London

London is one of the few places in Kensuke Ogawa’s account that belongs to his life before the island: he goes there to study at Guy’s Hospital, learns some English, and later recalls a specific address and an episode from his time in the city. These memories help make his history more than a story of isolation, connecting his life on the island to the family, education, and wider world left behind.

Study and Early Life

After growing up in Nagasaki, Kensuke studies medicine in Tokyo and becomes a doctor. He then travels to London to continue his studies at Guy’s Hospital. He says that he learns some English there before returning to Nagasaki, where he lives with his wife, Kimi, and their young son, Michiya. London thus belongs to a period of professional development that precedes his family life and service as a doctor in the Japanese Navy during the war.

Memories Recalled at Sea

Kensuke returns to London in conversation with Michael while they fish from Kensuke’s outrigger boat. By this stage, the two have reconciled, and fishing has become a setting in which Kensuke tells Michael more about his past. He remembers the address where he lived while studying in London: No. 22 Clanricarde Gardens. The precision of the address gives the recollection a concrete, enduring quality within a story otherwise marked by losses and years of isolation.

He also recalls going to watch Chelsea play soccer and, afterward, sitting astride a lion in Trafalgar Square until a police officer chased him away. The anecdote offers a glimpse of Kensuke as a young man moving through the city, beyond his later identities as a doctor, wartime survivor, and island-dweller. It is one of several personal memories he shares as his English grows more fluent and he becomes more willing to speak.

Narrative Significance

London functions as a point of connection between Kensuke’s earlier life and his relationship with Michael. His memories of studying, watching soccer, and living at a remembered address emerge through conversation rather than through a separate scene set in the city. They deepen the account of a man whose past includes education and ordinary youthful experiences, even as the war and his belief that his family died in the bombing of Nagasaki shape his long seclusion. The remembered city helps restore that past to the present: Kensuke tells it to Michael, who listens as a friend and, increasingly, as the son Kensuke has come to regard him as.