Heaven: A Novel

Kojima is a secondary character in Heaven. She is the protagonist’s closest—and only—friend. She supports his journey of self-acceptance by encouraging the narrator to see his lazy eye not as a defect, but as an important part of his identity. The narrator also has romantic and sexual feelings for her. However, this interest is never explicitly reciprocated by Kojima.

Kojima’s sympathy for the narrator arises from their common status as targets for the class bullies. While the bullies harass the narrator by making fun of his lazy eye, they harass Kojima by claiming she is dirty and smelly. Their taunts initially imply that Kojima comes from a low-income family. However, the narrator later discovers that she lives in a large, gated multi-story house. Kojima explains that the house belongs to her wealthy stepfather, whom her mother married after divorcing Kojima’s father. Kojima says she owes her sympathetic nature to her relationship with her birth father, who fell into serious debt after the failure of his business. During the summer, Kojima visits her father at the seaside town where he lives and works, and she is encouraged by how happy her presence makes him feel. She says that her father’s ill fortune is not the result of any particular character flaw, but simply bad luck. This causes Kojima to believe that there must be some kind of meaning to her father’s suffering. Otherwise, it wouldn’t make any sense for him to suffer.

Ultimately, the things that the bullies make fun of Kojima for—her messiness and her smell—are all qualities she actively adopts for herself as a sign of solidarity with her birth father, who is still struggling financially. She determines that the real reason the bullies make fun of her is that they are afraid of understanding her experience. Later on, when the narrator decides to pause his correspondence with her, Kojima begins to starve herself, which she explains is her way of protecting the “beautiful weakness” of others. She is very disappointed when she learns that the narrator is considering corrective surgery to treat his lazy eye. To rid himself of it symbolizes his disagreement with her philosophy, as well as his failure to understand her solidarity with her father.

Kojima’s beliefs galvanize her to face her bullies’ torments more defiantly. Once they discover her collection of letters, however, they coerce her to write a letter to the narrator, summoning him into a trap. Kojima’s final scene reaffirms her defiance of the bullies as she willingly takes off her clothes at their command. Though they intend for her and the narrator to have public sex, she begins touching each of the bullies’ faces and laughing at them, triggering their fear of understanding her. Ninomiya is the last bully she touches, which provokes him so much that he throws her to the ground. She remains unresponsive for the remainder of the chapter, and the novel doesn’t address whether Kojima recovers from her injury. The final time that the narrator mentions her, he says that he has never had another friend like her, indicating that her ideas left a lasting impression on him.

Ninomiya is the central antagonist of Heaven. Unlike stereotypical bullies, who use aggression to compensate for a lack of intelligence or academic achievement, Ninomiya is a star student and a popular member of his class. Not much is revealed about his background to explain why he chooses to torment the narrator and Kojima. However, his friend, Momose, says that aggression comes naturally to them. Moreover, Kojima connects his popularity to the size of the group he commands. Kojima suggests that most of their classmates don’t know why they would want to bully anybody. They just see the star student doing it and follow his behavior.

Ninomiya is particularly crafty in his approach to bullying. He devises torments that force the narrator to engage in some form of bodily humiliation, whether that involves forcing the narrator to eat chalk or wrapping a punctured volleyball over the narrator’s head to kick him around in a game of soccer. Ninomiya ensures that he will not be caught by the school authorities for his behavior by scaring the narrator into never reporting the bullying.

At the end of the novel, Ninomiya discovers the relationship between the narrator and Kojima. He decides to exploit it by tricking the narrator to meet Kojima at the park, and then forcing them to have sex in front of everyone. Kojima manages to scare everyone off, however, by willingly taking off her clothes, touching everyone’s faces, and laughing. Ninomiya is one of the last bullies she does this to, which leaves him in a trance. Once he breaks out of the trance, he retaliates by throwing Kojima to the ground, severely injuring her. He escapes the park before he can face the repercussions of his aggression.