Reading 'Arson in the Tsuge-Minami District' Part 2: Thinking about how to view the world from the perspective of a woman around forty

In my previous article, I wrote about the simple plot and my thoughts on one of the characters, 'Obayashi,' so please be sure to read it.

To summarize the previous article briefly, Obayashi is a 'man who is immature because he has no experience with women,' and I wrote that the feeling of 'there's something off about that guy' that he gives off to those around him is conveyed vividly through Mizuki Tsujimura's writing style.

So, is there no problem with the 'narrator' of this novel?

A famous story included in junior high school Japanese textbooks is Hermann Hesse's 'The Memoir of a Boy.' Yes, that's the one with 'I see, I see, so that's the kind of person you are.' I really like
the Japanese language education that uses this work in the first year of junior high school. The 'I' in this work is a real brat. He is jealous of his neighbor and friend, Emil, thinks he is an obnoxious guy, and tries to steal a valuable specimen but ends up breaking it. Then, when he apologizes and gets a little sarcasm in return, he lashes out in reverse. Even from the perspective of a first-year junior high student, one can retort, 'No, no, you have some fault in this too.' This work is just perfect for making one realize that one's own perception is not the same as someone else's, and that one's own subjectivity is not necessarily the correct perception of the world. To return to the topic, Shoko in 'Arson in the Tsuge-Minami District' also has

distorted cognition.In a way, she is late to marry but has too high of ideals. She is obsessed with episodes of 'being popular in the past,' such as being fought over by two popular seniors in her club, and she has turned down matchmaking meetings with accountants who have status because she didn't like their looks. Even regarding Obayashi's arson this time, once she thinks that 'Obayashi set the fire because he likes me and wanted to see me,' she cannot escape that thought. (By the way, Obayashi told the media that his motive for the arson was 'I wanted to be a hero by setting the fire and then putting it out,' but I think that aspect was truly strong. As I considered in the previous article, Obayashi is a person who is a mass of desire for approval, and I think he truly loves the version of himself that is helping someone by putting out a fire.) Then, if one asks if Shoko is just a self-conscious woman whose view of the world is 180 degrees wrong, I don't think that's the case. It is true that there was a time when Obayashi was interested in Shoko, and it is also true that Tomoe (a young woman at Shoko's workplace) looks down on Shoko somewhere in her heart. However, Obayashi and Tomoe probably
do not care about Shoko as much as she thinks.

However, I don't want to end it with 'Shoko is a hopeless person who is around forty, late to marry, and self-conscious. The end.' Can we not become Shoko?

The world we see looks different for each of us. The world seen through Person A's yardstick and the world seen through Person B's yardstick are completely different. So, is the appearance of everyone's world the same as 'the world'? (Please understand that 'the world' here refers to something like the true form of the world.) That is probably not the case. For example, suppose you have a crush on Person C, and when you confess your love, convinced that you can date Person C, you are told, 'That wasn't my intention.' If that is the case, your view of the world, which was convinced that you could date Person C, was wrong, and in the true 'world,' Person C did not intend to date you.
Since it is impossible to know someone else's feelings completely, we cannot know the perfectly correct world.
However, just because of that, we cannot abandon it by saying, 'I don't care about other people's feelings.' If we did that, we would end up hurting others. It might have been better if it were unconscious, but if you can think this far after reading this work and still think 'it's fine to be unconscious,' then you are happy. At the very least, I believe that we want to be people who can make others happy without hurting them, and that this is the human ideal.

If so, what should we do? I feel like Shoko gives us a hint. Why is Shoko self-conscious? Isn't it because she is 'evaluating herself and others'? It's not that Shoko doesn't want to get married. She even thinks that Obayashi might be an option when she tries to recall his face during difficult times. Shoko is likely evaluating Obayashi firmly within the framework of what is called 'men.' However, where she is unfortunate is that she is not evaluating herself correctly within that value standard of the dating market.

It is difficult to evaluate oneself correctly. That is precisely why shouldn't we evaluate ourselves based on our own axes and have a solid sense of self-affirmation? If we do that, wouldn't we be able to interact with others with more composure?