The conflict between generations in a changing Japan is the primary theme of the story. His father is a very traditional man and finds it difficult to understand these changes. In the story he states to his son:
”Obviously you don’t see. You don’t see how it is for some parents. Not only must they lose their children, they must lose them to things they don’t understand”
The conflict between generations, between a father and a son, can be seen in “The Kite” as well, when the Puerto Rican protagonist, Rick Sanchez, cannot recall a memory of a kite his father made him when he was small. His father feels that Rick cannot understand him, and the kite, which also is the title of the story, symbolize the distance between them.
Rick wishes for himself that his father could understand, that they are not the same men and, that too much has happened in the passage from one culture to the other. He wants desperately to convey his respect but the words always comes out short and angry. Deep inside he loves his father who has sacrificed so much and worked for so many years, so that his children could go to college and get a better life. But is he grateful for this life? One get a picture of Rick being dissatisfied with his job. Also he seems a bit lost between the two cultures he has been brought up in. In the story Yunqué gives us a metaphor when Rick is reading a book in Spanish:
”He enjoyed his ability to let the Spanish language flow through him without his having to translate into English and back again as had happened for a time. The problem had caused him forever asking himself why he had to exist between two languages.”
This feeling of existing between two worlds is something that both authors of this two short stories recognize and can identify themselves with. The author of ”The Kite”, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, moved to New York from Puerto Rico at the age of thirteen. And Kazuo Ishiguro, the author of “A Family Supper”, was only six years old when his parents moved to England from Japan. In an article (Mackenzie, Suzie, Between Two Worlds, The Guardian, 2000) Ishiguro says:
“I never properly said goodbye to Japan, only a temporary goodbye. For a long time, I simply assumed that we would return."
Maybe, if he had known that the move was forever, there would have been a more conscious holding on to Japan. Ishiguro’s accent and manners are British, but at the same time he is Japanese.
"I was, after all, brought up by Japanese parents - to a certain extent I am accustomed to Japanese values" he adds in the article.
Primary source:
Moscow, Michal Anne & Olinder, Britta, Criss-Cross Tales, Short Stories from English-speaking Cultures, Lund, Studentlitteratur, 2002.
Secondary sources:
Mackenzie, Suzie, Between Two Worlds, the Guardian, 2000.
Richards, Linda, January Interview, January Magazine, 2000
Weber, Bruce, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, Novelist of the Puerto Rican Experience in New York, Dies at 72, The New York Times, 2008.
