A Family Supper Summary / Study Guide

A Family Supper | Overview

"A Family Supper" concerns the difficulty of different generations communicating in one Japanese family. After several years of living in California, the son, who remains nameless, returns to Japan two years after his mother’s death, about which he knew little. She died by eating—out of politeness to a friend—the poisonous fish called “fugu.” The implication is that allegiance to Japanese tradition had something to do with her death, and this grows in thematic significance as we learn that the young man’s father is “in retirement” because his longtime business partner recently committed suicide, taking his family with him. Indeed, death hovers throughout the story, especially as the son and his sister, who visits for dinner, reminisce over a childhood memory of a ghost in the backyard well. As the family haltingly talks over dinner, slowly eating a fish the father has prepared, no one speaks of the fugu that killed the mother, although father and son agree that the business partner made a mistake in his suicide and the murder of his family. The father, meanwhile, encourages the son to stay in Japan, but the son remains noncommittal about his plans. Nothing is resolved at the end of the story, when, as the narrator says, “We fell silent once more.”

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