Infobox
Thousand Cranes
Info
Status read Year Read 2026 Rating ★★★★ Shelves Fiction, Asian lit, East Asian lit, Translated lit, Japanese lit
Reading notes
"The moment for sending her away had passed, and, in the sweet slackening of his heart, Kikuji gave himself up."
For a book that features more women than men, this feels violently misogynistic. The male main character has more respect for his father — who has died before the first sentence — and views with contempt and judgment every mistress his father has had. He sexualizes them too, in his disgust.
"If Mrs. Ota had made her mistake when she saw Kikuji's father in Kikuji, then there was something frightening, a bond like a curse, in the fact that, to Kikuji, Fumiko resembled her mother."
And he can’t separate himself from his father (neither can the mistresses) and later can’t separate daughter from late mother either. (This seems to be a group of old Japanese lit traits but I just can’t prove it.) Women who are untouched by his father (or untouched at all as far as he knows) are made of pure light to him. Barf.
“Between the living and the dead there can be no forgiving and not forgiving.”
“No matter how she had been misunderstood, death could not be her answer. Death only cuts off understanding. No one can possibly forgive that.”
Curious: what is the significance of ceramic and tea ceremonies in the themes?