After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

I’m nothing
, Tengo repeated. 
Suddenly he realized that his young mother in the photo from long ago reminded 
him of his older girlfriend. Kyoko Yasuda was her name. In order to calm his mind, 
he pressed his fingers hard against the middle of his forehead. He took the photo out 
again and stared at it. A small nose, plump lips, a somewhat pointed chin. Her 
hairstyle was so different he hadn’t noticed at first, but her features did somewhat 
resemble Kyoko’s. But what could that possibly mean? 
And why did his father think to give this photo to Tengo after his death? While he 
was alive he had never provided Tengo with a single piece of information about his 
mother. He had even hidden the existence of this family photo. One thing Tengo did 
know was that his father never intended to explain the situation to him. Not while he 
was alive, and not even now after his death. 
Look, here’s a photo
, his father must be 
saying. 
I’ll just hand it to you. It’s up to you to
figure it out. 
Tengo lay faceup on the bare mattress and stared at the ceiling. It was a painted 
white plywood ceiling, flat with no wood grain or knots, just several straight joints 
where the boards came together—the same scene his father’s sunken eyes must have 
viewed during the last few months of life. Or maybe those eyes didn’t see anything. 
At any rate his gaze had been directed there, at the ceiling, whether he had been 
seeing it or not. 
Tengo closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself slowly moving toward death. 
But for a thirty-year-old in good health, death was something far off, beyond the 
imagination. Instead, breathing softly, he watched the twilight shadows as they moved 
across the wall. He tried to not think about anything. Not thinking about anything was 
not too hard for Tengo. He was too tired to keep any one particular thought in his 

---

730
head. He wanted to catch some sleep if he could, but he was overtired, and sleep 
wouldn’t come. 
Just before six p.m. Nurse Omura came and told him dinner was ready in the 
cafeteria. Tengo had no appetite, but the tall, busty nurse wouldn’t leave him alone. 
You need to get something, even a little bit, into your stomach, she told him. This was 
close to a direct order. When it came to telling people how to maintain their health, 
she was a pro. And Tengo wasn’t the type—especially when the other person was an 
older woman—who could resist. 
They took the stairs down to the cafeteria and found Kumi Adachi waiting for 
them. Nurse Tamura was nowhere to be seen. Tengo ate dinner at the same table as 
Kumi and Nurse Omura. Tengo had a salad, cooked vegetables, and miso soup with 
asari clams and scallions, washed down with hot 
hojicha
tea. 
“When is the cremation?” Kumi asked him. 
“Tomorrow afternoon at one,” Tengo said. “When that’s done, I’ll probably go 
straight back to Tokyo. I have to go back to work.” 
“Will anyone else be at the cremation besides you, Tengo?” 
“No, no one else. Just me.” 
“Do you mind if I join you?” Kumi asked. 
“At my father’s cremation?” Tengo asked, surprised. 
“Yes. Actually I was pretty fond of him.” 
Tengo involuntarily put his chopsticks down and looked at her. Was she really 
talking about his father? “What did you like about him?” he asked her. 
“He was very conscientious, never said more than he needed to,” she said. “In that 
sense he was like my father, who passed away.” 
“Huh,” Tengo said. 
“My father was a fisherman. He died before he reached fifty.” 
“Did he die at sea?” 
“No, he died of lung cancer. He smoked too much. I don’t know why, but 
fishermen are all heavy smokers. It’s like smoke is rising out of their whole body.” 
Tengo thought about this. “It might have been better if my father had been a 
fisherman too.” 
“Why do you think that?” 
“I’m not really sure,” Tengo replied. “The thought just occurred to me—that it 
would have been better for him than being an NHK fee collector.” 
“If your father had been a fisherman, would it have been easier for you to accept 
him?” 
“It would have made many things simpler, I suppose.” 
Tengo pictured himself as a child, early in the morning on a day when he didn’t 
have school, heading off on a fishing boat with his father. The stiff Pacific wind, the 
salt spray hitting his face. The monotonous drone of the diesel engine. The stuffy 
smell of the fishing nets. Hard, dangerous work. One mistake and you could lose your 
life. But compared with being dragged all over Ichikawa to collect subscription fees, 
it would have to be a more natural, fulfilling life. 

