Straw hat

The Straw hat is a recurring object in Maori Hino and Tooru Kamiya’s relationship, turning an ordinary accessory into a record of intimacy under the pressure of Maori’s memory loss. Its significance lies not in the hat alone but in the plans, mistakes, and acts of consideration gathered around it: Maori forgets that Tooru wanted to buy her one, buys it herself, and receives from him a sunflower decoration meant to make it her own.

An image in Maori’s drawings

The hat first appears among the details Tooru encounters while looking through Maori’s sketchbook. He recognizes drawings of himself in different poses, including one showing him from behind as he pushes Maori on her bicycle in the library parking lot. The hat enters the scene through a question about whether he recognizes it, followed by his recollection of an earlier exchange about it. The memory stings, and he tries to ignore the feeling before closing the sketchbook.

That small interruption matters because Tooru has been looking at pictures that disclose how closely Maori has observed him. The drawings preserve poses and expressions that might otherwise pass without notice; the hat, too, belongs to a relationship made legible through accumulated details. Yet the sketchbook does not give him untroubled access to that shared past. His recognition comes with pain, and he closes the book rather than lingering over it.

A purchase made out of sequence

During a later outing, Maori describes going to a bookstore with Tooru. She wants to revisit books she read before her accident and find new favorites through movies and manga, while Tooru reads a magazine featuring an interview with his sister. At the end of the day, he asks whether she has forgotten her Straw hat again. She has: she has lost track of their earlier visit to look at hats together and of his intention to buy one as a present. Without consulting her notes, she buys the hat herself.

The mistake is specific, not a failure of affection. Maori’s journal preserves both the earlier plan and the present-day confusion, letting the reader see how her daily memory reset separates an intention from the occasion meant to fulfill it. What should have been a shared gift becomes a purchase she makes without knowing she has displaced Tooru’s plan. The hat consequently shifts from a simple object of use into a visible measure of the gap between the day Maori is living and the days her records describe.

The sunflower decoration

Tooru answers the mistake without reproaching her. Maori says the hat’s size is not quite right; he then takes a small decoration from his bag, a fake sunflower with a pin on its back, and shyly gives it to her because he thinks it will look good on the hat. She understands that he has noticed why her earlier selves were not wearing it: they had left it off to spare him the disappointment of seeing that she had forgotten their plan.

The exchange gathers care on both sides. Tooru adapts his intended present into something he can still give, while Maori’s earlier selves have tried to protect his feelings by preserving the unfulfilled gesture in their choices. The sunflower does not undo her forgetting or restore the lost sequence of events. Instead, it makes their response to forgetting visible: an intention can be lost from Maori’s immediate memory and still be carried by notes, objects, and Tooru’s gentleness.

An object inside a larger record

The hat belongs to a wider system of reminders Maori uses to orient herself. Her binder and journal direct her to information about her boyfriend, and a folder on her phone contains photos and videos of Tooru. One video, made while they ride together, captures him looking back as he pedals and her own flirty voice; watching it makes her smile at a happy moment she had to recover through a record. The account of the hat works similarly, retaining the forgotten plan and the decoration that followed it.

That system is later subject to deliberate editing after Tooru dies. Izumi Wataya and Keiko Nishikawa arrange to replace Maori’s binder and journals with revised copies that remove Tooru, and Izumi transfers the altered digital records to Maori’s computer. Against that effort to erase traces, a note hidden on the back of one of Maori’s reminders insists that she remember Tooru even if she recovers. The Straw hat’s importance is smaller and more domestic than the note’s declaration, but it belongs to the same struggle over what a written record or tangible keepsake can preserve.

The novel does not establish that the hat itself is what eventually restores Maori’s memories. Its role is more precise: it materializes a courtship that has to be pieced together from daily entries, photographs, videos, and remembered gestures. In the failed present of the purchase, the hat registers what Maori has forgotten; in the sunflower pin, Tooru’s considerate response remains. Together, they make an everyday accessory a compact record of affection sustained across discontinuous memory.