As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
The "rainy day fund"
- Why did Seita wait so long to get the rest of the money out of his mother's account? He's stealing from his neighbors, risking his life dashing out during raids, watching as his sister gets sicker, all the while he has 3000 yen just sitting there collecting interest.
- He could have wanted the money for just such an emergency. He also thought that his father was coming home and either didn't want to spend the entirety of their savings before he returned until a crisis forced his hand or at least wanted to make the money last as long as possible, stealing to supplement what food they could buy without spending it all at once.
- I took it that, odds are, his mother didn't have much money in her bank account to begin with and that he only withdrew the funds when things got especially dire.
- He's also fourteen years old and may still think that dealing with money is what ADULTS are supposed to do. A lot of parents avoid talking about money problems in front of their kids specifically because they'll panic—and it's also implied that their mother had health troubles, so she wouldn't have wanted to talk to Seita about money on top of that. Even if Seita started to handle money in a basic "can we afford this?" way before the raids happened, he may not understand all the fine details that seem evident to older teens and adults. This is basically the opposite of the Credit Card Plot—while most teenagers learn how to stay within their means, Seita got hit with a war that caused his mother's death and he may be unconsciously terrified of spending money AT ALL, even for an emergency.
- Keep in mind that the value of the yen cratered as a result of the war and subsequent surrender, with 3000 yen going from being worth thousands of dollars initially, to thousands of cents in the end. It's about the equivalent of $28 in today's currency (having stabilized in the vicinity of 100 yen to the dollar after bottoming out at a little over 300 to the dollar in the early 1970s), and when you consider how expensive food is and how much young children need to eat to stay healthy (particularly during wartime when everything is rationed), it's not surprising that Seita would want to hang on to it for as long as he could in case he couldn't find anything else.
- He could have wanted the money for just such an emergency. He also thought that his father was coming home and either didn't want to spend the entirety of their savings before he returned until a crisis forced his hand or at least wanted to make the money last as long as possible, stealing to supplement what food they could buy without spending it all at once.
The Ending
- What's the purpose of the final shot, of Seita and Setsuko's spirits sitting on a bench that overlooks 1980's-era Kobe? I can guess something along the lines of "Today's generation will likely never know their pain firsthand"?
- According to the author yes, but I always took it to mean something like, "Now that you know what happened, it's important that you don't forget it so hopefully this sort of thing will never happen again."
