Summary
Still talking near the garden well, Kikuko tells the narrator that their mother “never really blamed” him. Their mother used to say it was her and Father’s fault for not bringing him up correctly. Kikuko says their mother would say they’d been more careful raising Kikuko, and that’s why she was so good.
Kikuko looks up with a mischievous grin. She asks if the narrator is going back to California. He says he doesn’t know. She asks what happened with Vicki. The narrator says the relationship is finished and there’s nothing left for him in California. Kikuko asks if she should go there. The narrator says she’d probably like it, then suggests they go inside and help their father with supper.
Kikuko peers down the well and says she can’t see any ghosts, her voice echoing. The narrator asks if Father is upset about the firm collapsing. Kikuko says you can never tell what Father is feeling. Kikuko says that Watanabe didn’t just kill himself, he also killed his wife and two daughters. He’d turned the gas on while they were asleep and cut his stomach with a meat knife. The narrator says Father said Watanabe was a man of principle. “Sick,” Kikuko replies.
Kikuko turns to the well again. The narrator warns her she’ll fall in. She says he lied about the ghost. The narrator replies that he never said it lived down the well. He points to a small clearing ten yards away. They stare at the spot, as if mesmerized. He says he couldn’t see it well, because it was dark. He says the ghost was an old woman standing there, watching him. The woman wore a white kimono; her hair had come undone and was blowing around.
Kikuko elbows her brother and tells him to stop trying to frighten her all over again. She steps on her cigarette end and covers it with pine needles before they return to the house. Their father is busy in the kitchen. Kikuko says he’s become quite a chef since having to cook for himself.
Father says cooking is not a skill of which he’s proud, and he tells Kikuko to come help. She stays still for a moment, then puts on an apron and takes over. Father suggests the narrator wants to see the house because he’s been away so long. They leave Kikuko in the kitchen. Father says she’s a good girl.
The narrator follows his father from room to room, remembering how large the house is. Father says he doesn’t have much use for the rooms now. In a room full of books and papers, there is a plastic model of a battleship. Father laughs, and says he’s had more time on his hands since the firm folded. He says he was too busy perhaps, and that he should have been a more attentive father.
The narrator’s father then says he believes Mother’s death wasn’t an accident, adding, “She had many worries. And some disappointments.” The narrator says that surely she didn’t expect the narrator to live at home forever. Father replies that he doesn’t see how hard it is for parents who lose their children to things they don’t understand.
Father contemplates the gunship in his hands and says he spent time on a ship like it during the war, but his ambition had always been the air force, where pilots committed honorable suicides by flying into the enemy. He says he supposes the narrator doesn’t believe in war. The narrator says, “Not particularly.”
Analysis
Having found a way to casually introduce the subject of their mother, Kikuko mentions how their mother didn’t blame the narrator for defying their wishes. Instead, she believed herself responsible for failing to bring him up to be someone who could fulfill the role of dutiful son. Kikuko couches the comment in humor, declaring herself the good and obedient child they apparently raised properly, when in fact she has merely done a better job of appearing to conform to their parents’ expectations.
From Kikuko’s mention of Vicki, and the unspecified upset the narrator caused to his traditional Japanese parents, it seems likely that the narrator went against his parents’ wishes by leaving home to live with a non-Japanese woman in California—a decision that would have looked like an insult or challenge to their understanding of how a man should live his life.
In a symbolic exchange, Kikuko asks if she should go to California like he did. Because the state symbolically represents a break with tradition and a prioritization of independence, the narrator’s reply that she would probably like it is imbued with a deeper meaning: she’d probably like to get away from home and its associated expectations of her.
The themes of grief, traditional family roles, and suicide arise again when Kikuko informs the narrator that Watanabe committed murder-suicide after the collapse of his and their father’s business. The crime stands as an extreme outcome of Watanabe’s belief in his place as the head of his household. Rather than let his dependents live with the disgrace of his failure, he takes them with him. The gruesome details of Watanabe’s samurai-style harakiri death, which Father omitted earlier, speak to the man’s investment in what to the younger generation sees as a sick and antiquated notion of honor.
The theme of suicide arises again when Father brings the narrator to his office room and shows him a model boat he has been building. In a statement that reveals his continuing resentment for his son, Father suggests that Mother’s death was in fact a suicide disguised as accidental fugu poisoning. In vague terms, he cites the narrator’s disappointment of his parents as the cause, to which the narrator expresses a restrained disbelief in the idea that she really expected him to stay at home forever.
In a characteristic avoidance of the subject at hand, Father returns to the subject of his ship, speaking with admiration of the suicidal WWII kamikaze pilots he aspired to be among. The father’s statement invites questions: Does he think what Watanabe did was admirable? Does he think Mother’s disappointments warranted suicide? These questions will loom large over the story’s last scene.
