Hokkaido

Hokkaido is where Teiji says he is going after leaving Tokyo, a destination that makes his departure feel definite while keeping his whereabouts beyond Lucy’s reach. The novel gives no account of his life there; instead, the island enters the story through a note, an uncle’s unanswered questions, and Lucy’s belief that Teiji has disappeared beyond the police’s grasp.

Teiji’s Departure

A few weeks after returning from Sado Island, where he had gone away for a weekend, Teiji seems jumpy and nervous. He then leaves a note on the counter of his uncle’s noodle shop, held down with a roll of undeveloped film. The note says that he is going north to Hokkaido to try his luck. The brevity of the message leaves the reason for his departure unstated, and the film beside it offers no clear explanation.

Teiji’s uncle had expected him to remain at the shop, where he worked long days and seemed content with routine tasks. He had also been considering urging Teiji to marry. Instead, Teiji’s departure breaks the future his uncle had imagined for the family business: the uncle has never married and had hoped the shop would eventually belong to his nephew.

Traces Left Behind

Hoping the undeveloped film might offer a clue, Teiji’s uncle has it developed. The pictures show deserted beaches, railway tracks without trains, boarded-up buildings, and abandoned trash cans. The images do not establish what Teiji is doing in Hokkaido or explain why he left; their emptiness sharpens rather than resolves the mystery. The uncle studies them from different angles, even using old three-dimensional glasses, before throwing them away. With his back troubling him and retirement approaching, he sells the shop to a stranger and concludes that he will never see Teiji again.

A Distant and Unconfirmed Whereabouts

Later, police tell Lucy that Teiji’s uncle says Teiji is in Hokkaido. For Lucy, this is also the moment she learns that Teiji’s surname is Matsuda, a reminder of how much about him she never knew. The news gives his absence a reported destination, but not a confirmed account of his life there: no scene follows him to Hokkaido, and the narrative supplies no further contact between him and his uncle.

During her questioning, Lucy imagines Teiji as a possible visitor, then corrects herself: he is in Hokkaido and has no reason to come to her. She thinks the police will never find him in the city or the mountains. Hokkaido thus marks both a concrete direction away from Tokyo and the distance Lucy feels between herself and a man who has eluded her understanding.

Narrative Significance

The destination is defined less by description of its landscape than by what it separates. Teiji’s note takes him away from the noodle shop and the life his uncle hoped to pass on; the undeveloped film provides images of abandonment without clarifying his intentions; and Lucy’s knowledge of his whereabouts does not restore access to him. Hokkaido remains the name attached to his disappearance, a place at the far end of the story’s available clues rather than a setting the narrative enters.