Nurture without Ruling — Laozi, Chapter 51#

At the beginning of Fugutaiten, Haruki is far from the riverbank.

He tells Setsuna not to come anymore and admits that he is lying. If he truly wanted to refuse, he could take back the key or fasten the chain. He does neither. He has accepted her food, housework and embraces before asking her to leave. Setsuna also acknowledges the satisfaction she takes in caring for him. She fears his illness and the possibility that he may one day stop needing her.⁴

The most convenient verdict is that both are selfish. It sounds penetrating and explains very little. Meals are actually cooked, clothes actually washed, and a weakened person actually lives with their help. Pleasure in giving does not turn those acts into counterfeits. Conversely, useful care does not prove that its existing form should continue forever.

The difficulty appears when things change.

On one visit, Setsuna sweats heavily at the station, cannot get her legs moving and feels nausea rising. She still longs to reach Haruki, while her body can barely bear the journey. When she finally arrives, she attributes her lateness to work, cooks and cleans as usual and tries to seem brighter than ever. He says he has been feeling better. She says everything will soon be as it was. She proposes a walk; he agrees; she herself retracts it because it is too hot outside.⁵

Bodily distress and the wish to visit inhabit the same scene. Neither abolishes the other. To appoint the body another omniscient judge that has exposed love’s falsehood would be too convenient again. She wants to care for Haruki and is being exhausted by a particular way of caring: as long as she can stand, she must continue; as long as he has not recovered, she cannot stop.

“I want to see him” is gradually overborne by another sentence: what will he do without me?

In discussing the sacrificial mother, Žižek raises an uncomfortable question. If someone’s worth depends entirely on sacrifice for others, relieving the burden may also remove her position. The suffering is real, and so is the identity it preserves. The analysis is sharp when it asks whether sacrifice can end. Used to prove that everyone who labors secretly wants to suffer, sharpness turns into meanness.⁶

Setsuna’s situation clarifies the distinction. She does not sit hoping that Haruki will never recover. She desperately wants him well while tying her worth to “Only I can make him well.” The wishes have traveled together. As he gradually becomes able to care for himself, their paths diverge.

Haruki notices the effort she conceals and asks her to go home and rest for a while. He must admit that he has long wanted to suggest it but could not bear to let her go. This time, protecting Setsuna requires accepting less care. Gratitude that never permits her rest would keep the door for dependency.⁷

Setsuna does not hear protection alone. Haruki had been willing to go under with Kazusa, she thinks; with her, he stops her from collapsing alongside him. Why does the same love grant one woman an abyss and the other only safety? As she feels it then, safety seems a lesser grade of love.

Staying together becomes harder. Beyond reducing chores and recovering strength, they must gradually loosen a comparison: if I do not destroy myself for you, do I matter less to you?

When Takeya tells Haruki to decide for himself, the text supplies a crucial continuation: not now, but when he can trust his choice. Then he should come and discuss it first; Takeya will offer his opinion. His friend returns the decision and allows time. He does not withdraw outside and require Haruki to prove adulthood alone.⁸

Help can therefore have another endpoint. The recipient gradually becomes able to act; the caregiver gradually becomes able to rest. Closeness sustained by crisis can become ordinary contact. Both must be willing to change, and someone must take up what is temporarily put down. Haruki’s treatment, his friends’ visits and the home where Setsuna can rest cannot be wished away by saying “Let go.”

What Night Is This, Sharing the Candlelight Again? — Du Fu, “For Wei Ba, Living in Retirement”#

Kazusa makes the call.

Setsuna has been preparing to contact her but has not finished dialing. Across a national border, each imagines the other far ahead: Setsuna sees the pianist on European stages; Kazusa imagines those remaining in Japan living happily together. Distance hides each woman’s difficulties and delivers the happiness she most fears the other has.⁹

As the call nears its end, Kazusa stops her. Setsuna first apologizes: perhaps she can no longer save Haruki. Kazusa is shocked, then angry; Setsuna asks for help. Youko’s serious illness and the life Setsuna can no longer sustain then force their way into the conversation. Having each pretended nothing was wrong, they finally discover that the other is not doing so well either.¹⁰

Kazusa’s end of the telephone scene in Fugutaiten. PS3 gameplay frame: ©2012 AQUAPLUS / via 次郎JIRO, Bilibili.

