Quote:
Originally Posted by Sol Falling
I was a bit intrigued by how enigmatic this one was, so looking into the background of this poem a bit, I found out that it is actually one of the most famous poems from the collection. It seems that it is quite an exemplary expression of the Japanese concept of "mono no aware", the classical symbol of which is cherry blossoms in spring, which is literally "the pathos of things"; a literary moniker for a concept which evokes the ephemerality of existence.
Revisiting the episode, the specific context of this card seems to be Taichi's practice during the club meeting while thinking of making A-kyu to participate in the national tournament in October (together with Chihaya and Arata). In the sense of "temporality", I can think of two interpretations: first, the card evokes Taichi's feelings of urgency regarding the impending reunion between Chihaya and Arata, with the potential restoration of Arata as Chihaya's "karuta master" spelling the end of his present closeness to her. Alternatively, the card could perhaps also be an external omen of the temporality of Taichi's emotions at that moment themselves, given what we witnessed later in the episode in terms of Taichi's difficult performance at the B-class tournament.
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The scene is a very curious one: Taichi has just broken up with his girlfriend, with a coolness so striking all the other team members immediately remark upon it. At that point the animation returns to Taichi's interior monologue, and we find that he is thinking about Arata. The viewer learns that Taichi's cool demeanor belies an interior anxiety about keeping up with his rival.
I think the card speaks to this disjunction of feeling: the tranquil permanence of the sun is undermined by the transitory cherry blossoms, which resemble instead "restless thoughts." Both of your interpretations of Taichi's emotional state seem to me to be valid accounts of his inner disquiet. He feels the pressure of the advancing deadline upon his hopes to level up to A level, and the confidence he expresses in this scene belies the depression he and Nishida share upon their inglorious return from the tournament. As you point out, in both instances Taichi is caught in a transitory condition, of events themselves as they rush toward the Meijin and Queen qualification tournaments, and of his own feelings, which rise and fall with the fortunes of his ambitions.
Like Chihaya, Taichi dedicates himself completely to his dreamed-for future. The present is turned into the instrument of the realization of his hopes. Everything he does is dedicated to changing himself, to accomplish this dream. If his present is transitory, it is since he has made it the purpose of his whole being to make it so. There is an irony here, if you think about it. If he changes himself so much, will he still be the person who had wanted the goal he had set for himself so long ago? When Chihaya becomes queen, will she still be the person he has been in love with?
Here I would go back to the earlier poems, which are about love's transformation in its own progress, to point out how they suggest the negation of love. In the 43rd waka, the older poet no longer recognizes his own earlier feelings of love to be love at all. And in the 13th, the poet describes a process of entropy, as the energy of the waterfall is dissipated into the quietness of deep waters. The changes in phase make the identity of the feeling itself a matter of question. Perhaps the older Taichi will no longer even recognize his own earlier feelings, or will come to find his own deep emotions to be of a different kind than his earlier, wilder passions.
I think the reason Taichi does not finally hold Chihaya's hand on the train is that he knows somewhere deep inside that the love he has for her lives only now, in the present moment of longing in which his wish is yet unrealized. The time of his life that he will always remember will not be the day he finally gets his answer from her, but these brief months themselves, in this time of his yet unrequited love. Taichi already has everything he could want with Chihaya, in closeness, in shared passion, in life together. And the great paradox, and the source of melancholy, were he to think about it, is that everything he is doing to reach the A level and everything she is doing to become queen must have as its end the termination of this special time and connection which they share.
The entire narrative is written in retrospect. According to Wikipedia, the author of the original manga "Yuki Suetsugu belonged to a karuta club in senior high school, and feels that the school years are a period of a person's life where "you can dedicate the most genuine part of yourself to something"." If the manga seeks to recapture this lost time, then it knows that what it describes is something intrinsically transitory, something that is already lost. The anime brings this point out by showing us that Chihaya's deepest motive is her wish to return to the time in elementary school where she, Arata, and Taichi played together. And if you are familiar with the very first panel of the manga, then you will understand that everything we are watching, the entire narrative, has already passed onwards to its future.
So, you see, Sol, I do think that the concept of
mono no aware is central to this anime.