Okubo

Okubo, a district in Tokyo, becomes the site of Yozo's most abject confinement after his failed suicide with Tsuneko. Following his release from police custody, Yozo is placed under the guardianship of Flatfish, a family retainer who runs an antique shop called Garden of the Green Dragon near the Okubo Medical School. This location, with its dusty interior of useless junk and the oppressive atmosphere of Flatfish's house, represents a nadir in Yozo's life—a place where he is stripped of all agency and reduced to a parasite living on the second floor, forbidden to leave, unable to drink or smoke, and left with nothing but old magazines to read. The change in Flatfish's demeanor from his earlier obsequiousness to cold contempt is so stark that Yozo reflects on how contemptible human beings are who can metamorphose themselves as simply as turning over their hands.

Confinement and Humiliation

In Okubo, Yozo is treated as a half-wit by both Flatfish and the seventeen-year-old shop boy, who lectures him in the manner of an older and wiser head. The boy, possibly Flatfish's illegitimate son, prepares meals three times a day and carries them on a separate tray to the parasite on the second floor, while Flatfish and the boy eat hurriedly in the dank room under the stairs. Yozo, who has never been able to argue with anybody, submissively listens to the boy's lectures with a weary though admiring expression. The only impressive thing about the shop is its signboard; the business itself depends on transferring secret property to avoid taxes, and Flatfish almost never waits in the shop, leaving the boy to play catch in the street with neighborhood children. Yozo's lack of incentive to play the clown, his usual survival mechanism, indicates the depth of his despair in this place.

The Dinner and the Flight

One evening towards the end of March, Flatfish—perhaps after some financial success or for other obscure reasons—invites Yozo downstairs for a dinner with sake and sliced tuna. During this meal, Flatfish asks about Yozo's future plans, but his speech is so circumlocutory and full of unnecessary precautions that Yozo cannot grasp the simple fact that his family is willing to send money if he returns to school. When Yozo declares he wants to be a painter, Flatfish laughs with an indescribably crafty shadow passing over his face, a laugh that reveals the very nadir of adult life. Yozo runs upstairs, lies in bed without any constructive thoughts, and at dawn the next morning flees Flatfish's house. He leaves a note scrawled in pencil on his writing pad, stating he will return that night after discussing plans with a friend, and writes Horiki's name and address—though he has no real intention of consulting Horiki. The note is a desperate attempt to pacify Flatfish momentarily, born of Yozo's compulsion to embellish situations out of fear of causing sudden shock.

Aftermath and Significance

When Yozo later runs away from Shizuko's apartment in Koenji, he goes to the bar in Kyobashi, but Okubo remains the place where his status as a social outcast was most explicitly enforced. During the conference called by Shizuko after Yozo's flight, Flatfish participates in the decision to sever all relations between Yozo and his family. Years later, after Yozo's second suicide attempt with Dial sleeping pills, Flatfish appears at his bedside with a most unpleasant expression, complaining that Yozo always chooses the end of the year to cause trouble. Flatfish leaves money, pretending it is his own gift though it actually comes from Yozo's brothers, and Yozo, now clever enough to see through the theatrical airs, humbly offers thanks. Okubo thus encapsulates the pattern of Yozo's life: confinement, humiliation, failed communication, and flight—a cycle that repeats with each new location but never breaks.