53 pages • 1 hour read
A Gesture Life
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Chapters 10-12
Chapter 10 Summary
Out for a drive through Bedley Run, an elderly Hata passes his old store and notices a for sale sign. He is shocked that Liv is the one selling it; she never mentioned it. Sunny Medical Supply going out of business disturbs Hata—he hoped the store would remain a humble legacy of “Doc Hata” and is troubled that his reputation will disappear, leaving nothing in his memory.
Liv sends meals to Hata regularly, and Renny calls to check up on him. When Renny visits, he closely observes Hata for any concerning changes. It is unusual that the house is unswept, dishes unwashed, and mail unsorted. Renny drinks a glass of wine and tells Hata Liv desires a permanent relationship. Though Renny desires the same, he fears she is simply settling for him. Renny helps Hata sort through the mail. They set up the dozens of get-well cards on the mantel, including one without a return address.
Hata wishes to thank the villagers for the get-well cards, but the collective memory of Doc Hata has disappeared. His reputation went from the nice old fellow to a random, ancient oriental. The day before, Hata called Lerner’s—the clothing store Sunny manages—and hung up after hearing her voice. He drives now to the failing, empty mall, remembering his dream of building a family reputation with Sunny. Upon seeing Lerner’s, Hata is impressed that Sunny is managing such a huge, professionally staffed store. He thinks back to the closing of Sunny Medical Supply, one of his life’s many failed attempts at belonging. At first, Sunny is nowhere in sight. The assistant manager recognizes that they look related, after which Hata has an asthma attack.
In the mall, Hata sees Sunny, now 32, for the first time in 13 years inside Kiddy Kare with her son. Her son has her eyes and color, with tightly curled hair. When Sunny finally sees Hata, she drops her keys. At the food court, Sunny shares that she managed a store in Long Island until it became too expensive to live there. She asks him not to mention to the six-year-old Thomas that Hata is his grandfather to avoid expectations. The feeling that there was once love and not just duty and responsibility between them strikes him. He tells Sunny how proud he is to see her in a leadership position with such attentive employees. Unfortunately, the store is closing, and she has to find work. Hata offers to help with Thomas until she finds another management position, which Sunny refuses. They plan to meet to go shopping for Thomas. When Hata passes Kiddie Kare, he realizes Sunny sent the card for the sake of her son. He wonders then if love truly conquers all, or if some like him remain unvanquished.
Chapter 11 Summary
Hata is sleepless after enjoying an afternoon with the energetic Thomas. He feels he rubbed Sunny the wrong way by entering her territory too fast. Hata took Thomas shopping for toys, telling people that he is his grandson. Sunny was cross when she saw the bulging bags, and she asked Thomas to thank Mr. Hata. It’s bittersweet for Hata, who realizes how brief his time with Thomas will be in the days to come, and how impossible it is to abide by Sunny’s wishes. He wonders who he really is to Sunny and Thomas, his life suddenly feeling full of possibility. After dropping Thomas off, Hata witnesses a teenaged boy bothering a teenaged girl until she takes a black cloth and puts it over her head. Hata understands the peculiar action as a means of disappearing, remembering the cloth Sunny found and Kkutaeh, whom he came to call K.
In a flashback, Captain Ono instructs young Hata to remove K from service for medical reasons, despite lack of illness—a precaution not made for the other girls. Captain Ono instructs Hata to look for a black flag outside the infirmary every morning. The choice is intentionally belittling, as his surname Kurohata literally means black flag, referring to the ones hung at village gates in olden times to warn of contagion. The Kurohatas come from a lineage of apothecaries who ventured into stricken villages. Haunted by Endo’s relinquishment of his token, Hata can’t bring himself to visit the girls. Each girl is visited by 20 to 30 men every night, after which their privates bleed and swell beyond recognition. It is odd that K is kept separate— it seems Captain Ono has discovered something unique about her.
During Hata’s morning walk, Captain Ono drags a menstruating K to him. He is angry Hata didn’t send another girl to the commander, who is particular about purity. K doesn’t follow Hata until he speaks in her language. In the infirmary, she claims Hata is Korean—he speaks more Korean than any Japanese would. K sounds mature, confident, and educated in her own language. She states that Hata’s face seems gentle, kind, and careful. K asks what the Captain wants from her. She fears him, as he isolates her and examines her body as if planning something terrible. Though Hata is disturbed, he doesn’t question the captain.
K is thankful that Endo killed her sister, and she wishes for Hata to do the same to her. She grabs a surgeon’s blade, instigating Hata to shoot her in self-defense. When he doesn’t, she starts to cry that she will somehow kill herself. In the days afterwards, Hata allows her to sleep in the examination room, neither touching nor speaking to her. Hata feels a connection roused from speaking in his childhood language. He is drawn to her presence by the notion that by being near her he might somehow be found.
