The Sakakis capture the name-stealing monkey

The Sakakis’ capture of the name-stealing monkey turns Mizuki Ando’s baffling lapses of memory into a concrete mystery with an unlikely culprit. At a meeting in the ward office counseling center, Tetsuko Sakaki reveals two recovered name tags, and Mizuki sees her work name, Mizuki Ozawa, beside the name of her deceased colleague Yuko Matsunaka. The tags had been stolen from her apartment by a monkey living underground; their recovery explains why Mizuki’s own name had periodically vanished from her mind and brings her face to face with the creature responsible.

The Mystery of the Missing Names

The discovery concludes a series of meetings between Mizuki and Tetsuko, who tells her that their discussions have gradually clarified what is happening. At the next appointment, Tetsuko announces that she has identified the cause of Mizuki’s memory problem and found a solution. She takes an object from a black enamel handbag and lays it on the desk: two name tags, one bearing the name Mizuki Ozawa and the other Yuko Matsunaka.

Mizuki’s reaction is immediate and physical. She pales, returns to the sofa, and sits speechless, holding both hands over her mouth as if trying to keep words from spilling out. Tetsuko explains that the tags were stolen from Mizuki and that getting them back was necessary for Mizuki to recover her name. The evidence connects an apparently internal failure of memory to the physical removal of the signs by which Mizuki and Yuko were identified.

The Search and Capture

Tetsuko does not initially identify the culprit. Instead, she suggests that Mizuki ask the responsible individual directly. The culprit, she says, has been captured and the tags recovered through the efforts of her husband, Yoshio Sakaki, and one of his colleagues. Yoshio is section chief of the Public Works Department, whose staff are responsible for the sewers; the colleague, Sakurada, helped carry out the capture.

Tetsuko leads Mizuki from the counseling office down a hallway and into an elevator. They descend to the basement, walk along a deserted corridor, and enter a room where Yoshio and Sakurada are waiting. From there, Sakurada opens a second door into a bare storage room. A large, gray-flecked monkey sits alone on a chair, its limbs tied to the wood with thin cord and its long tail hanging to the floor. The creature looks at Mizuki briefly, then lowers its gaze. The revelation is literal: the name thief is not a human intruder but an animal caught and brought into the ward office’s basement.

How Tetsuko Solves the Case

Tetsuko explains that the monkey had been hiding in the Shinagawa sewers. Because Yoshio’s department oversees that underground network, she asked him to have his younger colleagues search for and catch it. Sakurada says the monkey had used a hideout beneath Takanawa as a base for foraging operations across Tokyo. The capture thus joins Tetsuko’s counseling work to Yoshio’s municipal responsibilities: her inference identifies where to look, and the public-works staff make the search possible.

Tetsuko says that listening to Mizuki over the preceding two months led her to infer that something was stealing names and hiding underground. In a city, she reasons, the likely possibilities are the subway or the sewers; she told Yoshio she suspected a nonhuman creature in the sewers and asked him to investigate. The explanation presents the case as a sequence of observation and deduction rather than a random arrest. Yoshio adds that he regards his wife as unusually gifted and says that he supported her counseling center so that residents of Shinagawa could benefit from her abilities. His relief at the mystery’s solution makes clear that the case has drawn in the Sakakis as a couple as well as in their separate public and municipal roles.

The Monkey’s Motive and the Meaning of the Tags

When Mizuki asks why her own tag was taken along with Yuko’s, the monkey apologizes and says it cannot control its urge to snatch names it likes. It describes Mizuki’s name as having moved its heart and calls the compulsion an illness. Its explanation gives the theft a motive without making the harm less real: Mizuki has suffered because she could not recall her name, even though the monkey says it knew the act was wrong.

The recovered tags matter because they carry distinct names from different parts of Mizuki’s life. She became Mizuki Ando after marrying Takashi Ando, but at work she continued to use her maiden name, Mizuki Ozawa, because changing the records and paperwork seemed too troublesome. Her business cards, time card, and name tag therefore kept the earlier name in circulation. The returned Ozawa tag is not simply a label for her married identity; it is the tangible workplace name that had remained in daily use, while Yuko’s tag links the theft to a colleague whose own name had also been taken.

Resolution and Limits

The capture supplies an answer to the central question of why Mizuki’s name disappears: a monkey stole the name tags, and the Sakakis recovered them. The resolution makes an invisible disturbance visible through two small objects laid out on a desk, then leads Mizuki from the counseling room into a basement where the thief is physically present. Yet it does not reduce identity to a tag alone. Mizuki still knows other people’s names and remembers her address, phone numbers, birthday, and passport number; what has failed is her ability to retrieve her own name when caught unprepared.

The episode also brings the story’s concern with names into sharp focus. A married name, a maiden name retained at work, and a colleague’s name on a stolen tag occupy different social contexts, but all can be carried, withheld, or taken as objects. The monkey’s capture restores the tags and offers a practical explanation for Mizuki’s recurring blankness. The scene’s strangeness remains part of that explanation: the disturbance is neither ordinary forgetfulness nor total amnesia, but a problem of self-recognition made concrete by a thief beneath the city.