After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 13 
Ushikawa 
IS THIS WHAT THEY MEAN 
BY BACK TO SQUARE ONE?
Ushikawa’s appearance made him stand out. He did not have the sort of looks suited 
for stakeouts or tailing people. As much as he might try to lose himself in a crowd, he 
was as inconspicuous as a centipede in a cup of yogurt. 
His family wasn’t like that at all. Ushikawa’s family consisted of his parents, an 
older and younger brother, and a younger sister. His father ran a health clinic, where 
his mother was the bookkeeper. Both brothers were outstanding students, attended 
medical school, and became doctors. His older brother worked in a hospital in Tokyo, 
while his younger brother was a research doctor at a university. When his father 
retired, his older brother was due to take over the family clinic in Urawa, a suburb of 
Tokyo. Both brothers were married and had one child. Ushikawa’s sister had studied 
at a college in the United States and was now back in Japan, working as an 
interpreter. She was in her mid-thirties but still single. All his siblings were slim and 
tall, with pleasantly oval features. 
In almost every respect, particularly in looks, Ushikawa was the exception in his 
family. He was short, with a large, misshapen head and unkempt, frizzy hair. His legs 
were stumpy and bent like cucumbers. His popping eyes always looked startled, and 
he had a thick layer of flesh around his neck. His eyebrows were bushy and large and 
nearly came together in the middle. They looked like two hairy caterpillars reaching 
out to each other. In school he had generally gotten excellent grades, but his 
performance in some subjects was erratic and he was particularly hopeless at sports. 
In this affluent, self-satisfied, elite family, he was the foreign element, the sour, 
dissonant note that ruined the familial harmony. In family photos he looked like the 
odd man out, the insensitive outsider who had pushed his way into the group and had 
his picture taken with them. 
The other members of his family couldn’t understand how someone who didn’t 
resemble them in the least could be one of them. But there was no mistaking the fact 
that his mother had given birth to him, with all the attendant labor pains (her 
recollection was how particularly painful that birth had been). No one had laid him at 
their doorstep in a basket. Eventually, someone recalled that there was a relative who 
also had an oversized, misshapen head—Ushikawa’s grandfather’s cousin. During the 
war he had worked in a metal shop in Koto Ward in Tokyo, but he died in the massive 
air raid in the spring of 1945. His father had never met the man, though he had a 
photo of him in an old album. When the family saw the photo, they exclaimed, “It all 
makes sense now!” Ushikawa and his uncle were such peas in a pod that you would 

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think that Ushikawa was the man reincarnated. The genetic traits of this uncle had, for 
whatever reason, surfaced once more. 
The Ushikawa family of Urawa, Saitama Prefecture, would have been the perfect 
family—in both looks and academic and career achievements—if only Ushikawa 
hadn’t existed. They would have been the kind of memorable, photogenic family that 
anyone would envy. But with Ushikawa in the mix, people tended to frown and shake 
their heads. People might begin to think that somewhere along the line a joker or two 
had tripped up the goddess of beauty. No, they 
definitely
must think this, his parents 
decided, which is why they tried their hardest to keep him out of the public eye or at 
least make sure he didn’t stand out (though the attempt was always pointless). 
Being put in this situation, however, never made Ushikawa feel dissatisfied, sad, or 
lonely. He wasn’t sociable to begin with and usually preferred to stay in the shadows. 
He wasn’t particularly fond of his brothers and sister. From Ushikawa’s perspective, 
they were irretrievably shallow. To him, their minds were dull, their vision narrow 
and devoid of imagination, and all they cared about was what other people thought. 
More than anything, they were completely lacking in the sort of healthy skepticism 
needed to attain any degree of wisdom. 
Ushikawa’s father was a moderately successful doctor of internal medicine in the 
countryside, but he was so utterly boring that talking with him gave you chest pains. 
Like the king whose touch turned everything to gold, every single word he uttered 
turned into insipid grains of sand. But as a man of few words he was able—probably 
unintentionally—to conceal how boring and ignorant he really was. In contrast, his 
mother was a real talker, a hopeless snob. Money was everything to her, and she was 
self-centered and proud, loved anything gaudy and showy, and could always be 
counted on to bad-mouth other people in a shrill voice. Ushikawa’s older brother had 
inherited his father’s disposition; his younger brother had his mother’s. His sister was 
very independent. She was irresponsible and had no consideration for others. As the 
baby of the family, she had been totally pampered and spoiled by her parents. 
All of which explained why, since he was a boy, Ushikawa had kept to himself. 
When he came home from school, he had shut himself in his room and gotten lost in 
books. He had no friends other than his dog, so he never had the chance to talk with 
someone about what he had learned, or debate anyone. Still, he was convinced that he 
was a clear, eloquent, logical thinker, and he patiently honed these abilities all by 
himself. For instance, he would propose an idea for discussion and debate it, taking 
both sides. He would passionately argue in support of the proposition, then argue—
just as vigorously—against it. He could identify equally with either of the two 
positions and was completely and sincerely absorbed by whatever position he 
happened to be supporting at the moment. Before he had realized it, these exercises 
had given him the talent to be skeptical about his own self, and he had come to the 
recognition that most of what is generally considered the truth is entirely relative. 
Subject and object are not as distinct as most people think. If the boundary separating 
the two isn’t clear-cut to begin with, it is not such a difficult task to intentionally shift 
back and forth from one to the other. 
In order to use logic and rhetoric more clearly and effectively, he filled his mind 
with whatever knowledge he could find—both what he thought would be useful and 
what he was pretty sure was the opposite. He chose things he agreed with, and things 

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that, initially, he opposed. It wasn’t cultivation and learning in the usual sense that he 
was after, but more tangible information—something you could actually handle, 
something with a real shape and heft. 
That huge, misshapen head of his turned out to be the perfect container for these 
quantities of accumulated information. Thanks to all this, he was far more erudite than 
any of his contemporaries. If he felt like it, he knew he could shoot down anybody in 
an argument—not just his siblings or classmates, but his teachers and parents as well. 
But he didn’t want to attract any kind of attention if he could avoid it, so he kept this 
ability hidden. Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off. 
Ushikawa began to think of himself as a nocturnal creature, concealed in a dark 
forest, waiting for prey to wander by. He waited patiently for an opportunity, and 
when it came he would leap out and grab it. But until that point, he couldn’t let his 
opponent know he was there. It was critical to keep a low profile and catch the other 
person off guard. Even as an elementary school pupil, he had thought this way. He 
never depended on others or readily revealed his emotions. 
Sometimes he imagined how his life would be if he had been born a little better-
looking. He didn’t need to be handsome. There was no need to look that impressive. 
He just needed to be normal-looking, or enough so that people wouldn’t turn and 
stare.