Jiro

Jiro is Etsuko’s husband and Ogata-San’s son, a careful, reserved man whose preference for sidestepping confrontation becomes especially clear during his father’s visit. In the dispute over Shigeo Matsuda’s article, Jiro lets his father believe he will act while postponing the promised letter; at the chessboard, the same retreat takes the form of abandoning a coherent strategy. His brisk return to domestic routine after their quarrel leaves their disagreement unsettled rather than resolved.

Identity and Bearing

Jiro is remembered as a small, stocky man with a stern expression, markedly unlike his father. He is fastidious about his appearance and often wears a shirt and tie even at home. At meals, he sits hunched over his food; the narrator recalls that the same forward-leaning posture follows him when he stands or walks. These details give his presence a contained, self-disciplined quality, distinct from Ogata-San’s more relaxed and physically expansive manner.

The contrast between father and son is also a contrast in how they occupy a room. Ogata-San sits with his shoulders thrown back and projects robust energy, while Jiro’s hunched posture and absorption in newspapers or meals make him seem withdrawn. The narrator describes these physical differences as part of her remembered image of the two men, setting up a pattern that recurs in their argument: Ogata-San presses for engagement, while Jiro turns away.

The Matsuda Dispute

During Ogata-San’s early-summer visit, he asks whether Jiro will see Shigeo Matsuda at a school reunion. Jiro corrects the timing, saying that the reunion is the following evening. The subject soon becomes more serious than an old school acquaintance: Matsuda has published a magazine article critical of old-style education, which Ogata-San regards as an attack on the family name and believes should be answered promptly. He expects Jiro to write to Matsuda, his former school friend.

Ogata-San’s grievance is rooted in his life as a teacher. He says he devoted himself to educating the young and watched the Americans dismantle the system he served. He objects to changes in what children are taught and fears they leave school knowing little of their country’s history or having shared values. Jiro responds with a counterexample from his own schooling: pupils had been required to memorize claims that Japan was created by gods and was divine and supreme. In his view, the loss of such lessons is not necessarily a loss at all. Their disagreement therefore concerns not only Matsuda’s article but also what education should transmit and whether the old nationalist curriculum deserves preservation.

Jiro does not openly tell his father that he will refuse to write the letter. Instead, he agrees that the article should be dealt with firmly and repeatedly says he will write when he has time. While playing chess, he is still asked whether the letter has been written; he replies that he has been busy and has not yet done it. Etsuko later interprets this delay as deliberate: Jiro is waiting for Ogata-San to return to Fukuoka so that the affair can be forgotten. His apparent agreement serves as a way to avoid stating his position directly, leaving his father to wait for an action Jiro does not intend to take.

Chess and Confrontation

Chess makes Jiro’s avoidance visible in another form. Ogata-San observes that Jiro began with a plan, but after that plan was broken he stopped thinking strategically and played one move at a time. For his father, persistence means developing a new strategy when the first fails; defeat arrives not simply when the king is cornered but when a player gives up planning altogether. Jiro accepts that he has lost and tries to end the discussion. When Ogata-San points out three possible ways to escape, Jiro turns his father’s lesson against him: if he has been playing only one move at a time, he says, there is little point in continuing.

The exchange turns the board into more than a contest between father and son. Ogata-San uses the game to argue that Jiro is surrendering too soon, while Jiro uses the argument to justify stopping. His father calls this defeatism and recalls that Jiro had shown the same tendency as a child. Jiro does not answer. He lowers his attention to his newspaper and continues reading as Ogata-San tries to show him how the position can be saved.

Jiro’s silence then gives way to an abrupt, frustrated gesture. He throws down the newspaper and moves toward the chessboard, apparently intending to sweep it and its pieces onto the floor. Instead, he knocks over the nearby teapot with his foot. The pot rolls, its lid rattles open, and tea runs across the tatami and begins soaking the cushion where he had been sitting. Jiro looks first at the spilled tea and then at the chessmen, which remain upright; he gets to his feet, takes his newspaper, and leaves without speaking. The failed attempt to overturn the board leaves the game intact but the room disturbed, making his anger plain without resolving the argument.

Work, Family, and Aftermath

The chess quarrel takes place alongside an important moment in Jiro’s work. Ogata-San treats Jiro’s selection to represent his firm as a triumph in itself, regardless of the next day’s outcome. Jiro dismisses the occasion as nothing to make a fuss about. The following day he returns from work earlier than usual, greets his father cheerfully, and goes to bathe; afterwards, in a kimono, he hums to himself and towels his hair. Asked about the meeting, he says it was not so bad. His ordinary, almost buoyant routine contrasts with the intensity of the earlier confrontation, which he appears to have put aside without discussing it.

Jiro says the deal has finally gone through and that he will have more time, but Ogata-San is preparing to return to Fukuoka. Etsuko asks whether he might stay another week if Jiro is to take a few days off. Jiro stops eating but does not look up; Ogata-San says that, tempting as the offer is, it is time to go home. The exchange ends without a clear reconciliation or a renewed discussion of Matsuda’s letter. Jiro’s pause registers the invitation, but the visit—and the opportunity to settle the dispute—continues toward its close.

Narrative Role

Etsuko presents Jiro through remembered behavior and, in retrospect, identifies avoidance as a recurring feature of how he faces awkward confrontations. She connects his handling of the Matsuda affair to a later crisis, saying that had he not faced that crisis in much the same way, she might never have left Nagasaki. The later event remains unspecified here, so the comparison does not explain it; instead, it makes the earlier scenes carry an unresolved consequence beyond the visit itself.

Across the letter, the chessboard, the newspaper, and the spilled tea, Jiro repeatedly approaches conflict without speaking his position plainly. His inaction lets the promise of a letter stand in for a decision, and his withdrawal from the game lets the disagreement with his father remain open. The next day’s cheerful manner restores routine but does not show that the underlying tension has been addressed. This pattern makes Jiro’s reserve consequential: what he declines to confront shapes both the remembered family scene and Etsuko’s account of a later turning point.