Maternal responsibility, abandonment, and mother-daughter bonds

Maternal responsibility, abandonment, and mother-daughter bonds are tested in the novel less by declarations of love than by the choices made under pressure. Sachiko repeatedly presents Mariko’s future as her foremost concern, yet her pursuit of a new life involves broken assurances and an act of abandonment that Mariko witnesses. In another generation, Etsuko admits that she took Keiko to England while believing that Keiko would not be happy there. Set beside Niki’s regret about Keiko’s isolation, these accounts make maternal care a matter of intention and consequence, not intention alone.

Sachiko’s promises and the burden of responsibility

When Sachiko tells Etsuko that she and Mariko will leave for America within days, the announcement comes as a surprise in the middle of Etsuko’s concern over Mariko. Sachiko’s confidence makes departure sound settled, but the plan depends on Frank, whose reliability is already in question. She asks Etsuko to trust that his earlier journey from Tokyo to Nagasaki proves he means to take her to America and build a respectable life with her. His disappearance, she insists, is only a delay. Her effort to interpret his absence as temporary reveals how much the imagined future rests on promises rather than dependable action.

Sachiko’s recollection of an earlier attempt to reach America gives that uncertainty a material history. In Tokyo, Frank disappeared and spent their money drinking in three days. Sachiko had worked as a hotel maid, scrubbing floors on her knees, to save enough for a ship; she says that a few more weeks might have brought them to departure, but Frank’s drinking erased the savings. She now describes him in a bar with a saloon girl and asks how she could place Mariko’s future in his hands. Her insistence that her daughter comes first is therefore both an expression of maternal priority and a judgment formed by repeated disappointment. Yet, even after naming the danger, Sachiko continues to speak as though America remains within reach.

Mariko, the kittens, and the cost of departure

The contradiction between Sachiko’s stated priorities and her treatment of Mariko becomes especially sharp while she packs. Mariko reminds her that she had been promised she could keep the kittens. Sachiko answers that circumstances have changed and that they cannot take the animals with them. When Etsuko offers to feed the kittens until they find homes, Mariko repeats that her mother had said she could keep them. Sachiko rebukes her for being childish, then puts the kittens into a box one by one. Mariko continues to hold the last kitten and turns to Etsuko as Sachiko reaches for it.

At the riverbank, Etsuko quietly asks whether the kittens could be released so someone might want them. Sachiko instead takes one from the box, holds it in the water, and puts it back after seeing that it is still alive. She remarks on the dirty water and the kittens’ struggle, then pushes the box into the river and holds it down before letting it drift into the current. Mariko runs along the bank, watching the box move downstream until only a corner remains visible above the surface. Sachiko’s brisk return to practical concerns after the act contrasts with the child’s silent pursuit. The episode does not establish that Mariko’s fate is identical to the kittens’, but it gives concrete form to the fear that a mother’s plans may require her to dismiss what her child is attached to. Etsuko’s offer to care for the animals briefly provides an alternative; it cannot undo Sachiko’s decision.

Leaving Nagasaki, and admitting what may be lost

Later, Sachiko says that the family is leaving Nagasaki for Kobe, with America still imagined as the next destination. She is packing a tea set with rolls of wool when Mariko’s insistence about the kittens interrupts her. Sachiko says she will leave her uncle’s household and describes it as a place of empty rooms, a life in which she could simply grow old. Her choice to go to Kobe is presented not as a guarantee of reaching America but as a refusal of that stagnant alternative. She admits to Etsuko that they may never see America and that life there would be difficult; even so, she asks what she has to lose by leaving.

The conversation turns from migration to the quality of Sachiko’s mothering. When Etsuko asks what will happen to Mariko, Sachiko says Mariko will manage, then asks whether Etsuko imagines that she is a good mother. The question does not resolve into a confession or a clear account of what Sachiko will do next. Instead, it exposes a gap between her certainty when defending departure and her uncertainty when judging herself. She has framed the journey as a way to secure a future for her daughter, but the scene leaves that future precarious: Frank has previously squandered their money, America may remain unreachable, and Mariko’s needs have just been subordinated to the logistics of leaving.

Etsuko, Keiko, and retrospective responsibility

The later conversation between Etsuko and Niki extends the question of maternal responsibility beyond Sachiko and Mariko. Niki says that Jiro should have looked after Keiko more, observing that he ignored her much of the time and that this was unfair. Etsuko answers that he was not Keiko’s real father, a distinction that helps explain the relationship but does not erase Niki’s sense of neglect. Her repeated return to the unfairness gives Keiko’s isolation a family context: responsibility was distributed among adults, while Niki, looking back, wonders whether she too should have done more.

Etsuko then acknowledges a more painful part of her own decision. She tells Niki that she knew Keiko would not be happy in England but brought her there anyway. Niki rejects the claim that her mother could have known the outcome and says that Etsuko did everything she could. Her reassurance does not change Etsuko’s account of what she believed at the time; it shows the difference between a parent’s retrospective self-judgment and a daughter’s effort to absolve her. The exchange also resists a simple contrast between a negligent mother and a blameless one: Etsuko’s decision was made in the belief that she and Keiko could have a happy life, yet she remembers choosing migration despite anticipating unhappiness.

Migration, memory, and the measure of care

Etsuko’s recollection of the English landscape makes that decision more than a change of address. She remembers that when her family first arrived, there were fields where the orchard now stands and the house could be seen from there. When Keiko’s father first brought her to the place, its fields and house seemed exactly like the England Etsuko had imagined, and she was pleased. The contrast between that remembered promise and her later admission about Keiko’s unhappiness places maternal responsibility within the allure of starting over: a parent may see a destination as hopeful while the child experiences the move differently.

The two maternal stories therefore echo without collapsing into one another. Sachiko turns departure into an urgent escape from her uncle’s empty rooms and an uncertain household, while Etsuko remembers migration as a choice she made for Keiko despite doubts she says she already had. Sachiko’s treatment of Mariko’s kittens makes the conflict between a mother’s plans and a child’s attachments visible in a single, irreversible act; Etsuko’s conversation with Niki instead dwells on memory, blame, and the limits of what a family member can know about another’s unhappiness. Together, these scenes make care neither a dependable virtue nor an absent one. It is shown as something claimed, attempted, compromised, and judged after its consequences have become impossible to separate from the choices that preceded them.