England

England appears as Etsuko’s home and as a landscape she continues to assess through memory. Its winding residential lanes and familiar village routes offer a quiet countryside, though Niki distinguishes this wealthy, suburban version from the agricultural north she considers the real countryside. England is also the vantage point from which Etsuko recalls Nagasaki, setting everyday English life against the customs of postwar Japan.

Residential countryside

Etsuko describes the lanes near her home as calm and quiet, qualities she has come to appreciate over the years. During Niki’s visit, the two walk into a village after several days of rain; the drizzle has eased, and Etsuko welcomes being outside. Niki walks quickly in narrow leather boots, while Etsuko would rather take her time and enjoy the walk itself. Their difference becomes a disagreement about place: Etsuko values the lanes’ quiet, but Niki calls the area a residential imitation built for wealthy inhabitants and points toward the agricultural north as the real countryside. Etsuko acknowledges that she has never explored that region.

A vantage point for remembering Japan

England also frames Etsuko’s recollections of Nagasaki. Looking back on an evening there, she contrasts Japanese cities, where shopkeepers and teahouse proprietors seem eager for night to arrive and lanterns appear before daylight has faded, with England. She remembers the colours of Nagasaki’s evening streets, young couples holding hands, and fish sellers carrying baskets from the harbour. The details make England more than a location: it is the present-day measure against which Etsuko’s remembered Japanese streets acquire their particular customs and atmosphere.

She also explains that the Nagasaki lottery game kujibiki has no true equivalent in England, except perhaps at fairgrounds. The comparison shows how the practical vocabulary of her later home shapes what she can readily recall about Japan, even as her memories preserve the difference between the two places.