The Setting Sun

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1947

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

The Decline of the Old Order

The Setting Sun charts the collapse of the aristocracy in Japan after World War II. In this immediate post-war moment, Japanese society is undergoing radical change. Through the crises affecting Kazuko and her family, the novel explores the decline of the old order.

Kazuko alludes to the extent of this decline through flashbacks and reveries. She recalls her family’s formerly lofty status in contrast to their current struggles. They must downgrade their house, and leave the urban environment of Tokyo for a more modest place in the country. They must let go of their servants and limit their expenditure. They are not suited to life in Izu; this quickly becomes apparent when Kazuko nearly burns down the entire village because she is not used to disposing of her own firewood. If the local people at one time respected the aristocracy, that respect has gone. Kazuko is chided and pitied by her neighbors, even when she goes from house to house to apologize. The decline in the family’s living conditions is an analogy for the broader decline of the aristocracy in Japan, with Kazuko’s struggles reflecting the struggles of former aristocrats around the country as they adjust to their downgraded status.

For Kazuko and Naoji, the greatest embodiment of the old order is their mother. Kazuko’s mother possesses a level of refinement and grace that fills her children with awe, and they regard themselves as failures for being unable to imitate. Neither Naoji nor Kazuko ever truly feels part of the aristocracy, which reinforces the sense that there is no way to revive the old order. Their mother is a ghost of a distant world, a woman whose slow death throughout the novel is a metaphor for a broader social decline. The death of Kazuko’s mother is not just the death of an individual, but the metaphorical death of the aristocracy and the old order itself.

In his youth, Naoji rejected the affectations of the aristocracy. He considered himself an artist and sought to ally himself with the working-class writers he admired. His deliberate alienation leads to an irreversible social alienation, as he finds himself accepted by neither the aristocrats nor the working class. Naoji’s death by suicide reflects the despair of a generation struggling to find their place in a post-war world that seems to have no room for them. While Kazuko is determined to keep living and retains hope for the future, she appears as the only member of her family willing to embrace something new as the old order fades away.

The Lingering Effects of Trauma

The primary cause of the collapsing social order in Japan is the end of World War II. Japan lost the war, which has inflicted a massive trauma on society as a whole. Not only did many die on the front line and in the cities, but the country bore the shock of two atomic bombs. Amid radical social changes and hardships, people like Kazuko still struggle to process the lingering effects of trauma.

Kazuko is often unable—or unwilling—to reckon with the actual effects of losing the war. To her, the war was a brief period of conscription. She is more willing to talk about her sneakers than the way the loss has forever altered the highly stratified social order. These lingering effects of war trauma are an important theme in The Setting Sun, yet they are often only alluded to in the vaguest terms. Kazuko, like many of her peers, hopes to focus on the immediate problems in her present rather than the destructive trauma of her recent past.

Similarly, Kazuko rarely ever mentions her father, who died years before the novel’s events begin. While Kazuko and Naoji adore their mother’s grace, she is incapable of pragmatically managing the family’s affairs. Both siblings are fearful of mentioning how much they have lost in their father’s absence. His death is described in the opening chapter as an ominous and portentous event, with Kazuko’s memories of his death closely associated with snakes knotted around trees. As her mother slowly dies, the effects of this earlier bereavement linger but, like the effects of the war, Kazuko is unwilling to confront her pain directly.

Kazuko is more explicit about the lingering trauma of her failed marriage. Her husband accused her of having an affair, which has impacted Kazuko’s social reputation. The collapse of the marriage was also accelerated by the stillbirth of their child. While Kazuko does not seem to regret losing her husband, her child represents a real loss that Kazuko is still struggling to comprehend. Just as her mother’s death represents the decline of the old social order, the stillbirth of the child represents a rupture with an earlier, more innocent version of Kazuko who was less alienated from the world.

Kazuko, still feeling the effects of this traumatic loss and the effects of her social alienation, seeks to resolve her pain by the only method she knows: having another child. After losing both her brother and mother within a short period, she has the potential to give birth to someone she truly can love. She hopes that the child will be a way of healing from her lingering trauma so that she can move forward.

The Persistence of Optimism

The Setting Sun charts the end of an era and the confusion of living in an undefined, traumatized age. By the end of the novel, Kazuko is almost entirely alone. Her father, mother, and brother are dead, her husband left her years before, and her lover is swept up in his own self-obsessed decline. Despite these losses and tragedies, Kazuko embodies the persistence of optimism through her character arc.

Kazuko initially cuts a lonely figure, as she begins the novel struggling to adjust to her new circumstances, which inspires a feeling of hopelessness within her. She and her mother seek to put a brave face on their struggles, searching for reasons for optimism on both a personal and national level. For example, Kazuko and her mother try to assure each other that their new, modest house is enough for them. Kazuko and her mother also try to take pleasure in a picture of the Emperor of Japan. They assure one another that the Emperor is now liberated, just as they are liberated by the current state of post-war Japan. Their attitudes show a desire to be optimistic, even though the reality of their situation suggests that this optimism may be misplaced.

Kazuko gradually turns her gaze inward and searches for a way to define her future. At first, she seeks an escape through a love affair with Uehara. When she discovers that Uehara is steeped in a downward spiral of his own, she decides that she can forge her path without his help. For Kazuko, the prospect of having a child is an act of radical optimism, even if she entertains no hopes of a meaningful future with the child’s father, Uehara. Kazuko also plans to bring her child into the rapidly changing world that she will embrace instead of seeking to hide from. In her closing letter to Uehara, she writes of revolutionary changes that she will not only welcome but actively seek to bring about.

Kazuko’s eagerness to embrace the new and try to build a different society in Japan forms a significant contrast to the decline and apathy she has witnessed in the other characters around her. Her mother represented the old aristocracy that post-war Japan had rejected; her brother succumbed to hopelessness after failing to find a social group that would truly accept him; and Uehara has given up trying to build a new society because he no longer feels like anything is worth living and fighting for. Kazuko alone rejects this apathy, believing that she and her child can forge a future that is truly theirs. Kazuko’s optimism injects a note of hope at the novel’s end, suggesting that her optimism represents a possible way forward not just for her, but for Japan’s new generation.