Hideo Harada’s reunion and farewell with his deceased parents

Hideo Harada’s reunion and farewell with his deceased parents is the emotional center of his return to a family life that ended when he was twelve. In Asakusa, a couple who resemble his parents welcome him as their son, and he allows himself to inhabit that impossible relationship. Its comfort is real to him even as its reality remains uncertain; the final visit makes the cost of continuing plain, and leaves him to carry the bond forward through remembrance and ritual.

Childhood Loss and the Return to Asakusa

Hideo’s return to Asakusa is bound to the childhood he lost with his parents. More than thirty years after their deaths, he can visit familiar parts of the district, including Sensō-ji and the entertainment area to its west, but avoids streets tied most intimately to his family. He fears finding the tinsmith’s place where they spent their last days and months together: such a discovery might break through the emotions he has kept contained since he was twelve. His hesitation makes the district more than a setting. The old streets are possible points of contact with a past he has protected himself from feeling too fully.

When Hideo later gets off at Tawara-machi Station, the visit takes on a different weight. He remembers resenting a television news anchor who misread the station’s name, an enduring loyalty to the neighborhood despite his infrequent returns. In the fierce midsummer sun, the shabby townscape seems to reflect the doubts he carries as he sets out to meet the couple again. The district is both the place of his childhood and the setting where he can briefly experience a family life that ordinary time has taken away.

An Imagined Parent-and-Child Bond

The relationship begins without the ordinary introduction between parent and child. Hideo learns from words spoken behind him that the woman is his mother; they have not yet had a chance to speak to each other as mother and son. The couple are in their thirties, while their son is forty-eight. Hideo recognizes that such a family cannot belong to the real world, but the impossibility does not cancel its emotional force. He is ready to accept the imagined world because it lets him receive his parents’ joyful welcome.

He understands his longing as connected to the child still alive within him. He has known the happiness of being welcomed by loved ones in his marriage and when his son was a toddler, so he does not describe himself as wholly deprived of affection. Yet the strength of his desire for his parents’ smiles has produced these Asakusa visions. The relation is not simply a replacement for every later bond; it answers a particular, enduring yearning for the parents he lost.

That answer also makes Hideo feel responsible for the couple’s existence. He imagines that the days between his visits might be a void for them, with his parents frozen in the middle of an activity, like figures in a wax museum. In this conception, he alone can breathe life into them. The fantasy therefore offers him a son’s place in their home while placing a burden on him: to stop returning might mean not only giving up their company, but extinguishing the version of his parents who have come back to live in Asakusa.

The Decision to Leave and Their Response

At the final meeting, Hideo tells his parents that he will not be able to visit after that day. He explains what his producer and Mamiya have said about his health and describes the wasted figure he saw in the mirror. He does not tell them about Kei, fabricating part of his account because he fears that someone seen as separating him from his parents could face retribution from the world of the dead. His omission shows how intensely he feels the relationship’s pull, even as he tries to end the visits for his own safety.

Hideo bows deeply, expecting a frightening response, but his parents answer gently. His mother admits that she had sensed the visits could not continue forever; both tell him how happy they were to have had him with them, brief as the time was. Their acceptance changes the farewell from a rupture into an exchange of gratitude. They do not deny that the relationship must end, and they do not make him responsible for prolonging it. Their sadness accompanies their care rather than turning it into a demand.

As the meeting continues, his parents tell him they care deeply for him and are proud to have met him again. Hideo rejects their praise by listing his perceived failures: he believes he failed as a husband, was not much of a father, and has not produced anything truly great in his career. He also questions whether he would have remained a devoted son had his parents lived into his adulthood. His self-accusation exposes the distance between the person he sees himself to be and the warmly regarded son they recognize. They stop him from continuing, urge him not to be so hard on himself, and affirm their pride in him.

Disappearance and the Keepsake

The goodbye becomes visible as Hideo’s mother’s shoulders turn transparent and his father begins to fade. His father’s shoulders disappear; his mother’s face grows dim. Hideo understands that he cannot stop their departure and keeps watching rather than turning away. He thanks both parents quietly, conscious of the waitress and other guests nearby. His mother becomes almost impossible to see, and then his father disappears from view. The scene gives the relationship a definite ending in the room: his parents have heard his explanation, answered his self-condemnation, and said goodbye.

After they vanish, Hideo is too distressed to hide his grief from the waitress. He gathers the two pairs of chopsticks his parents used and wraps them carefully in a handkerchief, forcing himself through a heavy fatigue to preserve something from the meal. The chopsticks make the farewell tangible. They are ordinary objects used in the family scene, but once the parents are gone they become a physical reminder he can keep.

Memory, Place, and Continuing Attachment

Later, Hideo returns to the site with Mamiya and finds that the apartment building is gone. It has been demolished, leaving an empty lot bounded by neighboring walls and overgrown with summer weeds. The disappearance of the building gives the loss a parallel in the physical world: the place where Hideo encountered his parents is no longer available as it was, and the new growth makes the vacant lot seem almost otherworldly. His imagined family life cannot simply be resumed by returning to the old address.

Hideo brings incense, a burner, and a small bouquet of chrysanthemums wrapped in newspaper. It has been two years since he last visited his parents’ family grave in Aichi, where their ashes are buried. He lights the incense with his cigarette lighter, divides it between two holders, and prays with Mamiya beside him. The actions connect the vanished Asakusa visits with a more familiar memorial practice, without making the two places identical: the ashes are at the family grave, while the empty lot marks where his parents had appeared to him.

The chopsticks give Hideo a reason to imagine returning. He plans to bring them to the site, burn them, and pray again. This intention does not restore the visits or reverse the farewell; it gives his continuing attachment a form that can survive their absence. His final words extend the leave-taking to his parents and Kei, followed by thanks. In that closing gesture, the bond with his parents changes from a desperate attempt to keep an imagined household alive into a relationship carried through memory, objects, and ritual.