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Part 1, Chapter 7
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Glory, Heroism, and Death
Japanese Nationalism and Identity
Masculinity, Love, and Family
Reality, Perception, and Identity
Summary
Analysis
Fusako and Ryuji spend the night at drab hotel near the docks. In the morning, Fusako goes home and Ryuji goes to work on the Rakuyo, which is scheduled to leave for Brazil at 6 p.m. In the afternoon, Fusako and Noboru go to the pier to say goodbye. While Fusako waits in the car, Noboru races madly around the pier, gawking at ships and exploring the sheds full of cargo. When he sees Ryuji standing on the ship, he runs back to get his mother. They wave to Ryuji, who waves back and returns to work.
When Fusako and Noboru return to the pier, they relive their previous visit: Fusako waits in the car while Noboru runs around, admiring the ships that represent his dreams of greatness. Of course, Ryuji’s presence in their lives gives this all a new significance: Noboru is imitating Ryuji by playing sailor, while Fusako is waiting for him. This parallels the broader pattern surrounding gender in this novel: men embrace motion, change, and adventure, while women passively wait for love.
Themes
Noboru is proud to know a hardworking sailor, but Fusako feels a sense of overwhelming grief engulfing her. To hide from the scorching sun, they both squat by a sea wall and watch the waves, ships, and seabirds. Noboru notices numbers on the side of the Rakuyo and asks Fusako if she thinks the water line ever reaches the highest one—but she doesn’t answer.
The novel again associates heat with departure, adventure, and masculinity. And Noboru and Fusako’s contrasting responses once again show that Ryuji means completely different things to each of them. To Noboru, Ryuji is a heroic role model, and his departure represents him fulfilling his destiny of pursuing glory. (Despite the events of the last chapter, Noboru doesn’t seem to resent Ryuji anymore.) In contrast, Fusako feels the characteristic grief of the woman left behind at port—even though she told herself that she wouldn’t.
Themes
At 5 p.m., with the Rakuyo all loaded for departure, Ryuji descends the gangplank to meet Fusako and Noboru on the docks. Fusako comments that she wore a kimono because Ryuji won’t see another one for a long time, but she decides not to mention her loneliness. They say little more. Noboru thinks that Ryuji and his mother both represent perfect archetypes: the sailor leaving to travel the world and the woman grieving his departure. Ryuji knows that he can’t kiss Fusako with Noboru around; he secretly yearns to leave immediately and cut short the pain of departure. And Fusako wishes Ryuji’s face were easier to forget. Noboru asks Ryuji to write them, and Ryuji agrees, then says goodbye and returns to the ship.
Fusako’s decision to wear a kimono is significant: she all but tells Ryuji that she wants this to make her a representative of Japanese womanhood in his eyes. This choice represents her gradual transformation from an independent, Westernized woman into a woman who fulfills traditional Japanese gender roles (like waiting onshore for her beloved sailor to return). Indeed, Noboru’s sense that Ryuji and Fusako are transforming into archetypes supports this interpretation. It also shows that he shares Ryuji’s idea that heroic men are destined to go pursue a “Grand Cause” and leave the women they love behind. Thus, while Noboru, Ryuji, and Fusako all want to defy stereotypes and live distinctive, independent lives, they have ended up reproducing those stereotypes instead. This turn of events suggests that people cannot escape their fate—which is often to live out a preestablished, universal pattern.
Themes
Noboru notices the seagulls, shadows, and warehouse signs on the empty, sun-seared docks. At 5:45 p.m., the Rakuyo’s horn blasts. Noboru feels like this is “where all dreams began and ended.” He calls out to Ryuji, who is standing next to the Japanese flag. Ryuji waves back, then returns to work. To Fusako, the ship looks like a heavenly blade, dividing up the shore. Its smokestacks sputter out black smoke, its sailors yell, and a tugboat starts rotating it and dragging it out to sea. From the side, it looks completely different. The mighty ship’s horn blasts “one last enormous farewell” that shakes the entire city. It sails out to sea, and Ryuji is gone.
In this passage, the novel draws several explicit connections between Ryuji’s departure and Japan’s national destiny. The most obvious are the flag and the sun (Japan’s national symbol). But Noboru’s comment about dreams also references both Ryuji’s dreams of glory and the Japanese Empire’s dreams of global domination. Similarly, Fusako’s vision of the ship as a divine blade cleaving up the shore also references the Japanese Empire’s aspiration to conquer and divide up the world. After all, just two decades earlier, this same image of a Japanese ship sailing off into the sunset would have represented its navy heading off to fight for glory in World War II. Fusako and Noboru’s perspective on the ship changes as it turns, to the point that it looks like an entirely different object. If the ship’s departure represents Japan’s advance into the future, then these changing perspectives represent the wide variety of different possibilities inherent in the nation and its people. Through all of these associations, the novel presents Ryuji’s departure as both the beginning of a heroic quest for glory and a new starting point for the nation itself.
Themes
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