yes that seems plausible.
I’m not sure how to read her state of mind.
I interpreted Tomoko’s parting words as a kind of petulant decision to make explicit what was known by unspoken. “I left that leaflet. I visited your mistress’ apartment. I know what you are doing.” That last お願いします though could be just as you suggest - a plea for him to fix things in the family (rather than just fixing the things on his desk). (I think that raises something interesting that I hadn’t thought of before - that the objects left by the family have the same unspoken message “fix us” .) I do love the subtle ambiguity in the family here, and of course in Ogawa’s writing. She really knows how to leave gaps in the story for the reader’s imagination…
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Ch. 26
All those moments where the older Tomoko shimmers through the story feel so heavy and somehow sad to me. At the end of chapter 26 I had the strong impression that somebody is going to die. On the beach I thought for the first time that maybe Mina might die before the end of the book. Also the recalling of Tomoko‘s father‘s funeral strengthened that impression („we all have to go there; he just went early to check out the place“). But I don‘t think it will be Rosa; that would be too normal in a way. Maybe the aunt, but I somehow thought maybe the uncle might die?
For his relationship to Ryuuichi, I guess it’s part „normal teenager behavior“ challenging and distancing themselves from the parents, but it’s pretty loaded with energy… maybe the next challenge will be a car race? (the silver Jaguar still needs a purpose in the story beyond being a car).
Also there is this secret hanging over the uncle; I can imagine Ryuuichi knowing more and loathing him for whatever he is doing there…
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Week 21 ミーナの行進！ 
Photo by Chiara Guercio on Unsplash
(Join the 小川洋子 book club here)
| Week 21 | 13 Sep 2025 |
|---|---|
| Chapters | 41 and 42 |
| End point (kindle) | |
| Previous week | Week 20 |
| Next week | Week 22 |
| Home Thread | ミーナの行進 |
Will you be reading along with us this week?
- I’m reading along
- I have finished this part
- I’m no longer reading the book
- I’m reading this book after the club has finished
- I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
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Chapter 41
Well, I didn’t expect that!
The alarm went off in the middle of Christmas Eve night at the end of the last chapter (a bit of a cliffhanger for this week). I had imagined that it might be a burglary. Wasn’t expecting a forest fire at all. (I had forgotten how dry the Japanese winters can be - very different from my part of the world).
There were some lovely images of the family clinging together in the dark, and I was worried that 叔父さん was going to get trapped in the house. Then when he emerged and they disappeared off for their middle of the night 冒険, I imagined that they would come back to find the house reduced to cinders.
(Incidentally - here is 深江 - downtown in Ashiya, near the water and obviously away from forest fires… Fukae Station - Wikipedia)
So I was pleasantly surprised and relieved to find that it had all apparently been an over-reaction. But then… noooooooo
Chapter 42
Pochiko wasn’t on my list of possible casualties, way back in week 13.
We’ll have to see what happens in the next couple of chapters, but I’ll be glad if my premonitions about Mina were misplaced. Although Pochiko’s death was tragic for the family, for us readers, it was the least traumatic of the possibilities.
I found the funeral and its aftermath quietly moving. It feels definitely as if we are coming to the end of the 行進 and Ogawa is wrapping up various elements of the story. We have the return to the animal cemetery in the trees, and the family hoping that Pochiko will be reunited with the monkey train conductor. Pochiko’s personal vet makes a reappearance and tries (unsuccessfully) to assuage Mina’s guilt. The elderly ladies talk about seeing Pochiko soon. Most dramatically, Mina emerges from this tragedy now able to march off solo to school. The image of her disappearing around the corner (no longer part of the wonderfully magical parade), plus Tomoko’s comment to Turtleneck guy make me think that there is a future ahead for Mina. It is possible that the magical, fantastic hippo-riding invalid of the story has disappeared, and that there is a more normal child (and maybe even adult?) who is going to emerge.
Does Ogawa have any more surprises for us in the last two chapters? What do you think?
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Getting closer! 
Ch. 29
In hindsight the name „Rosa“ could have been a dead giveaway, but it didn’t click with me either. Amazing how Ogawa prepped this all along, just to drop it here together with the Olympic Games terror attack. Deeply impressed with all the little snippets of people’s lives getting interwoven.
Ch. 30
What a tense - happy - sad - happy rollercoaster! Ogawa strikes amazingly beautiful chords with Tomoko’s lingering memories.
No, you haven’t. I think it’s not “they knew” as a hard fact, but they were convinced of it, is my take.
まさか！Haven’t watched it yet, but was the aunt correct in her finding? 
Yet another snippet, interwoven between fact and fiction…
I found it amazingly grown-up. Trying to imagine similar letters by 12-year-old German girls, my expectation would be that they are more or less love letters, going fully overboard. While Mina simply congratulates him and praises his skills, telling him that she had always focused on him and noticed everything he had done. While German girls would probably describe themselves in the best way possible, Mina is very straightforward about her age and physique and only focuses on him in her letter as praiseworthy.
