Hatori Sohma

Hatori Sohma , aged 27–29, is the dragon of the Chinese zodiac and, like his father before him, the private doctor to the Sohma family. He is responsible for erasing memories (using a form of hypnosis that is handed down in his line of the family) of those outsiders who discover the Sohma family secret, such as Yuki's childhood playmates. Hatori is depicted as a tall, somber man who is rarely amused by the antics of his best friends, Shigure and Ayame. He is often the only one who can restrain Ayame's worst behavior, and is the only person Shigure trusts enough to talk about his schemes. He takes his duties to the Sohma family and as a doctor seriously, and warns Tohru about the dangers of getting too involved with the family. In an author's note, Natsuki Takaya described him as "the best marriage material of the cast." When his curse activates, Hatori transforms into a 8-centimeter (3.1 in) long seahorse (in Japanese tatsuno-otoshigo, literally "baby dragon") rather than an actual dragon, which he is self-conscious about. According to Shigure, this is a sign the zodiac curse has weakened. Two years before the series began, he was engaged to Kana Sohma, the assistant in his doctor's office. The relationship ended when Hatori asked Akito for permission to marry Kana and in response, Akito attacked Hatori (in the anime, he threw a vase), leaving him almost blind in his left eye; Kana blamed herself for the incident and felt so guilty about it that Hatori was forced to erase her memory of their relationship to ease her suffering. When Tohru meets up with him near the end of Volume 2, he looks back with his time with Kana, then says his heart is like snow. After Kana marries someone else, Shigure manipulates Hatori into meeting Kana's best friend, Mayuko Shiraki, who secretly had always liked him. In the last chapter, Hatori invites Mayuko on a Okinawa vacation. Takaya derived Hatori's name from the fourth month, konohatorizuki or "month of taking leaves [to silkworms]," which is the month of the dragon, of the traditional Japanese calendar.

Voiced by: Kazuhiko Inoue (Japanese), Kent Williams (English)