Summary
Kikuko has supper waiting on the table in the room next to the kitchen. A big lantern hangs over the table, casting a dim light. They bow to each other before eating. They speak little during the meal. Eventually, Father says it must feel strange to be back in Japan and that he must regret leaving America. The narrator says he does a little, but he didn’t leave behind much.
In the darkness past his father’s shoulder, the narrator sees a photograph that makes his hands go still. He asks who is in the photo—who is the old woman in the white kimono. Father puts down his chopsticks, looks at the photo, then turns to the narrator. In a hard voice, he says, “Your mother. … Can’t you recognize your own mother?” The narrator says it’s dark; he can’t see very well.
After a silence, Kikuko gets up and brings the photograph to the table for the narrator to look more closely. He comments that she looks a lot older. Father says it was taken just before her death. The narrator repeats, “It was the dark. I couldn’t see very well.”
After contemplating the picture himself, Father makes Kikuko return it to the wall. He then opens a large pot at the center of the table. Steam rises and curls toward the lantern. When asked, Father tells the narrator it is fish. Strips of fish have curled into balls in the hot soup.
They take turns serving themselves. The narrator’s father begins to eat. The narrator starts as well. The fish feels soft and fleshy against his tongue. He says it is very good and asks what kind of fish it is. His father says, “Just fish.” They eat in silence and then each take a second serving from the steaming pot.
At the end of the meal, Father stretches his arms and yawns with satisfaction. He tells Kikuko to prepare a pot of tea, then he and the narrator move to the tearoom, where a breeze from the garden comes in. The narrator brings up Watanabe killing his whole family as part of his suicide.
Father nods, then says Watanabe was devoted to his work. He says he fears the firm’s collapse weakened his partner’s judgment. The narrator asks his father if he sees what Watanabe did as a mistake. Father says of course: there are other things besides work.
The sound of locusts comes from the garden. The narrator looks into the darkness; he can no longer see the well. His father asks if he’ll stay in Japan for a while, and invites him to stay in the house, as long as he doesn’t mind living with an old man. The narrator thanks him and says he’ll have to think about it. Father says the house is so dreary now that the narrator will no doubt return to America. The narrator says perhaps, but he doesn’t know yet.
The narrator’s father studies the back of his hands for some time. He then looks up and sighs. He says Kikuko will graduate next spring and might want to come home then. He says she’s a good girl, and that “Things will improve then.” The narrator agrees, saying he is “sure they will.” The story ends with father and son falling silent again as they wait for Kikuko to bring them tea.
Analysis
In the story’s final scene, Kikuko, the narrator, and the father sit down to eat, their conversation punctuated with the usual silences and awkwardness. The theme of grief arises when the narrator seems to see the ghost from the garden in the image of his mother wearing a white kimono. The narrator’s ignorance angers the father, who perceives it as disrespectful that he doesn’t recognize his own mother. The narrator explains it was too dark for him to see properly, a statement that echoes the words he earlier spoke to Kikuko when excusing his inability to see details of the ghost’s identity.
More than an eerie coincidence, the narrator’s projection of the ghost into the photo of his mother is a symbolic expression of the guilt he carries around the circumstances of his death. Now that he knows she may have committed suicide because of the heartbreak he caused, the narrator must wonder if the ghost he once saw in the garden was a premonition of his mother’s death long before she ate the fugu.
With the dead mother’s presence haunting the scene, the reader cannot help but suspect the unidentified fish Father serves. With the restraint he has shown throughout the story, the narrator does not appear to worry about what he is eating. However, Ishiguro leads the reader to question whether the father has plotted a murder-suicide akin to Watanabe’s but involving fugu as a fitting tribute to his wife.
Ishiguro relieves the tension somewhat when the narrator and his father discuss Watanabe’s actions. Although Father admires his ex-partner, he does not condone what he did to his family. He tells his son he believes Watanabe suffered from a warped perspective because of his dedication to his work. By contrast, Father believes there are things in life other than work. He shows this love for his family by shyly inviting the narrator to live at home again, and by speaking of his desire to have Kikuko return once she graduates. Having lived alone for two years by then, he risks his pride by exposing his vulnerability and declaring that he does not want to be alone.
The narrator agrees things will improve for him when Kikuko moves home, but in an instance of dramatic irony, the reader knows Kikuko has plans to travel the United States, taking the same independent path the narrator did. Rather than improve, it seems that things for the father will only get worse as he lives out his days alone in the empty house, abandoned by the children whose independence he ironically helped to foster through his attempts to restrain it.
