After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

The Getaway
. The Steve 
McQueen movie. A wad of bills and a shotgun. I love that kind of stuff.” 
“More than being on the side that enforces the law?” 
“Personally, yes,” Ayumi said with a smile. “I’m more drawn to outlaws. They’re 
a whole lot more exciting than riding around in a mini patrol car and handing out 
parking tickets. That’s what I like about you.” 
“Do I look like an outlaw?” 
Ayumi nodded. “How should I put it? I don’t know, you just have that atmosphere 
about you, though maybe not like a Faye Dunaway holding a machine gun.” 
“I don’t need a machine gun,” Aomame said. 
“About that religious commune we were talking about last time, Sakigake …,” Ayumi 
said. 
The two were sharing a light meal and a bottle of Chianti at a small, late-night 
Italian restaurant in Iikura, a quiet neighborhood. Aomame was having a salad with 
strips of raw tuna, while Ayumi had ordered a plate of gnocchi with basil sauce. 
“Uh-huh,” Aomame said. 
“You got me interested, so I did a little searching on my own. And the more I 
looked, the fishier it began to smell. Sakigake calls itself a religion, and it even has 
official certification, but it’s totally lacking any religious 
substance
. Doctrine-wise, 
it’s kind of deconstructionist or something, just a jumble of 
images
of religion thrown 
together. They’ve added some new-age spiritualism, fashionable academicism, a 
return to nature, anticapitalism, occultism, and stuff, but that’s all: it has a bunch of 
flavors, but no substantial core. Or maybe that’s what it’s all about: this religion’s 
substance is its lack of substance. In McLuhanesque terms, the medium is the 
message. Some people might find that cool.” 

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“McLuhanesque?” 
“Hey, look, even I read a book now and then,” Ayumi protested. “McLuhan was 
ahead of his time. He was so popular for a while that people tend not to take him 
seriously, but what he had to say was right.” 
“In other words, the package itself is the contents. Is that it?” 
“Exactly. The characteristics of the package determine the nature of the contents, 
not the other way around.” 
Aomame considered this for a moment and said, “The core of Sakigake as a 
religion is unclear, but that has nothing to do with why people are drawn to it, you 
mean?” 
Ayumi nodded. “I wouldn’t say it’s amazing how many people join Sakigake, but 
the numbers are by no means small. And the more people who join, the more money 
they put together. Obviously. So, then, what is it about this religion that attracts so 
many people? If you ask me, it’s primarily that it doesn’t 
smell
like a religion. It’s 
very clean and intellectual, and it looks systematic. That’s what attracts young 
professionals. It stimulates their intellectual curiosity. It provides a sense of 
achievement they can’t get in the real world—something tangible and personal. And 
these intellectual believers, like an elite officers’ corps, form the powerful brains of 
the organization. 
“Plus,” Ayumi continued, “their ‘Leader’ seems to have a good deal of charisma. 
People idolize him. His very presence, you might say, functions like a doctrinal core. 
It’s close in origin to primitive religion. Even early Christianity was more or less like 
that at first. But 
this
guy never comes out in the open. Nobody knows what he looks 
like, or his name, or how old he is. The religion has a governing council that 
supposedly runs everything, but another person heads the council and acts as the 
public face of the religion in official events, though I don’t think he’s any more than a 
figurehead. The one who is at the center of the system seems to be this mysterious 
‘Leader’ person.” 
“Sounds like he wants to keep his identity hidden.” 
“Well, either he has something to hide or he keeps his existence obscure on 
purpose to heighten the mysterious atmosphere around him.” 
“Or else he’s tremendously ugly,” Aomame said. 
“That’s possible, I suppose. A grotesque creature from another world,” Ayumi 
said, with a monster’s growl. “But anyway, aside from the founder, this religion has 
too many things that stay hidden. Like the aggressive real estate dealings I mentioned 
on the phone the other day. Everything on the surface is there for show: the nice 
buildings, the handsome publicity, the intelligent-sounding theories, the former social 
elites who have converted, the stoic practices, the yoga and spiritual serenity, the 
rejection of materialism, the organic farming, the fresh air and lovely vegetarian 
diet—they’re all like calculated photos, like ads for high-class resort condos that 
come as inserts in the Sunday paper. The packaging is beautiful, but I get the feeling 
that suspicious plans are hatching behind the scenes. Some of it might even be illegal. 
Now that I’ve been through a bunch of materials, that’s the impression I get.” 
“But the police aren’t making any moves now.” 
“Something may be happening undercover, but I wouldn’t know about that. The 
Yamanashi Prefectural Police do seem to be keeping an eye on them to some extent. I 

