After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

something
could have 
come up that caused her to miss it, but this was very unlikely—unlikely, but not 
unthinkable. 
She knit her brow and mulled over the possibility that she could have missed such 
a report. Then she recorded the date in her notebook, with a summary of the event. 
The collector’s name was Shinnosuke Akutagawa. Impressive. Sounded like the 
literary giant Ryunosuke Akutagawa. There was no photograph of the collector, only 
of the man he stabbed, Akira Tagawa, age twenty-one. Tagawa was a third-year 
student in the undergraduate law program of Nihon University and a second-rank 
practitioner of Japanese swordsmanship. Had he been holding a bamboo practice 
sword at the time, the collector would not have been able to stab him so easily, but 
ordinary people do not hold bamboo swords in hand when they talk to NHK fee 
collectors. Of course, ordinary NHK fee collectors don’t walk around with butcher 
knives in their briefcases, either. Aomame followed the next several days’ worth of 
reports on the case but found nothing to indicate that the student had died. He had 
probably survived. 
On October 16 there had been a major accident at a coal mine in Yubari, 
Hokkaido. A fire broke out at the extraction point one thousand meters underground, 
and more than fifty miners suffocated. The fire spread upward toward the surface, and 
another ten men died. To prevent the fire from spreading further, the company 

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pumped the mine full of water without first ascertaining the whereabouts of the 
remaining miners. The final death toll rose to ninety-three. This was a heartrending 
event. Coal was a “dirty” energy source, and its extraction was dangerous work. 
Mining companies were slow to invest in safety equipment, and working conditions 
were terrible. Accidents were common and miners’ lungs were destroyed, but there 
were many people and businesses that required coal because it was cheap. Aomame 
had a clear memory of this accident. 
The aftermath of the Yubari coal mine accident was still being reported in the 
paper when Aomame found the event that she was looking for. It had occurred on 
October 19, 1981. Not until Tamaru told her about it several hours earlier was 
Aomame aware that such an incident had ever happened. This was simply 
unimaginable. The headline appeared on the front page of the morning edition in large 
type: 
YAMANASHI GUNFIGHT WITH RADICALS: 3 OFFICERS DIE 
A large photo accompanied the article, an aerial shot of the location where the 
battle had occurred near Lake Motosu, in the hills of Yamanashi Prefecture. There 
was also a simple map of the site, which was in the mountains away from the 
developed area of lakeside vacation homes. There were three portrait photos of the 
dead officers from the Yamanashi Prefectural Police. A Self-Defense Force special 
paratroop unit dispatched by helicopter. Camouflage fatigues, sniper rifles with 
scopes, short-barreled automatics. 
Aomame scowled hugely. In order to express her feelings properly, she stretched 
every muscle in her face as far as it would go. Thanks to the partitions on either side 
of her, no one else sitting at the library tables was able to witness her startling 
transformation. She then took a deep breath, sucking in all the surrounding air that she 
possibly could, and letting every bit of it out, like a whale rising to the surface to 
exchange all the air in its giant lungs. The sound startled the high school student 
studying at the table behind her, his back to hers, and he spun around to look at her. 
But he said nothing. He was just frightened. 
After distorting her face for a while, Aomame made an effort to relax each of her 
facial muscles until she had resumed a normal expression. For a long time after that, 
she tapped at her front teeth with the top end of her ballpoint pen and tried to organize 
her thoughts. There ought to be a reason.