Water Moon

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

Hana’s pawnshop symbolizes duty. The shop has been in Hana’s family for many generations. In their world, Hana’s family is responsible for claiming the portions of clients’ souls that they’ll use to enliven their supposedly “soulless” children. Because the shop isn’t “like other ordinary pawnshops that [trade] in diamonds, silver, and gold,” Hana’s family doesn’t have “the luxury of sick days and weekends” (4). The family’s entire life—past, present, and future—is structured around the shop and its operation. In these ways, the pawnshop imposes a seemingly higher sense of duty on Hana’s family and entraps them in their world’s expectations.

Throughout the novel, Hana tries to escape her duty to her family when she leaves the pawnshop. She’s indeed looking for her parents as she ventures throughout her world with Keishin, but in doing so, she experiences the world independently for the first time. Once she leaves the confines of the pawnshop, she begins to discover all that life might offer. She disrupts her usual patterns of behavior and the routines that have governed her life since she was a young girl. In doing so, she pursues happiness and personal fulfillment outside the context of her duty.

The scenes of the pawnshop that Chiyo has recreated in the subterranean field further underscore the shop’s symbolic significance. She made a copy of the pawnshop underground because she still feels bound by her perceived duty. Toshio leaves the real pawnshop but ultimately imprisons himself in this same space when he rejoins Chiyo underground. Hana’s parents are thus trapped by their sense of duty. Hana can leave and thus free herself from these expectations.