Naoko’s final visit to Reiko and suicide

Naoko’s final visit to Reiko and suicide joins a moment of apparent recovery to an irreversible loss. Naoko arrives at the sanatorium looking healthier and speaking confidently about the future; she and Reiko make plans, share an evening, and revisit painful memories. By morning Naoko has disappeared, leaving a note asking Reiko to take her clothes. Her death deepens Watanabe’s grief and sharpens the novel’s distinction between understanding death and enduring the loss of someone loved.

Background and the Visit

The visit follows hospital tests in Osaka, which indicate that Naoko’s condition is improving for the moment but that she should remain in treatment longer for intensive therapy. On August 24, her mother calls Reiko to ask whether Naoko may visit the sanatorium. Naoko wants to collect belongings she has left there and, knowing she will not see Reiko for a while, have a long talk with her and perhaps spend a night in their flat. Reiko agrees, eager to see her.

Naoko and her mother arrive by taxi the next day, August 25. They pack Naoko’s things together and chat. Later, Naoko tells her mother that she can go home and that Naoko will be fine on her own. Reiko recalls that neither of them was alarmed: Naoko seems healthier than expected, smiles, jokes, and speaks more normally than during their previous meeting. She has been to the hairdresser and shows off her new hairstyle. Reiko’s relief rests on visible signs of improvement, though those signs will not predict what happens next.

Plans for a Future

Naoko tells Reiko that she intends to let the hospital doctors cure her once and for all. Reiko agrees that treatment is probably best. The two go for a walk and speak mainly about the future. Naoko says she would like them to leave the sanatorium and live together somewhere. When Reiko asks what Watanabe will think, Naoko says she will get everything straight with him. She talks about where they might live and what they might do, then she and Reiko visit the aviary and play with the birds.

Reiko believes Naoko’s plans explain her renewed energy: having decided what to do, Naoko seems relieved. They finish sorting through her belongings and burn what she no longer needs in a metal drum in the garden. Among the things destroyed are her diary notebook and the letters she has received, including Watanabe’s letters. Reiko finds this surprising because Naoko had carefully kept his correspondence and reread it. Naoko explains that she is getting rid of everything from the past so she can be reborn in the future. The act gives her hope a concrete form, but the story makes clear that a declared intention to begin again cannot guarantee safety.

The Last Evening

After the bonfire, Naoko and Reiko eat supper in the dining hall as they used to. They bathe, drink a bottle of good wine Reiko has saved for a special occasion, and listen as Reiko plays the Beatles songs Naoko loves, including “Norwegian Wood” and “Michelle.” Later they turn out the lights and go to bed. In the dark, Naoko begins speaking openly and in detail about her sexual relationship with Watanabe, a subject she had not previously discussed so directly with Reiko. Reiko is shocked, but listens when Naoko says she simply feels like talking.

Naoko begins to cry. Reiko comforts her, dries her with a towel, and helps her change. Naoko asks Reiko to hold her, explaining that this will be their last time together. Although Reiko initially objects that it is too hot, she holds Naoko briefly, with a towel between them. Once Naoko calms down, Reiko helps her into her nightdress and puts her to bed. Naoko falls asleep, or appears to; Reiko sees her looking peaceful and believes she can sleep without worry. The tenderness of this farewell is inseparable from the hope that makes its finality so difficult to recognize.

Disappearance and Death

When Reiko wakes at six the next morning, Naoko is gone. Her nightdress lies where she left it, but her clothes, trainers, and the torch Reiko keeps beside her pillow are missing. The torch makes Reiko realize that Naoko must have left in the dark. At her desk, Reiko finds a note asking that all Naoko’s clothes be given to her. The residents search the dormitories and surrounding woods, taking different paths; it takes five hours to find Naoko. Reiko reports that Naoko had brought a rope with her.

An ambulance takes Naoko away, and the police question Reiko. In Reiko’s account, there is little uncertainty about the nature of what has happened: the police treat it as suicide and proceed formally. As soon as they leave, Reiko sends a telegram to Watanabe. The contrast between the visit’s confident plans and the disappearance the following morning is stark, but Reiko’s account does not provide a definitive explanation for Naoko’s decision.

Aftermath and Significance

Watanabe later learns that Naoko had told Reiko she wanted to build a life with her and had said she would settle matters with him. He also learns of the burning of his letters, which had once been precious to Naoko, and of the note she left for Reiko. These details make the visit not simply a final meeting but a moment in which Naoko tries to clear away the past and imagine a future, without making that future secure.

Naoko’s death returns Watanabe to a conviction first formed after Kizuki died: death is part of life, not its opposite. Yet his experience of Naoko’s death teaches him that this insight cannot cure bereavement. During his travels along the coast, memories of Naoko recur with force, and he imagines her as present in a world where death exists alongside life. When those moments pass, he is left alone with grief. He concludes that no truth, sincerity, strength, or kindness can remove the sorrow of losing a loved one; it must be lived through, and what one learns cannot prevent the next grief.

After returning to Tokyo, Watanabe shuts himself in his room and remains mentally fixed on the dead rather than the living. Reiko’s later letters insist that Naoko’s death was nobody’s fault, but he does not answer. The visit’s movement from treatment and future plans to suicide therefore leaves its central contradiction unresolved: signs of improvement and sincere hopes for a new life coexist with a death that the people closest to Naoko cannot explain or undo.