The story is narrated by a young Japanese man who returns home after living in California for two years. It is not told why he leaves but the narrator says “My relationship with my parents had become strained around that period”. When the father arrives at the airport to pick up his son, the conversation is very tense, even though the father tells his son, that his firm partner, Watanabe, committed suicide after the firm bankrupted. Kikuko tells her brother afterward that Watanabe took his two daughters and his wife with him in the suicide.
The father believes that “It's my belief that your mother's death was no accident. She had many worries. And some disappointments”.
The father reveals that he was in the Japanese Navy during the war, but wishes he was in the Air Force instead. He explains that if you were stuck in the ship, you could only hope on a lifeline, but in an airplane, you could crash down in the American ships “Kamikaze pilots” The father, son, and sister sit down at the table and eat dinner together, eating a fish supper.
The first person narrator’s mother in the story has been dead for 2 years before the story is told. She died of eating a Fugu that a friend prepared for her. The mother usually did not eat Fugu, but she was anxious to offend the old school friend that invited her to dinner. “Apparently, my mother had always refused to eat fugu, but on this particular occasion she had made an exception, having been invited by an old school friend whom she was anxious not to offend.” (p. 3, left, l. 1-4).
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