Hatsu Kanou is the grandmother of Seigi Nakata and the mother of Hiromi Nakata. In the sixties, she stole Tae Miyashita's pink sapphire ring, which she eventually passed down to Seigi.
Hatsu was born before World War 2. During the war, she had lost her whole family, and after the war, she married a soldier from the war. However, he was abusive to her, which Seigi suspects was due in part to his PTSD. The couple lived in poverty and had two sons who died young. When Hatsu had Hiromi, she did not want her to die as well and fled to Tokyo with her.
However, she couldn’t find work that would also allow her to look after a young child by herself, and so she resorted to pickpocketing people on trains. She was skilled at it and by pawning off what she stole, she was able to feed her family.
