The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

The main character of this tale is Hiroto Shimizu, who narrates the tale in the first person. In flashbacks, he tells the story of trying to leave the planet with his mother and father. An asteroid is about to crash into the earth, so they are evacuating.

In Hiroto’s flashbacks, they are in a temporary camp in Kagoshima. Government inspectors come daily to tell everyone to be patient, but eventually rumors start that something is wrong with the ships. The shipbuilders took the money and built substandard ships. Everyone packs up and goes home. Hiroto’s dad gets an offer from an old college friend to save his wife, but his parents refuse. Hiroto’s father says, “That feeling in your heart, it’s called mono no aware. It is a sense of the transience of all things in life” (244).

On Christmas Day, Hiroto’s mother takes him to Dr. Hamilton, who has a place on the only American ship left and can bring one person with him. His father thanks Dr. Hamilton for taking care of his child. His last words to his son: “Remember that you’re Japanese” (247).

On board the ship Hopeful, Hiroto goes to school. He is playing Go with two other kids, Bobby and Eric, but Bobby doesn’t like the game of black and white stones on a board. He thinks it is boring compared to video games and even chess, where he likes the queen. “She’s powerful and different from everyone else. She’s a hero” (237). He claims there are no heroes in Go.

Hiroto teaches his girlfriend, Mindy, Japanese so she can weave words into her songs. She wants to know how to stay “star” and “guest” in Japanese; she weaves those words into her songs. He phrases what she wants poetically for her: translated into English, he says, “We have come to be guests among the stars” (240). Hiroto wishes his father were there to help.

At Hiroto’s job, he finds that the ship is drifting off course. The command crew discovers something has punctured the sail. Hiroto realizes he is best suited to fix the problem quickly, though it will require several days of climbing to the solar sail to patch it. Mindy talks with him on the radio link to keep him awake. He continues to climb, imagining he is walking with his father, talking of mono no aware. His inattention causes him to almost knock a fuel tank loose and fall asleep.

During the last part of the trip, his father reminds him of strategy in the game of Go and is with him as he makes the repairs. It seems to work, but his earlier collision with the fuel tank caused a leak, and there isn’t fuel enough to finish the patch, nor enough time to make a second trip. He does have some fuel for getting home, though. In his mind, his father waits for a decision: “One stone cannot be in both places. You have to choose, son” (252).

Hiroto fixes the sail, but now has no fuel to return and not enough air to wait for a rescue, so he pushes off into space. He hears Bobby’s voice, saying maybe there are heroes in Go. At the end, Hiroto walks down the street with his father.