One Vision of Pain

“Then for the first time, without taking her hands from the water, Sachiko threw a glance over her shoulder towards her daughter. Instinctively, I followed her glance, and for one brief moment the two of us were both staring back up at Mariko. The little girl was standing at the top of the slope, watching with the same blank expression. On seeing her mother’s face turn to her, she moved her head very slightly; then she remained quite still, her hands behind her back.” (Ishiguro 167)

Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, A Pale View of Hills, illuminates the potential psychological damage Hibakusha, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, lived with. Driven by her daughter’s recent suicide, the narrator reflects, years after immigrating from Japan, upon a brief friendship of the post-bomb period. The narrator's borderline fantastic perception of the past is crucial in illuminating the impact of trauma upon her psyche and upon the public in the post-war period. The narrator attempts to reconcile the guilt surrounding her daughter’s death through remembrances of a young pregnant woman's interactions with a selfish mother figure. Both of these women were, in all likelihood, unreliable figments of half-truths.

 It is quite possible that both Etsuko (the name given to the first person, “I”) and Sachiko are the narrator’s blurred reflections of herself, jumbled by guilt and the passage of years. This split-recollection of trauma is complex. The characterizations of Etsuko and Sachiko seem to contradict each other throughout the novel, though “for one brief moment” they overlap in staring at Mariko and recognizing her pain. 

 This quote catches Sachiko, Etsuko, and Mariko in the moment after Sachiko drowns her daughter’s kittens in the river. Only after the kittens have been disposed of, Sachiko looks up at her daughter “for the first time.” Her acknowledgment is decidedly casual, she regards her simply by throwing “a glance over her shoulder.” Though Mariko’s feelings are afterthoughts for her mother, Sachiko does acknowledge them, and thus is not entirely insensitive. Etsuko’s instinctive glance can be viewed as the narrator’s maternal instinct responding in retrospect to her own past insensitivities. 

Sachiko’s biological daughter Mariko, repeatedly referred to as “the little girl” as in this passage, is an ambiguous figure. It is possible that the child is a stand-in for the narrator’s late daughter, Keiko. Once the kittens are drowned, the three females stare at each other “with the same blank expression.” This unity in their gaze suggests that the little girl, representative of the subsequent generation, is affected in much the same way as the immediate survivors by the bombing of Nagasaki. In response to her mother drowning the kittens, Mariko shyly and discreetly expresses her pain. She “remained quite still, her hands behind her back.” There is similarity between Mariko’s response and what we know about Keiko’s lifestyle. We know that Keiko was private with her pain, locking herself alone in her room for extended periods of time. Mariko’s tendency to seek solitude and to quietly accept her suffering can be likened to Keiko’s pattern of internalizing trauma. Keiko’s suicide is complex and not completely explored in the novel. However, it can be argued that she, growing up in Nagasaki shortly after “Fat Man” with a mother so profoundly affected was also a psychological product of the bombings.  

As a reflection of a Hibakusha woman’s experience in the post-bomb period, this passage shows the confusion and pain the immense loss and destruction Fat Man left in it’s wake. In her memory, the narrator depicts her disjointed perception of her maternity and the supposed impact on her daughter.