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Originally Posted by Kirarakim
And it is also true that only Kanba & Himari had flashbacks with their parents so far. I wonder if that is significant.
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Eh? Shoma was in all of those flashbacks. The mother stops him from running out with his Dad and he is the first one other than Himari to notice that their mom was bleeding due to glass cuts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kazu-kun
Self-sacrifice is not the point per se. What set Campanella apart in the novel is that he risked his life for someone who was a pretty nasty person, not one of his loved ones. The point of his act is the altruistic nature of it, not the sacrifice itself.
The tale of the red scorpion parallels Campanella. It's a tale about the value of living (and dieing) for the sake of others (in general, not a loved one specifically).
You see, Miyazawa wrote this novel to get over the death of his sister, whom he loved deeply. The only way for him to overcome his grief, was to see his sister's death through Christian lenses, believing there was a higher purpose to her death, that it was a form of self-sacrifice. That's why he puts so much value on altruism, the sacrifice motivated not by personal attachments, but rather by your willingness to devote yourself to others.
Note that at the end of the novel, Campanella's father gets over the death of his son surprisingly quickly, and proceeds to invite Campanella's friends to his house, for the purpose of cheer them on, even though it should be the other way around. Again, altruism
In a sense, it's a pretty demanding novel, since most people can't be like that. We may risk our lives for our loved ones, but to put everyone else before ourselves, that's really tough.
EDIT: Incidentally, the tale of the red scorpion is also about accepting death instead of struggling against it. This too is the totally opposite to what Kanba is doing!!
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Funny you'd say that considering Miyazawa was a
DEVOUT Buddhist 
and considering self-sacrifice is a much stronger concept in Oriental philosophical schools than in any Abrahamic religion.
And I think that's where you're kind of misguided. It's still pretty demanding to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, but not as much, in a society such as the Japanese one when he wrote the novel. It's kind of expected of everyone to willingly self-sacrifice themselves for the common good in traditional Japanese (Buddhist) mentality.
And from what I see, Kanba willing to die in place for his sister is self-sacrifice enough. Basically, I think you're the one putting the demand that Miyazawa's novel must absolutely refer to someone sacrificing themselves for a complete stranger and not the novel itself.
Actually, you go a bit further, you imply that a sacrifice of self to save someone related to you isn't actually self-sacrifice and that's simply not true. It would also mean that most of the selfless acts of sacrifice that are considered as such by the Japanese, the Buddhist, the scholarly or whoever you think Miyazawa borrowed his ideals from aren't actually self-sacrifice. You can always extend relationship outward (a Japanese died for a Japanese because they were Japanese, a human died for another human because they were human ... ad infinitum) but what is there to invalidate someone giving up something so valuable as their very life for someone else as self-sacrifice just because the beneficiary happens to be a loved one of theirs? That self-sacrifice is only so (or that it is only a higher purpose) when the benefactor is unrelated to the beneficiary is thus an inherently flawed argument.