Well, maybe this is kind of the Japanese equivalent of a love letter? 
Ch. 31
First I suspected 米田さん for wanting to get rid of the ticket, but when Mina talked about it and mentioned the whisky and cigarettes again and how much better it is for her mom, I also figured it might have been her. It’s an interesting take on a child’s mind, lacking the experience that adults (especially adults as rich as her parents) can simply buy whatever they like and can’t be made into changing their behavior just because their item of interest is no longer available (for a short period of time).
I wonder whom they caught? Did they realize it’s Mina? Or did they accidentally catch the bakery boy instead? 
Ch. 32
Wasn’t she referred to as being the snow in the snow dome? Not actually part of the group of figures, but omnipresent, and when the snow dome breaks, nothing is left from her except a pile of mush. Another foreshadowing, a beautiful image on the surface but very deep and sad on the inside.
I was very surprised to see with how much professionalism Mina handled the baby, just telling the others how to support her. It was also beautiful that they used the old but still glorious baby-car for him.
I didn’t feel any sadness in the evening picture, just the relief of those who returned home after a long day, and a deep nostalgia.
But of course, this could also be a foreshadowing of this beautiful secluded world coming to an end…
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Finally got around to listening to this, and the words of the announcer are a bit different from what is written in Japanese in the book, so here it is:
Bewahrt euer Land
vom Kriege haltet euch fern
und gebt ein Zeichen der Welt
für brüderliche Freundschaft
wenn die Zeit der 4jährigen Spiele herannaht
Preserve your country
abstain from war
and give a sign to the world
for brotherly friendship
when the time of the 4yearly games approaches
[translation is mine]
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Hopefully you’ll catch up before we start 密やかな結晶…
It’s nice to have your comments on these reflections from a little while ago. (I’ve enjoyed reading the book at a very leisurely pace, but it is interesting how much I have forgotten about what happened earlier in the novel)
Yes, I’ve reflected that わかる can mean something more like “believe” than ‘know’.
I still smile at this. This is one of the bits of pure 小川. I wonder whether she watched this video when she was writing the novel, and imagined the name popping up on the screen with the 誤植 (But I don’t know if the video would have been easily available on the internet back in ~2005 when she was writing this. Youtube didn’t actually launch until December 2005, so I am guessing not! In which case, I wonder whether she was basing the scene from her memory).
I think the way it is written about - it seems as though there was a genuine burglar. But maybe this is one of those ambiguous 小川 moments where we have a slightly unreliable narrator and the reader can decide what to believe…
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I thought at first that Mina was having a big asthma attack…
While I thought all would be well again in the world, this being Christmas morning and all… and what with Chapter 40, and Tomoko experiencing a truly magical Christmas for what seemed to be the first time.
Me too !
That was pretty traumatic anyway…
When I first read the sentence, I thought this was Mina speaking…
That’s funny, I didn’t feel like this at all. The human Mina might well survived, but this was very much an ending to her, and possibly Tomoko’s childhood. I was almost shocked when she mentioned moving back to Okayama.
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Me too.
I was actually pleased to see this. やっぱり, I had been worried that the stay was going to get cut short by a tragedy. But it was always going to be a time-limited adventure.
I forgot to mention the biggest surprise for me in these chapters.
It seemed like you were right @Magyarapointe . Tomoko’s little “intervention” seems to have done the trick and 叔父さん seems to be making a huge effort to reform himself. I had thought initially that maybe it was just the pre-Christmas season. But there is no sign of him doing the disappearing trick, and Tomoko mentions that she thinks he has left out the フレッシー leaflet to remind himself to behave.
(What do you think, will he manage to stay with the Ashiya house? Or will his dalliance resume once Tomoko has gone? My guess is that this will be a loose end that Ogawa sensei will leave to our imagination.)
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That’s the plan! 
Thanks! And also thank you both for responding to me - it still feels like I am part of the club although I was so far behind.
Ch. 33
So our Wednesday boy invites her on a date in the middle of the night, ah-hah. And then Tomoko sees him with another girl, hmmm.
First thought: It is impossible for them to hold hands in public if they are a couple. 
There must be another explanation. Maybe it will eventually turn out that she is his sister? 
Second thought: Ok so she is 12 and he can drive, so he must be at least 18. Pretty safe to assume that he has older-brother feelings and not romantic feelings towards her? So maybe he just wanted to give her a nice experience…
Ch. 34
The planning sets off full steam Not sure whether there is actually a secret means of communication or whether Kobayashi is just making this up but I like the „you need to give a presentation on this“ approach 
I did this with my children as well, occasionally. What surprised me is that they bring Pochiko along And yeah, my bet is that they will bump into the Wednesday couple - maybe he planned to go with both of them together right from the start? 
