“Morisu. Yes, he has a wonderful name too.”

守須 morisu. i don’t know if the book will mention it again so i wanted to speculate why shimada thinks it’s a wonderful name.

first, of course, the closest foreign name the syllables mo-ri-su come to is something like ‘morris’, or if you elongate the mo (mo-o-ri-su), maurice. did a quick google search for authors with those names or similar and came upon Maurice Leblanc, who is “known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsène Lupin, often described as a French counterpart to Arthur Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes.” i’ve never heard of him and thought that was interesting. don’t know if that’s what shimada meant by his name being wonderful, but i’m guessing it’s cos it sounds similar to an author’s.

another wonderful— or well, not wonderful, but very interesting fact about the characters of morisu’s name. each character can be read multiple ways, so here’s how you can read morisu’s:

守 - (ma)mori, su, shu 須 - su, shu(<- extra rare)

so, yknow, morisu’s name reading can be combined in different ways, like ‘su-su’ or ‘shu-shu’ 💅, though you’ll probably never find someone irl with this name pronounced like that.

let me know what you think, though, if shimada provides an explanation later in the book or if i got it wrong.

I did a bit of digging on where J Cape of S Town harbour in “S Peninsula on the east coast of the Oita Prefecture in Kyushu” is. Do take this with a grain of salt, though.

Tsunojima itself is, according to a few blogs, based on 高島 Takashima Island.

S Peninsula is most likely referring to 佐賀関半島 Saganoseki Peninsula. It’s the only peninsula in Oita I could find that starts with an S, and is located on the east of Oita.

In Saganoseki is a town called 佐賀関町 Saganoseki Town (S Town). There are a few towns around the area but according to Wiki, up til 2005 it’s the only town there, and this book was published in the late 80s.

J Cape probably refers to 地蔵崎 Jizou Cape, though it’s more commonly known as 関崎 Seki Cape. The book mentions Tsunojima is located about 5km off J Cape. In reality, Takashima is about 3.5km off Jizou/Seki Cape.

The university itself is a little tricky. There aren’t many universities in Oita. If K University of O(ita) City is based on a real university, the only one I can find that has the letter K in it, is 大分県立看護科学大学 Oita University of Nursing and Health Sciences (Ooita-kenritsu Kango kagaku daigaku). K University is most likely not based on anything.

If you know more or think I made a mistake, let me know!

For those of you who have a physical copy:

Does the book really say “al-ħamdu Allah” (which is what the narrator says) instead of “al-ħamdu(li)llah”? I think it was in the last third of the book.

specifically the one in oita. not exactly where it’s located on the map in the book, but there is one. its called 深島 Fukashima. as of 2025, around 60 cats are residents of the island, although at one point it reached about 100 cats. dogs are not allowed on the island, apparently, and you can buy a picture book featuring all the cats (up to 2019) in the island. you can visit the island by ferry, and it’s not expensive, if anyone wants to plan their next japan visit.

What is cat island and how do I get there