Sanae Kamiya and her father

The relationship between Sanae Kamiya and her father is marked by a painful reversal of care: while he pursued writing, Sanae took responsibility for keeping the family together, and later left home to pursue writing herself. Their estrangement begins to change when her father discovers that she has become the novelist Keiko Nishikawa. Recognition and apology open a way back into contact, but the reconciliation remains a beginning rather than a clean resolution.

Background and Estrangement

Sanae’s father had chosen novel-writing over his responsibilities as a parent. From her first year of junior high school, Sanae helped hold the family together, taking on household responsibility even though she knew her father’s literary dream was not coming true. She eventually left to follow the path of writing herself. The resulting distance was sustained by guilt on both sides: her father had failed to be the father she needed, while Sanae had carried the household and then chosen a life beyond it.

For her father, Sanae’s departure could look like rejection. When he learns that she moved out to become a novelist, he asks whether she was escaping from the family. Tooru rejects that description: Sanae was not running away from her life but running toward something. The distinction matters because it recasts her independence as a positive choice of vocation, not merely abandonment. Her father initially insists that the two explanations are the same, revealing how difficult it is for him to separate her departure from his own sense of loss.

Recognition and First Contact

The turning point comes when Sanae’s father searches online for the winner of the Akutagawa Prize and sees that it is Keiko Nishikawa, a young woman in her twenties whose face he recognizes as his daughter’s. He asks Tooru whether he knew. Tooru confirms that Sanae had been writing novels for a long time under that pen name, and explains that he and Sanae met recently at a bookstore signing event. Although they had not been in regular contact, the chance meeting gave them an opportunity to talk.

Her father’s discovery brings the family’s unspoken history into a direct conversation. After asking whether Tooru met Sanae, he worries aloud that she may not want to live with them again. Tooru answers that the issue is not simply whether she will return: Sanae worked hard for the family for a long time, and now she must be allowed to follow her own path. He admits that he, too, had once waited for her return as his central hope, before building a wider life with Hino and Wataya. The conversation therefore marks a change in his understanding, not the disappearance of his longing.

Apology and Renewed Contact

After Tooru and his father clean up the dishes, the rarely used landline rings. Tooru’s father recognizes that Sanae is calling and answers nervously. For the first time in years, father and daughter speak. He apologizes, calls himself a bad father, and acknowledges that the day is special for her. When he congratulates her on the prize from the bottom of his heart, the news that first exposed their distance becomes a reason for him to affirm her achievement. Tooru listens from the window, where he opens it to let in the night air, and quietly cries.

Sanae calls again a few days later, and about ten days after the prize announcement she visits home. Her father has begun helping with chores after his conversation with Tooru. He has tried cooking, made mistakes, and tried again with Tooru’s help; on the day of Sanae’s visit, he has been cleaning since morning and plans to cook dinner. Sanae is genuinely surprised when Tooru tells her their father has been helping. These ordinary tasks provide visible evidence that the change is not only verbal: her father is beginning to take part in the work Sanae had once carried.

Writing, Responsibility, and Reconciliation

During the visit, Sanae’s father says he has turned over a new leaf and found cooking and cleaning enjoyable once he tried them. He also says he intends to take a break from writing until he can face himself honestly in his work, rather than treating the pause as another escape. Offering Sanae books from his collection, including first editions, he asks her to take what she wants because he needs to reduce the collection. The gesture connects their shared relationship to writing with a practical act of generosity: he makes room for her own life and work within the home he once failed to maintain.

Sanae responds by telling him that he was the reason she began writing. Watching him write novels at close range had shown her what writing could be. At first she, like him, wrote to escape reality; later she came to see it as a way to grow and encounter new words and ideas. Her account neither excuses his past neglect nor rejects the influence he had on her. It allows her to name both the harm and the creative inheritance that came from their relationship. When she jokes that the house has too many books and is not sanitary, and asks whether she can take some, he agrees. They grin at the same moment.

That shared smile does not mean that all the bad blood has vanished. The history remains: her father had chosen his writing over fatherhood, while Sanae had taken over the household before eventually pursuing the writer’s life herself. Both have reason to feel guilty. Their relationship changes because they begin to face that history rather than pretending it never happened. Her father’s congratulations, his new participation in domestic work, Sanae’s recognition of his influence, and their exchange over the books make reconciliation concrete but unfinished: each is trying, in a different way, to move forward.