he sometimes had trouble remembering her own name. Usually this happened when someone unexpectedly asked what it was. She’d be at a boutique, getting the sleeves of a dress altered, and the saleswoman would say, “Your name, Ma’am?,” and her mind would go blank. The only way she could remember it was to pull out her driver’s license, which was bound to seem weird to the person she was talking to. Even if she was on the phone when it happened, the awkward silence as she rummaged through her purse inevitably made the person at the other end wonder what was going on.

She could remember everything else. She never forgot the names of the people around her. Her address, phone number, birthday, and passport number were no problem at all. She could rattle off her friends’ phone numbers, and the numbers of important clients. And when she was the one who brought up her name she never had any trouble remembering it. As long as she knew in advance what to expect, her memory was fine. But when she was in a hurry or unprepared, it was as if a circuit had been broken. The more she struggled, the clearer it became that she couldn’t, for the life of her, remember what she was called.

Her married name was Mizuki Ando; her maiden name was Ozawa. Neither name was unique or particularly dramatic, though that still didn’t explain how they could, in the course of her busy schedule, vanish from her memory. She had been Mizuki Ando for three years, since she married a man named Takashi Ando. At first she hadn’t been able to get used to her new name. The way it looked and sounded just didn’t seem right to her. But, gradually, after she had repeated it and signed it a number of times, she began to feel more comfortable with it. Compared with other possibilities—Mizuki Mizuki, for instance, or Mizuki Miki (she’d actually dated a guy named Miki for a while)—Mizuki Ando wasn’t bad.

She’d been married for a couple of years when the name started to slip away from her. At first it happened only once a month or so, but over time it became more frequent. Now she was forgetting her name at least once a week. If she had her purse with her she was fine. If she ever lost her purse, though, she’d be lost, too. She wouldn’t entirely disappear, of course—she still remembered her address and phone number. This wasn’t like those cases of total amnesia in the movies. Still, the fact remained that forgetting her name was upsetting. A life without a name, she felt, was like a dream you never wake up from.

Mizuki went to a jewelry store, bought a thin, simple bracelet, and had her name engraved on it: “*Mizuki (Ozawa) Ando.”* She felt like a cat or a dog, but still she was careful to wear the bracelet every time she left home. If she forgot her name, all she had to do was glance down at her wrist. No more yanking out her license, no more strange looks from other people.

She didn’t tell her husband about her problem. She knew he’d only decide that it meant she was unhappy with their marriage. He was overly logical about everything. He didn’t mean any harm by it; that was just the way he was—always theorizing. He was also quite a talker, and he didn’t easily back down once he had started on a topic. So she kept the whole thing to herself. Still, she thought, what her husband said—or would have said if he’d known about the problem—was off the mark. She wasn’t dissatisfied with their marriage. Aside from her husband’s sometimes excessive rationality, she had no complaints about him at all.

Mizuki and her husband had recently taken out a mortgage and bought a condo in a new building in Shinagawa. Her husband, who was now thirty, worked in a lab in a pharmaceutical company. Mizuki was twenty-six and worked at a Honda dealership, answering the phone, getting coffee for customers, making copies, filing, and updating the customer database. Mizuki’s uncle, an executive at Honda, had got her the position after she graduated from a women’s junior college in Tokyo. It wasn’t the most thrilling job she could imagine, but she did have some responsibility, and over all it wasn’t so bad. Whenever the salesmen were out she took over, and she always did a decent job of answering the customers’ questions. She had watched the salesmen at work, and quickly grasped the necessary technical information. She’d memorized the mileage ratings of all the models in the showroom and could convince anyone, for instance, that the Odyssey handled less like a minivan than like an ordinary sedan. Mizuki was a good conversationalist, and she had a winning smile that always put customers at ease. She also knew how to subtly change tacks, based on her reading of each customer’s personality. Unfortunately, however, she didn’t have the authority to give discounts, to negotiate trade-ins, or to throw in free options, so, even if she had the customer ready to sign on the dotted line, in the end she had to turn things over to one of the salesmen, who would get the commission. The only reward she could expect was a free dinner now and then from a salesman sharing his windfall.

