A plain, unassuming book that opens up into an intense meditation of Nietzschean themes in its second half. (See this review by Merve Emre for the same observation.) Momose plainly states a kind of nihilism, where there is no justice in the world. The only thing that matters is to get what you want; there is no “right” thing to do. He uses this to explain his friends actions: It’s not even that they bully Eyes because of his lazy eye; rather, it’s just that he, a weak person, was there to be taken advantage of. On the other hand, Kojima espouses a kind of slave morality. She suffers bullying along with Eyes, but she finds her suffering full of meaning. She suffers for everyone who is weak, so that they may see that she endures, and that may endure as well. It’s clear that Momose and Kojima espouse master and slave morality, respectively. Ninomiya and Momose are described to be handsome; Eyes and Kojima are ugly and smell bad.
Interestingly, however, Kawakami takes Kojima to be a kind of self-invented martyr. First, she invents her own set of values, as unlike Eyes the reasons she is bullied---what she wears, how often she bathes---are totally within her control. She pretends to be poor in solidarity with her father when she is actually rich. She is not weak; she takes it upon herself to be weak. Second, the climax at Whale Park has her triumphing over Ninomiya by acting outlandishly and stripping herself naked. In Nietzschean terms, here Kojima succeeds in placing her slave morality over the traditional “might makes right” values of Momose. Here Kawakami recalls the same admiration that Nietzsche has for the ascetic priest in the Genealogy for the priest’s capacity for invention without the disgust he feels about the priest’s life-negating ideals.
In the end, Eyes rejects Kojima’s slave morality and gets the surgery to fix his lazy eye. He looks around and sees that everything is beautiful, though there was no one to share it with. Despite the fact that he never saw the painting that Kojima describes as Heaven, he found his own version instead.