Miyazaki Family Court (505905d3)

The Miyazaki Family Court is the court with jurisdiction over the family registers of households legally residing in Town S. In the novel, it provides the legal process through which Kido seeks to correct Rié’s records after her late husband is shown not to be Daisuké Taniguchi. Its decisions turn the discovery of a false identity into a formal change in marital status and family registration.

Jurisdiction and the disputed records

The relevant family register listed Rié and the man recorded as Daisuké Taniguchi at Rié’s family home in Town S, placing the matter within the Miyazaki Family Court’s jurisdiction. The discrepancy was consequential: the man had been treated in official records as Daisuké through marriage and death notifications, despite the real Daisuké’s brother identifying the deceased as someone else. The case therefore concerned more than an incorrect name; it required reconciling a person’s lived identity with government records that had recognized him as someone else.

Kido’s petitions

Kido petitioned the court for two linked revisions. First, he asked it to cancel the removal of “Daisuké Taniguchi” from the register on account of death. Restoring that record would mean that the real Daisuké was legally alive, so the police would no longer be pursuing a missing-person report for someone officially recorded as dead. Second, Kido asked that the false Daisuké be removed from Rié’s family register and that her register be restored under her maiden name, Takemoto. Together, the requests sought to annul the marriage on the basis of error and erase it from Rié’s register.

Evidence and decision

Because of the case’s complexity, the court required Rié to appear in person and requested DNA evidence that her late husband was not Daisuké Taniguchi. Kido collected samples from the deceased man’s personal effects, including hair from his clothes, nail clippings, an electric razor, and a toothbrush. The court had warned that its ruling might take from two months to a year; in the event, both petitions were approved five months later, around the first week of August. The DNA test established that the deceased was not the person named in the register.

Effects on Rié and Hana

Following the decision, Rié’s second marriage was erased from the records. She was no longer legally a widow and was recorded as having been married only once; her family register was restored under her maiden name. The correction also made Hana, Rié’s child with the deceased man, legally illegitimate. Thus, the ruling resolved the false marriage entry but had direct consequences for the legal status of the family formed during that marriage.

Narrative significance

The court’s role illustrates the power and limits of official documentation in the novel. Public records had accepted the impersonator’s identity across marriage and death, yet the court could revise those records once evidence established the error. Its ruling changes the state’s account of who was married, who had died, and how a child was classified. The legal remedy gives Rié a way to correct her status, but it does not restore the life she understood herself to have lived: the formal erasure of the marriage leaves her confronting the unsettling gap between an administratively corrected past and her personal memories.