Ushikawa and Noboru Wataya

Ushikawa and Noboru Wataya are joined by an employer–messenger relationship in which Ushikawa conveys Wataya’s demands to Toru Okada but insists that he does not control the decisions behind them. Their arrangement makes him both a practical instrument of Wataya’s influence and a revealing witness to the risks and compromises of working in Wataya’s world. In his visits, Ushikawa warns Okada that Wataya’s power is growing, urges him to leave the disputed property, and offers eighty million yen on Wataya’s behalf.

The Messenger and His Employer

Ushikawa repeatedly defines himself as a low-ranking intermediary rather than a decision-maker. When Okada asks how Wataya connected him with the house, Ushikawa avoids claiming knowledge of Wataya’s reasoning. Instead, he says that he is only a messenger who carries communications back and forth. He nevertheless stresses that Wataya is intelligent, possesses an unusual instinct, and can exercise real power in the world—power that is increasing. The distinction is central to their relationship: Ushikawa disclaims responsibility for Wataya’s purposes while making sure Okada understands the danger of disregarding them.

His account of the work also places the relationship in a longer history. Ushikawa says he has operated in this difficult world since the time of Wataya’s uncle, when that uncle took him in before he might otherwise have ended up in prison or dead. He describes Wataya as having inherited the uncle’s sphere of influence. The arrangement therefore appears not as a new favor between two equals but as Ushikawa’s continued service within a network that has passed from one generation to the next.

Warning and Persuasion

Ushikawa does more than deliver a bare instruction. He elaborates on the danger of staying in Wataya’s orbit, telling Okada that people in this world eventually burn out and that an isolated person without allies can be destroyed by a single fall. He presents himself as someone who has survived by carrying insurance and belonging to a network, while warning Okada that he is approaching a point of no return. His counsel blends caution with pressure: he claims not to be trying to frighten Okada, but predicts that Okada will soon be in serious trouble.

The warning supports Wataya’s demand that Okada sever his connection to the property. Ushikawa explains that Wataya wants him to withdraw, then anticipates that Okada may be financially unable to do so because of his loan. He offers to bring eighty million yen, enough to repay what Okada owes and leave him with the remainder. When Okada asks whether the land and building would then belong to Wataya, Ushikawa concedes that this is how the arrangement would work, although he does not know what Wataya intends to do with the property afterward. His lack of knowledge limits his authority, but the offer itself makes the objective plain: Wataya wants Okada away from the site and is prepared to use money to secure that outcome.

Power, Complicity, and Limits

Ushikawa describes his position through the image of a carrier pigeon: he carries the message, and the choice belongs to Okada. He says most assignments from his master are unpleasant and likens his service to being a genie compelled to fulfill another person’s wishes. These comparisons cast him as burdened and subordinate, yet they do not erase his active role. He presses Okada to take the offer seriously and quickly, warning that the money may not remain available indefinitely. The deadline is conveyed as personal advice, but it serves the employer’s purpose by making refusal feel costly.

His service is also shaped by dependence and self-preservation. Ushikawa says he once undertook dangerous work and was rescued from that path by Wataya’s uncle; he now argues that survival depends on having some form of insurance and not standing alone. This outlook helps explain why he remains within Wataya’s network, though it does not establish that he approves of Wataya’s plans. The relationship is therefore marked by an imbalance: Wataya supplies the authority and resources, while Ushikawa manages contact with Okada and gives the pressure a conversational, apparently personal face.

Narrative Significance

The relationship brings Wataya’s influence into Okada’s domestic and financial circumstances without requiring Wataya to appear in person. Through Ushikawa, a political figure’s growing power becomes an immediate demand concerning a particular house, a debt, and the choice to withdraw or resist. Ushikawa’s repeated insistence that he is merely carrying messages sharpens the contrast between formal responsibility and practical effect: although he disclaims knowledge of the ultimate plan, his warnings and offer are the means by which Wataya’s will reaches Okada.

Ushikawa’s self-description also complicates the messenger’s role. He speaks as someone who has survived by adapting to dangerous systems, but his experience makes him an interpreter of those systems as well as their agent. He warns Okada that solitary resistance carries risks, while participating in the effort to remove him from the property. Their exchanges thus show how Wataya’s power operates through both material inducement and intimations of danger, with Ushikawa occupying the uneasy space between subordinate, adviser, and instrument.