They say harsh things. Kazusa demands Haruki back; Setsuna refuses. Setsuna is willing to help care for Youko but will not relinquish Haruki. Both still speak of him as someone to seize or return. Later, Kazusa says it should be Haruki’s decision. The statement opens a space within their contest without immediately ending it.

Reading this only as two people finally becoming honest would miss the resentment within honesty and the new concern within resentment. Setsuna cries on learning of Youko’s illness. She is not your mother, Kazusa says. Setsuna urges her to keep trying; Kazusa says any more effort will make her collapse. Setsuna changes her words: be lazy, have fun, work toward first place.¹¹

It is a tiny correction, more substantial than a grand reconciliation. Having just admitted there is someone she cannot save, Setsuna hears Kazusa’s exhaustion and no longer piles on the same demand for effort. Becoming a fine pianist can include rest.

Hostility remains. They have not agreed to share a future life or settled every old account. After the long call, Setsuna is hungry. She makes a packed meal, asks her mother to help beat the eggs and prepares to take it to Haruki. She tells her mother that she still loves him. If her family continues to obstruct her, she is even prepared to move out. Her new decision may produce further conflict, but she is finally willing to speak her wish as her own.¹²

Then comes the riverbank meeting.

Haruki had already been walking alone for some time. The call lets Setsuna visit again; it does not cure him overnight from across the sea. Their changes meet when she arrives. She no longer comes only with a rescue mission, and he no longer only sits in a room waiting to be saved.

Still, she asks whether everything she did was wasted. Certainly not, he tells her, but it was not entirely her doing either. He knows both that her support was indispensable and that it was insufficient by itself. He acknowledges the real debt and sets a limit to it. Deny the support and he erases the path here; admit nothing but support and she must continue managing his future alone.¹³

Even waiting needs precise words. Had he always believed she would return, Setsuna asks? He says he hoped. Knowing she would come readily includes her choice in his advance arrangements. Hoping names his wish and acknowledges that she could have stayed away. He still needs her very much. That need has finally found a sentence that does not begin in reproach.

Later, they watch Kazusa’s performance and interview together. Haruki sees her cooperating with an orchestra and handling an interview; she is no longer entirely the person who worried him. He is pleased for her and a little lonely. A caregiver’s sense of loss is not Setsuna’s alone. Haruki too must face someone important to him growing a life that does not depend wholly on him.¹⁴

Recovering a life thus means more than coming to terms with things mentally. Knowing which path to take, where to stop when it rains, whom one wants to see today and what one wants to do tomorrow makes the world a place in which one can act again. The riverbank acquires lived substance. Through repeated outings, Haruki makes it reachable again, a place where he can stay.

The events remain small. Life is already extending from them.

The Paths Are Overgrown; Pine and Chrysanthemum Remain — Tao Yuanming, “Homeward”#

In another route, Haruki and Kazusa return to Japan from Vienna.

The Road Back to Happiness does not begin solemnly. Delayed by work, Haruki misses his flight. Kazusa waits five hours, complains throughout the journey, and at the hotel they argue their way into threatening divorce. He is both husband and the person managing her affairs: he is busy, she is irritated, neither is entirely lovable. Three years together have not worn two difficult people into smooth stones.¹⁵

Yet Kazusa’s world has not contracted to Haruki alone. Before leaving, she speaks at length with Youko. Living far apart, mother and daughter are in closer contact than when they shared a home. Youko’s condition is temporarily stable, and she still enjoys teasing Haruki. Agency work, family talk and performance arrangements connect their life abroad with Japan. Their marriage takes place within these connections.

At the old house, the basement looks familiar, but the piano is new; the original remains in Vienna. Haruki picks up a guitar, hears Kazusa’s voice and puts it down again. They can return, but restoring the house has not restored the relationship in which three sounds once met. Kazusa approaches the new piano and gets acquainted. Not everything old remains; new things too can become familiar.¹⁶

Youko has not renovated the house merely to show her daughter the past. She wants them to stay whenever performances, New Year, family visits or homesickness bring them back. Japan acquires another home they can return to. A past place need not be only evidence that puts its visitors on trial every time they enter. Repaired by people, it can again receive luggage, rest and plans for next year.

