After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

All right, say 
something
, he told himself, but no meaningful words came to mind. 
“Father,” he ventured in a whisper, but no other words followed. 
He got up from the stool, approached the window, and looked at the well-tended 
lawn and garden and the sky stretching high above the pine woods. A solitary crow 
sat perched on a large antenna, glaring at the area with disdain as it caught the 
sunlight. A combination transistor radio/alarm clock had been placed near the head of 
the bed, but his father required neither of its functions. 
“It’s me—Tengo. I just came from Tokyo. Can you hear me?” he said, standing at 
the window, looking down at his father, who did not respond at all. After vibrating in 
the air for a moment, the sound of his voice was absorbed without a trace by the void 
that had come to occupy the room. 
This man is trying to die
, Tengo thought. He could tell by looking at the deeply 
sunken eyes. 
He made up his mind to end his life, and then he closed his eyes and 
went into a deep sleep. No matter what I say to him, no matter how much I try to 
rouse him, it will be impossible to overturn his resolution
. Medically speaking, he was 
still alive, but life had already ended for this man. He no longer had the reason or the 

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508
will to continue to struggle. All that Tengo could do was respect his father’s wishes 
and let him die in peace. The look on his face was utterly tranquil. He did not seem to 
be suffering at all. As the doctor had said on the phone, that was the one salvation. 
Still, Tengo had to speak to his father, if only because he had promised the doctor 
that he would do so. The doctor seemed to be caring for his father with genuine 
warmth. Secondly, there was the question of what he thought of as “courtesy.” Tengo 
had not had a full-fledged conversation with his father for a very long time, not even 
small talk. The truth was that Tengo had probably been in middle school the last time 
they had had a real conversation. Tengo hardly ever went near their home after that, 
and even when he had some business that required him to go to the house, he did his 
best to avoid seeing his father. 
Now, having made a de facto confession to Tengo that he was not his real father, 
the man could lay down his burden at last. He looked in some way relieved. 
That 
means that each of us was able to lay down his burden—at the last possible moment
. 
Here was the man who had raised Tengo as his own son, listing him as such in the 
family register despite the absence of blood ties, and raising him until he was old 
enough to fend for himself. 
I owe him that much. I have some obligation to tell him 
how I have lived my life thus far, as well as some of the thoughts I have had in the 
course of living that life
, Tengo thought. 
No, it’s not so much an obligation as a 
courtesy. It doesn’t matter if the things I am saying reach his ears or whether telling 
him serves any purpose
. 
Tengo sat on the stool by the bed once again and began to narrate a summary of his 
life to date, beginning from the time he left the house and started living in the judo 
dorm when he entered high school. From that time onward, he and his father had lost 
nearly all points of contact, creating a situation in which neither had the least concern 
for what the other was doing. Tengo felt he should probably fill in such a large 
vacuum as best he could. 
Ultimately, however, there was almost nothing for Tengo to tell about his life in 
high school. He had entered a private high school in Chiba Prefecture that had a 
strong reputation for its judo program. He could easily have gotten into a better 
school, but the conditions offered him by that school were the best. They waived his 
tuition and allowed him to live in the dormitory, providing him with three meals a 
day. Tengo became a star member of the judo team, studied between practice sessions 
(he could maintain some of the highest grades in his class without having to study too 
hard), and he earned extra money during vacations by doing assorted manual labor 
with his teammates. With so much to do, he found himself pressed for time day after 
day. There was little to say about his three years of high school other than that it was a 
busy time for him. It had not been especially enjoyable, nor had he made any close 
friends. He never liked the school, which had a lot of rules. He did what he had to do 
in order to get along with his teammates, but they weren’t really on the same 
wavelength. In all honesty, Tengo never once felt totally committed to judo as a sport. 
He needed to win in order to support himself, so he devoted a lot of energy to practice 
in order not to betray others’ expectations. It was less a sport to him than a practical 

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means of survival—a job. He spent the three years of high school wanting to graduate 
so that he could begin living a more serious life as soon as possible. 
Even after entering college, however, he continued with judo, living basically the 
same life as before. Keeping up his judo meant he could live in the dormitory and thus 
be spared any difficulty in finding a place to sleep or food to eat (minimal though it 
was). He also received a scholarship, though it was nowhere nearly enough to get by 
on. His major was mathematics, of course. He studied fairly hard and earned good 
grades in college, too. His adviser even urged him to continue into graduate school. 
As he advanced into the third year and then the fourth year of college, however, his 
passion for mathematics as an academic discipline rapidly cooled. He still liked 
mathematics as much as ever, but he had no desire to make a profession of research in 
the field. It was the same as it had been with judo. It was fine as an amateur endeavor, 
but he had neither the personality nor the drive to stake his whole life on it, which he 
well knew. 
As his interest in mathematics waned and his college graduation drew near, his 
reasons for continuing judo evaporated and he had no idea what path he should next 
pursue. His life seemed to lose its center of gravity—not that he had ever really had 
one, but up to that point, other people had placed certain demands and expectations 
upon him, and responding to them had kept him busy. Once those demands and 
expectations disappeared, however, there was nothing left worth talking about. His 
life had no purpose. He had no close friends. He was drifting and unable to 
concentrate his energies on anything. 
He had a number of girlfriends during his college years, and a lot of sexual 
experience. He was not handsome in the usual sense. He was not a particularly 
sociable person, nor was he especially amusing or witty. He was always hard up for 
money and wasn’t at all stylish. But just as the smell of certain kinds of plants attracts 
moths, Tengo was able to attract certain kinds of women—and very strongly, at that. 
He discovered this fact around the time he turned twenty (which was just about the 
time he began losing his enthusiasm for mathematics as an academic discipline). 
Without doing anything about it himself, he always had women who were interested 
enough to take the initiative in approaching him. They wanted him to hold them in his 
big arms—or at least they never resisted him when he did so. He couldn’t understand 
how this worked at first and reacted with a good deal of confusion, but eventually he 
got the hang of it and learned how to exploit this ability, after which Tengo was rarely 
without a woman. He never had a positive feeling of love toward any of them, 
however. He just went with them and had sex with them. They filled each other’s 
emptiness. Strange as it may seem, he never once felt a strong emotional attraction to 
any of the women who had a strong emotional attraction to him. 
Tengo recounted these developments to his unconscious father, choosing his words 
slowly and carefully at first, more smoothly as time went by, and finally with some 
passion. He even spoke as honestly as he could about sexual matters.