Suspicious The Characteristics of Kawashima Masayuki
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worried about what would happen to him if Yoko became closer to Little Rie. That is why the author concludes that he is anxious.
Still explaining about the quotation above, Kawashima became anxious when he faced a certain situation and condition related to someone he loved, cared
about and liked. He became anxious toward something vague in front of him. The following quotation will show how Kawashima Masayuki became anxious when
he was disturbed by his own thought. Here, he felt anxious when the tension in him increased. At the time when his emotion and thought were in tension, some
questions appeared in his mind and it ended into fear and anxiety that were united to disturb his own thought.
“Yoko had awakened but hadn’t seemed to notice anything, and for the moment, standing on the empty street of their neighborhood in Kokubunji,
away from the room with the sleeping baby, he felt a certain degree of relief.
It’s just my neurosis, he reasoned with himself. I just get freaked out imagining I might stab the baby. It’s not as if I actually want to stab her.
Who doesn’t imagine things that make them anxious?” Murakami, 2007: 20.
The above quotation shows how anxious Kawashima Masayuki was. His emotion and thought made him think clearly toward all acts and imaginations that
he wanted to do. Here, his anxiety appeared every time he got closer to his baby, which caused him to sweat and at the same time, the desire to stab his baby
increased and then continue to imagine that he might stab his daughter. The imagination that appeared in Kawashima Masayuki’s mind is caused
by the reaction that he felt and thought of. Through this novel, the writer sees that his anxiety had already messed up his mind. All question and things that he was
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thinking are influenced his anxiety. Murphy said that a secret that appears in the main character’s mind reveals some oddity from Kawashima Masayuki’s life.
The last evidence that also supports Kawashima Masayuki’s anxiety can be seen when he met a young prostitute named Sanada Chiaki. In the story,
Kawashima thought that Sanada read his note about his plan to stab someone. Here, Kawashima did not know that actually Sanada had mental illness. She was
described as a person who had bad experience in childhood life and got abused by their parents. That is why every time she felt uncomfortable with the situation in
front of her, she would hurt herself and Kawashima made her feel insecure because he shouted ‘idiot’ to her p.89. In short, Kawashima did not realize that
Sanada Chiaki was a fragile person, just like him. Below is the quotation showing that he was anxious after he prevented
Sanada from committing suicide. “Kawashima grunted agreement and stood up. It was then that he noticed
his overnight bag lying on its side against the opposite wall, and a shiver emanating from his bitten finger rippled through every cell in his body. He
experienced a surge of nausea and looked over at the girl, who had turned her back to him and was climbing into her slip. I have no choice now, he
thought, and the chill and the nausea merged with a peculiar bubbling excitement. I have no choice but to kill her. If she read the notes and lived,
there couldn’t be a next time. She’d be sure to tell someone: I had a client like that once” Murakami, 2007: 117.
His anxiety appeared when he realized that Sanada was so close to his notebook that she would be able to read all his plans. Here, Kawashima got anxious because
he could not let Sanada uncover all his plans and tell anything to anyone. Thus, he was thinking to kill Sanada as an effort to keep himself safe and to overcome his
anxiety.
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