Tokyo is both the center of the murder investigation and a landscape of personal memory in the novel. News of a killing there brings Yasuyo back to thoughts of Kyoichiro Kaga; the discovery of Michiko Oshitani’s body in a Tokyo apartment launches a case that reaches into the pasts of Kaga, Shuhei Matsumiya, and Hiromi Asai. The city’s official channels, stages, shopping streets, zoo, and bridges each expose a different scale of the story: public information, investigative work, and private family ties.

The Investigation and Its Public Face

A newspaper article about a murder in Tokyo makes Yasuyo think of Kaga when she sees the words “Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Homicide Division.” Though Kaga sends her a New Year’s card each January, he volunteers little about himself; she wonders whether he stays in touch in hope of hearing news about Shunichi Watabe, of whom she has heard nothing. The article concerns a woman found dead in an apartment in East Tokyo, and the report recalls Yasuyo’s own experience of discovering Yuriko’s body. She wonders whether Kaga is involved in the investigation.

The case becomes concrete in Kosuge, in Katsushika Ward. Michiko Oshitani’s body is found in an apartment rented by Mutsuo Koshikawa, after a resident complains that liquid is dripping through the ceiling. The building manager enters with a duplicate key when no one answers and discovers the body in a closet. The evidence establishes a homicide and brings a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department homicide unit into the local investigation. The apartment’s unremarkable address thus becomes the point where the inquiry begins to connect separate lives and identities.

The city’s news also reaches Hiromi Asai. After seeing a report about an identified, decomposed corpse in a run-down apartment, she senses that the news concerns Michiko Oshitani. She tells herself she has nothing to worry about, then returns to her office after speaking with actors and theater staff. Her response contrasts the apparent routine of her working day with the private alarm stirred by a public report: information released to everyone has a particular force for someone who recognizes the person behind the case.

Police Work Across the City

Tokyo is the working terrain of Kaga and Matsumiya, but their investigation depends on how they handle information as much as on where they go. In a fast-food restaurant on Ningyocho Boulevard, Matsumiya briefs Kaga on the Kosuge murder and the inquiry’s findings. Matsumiya rarely shares details of an active case with outsiders, yet makes an exception for Kaga. Kaga focuses their attention on the victim’s movements, reasoning that an abduction would likely require a car and some means of preventing resistance; Matsumiya notes that the autopsy report contains no evidence of either. The exchange shows the city functioning not merely as backdrop but as the field of movements the detectives must reconstruct.

Other inquiries take the police through Tokyo’s professional and institutional networks. Kaga recalls that a kendo magazine interviewed him after he won the national police championships in judo and kendo. Although the published feature did not include his address, he had given it to the magazine so the publisher could send him a complimentary copy. He had considered asking whether his address was passed on, but resisted using his rank to pursue a personal matter. When he finally seeks help, Kaga and Mogi take care not to alert the publisher that the inquiry is connected to a murder. Mogi approaches Machiko Yoneoka under the pretext of surveying the effectiveness of police public-relations outreach, presenting the magazine interview as the article under review and asking who had requested Kaga’s contact details. The sequence shows how a public-facing article can become an investigative lead, and how the police manage the distinction between what they disclose and what they need to learn.

Tokyo’s central transport hub becomes another point in the case. When Hiromi leaves her usual destinations—the office and Meijiza Theater—and takes a taxi elsewhere, a tail follows her to Tokyo Station. She buys a ticket for the Tokaido bullet train, but investigators do not yet know where she intends to go. The departure turns ordinary movement through the city into an unresolved investigative question: the detectives can follow the route, but not yet explain its purpose.

Theaters, Streets, and Investigative Encounters

Theater work gives the investigation a different route into Tokyo. At a rehearsal space used by the Balalaika troupe, actors work through a production in a gym-like room where tables and cardboard boxes stand in for stage scenery. With the play due to open the following month, pressure shapes the rehearsal. Matsumiya is there in connection with Takeo Suwa, Hiromi’s former husband, though he has no specific objective beyond checking whether Suwa knows anything useful. The visit places police inquiry inside a working performance company, where the demands of rehearsal continue alongside the detectives’ questions.

The broader theatrical world also draws the detectives into public crowds. Kaga remarks that the Meijiza production Love Suicides at Sonezaki: A Reimagining is popular and says he is looking forward to seeing it. He and Matsumiya then move with theatergoers along Ningyocho Boulevard before stopping for coffee. The scene links the city’s entertainment district to the investigation without making them the same thing: Kaga can be a sincere prospective audience member and an experienced investigator, while the crowd provides the ordinary urban movement through which the detectives travel.

A photograph from the annual Nihonbashi bridge-washing ceremony becomes another object of inquiry. Kaga asks about a picture in which Hiromi Kadokura appears, explaining that the ceremony may be connected with an incident under investigation. The photographer remembers no special circumstance that year; Hiromi happened to be there, standing alone as far as he could recall. The encounter makes a chance presence in a public event newly significant, while leaving its meaning unsettled. In Tokyo, an image taken as a record of a ceremony can later be examined for the movements and associations it preserves.

Tokyo as a Place of Memory and Connection

For Hiromi, Tokyo is not only the city where she works but also a place bound to her history with her father, Tadao Asai. After she begins working in theater, they finally arrange to meet in person at Ueno Zoo, in front of the monkey mountain. They communicate by letter beforehand; Hiromi wears a pink hat as their agreed sign and pretends to watch the monkeys while remaining alert to those around her. The crowded public setting allows a private reunion to take place without making it openly visible. Their meeting is a return to face-to-face contact after a period when circumstances had kept them apart, even though Tadao was working not far from the orphanage where she had lived.

Later, Hiromi and Tadao devise a way to speak at a distance without drawing attention. They decide that bridges are better meeting points than unspecified stretches of riverbank, and that varying the bridge will reduce the chance of being noticed. The twelve bridges of the Nihonbashi district suit them because the district matters to Hiromi and includes Meijiza, where she first performed. She buys two cell phones and mails one to Tadao. At their next meeting, in August, they stand at opposite ends of Edobashi Bridge and talk by phone across the water. A place associated with Hiromi’s working life becomes part of a careful private arrangement: the city’s bridges offer connection, but only through distance and concealment.

The novel places these intimate uses of Tokyo beside its official and commercial systems. Police divisions, magazine publishers, transport routes, theaters, and public landmarks all carry information or people, but none alone explains the whole story. The city’s defining narrative function lies in this overlap: ordinary urban locations acquire investigative importance, while places of public visibility also shelter relationships that have had to remain private.