Karen's father never had any reason to go into her bedroom closet. Whenever he stayed at his daughter's Tokyo apartment while on business trips, she always told him not to bother putting away the futon in the morning and unfailingly reminded him not to touch anything.
But before leaving one recent morning, he pointedly told her she "needed to get one of those closet doors fixed."
"If he knew the door was broken, he must have opened it, so he must know what's inside," said Karen, 24, her dark, fiery eyes as elusive as the smoke being wafted from her cigarette. "But he never asked me about what's inside. If only he had. I wanted to tell him; I wanted him to know, because I don't have any hangups."