After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Air 
Chrysalis
, has been listed as missing, it was revealed yesterday afternoon. According 
to her guardian, cultural anthropologist Takayuki Ebisuno (63), who filed the search 
request with the Oume police station, Eriko has failed to return either to her home in 
Oume City or to her Tokyo apartment since the night of June 27, and there has been 
no word from her since then. In response to this newspaper’s telephone inquiry, Mr. 
Ebisuno said that Eriko was in her usual good spirits when he last saw her, that he 
could think of no reason she would want to go into hiding, that she had never once 
failed to come home without permission, and that he is worried something might have 
happened to her. The editor in charge of 
Air Chrysalis
at the ** publishing company, 
Yuji Komatsu, said, “The book has been at the top of the bestseller list for six straight 
weeks and has garnered a great deal of attention, but Miss Fukada herself has not 
wanted to make public appearances. We at the company have been unable to 
determine whether her current disappearance might have something to do with her 
attitude toward such matters. While young, Miss Fukada is an author with abundant 
talent from whom much can be expected in the future. We hope that she reappears in 
good health as soon as possible.” The police investigation is proceeding with several 
possible leads in view. 
That was probably about as much as the newspapers could say at this stage, Tengo 
concluded. If they gave it a more sensational treatment and Fuka-Eri showed up at 
home two days later as if nothing had happened, the reporter who wrote the article 

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would be embarrassed and the newspaper itself would lose face. The same was true 
for the police. Both issued brief, neutral statements like weather balloons to see what 
would happen. The story would turn big once the weekly magazines got ahold of it 
and the TV news shows turned up the volume. That would not happen for a few more 
days. 
Sooner or later, though, things would heat up, that was for certain. A sensation was 
inevitable. There were probably only four people in the world who knew that she had 
not been abducted but was lying low somewhere, alone. Fuka-Eri herself knew it, of 
course, and Tengo knew it. Professor Ebisuno and his daughter Azami also knew it. 
No one else knew that the fuss over her disappearance was a hoax meant to attract 
broad attention. 
Tengo could not decide whether his knowledge of the truth was something he 
should be pleased or upset about. Pleased, probably: at least he didn’t have to worry 
about Fuka-Eri’s welfare. She was in a safe place. At the same time it was also clear 
that Tengo was complicit in this complicated plot. Professor Ebisuno was using it as a 
lever, in order to pry up an ominous boulder and let the sunlight in. Then he would 
wait to see what crawled out from under the rock, and Tengo was being forced to 
stand right next to him. Tengo did not want to know what would crawl out from under 
the rock. He would prefer not to see it. It was bound to be a huge source of trouble. 
But he sensed he would have no choice but to look. 
After he had drunk his coffee and eaten his toast and eggs, Tengo exited the café, 
leaving his rumpled newspaper behind. He went back to his apartment, brushed his 
teeth, showered, and prepared to leave for school. 
. . . 
During the noon break at the cram school, Tengo had a strange visitor. He had just 
finished his morning class and was reading a few of the day’s newspapers in the 
teachers’ lounge when the school director’s secretary approached him and said there 
was someone who wanted to see him. The secretary was a capable woman one year 
older than Tengo who, in spite of her title, handled virtually all of the school’s 
administrative business. Her facial features were a bit too irregular for her to be 
considered beautiful, but she had a nice figure and marvelous taste in clothes. 
“He says his name is Mr. Ushikawa.” 
Tengo did not recognize the name. 
For some reason, a slight frown crossed her face. “He says he has ‘something 
important’ to discuss with you and wants to see you alone if possible.” 
“Something important?” Tengo asked, taken aback. No one 
ever
brought him 
“something important” to discuss at the cram school. 
“The reception room was empty, so I showed him in there. Teachers aren’t 
supposed to use that room without permission, but I figured …” 
“Thanks very much,” Tengo said, and gave her his best smile. 
Unimpressed, she hurried off somewhere, the hem of her new agnès b. summer 
jacket flapping in the breeze. 
Ushikawa was a short man, probably in his mid-forties. His trunk had already 
filled out so that it had lost all sign of a waist, and excess flesh was gathering at his 

