Hokkaido is the postwar home of Aki Tomokawa and the destination of Tenji Nakamura’s decision to reconnect with the men he had avoided for years. Through Tomokawa’s letter and Nakamura’s winter journey to Sapporo, the island marks a passage from wartime separation and postwar fear toward renewed fellowship.

Tomokawa’s Northern Home

After the war, Aki Tomokawa settled on Hokkaido, Japan’s northern island. From there, the former corporal searched for his old commander for several years before writing to Tenji Nakamura, hoping the letter would finally reach him. Hokkaido enters the story first through this act of persistence: Tomokawa’s distance from Nakamura has not erased their shared past or his wish to find him.

The Journey to Sapporo

The letter changes how Nakamura understands his former subordinate. He had once found Tomokawa narrow and obsequious; now he sees him as a good and noble man with whom he had shared much, and reads his loyalty alongside the kindness of his own family. Since the Shinjuku Rashomon, where he saw his name on a list of suspected war criminals, Nakamura had avoided contact with his old comrades. He now judges that self-imposed isolation selfish and absurd, and decides to travel despite his illness to meet Tomokawa in Sapporo.

Nakamura arrives in midwinter as preparations are under way for Sapporo’s 1966 snow festival. On the drive from the airport, he sees Japanese Self-Defence Force soldiers helping to build enormous ice sculptures of popular screen monsters. Their workmanship impresses him, though their names mean nothing to him. The festival gives his arrival a distinctly postwar setting: the city is preparing a public celebration while Nakamura, privately, is preparing to return to a relationship he had kept at a distance.

Tomokawa lives in a high-rise government housing complex, where Nakamura loses his way and grows exhausted from the search and the cold. When he finally finds the right apartment, however, the difficulty of reaching it gives way to the pleasure of seeing his old comrade. Tomokawa is older and changed in appearance, but remains recognizably himself. Nakamura still notices traits that once irritated him, yet now resolves to regard them as endearing and charming.

Significance in the Story

Hokkaido is not presented as a broadly described region; its significance is concentrated in Tomokawa’s home and the Sapporo reunion. The island’s northern distance makes the letter an act of deliberate reach across years of separation, while Nakamura’s journey turns the reply into action. His visit signals that the fear governing his postwar avoidance has begun to loosen, and that a shared wartime past can again support loyalty and companionship.