Hideo Harada’s final farewell to his parents in Asakusa ends the visits through which he has experienced a renewed family life with them. Their status remains uncertain to him: he has considered that these encounters may be hallucinations, yet he has also imagined that his visits give his parents’ brief return to the world its life. At the farewell, ordinary acts of hospitality culminate in their disappearance, while the objects left at the table give Hideo a way to carry their relationship forward.

The decision to say goodbye

Hideo understands the danger of returning. When Kei warns that another visit could kill him, he answers that he will die anyway at his present rate. His choice makes the final journey an encounter with both the parents he longs for and the cost of crossing into their world. The visit is not simply a continuation of his comforting excursions: he intends to tell them that he cannot come again.

The uncertainty surrounding the encounters has never erased their emotional force. Hideo has reasoned that his parents, appearing as people in their thirties while he is forty-eight, cannot belong to ordinary reality. Yet he has been willing to embrace an imagined world in which they welcome him as their son. He has also wondered whether, between his visits, they exist only in suspension, like figures frozen in a wax museum, and whether he alone can breathe life into them. That belief makes a final visit feel like more than a personal goodbye: it means accepting that he can no longer sustain the reunion by returning.

A household renewed

The farewell grows from the intimacy of domestic routines. On an earlier visit, Hideo’s parents prepared edamame beans and garnished tofu, set out three beer glasses, and made room for him at their low table. His mother poured him beer as she beckoned him to sit between his parents. The scene gives their welcome a practical form: a place at the table, food to share, and the familiar attention of a mother and father.

Their time together also revises Hideo’s memories of childhood. During an August visit, the city’s shops are largely closed until the seventeenth for the Obon Festival, and his father finds two worn baseball gloves in the futon closet. Hideo remembers how much he wanted to play catch as a boy, and how his father had usually been too occupied with his baseball league to make it a priority. They set out to play, but find that the shopping street is not empty enough for a game. His father quickly proposes another route, and Hideo sees him less as the formidable figure of his childhood than as a cheerful man who improvises when plans go wrong. This recovered ease makes the final separation sharper: the visit has restored not an idealized portrait alone, but a parent-child relationship made of small, imperfect moments.

The last meal and the vanishing

When Hideo tells his parents that he will not be able to visit after that day, they respond with concern rather than reproach. His father initially accepts that nothing can be done, and his mother says that even a brief time together has made them happy. Then his father suggests that they go out for sukiyaki after all. His mother agrees through tears, naming the meal as part of their goodbye. The change of plan lets the family continue its time together through a customary act of eating, even as all three understand that the visit is ending.

At dusk they walk toward Kaminarimon Gate, crossing International Boulevard and passing a shop where an attendant grills skewered lamprey livers. Hideo’s father stops to suggest that each of them have one. The detail of the unhurried walk and the food along the way contrasts with the finality they have acknowledged indoors. When Hideo suggests going up to the temple to pray to the Goddess of Mercy and browse the shops for small cakes, his parents cannot accept: they are not free to do whatever they wish. His mother’s tears and sagging shoulders expose the limits of their reunion more clearly than explanation could. Hideo nearly takes back his promise not to return, but does not say that he will come again.

At dinner, Hideo’s mother shifts into a formal posture and tells him that both parents care deeply about him. Hideo responds by condemning himself as a failed husband and inadequate father, and by dismissing his work as unexceptional. As he speaks, he realizes that he can see through his mother’s shoulders; his father’s shoulders and torso are fading too. Their disappearance answers the fear that had accompanied the goodbye. Hideo pleads for them to stay, but knows he cannot stop them. His mother and father tell him they are proud of him and urge him not to be so hard on himself. Their affection directly counters his self-accusation, but it cannot preserve their presence.

What remains

His parents vanish without a trace, leaving the sukiyaki bowls, half-empty beer glasses, a bag of figurine cakes, the soiled table, and two wrinkled cushions. The untouched portion of the meal gives the ending its stark domestic measure: Hideo protests that they have hardly eaten, as if the ordinary expectation of finishing dinner might still hold them there. Instead, only the simmering food and the places they occupied remain. He is too devastated to cry, but gathers the two pairs of The chopsticks used by his parents and wraps them carefully in a handkerchief, concentrating what strength he has on preserving something they handled.

The bond does not end with the apparition. Two years later, at the family grave in Aichi, Hideo brings incense and chrysanthemums; when Mamiya has brought incense as well, they divide it between two holders and pray together. Hideo thinks of bringing The chopsticks used by his parents on a future visit and burning them in prayer. The object thus carries the farewell beyond Asakusa: it is a remnant of the last shared meal and a reason for Hideo to return to his parents’ grave. The event closes the possibility of renewing their visits, but leaves him with a form of remembrance that does not require pretending they are still present.