Reading Diary: 'Dreaming Without a Key' by Mizuki Tsujimura | A sense of inescapable confinement. Let's survive reality while complaining.

Introduction: Why I picked it up

S.Ssan, Shin Sakai-san's note review caught my interest, and I picked up this work, 'Dreaming Without a Key'. The first work by Mizuki Tsujimura I read was 'Tsunagu' (2010), which was serialized in Shinchosha's yomyom, but 'Dreaming Without a Key', which I read this time, is a 2012 work. Tsujimura's works range from those that leave you feeling happy at the end (known as the 'White Tsujimura' style) to those that depict the dark side of humanity (the 'Black Tsujimura' style), and while 'Tsunagu' belongs to the former, 'Dreaming Without a Key' belongs to the latter. As written in the review, the protagonists of these five short stories are 'ordinary people' who could be anywhere, yet they get caught up in incidents and turmoil due to a slight misalignment of buttons.

'The Kidnapping of the Kimimoto Family': It's tough to spend time alone with a baby

The final work of the five-part series, 'The Kidnapping of the Kimimoto Family', describes feelings that anyone who has taken care of a fussy infant will recognize. It reminded me of when my own child was an infant.

Whether a child is a good sleeper or not is likely determined by the child's own personality rather than how they are raised, but since my family had the latter, the year before they started nursery school was quite grueling. After all, parents have almost no free time. You cannot secure a continuous period of sleep.

Since I was working before my maternity leave, it was painful not being able to have adult conversations every day, and it was depressing that they wouldn't stop crying all the time, day or night. Even if I participated in a 'play area' for infants, I would worry about developmental differences compared to children of the same age, and on top of that, there was always the worry of whether I would be able to get into a nursery school after my maternity leave ended (at the time, the competition for nursery schools was extremely high, and it was difficult to get into a licensed nursery school even for full-time regular employees), so I never reached the state of 'enjoying child-rearing in a relaxed way'.

Yoshie, the protagonist of the story, is evaluated by her friend Risa regarding her life plan as follows.

It is only natural that Yoshie, with such a personality, would be struck by inexplicable impatience and anxiety when she spends days alone with a baby who does not behave as adults expect. I think it's the same even with someone else's child, but especially with your own child, you are overcome by a misplaced 'sense of self-reproach', which accelerates the pain. Furthermore, if you have days of sleep deprivation, you cannot think normally, so it is even worse.
Cornered, Yoshie finally gets caught up in the turmoil.

What 'Dreaming Without a Key' means

Regarding the title 'Dreaming Without a Key'. I think it is a metaphor for the sense of confinement where you cannot find an exit even if you try to escape from the current situation, but in my case, I sometimes actually have 'dreams without keys' while sleeping (where I get caught up in trouble with no exit without being able to avoid it). Perhaps I have maintained my mental balance there. And perhaps many parents have had 'nightmares' of a similar kind to 'The Kidnapping of the Kimimoto Family'.

In the real world, I feel that relying on those around you or slacking off on housework was the wisdom for surviving. Whether in an organization or a family, it would be good to be able to build human relationships where you can complain freely without cornering yourself.