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CHAPTER 11
Aomame
THE HUMAN BODY IS A TEMPLE
The number of people who could deliver a kick to the balls with Aomame’s mastery
must have been few indeed. She had studied kick patterns with great diligence and
never missed her daily practice. In kicking the balls, the most important thing was
never to hesitate. One had to deliver a lightning attack to the adversary’s weakest
point and do so mercilessly and with the utmost ferocity—just
as when Hitler easily
brought down France by striking at the weak point of the Maginot Line. One must not
hesitate. A moment of indecision could be fatal.
Generally speaking, there was no other way for a woman to take down a bigger,
stronger man one-on-one. This was Aomame’s unshakable belief. That part of the
body was the weakest point attached to—or, rather, hanging from—the creature
known as man, and most of the time, it was not effectively defended. Not to take
advantage of that fact was out of the question.
As a woman, Aomame had no concrete idea how much it hurt to suffer a hard kick
in the balls, though judging from the reactions and facial expressions of men she had
kicked, she could at least imagine it. Not even the strongest or toughest man, it
seemed, could bear the pain and the major loss of self-respect that accompanied it.
“It hurts so much you think the end of the world is coming
right now
. I don’t know
how else to put it. It’s different from ordinary pain,” said a man, after careful
consideration, when Aomame asked him to explain it to her.
Aomame gave some thought to his analogy. The end of the world?
“Conversely, then,” she said, “would you say that when the
end of the world is
coming
right now
, it feels like a hard kick in the balls?”
“Never having experienced the end of the world, I can’t be sure, but that might be
right,” the man said, glaring at a point in space with unfocused eyes. “There’s just this
deep sense of powerlessness. Dark, suffocating, helpless.”
Sometime after that, Aomame happened to see the movie
On the Beach
on late-
night television. It was an American movie made around 1960. Total war broke out
between the U.S. and the USSR and a huge number of missiles were launched
between the continents like schools of flying fish. The earth was annihilated, and
humanity was wiped out in almost every part of the world. Thanks to the prevailing
winds or something, however, the ashes of death still hadn’t
reached Australia in the
Southern Hemisphere, though it was just a matter of time. The extinction of the
human race was simply unavoidable. The surviving human beings there could do
nothing but wait for the end to come. They chose different ways to live out their final
120
days. That was the plot. It was a dark movie offering no hope of salvation. (Though,
watching it, Aomame reconfirmed her belief that everyone, deep in their hearts, is
waiting for the end of the world to come.)
In any case, watching the movie in the middle of the night, alone, Aomame felt
satisfied that she now had at least some idea of what it felt like to be kicked in the
balls.
After graduating from a college of physical education, Aomame spent four years
working for a company that manufactured sports drinks and health food. She was a
key member of the company’s women’s softball team (ace pitcher, cleanup batter).
The team did fairly well and several times reached the quarterfinals of the national
championship playoffs. A month
after Tamaki Otsuka died, though, Aomame
resigned from the company and marked the end of her softball career. Any desire she
might have had to continue with the game had vanished, and she felt a need to start
her life anew. With the help of an older friend from college, she found a job as an
instructor at a sports club in Tokyo’s swank Hiroo District.
Aomame was primarily in charge of classes in muscle training and martial arts. It
was a well-known, exclusive club with high membership fees and dues, and many of
its members were celebrities. Aomame established several classes in her best area,
women’s self-defense techniques. She made a large canvas dummy in the shape of a
man, sewed a black work glove in the groin area to serve as testicles, and gave female
club members thorough training in how to kick in that spot.
In the interest of realism,
she stuffed two squash balls into the glove. The women were to kick this target
swiftly, mercilessly, and repeatedly. Many of them took special pleasure in this
training, and their skill improved markedly, but other members (mostly men, of
course) viewed the spectacle with a frown and complained to the club’s management
that she was going overboard. As a result, Aomame was called in and instructed to
rein in the ball-kicking practice.
“Realistically speaking, though,” she protested, “it’s impossible for women to
protect themselves against men without resorting to a kick in the testicles. Most men
are bigger and stronger than women. A swift testicle attack is a woman’s only chance.
Mao Zedong said it best. You find your opponent’s weak point and make the first
move with a concentrated attack. It’s the only chance a guerrilla force has of defeating
a regular army.”
The manager did not take well to her passionate defense. “You know perfectly well
that we’re one of the few truly exclusive
clubs in the metropolitan area,” he said with
a frown. “Most of our members are celebrities. We have to preserve our dignity in all
aspects of our operations. Image is crucial. I don’t care what the reason is for these
drills of yours, it’s less than dignified to have a gang of nubile women kicking a doll
in the crotch and screeching their heads off. We’ve already had at least one case of a
potential member touring the club and withdrawing his application after he happened
to see your class in action. I don’t care what Mao Zedong said—or Genghis Khan, for
that matter: a spectacle like that is going to make most men feel anxious and annoyed
and upset.”
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Aomame felt not the slightest regret at having caused male club members to feel
anxious and annoyed and upset. Such unpleasant feelings were nothing compared
with the pain experienced by a victim of forcible rape. She could not defy her
superior’s orders, however, and so her self-defense classes
had to lower the level of
their aggressiveness. She was also forbidden to use the doll. As a result, her drills
became much more lukewarm and formal. Aomame herself was hardly pleased by
this, and several members raised objections, but as an employee, there was nothing
she could do.
It was Aomame’s opinion that, if she were unable to deliver an effective kick to the
balls when forcefully attacked by a man, there would be very little else left for her to
try. In the actual heat of combat, it was virtually impossible to perform such high-
level techniques as grabbing your opponent’s arm and twisting it behind his back.
That only happened in the movies. Rather
than attempting such a feat, a woman
would be far better off running away without trying to fight.
In any case, Aomame had mastered at least ten separate techniques for kicking
men in the balls. She had even gone so far as to have several younger men she knew
from college put on protective cups and let her practice on them. “Your kicks really
hurt
, even with the cup on,” one of them had screamed in pain. “No more, please!” If
the need arose, she knew, she would never hesitate to apply her sophisticated
techniques in actual combat.
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