October 20 (Miraijin's birthday)

October 20 (Miraijin's birthday) is both the date of Miraijin’s birth and a recurring measure of the life Marco Carrera builds around his granddaughter. The date links a decisive scene of birth in 2010 to the birthdays Marco celebrates with her as she grows, and eventually to the gathering she arranges near the end of his life. Its significance is not simply calendrical: October 20 becomes a ritual through which family ties are made, remembered, and carried forward.

Birth and the Date’s Meaning

In 2010, Adele’s conviction that October 20 would prove auspicious gave the date a meaning before the birth itself. At eleven in the morning, Marco joined Adele and the midwife, Norma, in the bathtub for the delivery. Although he had considered whether to be present, he chose to support his daughter through labor. The experience differed from his memory of Adele’s own birth: he felt useful and involved rather than helpless, and his initial uncertainty gave way to a sense of connection with Adele and the newborn Miraijin. The time they spent together in the water became, in Marco’s recollection, an unusually complete experience of family happiness.

The date therefore begins as a prediction affirmed by an event, but its force comes from what Marco does within that event. His presence makes him part of the birth rather than a bystander, while the water provides a shared setting for father, daughter, and newborn. October 20 becomes attached to a change in Marco’s role: he is not only Adele’s father but also Miraijin’s grandfather, with a new person to care for and a future to protect.

Annual Celebrations and Miraijin’s Future

Marco celebrates Miraijin’s birthday every October 20 as she grows from nine to fourteen. The repeated birthdays give the novel a yearly rhythm within a future that he describes as a world coming apart. Marco delights in organizing the celebrations, but his hopes for Miraijin extend beyond the parties. He urges her not to let talent or achievement turn her into a competitor or a prodigy, and instead to carry other people with her. He wants her to develop her interests—including music, dance, drawing, and riding—without allowing them to define her worth or separate her from others.

The birthday ritual is thus bound to Marco’s belief in Miraijin as a person capable of helping change the future. His guidance combines confidence in her abilities with a warning against standing apart: she is to remain attentive to other people and to the dangers facing the world, including climate change. October 20 repeatedly gives him an occasion to express that hope, while the passage of the years shows Miraijin becoming a person in her own right rather than merely the object of his expectations.

Family Memory and Reconciliation

The date’s recurring place in family life contrasts with other occasions on which family history is exposed or reconsidered. At Letizia’s funeral, held on her birthday, Luisa explains the Jewish popular-mystical belief that dying close to one’s birthday is characteristic of a righteous person. Her explanation offers a distinct example of a birthday acquiring significance through family and religious interpretation. Later, when Marco confronts Luisa about what she had withheld concerning Giacomo’s love for her, he recalls the occasion when they scattered his parents’ ashes at sea and Giacomo’s absence seemed especially painful. These memories place Miraijin’s birthday within a wider family history shaped by death, secrets, and belated understanding.

Near the end of Marco’s life, Miraijin proposes inviting the people close to him to gather. Marco thanks those who have come and recognizes that the idea was hers. The gathering is not identified as one of her birthdays, but it echoes the birthday ritual in its attention to the people around her grandfather and to the relationships that connect them. Giacomo and Marco embrace and apologize to one another, giving their reconciliation a physical expression after years of estrangement. The calendar date has helped mark Miraijin’s growth; the final gathering shows her also creating a meaningful occasion for the family.

Narrative Significance

October 20 binds private time to shared memory. As an annual date, it makes Miraijin’s growth legible year by year; as the day of her birth, it recalls Marco’s decision to be present and the family happiness he found in that moment. The date’s recurrence also carries an idea of continuity without erasing loss: the celebrations take place against Marco’s awareness of a troubled world, and the later gathering occurs as he approaches death.

The novel gives birthdays, funerals, the scattering of ashes, and final farewells different forms of ritual significance. October 20 is the most sustained of these markers because it returns with Miraijin’s age and gives Marco a repeated opportunity to care for her and articulate his hopes. Its meaning changes as she grows: first the day she arrives, then an annual occasion for his guidance, and finally part of a family story that continues beyond the limits of his own life.