Reading Notes W10: Ichiyo, Part B

Ichiyo (905-913)

  • Okyo - a stylish women in her early twenties
  • Kichizo - "dwarf" sixteen year old and worked as an apprentice at the umbrella shop
  • People mistaken him as 11 or 12 years old because of his small face
  • He was teased because of how short and small he was that people dubbed him as "dwarf" (907)
  • Okyo is poor  and teases Kichizo about sewing him a kimono if she could but she doesn't have the money for it - she tells him, "I'm sewing to support myself. These aren't gifts I'm making" (908)
  • Kichizo tells Okyo that he'll never succeed in life because he'd rather stay where he is in life, meaning he'd rather oil umbrellas because that's what he was born in to
  • Hanji is the mean, stuck-up owner's son of the shop and will be a future boss
  • Kichizo tells Okyo that she reminds him of being his sister but she says she's an only child
  • Kichizo has no clue where his family is or where his family whereabouts
  • Because he has no proof of his identity of family, his friends would tease him and tell him they left him underneath a bridge when he was born, so he'd be taken for a beggar's baby (909)
  • Okyo tells Kichizo that it doesn't make a difference to her whether what kind of people his parents were and tells him, "If I were you, I wouldn't let it bother me. Even if I were the child of an outcast, I'd make something of myself, whether I had any parents or not, no matter who my brothers were. Why are you whining around so?" (909)
  • Omatsu, who was now dead, was a lady who made a tidy fortune at the umbrella shop and picked up Kichizo six years before she died
  • She give Kichizo a place to sleep in the kitchen and gave him a little bit to eat
  • She told him he's going to have to work hard and since then, he has been working hard on those umbrellas
  • Since Kichizo was always picked on, it made him a little fireball with a violent temper 
  • Okyo had moved into the neighborhood and her landlord was the owner of the umbrella shop
  • Because Kichizo would talk about Okyo all the time, that was a new thing to tease him about so they would say that he's in love with Okyo but she doesn't give him the time of day (911)
  • Okyo startles to Kichizo and tells him that she's moving away to a relatives house and he's not the happiest about it
  • She's giving up her sewing to be a mistress and Kichizo tells her, "When you're good at your work, why give it up for something so stupid? It's disgusting of you. Don't go through with it. It's not too late to change your mind" (912)
  • She then tells him that she's tired of washing and sewing and that anything would be better
  • Kichizo is upset that the only people that are friendly to him always disappear and that happiness will never come to him no matter how long he waits (913)
  • In the end, he tells Okyo goodbye and that that was the last time she'll ever see of him and left with tears in his eyes (913)

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