Etsuko’s situation is supposedly happy because of Ogata-san’s intervention and her willingness to embrace a traditional role as Jiro’s wife, Sachiko represents the less fortunate alternative. Sachiko also embodies resentment of the restraint of traditional values and a desire for something more (feelings that Etsuko does not express but apparently pursues, given her immigration to England and her second marriage). Sachiko is a widowed single mother who, if she accepts her relative’s help, will spend the rest of her life alone and isolated. Her plan to immigrate to America represents her desire to escape the physical and emotional emptiness left behind by the bombing of Nagasaki, as well as her ambition to reclaim her autonomy and achieve something more in life, such as start a business.
Etsuko’s interest in Sachiko signals that the older woman in many ways embodies the narrator’s own secret or repressed desire for a more fulfilling life. Simply waiting to give birth and become a mother does not seem to be enough for Etsuko, blatantly presented when Mrs. Fujiwara remarks that she looks unhappy. Feelings of emptiness and loneliness taint the narrator’s memories of her first pregnancy. Everyone around her seems to believe that having children will give her a purpose, but such a deep dissatisfaction with life cannot be cured so simply. Consequently, Sachiko’s character becomes Etsuko’s darker, selfish double who represents her fears and purportedly shameful desires. While Etsuko is dutiful and seemingly selfless, Sachiko pursues her own wishes without regard for other people’s feelings. While Etsuko chooses a socially acceptable path in life, Sachiko goes against the norm and chooses to live alone and have a relationship with an American soldier outside of marriage. Etsuko is also fearful of being a mother, and Sachiko seems to fulfill her worst fears about not loving or taking care of her child.
This doubling repeats once more, and more extremely, when Sachiko and Mariko witness a mother drowning her baby. This scene haunts them two years later, allowing a glimpse of how terrible life could be for a single mother in post-WWII Japan. The imagery of drowning repeats when the older woman kills her daughter’s kittens, indicating the potential ruthlessness of motherhood.
Another pair of doubles are Keiko and Mariko. Many of Etsuko’s memories after Keiko’s death relate to a different girl, Mariko, another withdrawn and anti-social child. The scenes by the river, Etsuko’s dreams, and the outing to the Nagasaki harbor suggest that Etsuko might be conflating Mariko and Keiko. In the penultimate chapter, the narrator begins talking to Mariko, but changes her way of address to “we,” indicating that she might be reliving a conversation with Keiko about their own immigration to England.
One of the wider themes framing A Pale View of the Hills is the tension between tradition and modernization and its impact on gender relations. Ogata-san is clearly a representative of the more traditional worldview. His occupation, in this context, is significant, as teachers serve to both mold the future generation and connect the present to the past. Despite the losses of WWII, Ogata-san still believes in the old system, which valorized unquestioning loyalty and obedience. However, these values are easily co-opted for political purposes, which is what the younger generation believes happened. Furthermore, as an individual, Ogata-san is an upstanding citizen who fostered a war orphan. It is difficult to dislike him, even if he is unable or unwilling to admit that Japan’s involvement in WWII was unjustified or at least problematic. The story humanizes him and the people of his generation and reveals how difficult it would be to accept the problems inherent to their entire worldview.
The Japanese emphasis on the family as a unit, rather than on its members as individuals, leads to strong social cohesion and clearly defined roles. For men, that usually means shouldering most of the responsibilities, as well as benefitting from most of the privileges. For women, in contrast, such a rigid patriarchal social structure does not leave much room for self-expression outside of, or even within, the immediate family. For example, both Etsuko and Sachiko are expected to forget their personal interests and ambitions in favor of supporting their husbands’ careers. While such an arrangement can be satisfying to many families, the novel highlights that not all women are happy with the life of homemakers. The mid-20th-century American social model imported after WWII was subversive and liberating to many Japanese women.
The abrupt introduction of American values to post-war Japanese society also brings its own problems. Without a deeper understanding of the history and significance of ideas like democracy and individualism, they are easily co-opted as pretext for personal gain and exploiting others. While discussing democracy and elections, Jiro and his colleagues completely miss the irony of condemning a wife for voting differently from her husband. In other words, the novel shows how new ideas and old values co-exist uneasily, creating social tensions and, in the process, revealing problematic aspects of traditional Japanese culture.
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By Kazuo Ishiguro