Love, commitment, and responsibility

Love, commitment, and responsibility form a conflict rather than a simple promise in Toru Watanabe’s relationships. He proposes that Naoko come live with him in Tokyo, but her anxiety about whether she can recover or have sex makes the future uncertain; later, he declares his love for Midori Kobayashi while refusing to abandon what he sees as his responsibility to Naoko. The novel gives that responsibility moral weight without making it a cure for illness, grief, or loss.

A shared life offered to Naoko

Watanabe’s proposal to leave the dormitory and find a flat turns affection into a practical offer: he expects that part-time work can cover his expenses and asks Naoko to join him in Tokyo, as he had suggested before. Naoko is moved by the invitation and thanks him, but he does not demand an immediate answer. He says he will move by the end of March and leaves open the possibility that she may come later. The offer is therefore both intimate and provisional: he can make room for a life together, but cannot decide on her behalf when she is ready to enter it.

The tenderness of their reunion does not erase the difficulty Naoko names. She asks why she became sexually responsive only once, on the night of her twentieth birthday, and wonders what is wrong with her. Watanabe reassures her that the problem is psychological and tells her there is no hurry. Naoko replies that all her problems are psychological and voices the fear that she may never recover or be able to have sex. She asks whether he can continue loving her, whether affection without sex will be enough, and whether he will seek sex with other women instead. Her questions make commitment concrete: she is asking not only whether he loves her now, but whether his promise can withstand a future in which her condition does not change.

Watanabe offers optimism, but the exchange does not resolve Naoko’s fear or establish that she will recover. His invitation to live together is meaningful as a pledge of presence, yet the scene leaves the limits of that pledge exposed. Love can offer companionship and patience; it cannot guarantee her health or answer, in advance, every question about their future intimacy.

Responsibility as a chosen obligation

After Naoko’s circumstances darken, Watanabe describes his choice to live as a decision to become more responsible. He tells himself that, unlike Kizuki, he has chosen to live as well as he knows how. He connects the difficulty of his own life to Kizuki’s suicide and to Naoko being left behind, and vows that he will not turn his back on her. He says that he loves her, believes himself stronger than she is, and intends to keep becoming stronger. The resolve marks a change in his self-understanding: he no longer wants to remain at the age of seventeen or eighteen, but sees adulthood as something he must undertake and pay for by continuing to live.

That decision is not presented as effortless strength. Watanabe’s promise to remain beside Naoko grows out of his awareness that living has a cost, and his confidence that he can become stronger coexists with the knowledge that strength cannot control what happens to her. His responsibility is a commitment to act and endure, not a claim that he can repair her condition. The distinction matters because the novel later refuses to let sincere love or moral determination stand in for recovery.

Midori and the divided claim of love

Watanabe’s love for Midori becomes explicit when he tells her that he loves her from the bottom of his heart and never wants to let her go again. Yet he immediately adds that he cannot make a move. When Midori asks whether the obstacle is Naoko, he confirms it. His hesitation is not a denial of his feelings for Midori; he explains that his involvement with Naoko is long-running and complicated, that neither of them knows exactly what it means, and that he feels he has a responsibility as a human being not to turn his back on her, even if she does not love him.

Midori insists on the reality of her own claim. She describes herself as a living woman who loves him, is willing to do what he asks, works hard, and wants a chance at happiness after having already suffered enough. Her declaration places an immediate, reciprocal relationship beside Watanabe’s uncertain obligation to Naoko. She is not content to be valued in the abstract or kept waiting without terms: she tells him that if he chooses her, he must choose only her and think only of her when he holds her.

Watanabe asks for time to think and make decisions, apologizing that this is all he can say. Midori agrees to wait because she believes him, while making clear that she does not want him to hurt her. They embrace and kiss, but the scene ends without a decision that settles the competing commitments. The rain-soaked reunion brings their mutual love into the open; it does not transform indecision into a completed promise.

Grief, limits, and the continuing bond with the dead

The novel’s account of responsibility is tested by events beyond anyone’s control. Early in Watanabe’s life in the dormitory, he tries to put distance between himself and memories of death, but comes to understand death not as the opposite of life but as part of it. This realization offers a way to understand survival, not a way to avoid loss. Later, after Naoko dies, Watanabe travels along the coast, sleeping on the sand, making fires from driftwood, eating dried fish, and thinking about her. The memory of her remains vivid enough that he cannot readily absorb the fact of her death.

In his imagination, Naoko seems to live with him among the dead; the distinction between memory and presence briefly softens. But this inward companionship does not end his grief. He understands that death is part of life and also learns that no truth, sincerity, strength, or kindness can cure the sadness of losing someone loved. Grief has to be lived through, and what one learns from it offers no protection against the next loss. The novel thus sets a limit on the idea that devotion can save another person: Watanabe’s commitment to Naoko is real, but neither that commitment nor his philosophy can keep her alive or remove his sorrow.

The cost of choosing and not choosing

After returning to Tokyo, Watanabe cannot simply transfer his love to Midori and call the past finished. He shuts himself away for days, and his memory remains fixed on the dead rather than the living. He imagines rooms set aside for Naoko, shuttered and covered, and speaks inwardly of having tried to establish a new life with her before giving her back to Kizuki. The image reveals how completely his sense of responsibility has become entangled with grief: even after Naoko is gone, he continues to address the dead and to measure his place among the living against them.

The relationship with Midori therefore remains a demand as well as a possibility. She asks him to recognize her living presence and to choose her without reservation; Watanabe’s attachment to Naoko and his account of human responsibility prevent an easy answer. The novel does not treat love as a force that automatically resolves competing claims. It distinguishes the wish to love, the promise to stay, and the ability to act, while showing how bereavement can obstruct the passage from one to another.

This theme is finally defined by its limits. Watanabe can offer Naoko a home, patience, and fidelity; he can tell Midori the truth about his feelings and ask for time; and he can decide that he will keep living rather than turn away. None of those choices guarantees a happy outcome. Responsibility gives his decisions ethical weight, but it cannot undo death, cure grief, or make another person’s future certain. The tension between commitment and its limits is what makes love in the novel an ongoing burden of choice rather than a simple resolution.