The Setting Sun

After sending three letters to Uehara, Kazuko receives no reply. Feeling depressed, she asks her brother careful questions about Uehara. Naoji explains that Uehara encouraged him to start a publishing company and act as the agent for a group of young writers. Kazuko is convinced that Uehara has not been affected in any way by her letters. 

Feeling a sense of “disappointed love,” she decides to visit Uehara. Just as she is preparing to make the trip to Tokyo, her mother falls sick. She has a terrible cough and a high fever. When this does not pass, Kazuko fetches the village doctor. Though the doctor assures Kazuko that her mother will recover, her mother remains in bed. The doctor returns and diagnoses Kazuko’s mother with seepage in her left lung. This, he says, is “no cause for alarm” (103).

Kazuko is relieved, though she is hurt by the realization that Naoji is still the mainstay of her mother’s pleasure in life. After a week, Kazuko’s mother has still not recovered. Kazuko writes to Uncle Wada, who sends a doctor from Tokyo. 

Doctor Miyake is an old aristocratic man who once served as a court physician. His “rough manners and coarse speech” make Kazuko’s mother laugh as they gossip while he examines her (104). After, however, Miyake takes Kazuko aside to reveal his diagnosis: Her mother has tuberculosis and will likely die. There is nothing that can be done. Kazuko chooses to tell her mother that “it’s nothing serious” (107). She prepares her mother’s favorite foods, hoping to convince herself as much as her mother that everything is fine.

Kazuko has a dream in which she finds herself beside a lake in a forest, accompanied by a small boy. They walk to a hotel. When Kazuko mentions her mother, the boy says that she is “in her grave” (109). Kazuko feels immense loneliness as she is jolted out of her nightmare. Her mother calls to her and mentions that her fever has increased. Kazuko is “plunged into a blank despair” (110), though her mother is sure that she will soon be healthy. She cries while eating tinned salmon in the dark.

Kazuko borrows Naoji’s books. She reads Introduction to Economics by Rosa Luxemburg, as well as other revolutionary texts. Her mother prefers French novels, but Kazuko feels drawn to these works about social change. She feels caught “in the passion of love [she] must destroy” (112); she wants to start a revolution. This reminds her of her adolescence, when her friend compared her unflatteringly to “the girl in the Sarashina Diary” (113). Though the comment effectively ended their friendship, Kazuko is beginning to understand that she has not changed since that day, 12 years ago. She has “not even known love” (114), let alone revolution.

In October, Kazuko notices that her mother’s hand is swollen. She mentions this to Naoji, who is convinced that their mother’s death is imminent. Kazuko is determined to save their mother, but Naoji weeps and claims that “there’s nothing [they] can do” (117). Naoji visits Uncle Wada to provide an update; Kazuko stays at home and cries. 

Doctor Miyake returns and examines Kazuko’s mother. He leaves a nurse behind as he leaves, seemingly on the brink of tears. He believes that death will occur in a few days. Kazuko is “surprisingly self-possessed.” According to Uncle Wada, the family cannot afford a big funeral. Kazuko surprises Naoji by revealing that she will have somewhere to go: She plans to “become a revolutionary” (120).

Their conversation is interrupted by the nurse, who summons Kazuko to her mother’s bedside. Kazuko’s mother dreamed about a snake on the porch. She asks Kazuko to check the porch. Kazuko does so and finds the snake. She believes that this is the female snake whose eggs she tried to burn. Taking this as a bad omen, Kazuko moves the snake away, then returns to her mother to say that the porch is bare and that her mother’s dream could not be true. Kazuko begins to lose hope.

Kazuko knits to distract herself, hoping that her mother will guide her knitting, as she always did. They talk about a photograph of the emperor in the newspaper. During their conversation, Kazuko confesses to her mother that she has been “very ignorant of the world until now” (124). She is too embarrassed to say more, but she resolves to go on living and to continue to “struggle with the world” (124).

Over the coming days, Kazuko cares for her mother. Uncle Wada arrives with his wife. Kazuko and Naoji gather at their mother’s bedside with their aunt and uncle. When Doctor Miyake arrives, Kazuko’s mother asks him to “put an end to [her] suffering soon” (126). Kazuko prepares a meal for everyone. Her uncle hands her some money, leaving orders with Miyake on how to proceed in the remaining days. 

After they have left, Kazuko returns to her mother’s bedside. In a whispery voice, her mother says, “[I]t must have been a terrible rush for [Kazuko]” (127). These are her last words. She dies three hours later. Kazuko mourns her mother’s death as the death of “the last lady in Japan” (127).