Such a return does not depend solely on the couple’s courage. Youko negotiates and visits, is repeatedly turned away and gains entry to that household only on her fifth attempt. Later, “that family’s daughter” speaks for her. Telling Kazusa, she says she finally feels she has become a mother. Helping her daughter gives her an identity she had not experienced in quite this way.¹⁷

Doing things together changes more than the number of objects produced; it can change relations among participants. Youko makes more than a repaired house. Visiting, being refused and returning, she begins to be a mother differently. Haruki and Kazusa need not relate to Japan solely as those who left. The house accommodates this change but cannot accomplish it by itself.

The belated wedding acquires its meaning here too.

Haruki and Youko secure the school’s second music room and arrange rings, a dress and witnesses. Kazusa initially protests that she does not want this; then she explicitly says she will answer the vows. She and Haruki registered their marriage and have lived together for years. Wearing a wedding dress now does not supply a missing legal procedure without which the marriage would be invalid. Already a wife, she still finds it hard to allow herself a joyful turn as a bride.¹⁸

The wedding-dress scene in The Road Back to Happiness. The ceremony takes place years after the marriage was registered. Windows mini-after gameplay frame: ©AQUAPLUS / via 糖炒小熊clover, Bilibili.

Haruki tells her she is beautiful; Kazusa finally cries. He jokes that Youko will enjoy recording this. Such pleasures need not await the exoneration of their entire past. The couple has no right to demand blessings from those they hurt. They need not treat a lifetime without smiling as their only way to take responsibility either.

Still, Youko’s claim that the other party has forgiven remains her claim. The text does not name “that family’s daughter,” and the three friends at the ending have numbers only. The wedding happens; the mother, daughter and couple feel real joy. What the injured parties have forgiven remains theirs to say. Happiness, understanding and the justification of past actions carry different weights.

Old habits of care persist. Fearing Youko’s eventual death, Haruki schedules Kazusa’s life in advance. Part of his reason for postponing children is to prevent two major changes arriving together. The plan comes from love and reveals his habit: Kazusa has said she has always wanted children, yet he still decides when the time is right from the position of shielding her from pain.¹⁹

The ceremony matters for what it actually accomplishes. Someone burdened by guilt temporarily allows herself to receive blessings before people close to her. She has not returned to adolescence. She can enter the music room again in the identity of someone who has grown up.

Kazusa says she has already vowed eternal companionship a million times; a million and one will do no harm. Repetition has acquired time. Those making the first promise had not lived these three years. Those saying it again now know something of what traveling together is like and still want to say it.²⁰

Wind and Rain Darken the Sky; the Cock Keeps Crowing — Book of Songs, “Wind and Rain”#

The Road Forward to Happiness lets a vow encounter something rather deflating: overtime.

On Christmas Eve, Haruki and Setsuna promise to be home before ten. She even says he should leave any exclusive scoop to his boss. A major story obligingly breaks: the construction minister resigns, and the entire editorial office goes to work. A product released by Setsuna’s company the day before also develops a problem and requires a total recall. She rushes between stores and cannot get home either.²¹

Both break the appointment.

Haruki still wonders whether a table of food is going cold at home. Could Setsuna’s claim to be working late be another considerate lie? He pictures her cooking and waiting alone. These images exist in his suspicion. When she stands outside his office, he hears her say she no longer needs to tell such lies.

At three in the morning they finally meet. Setsuna is delighted and has booked a nearby hotel. Haruki remembers the absolute promises they once made, when a broken promise seemed to threaten both people with destruction. They still make promises now. Missing one need not break them apart. The evening has changed; they can still spend it together.²²

A chance encounter in love often wants to become forever almost as soon as it speaks. In the final session of Seminar XX: Encore, Lacan discusses this transition: an encounter might not have happened, yet lovers want it to continue without end. Repeated meetings and shared life are consequently more than remnants after love has dispersed. They give an encounter time. Desire alone, however, cannot guarantee every future circumstance.²³

A promise’s force cannot therefore be measured only by its absoluteness. “Home at ten tonight” initially gives the other person an evening to expect. If ten passes without a return, what happened at work and when a meeting is possible become matters the promise still requires one to attend to. Merely announcing one’s breach and guilt can instead leave the waiting person where she was.

