After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 21 
Aomame 
NO MATTER HOW FAR AWAY I TRY TO GO 
Aomame went to the ward library and, following the same procedures as before, 
opened the compact edition of the newspaper on a desk. She was there to read once 
again about the gun battle between the radical faction and the police that had taken 
place in Yamanashi Prefecture in the autumn three years earlier. The headquarters of 
Sakigake, the religious group that the dowager had mentioned, was located in the 
mountains of Yamanashi, and the gun battle had also occurred in the mountains of 
Yamanashi. This might have been a mere coincidence, but Aomame was not quite 
ready to accept that. There might well have been some link between the two. And the 
expression that the dowager had used—“such a major incident”—also seemed to 
suggest a connection. 
The gunfight had occurred three years earlier, in 1981 (or, according to Aomame’s 
hypothesis, three years prior to 1Q84), on October 19. Having read the news reports 
during her previous trip to the library, Aomame had fairly detailed knowledge of the 
facts. This enabled her to skim through that material and concentrate instead on 
subsequent related articles and analyses that viewed the affair from different angles. 
In the first battle, three officers had been killed and two badly wounded by 
Chinese-made Kalashnikov automatic rifles. After that, the radical group fled into the 
mountains with their weapons and the police staged a major manhunt. Fully armed 
Self-Defense Force paratroopers were also sent in by helicopter. Three radicals who 
resisted the onslaught were shot to death, two were gravely wounded (one of those 
died in the hospital three days later, but the fate of the other was not clearly stated in 
the article), and four others were arrested unharmed or slightly wounded. Wearing 
high-performance bulletproof vests, the police and Self-Defense troops suffered no 
further casualties except for one policeman’s broken leg when he fell off a cliff in 
pursuit of the radicals. Only one of the radicals was listed as whereabouts unknown. 
He had apparently managed to disappear in spite of the extensive search. 
Once the initial shock of the gun battle wore off, the newspaper started carrying 
detailed reports on the origins of the radical group, which was seen as the fallout from 
the university campus uprisings that occurred around 1970. More than half of the 
members were veterans of the takeover of Yasuda Hall at the University of Tokyo or 
the sit-in at Nihon University. After their “fortresses” had fallen to the riot police, 
these students (and a few faculty members) had been expelled from their universities 
or become disillusioned with urban political action centered on the university 
campuses. They overcame their factional differences and started a communal farm in 

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Yamanashi Prefecture. At first they participated in the agricultural commune known 
as the Takashima Academy, but they were not satisfied with the life there. They 
reorganized, went independent, bought an abandoned village deep in the mountains at 
an exceptionally low price, and started farming there. They experienced many 
hardships at first, but they eventually succeeded in the mail order sale of vegetables 
when the use of organically grown produce began a quiet boom in the cities. Their 
farm grew. They were, ultimately, serious, hardworking people whose leader had 
organized them well. The name of the commune was Sakigake. 
Aomame twisted her face into a major grimace and swallowed hard. She let out a 
deep groan and started tapping the surface of the desk with her ballpoint pen. 
She continued reading. She read through the news reports that explained how a 
deep split grew within the ranks of Sakigake between a moderate group that rejected a 
violent revolution as acceptable for contemporary Japan, and a radical faction that 
eventually founded a nearby commune and took the name Akebono. She learned how 
they were granted religious status by the government in 1979. 
After the radical group moved to their own property, they underwent secret military 
training even as they continued to farm, which gave rise to several clashes with 
neighboring farmers. One such clash involved water rights over a stream that flowed 
through Akebono’s land. The stream had always been used as a common source of 
water by farms in the area, but Akebono denied neighboring residents entry. The 
dispute went on for a number of years, until several Akebono members severely beat 
a resident who had complained about the barbed wire fence surrounding their land. 
The Yamanashi Prefectural Police obtained a search warrant and headed for Akebono 
to question the suspects, only to become involved in a wholly unanticipated shootout. 
After Akebono was all but obliterated by the intense gun battle in the mountains, 
the religious organization Sakigake lost no time in issuing a formal statement. A 
handsome, young spokesman in a business suit read the document to the media at a 
press conference. The point of the statement was quite clear. Whatever their 
relationship might have been in the past, Sakigake and Akebono now had no 
connection at all. After the two groups parted ways, there had been hardly any contact 
aside from certain operational matters. They had separated amicably after concluding 
that, as a community devoted to farming, respect for the law, and longing for a 
peaceful spiritual world, Sakigake could no longer work with the members of 
Akebono, who pursued a radical revolutionary ideology. After that, Sakigake had 
become a religious organization and had been legally certified as a Religious Juridical 
Person. That such an incident involving bloodshed had occurred was truly 
unfortunate, and Sakigake wished to express its deep sympathy for the families of the 
officers who had lost their lives in the course of their duties, but Sakigake was in no 
way involved. Still, it was an undeniable fact that Sakigake had been the parent 
organization of Akebono. Consequently, if the authorities deemed it necessary to 
conduct some sort of investigation in connection with the present incident, Sakigake 
was fully prepared to comply so as to avoid pointless misunderstanding. 
A few days later, as if in response to Sakigake’s formal statement, the Yamanashi 
Prefectural Police entered the organization’s precincts with a search warrant. They 

