Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of suicide.

Mitani Kikuji is the protagonist of Thousand Cranes. The novel follows him as he becomes entangled with two of his father’s former mistresses and grapples with a legacy of guilt and passion against a backdrop of inherited traditions. He often takes on a passive role in the narrative due to an acknowledged “weakness” in his character that Chikako recognizes and exploits. He therefore has few of the conventional qualities of a protagonist. While he resists Chikako’s attempts to match him with Yukiko, he never defies her openly by turning her away or even defending Fumiko from her spite.

As an orphan, Kikuji is simultaneously cut off from his father’s legacy and trapped by it. While Kikuji takes no interest in his father’s hobby of tea, renouncing his connection to the ancient tradition, his father’s legacy nonetheless draws him into the world of tea ceremonies. When Kikuji drinks from the same cups that his father used, father and son are connected as the most recent links in a chain of owners dating back centuries. Kikuji neither organizes for his father’s tea cottage to be repaired and properly maintained, nor does he commit to selling off the property.