Karuizawa

Karuizawa is the off-season mountain town where Toru and Kumiko take a private April retreat, seeking quiet and freedom to walk. Its hushed hotels and closed shops provide the conditions for Kumiko to weep and speak, in fragments, about her abortion and the loneliness she had experienced; the place becomes the setting for an attempt at renewed intimacy that does not erase what she cannot yet explain.

Setting and Choice

In April, Toru and Kumiko travel to Karuizawa by train. Kumiko has asked for a quiet place in the mountains where they can walk as much as they like, and Toru chooses the destination to meet that wish. The town is off-season: the hotel is hushed and most shops are closed. Rather than treating the quiet as an inconvenience, the couple welcome it, spending their days walking from morning until evening.

The trip marks a deliberate change of setting from the pressures and separations of their ordinary life. Karuizawa offers no elaborate diversion; its value lies in the room it gives them to be together without a demanding schedule. The walks fill the days, while the quiet hotel becomes the place where Kumiko can finally let her feelings surface.

Kumiko Speaks

It takes a day and a half for Kumiko to release what she has been holding in. She then sits crying in the hotel room for nearly two hours. Toru does not interrupt or press her to stop; he says nothing and holds her while she cries. The scene makes the retreat’s quiet consequential: it allows grief to emerge at its own pace rather than being converted immediately into explanation.

Afterward, Kumiko begins telling Toru, in fragments, about the abortion, how she had felt at the time, and the extreme sense of loss that followed. She also explains how alone she felt while Toru was in Hokkaido, and that it was only in that loneliness that she could have done what she did. The disclosure connects the abortion not only to her private decision but to the isolation within their marriage at that time.

Intimacy and Its Limits

Kumiko is clear that she does not regret the abortion and considers it the only way. What continues to hurt is that she wants to tell Toru everything but cannot describe exactly how she feels. Her disclosure is therefore both a movement toward him and a statement of its limit: she can recount circumstances and name loss without making her inner experience fully available.

A small gesture accompanies that unresolved difficulty. Kumiko pushes her hair up, exposing one ear, and shakes her head. The retreat does not furnish a complete explanation or settle the pain between them. Instead, Karuizawa is significant as the setting for a provisional exchange in which Toru listens, Kumiko begins to speak, and the distance between them becomes expressible without being entirely closed.