Major Themes
This story contains a religious question by author Kenji Miyazawa. The main theme of this story is "what is true happiness?"
After Miyazawa's most beloved sister Toshi died in 1922, Miyazawa, in sorrow, went on a railroad trip to Sakhalin. He started working on this novel soon afterward in 1924, and this trip is said to be the basis of the story. He kept on polishing the work steadily until his death in 1933. The middle part of the novel was never completed but was published as it is nevertheless.
A tribute to those who give themselves to others is a recurring theme throughout the storyline, and according to Hasebe (2000), they are reflections of Miyazawa's philosophy of self-sacrifice, a view appearing in many other juvenile novels of his such as Yodaka no Hoshi and GusukÅbudori no Denki. Meanwhile, Suzuki (2004) interprets them as representing a "holistic thought of Ecosystem".
Read more about this topic: Night On The Galactic Railroad
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