Hikari was a strong influence on "Father, Where are you Going?", "Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness," and "The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away," three novels which rework the same premise—the father of a disabled son attempts to recreate the life of his own father, who shut himself away and died. The protagonist's ignorance of his father is compared to his son's inability to understand him; the lack of information about his father's story makes the task impossible to complete, but capable of endless repetition, and, "repetition becomes the fabric of the stories".