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kind of sensed that when I spoke to the guy in charge of the investigation. I mean, 
Sakigake gave birth to Akebono, the group that staged the shootout, and it’s just 
guesswork that Akebono’s Chinese-made Kalashnikovs came in through North 
Korea: nobody’s really gotten to the bottom of that. Sakigake is still under some 
suspicion, but they’ve got that ‘Religious Juridical Person’ label, so they have to be 
handled with kid gloves. The police have already investigated the premises once, and 
that made it more or less clear that there was no direct connection between Sakigake 
and the shootout. As for any moves the Public Security Intelligence Agency might be 
making, we just don’t know. Those guys work in absolute secrecy and have never 
gotten along with us.” 
“How about the children who stopped coming to public school? Do you know any 
more about them?” 
“No, nothing. Once they stop going to school, I guess, they never come outside the 
walls of the compound again. We don’t have any way of investigating their cases. It 
would be different if we had concrete evidence of child abuse, but for now we don’t 
have anything.” 
“Don’t you get any information about that from people who have quit Sakigake? 
There must be a few people at least who become disillusioned with the religion or 
can’t take the harsh discipline and break away.” 
“There’s constant coming and going, of course—people joining, people quitting. 
Basically, people are free to quit anytime. When they join, they make a huge donation 
as a ‘Permanent Facility Use Fee’ and sign a contract stipulating that it is entirely 
nonrefundable, so as long as they’re willing to accept that loss, they can come out 
with nothing but the clothes on their backs. There’s an organization of people who 
have quit the religion, and they accuse Sakigake of being a dangerous, antisocial cult 
engaged in fraudulent activity. They’ve filed a suit and put out a little newsletter, but 
they’re such a small voice they have virtually zero impact on public opinion. The 
religion has a phalanx of top lawyers, and they’ve put together a watertight defense. 
One lawsuit can’t budge them.” 
“Haven’t the ex-members made any statements about Leader or the children 
inside?” 
“I don’t know,” Ayumi said. “I’ve never read their newsletter. As far as I’ve been 
able to check, though, all the dissidents are from the lowest ranks of the group, just 
small fry. Sakigake makes a big deal about how they reject all worldly values, but part 
of the organization is completely hierarchical, sharply divided between the leadership 
and the rest of them. You can’t become a member of the leadership without an 
advanced degree or specialized professional qualifications. Only elite believers in the 
leadership group ever get to see or receive direct instruction from Leader or make 
contact with key figures of the organization. All the others just make their required 
donations and spend one sterile day after another performing their religious austerities 
in the fresh air, devoting themselves to farming, or spending hours in the meditation 
rooms. They’re like a flock of sheep, led out to pasture under the watchful eye of the 
shepherd and his dog, and brought back to their shed at night, one peaceful day after 
the next. They look forward to the day when their position rises high enough in the 
organization for them to come into the presence of Big Brother, but that day never 
comes. That’s why ordinary believers know almost nothing about the inner workings 

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of the organization. Even if they quit Sakigake, they don’t have any important 
information they can offer the outside world. They’ve never even seen Leader’s face.” 
“Aren’t there any members of the elite who have quit?” 
“Not one, as far as I can tell.” 
“Does that mean you’re not allowed to leave once you’ve learned the secrets?” 
“There might be some pretty dramatic developments if it came to that,” Ayumi 
said with a short sigh. Then she said to Aomame, “So tell me, about that raping of 
little girls you mentioned: how definite is that?” 
“Pretty definite, but there’s still no proof.” 
“It’s being done systematically inside the commune?” 
“That’s not entirely clear, either. We do have one actual victim, though. I’ve met 
the girl. They did terrible things to her.” 
“By ‘rape,’ do you mean actual penetration?” 
“Yes, there’s no question about that.” 
Ayumi twisted her lips at an angle, thinking. “I’ve got it! Let me dig into this a 
little more in my own way.” 
“Don’t get in over your head, now.” 
“Don’t worry,” Ayumi said. “I may not look it, but I’m very cautious.” 
They finished their meal, and the waiter cleared the table. They declined to order 
dessert and, instead, continued drinking wine. 
Ayumi said, “Remember how you told me that no men had fooled around with you 
when you were a little girl?” 
Aomame glanced at Ayumi, registering the look on her face, and nodded. “My 
family was very religious. There was never any talk of sex, and it was the same with 
all the other families we knew. Sex was a forbidden topic.” 
“Well, okay, but being religious has nothing to do with the strength or weakness of 
a person’s sex drive. Everybody knows the clergy is full of sex freaks. In fact, we 
arrest a 
lot
of people connected with religion—and with education—for stuff like 
prostitution and groping women on commuter trains.” 
“Maybe so, but at least in our circles, there was no hint of that kind of thing, 
nobody who did anything they shouldn’t.” 
“Well, good for you,” Ayumi said. “I’m glad to hear it.” 
“It was different for you?” 
Instead of responding immediately, Ayumi gave a little shrug. Then she said, “To 
tell you the truth, they messed around with me a lot when I was a girl.” 
“Who were ‘they’?” 
“My brother. And my uncle.” 
Aomame grimaced slightly. “Your brother and uncle?” 
“That’s right. They’re both policemen now. Not too long ago, my uncle even 
received official commendation as an outstanding officer—thirty years of continuous 
service, major contributions to public safety in the district and to improvement of the 
environment. He was featured in the paper once for saving a stupid dog and her pup 
that wandered into a rail crossing.” 
“What did they do to you?” 

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259
“Touched me down there, made me give them blow jobs.” 
The wrinkles of Aomame’s grimace deepened. “Your brother and uncle?” 
“Separately, of course. I think I was ten and my brother maybe fifteen. My uncle 
did it before that—two or three times, when he stayed over with us.” 
“Did you tell anybody?” 
Ayumi responded with a few slow shakes of the head. “I didn’t say a word. They 
warned me not to, threatened that they’d get me if I said anything. And even if they 
hadn’t, I was afraid if I told, they’d blame