Occasionally it crossed her mind that the dealership would sell more cars if it would let her do sales. But the idea didn’t occur to anyone else. That’s the way a company operates: the sales division is one thing, the clerical staff another, and, except in very rare cases, those boundaries are unbreachable. But it didn’t really matter; she wasn’t ambitious and she wasn’t looking for a career. She much preferred putting in her eight hours, nine to five, taking the vacation time she had coming, and enjoying her time off.

At work, Mizuki continued to use her maiden name. She knew that in order to change it she’d have to change all the data relating to her in the computer system. It was too much trouble and she kept putting it off. She was listed as married for tax purposes, but her name was unchanged. She knew that this wasn’t the right way to do it, but nobody at the dealership said anything about it. So Mizuki Ozawa was still the name on her business cards and on her time card. Her husband knew that she was still going by her maiden name at work (he called her there occasionally), but he didn’t seem to have a problem with it. He understood that it was simply a matter of convenience. As long as he saw the logic of what she was doing, he didn’t complain. In that sense, he was pretty easygoing.

Mizuki began to worry that forgetting her name might be a symptom of some awful disease, perhaps an early sign of Alzheimer’s. The world was full of unexpected, fatal diseases. She had only recently discovered that myasthenia and Huntington’s disease existed. There had to be countless other diseases she’d never heard of. And with most of these illnesses the early symptoms were quite minor. Minor but unusual symptoms such as—forgetting your own name?

She went to a large hospital and explained her situation. But the young doctor in charge—who was so pale and exhausted he looked more like a patient than like a physician—didn’t take her seriously. “Do you forget anything besides your name?” he asked. “No,” she said. “Right now it’s just my name.” “Hmm. This sounds more like a psychiatric case,” he said, his voice devoid of interest or sympathy. “If you start to forget anything else, please check back with us. We can run some tests then.” *We’ve got our hands full with people who are much more seriously ill than you*, he seemed to be implying.

One day in the newsletter for the local ward, Mizuki came across an article announcing that the ward office would be opening a counselling center. It was a tiny article, something she would normally have overlooked. The center would be open twice a month and would be staffed by a professional counsellor offering private sessions at a greatly reduced rate. Any resident of Shinagawa Ward who was over eighteen was welcome to make use of the service, the article said, and everything would be held in the strictest confidence. Mizuki had her doubts about whether a ward-sponsored counselling center would do her any good, but she decided to give it a try. The dealership was busy on the weekends, but getting a day off during the week wasn’t difficult, and she was able to adjust to fit the schedule of the counselling center, which was an unrealistic one for ordinary working people. One thirty-minute session cost two thousand yen, which was not an excessive amount for her to pay.

When she arrived at the counselling center, Mizuki found that she was the only client. “This program was started rather suddenly,” the receptionist explained. “Most people don’t know about it yet. Once people find out, I’m sure we’ll get busier.”

The counsellor, whose name was Tetsuko Sakaki, was a pleasant, heavyset woman in her late forties. Her short hair was dyed a light brown, her broad face wreathed in an amiable smile. She wore a pale summer suit, a shiny silk blouse, a necklace of artificial pearls, and low heels. She looked less like a counsellor than like a friendly neighborhood housewife.

“My husband works in the ward office here, you see,” she said, by way of introduction. “He’s the section chief of the Public Works Department. That’s how we were able to get support from the ward and open this center. Actually, you’re our first client, and we’re very happy to have you. I don’t have any other appointments today, so let’s just take our time and have a good heart-to-heart talk.” The woman spoke at a measured pace; everything about her was slow and deliberate.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” Mizuki said. Privately, though, she wondered whether this sort of person would be of any help to her.

“You can rest assured that I have a degree in counselling and lots of experience,” the woman added, as if she’d read Mizuki’s mind.

Mrs. Sakaki was seated behind a plain…