ABSTRACT
The life circle is an on-going progressive and transforming process. Throughout our lives, many transformations take place in our physical activities, mental and psychological priorities. Besides the fact that old age is a natural stage of this process, depending on physiological, psychological transformations and on chronic diseases occurring during this period, physiological decay is apparent. Along with old age, both mental and physical transformations reach at a very high level. While progress is prevailing at old age, it is a physiological phenomenon in which the continuous process of decay and demise prevail at the same time. Old age especially is the most difficult experienced period when compared to earlier periods. The state of experienced old age differs from one nation to another. Physical and psychological transformations contain intense conflict between these two conditions and deprivation of functional situations. Physiological and psychological transformations of old people due to aging affect individual’s daily life, career, state of dependence and communication with his or her close circle. In this novel under much debate, we see the experience of an old man who is raised with Japanese tradition, at the age of eighty. He can be considered as a wealthy man, works hard during his youth and spends the rest of his life with his family. He relates his physical deficiencies and current state with his own words when he lives with his family. Based on Uchiki’s diary, this novel discusses his physical and mental state. Feeling unbearable pain and suffering day by day deteriorating health when he gets old and putting askance at his family and caretakers who serve him to alleviate his pain, the old man’s always trying to seek ways to spend time with daughter in law makes the novel interesting. Especially the psychological mood of the old age and sexual desire towards the daughter in law are extracted from the old man’s words. He writes his passion and emotion with a sorrowful irony in his diary in which he tries to write about his everyday getting old body, declining health and his death. Furthermore, in this novel we observe his yearning to Japanese entertainment, wish for death even while being alive, emotional transformations which he experienced, fatal fears and sexual desire towards his daughter in law. We observe especially that some emotions cannot be related with the age. In this novel we read a diary of an old, sick old man wanting to feel himself young maybe because of his being quite close to death. For this reason, he admits that he is feeling sexual desires and emotional feelings towards the youngest woman, the daughter in law in his circle. We see that his feelings towards his daughter in law, sexuality, prosperity and feeling of death are all together in this novel. By handling the years of old age with naivety and irony, the novel itself is situated on the basis of them both. As a consequence, the author makes the comparison of the period. In this novel the transformation of the Japanese culture throughout the years is depicted in a fluent way. Additionally, the writer conveys both the dissipation of Japanese culture due to the indulgence in western influence and the reflection of the conflict between “the old” and “the new” with quite much dexterity.