100
ten escaped radicals, staging a large-scale manhunt in the
surrounding hills, killing
three of them, severely wounding two, and arresting four (one of whom turned out to
be a woman). The last person remained unaccounted for. The paper was filled with
reports on the incident, completely obliterating any follow-up reports on
the NHK fee
collector who stabbed the college student in Itabashi Ward.
Though no one at NHK ever said so, of course, the
broadcasters must have been
extremely relieved. For if something like the Lake Motosu Incident had not occurred,
the media would almost certainly have been screaming about the NHK collections
system or raising doubts about the very nature of NHK’s quasi-governmental status.
At the beginning of that year, information on the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s
objections to an NHK special on the Lockheed scandal was leaked, exposing how the
NHK had,
in response, changed some of the content. After these revelations, much of
the nation was—quite reasonably—beginning to doubt the autonomy of NHK
programming and to question its political fairness. This in turn gave added impetus to
a campaign against paying NHK subscription fees.
Aside from the Lake Motosu Incident and the incident involving the NHK fee
collector, Aomame clearly remembered the other events and incidents and accidents
that had occurred at the time, and she clearly remembered having read all the
newspaper reports about them. Only in those two cases did her powers of recall seem
to fail her. Why should that be? Why should there be absolutely nothing left in her
memory from those two events alone?
Even supposing this is all due to some
malfunction in my brain, could I possibly have erased those two matters so cleanly,
leaving everything else intact?
Aomame closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips against her temples—hard.
Maybe such a thing is, in fact, possible. Maybe my brain is giving rise to some kind of
function that is trying to remake reality, that singles out certain news stories and
throws a black cloth over them to keep me from seeing or remembering them—the
police department’s switch to new guns and uniforms, the construction of a joint U.S.-
Soviet moon base, an NHK fee collector’s stabbing of a college student, a fierce gun
battle at Lake Motosu between a radical group and a special detachment of the Self-
Defense Force
.
But what do any of these things have in common?
Nothing at all, as far as I can see
.
Aomame continued tapping on her teeth with the top
end of her ballpoint pen as
her mind spun furiously.
She kept this up for a long time until finally, the thought struck her:
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