After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

In this case
, Ushikawa thought, 
the only thing to do is visit the parents or the 
brother and ask them. Maybe they will provide me with some hint
. From what he 
gathered from the documentary evidence, he didn’t imagine they would be too 
pleased to answer his questions. Aomame’s family—as far as Ushikawa could see it, 
that is—were narrow-minded in their thinking, narrow-minded in the way they lived. 
They were people who had no doubt whatsoever that the more narrow-minded they 
became, the closer they got to heaven. To them, anyone who abandoned the faith, 
even a relative, was traveling down a wicked, defiled path. Who knows, maybe they 
didn’t even think of them as relatives anymore. 
Had Aomame been the victim of domestic violence as a girl?
Maybe she had, maybe she hadn’t. Even if she had, her parents most likely would 
not have seen this as abuse. Ushikawa knew very well how strict members of the 
Witnesses were with their children. In many cases this included corporal punishment. 
But would a childhood experience like that form such a deep wound that it would 
lead a person, after she grew up, to commit murder? This wasn’t out of the realm of 
possibility, but Ushikawa thought it was pushing the limits of conjecture to an 

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extreme. Carrying out a premeditated murder on one’s own wasn’t easy. It was 
dangerous, to begin with, and the emotional toll was enormous. If you got caught, the 
punishment was stiff. There had to be a stronger motivation behind it. 
Ushikawa picked up the sheaf of documents and carefully reread the details about 
Masami Aomame’s background, up to age eleven. Almost as soon as she could walk, 
she began accompanying her mother to proselytize. They went from door to door 
handing out pamphlets, telling people about the judgment to come at the end of the 
world and urging them to join the faith. Joining meant you could survive the end of 
the world. After that, the heavenly kingdom would appear. A church member had 
knocked on Ushikawa’s door any number of times. Usually it was a middle-aged 
woman, wearing a hat or holding a parasol. Most wore glasses and stared fixedly at 
him with eyes like those of a clever fish. Often she had a child along. Ushikawa 
pictured little Aomame trundling around from door to door with her mother. 
Aomame didn’t attend kindergarten, but went into the local neighborhood 
municipal public elementary school in Ichikawa. And when she was in fifth grade she 
withdrew from the Witnesses. It was unclear why she left. The Witnesses didn’t 
record each and every reason a member renounced the faith. Whoever fell into the 
clutches of the devil could very well stay there. Talking about paradise and the path to 
get there kept members busy enough. The righteous had their own work to do, and the 
devil, his—a spiritual division of labor. 
In Ushikawa’s brain someone was knocking on a cheaply made, plywood partition. 
“Mr. Ushikawa! Mr. Ushikawa!” the voice was yelling. Ushikawa closed his eyes and 
listened carefully. The voice was faint, but persistent. 
I must have overlooked 
something
, he thought. 
A critical fact must be written here, somewhere, in these very 
documents. But I can’t see it. The knock must be telling me this
. 
Ushikawa turned again to the thick stack of documents, not just following what 
was written, but trying to imagine actual scenes in his mind. Three-year-old Aomame 
going with her mother as she spread the gospel door to door. Most of the time people 
slammed the door in their faces. Next she’s in elementary school. She continues 
proselytizing. Her weekends are taken up entirely with propagating their faith. She 
doesn’t have any time to play with friends. She might not even have had any friends. 
Most children in the Witnesses were bullied and shunned at school. Ushikawa had 
read a book on the Witnesses and was well aware of this. And at age eleven she left 
the religion. That must have taken a great deal of determination. Aomame had been 
raised in the faith, had had it drummed into her since she was born. The faith had 
seeped into every fiber of her being, so she couldn’t easily slough it off, like changing 
clothes. That would mean she was isolated within the home. They wouldn’t easily 
accept a daughter who had renounced the faith. For Aomame, abandoning the faith 
was the same as abandoning her family. 
When Aomame was eleven, what in the world had happened to her? What could 
have made her come to that decision?
The Ichikawa Municipal ** Elementary School. Ushikawa tried saying the name 
aloud. 
Something had happened there. Something had most definitely happened …
He 
inhaled sharply. 
I’ve heard the name of that school before
, he realized. 
But where?
Ushikawa had no ties to Chiba Prefecture. He had been born in Urawa, 
a city in Saitama, and ever since he came to Tokyo to go to college—except for the 

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time he lived in Chuorinkan, in Kanagawa Prefecture—he had lived entirely within 
the twenty-three wards of Tokyo. He had barely set foot in Chiba Prefecture. Only 
once, as he recalled, when he went to the beach at Futtsu. So why did the name of an 
elementary school in Ichikawa ring a bell? 
It took him a while to remember. He rubbed his misshapen head as he 
concentrated. He fumbled through the dark recesses of memory, as if sticking his 
hand deep down into mud. It wasn’t so long ago that he first heard that name. Very 
recently, in fact. Chiba Prefecture … Ichikawa Municipal ** Elementary School. 
Finally he grabbed onto one end of a thin rope. 
Tengo Kawana. That’s it—Tengo Kawana was from Ichikawa! And I think he 
attended a municipal public elementary school in town, too
. 
Ushikawa pulled down from his document shelf the file on Tengo. This was 
material he had compiled a few months back, at the request of Sakigake. He flipped 
through the pages to confirm Tengo’s school record. His plump finger came to rest on 
Tengo’s name. It was just as he had thought: Masami Aomame had attended the same 
elementary school as Tengo Kawana. Based on their birthdates, they were probably in 
the same year in school. Whether they were in the same class or not would require 
further investigation. But there was a high probability they knew each other. 
Ushikawa put a Seven Stars cigarette in his mouth and lit up with his lighter. He 
had the distinct feeling that things were starting to fall into place. He was connecting 
the dots, and though he was unsure of what sort of picture would emerge, before long 
he should be able to see the outlines. 
Miss Aomame, can you hear my footsteps? Probably not, since I’m walking as 
quietly as I can. But step by step I’m getting closer. I’m a dull, silly tortoise, but I’m 
definitely making progress. Pretty soon I’ll catch sight of the rabbit’s back. You can 
count on it
. 
Ushikawa leaned back from his desk, looked up at the ceiling, and slowly let the 
smoke rise up from his mouth. 

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