Chapter summaries

Chapter 1:

We are introduce to Noboru and his mother, Fusako. We find out that his mother locks because he escaped one night for some reason. One day out of rage from the humiliation of being locked in the room he “Noboru began to rummage through his room”. He pulled all the drawers from a chest built into the wall and discovered a peephole that allowed him to look into his mother’s room. Noboru wandered if this peephole was made during the war when the soldier’s families lived there. After he discovered the hole on the days that she had “nagged or scolded” him he would spy on her at night. One night his mother invited the sailor Ryuji Tsukazaki to dinner in their house to thank him for showing them around his ship the day before. At ten-thirty Fusako hurried Noboru to his room because it was time for him to go to bed, he immediately spied through the peephole once Fusako and Ryuji entered. Noboru witnessed “the most ungentle night of all” where he saw his mother and Ryuji have sexual relations, but towards the end a horn from a ship sounded and for Noboru “Universal order” was at last achieved.

Chapter 2:

Ryuji wakes up in Fusako’s and she is not there, he remembers that she told him that she was going to take Noboru go swimming with his friends in the morning. We learn that Ryuji, contrary to most sailors, was lead to sea because of an antipathy to land and that he hated the lowbrow chatter of sailors. He used to love the tropics but “as the years passed, he grew indifferent to the lure of the exotic lands”. At twenty he had been certain that he was destined for glory, he had no idea of what kind of glory, only “that in the depths of the world’s darkness was a point of light which had been provided for him alone”. While he was at sea he saved up money and had two million yen in his bankbook. He remembered his first experience with sex with a Chinese prostitute and compared it to the previous night. Fusako entered the room and apologized for having taken so long, she also told him that there was something strange about Noboru, as if he knew what happened.

Chapter 3:

Here we are introduced to Fusako’s job, she is the owner of one of the oldest and best-known luxury shops in Yokohoma’s swank Motomachi district, named Rex LTD., and has been running the store by herself since her husband’s death. Her clientele consisted mostly of wealthy foreigners, a large number of dandies and movie people from Tokyo. Two days before Fusako and Noboru went to visit the Rakuyo, Ryuji’s ship, where they met him for the very first time and he gave them a tour of the ship. Fusako and Ryuji felt an attraction instantly. Throughout the tour Noboru showed his knowledge about sailing and Ryuji was impressed. Mr Shibuya the manager of the shop went to call Fusako to tell her that Yoriko Kasuga, a famous movie star from Tokyo, had just arrived. Fusako went to meet her, Fusako did not like Yoriko’s vulgarity and flaws but because she was still thinking about Ryuji, she found herself in a “paralyzing gentleness”. Fusako then returned to the Rakuyo where Ryuji concluded his tour and Fusako invited him to dinner. They had dinner in the New Grand Hotel, when they were walking home they stopped in a park and had long talk. “[Fusako had] never talked so much with a man before, not since [her] husband died”.

Chapter 4:

Ryuji went to the park where he had been with Fusako reliving the night before, he thought about how he talked so badly to Fusako and how he wasn’t able to explain his ideas of glory. He remembered telling her of his father and how all his memories of life on land were of poverty, sickness and death and so he became a sailor to detach himself from these memories. He also remembered the happiness he felt when they kissed, “Ryuji was happy to die at that very moment”. The noon heat was too much for him and so he sprayed water from a fountain on him drenching his shirt. Leaving the park he saw Noboru and a group of his friends on the street so he forced a smile and tried to be friendly to Noboru but Noboru didn’t like this and the fact that his shirt was wet.

Chapter 5:

Noboru began to think how he would keep Ryuji from telling Fusako that he had seen Noboru since he hadn’t gone swimming and was with an entirely different group of friends. He had gone to Yamuchi Pier in Kanagawa that morning. The ranking system that he and his friends used was described where there was a chief and numbers 1 to 5 (Noboru was number 3). They typically got together to discuss the uselessness of mankind and the insignificance of life, they liked to do this on insecure place where intrusion was always a possibility. They talked about Ryuji and the happenings of the night before. The chief said that Ryuji was a nobody and only wanted Fusako’s money. The boys then went to the chief’s house by train. Once at the chief’s house they went to a shed in the backyard where they could go without being seen by the butler. They went hunting for a cat and found a small stray cat. It was very hot, so they undressed and bathed inside the shed. After they bathed Noboru grabbed the cat and slammed it on a log in the shed and killed it, “the chief always insisted it would take acts such as these to fill the world’s great hollows”. The chief then proceeded to making a cut on the cat’s neck and pushing the skin to the side to show the nakedness of the cat without the skin.