The elderly gardener is one of the servants who works for Dr. Sadao Hoki and Hana. Like the cook, he’s been an instrumental part of the household ever since Sadao was just a boy. He is fiercely loyal to Sadao’s father, who is dead at the outset of the story. The gardener is especially skilled with flowers and moss; in his younger years, he created “one of the finest moss gardens in Japan” for Sadao’s father. He refers to Sadao’s father as “my old master” and Sadao as “my old master’s son,” demonstrating his lopsided loyalty to Sadao’s father over Sadao. This, coupled with his old age, suggests that the gardener clings to traditions, superstitions, and mindsets of the past. Even though Sadao and Hana are fairly traditional, the gardener aligns himself with Sadao’s father’s belief in racial purity, Japanese superiority, and the “old Japanese way” of doing things. Like the other servants, the gardener resents Sadao for saving Tom—besides his racist reasons for believing Tom should die, he also superstitiously believes that saving Tom from the sea will make the sea take revenge on Sadao and his family. The gardener eventually cuts ties with the family and leaves the household because of Tom. However, like the other servants, the gardener returns once Tom is gone, suggesting that the gardener was too engrained in the household— and too devoted to the memory Sadao’s father—to truly leave. Tom is a teenage American prisoner of war who was captured and tortured by the Japanese but somehow escaped. He washes up on the beach near Dr. Sadao Hoki and Hana’s isolated house, and they discern that he’s a prisoner of war from his recent bullet wound (reopened by one of the rocks out at sea), his blonde hair, and his U.S. navy cap. Even though Tom is unconscious or sleeping for much of his time with Sadao and Hana, his mere presence forces them to grapple with their conflicting impulses to help a fellow human and to be loyal to one’s country. When he is conscious, Tom is scared of Sadao but also deeply grateful to the surgeon for saving his life—praise that Sadao coldly shrugs off. After saving Tom’s life through surgery, Sadao knows that he can’t allow the American to stay, but nor can he turn the American over to the authorities—the boy will surely die a torturous death. Sadao arranges for the General, an influential patient of his, to have a few assassins come to Sadao’s house in the middle of the night to silently kill Tom and do away with his body. When the assassins fail to show up night after night, Sadao decides to take matters into his own hands by helping Tom escape by boat to a nearby island, where he’s bound to be saved by a Korean fishing boat. The plan works, and Sadao is ultimately baffled as to why he couldn’t just kill Tom, given that Americans are his enemies and he hates all white people. In the story, Tom is the catalyst for human kindness, forcing Sadao and Hana to consider the universality of humankind and the inherent human impulse to be kind.
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