Yozo and Moko's Parent-Child Bond

Yozo's relationship with Shigeko, the five-year-old daughter of his mistress Shizuko, is one of the most tender and most devastating bonds in his life. It is a brief domestic interlude in which Yozo, for the first time, is called "Daddy" without hesitation, and in which he experiences a fragile, almost childlike happiness—only to have it destroyed by a single innocent question that reveals the unbridgeable distance between himself and even the smallest human being.

Identity and First Meeting

When Yozo runs away from Flatfish's house and is taken in by Shizuko, a journalist he meets at Horiki's home, he enters a household that includes Shigeko, Shizuko's five-year-old daughter. Shigeko had previously been left to play in the superintendent's room while her mother worked, but now she is delighted that an interesting "uncle" has turned up as a new playmate. Yozo, in his role as a kept man, spends his days looking after the apartment and drawing cartoons for Shigeko, and she soon begins calling him "Daddy" with no show of hesitation.

The Bond of Trust and the Question of God

In this quiet domestic setting, Yozo experiences a rare moment of openness. One day Shigeko asks him, "Daddy, is it true that God will grant you anything if you pray for it?" Yozo's response reveals the depth of his own spiritual despair: he thinks that God would grant Shigeko anything she wants, but that he himself has no chance, because he disobeyed his father. When Shigeko protests that everyone says he is so nice, Yozo is unable to explain to her that his niceness is a deception, that the more he fears people the more he is liked, and that this very process compels him to run away from everyone. He changes the subject by asking Shigeko what she would like from God, and her answer—"I would like my real Daddy back"—strikes him with the force of a physical blow. In that instant, Shigeko's face transforms before his eyes into that of a frightening stranger, an enemy, an incomprehensible being full of secrets. He realizes that even this little girl, whom he had believed safe, is capable of the same sudden, lashing cruelty he has always feared in human beings, and he knows that from then on he must be timid even before her.

The Collapse of Domestic Peace

The relationship does not survive this revelation. Yozo's growing alcoholism and his compulsive drinking sprees, which take him away from the apartment for nights at a time, further erode the fragile bond. On one occasion, after stealing Shizuko's clothes to pawn for drinking money, he returns home to overhear Shizuko and Shigeko playing happily with a white rabbit. Shigeko asks why he drinks, and Shizuko answers that it is because he is too good. Yozo, watching through a crack in the door, sees their humble happiness and feels that he has been a fool to come between them, that he might destroy them both. He prays for happiness once in his lifetime, then shuts the door softly and goes back to the Ginza, never returning to the apartment. The relationship ends not with a confrontation but with Yozo's silent, self-protective flight, leaving Shigeko and her mother to their happiness without him.

Thematic Significance

Yozo's bond with Shigeko is a microcosm of his entire struggle with human connection. She offers him the purest form of trust—the unconditional affection of a child—and for a brief time he responds with genuine warmth, drawing cartoons for her and playing the role of a father. Yet her innocent wish for her real father back exposes the lie at the heart of this arrangement: Yozo is not, and can never be, a real father or a real human being. The relationship demonstrates that even the most trusting, uncorrupted love cannot survive Yozo's fundamental inability to believe in his own worth or to trust that he will not be betrayed. Shigeko's question about God also echoes Yozo's own theological despair—he can believe in punishment but not in love, in hell but not in heaven—and her simple wish for her real father back becomes a judgment on his entire life. The bond is thus both a brief respite and a devastating confirmation of his disqualification from human life.