Fujino, a Man who Never Grew Up

Yuko Tsushima "Territory of light".

Territory of Light is a novel about single motherhood in 1970s Japan. Its narrator, recently abandoned by her husband, recounts the first year in a new apartment she shares with her young daughter. The book is praised for its unflinching portrayal of motherhood, loneliness, and the quiet violence of a rigid society that expects women to endure rather than resist.

But hovering in the shadows of this story is a character who deserves far more attention than he usually gets: Fujino, the ex-husband. The man who leaves, returns, interferes, vanishes, reappears, and somehow still expects gratitude.

Now, why focus a review on a secondary character when there is so much to say about language, structure, or womanhood?

Because children are not conceived in solitude, single mothers do not appear by magic and men like Fujino are not side notes - they are co-authors of the damage.

A Man of endless motion and zero growth

Fujino is a busy man. Always moving. Always doing something. He is there to help the woman he left with a child to fight off greedy rental agents, as long as she pays her rent on her own and he can show off at the viewings . He works part-time at a restaurant run by a woman twice his age, with whom he is romantically involved. He never personally tells his ex-wife she will never find a better man than him - but two of his friends somehow feel compelled to call her within ten days to deliver the message on his behalf:

You won’t meet a better man than Fujino. The type of man you’ll meet will go steadily downhill. That’s a given. Every woman thinks it’ll be different for her, but she ends up at the bottom of the heap all the same.

Charming. Most importantly, society-approved.

Fujino cares deeply. So deeply, in fact, that he insists his ex-wife and daughter stay with her mother “for their own good,” then disappears without a trace. Later, he casually calls her at work to ask whether she really wants a divorce. Just checking in. Like one does.

Legal obligations, mediation, official paperwork - these words send him into mild hysteria. He does not attend mediation. Responsibility, it seems, is terribly inconvenient when you are a man of many passions.

The calm that hurts...

What is truly unsettling is not Fujino’s behavior, but the narrator’s reaction to it. Or rather, her lack of one.

She follows him to apartment viewings she knows she cannot afford. She listens as men explain to her, calmly and confidently, that her life will only go downhill without him. She nods. She agrees and absorbs.

As a reader, you begin to wonder: is there a limit? Is there a line Fujino could cross that would finally provoke something louder than silent endurance?

Naturally, Fujino answers this question by crossing it. He takes their daughter from daycare without telling the mother where they are going or when they will return. And only then does the narrator snap - quietly, mildly, almost apologetically. Still, it is a snap. Perhaps the first real one.

Is this the moment she realizes she must move on? Possibly. Or perhaps it is simply the moment she understands how unsafe his irresponsibility truly is.

A husband in name only

From the beginning, calling Fujino a “husband” feels generous. He is less a partner than a dependent who never matured. When an actual child enters the picture, he seems to flee in search of another woman who can mother him. Competition, after all, is unbearable.

Child or no child, Fujino continues to manipulate, threaten, and administer his preferred form of harm: small, poisonous, well-aimed emotional bites.

When he finally presents the divorce papers, he admits he cannot care for his daughter and will not provide child support. Still, he manages to shift the emotional burden back onto his ex-wife:

Are you sure? Isn’t this what you wanted? I’m just doing what you wanted.

And she says, “Thank you.”

Of course she does.

He leaves her with one last confession: he cannot repay the money he borrowed, because he must not disappoint people by failing to make his film. Art, after all, waits for no one, certainly not abandoned wives or children.

The selfishness is complete. The hypocrisy, immaculate.

The real horror

The most painful thing about Fujino is not that men like him exist. It is that he moves through the world with absolute confidence that he is entitled to behave this way - and that society will cushion him while women absorb the consequences.

And if you believe this is merely a picture of 1970s Japan, you haven’t been paying attention.