53 pages • 1 hour read
Breasts and Eggs
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Book 2, Chapters 16-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 2: Eggs
Book 2, Chapter 16 Summary: “Burning Up”
In August, Rika calls Natsu to tell her that Sengawa has died of metastatic lung cancer, which she hid from everyone until her death. Natsu is grief-stricken and feels guilty that her last encounter with Sengawa ended in a fight. She is thrown back into memories of her mother and Komi. She misses Aizawa, not having heard from him since she rejected him months ago.
Thinking of Aizawa, Natsu wonders if she’s still incapable of having sex. She attempts to masturbate but finds the experience unremarkable and quickly gives up. She feels certain that her body wasn’t made to have sex. She imagines Yuriko telling her that it’s okay for parts of her body to remain childlike.
Midoriko calls Natsu to ask if she is still planning on coming to Osaka for her birthday in late August. Natsu reluctantly agrees. Midoriko tells her that Makiko has been agonizing over whether to call her sister.
Twenty days later, Natsu makes the trip to Osaka. Arriving at Shobashi station, she’s overwhelmed by childhood memories, some happy and some sad. She remembers the day of her mother’s death, but also the joy of Komi’s visits and of playing in the street on hot days.
Natsu finds herself drawn to the apartment where she lived before her father abandoned the family. Entering the building, she locates apartment 319, but the door is locked. Natsu knocks incessantly, then attempts to force the door. She feels like if she can get it open, she might find her mother and Komi inside, just as she remembers them. Eventually she gives up and sits down in the stairwell.
Aizawa calls Natsu; anticipating her visit to Osaka, he’s come to the city to meet her. He’s been thinking about her since their last conversation and wants to talk things over.
Book 2, Chapter 17 Summary: “Not Letting Go”
Aizawa meets Natsu at the train station where she used to wait for Komi. They walk toward the nearby harbor, which houses an aquarium Natsu used to visit as a child. As they walk, Natsu points out various places she remembers visiting with her family, describing how her mother had to rely on the charity of others, and sometimes even steal, to keep the family afloat.
Inside the aquarium, Aizawa tells Natsu that he and Yuriko have broken up and that he told her directly that he would rather be with Natsu. The two of them reach a large Ferris wheel in the center of the aquarium and board it together. Aizawa says that he and his father used to ride Ferris wheels together. After meeting Natsu, Aizawa realized that part of the empty feeling he carried around with him stemmed from never having told the man who raised him that he was still his father, despite their lack of blood ties. As the two exit the Ferris wheel, Aizawa abruptly suggests that he father her child.
Natsu meets up with Makiko and Midoriko for Midoriko’s birthday dinner. She and Makiko reconcile, and Makiko assures her that they can always rely on one another. In September, Natsu arranges a meeting with Yuriko. She tells Yuriko that their conversation at the park changed her perspective and made her realize that she was thinking about childbirth in a selfish, egocentric way. She accepts that bringing a child into the world is a choice undertaken without their consent, but still, she can’t live with the idea of never trying. Yuriko asks if she is having Aizawa’s baby, and she nods. Yuriko tells her that despite his suicide attempt, Aizawa differs from her because he is still glad he was born. Yuriko, on the other hand, “can never accept life […] if [she wants] to go on living” (417).
In July of the following year, a pregnant Natsu meets up with Rika. They discuss her due date, less than a month away, and Natsu’s arrangement with Aizawa. Natsu plans to raise the baby on her own and allow them the choice of whether they want to meet Aizawa when they’re older. Rika has introduced Natsu to a new editor, Osuku, and they’re getting along well.
Natsu recaps the events leading up to her pregnancy. She decided to go through with the plan in December 2017. She and Aizawa attended an infertility clinic pretending to be a common-law married couple who had been trying to conceive for months. They were approved for artificial insemination, and eight months later Natsu was pregnant.
Returning home, Natsu calls Midoriko. They discuss her pregnancy; despite the changes it’s brought about in her body, Natsu feels well. She remarks bemusedly that nothing scares her anymore.
