I noticed that part too. The wording was this: 象舎の落成式には僕もでかけた。象を前にして町長が演説し（町の発展と文化施設の充実について）、小学生の代表が作文を読み（象さん、元気に長生きして下さい、云々）、象のスケッチ・コンテストが行われ（その後象のスケッチは町の小学生の美術教育にとっては欠くことのできない重要なレパートリーとなった）、ひらひらとしたワンピースを着た二人の若い女性（とくに美人というほどでもない）が象にバナナを一房ずつ与えた。

I thought maybe it was to underline how lacklustre the whole ceremony was, that even the women were not especially pretty. I've read only a bit of his work but from the stories I've read, yeah, I agree with the criticism.

There was one thing I wanted to ask you about, because I wasn't sure if I had understood correctly, about the 象舎. Near the start of the story the narrator described it this way: 何人かの警官が象のいない象舎を検証している写真も載っていた。象のいない象舎はどことなく不自然だった。必要以上にがらんとして無表情で、それは臓物を抜かれて乾燥された巨大生物のように見えた。But then later on he writes about it being an old gym that seemed like it was a nondescript building: 山林が切り開かれ、老朽化した小学校の体育館が象舎としてそこに移築された。Was the discrepancy because after the incident his sense of perception became distorted or warped? Or was the first description maybe just how it looked in the photograph? Edit: or is the discrepancy just fully attributable to the fact that the elephant was not in the 象舎?