Higashikawaguchi Office

The Shinagawa Ward Office is both the municipal home of a new counseling service and the institutional setting for a decisive turn in Mizuki Ando’s search for an explanation of why she sometimes cannot remember her own name. The ward’s practical support makes the center accessible; its connection to the Public Works Department also allows Tetsuko Sakaki and her husband to bring Mizuki face-to-face with the alleged culprit and the recovered name tags.

Establishment and Access

The counseling center is announced in a small article in the local ward newsletter. It is to open twice a month, offering private, one-on-one advice from a professional counselor at a greatly reduced rate. Any resident of Shinagawa Ward over eighteen is eligible, and the service promises strict confidentiality. Although Mizuki doubts at first that a ward-sponsored program will help, she decides that trying it cannot hurt.

The service requires an appointment. Mizuki arranges a weekday off from her busy job at a car dealership and books a thirty-minute session for one p.m. the following Wednesday, at a cost of two thousand yen. The schedule is described as difficult for ordinary working people, but her workplace allows her to adjust her hours. When she arrives, she is the center’s only client. The receptionist explains that the program began suddenly and is not yet widely known, so the office has few appointments for now.

The Counseling Center and Its Staff

The counselor, Tetsuko Sakaki, is presented as a pleasant, short, heavyset woman in her late forties, dressed in a light summer suit and an artificial-pearl necklace. Her manner is slow and deliberate. She tells Mizuki that she has a counseling degree and substantial experience, and invites her to speak freely. Mizuki is unsure whether this counselor will be able to help, but the center has given her a confidential setting in which to discuss a problem that a hospital doctor had dismissed as not requiring immediate tests.

Sakaki explains the office’s institutional connection through her husband: he is section chief of the Public Works Department at the ward office, and his position helped secure ward support for the counseling center. She says that Mizuki is their first client and that no other appointments are scheduled that day, allowing them to talk at length. This personal link between the counseling service and the office’s administrative staff later becomes important beyond the counseling session itself.

From Counseling to an Investigation

Sakaki eventually tells Mizuki that her name tags were stolen and that their recovery is connected to the return of her name to memory. She says the people responsible have been caught, and that her husband and one of his subordinates recovered the tags. In doing so, the story gives the ward office a role extending beyond the provision of advice: its Public Works Department becomes the means by which Sakaki’s explanation is put before Mizuki as a concrete encounter.

Mizuki follows Sakaki out of the counseling room and down the hallway to an elevator. They descend to the basement, walk along a deserted corridor, and arrive at a door at its far end. Inside are Yoshio Sakaki, Tetsuko’s husband and head of the Public Works Department, and his colleague Sakurada. Sakurada is holding a black nightstick. Yoshio introduces himself to Mizuki as the section chief and identifies Sakurada as his coworker. The passage ends with Mizuki brought directly to the men Sakaki has identified as connected to the recovered name tags.

Narrative Significance

The office’s significance rests on the contrast between familiar civic procedure and the unusual explanation offered within its walls. A newsletter, appointment, fee, receptionist, and counseling room make the service part of everyday local administration. The later journey through the same building—to a basement room where the staff responsible for recovering the tags are waiting—changes the office from a neutral place to seek help into the setting for an unsettling revelation.

The ward’s involvement is specific rather than abstract: public support establishes the counseling center, and Yoshio Sakaki’s position in the Public Works Department supplies the institutional link to the recovery operation. The office therefore joins Mizuki’s private anxiety to a public setting, while leaving the truth of the explanation to the unfolding encounter with the men and the name tags.