Keeping Bonds Through Memory and Not Forgetting

Keeping Bonds Through Memory and Not Forgetting gives shape to the book’s relationships across distance, loss, and time. Kensuke remembers the family he believes he has lost, Michael learns to understand that grief, and the two make a promise to keep one another present in memory even after they part. The closing letter from Michiya Ogawa shows how telling their story can also reconnect a family separated by a mistaken belief about death.

Memory, Loss, and the Family Left Behind

Kensuke’s memories of Kimi and Michiya are not incidental recollections: he says they remain in his mind forever. He uses that experience to imagine Michael’s mother grieving a child she believes has been lost. In Kensuke’s view, a mother may continue to see her child in her mind, just as he continues to carry Kimi and Michiya within his own thoughts. The parallel makes memory a form of continuing attachment, though it cannot erase the separation or the pain of believing loved ones dead.

Kensuke’s account of his earlier life explains the weight of that belief. Born in Nagasaki, he studied medicine in Tokyo and London, returned to Nagasaki, and built a family with Kimi and their son, Michiya. During the war he served as a doctor aboard a warship. After surviving its destruction, he heard by radio that an atomic bomb had fallen on Nagasaki and concluded that his family, including his mother, had died. The news, followed by Japan’s surrender and his isolation on the island, became the basis for a conviction he held for decades.

Storytelling as Recognition

The shift from silence to conversation allows memory to be shared rather than held alone. At Kensuke’s request, Michael tells the story of his life, from his family and the closure of the brick factory to his travels and the night he fell overboard. Kensuke responds by recognizing Michael’s homesickness and recalling that soccer had once made him happy in Japan. He promises to make Michael happier and proposes that they exchange their stories. Their telling becomes a way to recognize what each has lost and to begin relating as family.

Later, while fishing together in the outrigger, Kensuke recounts his life in detail. He tells Michael about his work as a doctor, his family, the war, and his arrival on the island. He also explains how he learned to live there and how hunters’ violence against the island’s animals deepened his distrust of people. His account finally reveals that he had rescued Michael and Stella at sea, then initially kept Michael at a distance because he feared that other people might find the island and harm its inhabitants. The story revises Michael’s understanding of their first encounters: care had been present even when Kensuke’s actions seemed rejecting or hostile.

After their reconciliation, Kensuke speaks more freely. He remembers his twin sister, including the childhood accident in which she broke her arm after he pushed her from a tree, and says that the cherry tree he paints recalls her. He also shares details from his years in London, including his address at No. 22 Clanricarde Gardens and a visit to see Chelsea play soccer. But he speaks most often of Kimi and Michiya, imagining the ages they would have reached. Michael suggests that they might have survived the bombing, and that Kensuke could go home. Kensuke refuses the possibility, still believing his family dead; the conversation shows that hope alone cannot immediately undo a long-held account of loss.

Separation and the Promise to Remember

When Michael prepares to leave, Kensuke accepts that their wishes differ. He says that he wants to remain on the island, whereas Michael is right to return home across the sea. At the same time, Kensuke admits that Michael has become like a son to him and that he will be sad when he goes. Their attachment is real, but it does not require Michael to give up home or Kensuke to abandon the place and life he has chosen.

Kensuke gives Michael three promises to carry into the separation: to paint every day and aspire to become a great artist like Hokusai; to think of Kensuke when he is back in England, especially when he sees the full moon, while Kensuke does the same; and to keep Kensuke’s existence and the island secret for ten years. The first promise connects their shared life to Michael’s future practice; the second turns remembrance into a mutual act; the last sets a limit on what can be told and protects Kensuke’s wish for peace. Memory here is not unrestricted disclosure: Kensuke asks to be remembered by Michael, but not yet revealed to the wider world.

The Letter and Memory’s Later Consequences

The final exchange, years after the island events, complicates what Kensuke believed about his family. Four years after the book was first published, Michael receives a letter from Michiya Ogawa, who says he had thought his father died in the war. Michiya explains that he and his mother survived because they had gone to the countryside to visit his grandmother before the bomb fell. His mother died only three years before the letter, still believing Kensuke dead. The letter therefore reveals that the family’s separation had been sustained by reciprocal, mistaken beliefs: Kensuke thought Kimi and Michiya had died, while Michiya and his mother thought Kensuke had died.

Michiya has no memories of his father, only photographs and Michael’s book. He writes that he would like to meet someone who knew Kensuke. A month later, Michael travels to Japan and meets him, noting that Michiya laughs like his father. The reunion does not restore the years the family lost, but it carries Kensuke’s remembered presence into the next generation through Michael’s account. In this ending, memory is both intimate and transmissible: it keeps Michael and Kensuke connected after their parting, and the telling of Kensuke’s life gives his son a route back to a father he never knew.