Kawashima and Rie’s Fragile Bond

This thread follows Kawashima’s love for his infant daughter as it is distorted by intrusive fear and then placed in sharper relief by the violence he nearly repeats.

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The Wanted Child

A Family He Chooses Agreement About Parenthood Kawashima does not oppose Yoko’s wish to have a child. Since marrying her, he has felt less overwhelmed by self-hatred, and even the birth itself does not immediately bring back his old panic. A New Emotional Risk The prospect of becoming a father carries a private worry: Kawashima has suffered from insomnia since childhood and fears that his child might inherit it. His anxiety expresses care, but also the way he anticipates harm before it arrives. Rie’s birth therefore begins as a hopeful change in the household. The threat that will later dominate his attention is not a lack of love but his terror of what his own mind might make him do.

The Cribside Watch

Care Turned Into Compulsion Watching the Sleeping Baby Kawashima begins standing beside Rie’s crib after midnight, using a penlight to watch her sleep while Yoko rests in the bed behind him. He tells himself that newborns need sleep and feels relief when she appears peaceful. A Dangerous Object He carries an ice pick in his pocket and takes it out beside the crib. He touches the down on Rie’s cheek with a fingertip and then with the tool, repeatedly insisting to himself that he will not stab her. The scene reveals how affection and fear have become entangled. His vigil is not a plan to harm Rie, but its ritual form makes the imagined danger feel increasingly present and difficult to dismiss.

An Unwanted Thought

Fear Enters the Family Routine The Thought in the Steam After washing Rie in the bath, Kawashima hands her to Yoko and sits in the warm water. A thought rises without warning: he would never stab the baby with an ice pick, would he? Reassurance Fails For a moment he cannot recognize himself in the scene. Yoko notices his absence and calls his name until he comes back to himself, but the image of the weapon remains fixed in his mind afterward. The thought is frightening precisely because it contradicts the tenderness of the moment. Instead of sharing it with Yoko, Kawashima begins to test himself each night at the crib, seeking certainty in a ritual that cannot provide it.

The Fear Becomes a Mission

Protection Recast as Danger Testing His Own Resolve After leaving the apartment, Kawashima tries to treat his fear as an extreme version of ordinary anxiety. He remembers that talking with Yoko usually helps, but he has already kept this particular thought from her. A False Solution At a convenience store, a dissociative encounter with an imagined version of himself produces a brutal answer: to overcome the fear, he must stab someone else with an ice pick. The proposed act is first framed as a way to reassure himself that he will not harm Rie. The reasoning turns parental love into the justification for a crime. Kawashima’s desire to preserve his family remains real, but his attempt to control the fear begins to put another vulnerable person in danger.

A Love He Cannot Resolve

The Child Behind the Violence A Moment of Recognition As Kawashima prepares to use the ice pick against Sanada Chiaki, the image of Rie in her crib flashes into his mind. He gives a small cry, briefly linking the woman before him to the innocent child he had been terrified of hurting. The Past Takes Over Before he can act, the smell and sensation of his own childhood abuse overwhelm him, and his mother seems to enter his body. He loses consciousness before completing the attack. The interruption does not erase the danger he created or settle his fear about fatherhood. Instead, the scene exposes the distance between the loving father Kawashima wants to be and the violence his past has made imaginable, leaving his bond with Rie emotionally unresolved.

Before Rie’s birth

Ten nights before the story’s opening

Ten nights before the opening, during Rie’s bath

The night Kawashima leaves home

Near the ending, during Kawashima’s attack on Chiaki