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throat. But Tengo could not be sure of his age. Owing to the peculiarity (or the 
uncommonness) of his appearance, the clues necessary for guessing his age were 
difficult to find. He could have been older than that, or he could have been younger—
anywhere between, say, thirty-two and fifty-six. His teeth were crooked, and his spine 
was strangely curved. The large crown of his head formed an abnormally flat bald 
area with lopsided edges. It was reminiscent of a military heliport that had been made 
by cutting away the peak of a small, strategically important hill. Tengo had seen such 
a heliport in a Vietnam War documentary. Around the borders of the flat, lopsided 
area of his head clung thick, black, curly hair that had been allowed to grow too long, 
hanging down shaggily over the man’s ears. Ninety-eight people out of a hundred 
would probably be reminded by it of pubic hair. Tengo had no idea what the other two 
would think. 
Everything about the man—his face, his body—seemed to have been formed 
asymmetrically. Tengo noticed this right away. Of course, all people’s bodies are 
asymmetrical to some extent: that in itself was not contrary to the laws of nature. 
Tengo himself was aware that his own two eyelids had slightly different shapes, and 
his left testicle hung slightly lower than the right one. Our bodies are not mass-
produced in a factory according to fixed standards. But in this man’s case, the 
differences between right and left went far beyond the bounds of common sense. This 
imbalance, obvious to any observer, could not help but annoy those in his presence 
and cause them the same kind of discomfort they would feel in front of a funhouse 
mirror. 
The man’s gray suit had countless tiny wrinkles, which made it look like an 
expanse of earth that had been ground down by a glacier. One flap of his white dress 
shirt’s collar was sticking out, and the knot of his tie was contorted, as if it had 
twisted itself from the sheer discomfort of having to exist in that place. The suit, the 
shirt, and the tie were all slightly wrong in size. The pattern on his tie might have 
been an inept art student’s impressionistic rendering of a bowl of tangled, soggy 
noodles. Each piece of clothing looked like something he had bought at a discount 
store to fill an immediate need. But the longer Tengo studied them, the sorrier he felt 
for the clothes themselves, for having to be worn by this man. Tengo paid little 
attention to his own clothing, but he was strangely concerned about the clothing worn 
by others. If he had to compile a list of the worst dressers he had met in the past ten 
years, this man would be somewhere near the top. It was not just that he had terrible 
style: he also gave the impression that he was deliberately desecrating the very idea of 
wearing clothes. 
When Tengo entered the reception room, the man stood and produced a business 
card from his card case, handing it to Tengo with a bow. “Toshiharu Ushikawa,” it 
said in both Japanese characters and Roman script. An ordinary enough first name, 
but “Ushikawa”? “Bull River”? Tengo had never seen that one before. The card 
further identified the man as “Full-time Director, New Japan Foundation for the 
Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts,” located downtown in Kojimachi, Chiyoda 
Ward, and gave the foundation’s telephone number. Tengo had no idea what kind of 
organization the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the 
Arts might be, nor what it meant to be a “full-time director” of anything. The business 
card, though, was a handsome one, with an embossed logo, not a makeshift item. 

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Tengo studied it for several moments before looking at the man again. He felt sure 
there could not be many people in the world whose appearance was so out of keeping 
with the grandiose title “Full-time Director, New Japan Foundation for the 
Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts.” 
They sat in easy chairs on opposite sides of a low table and looked at each other. 
The man gave his sweaty forehead a few vigorous rubs with a handkerchief and 
returned the pitiful cloth to his jacket pocket. The receptionist brought in two cups of 
green tea on a tray. Tengo thanked her as she left. 
Ushikawa said nothing to her, but to Tengo he said, “Please forgive me for 
interrupting your break and for arriving without having first made an appointment.” 
The words themselves were polite and formal enough, but his tone was strangely 
colloquial, and Tengo found it almost offensive. “Have you finished lunch? If you 
like, we could go out and talk over a meal.” 
“I don’t eat lunch when I’m working,” Tengo said. “I’ll have something light after 
my afternoon class, so don’t worry.” 
“I see. Well, then, with your permission, I’ll tell you what I have in mind and we 
can discuss it here. This seems like a nice, quiet place where we can talk without 
interruption.” He surveyed the reception room as though appraising its value. There 
was nothing special about the room. It had one big oil painting hanging on the wall—
a picture of some mountain, more impressive for the weight of its paint than anything 
else. A vase had an arrangement of flowers resembling dahlias—dull blossoms 
reminiscent of a slow-witted matron. Tengo wondered why a cram school would keep 
such a gloomy reception room. 
“Let me belatedly introduce myself. As you can see from the card, my name is 
Ushikawa. My friends all call me ‘Ushi,’ never ‘Ushikawa.’ Just plain, old ‘Ushi,’ as 
if I were a bull,” Ushikawa said, smiling. 
Friends? Tengo wondered—out of pure curiosity—what kind of person would ever 
want to be this man’s friend. 
On first impression, Ushikawa honestly made Tengo think of some creepy