Narrator
The story's narrator and protagonist is a young Japanese man whose mother dies from eating fugu while he is living in California. Two years after her death, the narrator, having broken up with his girlfriend Vicki, returns to Japan to visit his father and his sister. His parents have never quite understood his life choices and blame themselves for not bringing him up to become a good person like his younger sister. When his father invites him to stay in the family home, the narrator reveals that he will probably not oblige his father's wish, but at the same time, he is unsure what his next steps in life will be.
Father
The narrator's father is a retired Japanese businessman described as "formidable-looking" and "proud of the pure samurai blood that [runs] in the family." After picking up his son from the airport, he reveals that his wife died two years earlier and he never notified his son. He also says the law firm he ran with his partner Watanabe has collapsed, and that Watanabe, "a man of principle," committed suicide because of it. When he shows his son through the now almost empty house, he appears to have lost his purpose; a model of a battleship is the only thing he seems to be working on. He prepares supper for his children, not specifying the type of fish they are eating. Afterward, he expresses his hope that his son and daughter will come back and live in the dreary house.
Mother
Two years before the events of the story, the narrator's mother dies after eating a poisonous fish called fugu at a friend's house. The narrator's life choices and departure from Japan upset his mother, and the narrator's father suggests at one point that her worries and disappointments likely contributed to her death. At supper, the narrator discovers a photograph of an old woman wearing a white kimono on the wall—the same outfit the narrator once saw the "ghost" in the garden wearing. His father is surprised that he does not recognize his own mother.
Kikuko
Kikuko is the narrator's younger sister, who studies at a university in Osaka. She tells her brother in a private conversation that she would like to go hitchhiking in America with her boyfriend. Though she pretends to be obedient to her father, she drops the facade when she is with her brother and starts smoking in the garden. She also reveals to her brother that her father's partner Watanabe killed not just himself but his entire family.
Watanabe
Watanabe is the father's ex-partner in their firm. After the firm's collapse, Watanabe committed suicide by stabbing himself in the gut according to the honorable harakiri ("belly cutting") method of disembowelment once practiced by samurai in Japan. He also turned on the gas in the home to kill his wife and children at the same time. According to the father, Watanabe was a man of principle and had become too devoted to his work.
Suichi
Suichi is Kikuko's boyfriend in Osaka. He wishes for her to travel with him to America, where they would hitchhike to get around. Kikuko is unsure if she would like to spend that much concentrated time just with him.
Vicki
Vicki is the narrator's ex-girlfriend, who is presumably American. Now that they are broken up, the narrator says that there is nothing for him in California.
