Niigata

Niigata is the rural setting of Kumiko’s childhood separation from her parents, a place where she is cared for by her grandmother from age three until just before elementary school. The years there are not described as unhappy in themselves; their lasting significance lies in the family conflict behind her being sent away and in the painful, abrupt return that leaves her feeling estranged from the household she is supposed to call home.

A Childhood Away from Tokyo

At three, Kumiko is sent from Tokyo to live with her grandmother in Niigata. Her parents explain that she had been a sickly child and would benefit from the countryside’s clean air, but Kumiko does not recognize that account in her own memories: she recalls no serious illness and no special concern for her health from the people around her in Niigata. She suspects that the explanation was a pretext rather than the real reason for the move.

According to what Kumiko later hears from a relative, her mother and grandmother had been embroiled in a longstanding feud. Sending Kumiko to Niigata served as a truce: her parents gave the grandmother temporary care of a grandchild, while the grandmother gained tangible confirmation of her connection to her son, Kumiko’s father. In Kumiko’s understanding, she had been treated as a kind of hostage in a conflict among adults. She also reasons that, because her parents already had two other children, sending their third child away may have seemed to them like the easiest solution.

Life with Her Grandmother and Return

Kumiko’s life in Niigata is not portrayed as bleak or deprived. Her grandmother adores her, and she enjoys playing with cousins closer to her age more than she does spending time with her own brother and sister. That affection makes the eventual separation more difficult: when Kumiko is due to start elementary school, her parents insist on bringing her back to Tokyo, worried that the distance has lasted too long.

In the weeks before the move, her grandmother’s distress becomes volatile. She stops eating and sleeping normally, alternately clings to Kumiko and tells her to leave, and expresses rage toward Kumiko’s mother. Kumiko is too young to understand these reversals or their causes. The return therefore does not simply reunite her with her parents; it abruptly removes her from the loving, familiar care she has known in Niigata while exposing her to an adult conflict she cannot make sense of.

The Aftermath of Separation

Overwhelmed by the situation, Kumiko shuts herself off from the outside world. The months that follow become a blank in her memory. When her awareness returns, she is in the Tokyo home where, in practical terms, she should always have lived, but it feels like a new environment rather than a recovered home. Niigata remains part of the story through this contrast: a place where she had been loved and had found companionship, set against a return that leaves her unable to experience her parents’ home as truly hers.

Kumiko becomes taciturn and difficult to reach in her new surroundings. She feels uneasy even in her parents’ embrace and has trouble trusting anyone unconditionally. Her older sister is the exception, patiently offering companionship and practical care; the sister’s later death from food poisoning removes the person who had helped Kumiko adjust after her return. Niigata is thus not merely a location in her biography. The separation from it marks an early break in her sense of belonging, while the family explanations surrounding the move leave her with lasting doubts about whether the adults responsible for her understood what the decision would do to a child.