I stole my lover's baby and used my mother's love to fictionalize our lives...
This child does not belong to me, but I can give her more love
Even if I fall into the abyss of all evils, I will keep that beautiful scenery for her
Hiroko meets and becomes pregnant with her husband, Akiyama, and is tricked into abortion by Akiyama and loses her fertility. Akiyama's wife gave birth to a baby girl, and Hiroko sneaked into Akiyama's house to see the child, but she could not suppress the evil thoughts that were born in an instant, and she abducted the child.
Since then, Heiko has taken her lover's child and begun a career of escape.
Mitsuyo Kakuda is a talented and productive Japanese female writer, and "Cicadas of the Eighth Day" is her masterpiece. In 2005, he won the Naoki Award, and was nominated for the Wasagawa Award three times and the Naoki Award three times. The film based on this film swept ten awards including the 35th Japan Academy Awards, and the TV series adapted from it won the AtP Tv Drama Award in Japan.
Next, I will analyze how "Cicada on the Eighth Day" reveals maternal love and human nature through the behavior of the character of Xiwako; how the baby Kaoru embarks on the road to find himself when he grows up; and in the third part, I will talk about the role of the humble insect "cicada" in this book. I hope that through the interpretation of the book "The Cicada of the Eighth Day", we will help everyone understand the author's expression and redemption of human nature and the protagonist's process of seeking his own path.
Cicadas on the eighth day
<h1>One</h1>
<h1>Human nature is so complex that it is often unable to make black and white choices: the maternal love and humanity of Xihezi are vividly expressed between the right and wrong transformations of this choice. </h1>
After Xihezi had an abortion, because of the adhesions of the uterus, she lost the opportunity to be a mother forever.
Originally a victim, he was seduced by a scumbag. But then the scumbag's wife calls Hitako every day, insults and insults her, and even finds her after she has an abortion, mocking her for becoming an "empty shell" that cannot give birth to a child because of "retribution for killing children".
Such a Xihezi is on the verge of collapse, and she is painfully determined to cut off her relationship with her lover and start over. Hearing that the wife had given birth, she wanted to see the child who was lucky enough to be born:
She didn't want to do anything, but just come and see. Just come and see that person's baby. And that's it, it's over. Tomorrow—no, this afternoon, she'll go buy new furniture and find a job. Forget all the old days and start a new life.
However, this plan, at the sight of the innocent baby, suddenly collapsed. In the pure and bright smile of the baby, she felt all the beauty in the world, and she had the idea of protecting her:
I will protect you from all pain, sorrow, loneliness, insecurity, fear, and suffering. Hiroko could no longer think about anything. She kept muttering like a mantra. It's up to me to protect. Protect, protect, forever.
Shortly after losing her child, Xi Hezi originally harbored deep guilt for the child who had not been born, and there was also resentment against the lover's cheating feelings, but seeing this pink carved sweet and immaculate child, her motherhood was awakened, and perhaps, there was still a little bit of repressed hatred. In short, she reached out and reversed her own life and changed the baby's life.
Protect her
This move of Xi hezi, as well as the setting of this character, is not in line with the traditional concept of right and wrong of the masses, but it is in line with human nature and is the choice of human nature.
Duncan said that "maternal love is so intense, selfish, and fanatical that it occupies the feelings of our whole hearts." For thousands of years, the world has sung the praises of maternal love as the greatest force in the world, and it is also the greatest flame, and this fire has made Xihezi lose his mind and make a wrong choice.
This mistake was made by Xi Hezi as an ordinary person.
After that, Hiroko named the stolen baby "Kaoru" and fled.
She only wants to live with her children, does not want to be separated, on the one hand she has a fearful premonition of "must not escape", on the other hand, she has the idea of "can get the blessing of heaven", the story oscillates between the two, spreading out a frightening progress.
In order to give Kaoru a stable environment, she gave all her possessions to the Angel House; for Kaoru, she worked Xiaodou Island; and even when she was arrested, she shouted That child has not eaten dinner yet, and what she offered was the heart of a mother. She gently taught Kaoru and, like a true mother, gave her all her love. Until the photos of the participation in the Shodoshima rural celebration were reported, recognized, the police arrived, and the beautiful life of Hewako and Kaoru was over.
By nurturing Kaoru, Kawako was redeemed.
On Adzuki Bean Island
<h1>Two</h1>
<h1>The daughter who returned could not be truly accepted by the family. Perhaps, the person who hurt you the most also loves you the most. Only by accepting can we reconcile with ourselves. </h1>
The little Kaoru who returned was changed back to its original name of "Huili Cuisine". She was frightened to pee her pants when she saw her biological mother, Keizuko; on a snowy day, she ran out of the house to find her "mother"; Keizuko sang "Little Star" hypnosis to her, but it was not always the tune she had heard...