Ch. 31 -32 continuation
What? This is crazy, I mean I was born before personal computers were a thing, but I got used to all of this so quickly
Ogawa was only 10 years old when the Olympics took place, i.e. even younger than Mina, so I doubt she remembered from the real event. Unless she maybe had a mother or aunt who pointed it out to her
I think there are two possibilities: Either we have a „stupid“ police who caught just someone, or even no one but reported a fake success, or we have a 優しい police who figured out that it’s Mina, talked to her mother and decided to keep this hidden while still putting everybody else at ease …
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Well, I might have misread, but I think that was just what Tomoko read into it (she has a one track mind ). But as far as I recall, he was just making conversation with her about it. There was no invitation as such, and definitely no date.
I think you are right that he has an 兄さん vibe rather than having any romantic interest in the prepubertal ミーナ (anything else would be 怪しすぎる. But the half naive/half precocious Tomoko has these complicated fantasies…
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Well (and this does spoil the surprise, so have a look first if you’d like to) the moment in the YouTube clip is the one moment when the coach’s name is totally visible on the score board. It is there for just a moment. But there is very definitely no 誤植.
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Ch. 35-36
What a lovely two chapters full of sweet memories!
自分がもう子供ではなくなったように感じた日、と。
On Tomoko‘s first all-nighter.
夜の縁には、朝の光が息を潜めて待っている。
On the sunrise. Isn’t that poetic? 
流れ星に願いを掛けすぎたせいではないだろうか
This gave me a good chuckle. By the way, I really think this is the reason for Tomoko to go hunting for him. It sounds weird to us Westerners, but Japanese are incredibly susceptible to superstition, are afraid of ghosts and so on, and not only children but full-blown adults as well
どこへでも、行きたい場所へ行ける
I can see this becoming Tomoko‘s motto, given she seems to have picked the profession of train driver, which sounds a bit exceptional to me…
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Well I’m nearly caught up just as the club is about to end!
Chapter 41
Near the start of the book I think I caught a foreshadowing of something like a fire when the adult Tomiko talked about there being nothing left of the house. So it would t have surprised me if it did go up in flames. But no.
I haven’t read much of Ogawa but I feel like some of her writing seems to suggest a potential dramatic conclusion that never quite eventuates. I do t mean that in a bad way. Let’s we what the rest of the book holds…
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Ch. 37
Tomoko makes amazing progress! From „I wonder whether I can get to the train station“ to sneaking into the company office and trying to find out things about an employee in like a day
Ch. 38
Wow, just as I thought, turtle-neck-man‘s encouragement goes a long way for Tomoko. She learns an incredible amount about Wednesday boy and the uncle’s car. I wonder how this will all resolve itself!
That looks strange from our perspective, but for Japanese it is totally normal to read the full name and age of crime culprits (even suspected ones!) or people who are affected by e.g. violence or natural disasters in the news or on television. So I don’t think our bat-man (or anybody else) thinks that this is strange or bad.
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You all already commented what I wanted to say as well for ch. 39, so I’ll skip that one and directly jump to
Ch. 40
I loved the Christmas preparations so much! It felt really 懐かしい to me, being German myself. All the food, and all the preparations! Tomoko stuffing the chicken and apologizing was really funny, it reminded me of myself a bit
And wow, a real Christmas tree where everybody else just went with plastic.
Happy to hear that the uncle stayed in the house ever since Tomoko issued that hidden warning to him. But I want to know how he feels about it as well! Is he happy with living with his family? Does he still sleep on the sofa in the study, or did he make peace with his wife again? is what I’m curious about as well.
And then Ogawa being Ogawa, she breaks all these sweet and cozy feelings by announcing that Rosa will die within the next year 
Well, I mean, given the age, she is the most likely person to die, but still, she feels like she is kind of keeping it all together silently in the background, the German world and the Japanese world. I feel like it will all fall apart when she’s gone…
And with that I’m formally caught up! 
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nearly…! I think you have two more chapters to read before Saturday…
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Well @nikoru is up to this week’s reading anyway!
I just caught up this week. One more week to go!
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True! But that’s this week’s assignment, like @Cathm2 said
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Ch. 41
Same! I had expected it to be related to Rosa’s death that was foreshadowed in the previous chapter - that they were rushing her off to the hospital and somebody had turned on the alarm to notify everybody, or somesuch.
But then we got bumped head-first into the first of the situations where Mina had “every right to cry but didn’t” as we were warned a few chapters ago. At least I did not think about Pochiko dying at all… What might happen next?
I once listened to an interview with Ogawa’s German translator, Sabine Mangold, and she said that Ogawa is famous for creating a somehow eerie atmosphere that never really materializes. So yeah, she absolutely agrees with your impression (and I share it as well).
Ch. 42
I also found the burial ceremony and everybody’s thoughts and words quite moving. Felt like a really nice wrap-up of the Freshy Zoo 
And yeah, I also thought that this is now the start of the wrap-up. Tomoko returning the card, Mina silently making enormous progress by being able to walk to school and to enter a more normal life, hopefully even with library visits and many joyful conversations with turtleneck-san.
Yeah, same! But then I got it on reading the next few sentences. That would have been a really weird statement from her side.
Yes, it was an ending, but it felt very hopeful and forward-looking to me, almost a relieved atmosphere after the burial. So I’m with domjcw feelings-wise.
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