Summary

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In the first of what may be regarded as the novel’s four main parts (chapters 1-3), the unhappy and taciturn couple dress in traditional kimono, take train and taxi to downtown Osaka, and then join Misako’s father and O-hisa at the Benten Theater to view the puppet play The Love Suicides at Amijima. While Kaname has accepted the invitation in order to ensure one filial act before his father-in-law is informed of the couple’s marital discord, he becomes intrigued by the play and the puppets, especially that of the heroine—a kind of prototype of the ideal woman for his father-in-law and himself. In contrast, Misako has unwillingly attended, seeking the earliest excuse for the couple’s departure so that she may “go to Suma,” the euphemism she and Kaname out of reciprocal consideration use for her trysts with a Mr. Aso. (Kaname has given his consent to the affair.)

In the second part (chapters 4-8), arriving from a regular business trip to China, Takanatsu delivers gifts to Hiroshi (a greyhound named “Lindy,” after the famous Charles Lindbergh), Kaname (an unexpurgated set of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments), and Misako (her choice of scarves), although his main purpose at Kaname’s behest is spurring the indecisive and delaying couple to act: either to reconcile, or more probably to separate.

In the third part (chapters 9-12), the theater motif is resumed when, at the invitation of his father-in-law, Kaname joins him and O-hisa in Awaji to see performances of the puppet theater at its rural birthplace and possibly accompany the couple on a pilgrimage to shrines on the island. Staying a few days to see the plays and puppets, Kaname declines the pilgrimage and departs for Osaka, stopping at Kobe to visit an Englishwoman’s foreign brothel in the narrative’s surprise revelation of Kaname’s two-year relationship with the Eurasian courtesan Louise (of Russian and Korean extraction).

As the second part opens with a letter (Takanatsu’s to Hiroshi), so does the fourth section (chapters 13-14), with Misako’s father responding to Kaname’s detailed written report of the reasons for divorce and for Misako to marry Aso. Courteously but firmly summoned, Kaname and Misako travel to the aging parent’s house in Kyoto, where Kaname is importuned to reconsider and then left to dine with O-hisa while Misako’s father takes his daughter to dinner and attempts to dissuade her from the couple’s announced plan. The novel closes with Kaname in the guestroom bed at night, awaiting the return of Misako and her father, wondering if Misako has been dissuaded from divorce (a decision which Kaname would accept), listening to the rain that has been imminent for some time, and through the bed’s mosquito netting observing first the female puppet his father-in-law purchased in Awaji and then the doll-like O-hisa, who brings some old Japanese woodblock books for him to leaf through as he waits.

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Themes