Mr. Kurumizawa's twenty-day amnesia

Mr. Kurumizawa’s twenty-day amnesia is the unresolved aftermath of his disappearance: he was found in Sendai with no memory of the journey or the days between leaving his mother’s home and waking in a station waiting room. His return resolves where he is, but not what happened during the missing time, making the blank in his memory the investigation’s final and most intimate mystery.

Discovery in Sendai

Mr. Kurumizawa’s wife called the volunteer investigator on a Saturday morning with news that the police had found her husband the previous day, around noon. A railway employee had been shaking him awake on a bench in the waiting room at Sendai Station. He carried neither money nor identification; after some time, however, he remembered his name, address, and telephone number. His wife flew to Sendai and confirmed that the man was her husband.

The location offered no explanation for his arrival. When asked why he might have gone to Sendai, his wife said he had no idea how he got there: he had simply awakened on the bench, with the railway employee beside him. He could not account for traveling so far without money or explain how he had eaten during the twenty days he could not remember.

The Missing Interval

The amnesia has a specific boundary. Mr. Kurumizawa remembered leaving his mother’s home and walking up the stairs, but after that point his recollection stopped until he woke at Sendai Station. His wife reported that he wore the same clothes he had had when he left the apartment, had grown a beard, had lost more than twenty pounds, and had lost his glasses somewhere along the way. These visible changes register the duration and physical cost of the disappearance, even though they do not disclose what he experienced.

At the time of the call, he was in a Sendai hospital undergoing a CAT scan, X-rays, and neurological examinations. His wife said his mind seemed entirely fine and that nothing appeared physically wrong, while his memory of the twenty days was gone. The episode is therefore not described as a general loss of identity or continuing confusion: he could recover basic personal information, but the intervening stretch remained inaccessible.

Resolution and Remaining Mystery

The discovery brought the search to an end. Mr. Kurumizawa’s wife expected to return to Tokyo with him the following day and told the investigator that there was no need to continue looking. The conversation closed with mutual understanding and a quiet exchange of thanks; the practical crisis of locating him had been resolved, though its cause had not.

After hanging up, the investigator slowly turned a new pencil and wrote down the details on a blank memo pad: Sendai Station, Friday around noon, the telephone call, the weight loss, the same clothes, the missing glasses, and the memory of twenty days gone. The final item was repeated, reducing the case to its irreducible fact. The amnesia turns a successful recovery into an incomplete one: Mr. Kurumizawa is found and recognized, yet the central portion of his recent life remains absent from his account.