Dear Heart

“Dear Heart” is a song that connects Naoko’s remembered musical taste with Reiko’s performance during the private funeral for her. Reiko’s soft rendition turns a melody Naoko had liked into part of a farewell, giving the song significance not as a cure for grief but as a means of remembering someone who is gone.

Performance at the memorial

At the funeral, Reiko asks for a large box of matches and tells Watanabe to lay down one match for every song she plays. She begins with a soft, lovely rendition of “Dear Heart,” then asks whether he had given Naoko a recording of it. Watanabe confirms that he gave it to her for Christmas two years earlier and that Naoko liked the song.

Reiko says that she likes it too, calling it sweet and beautiful. She runs through a few bars again before wondering how many songs she can play before becoming completely drunk. Her rueful description of the gathering as a funeral that might be “not so sad” places the song inside a memorial shaped by music, conversation, wine, and cigarettes rather than solemn silence.

A remembered gift

The recording gives “Dear Heart” a specific history: it was a Christmas gift from Watanabe to Naoko, and its appeal is confirmed both by his recollection and by Reiko’s affinity for it. At the funeral, Reiko’s performance renews that connection in the presence of Watanabe, who can recognize the song as part of Naoko’s life without mistaking remembrance for her return.

The song also belongs to a wider musical pattern in the novel. Earlier, a recording of Bill Evans recalled for Watanabe the night he had played music in Naoko’s room on her birthday, when she cried and he held her. At the sanatorium, Naoko requests “Norwegian Wood” from Reiko, paying for the performance with a coin; the song makes her imagine herself alone in a cold, dark wood. “Dear Heart” carries a different association: a shared preference and a gift, brought forward at the moment of farewell.

Music as an act of remembrance

Reiko’s match-counting gives the memorial a tangible sequence. After “Dear Heart,” she plays several Beatles songs, and Watanabe lays out seven matches for that set. The simple gesture turns listening into a record of the songs performed, while the familiar music lets the living attend to Naoko through specific memories rather than abstract consolation.

The novel sets this intimate ritual against Watanabe’s more painful understanding of loss. His earlier realization that death is part of life does not make Naoko’s death bearable; he later concludes that no truth or sincerity can cure the sorrow of losing someone loved. In that context, “Dear Heart” does not resolve mourning. Its gentleness offers a moment of companionship and remembrance within grief that must still be lived through.