“One arm” written by Yasunari Kawabata is about a man who borrows an arm from a young woman and slowly grows more attached to it. The man in the story begins to talk to the arm, and it responds back. Eventually not being able to resist the urge to take his right arm off and put the girl’s arm where his used to be, he swaps his arm. The man then grows to regret and be horrified by his decision and rips off the new arm and desperately attaching his arm back where it belongs. He wanted the arm so badly he did not think of the consequences from it. He had high expectations for the arm, even if it was just pure desire to have the arm be apart of him, and it failed to reach those expectations and he replaced it back with his arm. Was he horrified by the thought of the new arm after sleeping that night? Or was this a simple case of wanting what you can not have, then when you can it does not live up to what you have created in your mind? In this case, the woman was willing to share her arm with this man, who is oddly obsessed with her body.
“It was in the girl herself, a clean, elegant roundness, like a sphere glowing with a faint, fresh light. When the girl was no longer clean that gentle roundness would fade, grow flabby. Something that lasted for a brief moment in the life of a beautiful girl, the roundness of the arm made me feel the roundness of her body. Her breasts would not be large. Shy, only large enough to cup in the hands, they would have a cleaning softness and strength. And in the roundness of the arm I could feel her legs as she walked a long. She would carry them lightly, like a small bird, or butterfly moving from flower to flower. There would be the same subtle melody in the tip of her tongue when she kissed.” (pg. 105)
This is the only description of anything other than the arm, the focus is on the arm, but at the end, we find out he has both of his arms, so was he holding this other arm the entire time? The story describes the arm attached to the man’s shoulder, yet we do not know until the very end that he has both arms and this extra arm. “My left hand — mine from the start — took my right wrist — actually the girl’s. As I threw my head back, I caught sight of the girl’s little finger. Four fingers of her hand were grasping the arm I had taken from my right shoulder. The little finger alone — shall we say that it alone is allowed to play free? — was bent toward the back of the hand.” (pg. 121)
This piece, for my at least, definitely represents the Fantastic in the sense of the utter weirdness it displays. While reading this story, I got some strong necrophiliac vibes from the narrator. Why would he talk to this arm that this girl gave him?? I agree with you and also think that he felt guilty about putting the arm on him because of his desire. However, I interpreted her arm as the narrator took a piece of her (like when a woman gets deflowered by a man, he takes a part of her with him).
I thought of the narrator talking to the arm as another way to incorporate the fantastic, it was still weird as it was asked about on the first or second page though. He asks if it will talk to him and the woman shuts it down quickly. Why would he ask if it was possible, then be shut down, only for it to actually happen in the story?