Japanese New Year

Japanese New Year provides a familiar family ritual against which Kido’s private unease becomes newly visible. The holiday’s repeated journeys between the households of Kaori’s parents in Yokohama and Kido’s parents in Kanazawa make an apparently ordinary celebration the setting for thoughts of separation, custody, and the cost of breaking up a family.

The Prison Visit at Year’s End

On December 29, during the holiday season, Kido visits Omiura in Yokohama Prison. The firm has closed for the break, train crowds are thinning, and the overcast day brings a chill wind. Kido walks faster than usual, his dress shoes striking the asphalt, while the end-of-year quiet deepens his melancholy. Having never visited a prison during the Shogatsu holidays, he experiences the season not simply as a pause from work but as a weight settling over the year.

Omiura’s greeting—“Hey, Korean lawyer. Long time no see!”—releases the tension in Kido’s face. The encounter brings the holiday’s reflective mood into contact with the unresolved investigation that has occupied him: Omiura warns Kido that the man he is trying to understand is merely a “boring schmuck,” and urges him to leave the matter alone. The visit therefore carries both the season’s retrospective pull and a direct challenge to Kido’s pursuit.

The Annual Family Circuit

Kido, Kaori, and Sota follow a routine they repeat every year: New Year’s Eve at Kaori’s family home in Yokohama, then a journey to Kido’s family home in Kanazawa on New Year’s Day. Their holiday appears entirely ordinary. Kaori spends time comfortably with her brother and parents, and she is equally genial with Kido’s parents. Kido smiles and talks with her around both dinner tables; later, the couple lay out their futons and discuss practical plans for the next day.

That repetition makes the difference in this year’s celebration harder for Kido to ignore. On the night of New Year’s Day, lying awake in the dark, he looks back over the past two days. Unlike earlier years, he could not sleep either in Yokohama or in Kanazawa. The familiar arrangement—Kaori and Sota stretched out on futons on either side of him—feels too stimulating because he has grown used to a different pattern: one parent puts Sota to bed, after which Kido is alone until morning.

Holiday Routine and Marital Uncertainty

The family gatherings preserve the outward signs of ease, but Kido’s sleeplessness reveals the strain beneath them. His thoughts turn to what would happen if he and Kaori divorced: he expects a custody battle and cannot imagine simply giving up Sota, yet he also feels that taking the boy from Kaori would be wrong. He knows the grandparents on both sides love Sota deeply, making any outcome a source of guilt toward the family that loses daily contact with him.

Kido is also conscious that Sota would choose his mother if asked, even though, in the present circumstances, the boy seems to favor his father. His professional discussions about the possible introduction of joint custody in Japan offer no immediate solution; he regards that change as a long way off, if it happens at all. Japanese New Year thus places an intimate family ritual beside the practical uncertainty of divorce and custody. The holiday’s recurrence promises continuity, while Kido’s anxious vigil exposes how fragile that continuity has become.