Fusako Kuroda

Thirty-three-year-old Fusako Kuroda, Noboru Kuroda’s mother and Ryuji Tsukazaki’s lover, is a wealthy widow who runs her late husband’s imported luxury clothing store in Yokohama. Sophisticated, respected, and self-reliant, Fusako represents both traditional Japanese ideals of femininity and the powerful Western influences on Japanese culture and society in the postwar era. Five years after her husband’s death, she feels intensely lonely, particularly given the challenges of raising Noboru alone in a patriarchal culture. Thus, when she meets and falls in love with Ryuji Tsukazaki, she is elated—but she also worries that, because of his unpredictable life as a sailor, she would become dependent and powerless as his wife.