Natsu goes into labor in early August. At the hospital, she is swallowed by waves of blinding pain, but takes comfort in the presence of the nurses by her side. As her baby is born, she describes seeing something brilliant and blinding, like a nebula “twinkling in every color of the rainbow” (429). Natsu cradles the baby to her chest, marveling at her face and wondering “Where were you? You’re here now” (430).
Book 2, Chapters 16-17 Analysis
In returning to Osaka, Natsu finally confronts her memories head-on. As she wanders through the place where she grew up, Kawakami breaks up the narrative with interludes from Natsu’s childhood, each storefront and street evoking new memories. These memories provide further examples of how Natsu’s mother and Komi worked tirelessly to support Natsu and Makiko while maintaining a loving and stable family unit. Natsu recalls her childhood worry that she “had left [herself] behind” after fleeing her father’s house (388). In a sense, she has also left herself behind in Osaka, living inside her memories to such an extent that she is unable to participate in life. Large swathes of time pass uneventfully while she lingers in the past.
Natsu’s hope that her mother and grandmother might be on the other side of her old apartment’s door conveys how her grief keeps her suspended between the past and the present. Natsu can’t enter the apartment, just as she cannot go back in time. Her mother and grandmother will continue to exist only in her memory, forever behind a closed door. Natsu’s inability to open the door also represents her unwillingness to let go of her memories, which provide a way for her to keep her mother and grandmother alive. When she exits her old apartment to meet with Aizawa, Natsu symbolically loosens her tether to the past. She continues to carry memories of her childhood, some of which she shares with Aizawa, but she chooses to drive her life forward in the present. Her period of grief-induced stasis appears to be over.
In Chapter 16, the novel’s exploration of Defining Womanhood: Gender Roles in Contemporary Japan reaches a kind of resolution. Natsu seems to come to terms with her asexuality, finding a new way to relate to her body by comparing it to that of a young girl’s. Thinking of the abuse that Yuriko endured, Natsu acknowledges the privilege of remaining innocent in certain ways. She no longer sees her asexuality as a deficiency, nor as a blocker to motherhood. The fact that Yuriko’s voice speaks in her head as she comes to this realization illustrates how Natsu’s friendships with other women help her construct her own version of womanhood. The support and perspectives of women like Rika, Makiko, and Sengawa have helped Natsu come to a full and nuanced understanding of herself. After trying and failing to define womanhood by a set of arbitrary standards, Natsu accepts that there is no singular, objectively correct way to be a woman. Every woman is an individual who gets to determine for herself what womanhood means.
At the end of the novel, Natsu has faced down all the obstacles standing in the way of her desire to have a child. She no longer feels undeserving as a woman and a potential mother. She understands the moral complexity of choosing to have a child but accepts her desire as a valid reason in and of itself, circling back to the idea of happiness as life’s greatest motivator. Natsu chooses to have a child on her own despite Aizawa’s offer to be involved. In doing so, she defies societal pressure and affirms the validity of Single-Mother Households and the Dangers of Domesticity. Natsu and her baby will be a complete and “real” family.
Kawakami evokes the motif of bodily alienation several times in the final section of the novel. Sengawa’s sudden death from metastatic breast cancer parallels Midoriko’s experience of puberty; both come as a sudden, unwelcome change in the body. By contrast, Natsu’s pregnancy, which also brings about massive changes to her body, is a source of joy. Although she too feels alienated from her body in a sense, comparing pregnancy to a cartoonish costume she has “dressed up” in, she welcomes the changes. Ironically, in making her strange to herself, pregnancy makes Natsu finally feel safe and comfortable. Natsu laughingly notes to Midoriko, “I’m not afraid of anything anymore” (426), affirming that motherhood is the right choice for her and showing how far she has come in her self-acceptance.
Kawakami portrays Natsu’s experience of giving birth similarly to one of her hallucinatory visions. Kawakami acknowledges the pain of childbirth but doesn’t frame it as negative. Amid the pain, Natsu’s body “[rings] with […] explosive strength” (429), a strength that comes from the physical act of giving birth as well as the knowledge that she has remained steadfast in her own convictions, overcoming both internal and external resistance to create a happy life for herself. She gains courage from the women nurses around her just as she has leaned on women throughout her life for encouragement and the reassurance that it is possible, if not easy, to live life on her own terms.
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