“Why are they throwing themselves into it so enthusiastically when they don’t really seem to be enjoying it?”

“Throwing themselves into everything is the only way they know.”

This quotation, taken from a conversation between Mitsu and his wife, Natsumi, shows one of the main reasons behind the riot Taka leads: the village men’s boredom and unrest. Taka begins a football team for the young men of the village who have just lost all of their chickens (i.e., their income). Taka has realized that the men need something, anything to throw themselves into enthusiastically. This goes hand in hand with Taka’s own nihilist/existentialist attitude toward the uprising.

If the world is full of violence, then the most healthy and human reaction is not to stand in front of it moping, but to find something—anything—to laugh at.

This quotation, spoken by Mitsu’s wife, Natsumi, refers to Taka telling his men details of the 1860 uprising and laughing about them. Mitsu feels that it is in poor taste for the men to be laughing at such brutal violence, but as Natsumi tells him, the men are only making a natural human response. This dichotomy between Mitsu’s disgust and Taka’s laughter also highlights the differences in “types” between the brothers: Mitsu is a pacifist who abhors violence, while Taka is interested in feeling all emotions fully, regardless of whether they are positive or negative.

When your friend hanged himself, Mitsu, did you ask yourself what the point of it was? Or do you ever ask yourself what the point of your own survival is? Even if we achieve a new version of the rising, there mightn’t be any point to it at all.

This quotation—spoken by Taka when Mitsu asks him why he wants to create another uprising—shows that Taka’s motivations for inciting the men do not have a greater political or social meaning. Taka only wants to start the riot to feel the emotions of his ancestors, to have an understanding of what they went through. He is saying, in this quotation, that he sees no point to any human activities beyond experiences. This is a somewhat nihilist or existentialist perspective, which Taka would have been exposed to during his travels to the United States.