All this strangeness made little Huili cai unable to think straight, and her series of actions also deeply hurt Keizuko. For four years, she had been frantically looking for a child, but after the child's return, she could not really accept her daughter, and her emotions became extreme, sometimes gentle and kind, sometimes hysterical. In order to escape the pain of returning home, she worked desperately outside the home, rarely coming home, and the children's dinner was often bread from the supermarket.
The father is a vague shadow, because the lover who is known to everyone has kidnapped his own children, cowardly and constantly changing jobs and drinking, and no responsibility will only escape.
Say "I'm sorry"
Growing up in this indifferent environment, Huilicai's life became accustomed to saying "sorry", she was lonely, depressed, unsociable, and suspected that she was a "bad boy", as if it was her fault that she had been abducted.
She forces herself to hate Heiko and forget the warm memories of her past.
The "bad boy" does not get warmth in the family, lives alone in his sophomore year, falls in love with his husband Kishida, and becomes pregnant with his child.
It seems to be the reincarnation of the Heavenly Dao. Heiko, who is not related by blood, has "inherited" something in the life of Huili.
There is a Stockholm syndrome in psychology, which refers to a complex in which the victim develops feelings for the perpetrator and even helps the offender in turn. This emotion causes the victim to develop a favorable feeling and dependence on the perpetrator.
Hui Licai is fighting with herself: she knows that the criminal "mother" who abducts the baby loves her deeply, but wants to hate her; it is her own mother who gives her life and hurts herself, and she cannot love her from the heart. Between love and hate, four years, a struggle between the "mother" who lost the baby and the "criminal" who abducted the baby.
See the sea at Shodoshima
These love-hate entanglements were relieved during the journey of Huili Cai and her friend Chikusa back to Xiaodou Island, and she was calm. In those four years of her life, she received the gentle love of her mother, and she was very happy. That mother, the sea, the sky, the sun, the flowers... All these beautiful things have tried to take her to see, she feels that it feels good to be loved, she also wants to give birth to her own children, raise them, and let her see all this beautiful things.
<h1>Three</h1>
<h1>To understand "The Cicada of the Eighth Day", it is also necessary to understand the metaphorical meaning and status of the "cicada" in Japanese culture. </h1>
(1) "Material grief" is an emotion of compassion and pity, a sensory aesthetic born of the moment of high integration of subject and object. It can be said that "material mourning" is a very important aesthetic concept in Japanese literature and has had a great impact on the spiritual values of Japanese people.
Zi Shibu's "The Tale of Genji" is the originator of "material mourning" literature. In the view of the Purple Division, there are three levels of material mourning. The first is the touch on people, with the lamentation of the love between men and women being the most prominent; the second is the touch of the world, which runs through the aria of human feelings, including the major events under the world; the third is the feeling of natural objects, especially the impermanence brought about by the seasons, that is, the appreciation and sigh of the natural forces.
(2) The image of the cicada embodies the feeling of natural objects. Cicadas get rid of death and gain new life by shedding their shells. It is said that the cicada needs to go through seven years of dark underground cave life to reach the surface, and once it sees the sun, it can only survive for seven days.
Although there is not a single physical cicada in this novel, through the narration of Kaoru and Chikusa, this "cicada of the eighth day" runs through the whole text in a unique metaphor. Among them, the women, Wedgetsu, Heiko, and the nuns of the "Angel House", one by one, seem to have lost everything in their empty shells, and their situation in life is like a cicada living on the eighth day, some die alone, some stubbornly survive, and see a different freshness.
Chikusa and Huili find themselves
(3) In Japanese film and television, many of them reflect the "impermanent beauty" of life through the image of "cicadas", reminding people to live in the present and cherish the present.
Winter Cicada is a Japanese anime that premiered on TV Asahi. The meaning of "Winter Cicada" is that it is not the right time to be born, symbolizing the love of the protagonist.
The title of "Day Face" is a plant name represented by "Material Sorrow", in which the male protagonist is a biologist who studies cicadas, and "Cicada" in this drama is a metaphor for the protagonist's short-lived feelings and lust.
In "The Cicada of the Eighth Day", it is directly named after "Cicada". Both Hiroko and Kaoru are cicadas that live to the "eighth day".
Heiko has been looking for a place to live with Kaoru, and takes Kaoru to the eighty-eight temples on ShodoShima to pray that "I can live with Kaoru today and tomorrow." She treated every day she spent with Kaoru as if it were her last.
I hope to live with Kaoru
Kaoru and Chikusa lay on the bridge of Shodoshima and said that cicadas that live to the eighth day can see landscapes and things that other cicadas cannot.
The cicadas of the eighth day must also suffer differently. Life is there, and cicadas can only accept it. Only by surviving such suffering can we have "the joy of seeing a new landscape."