Thoughts from Episode 21: You only live twice

At the end of the previous chapter – and volume – Sara had what seemed horribly like morning sickness. This time, he goes to see his former wetnurse Aguri, whom he used to visit for a few days every month until very recently, to subtly ask about the typical symptoms of pregnancy. He soon concludes that it is just as he feared, then takes a week off from work to go and see Yoshino no Miya, the only person he can think to confide in.

Sara tells Yoshino he wants to die, but Yoshino tries to change his mind. He suggests that Sara has the ability to “die” once and then live a second life, implying that he has done something similar himself. In the end, Sara is inspired to persevere, but remains unsure of what to do.

Meanwhile, Tsuwabuki is indiscreetly snooping, and in his attempts to find out where Sara is, he ends up speaking to Shikibu-kyo no Miya, who reveals that Sara had just returned to speak to him. In fact, Sara is listening right at that moment, and isn’t too pleased about Tsuwabuki’s loud mouth. Afterwards, they have an argument, Sara collapses, and when Tsuwabuki insists on fetching a doctor, Sara blurts out the truth about his pregnancy.

Since early in the story, fate has been an important recurring theme in Torikae baya. Sara and Suiren’s peculiarities and their troubles are attributed to karma from their past lives, and when things go wrong, it can feel a lot like they’re helpless to make it better. But at the same time, the issue of fate is an area where the manga actually challenges the source material a bit: a topic that came up when I spoke to Saito was that the original story has quite a stern Buddhist outlook and that she wanted to make her version more “positive”.

That’s something that comes across strongly in this chapter. When Sara realises what has happened and questions what to do, he believes there’s no way he can go on living. He thinks of the tengu that supposedly cursed him and Suiren – the most prominent representative of fate in the manga – and asks if it is a shinigami, coming to take him away.

Panel from volume 5, page 24.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

Immediately afterwards, he visits Yoshino no Miya, whose mysterious power to predict the future also reflects the significance of fate. Indeed, Yoshino is associated with the tengu, but an important difference is that he emphasises Sara’s power to make his own decisions. Sara, despairing, wants to be told what to do, and he responds:

I will not tell you whether to have the baby,

or whether to join the priesthood!

What you do with the rest of your life

is something you must decide for yourself!

As much as Yoshino uses divination to claim that Sara is destined for a bright future, he also suggests that it’s up to Sara to shape that destiny. He tells Sara he’s reached a fork in the road (分かれ道 – this is also the title of the chapter!) where he needs to decide on a new course of action. And in Yoshino’s idea about living one life and then another, there is the suggestion that even one’s ultimate fate needn’t be truly final.

And so, even though the siblings still go through plenty of hardship in Saito’s version of the story, they’re portrayed as having the agency to control how their lives pan out. They ultimately make their own decisions, for better or for worse.