K swept away by a huge wave in the typhoon

K swept away by a huge wave in the typhoon is the childhood catastrophe that defines the narrator’s later life: when a sudden giant wave reaches the beach, he escapes to the seawall while K remains behind, and he must live with the belief that he might have saved his friend. The loss is compounded by the absence of a body, a funeral, or any accusation from K’s parents. Years afterward, recurring nightmares and guilt still govern the narrator’s relationship to his hometown and to other people.

The typhoon and the brief calm

A severe typhoon struck the narrator’s seaside community in September, prompting school closures and preparations for possible evacuation. His family secured the house, stored water, and gathered essential possessions, while the narrator remembers the storm as an exciting spectacle from a child’s perspective. After the winds intensified, the storm abruptly quieted: the family had entered its eye. His father warned that the calm would last only about fifteen or twenty minutes, and allowed him to go outside on the condition that he return at the first sign of wind.

The narrator walked through streets strewn with branches, broken roof tiles, and other storm damage. K saw him and came outside. The two boys went down to the beach to inspect debris carried ashore by the storm. There they found an assortment of objects, including toys, sandals, wood, clothing, bottles, and broken crates with foreign writing. Their exploration lasted only a few minutes before the water reached unexpectedly close to the narrator, then withdrew. Though the waves seemed gentle, he felt instinctively that the sea was dangerous and that he had to leave.

The wave and the narrator’s flight

As the narrator prepared to get away, K was crouched farther down the beach, absorbed in something he had found. The narrator heard a strange rumbling and understood that a large wave was coming. He later recalled knowing what he ought to do: run to K, seize him, and escape together. Instead, fear took over, and he ran alone toward the breakwater. From there he shouted a warning. K finally looked up, but the wave was already upon him; the narrator saw it rise behind his friend and sweep him away.

The wave struck the beach and sent water over the dike, where the narrator had taken shelter. When it receded, he could find no trace of K or K’s dog. He stayed on the seawall, aware that large waves often arrive in succession. A second enormous wave followed. The narrator remained where he was, whether because he was frozen by fear or because he believed there was no point in fleeing after K had been taken. The scene leaves the central fact unresolved only in its moral dimension: the narrator survives, but cannot stop asking whether he could have acted differently.

Loss without a funeral

The search for K and his dog continued with help from local fishermen, but neither was found. In that area, people who drowned were often carried to an inlet farther east; the narrator concludes that the waves must have taken K too far offshore for his body to return. Without a body, there was no funeral. K’s parents moved between searching the beach and staying at home chanting sutras, while the narrator’s parents avoided discussing the event in front of him.

K’s parents never blamed the narrator. They knew he had loved and protected K as if K were his younger brother. Their silence, and the care with which others avoided mentioning what happened, did not relieve him. He became convinced that he might have reached K in time and that he had abandoned his friend to save himself. The lack of accusation therefore sharpens rather than settles the narrator’s sense of responsibility: the judgment he cannot escape is his own.

Trauma and its later consequences

After the typhoon, the narrator suffered a prolonged physical and emotional shock. He spent a week in bed on a liquid diet, vomited, and experienced delirium; his father feared the high fever might cause lasting neurological harm. The narrator recovered physically, but stayed away from school for weeks, ate very little, and spent his days staring at the ceiling. In recurring dreams, K appeared in the wave and reached toward him; in another, K dragged him beneath the water. The dreams ended with the narrator waking in terror.

At the end of the year, the narrator asked his parents to let him leave because he could not bear to live within sight of the beach and could not escape the nightmares. In January he moved to a mountain village near Komoro in Nagano Prefecture, living with his father’s family. He finished school there and did not return to his hometown, even for holidays. As an adult, he continued to live and work in Nagano. The nightmares became less frequent after he left, but returned whenever he seemed close to forgetting. He never married, explaining that he could not share the terror that might wake someone beside him.

Memory, return, and the event’s significance

Much later, the narrator decided he had to return to his hometown. By then, industrial development had transformed the area: the former gift shop had become a mall, the movie theater a supermarket, his family home had been demolished, and K’s old house had been replaced by a parking lot. The physical landscape that held the memory had changed, but the return did not erase the event or restore the place to him.

The typhoon episode is told retrospectively by the survivor, whose account is shaped by years of recollection and self-reproach. Its sequence sets the storm’s temporary calm against the suddenness of the wave, and the narrator’s instinct to protect K against his actual flight. The disaster is not presented as an isolated childhood misfortune: it reorganizes his life, drives him from home, recurs in nightmares, and remains difficult to share. What endures is not only K’s disappearance, but the narrator’s conviction that survival came at the cost of a choice he cannot undo.