The narrator’s self-exile in Greece

The narrator’s self-exile in Greece is an escape jointly chosen by two people whose marriages have collapsed in the wake of their affair. It takes them from the wreckage of their domestic lives to a quiet island, where thrift, language study, drawing, and daily walks briefly make a new life seem possible. Yet the exile is not simply a restorative holiday: Izumi insists that returning to Japan is no longer an option, turning their refuge into a deliberate break with the world they left behind.

The Decision to Leave

After the affair is exposed, the narrator’s wife takes their son to her parents’ home in Chigasaki and refuses to speak with him. Izumi’s husband also leaves her, after beating her and cutting every garment she owns to pieces. When she calls the narrator, she is grieving the end of a marriage that began when she and her husband were high-school sweethearts. He wants to comfort her, but neither has a way to repair the lives that have just come apart.

Instead, Izumi proposes that they go out for a drink. They spend the night in an all-night Shibuya bar, with vodka gimlets for him and daiquiris for her, then walk to Harajuku at dawn and have coffee and breakfast at a Denny’s. It is there that she introduces the idea of Greece. She has always dreamed of going there, and had once hoped to honeymoon there, but her marriage had not allowed it. Now, she proposes going with the narrator and living there without worrying about anything. Japan, she says, will only depress them, and nothing good will come of staying.

Making Exile Possible

The narrator has no particular interest in Greece. He agrees not because he shares Izumi’s dream, but because the proposal gives their shared predicament a direction. They count their money: Izumi has two and a half million yen in savings, and he can contribute one and a half million, four million yen in all. Their calculation gives the decision practical shape. Izumi estimates that discount air tickets will cost about four thousand dollars, leaving thirty-six thousand; at a thousand dollars a month, that might last three years, though she allows for a safer estimate of two and a half.

In the crowded early-morning restaurant, they are the only couple over thirty. The narrator thinks they may also be the only couple there planning to take all their money and flee to Greece after a disastrous affair. He looks for a long time at the palm of his hand, registering the distance between the ordinary breakfast room around them and the extraordinary choice they are making. At last, he agrees to go.

The plan is an escape, but it is also a calculation made under pressure: money has to stretch, and the future remains unsettled. Later, when Izumi asks what would happen if she became pregnant, the narrator suggests that they could return to Japan. Izumi quietly corrects him: they can never go back. Her answer changes the meaning of their departure. What he has treated as a possible retreat is, for her, an irrevocable separation.

Island Life

In Greece, their days settle into a modest routine. Izumi continues studying Greek while the narrator draws. They eat simply and drink the cheapest wine sparingly, and each day they climb a nearby hill to a small village, from which they can see other islands in the distance. The narrator’s health improves with the fresh air and exercise. Their life is stripped of the familiar pressures he associates with Japan: there is no last train to catch and no need to invent lies for their spouses.

At night, after the sun has set, the island becomes completely silent. In that quiet, Izumi and the narrator make love and talk. He describes this period as the most peaceful time of his life, and as wonderful beyond belief. Its peace is concrete and repetitive—walking uphill, eating simply, studying, sketching—rather than built on a grand promise of success. Their closeness takes place within a life deliberately reduced to what they can afford and what the island affords them.

Exile and Its Limits

The season continues to turn while they remain on the island. Autumn deepens into early winter; the wind rises, and whitecaps appear on the sea. Their attention to money does not disappear with their departure: they read a newspaper report about the worsening condition of the Japanese emperor because they had bought the paper to check exchange rates. The yen is gaining against the drachma, which matters directly to their limited funds. Even in their retreat, the distant economy remains part of the terms on which they can stay.

The narrator’s account holds together two truths without resolving them into one. Greece offers a temporary release from shame, marital conflict, and the ordinary routines that had sustained their former lives; the couple’s simple days bring him a degree of peace he says he has never known. But Izumi’s declaration that they cannot go back makes that peace inseparable from exile. The island is both a chosen refuge and the setting of a life cut off from home, its fragile independence measured in savings, exchange rates, and the changing weather.