Toru Watanabe and Hatsumi

Toru Watanabe and Hatsumi form a brief but emotionally consequential friendship at the edge of her relationship with Nagasawa. Their shared walk, silent drinks, and pool game open a space for candid recognition: Watanabe sees the damage in Hatsumi’s attachment to Nagasawa, while she draws from him an image of the older sister he had never wished for before. He cannot alter her course. Years later, he understands that Hatsumi had stirred an innocent longing that remained unfulfilled, and her death makes that missed possibility part of his enduring grief.

An Intimacy Outside Nagasawa’s System

Watanabe’s connection with Hatsumi develops in the orbit of Nagasawa, whose companion she has been for three years. Watanabe admires Nagasawa’s strengths and enjoys his company, but also judges his way of life as indifferent to making himself or others happy. In a conversation with Hatsumi, he says that their systems are fundamentally different: Nagasawa’s way of living seems to propel him upward while leaving Watanabe going in circles. He does not present his criticism as a claim to know what Hatsumi should feel; rather, he answers when she directly asks what he thinks she should do.

That frankness distinguishes their friendship from the relationship she is asking him to assess. Watanabe tells her that he would leave Nagasawa and seek someone with a more ordinary outlook, because he believes staying with him can only make her unhappy and wear down her nerves. Yet he also acknowledges his affection for Nagasawa and the man’s considerable abilities. His advice therefore holds affection and disapproval together: he can value his friend and still see why that friend may be a destructive partner for Hatsumi.

A Night of Conversation and Pool

The evening that brings them closer begins with a quiet drink at a small bar. They say little, sitting opposite one another like an old married couple, drinking and eating peanuts. When the bar grows crowded, they walk through the cold night. Hatsumi wraps herself in a pale grey cardigan; Watanabe has no destination in mind, and the walk recalls for him the quiet walks he has shared with Naoko. The resemblance connects this encounter to his other relationships without making Hatsumi a substitute for Naoko.

Hatsumi suggests finding somewhere to play pool. At a small hall at the far end of an alley, her chic clothes and Watanabe’s blazer and regimental tie contrast with the scruffiness of the place, but she proceeds without hesitation. She chooses and chalks a cue, then clips her hair aside with a hairslide. They play two games. Hatsumi proves as skilled as she had said, while Watanabe’s bandaged hand hampers him; she beats him. The game gives the pair a shared activity in which Hatsumi’s confidence and ability are visible, not merely topics of conversation.

Later, Watanabe tells her that playing pool has unexpectedly made him wish he had had an elder sister like her: chic, striking, and good with a cue. He had been an only child but had never felt deprived or wished for siblings before. Hatsumi answers that it is the nicest thing anyone has said to her in the past year. The exchange turns a passing compliment into a disclosure of what their time together means to each of them: Watanabe names a newly felt familial longing, and Hatsumi receives the words as a rare affirmation.

Counsel, Choice, and Separation

When Hatsumi asks what she should do about Nagasawa, Watanabe gives her a direct answer, but he does not claim that the decision belongs to him. He wishes her happiness and wonders how someone who seems capable of being happy with almost anyone became involved with Nagasawa. Hatsumi replies that such things simply happen, and that Nagasawa would say the responsibility was hers rather than his. Her answer exposes the difference between Watanabe’s wish for her and the explanation she has made room for within the relationship.

Watanabe’s concern does not become intervention. After thanking him for the bandage and beer, Hatsumi prepares to leave. As he steps outside, he sees her answer the telephone; this is the last time he ever sees her. The unremarkable departure gives the night its painful limit: their conversation permits honesty and affection, but neither turns into a rescue or a new shared life.

Belated Recognition and Loss

Watanabe’s understanding of the connection arrives years later, during a visit to Santa Fe. While watching a sunset, he remembers Hatsumi and recognizes that what she had awakened was a childhood longing he had forgotten: an innocent desire that had remained unfulfilled and, he believes, would always remain so. The delayed recognition shows how the evening exceeded its immediate circumstances. Hatsumi had reached a dormant part of Watanabe’s self, though he did not understand it at the time.

In the same retrospective account, Watanabe says that someone should have done something to save her, then admits that neither Nagasawa nor he could have managed it. Two years after Nagasawa left for Germany, Hatsumi married; two years after that, she died by suicide. Nagasawa informed Watanabe in a letter from Bonn, writing that her death had extinguished something and was painful even to him. Watanabe tore up the letter and never wrote to Nagasawa again. The loss thus alters not only his memory of Hatsumi but also his relationship with the man who had been her partner and his friend.

The friendship’s significance lies partly in what it cannot accomplish. Watanabe sees the incompatibility between Hatsumi and Nagasawa and wishes her well, but insight and kindness do not provide control over another person’s fate. His later grief joins the tenderness of the pool-hall conversation to a lasting sense of helplessness. Hatsumi remains, in his memory, both a particular person with whom he shared an unusually candid evening and the bearer of an unfulfilled possibility he only learned to name after she was gone.