What Happens when the Tomato Ripens? Manufacturing Sense through Metaphorical Suspension in the Picturebook Kechappu-Man
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55245/energeia.2025.09Keywords:
metaphorical suspension, extravagant suspension, sense, Japanese, translationAbstract
Coseriu delineates three ways by which incongruence may be suspended in discourse (Coseriu 2001[1976], 2007[1988]): metaphorical, metalinguistic, and extravagant suspension. This paper focuses on metaphorical suspension, investigating how it contributes to creating sense in the Japanese picturebook Kechappu-Man (Ketchup-Man) by Noritake Suzuki. The story’s surreal characters and story beats ooze incongruence when set against a backdrop of what otherwise seems reality. Younger, more socially-inexperienced readers can enjoy the story’s bizarre nature at face value, while older readers will likely see beyond the surface-level extravagance and discover more nuanced metaphors at play within the narrative. Kechappu-Man includes various “building blocks” meant to guide readers towards this more metaphorical interpretation of the story’s characters and events. This picturebook’s multiple metaphorical suspensions ultimately interact to turn this story’s nonsense into congruency, culminating in a melancholic if not fatalistic view of life in modern society. Moreover, exactly how these “building blocks” function to create the metaphorical sense in Kechappu-Man can be more clearly understood via comparison with the Korean translation, as the latter seems more inclined toward extravagant suspension due to a relative lack of linguistic devices aimed at inviting deeper metaphorical interpretation.
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