[Finished Reading] #92 'Ken-chan'

'Ken-chan'

Author: Kodama

After finishing Ken-chan, a strangely quiet feeling remained. Rather than saying I was moved, it was closer to the feeling of "wanting to re-examine my own life".

At the center of the story is Ken-chan, who is also the title character. And there is another person, Tadano-sensei, who is depicted as the pillar supporting the story. When I first started reading, to be honest, I didn't have a strong impression of Tadano-sensei. She has a background of having a sister with a disability, and in that vein, she becomes a temporary teacher at a school for students with disabilities. However, she herself feels somewhat unfulfilled in life, writing complaints and gloomy feelings on social media.

That aspect of her was strangely realistic.
She isn't particularly unhappy. But she isn't fulfilled either. She can't find any definitive meaning in her work or her life, so she just lets her words flow onto social media. It's not reaching anyone, but she keeps updating it as if to confirm her own existence. That sense of temperature felt all too modern.

That is precisely why, as the story progressed, I barely noticed at first that the descriptions of social media were decreasing.
Her interactions with Ken-chan, events at school, and unexpected incidents. Her days are by no means calm; rather, they are difficult, a series of moments that shake her emotions. Even so, while reading, I felt the center of gravity of the story shifting little by little.

And in the final stages, when the existence of social media suddenly came to mind, I was startled.
Oh, this person had stopped updating, I realized.

Maybe it's not as simple as saying she stopped writing on social media because she was fulfilled.
But at the very least, I think for Tadano-sensei, the "time she couldn't endure without venting externally" had decreased. Her life with Ken-chan and her work as a teacher were by no means ideal or easy. Even so, she must have felt that she was truly using her own time.

When people get truly busy, or start engaging with someone seriously, the time they spend talking about themselves decreases. It's not that they run out of words to write on social media, but that their life becomes something that functions without needing to be written down.

'Ken-chan' is a story with themes of disability and education, but I think it was a work that depicted, even more than that, "the moment when the contours of life change through engaging with someone." It's not that the savior and the saved are clearly divided; rather, both sides change little by little through their interaction. The equality of that relationship was very sincere.

Ken-chan is not depicted as a special being.
That is precisely why the process by which his time with Tadano-sensei surely changes her life comes across so naturally.

After finishing the book, I looked back at my own social media just a little.
Perhaps, the more one keeps writing something, the more one's life might actually be spinning its wheels. Conversely, when every day is moving along properly, people forget to record it.

The thing I like most about this story is that it doesn't write that life took a dramatic turn for the better. Problems remain, and difficulties don't disappear. Even so, Tadano-sensei is in a different time than before.

The fact that she stopped updating social media.
That was the quietest and biggest change in this story.

'Ken-chan' is not a story about changing someone.
It was a story that depicted the process of one's own way of living becoming a little more rooted in reality by spending time with someone.

Before I knew it, the number of days where I don't need to put things into words has increased.
I think that is probably what it means for life to be moving forward.

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