Mitsuyo Kakuda's "She on the Other Side" triggered reflections on violence in Japanese schools

Mitsuyo Kakuda's "She on the Other Side" won the 132nd Naoki Prize in Japan. The narrative of the work is a bit special, it is the protagonist's present and past experiences are interlaced to narrate, when you first watch it, it makes people a little confused and not easy to understand. The novel begins with Aoi, who then recalls the transfer in middle school due to bullying at school and leads to the appearance of caviar, creating a novel about the growth of the three women.

The name of the novel is very interesting, "she on the other side", if you look at it from the growth route, it is actually very easy to understand, the middle school Aoi, longing for, envying the roe and hoping to become a caviar, the caviar is the other shore that Aoi wants to reach. For Xiao Yuezi, the capable Aoi is the introverted shore she wants to reach. Aoi and Caviar's friendship ended in a parting after a suicide attempt together, and for many years they neither contacted each other nor saw each other again. They are like the two fish who have forgotten each other in the jianghu, obviously they had such a good relationship before, but once they parted, they broke off contact. As for the reason for breaking the contact, it is: "Because I am afraid that if the other party has changed, I am afraid to contact again, or I am afraid that if I am in touch, what should I talk about?" Can you speak as freely as you used to? "And so on. If you think about it from these perspectives, it is better to meet/connect than to miss each other.

The novel mentions a very common phenomenon in Japanese schools, "school bullying", in Japan, school bullying is a very common and serious problem, there are students who dare not go to school because they are bullied in school, and there are students who commit suicide because they can't stand school bullying. The reason for the prevalence of bullying in schools is related to the Japanese national culture of "following the flow", whether in schools or in various social groups such as enterprises, people subconsciously isolate those who are different in some way.