Ah! An Abe chapter. This was cool. We saw his life, waking up and stepping on beer cans, a messy room, tons of cigarettes burnt out. He admits that he made up what he said to Gai but I’d like to come back to that. After that he’s shown to have gambling debts he has to pay back, he has the chief yelling at him, insulting him and saying this is why he’s 50 and not promoted further. He leaves and accepts a bribe from a store chain that is interviewing underage girls- what I presume is a hostess club, that has illegal immigrants and prostituion involved, and has yakuza funding. They are grateful for paying him because he gives them notices of search warrants so they can keep going. He has numerous loan sharks calling him for their money and he has a woman calling him about child support. He responds by taking pleasure in the fact that his retirement fund will not even be his, but rather the loan sharks. Is there anything more sad than taking pleasure in the fact that you don’t have anything to be taken from you? He then sits on his situation and considers himself a bug, I have to ask however, is he not lower than one? He has now conceived of two kinds of bugs, “bugs dreaming of a tomorrow and trying to live towards a future” and earlier where he said “they’re just worthless bugs crawling around in the same place”. I would not say he is the first idea of a bug he conceived of but I can see why he’d consider himself the latter. Unfortunately I think he is underestimating bugs, maybe he will learn why ants are so admirable one day. He’s ignoring the problem of his situation and saying “one day I will change this”. Sorry to say Abe-san but a human life is not provisional. Now Abe is the kind of guy I expect a Fukumoto protagonist to be! A dirty cop, a sad and flawed individual realizing what it means for them to properly take life into their hands and live, or so his role seems to be.
That was an effective way to show off Abe’s situation, it gave us a full day in his shoes with beer in hand ready to cycle over, repeating the process. But as I said, I’d like to go back to him saying he blurted out whatever came to his mind. Did he really? He seemed quite passionate about it, perhaps a part of him believes that. And moreover, in this chapter he thought to himself “but there was no other choice, it’s my job, right?”. This is aligned with his words “You’re right, that’s exactly what I’m going to do because that’s what being a “public servant” means! I won’t give up”! But, if that’s why he believes he should put his own safety on the line as courageous as he did, then why does he go against the job when he’s taking bribes? He is definitely an interesting fellow.
