Thousand Cranes

Trace Motif in Thousand Cranes

In the book Thousand Cranes there are plenty of motifs. One motif is Chikako's poison. She is a person who loves to meddle in people's lives. Chikako had an affair with Kikuji's father and now that he is dead she starts to interfere with Kikuji's life. Chikako uses manipulation to get what she wants even if it destroys people's lives. This meddling that she does is her poison.

Chikako has a huge ugly birthmark on her breast and this is the source of all of her bitterness and poison.

"Chikako unmarried because of the birthmark."(Page 5).

She believes that she can not get married because of the ugly birthmark and no one will ever love her. The only the man that ever gave her any attention was Kikuji's father, which at that time he had a wife and another mistress. This adds to Chikako's bitterness, which in result sets her to destroy the lives of the people involved in her life. She believes that if she couldn't love then no one else would.

Chikako begins by going after Mrs. Ota, the other mistress of Kikuji's father, because she was jealous of the relationship that she was having with Kikuji's father. Chikako would start rumors about Mrs. Ota and tell them to Kikuji because she knew of his affair with Mrs. Ota. "You must be careful with her. So meek and gentle-she always manages to make it look as if she could do no one the least harm. But you can never tell what she's thinking" (Page 22-23). Chikako is trying to destroy Mrs. Ota and Kikuji's relationship just as Mrs. Ota interfered with the relationship with Chikako and Kikuji's father. Chikako told Mrs. Ota that Kikuji was engaged to the Inamura girl to make Mrs. Ota feel insecure. The poison from Chikako built up so much that in the end she decides to commit suicide.

After finishing with Mrs. Ota, Chikako decides to move on to her daugher, Fumiko. Now with Mrs. Ota gone Kikuji started to get closer to Fumiko which made Chikako angry, so she sets out to destroy Fumiko. Chikako would use the death of Mrs. Ota to upset Fumiko. In doing this Kikuji would get a sense of Fumiko's disregard to her mother's death and he would become upset.

"She was only hoping that when she died the daughter would naturally go to you" (Page 98).

Chikako told this to Kikuji to make him feel suspicious of Mrs. Ota's motive for killing herself and also of Fumiko intentions of now being around him. With all of these