Monogatari Series - Volume 31 - Chapter 51

Tsubasa Shelf

"Araragi-kun. The two of us are eighteen years old now, so that makes us adults."

"Eh...?"

Are we? Adults? Whoa now, hold on, when did we become adults? I've still been living my life as a naive high school senior who doesn't know anything about the world...

"Hanekawa, please tell me something. If an adult man were to kidnap a lost fifth grader, would that be a crime?"

"That's a crime even if you're not an adult. That's a felony."

"I see... You really do know everything."

"I don't know everything. I just know what I know."

Araragi-kun must learn shame.

That's what I was told.

That's a harsh take.

Well, looking at myself and Hanekawa, the difference between the two of us couldn't possibly be more obvious even though we’re the same age. Age is nothing more than a number. If you were to say that Shinobu is five hundred years old so she has accumulated five hundred years’ worth of life experience and knowledge, then you would be absolutely wrong. She's nothing more than a little girl.

What is accumulated over the years is not knowledge, but something more like shame.

"That's it, Araragi-kun."

"? What's it? Are you talking about your affection for me?"

"No. My affection level for you is still falling and hasn't yet reached the bottom."

"I will survive this deep cut."

"Too bad... We obviously can't say that we compare much to Heartunderblade-san’s five hundred years, but we have lived eighteen years, and we've accumulated things gradually and sometimes in leaps and bounds. Whether that be shame or not. Adult or not, if you live for long enough, for good or bad, whether you want it or not, your experiences will shape the person that you are, right?"

She wants me to agree with her... But if the person that we are is shaped by some crazy event, then it's not like I wouldn't have become a vampire, right?

That which I don't have is what creates my current self.

And what does Hanekawa even mean when she talks about herself? Is she talking about being the class president among class presidents? The serious student? The smartest girl in our year? Or is it perhaps the girl possessed by a cat, Black Hanekawa, that she refers to?

"Hm. Hmm. Yes, but also no. 'Adults don't understand', or 'Adults aren't fair', are things that can only be said while one is a child—that meaning is true—but once you have enough years and experience to become an 'adult', then that sense of criticism, which would be self-critique at that point, doesn't really manifest itself."

"'You're just the same', 'Aren't you just as guilty of that', 'You can't say that', or 'I don't want to hear that from you', are such likely responses which can't be argued against that adults probably don't want to voice such criticisms. Even though a child who is still in the process of forming their own self has no right to be complaining about someone who has finished that process."

It sounds like the kind of logic where a film critic is able to be a critic because they have never made a movie of their own. It's the same with sports. If you have to be an expert in a sport in order to be able to cheer from the spectators' seats, then you've raised the bar too high. If we take it to the next step, a person can only say "Go make a movie if you want to be able to critique movies", because that person is not a film critic themselves. Saying that to a person is basically just a “gotcha!”.

"Yes, exactly. I wouldn't say that children are pure and innocent, but compared to an adult, the mistakes and blunders that they've made would certainly be far fewer. Which is why, paradoxically, they are exactly the right group to offer a personal opinion in regard to adults who have lived a long life full of mistakes."

A life full of mistakes.

Whether you call it a failed human being, a demon, or an aberration... In the end it's a tale of a human being.

A human tale.

Then following that idea, there is something wrong with saying "Ah, so young, you'll be this way one day as well". There's definitely something wrong with that. I don't want to be that kind of adult.

"A person will reach a point in their life where they realize that things they said before, without hesitation and based entirely on an intuitive feeling for their reality, are now impossible to say because of their own sense of shame. They'll stop and wonder if they have the qualifications to say something like that. The longer they live and the more experience they gain—the more shame they accrue—the more this trend will develop. Which is why it is best to get out there and say what you want to say while you're still young or you may come to regret it."

"I get what you're saying."

Well in reality I probably only understand one hundredth of what Hanekawa is saying. I’m merely skipping across the surface of her meaning and taking the most appealing bits. My level of understanding is like skimming the grease off the top of a boiling stockpot, so any response that I make is made with, at best, a tenuous grasp of the subject. But that is exactly the kind of "pure and innocent critique" that Hanekawa is talking about.

It is born of pure whiteness.

And Hanekawa isn't the kind of person who would say “Oh, no, I'm nothing special”, as some half-hearted placation, instead she is a genius girl who more expresses the idea of "If I am able to do this, then I don't see why you can't do it as well", and expects the impossible from those around her. Assigning a failure to be the class vice president, stopping a desperate suicide attempt—“I'm able to live, so Araragi-kun should also be able to live” is essentially what she said to me during spring break, isn’t it?

If anyone were to be qualified to critique a genius, then it would be a fool like myself, wouldn't it...? But it would be troubling if the genius were to stop speaking. Very troubling.

"There should be an opinion which is valid for someone who has accumulated shame over the years to say. That's why, when a person reaches the age of 18 or 20, they are given things like the right to vote... And those rights are not given because ‘Adults are smart’, or ‘Your mind should be fairly set by now’, but because they're essentially asking ‘You should now realize that the adults of the world, including yourself, are not anything all that great, so what will you do now?’.

Something I can say because of my experience as a vampire.

Something Hanekawa can say after being bewitched by a cat.

A girl caught by a crab. A girl made lost by a snail. A girl who wished on a monkey. A girl entangled by a snake.

And a vampire turned into a young girl.

They all have something they can say. Something they want to say.

"Hm. You're right. If you haven't experienced war, then how can you talk about what war is like. But won't people get angry and ask, 'Why are you putting yourself up on a shelf above everyone else?'?"1

"Certainly, if I, as a little-girl kidnapper, were to start talking on the topic of child abduction, that would be akin to a war criminal talking about war experience. Quite a questionable thing."

"So you admit to kidnapping little girls."

"But I think sometimes people do need to be put up on a shelf to talk about things. Someone who has not become a good adult can still serve as an example of what not to do, even if they can't be an example of what someone should strive to achieve."

Learning from mistakes by reading memoirs definitely has its merits, and the “bag of wisdom” that a grandmother has is held together by experiencing mistakes. So it's not saying “You will become this one day as well”, but it should be good to instead say “Don't become like this”.

To the youngsters nowadays.

"Putting up on a shelf, huh. I suppose if you're going to take a detailed stock one day that's just fine. So just because a girl likes a worthless boy doesn't mean that she can't warn other girls not to like worthless boys."

"?"

That was an oddly mundane example coming from Hanekawa.

And for a girl like that, it doesn't matter what shelf you put it on, she needs to be warned about worthless boys. Wait, actually, for a pure and innocent boy like me, I can't just let this go.

I, being a pure and innocent boy, was still too much of a child to realize that Hanekawa had placed something far back on a shelf where nobody would see it, instead of placing it high up on a shelf to be admired.

 
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TL notes:

[1] The word used is 棚上げ (tanaage, “shelving”), in the sense of “keeping something off the market”. Here, the way they are using it seems to be akin to “on a high horse”, sort of holding yourself outside of the realm of judgment or as if you are worthy of being admired.