General Idea

勇気 (Yuuki) August 29, 2015 5:24 am

Yes yes, the translation is wonky. The essential theme is organ transplantation. As a bit of a Japanese history lesson, to those of you who don't know, organ transplants were outlawed in Japan for quite awhile until around the 1990's. The politics of the whole issue was chiefly ideological in nature: it is a Buddhist and highly East Asian belief that ones body parts carry a massive amount of the individuals own personhood - organs especially are latent with unique energy. If a person has died and they do not have all their organs (i.e.: their organs are still living in someone else's body), there logical conclusion was that the "incomplete" person's spirit would not pass on.

That backbone of understanding in Japan was a VERY hard obstacle to overcome in the legalization of organ transplantation. This story explores the very possibility of all those cultural speculation: what would happen if someone received a transplant and the spirit the donor was still one with it?

Ah, and there are also many Western stories of transplantee behavioral changes, ostensibly due to the very same spiritual phenomenon speculated above.

Responses
    ... August 29, 2015 6:27 am

    ヾ(☆▽☆) Thank you! This was very interesting to learn about!

    .•♛ Empress .Yaoi. ♛•. August 29, 2015 6:45 am

    Interesting (๑•ㅂ•)و✧

    勇気 (Yuuki) August 29, 2015 6:57 am
    ヾ(☆▽☆) Thank you! This was very interesting to learn about! @...

    Thank you reading!

    勇気 (Yuuki) August 29, 2015 7:00 am
    Interesting (๑•ㅂ•)و✧ .•♛ Empress .Yaoi. ♛•.

    Yeah I took a course on Death as a biocultural phenomena and it just happened to be taught by my Japanese history professor, so a lot of Buddhist and Shinto values were taught. ヾ(☆▽☆)

    Alohomori August 29, 2015 7:26 pm

    Thank you very much for these informations. I didn't know about these beliefs.

    I know about the theory of the cellular memory though, but your explanation answers other things. As the hypothesis about the body memory excludes its action being the same as the brain memory, I was wondering why Keisuke could see, hear, think all of this and behave like this although it's not his personality.

    I was thinking there was a part of supernatural in this story but what you said cleared a lot of things for me.

    Your course must have been really interesting. It's a type of course that I like :)