“Blue Moon”is an essay written by renowned Japanese writer Hiromi Kawakami, and published in Granta 127: Japan. In this extremely rhetorical piece, Kawakami put the inevitable inaccuracy of translation and the fragility of life in parallel, thus relating her personal transition in embracing the fact of her little chance to survive the malignant tumor to the difficulty in translating Japanese haiku to the Russian audience. As she explained, “Things are always, at best, a near miss. We get through, sometimes just barely”. Finally, while she was composing a poem, the mixed feeling of sadness for transitory happiness flashed across her mind on a snowy day in Russia.
I created an edge list of characters in the essay and defined the connection as they met each other in person. Then I uploaded the excel to Google Fusion Tables to generate the network chart.
This network graph demonstrates the direct contacts between characters. It echoes with the tone of the essay, which depicts the author as the center figure and focus on her own transition. However, the graph fails to reveal the nature of these relationships, specifically the factors which triggers the development of the author’s mentality. The chart also lacks the importance of each character’s role in the essay. I believe that it can still be optimized with further consideration.
This is interesting, because I think a lot of the readings from the Japan edition of Granta all had very similar types of networks (don’t quote me, that’s just my own observation!). My network was similar to yours, including any direct contact the narrator had with any one character, making the narrator the center of the network while not really delving into any of the ‘satellite’ nodes’ relationships (or lack thereof) with one another. It would be interesting to see weights applied to each node based on how much the narrator was in contact with them!
Great blog post! I really like how you color coordinated the nodes to bring out additional insights. Your network graph is similar to mine in that the narrator is the central character connecting all of the other characters together; although I suppose this is by definition what the narrator should be doing. You make great points that this graph is limited in that it does not reveal the progression of the author’s mentality. It would be really interesting to create a graph which shows this development.
This is very well done. I believe you provide a sufficient amount of background for the reader to get a good sense of what the short-story was about but not too much to get into any mundane details. I really like the way you set up your network visualization by having the narrator visibly at the center of it to relate to how you said that the story centered on the narrator. This is a good technique to give a higher meaning to the visualization that is trying to convey meaning about another concept.
Dear leo6,
I believe this chart effectively illustrates the dichotomy that happens when translating between two languages. That said, it does not reflect the extent of the miscommunication that happens in language as fragile and subjective as poetry, which you’ve explained in your post. In this way, I question the efficacy of a network chart to carry a type of subjective value that seems crucial in this particular story. Perhaps a network diagram is not a wise way of conveying such information.
I thought it well done how you briefed us on the content of the narrative before anything, giving weight to the nature of the central character’s movement throughout the story, and notifying us to the limitations of the particular network graph you generated from the list of characters and the ways they crossed paths. Maybe you could generate a “strength tie” graph to demonstrate the strength of relationship between pairs of characters and code the kinds of relationships or roles played to a wider range of colors to further elucidate the affiliations and connections.