after the quake

Walls and boundaries form a prominent motif in the stories and often symbolize alienation from society, the family, and/or the self. By passing through these boundaries, characters embark on The Journey Into the Unconscious. In “ufo in kushiro,” Komura’s wife is glued to television reports of the Kobe earthquake and gradually becomes more distant from her husband. The narrator describes how a “stone wall of silence surround[s] her” (3). Rather than draw the couple closer, the national tragedy highlights how little the two communicate with each other. The stone wall is revealed to be a barrier between the two that existed before the earthquake, as his wife had a habit of leaving home unplanned. Komura had become accustomed to this wall and never objected to her frequent disappearances, suggesting a relationship lacking in emotional intimacy and support.

Another significant wall appears in “all god’s children can dance.” One of the barriers that Yoshiya must cross is the “high concrete wall” with “its dense crown of barbed wire that seem[s] to defy the rest of the world” (53). The wall represents a guarded boundary that prevents access to the unconscious, and the crown of barbed wire alludes to Christian imagery of Christ’s crown of thorns. The religious reference highlights the role that Yoshiya’s religious upbringing played in his repression. By crossing this boundary, he can access the parts of his psyche that he has repressed, becoming more fully himself.

In “thailand,” the old swimming pool that Satsuki swims in is surrounded by a “high wall” (70), and the snake in her dream will emerge from “a hole in a wall” (76). Both walls symbolize a barrier around Satsuki’s unconscious and suggest that she wants to block or protect herself from something she doesn’t want to confront. In contrast, Katagiri’s apartment has “thin” walls, a sign that he lives partly in his imagination and that Frog is a manifestation of his deepest desires. By climbing down the basement shaft beneath his bank, Katagiri crosses a physical boundary between the well-known, reliable world above ground and the mysterious underworld, where giant frogs battle with giant worms. Symbolically, he also crosses the boundary separating his conscious mind from his unconscious—the realm of confrontation with nameless fears.