Chorus of Mushrooms: week two

We're digging deeper into Chorus of Mushrooms this week - still working our way through Part One, but this time I'm focussing on the section that starts with the story of Izanagi and Izanami, up to the conversation on Highway 2 (pages 29-55 if you have the same edition of the novel that I'm using).

Murasaki describes helping her mother choose new names for Vietnamese refugees who have come to work on the family mushroom farm. Naoe talks about changing her name, and her feelings about the pointlessness of family names being carried forward. There's a lot of re-naming going on in this book - who else gets a new name, and how? How do the different characters feel about this process, and why? What does all of this show us about the characters and the world they live in?

And also, is this related to the uses of English and Japanese in the book and the "translations" or lack thereof? Is it related to the folktale-like stories we're told, like the one of Izanami and Izanagi? If yes, how?

Other things I'm thinking about:

Naoe's and Murasaki's childhoods seem extremely different, but is there anything they have in common? What does each of their stories tell us about the other?

What do we think of the men in this book so far? Shinji seems to have forgotten Japanese even more thoroughly than his wife Keiko; Naoe's former husband Makoto doesn't seem to be the most impressive character. And there's Murasaki's lover as well. What are their roles in the story so far, and what more do you want to know about them?