Loneliness

Throughout the novel, the author uses Sensei’s character as a narrative device by which Tsukiko is gradually drawn out of her solitude and into relationship with others. Not long after she and Sensei start spending time together, they fall into a familiar rhythm. Because the pattern their relationship assumes allows both Tsukiko and Sensei to preserve their particularities and preferences, it is not until “Twenty-two Stars” when the characters stop speaking after an argument, that Tsukiko notices how Sensei has begun to alter her insular life. “When I thought about it,” Tsukiko says during this first period of prolonged separation from Sensei since the start of their friendship, “Sensei was the only person I spent any time with . . . When I tried to think whom I spent time with before I became friendly with Sensei, no one came to mind. I had been alone” (27). Though she...