Significance of trains

Trains generally represent the passage of time. During one dream Natsuko has, she imagines taking a train through different stages of her life and seeing people on the train, such as her father, who are long dead. She has this dream after Makiko and Midoriko take a train back to Tokyo, and after waking up she seems to equate her body with the train in her dream, saying that she has “no idea where it had come from or where it was going” (123). A train also comes to represent the passage of time between the last point at which Natsuko sees Sengawa and Sengawa’s death, as she escapes the argument the two of them have by getting on a train.