Sapporo is where Toru Okada receives news of Kumiko’s abortion while away on a brief work assignment. The city’s winter streets become the setting for his first response: after a phone call in which Kumiko explains that she made the decision alone, he walks for a long time, unable to bring her close in thought. The episode closes with the image of a performer apparently burning his palm, a detail that follows Toru into sleep.

The Call and the Decision

Toru is in Hokkaido because his firm has sent him north to exchange important documents in person. He is meant to return directly to Tokyo, but every flight is full, so he must spend the night in a Sapporo business hotel. Kumiko has the abortion that day, alone. She calls after ten o’clock and tells him the operation is over; because an opening arose at short notice, she decided to take care of it while he was away.

Toru answers that she should not worry and that he will accept whatever she thinks best. Kumiko says she wants to explain more but cannot yet, and that she will have to tell him sometime. He replies that they can talk when he gets back. Their exchange is calm and brief, but its timing leaves Toru outside a decision that concerns them both: Kumiko has acted by herself, and the explanation she promises remains deferred.

Walking Through the City

After the call, Toru puts on his coat and goes out into Sapporo. It is early March. Snow lies in high banks along the roads, and he walks among people moving carefully over icy sidewalks, then steps into bars when the cold becomes too much before returning to the streets. He remains in motion for a long time, without turning the walk into a clear answer to the news.

The city’s winter conditions provide the concrete frame for his response, while his movement suggests the difficulty of settling into what Kumiko has told him. He continues walking even after visiting bars; the account gives no resolution to the couple’s conversation that night. Instead, Toru’s attention shifts, as he is falling asleep, to a separate and puzzling image.

The Performer and the Ending

At a bar below street level, Toru encounters a slim, bespectacled man playing guitar and singing on a small stage. The performer says the music is his own. Toru listens only half attentively, and the music itself makes little impression on him. Yet after returning to the hotel and getting into bed, he remembers the man apparently burning his palm.

Sleep comes quickly. Kumiko seems very far away, and Toru finds that he cannot continue thinking about her. The remembered performer’s palm-burning act becomes the final image of the Sapporo episode, leaving the emotional distance opened by Kumiko’s call alongside an unexplained spectacle that Toru carries into sleep.