Naming and Namelessness

Naming and Namelessness links the novel’s private acts of recognition to a wider unease about identity: a name can make someone present, burden them with another person’s associations, or fail to explain them at all. Money is imagined as powerful precisely because it has no personal name, while the returned cat is given one to loosen the hold of a name borrowed from a human antagonist. The contrast turns naming into both an instrument of abstraction and an intimate act of care.

Anonymity and the Namelessness of Money

A woman gives Toru Okada a plain white card bearing only an address in the wealthy Akasaka district. It carries no name, is blank on the reverse, and has no fragrance. Its stark lack of identifying detail makes it seem less like a conventional introduction than an invitation whose terms have not yet been disclosed. When Toru asks about the missing name, she answers that what he needs is money and asks whether money has a name.

Toru accepts the premise: money has no name, and if it acquired one, it would cease to be money. Its meaning lies in its namelessness and in its capacity to be exchanged. The scene makes anonymity more than a missing piece of information. The address points toward a specific appointment, but the card’s namelessness withholds the giver’s identity; money, by contrast, gains force from being transferable without belonging to any one named person. The exchange connects the practical promise of payment with a darker, less personal kind of power.

The Returning Cat and a Name of Its Own

After a year away, the cat returns and is set on an old cushion on the veranda. It is limp with exhaustion; when Toru picks it up, its eyes open and its mouth moves without a sound, then it yawns and falls asleep again. Toru wonders where it has been and what happened during its absence, but the immediate fact of its silent, sleeping body is all he can verify. Its return brings an absent creature back into reach without explaining the lost time.

The household had jokingly called the cat Noboru Wataya because its eyes reminded them of Kumiko’s brother. Yet they had gone six years without giving it a name of its own. The joke has become uncomfortable because the human Noboru Wataya has grown into too powerful a presence, culminating in his election to the House of Representatives. Toru concludes that the cat should no longer carry that name: its new name must be simple and tangible, something that can displace the sound and associations attached to Noboru Wataya.

A meal supplies the occasion for the change. Toru has bought fish, and the plate is left clean; pleased that the cat has eaten, he takes the meal as a good omen for both of them and names the animal Mackerel. The choice replaces an imposed association with a concrete name drawn from the cat’s immediate life. As Toru tells it that it is no longer Noboru Wataya, the act is both practical and emotionally charged: the returned cat is present, warm, and touchable, while the human name he is shedding has become burdened by a presence far beyond the household joke.

Names Chosen, Names Inherited

The question of whether a name is necessary returns when Toru asks a woman what he should call her. She regards names as irrelevant, arguing that there is no reason for him to use hers. He offers a practical counterexample: he has just named his cat Mackerel. She repeats the word, considers it, and responds with a name of her own choosing: Nutmeg. When Toru asks what to call her son, she answers Cinnamon. The names emerge through the conversation rather than through disclosure of their earlier identities; they give Toru a way to address mother and son while leaving their prior namelessness intact.

That exchange makes naming reciprocal. Toru’s act of naming the cat prompts Nutmeg to supply a name for herself, and she names her son as well. The resulting names are memorable and ordinary-sounding, but their significance lies less in what they describe than in the consent and connection they establish. Where the anonymous card makes namelessness serve a transaction, Nutmeg’s chosen name permits a human relationship to proceed without requiring a conventional account of who she was before.

Ushikawa offers a contrasting view from inside an inherited name. He explains that his surname is made from the words for “bull” and “river,” and that people have called him Ushi since kindergarten. He did not choose the surname or nickname, yet repeated use has made him feel like a real bull and even creates a sense of closeness when he sees one. He speculates that, instead of a name expressing the thing it represents, the person may gradually become more like the name. His explanation makes naming a social pressure that can acquire force through repetition, even when the bearer neither chose nor controls it.

Identity Beyond the Label

Toru’s wish to give the cat a new name and Ushikawa’s account of growing into his nickname pull in opposite directions. For the cat, changing the name loosens an unwanted identification: Noboru Wataya has become too consequential to remain a joke attached to an animal. For Ushikawa, the name he inherited has become difficult to separate from his public identity, as “Ushi” gathers associations through years of use. In one case, a chosen name can begin to free a creature from someone else’s shadow; in the other, a repeated name seems to draw its bearer toward the image it carries.

Together, the scenes refuse to make naming a simple solution to identity. A name can be absent without making money powerless; it can be withheld without preventing a relationship; it can be borrowed as a joke and later become unbearable; or it can be imposed so early that the bearer feels shaped by it. Mackerel’s new name matters because it does not explain where the cat has been or restore the missing year. Instead, it marks the animal’s return to the household as itself, in the immediate terms Toru can recognize: a living presence that has eaten, fallen asleep on the veranda, and can be touched.