Chapter 12 Summary
For the next few days, Hata spends undisturbed time with K, taking rice balls for her to eat. When they speak about their families, K is especially interested in the Kurohatas. Hata feels that he fails to honor them. K’s father, a Korean ambassador, never spoke to his daughters and was pleased at the birth of her younger brother. Hata tells K it isn’t better that her sister is dead, and she could have persevered and had a long, decent life. K laughs, thanking Hata for his hopefulness. K shares she educated herself by studying with her brother. When they walk to her sister’s grave, K admits that she and her sister were taken by military recruiters to prevent her brother from being conscripted for the army, unaware of the nature of their service. They speak in the darkness, pretending to be ordinary people. When he leads her back to the closet Captain Ono has ordered Hata to lock her in, they hold hands in the dark, neither moving nor speaking.
Two days later, Hata sees the black flag on the infirmary and heads to K’s closet. He tells her that the Captain will come to the infirmary, and she asks once more that Hata mercy-kill her. She claims that Hata is like her brother, generous and innocent, but brave by taking risks to be kind to her. K enjoys speaking of their hopes and plans, and the dream of meeting one day after the war. Hata wants to believe that their dreams will come true, claiming he will protect her. K replies sharply that the doctor is coming, and that the war won’t be finished before that. K finds their dreaming unrealistic, and says that trying to make it sound real makes her feel desperate and mad. She tells Hata he is a decent man, and she is tired of pretending. Hata strokes the crown of her head until she seems asleep. He then lays down beside her and rapes her as she sleeps. He tells her he loves her twice, and she doesn’t respond. Hata feels he could have done anything for her—would help her escape or even willingly injure another. As he leaves the closet, he hears her crying.
Hata decides to confront Captain Ono for his love for K, prepared to attack him if needed. He remembers the desire to exact revenge on his class bullies and how nothing transpired. Hata finds the doctor berating soldiers and asks to speak to him alone. The doctor then says about Hata: “You, Lieutenant, too much depend upon generous fate and gesture. There is no internal possession, no embodiment. Thus you fail in some measure always” (265). The doctor knows Hata’s intentions, saying Hata wishes to be resolute but sees nothing convincing in him. He claims that he took interest in K because of her pure breeding. He then calls Hata a fool, mocking his attempt to protect her and asking amusedly if K has professed her love and desire to meet after the war. When Hata claims he loves her and will marry her after the war, the Captain tells Hata that K has been pregnant since before she arrived. Hata tackles the doctor, who then strikes Hata unconscious.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
After 13 years, Hata finally meets Sunny once again, who is now a hard-working professional. Hata continues to act as though he owes his adopted daughter something—he doesn’t impose himself on her and lets her say and do as she wishes. When he finally meets Sunny’s son Thomas, he starts to feel alive and full of hope. He doesn’t recognize that it is love, and in his own way, he acknowledges that he only wishes he was young enough to handle such an energetic young boy. His life feels full of possibility, even though he realizes this time with them will most likely be limited. This foreshadows not only the possibility of their time together being shortened, but of Hata’s own dark sensibility and belief that he neither deserves nor will ever have any kind of long-term attachment with a loved one.
The sight of the teenaged girl hiding behind a black cloth in the mall takes Hata back to his time during the war. The black cloth triggers the memory of the black flag—once again signaling its importance as a symbol and its relation to K’s significance. The doctor orders Hata to look out for the black flag to remove K from her isolation, serving as an ominous warning of what is yet to come. Historically, a black flag was a symbol of infectious disease to warn outsiders of an outbreak in a town, and Hata’s adoptive family name—Kurohata—is a symbol of something diseased within Hata that an ominous black flag would be necessary as a warning.
In Chapters 11 and 12, the reader is properly introduced to K and the nature of her relationship with Hata. As the story comes through Hata’s biased perspective, it is almost overlooked that Hata forces himself on K for sex without her consent. When she cries, Hata believes it is at the loss of her womanhood—which is undeniably false. Although Hata believes himself to be above the base desires of sex, he gives in to sexual desires believing it to be love. Even in his own mind, Hata seems to be only trying to convince himself of the strength of his love for K. Hata imagines their sexual relations to be a given act of gratitude for the kindness he has done for her. K senses something kind in Hata, asking him to mercy kill her as Endo did her sister. Hata believes that he is saving her for a possible life together afterwards, and though K indulges his fantasies, she attempts a close relationship with him so that he might build the courage to save her from the situation at hand.
K is of an educated background, unlike the rest of the comfort girls who speak in a provincial dialect. The daughter of a Korean ambassador, she was forced into service as a comfort girl to ensure that her only brother can continue his studies. Captain Ono expresses a respect for her “pure breeding,” and for this reason, he keeps her apart from the others. Though both Captain Ono and Hata act as though protecting her is a noble act, Hata truly believes he loves K through the connection he feels—she sees who he really is and recognizes his soul. What no one else has been able to see, particularly in a lifetime of attempting to assimilate in Japanese society, K sees in him and is interested in knowing and understanding. However, this connection does not rouse anything substantial in Hata.
Captain Ono exposes very directly the core fault in Hata’s character—reflected both in the title of the book and in the peculiar lifestyle of gestures Hata leads. He describes Hata’s character as lacking true embodiment or internal possession, and that he relies too heavily on generous fate and gesture. Even in his desire to be a knight in shining armor for the sake of K, his inner desire to be resolute is not strong enough to convince anyone.
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