Belgium

Belgium functions in the narrative as an inherited identity and a remote political authority, not as a depicted destination. Through her Belgian parents and Father’s diplomatic obligations, Narrator (God) encounters nationality as something assigned by family and enforced by a country far away, while her deepest sense of home has formed in Japan.

National Origin and a Linguistic Joke

Narrator (God)’s parents are Belgian, and the narrator therefore describes herself as Belgian too. The account gives this fact a wry, expansive reach: it suggests that Belgian nationality may help explain disasters stretching back to biblical times, then recalls a priest from the Low Countries who supposedly proved that Adam and Eve spoke Flemish. The joke makes national and linguistic identity seem both inherited and absurdly ancient, while the narrator’s own childhood unfolds in another country and across more than one language.

Diplomatic Authority and Distance

Belgium becomes materially important when the narrator learns that Father is a diplomat. Mother explains that his job means he must do what Belgium tells him to do. The child objects that Belgium is far away and cannot punish him if he disobeys, treating political authority as something whose power ought to depend on physical reach. Mother’s explanation gives the distant country a place in family life: it is not merely the parents’ origin, but an authority that can shape the family’s future.

Belgium and the Loss of Home

When Mother confirms that the family will leave Japan one day, the narrator protests that she cannot go because Japan is her country and their house is her home. Mother replies that Japan is not her country. Belgium is not identified as the family’s eventual destination, but the exchange places the narrator’s Belgian nationality against her lived attachment to Japan. She understands the announcement as the beginning of a pattern in which what is loved will be taken away: the country, mountain, flowers, house, Nishio-san, and language. In that recollection, Belgium matters less as a landscape than as part of the national framework that makes departure possible and turns belonging into a source of grief.