Misuzu

Misuzu is a bartender whose longing for Daisuké Taniguchi shapes both her search for him and her tentative closeness with Kido. By creating a social-media account in Daisuké’s name, she makes the absent man seem present again; by the time she meets Kido at Minatomirai Station, that act of remembrance has become part of a more complicated relationship involving Kyoichi’s feelings, Kido’s attraction, and a threatened visit she chooses to undertake herself.

Identity and Search

For roughly two months, Misuzu used a Facebook account under Daisuké Taniguchi’s name, posting as if she were him in the hope that the real Daisuké would notice and contact her. The ploy was Kyoichi’s idea. Kido disapproved, though he did not entirely blame Misuzu for trying it, particularly after the police had dropped the search for Kyoichi’s missing brother. Kido also told Kyoichi that the census records had been updated to show Daisuké as alive and unmarried, leaving the family to deal with his disappearance privately.

The impersonation was not a neutral lure. Misuzu’s imagined Daisuké was vigorous and cheerful, timid yet competitive, and sensitive enough to post that UFO’s “Love to Love” made him cry. Kido recognized him as the Daisuké she wished for and could imagine: a figure assembled from her recollection rather than a verified account of the man now missing. Through the borrowed profile, she could revisit their past and feel her love just within reach, even as her performance risked disturbing the real Daisuké if he saw it.

Relationships and Conflicting Attachments

Kido’s reading of the Facebook exchanges led him to suspect that Kyoichi had loved Misuzu before she chose Kyoichi’s younger brother. There seemed to be a history between them, and the two appeared to message privately, although Kido never asked either of them directly. Kyoichi’s involvement in the impersonation thus carried more than a practical hope of finding Daisuké: it also kept him connected to Misuzu and to the brother whose disappearance he claimed to fear.

Misuzu’s relationship with Kido changes after he has impersonated Daisuké himself in a bar. While intoxicated, he told her what he knew about the missing man and found himself saying that Daisuké had once been in love with her. Kido then developed a secret wish to experience, even briefly, what it was like to be the young man who had loved and been loved by Misuzu. His desire makes their meetings uncomfortable for him: he feels ashamed and flustered, behaving like someone trying to conceal a crush. It also changes how he understands his wife’s suspicions. He had assumed Kaori feared an affair with Rié after his trip to Miyazaki; he now considers, though finds equally ludicrous, the possibility that she had anticipated Misuzu instead.

Meeting and Decision

At eleven on the appointed date, Kido met Misuzu at Minatomirai Station. She wore a loose blouse slipping slightly off one shoulder and ankle-length jeans; walking beside her in a necktie, he felt like a cornball. Her relaxed smile recalled the one he remembered from the bar, but seeing her face-to-face, rather than seated below her on a stool, made him newly aware of her large eyes, defined nose, and restrained morning perfume. The meeting’s ordinary details sharpen the difference between Misuzu herself and the remembered Daisuké who had mediated their earlier exchanges.

When Kido spoke about the difficulty of deciding who was a victim and who was causing suffering, he argued that a third party should intervene—a need he saw as the basis of the legal profession. Misuzu listened, then said she would go in his place. Kido was caught off guard and warned that the experience might make her feel awful; she answered that she wanted to go for her own reasons. Her choice is not presented as simple obedience to Kido or as a substitute for his professional role. She asserts an independent purpose, turning the intervention he described into an action she elects to take.

Public Witness and Narrative Role

Later, after dinner with Kaori and Sota, Kido fell asleep on the couch with his memories of playing bass at university passing through his mind. After eleven, he woke, turned up the heat for his cold toes, and switched on a television he rarely watched. A news feature showed a hostile crowd parading in daylight with Rising Sun flags and shouting anti-Korean abuse. As Kido went to turn the television off, the caption changed to “Counterprotesters on the Scene.” A woman holding a placard that read, “Can’t we just get along? Chinhage jinaeyo!” appeared for only a moment, but Kido was certain she was Misuzu.

The brief television image places Misuzu’s private concern for Daisuké alongside a public confrontation with anti-Korean hatred. Kido sees her not in the intimate setting where he has been projecting the absent man and his own desire, but among people opposing the crowd’s abuse. The glimpse supplies no account of what Misuzu does next; instead, its abruptness makes her presence a startling disclosure to Kido and a new question in the narrative. Her role therefore extends beyond being the object of the men’s competing attachments: the account also shows her making choices and appearing in a public act of opposition.