After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Your profession really molds you
, Ushikawa thought, impressed, sure that 
she must be a most capable teacher. 
“Mr. Kawana was an outstanding pupil in every area of school. I have taught 
countless students in a number of schools, for over twenty-five years, yet I have never 
run across a student as brilliant as he was. He outdid everyone in anything he tried. 
He was quite personable and had strong leadership qualities. I knew he could make it 

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in any field he chose. In elementary school he particularly stood out in arithmetic and 
math, but I wasn’t so surprised to hear that he has been a success in literature.” 
“I understand that his father was an NHK fee collector.” 
“Yes, that’s right,” the teacher said. 
“Mr. Kawana told me that his father was quite strict,” Ushikawa said. This was just 
a shot in the dark. 
“Exactly so,” she said, without hesitating. “His father did have a strict way about 
him. He was proud of his work—a wonderful thing—but this seemed to be a burden 
at times for Tengo.” 
Ushikawa had skillfully tied topics together and teased out the details from her. 
This was his forte—to let the other person do the talking, as much as possible. Tengo 
hated having to tag along with his father on his rounds on the weekend, she told him, 
and in fifth grade he ran away from home. “It was more like he was kicked out rather 
than ran away,” she explained. So Tengo 
had
been forced to go with his father to 
collect the fees, Ushikawa mused. And—just as he thought—this must have taken an 
emotional toll on the boy. 
Miss Ota had taken the temporarily homeless Tengo into her home for the night. 
She prepared a bed for him, and made sure he ate breakfast the next morning. That 
evening she went to Tengo’s house and convinced his father to take him back. From 
the way she talked about this event, you would have thought it was the highlight of 
her entire life. She told him too about how they happened to run into each other again 
at a concert when Tengo was in high school. Tengo had played the timpani, 
wonderfully, she added. 
“It was Janá
č
ek’s 
Sinfonietta
. Not an easy piece, by any means. Tengo had first 
taken up the timpani only a few weeks before. But even with such little preparation he 
played his part beautifully. It was miraculous.” 
This lady has deep feelings for Tengo
, Ushikawa thought admiringly. 
Almost a 
kind of unconditional love. What would it feel like to be loved that deeply by someone 
else?
“Do you remember Masami Aomame?” Ushikawa asked. 
“I remember her very well,” the teacher replied. But her voice wasn’t as happy as 
when she had talked about Tengo. The tone of her voice had dropped two notches on 
the scale. 
“Quite an unusual name, isn’t it?” Ushikawa said. 
“Yes, very unusual. But I don’t remember her just because of her name.” 
A short silence followed. 
“I heard her family were devout members of the Witnesses,” Ushikawa said, 
sounding her out. 
“Could you keep this between just the two of us?” the teacher asked. 
“Of course. I won’t repeat it to anyone.” 
The woman nodded. “There is a large branch office of the religion in Ichikawa, so 
I have had several children from the Witnesses in my class over the years. As a 
teacher this led to some delicate problems I had to address. But no one was as devout 
as Miss Aomame’s parents.” 
“In other words, they were uncompromising.” 

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As if recalling the time, the teacher bit her lip. “Exactly. When it came to their 
principles they were extremely firm, and I think they sought the same strict obedience 
from their children. This made Miss Aomame quite isolated in the class.” 
“So in a sense she was someone rather special.” 
“She was,” the teacher admitted. “But you can’t blame the child for this. 
Responsibility for it lies in the intolerance that can take over a person’s mind.” 
The teacher explained more about Aomame. Generally the other children just 
ignored her. They tried to treat her as if she