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Appendix: Plot Summary of Shi no toge Chapter 1: Ridatsu Chapter 1 involves approximately the first eight days of the ten months covered by the novel, from the first outbreak of Miho’s madness.1 The chapter title, meaning “separation” or “secession,” implies that the sudden crisis in the family—the outbreak of Miho’s mental illness—is the beginning of the process whereby Toshio and Miho separate, or “secede,” from their former life, so much so that by the end of the novel they are about to enter the mental ward and be cut off from the outside world. The time is the end of summer, and Toshio returns from yet another night outside the home. The crisis , or “transformation,” the male protagonist of earlier stories has been fearing and desiring has at long last materialized. He returns home to find the house locked; through the window he sees his ink bottle overturned on his desk. After using a piece of brick to break the glass and enter his home, I felt much like a criminal, and a shudder surged upward from the soles of my feet. Dishes lay untouched in the sink, and I knew that the day of judgment had finally come. My body and heart both felt as if they were suspended in midair. I walked from the entranceway through the two- and six-mat rooms and on into my study. As I stood frozen there, I felt as though I were examining the graphic scene of a crime. Ink was spattered on the desk, the tatami and the walls like bloodstains. And my diary, sordidly discarded in the midst of it all.2 The image of ink as blood is significant, because not only has his enclave , his study, been invaded by Miho, as in “Ie no naka,” but she has attacked the very symbol of his work as writer—his ink, which for a novelist is in a very real sense his lifeblood. The reader is thrown into 223 the midst of what becomes the main action of the remainder of the novel—the relentless interrogations of Toshio by Miho as she becomes the “ultimate lie detector,” able to ferret out the slightest deception and prevarication on Toshio’s part as she gruelingly forces him to reconstruct his past, in particular his activities with other women. Early on Miho is revealed as a complex personality, a divided self who is brutally, relentlessly cold, yet at the same time warm and affectionate. At one moment she will stare at her husband with the coldest expression imaginable , then turn to beg forgiveness and pledge her love (25–26). As in “Ie no naka,” her fits bring on excruciating physical pain, and often the only cure is to plead with Toshio to douse her repeatedly with water and hit her on the head. Her body has numerous bruises and burns she cannot remember getting, which presumably resulted from falls during her fits. She has also had fits in the past that necessitated her being alone (on the banks of the Edogawa River, for instance) for them to subside— what the wife was doing in “Tetsuro ni chikaku.” Another aspect of Miho that is highlighted in chapter 1 is her uncanny ability to predict events—what some commentators have called the shamaness side of her. Despite the intensity of the first chapter, which sets the tone for the rest of the novel, there are respites in the Toshio-Miho battle. Fearful that Miho will run away or kill herself the moment he takes his eyes off her, Toshio still finds the time to go alone to the public bath and the movies. And, in the sort of scene Shimao is so skilled at writing, the changing moods of the household are reflected in the words and actions of the children, who often serve to mitigate or soften the intensity of the exchanges between Miho and Toshio. At the end of chapter 1 Maya is playing with her dolls: Maya talks to herself when she plays with her dolls. Daddy’s stupid, I don’t like my house anymore, I went to another house. Every time things started up, we sat and talked. We talked about so many things. The first time we’d done so since our marriage. I might have been getting used to this. But it worried me that my wife’s dark expression didn’t fade at all. The pain she had at...

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