Characters
All of the tenants' names involve a pun on the character's room number:
| Number | Character | Kanji of family name and meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Kyoko Otonashi (née Chigusa) | 音無 (literally means "soundless") |
| 1(一) | The Ichinose Family | 一の瀬 (first ford) |
| 2(二) | Nozomu Nikaido | 二階堂 (two-storey temple) |
| 3(三) | Shun Mitaka * | 三鷹 (three hawks) |
| 4(四) | Mr. Yotsuya | 四谷 (four valleys) |
| 5(五) | Yusaku Godai | 五代 (five generations) |
| 6(六) | Akemi Roppongi | 六本木 (six trees) |
| 7(七) | Kozue Nanao * | 七尾 (seven ridges; the second character is "tail" but "Nanao" itself is a name from Ishikawa Prefecture) |
| 8(八) | Ibuki Yagami * | 八神 (eight gods) |
| 9(九) | Asuna Kujo * | 九条 (Ninth Avenue; the name is an old Japanese aristocratic name) |
| 1000(千) | Mr. & Mrs. Chigusa (Kyoko's parents) | 千草 (thousand grasses) |
(* Not residents of Ikkoku-kan.)
In the English version, main characters tend to refer to and address each other informally with their given names, with the exception of Mr. Yotsuya. Yusaku, while usually referring to Kyoko by her given name, almost always addresses her with her job title of "manager". In the Japanese original, Yusaku addresses Kyoko as "kanrinin-san," meaning manager.
Read more about this topic: Maison Ikkoku
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“Children pay little attention to their parent’s teachings, but reproduce their characters faithfully.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)