The Grasshopper and the Bell-Cricket

The culture of lantern-making that arises among the children is a Modernist art movement in miniature, and as such, it prizes beauty and originality in equal measure. The first child to make his own lantern does so not out of any artistic impulse but because, unlike his wealthier peer, he can’t afford to buy one. Necessity is the mother of invention, and this child displays a remarkable ingenuity in constructing what he cannot buy, out of materials he already has. His innovation attracts newcomers to the scene, and soon there is a thriving subculture of “wise child-artists” (Paragraph 3) who compete to produce and show off the most original and beautiful lanterns. The competition among them—and the drive for originality—produces novel forms and techniques, even as their willingness to copy one another allows the art form to progress.

Paraphrasing the children’s unspoken desires, the narrator expresses the ethos of their movement: “Look at my lantern! Be the most unusually beautiful!” (Paragraph 3). The first exclamation here evokes the desire to be seen and admired: The children lavish time and care on these lanterns so that their inner selves will be appreciated by their peers. The second exclamation echoes the poet Ezra Pound’s famous exhortation to the Modernists of Europe: “Make it new.” The version of this sentiment found in Kawabata’s story makes explicit what was subtextual in Pound’s dictum—that the drive for originality is inherently competitive, and that competition is its engine.

As soon as this culture gets going, it transfigures and even devalues what came before it. The original red lantern, previously a mark of its owner’s status and privilege, is now discarded as “a tasteless object that could be bought at a store.” (Paragraph 3). The first homemade lantern is also thrown away. It birthed a movement, but it was made without an awareness of its function as art, and now, in light of everything that has come after, its design appears “too simple.” All on their own, the children have created a microcosm of the modern world, in which the search for novelty and originality drives constant innovation, and each new form lays the foundation for that which will supplant it.

The events that conclude the story further emphasize this valorization of the original or unique. A boy exclaims that he has found a grasshopper and will give it to whoever asks. The grasshopper is a fairly ordinary insect but exciting enough to draw a crowd. One by one and then in unison, the children cry out—all in the same tone of greedy enthusiasm—that they want it, but the boy ignores them. Only when one girl says quietly, “Yes. I want it,” does he give it away (Paragraph 10). As the boy and the girl deftly transfer the insect from one lantern to the other, the narrator understands that this was the boy’s plan all along, that he never intended to give the insect to anyone other than this particular girl. Moreover, it’s not a grasshopper at all but a bell cricket—an insect the children all regard as much more rare and special. Everything about this exchange emphasizes the value of that which stands out from the crowd: the one girl speaking quietly among all the clamoring children, the one bell cricket among all the grasshoppers, even the artful, inventive way in which the boy courts the girl.

As they stand opposite one another, the narrator notices something neither child sees: that each child’s name is inscribed in light on the other child’s body, marking each of them out as uniquely belonging to the other. All the art and invention described in the preceding paragraphs has led to this achievement of total personal uniqueness, in which the girl is no one else but herself, and there is no one else for her but this specific boy, and vice versa. This personal uniqueness is the quality the narrator describes as rare in the adult world: “Even if you have the wit to search by yourself in a bush far away from the other children, there are not many bell crickets in the world” (Paragraph 25). Though the metaphorical comparison to species of insects suggests that such uniqueness is an innate quality, the story makes clear that it is instead cultivated through a lifelong practice of self-invention and aesthetic intention.