After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

There’s no point 
getting embarrassed about such things now
, he told himself. His father lay faceup, 
unmoving, his deep sleep unbroken, his breathing unchanged. 

---

510
A nurse came before three o’clock, changed the plastic bag of intravenous fluid, 
replaced the bag of collected urine with an empty one, and took his father’s 
temperature. She was a strongly built, full-bosomed woman in her late thirties. The 
name on her tag read “Omura.” Her hair was pulled into a tight bun on the back of her 
head, with a ballpoint pen thrust into it. 
“Has there been any change in his condition?” she asked Tengo while recording 
numbers on a clipboard with the ballpoint pen. 
“None at all. He’s been fast asleep the whole time,” Tengo said. 
“Please push that button if anything happens,” she said, pointing toward the call 
switch hanging over the head of the bed. Then she shoved the ballpoint pen back into 
her hair. 
“I see.” 
Shortly after the nurse went out, there was a quick knock on the door and 
bespectacled Nurse Tamura poked her head in. 
“Would you like to have a bite to eat? You could go to the lunchroom.” 
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry yet,” Tengo said. 
“How is your father doing?” 
Tengo nodded. “I’ve been talking to him the whole time. I can’t tell whether he 
can hear me or not.” 
“It’s good to keep talking to them,” she said. She smiled encouragingly. “Don’t 
worry, I’m sure he can hear you.” 
She closed the door softly. Now it was just Tengo and his father in the little room 
again. 
Tengo went on talking. 
He graduated from college and started teaching mathematics at a cram school in 
the city. No longer was he a math prodigy from whom people expected great things, 
nor was he a promising member of a judo team. He was a mere cram school 
instructor. But that very fact made Tengo happy. He could catch his breath at last. For 
the first time in his life, he was free: he could live his own life as he wanted to 
without having to worry about anyone else. 
Eventually, he started writing fiction. He entered a few of his finished stories in 
competitions, which led him to become acquainted with a quirky editor named 
Komatsu. This editor gave him the job of rewriting 
Air Chrysalis
, a story by a 
seventeen-year-old girl named Fuka-Eri (whose real name was Eriko Fukada). Fuka-
Eri had created the story, but she had no talent for writing, so Tengo took on that task. 
He did such a good job that the piece won a debut writer’s prize from a magazine and 
then was subsequently published as a book that became a huge bestseller. Because the 
book was so widely discussed, the selection committee for the Akutagawa Prize, the 
most prestigious literary award, kept their distance from it. So while it did not win 
that particular prize, the book sold so many copies that Komatsu, in his typically 
brusque way, said, “Who the hell needs 
that
?” 
Tengo had no confidence that his story was reaching his father’s ears, and even if it 
was, he had no way of telling whether or not his father was understanding it. He felt 
his words had no impact and he could see no response. Even if his words were getting 

---

511
through, Tengo had no way of knowing if his father was even interested. Maybe the 
old man just found them annoying. Maybe he was thinking, “Who gives a damn about 
other people’s life stories? Just let me sleep!” All Tengo could do, though, was 
continue to say whatever came to his mind. He couldn’t think of anything better to do 
while crammed into this little room with his father. 
His father never made the slightest movement. His eyes were closed tightly at the 
bottom of those two deep, dark hollows. He might as well have been waiting for 
winter to come and the hollows to fill up with snow. 
“I can’t say that things are going all that well for the moment, but if possible I’d like 
to make my living by writing—not just rewriting somebody else’s work but writing 
what I want to write, the way I want to write it. Writing—and especially fiction 
writing—is well suited to my personality, I think. It’s good to have something you 
want to do, and now I finally have it. Nothing of mine has ever been published with 
my name on it, but that ought to happen soon enough. I’m really not a bad writer, if I 
do say so myself. At least one editor gives me some credit for my talent. I’m not 
worried on that front.”