This time Haruki and Setsuna speak by telephone, explain their respective emergencies, arrange another meeting and actually find each other. Setsuna comes to his office and books the hotel; the work of repair is not evenly shared. Yet she also wants the meeting and takes pleasure in it. Recognizing that she does more can coexist with acknowledging her joy.

“Next time” thus differs from “the same old thing.” The same sentence in a new situation answers to different expectations. Repetition cannot be counted by wording alone: what does it let the other await and do now, and how do they keep talking when things go wrong?

Old guilt often returned Haruki to a trial conducted alone. Now they can jointly discuss an evening already spoiled. With this room inside a promise, ordinary days need not pass daily through the end of the world.

Meeting, We Speak of Nothing but the Growing Crops — Tao Yuanming, “Returning to Farm and Garden,” II#

Another opening on the Setsuna True branch contains no goal as definite as getting home at ten. It is merely Sunday, and Setsuna wants to stay in bed.

Haruki offers to cook. She objects: her dignity as a wife is at stake. He points out that both have jobs, so why should he not cook? She complains that he has already taken every opportunity to take over the laundry and cleaning; he cannot take cooking too. Domestic virtue has a territory of its own. He is not entirely innocent: threatening to cook is his way of getting her up.²⁴

The jokes contain real sharing of housework and attachment to the identity of a wife. Neither has become a person without preconceptions. Yet Setsuna finally has a Sunday when she wants to sleep late, instead of staying perpetually awake as someone’s rescuer. Haruki does the washing and cleaning. Labor already performed supports this ease.

His mother-in-law helps them move, so briskly that she packs dishes they will need for another week. Setsuna protests: how will they eat tomorrow? Paper cups and plates, her mother says. They bring out old albums, then clothes and jewelry; hands stop working as the past starts talking. Haruki had intended to finish alone but is drawn into the conversation. He thinks he would have packed faster by himself. This time, he leaves the thought unspoken.²⁵

Moving slowly need not mean doing everything badly. Setsuna had many experiences before Haruki entered her life. Her mother speaks of her through the photographs, and he listens. They are sorting belongings and allowing a later arrival in the family to hear an existing history anew. Measure the day only in packed boxes and every laugh becomes a delay.

Conversely, laughter has not turned paper cups into china. Her mother’s eager help really inconveniences the coming days, and Setsuna says so. One practical content of closeness is that she need not first deny her mother’s kindness to be allowed to say they still need the dishes.

Before leaving, her mother declines dinner: she has another engagement, a play and a restaurant afterward with Haruki’s mother. He is surprised. A mother-son relationship he has not yet managed to address has acquired contact between the two mothers first. The evening belongs to their interests and creates another connection between families that need not always pass through Haruki.²⁶

Accustomed to worrying about others, Haruki feels disturbed when others attend to him. The Ogiso family’s liveliness can indeed be rough, without making it wholly unwelcome. Gradually he can admit that watching bad television with someone on a Sunday, talking of nothing important, getting mildly annoyed and sharing a meal is a life he once wanted.

Some kinds of uselessness become enjoyable only after one no longer has to earn a place by being useful all the time.

Friends bring another liveliness to dinner. On Christmas Day, Takeya, Io and Tomo arrive with food; pans already packed for the move must come out again. Conversation afterward turns to marriage, children and work, revealing Takeya and Io’s difficulties. Io likes her present job and wants them to share parental leave if they have a child. Income and promotion make their plans difficult to align.²⁷

This conversation gives daily warmth an edge. People bring ingredients and their own troubles. They are not simply the friends assigned to counsel a protagonist. A couple’s happiness is sustained through relatives and friends, each of whom has a life to lead. Here the after-story’s world grows wider than the heroine already chosen.

Preparing to move into a larger home, Haruki and Setsuna also think about children. He fears resembling his father, fears that a “problematic person” does not deserve a family. Could he laugh, cry and grow alongside them? Still uncertain, he finally says he is willing to try. He expresses the wish for a child first; only then does Setsuna tell him that the hospital confirmed her pregnancy the day before.²⁸

The sequence gives his wish a voice of its own. He does not hastily announce responsibility after hearing the result. Without knowing, he has become willing to approach a life for which he cannot certify his competence in advance. A child will not issue him a certificate either. The actual father must gradually be made through raising the child.

