Why does Kiyoshi believe Obaban is a substitute for his mom?
From what I was able to understand when reading this second part of the book, Kiyoshi believed that Obaban would be the one taking his mothers place from passing away. His mother was extremely superstitious and she believed that someone had placed some kind of a curse in which she was paying for someone's wrong doing. Obaban mentioned that the person could always attempt to pass that "curse" on over to someone else in which that person would then take over the sickness.
When Kiyoshi's father showed up to his class to deliver some bad news and take the family over to Obaban's house, Kiyoshi sensed a bit of relief that it was not his mother who had gotten worse than what she was or even passed away. He considered Obaban's unfortunate passing as a substitute to his mother from passing away. In other words, she took Kiyoshi's mothers place since she had lived a long full life where as his mother was much younger and had many years to live in order to fulfill a full life.
I hope I understood this correctly for this second part of this book as I feel that this would play a key role for the remainder of the book since it focused so much on superstition, lack of money, building a stronger relationship, etc... All I know is that I got hooked and I want to continue reading more.
