Rabbits at Ami Hostel

The Rabbits at Ami Hostel are a small but recurring part of the sanatorium’s shared life and of Toru Watanabe’s memories of Naoko and Reiko. They appear not as individually described animals but as companions to the aviary birds in letters and recollections; after Naoko’s death, those familiar details help show how ordinary scenes of care persist within Watanabe’s grief.

Place in Ami Hostel’s Daily Life

Ami Hostel is a self-contained community where residents can obtain food and supplies, keep to individual schedules, and take part in daily work. The rabbits belong to the remembered world of its aviary and grounds, alongside birds cared for by Naoko and Reiko. The text offers no separate account of their number, appearance, or husbandry, but their repeated inclusion among the animals makes them part of the place’s everyday texture rather than a one-time spectacle.

A Detail in Watanabe’s Letters

Writing to Naoko, Watanabe recalls thinking of her, Reiko, the aviary, its varied birds, and the rabbits while lying in bed in the morning. He remembers Naoko and Reiko in their yellow raincapes on a rainy day, and imagines Naoko curled beside him, asleep. The animals anchor this intimate fantasy in a specific shared setting: the routine of caring for the aviary and fields each morning becomes a point of contact between the distant sanatorium and his life in Tokyo.

Watanabe describes his own morning routine as a counterpoint to theirs. As Naoko and Reiko tend the birds and fields, he winds his spring through the ordinary sequence of getting up, washing, eating, dressing, leaving the dormitory, and arriving at the university. The recollection of the rabbits is therefore folded into a larger account of how daily habits help him keep going while missing Naoko.

Reassurance and Recurrence

In a later letter, Reiko reports that the birds and rabbits are doing fine. Her message comes amid her response to Watanabe’s account of Midori, and she says she and Naoko look forward to his weekly letters as one of their few entertainments. Reiko also notes that she and Naoko are picking mushrooms and chestnuts every day, while she continues to smoke one cigarette after another. Against these specific details of their shared routine, the brief reassurance about the animals confirms that the sanatorium’s ordinary life continues between visits.

During Watanabe’s winter visit, the familiar pattern of life at the hostel includes time with Naoko and Reiko, music, conversation, cross-country skiing, and helping residents and staff shovel snow. Reiko plays guitar and works out tunes from records Watanabe has brought from the city. The rabbits are not singled out in this winter scene, but their earlier presence in the letters belongs to the same continuing world of shared work and companionship.

Memory After Loss

After Naoko dies, Watanabe wanders without a destination, sleeping in his bag in places ranging from empty car parks and stations to riverbanks and the seashore. On the coast he thinks about Naoko and struggles to accept that she is dead. Memories of her arrive in a flood: among them, Naoko in her yellow raincape cleaning the aviary and carrying its feed bag on a rainy morning. The animals are not individually recalled in that passage, but the aviary they inhabited remains part of the concrete scene through which Watanabe remembers her care.

The rabbits thus have a modest, precise narrative significance. They help establish the hostel as a place organized around shared routines and tending living creatures, and they recur in the correspondence that sustains Watanabe’s connection with Naoko and Reiko. Their mention does not resolve his bereavement: he comes to understand that no truth or kindness can cure the sadness of losing someone. Instead, such small memories remain among the details through which the living continue to carry the dead.