Commitment and reflection can follow each other within a finite undertaking: without an overall guarantee, a person can enter something, let it unfold and revise in light of its feedback. Haruki’s willingness to try already has preparations behind it. A new home, two jobs and family members already involved give his wish conditions in which to take root.

Before the move, a neighbor passes on the misdirected postcard. Windows mini-after gameplay frame: ©AQUAPLUS / via 糖炒小熊clover, Bilibili.

As they finally leave the old home, a neighbor calls them back with Kazusa’s postcard. Her Vienna performance succeeded; she will return after New Year. Setsuna reads it smiling. Haruki complains about the use of a postcard and suspects that writing the neighbor’s address was deliberate. There is news from far away and a new home waiting to be unpacked. The couple discuss cooking or eating out tonight and, within a few sentences, quarrel again over who will cook.²⁹

The past has not left. It no longer monopolizes every subject.

The ending’s mother-and-child image looks forward to family life. In the moving-day narrative, Setsuna has just told Haruki she is pregnant. Windows mini-after gameplay frame: ©AQUAPLUS / via 糖炒小熊clover, Bilibili.

When Joy Comes, the Evening Feels Too Short — Tao Yuanming, “Returning to Farm and Garden,” V#

These warm passages still permit a strong objection: do the after-stories soften the light to make us forget everyone outside it?

Sōseki’s The Gate offers a useful comparison. Exclusion draws Sōsuke and Oyone’s life inward. They depend more deeply on each other and have less of an outside world. Sōseki writes intimacy together with enclosure, retaining both satisfaction and weariness in companionship. Exclusion narrows their lives; intimacy grows within that narrowing. Each has its causes and weight.³⁰

Near the ending, Sōsuke escapes dismissal and receives a five-yen raise. The household rejoices, plans fish and red-bean rice and invites Koroku. Koroku’s own future has found a place too, partly through his active negotiations. These improvements are limited but concretely change several people’s days. Oyone says spring has finally come. Trimming his nails, Sōsuke says winter will be back soon.³¹

Two people in the same room need not feel the season alike. His anxiety cannot cancel the warmth she has felt. Her joy does not remove his anxiety. The novel accommodates two voices. Reading after-stories, we should allow their characters that room too.

Read together, Tao Yuanming’s “Returning to Dwell in the Country” poems contain more than the lightness of return. Neighbors discuss mulberry and hemp but still fear frost and sleet. Weeds outnumber beans; hoeing lasts until moonrise. Visiting old ruins brings news that former inhabitants have died. Still, someone washes his feet, drinks new wine, invites neighbors, lights brushwood and sits until dawn. Willingness does not make labor effortless, and raising a cup does not abolish death. Joy nevertheless has this night.³²

“My clothes getting wet is no cause for regret” expresses the worker’s own wish. Using it to demand that someone else willingly wear wet clothes changes the speaker. Setsuna’s willingness to cook does not disqualify her from rest. Kazusa’s wish to perform does not entitle others to tell her to keep holding on. Haruki’s wish to care for family does not authorize him to keep all care in his own hands. What makes companionship valuable must be read with these people’s wishes and fatigue.

Su Shi’s “quiet joy,” from which this essay takes its title, also contains companions, a waterfront in slanting wind and fine rain, a cup at midday and a plate of spring greens. It does not withdraw necessities one by one until people ought to be grateful merely to remain alive. Things to drink, eat, admire and share with others are the content of the joy.³³

Looking back over the three after-stories, their different contents deserve to remain. Setsuna can visit Haruki again, and he can walk to the river himself. Kazusa returns to Japan: the old piano is absent, but there is a new one, her mother and a belated ceremony. In another history, neither Setsuna nor Haruki gets home by ten, but they finally meet at three in the morning. Each changes people’s lives without needing jointly to prove which route is wisest.

History leaves later life difficulties and abilities already learned. Cooking, waiting, changing one’s words on hearing “I’m tired,” accepting help without immediately resisting, admitting that present happiness does not mean everything earlier was right: these capacities look trivial in a dramatic story. Once people actually live their days, they discover how necessary they are.

The first volume has traveled from meeting to staying together. “Both Wanderers at the World’s Edge,” the next essay, turns toward Japanese literature and asks whether the name “disqualified” can exhaust a person’s guilt and life.

This essay can stop by the river. Haruki has come outside. Setsuna has made food for them both. They still have things to say. There is time to say them slowly.