Sunny

Sunny, the bar where Misuzu works, is both a place of conviviality and a setting where the search for Daisuké Taniguchi acquires a more troubling social dimension. Its patrons and workplace relationships enter Kido’s view through Misuzu’s online life, while a later conversation there prompts discussion of prejudice against Chinese and Koreans.

Workplace and Social Life

Misuzu’s Facebook activity offers Kido glimpses of Sunny beyond the bar itself. The manager appears regularly in her comment threads, and photographs show the two of them smiling together amid drunken people. These scenes place Sunny within Misuzu’s everyday social world: not simply a workplace, but a setting where coworkers and friends gather and where Kido can observe her connections from a distance.

Kido’s attention to Misuzu’s social media is personal as well as practical. He had created a Facebook account chiefly to contact her, and he notices that she likes nearly everything he posts, including photographs from his trip to Miyazaki. Their small exchanges give him fleeting pleasure, though he remains uncertain what they mean. Sunny’s lively social circle thus stands in contrast to Kido’s largely deserted newsfeed and his tentative, mediated approach to Misuzu.

The Search for Daisuké

Sunny is also connected to the effort to find Daisuké. Misuzu had created a Facebook account using his name and posted as though she were him, hoping that the real Daisuké would contact her if the impersonation came to his attention. Kido disapproves of the ploy but does not blame Misuzu entirely, since Kyoichi had apparently devised it. The online impersonation extends the search from a missing person into the networks around Sunny and Misuzu, turning a familiar platform into an uncertain lure.

Kyoichi’s response to the stalled police search sharpens the stakes behind that effort. He is relieved that the case is unlikely to attract wider attention, even as he insists Daisuké must have been murdered and imagines sinister circumstances behind the disappearance. Once Kido tells him that the census records have been updated to list his brother as alive and unmarried, Kyoichi begins treating the matter as a family problem. Against that retreat into private concern, Misuzu’s attempt to draw Daisuké back into contact remains an active, if ethically questionable, pursuit.

Conversation and Prejudice

During an October visit to the Yokohama Museum of Art, Misuzu asks Kido to join her and also wants to consult him about the search. After they discuss an exhibit, she suggests returning to the gallery and then checks whether the conversation at Sunny had made him uncomfortable. Kido says it had not, acknowledging that abduction is a real problem while allowing that her boss had pressed his point too heavily.

Misuzu clarifies that her concern is not only the forcefulness of the discussion: she says Takagi is deeply prejudiced toward Chinese and Koreans. Kido responds by contrasting that prejudice with Takagi’s enthusiasm for black music, wondering whether that interest has made him more sensitive to discrimination. Sunny therefore becomes the point of departure for a conversation about how a person’s cultural interests can coexist with, rather than necessarily undo, racial prejudice. The scene links the ordinary sociability of Misuzu’s workplace to the broader tensions surrounding Kido’s identity and the search for Daisuké.