[hyperborealis]

There's so much going on in this episode it simply defies expression. The anime heaps you, to use Melville's expression--overwhelms you with significance, more and more. This is just the most amazing show.

So, one of the key points in the anime, I think we all agree, is Taichi's statement to Harada-sensei, after Harada-sensei offers to promote Taichi to Class A: "Sensei, I'm not so much focused on making Class A / As I'm focused on becoming someone who doesn't run away." The awe on Harada-sensei's face, the statement's position as the climax of the conversation are the animators' way of highlighting the significance of the moment. I think if we can answer even the simplest questions about Taichi's words--such as "what does he mean?" and "why does he say this?"--we will go a long way toward understanding the episode and the anime as a whole.

Spoiler for Length:

In literature, to ask and give the meaning of something is to place that thing in a context. For example, if we take the context of Harada-sensei's offer to give Taichi a pass into Class A, Taichi's response means in effect "I don't want a free pass, I want to be the kind of person who does things the regular hard way." See how that works? The context of Harada-sensei's offer defines the corresponding meaning of Taichi's response. Certainly this is a very basic aspect of what Taichi's words do mean. Still, Taichi's words are not identical to the paraphrase I just offered, and there are other contexts we can think of, so there more--much more--to what Taichi says.

Another possible context is suggested by Taichi's syntax. By placing "making Class A" and "becoming someone who doesn't run away" in opposition, Taichi brings up the issue of his own ultimate goals, and makes a choice between them, in favor of the latter. A good part of why Taichi's words resonate so is due to their scope and seriousness: Taichi is very much taking to heart Miyauchi-sensei's demand to Chihaya that she think about her future, and making a choice for himself about the kind of person he wants to be in the future.

More, Taichi's goals have a place within the narrative as a whole. You will remember that Taichi decides to go for Class A at the nationals, as a way to compete with Arata for Chihaya by proxy through karuta. Now, after his loss in the Yoshino tournament, without any further possibilities to win a karuta tournament before the qualifiers, Taichi stands before Harada-sensei with that plan in ruins. If we take this as the context for his words, then Taichi is saying in effect he will not give up, not run away. Not run away from karuta, which is what Harada-sensei primarily has in mind with his sympathetic thought that no one can go on without some measure of success. But also not run away from his love of Chihaya, even if his fate in love is to be that melancholy empty train running without stopping through Station Two. (That heart-stopping, unforgettable station announcement! Suetsugu-sama is a genius!)

In defining his goals this way, Taichi also shows us he has his priorities ordered right. His goal is no longer something external to himself, such as karuta or even Chihaya, but rather, becoming himself a certain kind of person, a person of courage, someone who does not run. This amounts to a fundamental change in his attitude and character. And, in giving Taichi this achievement, the anime shows us that it is neither ultimately a shounen drama about karuta, or a shoujo drama about a love triangle, but a drama about moral realism, about how human beings choose the values by which they define themselves and their lives.

The connotation of "running away" as "cowardice" suggests yet another context: Arata's criticism of Taichi as a "coward." Taichi may be saying that his goal is to cease to be the kind of person Arata called a coward. What did Arata mean? He calls Taichi that once, when Taichi stole his glasses at the grade-school karuta tournament: here he means that Taichi is unwilling to face him fairly on the tatami, and to take his loss like a man. The second time occurs when Chihaya and Taichi go to visit Arata at Fukui, when Taichi lies about his height to make himself equal to Arata: again, Arata chastises Taichi for being unwilling to accept losing. So Taichi's words to Harada-sensei may express his wish to become a person strong enough to accept failure, and not to hide from it or lie about it.

The final context I want to suggest for Taichi's response is the narrative context of the episode itself. Right before Harada-sensei makes his offer, Taichi is berating himself for not having watched and learned from the whole match between Arata and Hiroshi. Instead, he had gone to sit by himself in the hotel lobby, where Chihaya sees him, and then, when Chihaya turns without a word to go in to watch Arata play, by himself in the players' lounge. Taichi runs away into himself, into gloom and depression about competing with Arata for Chihaya. So, in making his response to Harada-sensei, Taichi is resolving to stop being a person who withdraws into himself, who drowns himself in emotions for losing, and instead to be someone who faces setbacks positively without emotional excess.

Some posters have commented positively on Taichi's troubled and conflicted character, his emotional depth and degree of introspection. My own sense is that the anime is impatient with Taichi's emotionality, regarding it as useless self-pity.

The sequence where Chihaya arrives at the tournament is an excellent case in point. Taichi is heartbroken when Chihaya turns away from him to go watch Arata play karuta. The anime shows his face to be impassive and blank; later, Harada sees him seated alone in the conference room, his head down, apparently morose. Presumably, Taichi is downcast since he now has to confront Arata as a rival in love, and since Chihaya seems indifferent to him and instead completely enthralled by Arata. For Taichi, what is going on is all about himself, his love, his problems in love, his rivalry with Arata, you name it.

But none of this is true, or not in the way he thinks it is. When he finally limps over to where Chihaya is watching Arata play, Chihaya seizes Taichi's arm, to express her happiness that Arata is back. Her focus on Arata turns out to have nothing to do with romance, but everything to do with the friendship between the three of them, along with Chihaya's interest in learning from Arata how to improve her karuta. In showing Taichi her happiness at Arata's return, she reminds Taichi that this was also his wish--he remembers his own earlier words to Chihaya about waiting for Arata to return, and then acknowledges his own happiness that Arata has come back. All of Taichi's emotional sturm-und-drang turns out to be not only unnecessary (Chihaya is making no romantic signal of any kind, and even Arata's note signifies his refusal to make a romantic overture to Chihaya without Taichi's permission) but absurd--in his deepest heart, Taichi is in truth happy that Arata is back.

By the end of the scene, Taichi seems to have realized this: when he whacks Arata on the shoulder, and tells him he's too slow, he's making a friend's effort to help Arata feel better about his unlucky loss to Hiroshi. Taichi's words to Harada-sensei may be then a decision not to run away into this kind of useless emotionalism in the future.

Which of these readings is correct? Why, all of them at once. Chihayafuru is literature, even great literature, just since it sustains a constant superfluity of meaning.

My apologies for length of post. I'm using this medium--as I suppose is obvious--as a way of thinking my way through what's going on in this great anime.