#tho it's hard to tell bc he's the unreliable narrator of this whole section

[grassbreads]

The more I linger on it, the more I think this might be the most subtly unhinged thing in all of SGRS. What do you MEAN you dated for eight years and never told each other your real names???

Miyokichi talks after the breakup about how she was putting on a "professional front" with Kikuhiko. As a survival technique, Miyokichi tends to make herself into whatever she thinks the man she's with wants from her, and in this case, that means she presented herself as her idea of Kiku's idea of a "good woman" for a full eight years while they were together. She probably would have tried to go on like that forever if he didn't break things off.

Yet at the same time, I think she's rightfully upset on some level that Kiku never looked at her more deeply. We see very little of their relationship, only the beginning and the very end, but given what we do see, it seems like Kiku never quite stops holding Miyokichi at arm's length. He goes along with things and initiates some level of closeness (like leaning into her when he's upset during the rain), but he doesn't push her to get more intimate.

Kiku looks scared when Miyokichi talks about dying during their breakup, he defends her personhood to his master, and he wants to bring her back to Tokyo with along Konatsu and Sukeroku when he finds them, so it's not like he doesn't care about her at all. But while he treats her his own version of decently, he never tries to get to know her on a deeper level. He doesn't take initiative to look for who she is behind her front for him.

(Personally, I'd blame his disinterest in knowing her largely on his own fear of being known, but we don't have time to get into that right now).

The problem with Miyokichi's frustration with being taken at face value, though, is that she doesn't know Kikuhiko's real name either. She most likely never asks, just like Kiku never asks hers. I think she falls in love with the idea of dating Kiku as much if not more than she falls in love with him. He's safe and well-mannered and very handsome, and I think his distant coldness is a comfort to her on some level because neglect, though an unhappy business, is what she has experience with.

Miyokichi likes the idea of ~being the woman~ and supporting Kiku emotionally. I'm sure she encouraged some playact of emotional intimacy between them. I'm sure they found comfort in each other in a very real way sometimes. But, if she got to know Kiku too well, she would have seen things about him she didn't like. Could she have truly known him without knowing he didn't love her the way she wanted? She never quite looks deeper to see whether he's really the type of man that she needs him to be.

I think Kiku is a bit more at fault for the dysfunction in their relationship overall. Whether or not he was ever properly attracted to or in love with her, he's quite clearly an inattentive boyfriend to an egregious degree. Who the hell goes traveling for an extended period without saying a word to their partner?? But he's not the only one that lets their partner pretend to be something they're not.

Kiku and Miyokichi are both very talented actors. Boyfriend and Girlfriend are roles that they're both playing. They're the happy heterosexual couple! Miyokichi seems to latch onto Kiku in large part for the sake of her safety (and because she doesn't know how to exist without a boyfriend in her life). And however much pleasure he may or may not get from Miyokichi's advances, I think Kiku stays in the relationship with her at least in part out of a sense of social obligation. She's beautiful and hitting on him. Young men are supposed to have girlfriends. He's encouraged to date to get experience for his rakugo. Is saying "no" even an option?

But because they're both playing roles, because they're both invested in Doing A Relationship as much as they're invested in each other as individuals, both of them skim along the other's surface. Neither of them ever volunteers to tell the other their real name, and apparently neither of them ever tries to ask. They spend eight years together, but those years are spent dating the personas of Kikuhiko and Miyokichi, not daring to look at the people underneath those masks.