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spent an entire day covering all parts of Sakigake’s extensive property and carefully 
examining their buildings’ interiors and their files. They also questioned several 
members of the group’s leadership. The police suspected that the two groups’ contacts 
were as active as ever and that Sakigake was surreptitiously involved in Akebono’s 
activities. But they found no evidence to support this view. Scattered along the trails 
winding through the beautiful deciduous forest were wood-frame meditation huts 
where many members dressed in ascetic robes were engaged in religious austerities, 
nothing more. Nearby, other adherents were engaged in farming. There was an array 
of well-maintained farming implements and heavy farm machinery. The police found 
no trace of weapons or anything else suggesting violence. Everything was clean and 
orderly. There was a nice little dining hall, a lodging house, and a simple (but 
adequately equipped) medical facility. The two-floored library was well stocked with 
Buddhist scriptures and books, among which several experts were engaged in studies 
and translations. Overall, the place seemed less like a religious establishment than the 
campus of a small private college. The police left deflated, having found almost 
nothing of value. 
Some days later, the group welcomed television and newspaper reporters, who 
observed much the same scenes the police had found. They were not taken around on 
carefully controlled tours, as might be expected, but were allowed to wander freely 
throughout the property unaccompanied, to speak with anyone they wanted to 
interview, and to write up their discoveries as they wished. The one restriction agreed 
upon was that the media would use only television and photographic images approved 
by the group in order to protect the privacy of individual members. Several ascetic-
robed members of the leadership answered reporters’ questions in a large assembly 
hall, explaining the organization’s origins, doctrines, and administration. Their 
manner of speaking was courteous but direct, eschewing any hint of the kind of 
propaganda often associated with religious groups. They seemed more like top 
employees of an advertising agency, skilled presenters, rather than leaders of a 
religion. The only thing different was the clothes they wore. 
We do not have any set, clear-cut doctrine, they explained. We perform theoretical 
research on early Buddhism and put into actual practice the ascetic disciplines that 
were engaged in back then, aiming for a more fluid religious awakening. We do not 
hold that doctrine gives rise to awakening but rather that the individual awakenings 
come first. This is our fundamental principle. In that sense, our origin differs greatly 
from those of established religions. 
Now, as to our funding: like most other religious organizations, we depend in part 
on the spontaneous contributions of our believers. Our ultimate goal, however, is to 
establish a frugal, self-sufficient lifestyle through our farming, rather than depending 
on contributions. For us, “less is more”: we aim to achieve spiritual peace through the 
purification of the body and the discipline of the mind. One after another, people who 
have sensed the emptiness of competitive society’s materialism have entered our gates 
in search of a different and deeper spiritual axis. Many of them are highly educated 
professionals with social standing. We are not trying to be one of those “fast food,” 
“new” religions that pretend to take on people’s worldly suffering and save anyone 
and everyone. Salvation of the weak is of course an important task, but it may be best 

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to think of us as a kind of “graduate school,” providing a suitable place and 
appropriate support to people who are strongly motivated to save themselves. 
Major differences of opinion arose at one point between us and the people of the 
Akebono commune concerning matters of administrative policy, and we were at odds 
with them for a time, but talks between us led to an amicable meeting of the minds. 
We then separated, each of us following a different path. Akebono pursued its ideals 
in its own pure-minded and ascetic way, but with those disastrous—and genuinely 
tragic—results. The single greatest cause was that they had become too doctrinaire 
and lost touch with actual, living society. For us, too, the event has driven home the 
message that we must continue to be an organization that keeps a window open to the 
outside even as we impose ever stricter discipline upon ourselves. We believe that 
violence solves nothing. We hope you understand that we do not force religion on 
anyone. We do not proselytize, nor do we attack other religions. All we do is offer an 
appropriate and effective communal environment to people in search of spiritual 
awakening. 
. . . 
Most of the journalists present left with a favorable impression of the organization. 
All of the believers, both men and women, were slim, relatively young (though older 
people had been spotted on occasion), and beautifully clear-eyed. They were 
courteous in speech and behavior. None of them evidenced an inclination to speak 
extensively about their pasts, but most did indeed appear to be highly educated. The 
lunch served to the journalists had been simple fare (much the same sort of food eaten 
by believers, supposedly) but delicious in its own way, all ingredients having been 
freshly harvested on the organization’s land. 
Subsequently, the media defined Akebono as a mutant offspring that Sakigake had 
had to shake off. A revolutionary ideology based on Marxism had become outmoded 
and useless in 1980s Japan. The youth with radical political aspirations in 1970 were 
now working for corporations, engaged in the forefront of fierce fighting on an 
economic battlefield. Or else they had put distance between themselves and the battle 
and clamor of real society, each in search of personal values in a place apart. In any 
case, the times had changed, and the season for politics was now a thing of the distant 
past. Sakigake was one hopeful option for a new world; Akebono had no future. 
Aomame set down her pen and took a deep breath. She pictured to herself the eyes of 
Tsubasa, so utterly lacking in expression or depth. Those eyes had been looking at 
Aomame, but at the same time they had been looking at nothing. Something important 
was missing.