Yuriko Tajima and Shunichi Watabe

This thread traces how two guarded people find companionship, sustain a private love across distance, and leave behind a final act of care.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

A Quiet Regular

A Quiet Regular A Familiar Presence Shunichi Watabe sits at the counter of Seven, usually in the corner with weak whiskey and water, a magazine, or a radio in his ear. His reserved habits make him easy to overlook, but he stays until closing time. Yasuyo Miyamoto notices that his attention to Yuriko Tajima has become something more than a customer’s fondness. A Relationship Admitted Yuriko eventually tells Yasuyo that she and Watabe are together. She is slightly embarrassed, but does not describe the relationship as a route toward marriage. Yasuyo welcomes the news and asks whether Watabe might be single; Yuriko evades the suggestion, keeping the terms of their connection private.

Love Without a Display

Love Without a Display An Unshowy Bond Watabe’s work in the electric-power industry takes him around Japan, and he periodically disappears from Sendai for long stretches. When he returns, Yuriko resumes the relationship without making a spectacle of it. Yasuyo sees that the two share a quiet attachment, though their time together does not look carefree or exuberant. Wounds Recognized Looking back, Yasuyo believes they were emotionally damaged people who could soothe one another’s hurts. Watabe’s own life is complicated, and neither he nor Yuriko openly exposes much of himself. Their intimacy is therefore expressed less through grand declarations than through persistence, discretion, and the comfort of a familiar presence.

A Final Call

A Final Call News of the Death Yasuyo calls Watabe using Yuriko’s phone to tell him that Yuriko has died. He answers quickly and receives the news in a muted, controlled voice. When asked to attend the funeral, he says he cannot, citing problems of his own rather than explaining the circumstances that keep him away. Leaving a Trace Watabe initially disappears from Yasuyo’s reach, then calls back after she has begun to fear he has abandoned the arrangements. He has found Yuriko’s son, Kyoichiro Kaga, and gives Yasuyo his address. He refuses to come offer incense and says he wants to be forgotten, turning his final contact into a practical act of care and farewell.

A Shared Secret

A Shared Secret The Bridge List A list of twelve Nihonbashi bridges, found among Yuriko’s things and again in Mutsuo Koshikawa’s apartment, makes the connection between their lives tangible. Kaga recognizes the handwriting as that of the man who had been close to his mother. For years, the note’s meaning had remained obscure even to Kaga, who did not know the extent of Watabe’s hidden life. Love Under Constraint The bridge list belongs to a wider effort by Watabe and Hiromi Asai to meet discreetly, rather than to a routine romance between Watabe and Yuriko. Still, Yuriko’s relationship with him gives her a rare source of emotional shelter. The investigation’s discovery of his other secret does not negate that bond; it reveals how many parts of his life had to be concealed.

A Loving Testimony

A Loving Testimony What Watabe Remembers In his letter to Kaga, Watabe recounts how Yuriko eventually described her marriage, her despair, and the fear that she might harm herself or her child. He says that leaving her family was a desperate attempt to escape a psychological crisis, not proof that she had stopped loving her son. Watabe’s testimony gives her private pain a witness. The Last Truth Watabe also remembers Yuriko’s happiness when she learned that Kaga had become a police officer, and her belief that keeping his photograph might somehow hinder him. He describes her as content with the life she managed to build. His uncertainty about whether he is telling the whole truth only deepens the tenderness of the letter: he wants Kaga to know the woman he loved, without claiming to possess every answer.

Around ten years after Yuriko begins working at Seven

During the years Watabe visits Yuriko in Sendai

Immediately after Yuriko’s death

As the investigation uncovers Watabe’s identity

Near the final pages, when Kaga receives Watabe’s letter