---

731
“But collecting NHK fees couldn’t have been easy work, could it?” Nurse Omura 
said as she ate her soy-flavored fish. 
“Probably not,” Tengo said. At least he knew it wasn’t the kind of job he could 
handle. 
“Your father was really good at his job, wasn’t he?” Kumi asked. 
“I think he was, yes,” Tengo said. 
“He showed me his award certificates,” Kumi said. 
“Ah! Darn,” Nurse Omura said, suddenly putting down her chopsticks. “I totally 
forgot. Darn it! How could I forget something so important? Could you wait here for 
a minute? I have something I have to give you, and it has to be today.” 
Nurse Omura wiped her mouth with a napkin, stood up, and hurried out of the 
cafeteria, her meal half eaten. 
“I wonder what’s so important?” Kumi said, tilting her head. 
Tengo had no idea. 
As he waited for Nurse Omura’s return, he dutifully worked his way through his 
salad. There weren’t many others eating dinner in the cafeteria. At one table there 
were three old men, none of them speaking. At another table a man in a white coat, 
with a sprinkling of gray hair, sat alone, reading the evening paper as he ate, a solemn 
look on his face. 
Nurse Omura finally trotted back. She was holding a department-store shopping 
bag. She took out some neatly folded clothes. 
“I got this from Mr. Kawana about a year or so ago, while he was still conscious,” 
the large nurse said. “He said when he was put in the casket he would like to be 
dressed in this. So I sent it to the cleaners and had them store it in mothballs.” 
There was no mistaking the NHK fee collector’s uniform. The matching trousers 
had been nicely ironed. The smell of mothballs hit Tengo. For a while he was 
speechless. 
“Mr. Kawana told me he would like to be cremated wearing this uniform,” Nurse 
Omura said. She refolded the uniform neatly and put it back in the shopping bag. “So 
I’m giving it to you now. Tomorrow, give this to the funeral home people and make 
sure they dress him in it.” 
“Isn’t it a problem to have him wear this? The uniform was just on loan to him, 
and when he retired it should have been returned to NHK,” Tengo said, weakly. 
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Kumi said. “If we don’t say anything, who’s going to 
know? NHK isn’t going to be in a tight spot over a set of old clothes.” 
Nurse Omura agreed. “Mr. Kawana walked all over the place, from morning to 
night, for over thirty years for NHK. I’m sure it wasn’t always pleasant. Who cares 
about one uniform? It’s not like you’re using it to do something bad or anything.” 
“You’re right. I still have my school uniform from high school,” Kumi said. 
“An NHK collector’s uniform and a high school uniform aren’t exactly the same 
thing,” Tengo interjected, but no one took up the point. 
“Come to think of it, I have my old school uniform in the closet somewhere too,” 
Nurse Omura said. 
“Are you telling me you put it on sometimes for your husband? Along with white 
bobby socks?” Kumi said teasingly. 

---

732
“Hmm—now that’s a thought,” Nurse Omura said, her chin in her hands on the 
table, her expression serious. “Probably get him all hot and bothered.” 
“Anyway …,” Kumi said. She turned to Tengo. “Mr. Kawana definitely wanted to 
be cremated in his NHK uniform. I think we should help him make his wish come 
true. Don’t you think so?” 
Tengo took the bag containing the uniform and went back to the room. Kumi Adachi 
came with him and made up the bed. There were fresh sheets, with a still-starchy 
fragrance, a new blanket, a new bed cover, and a new pillow. Once all this was 
arranged, the bed his father had slept in looked totally transformed. Tengo randomly 
thought of Kumi’s thick, luxuriant pubic hair. 
“Your father was in a coma for so long,” Kumi said as she smoothed out the 
wrinkles in the sheets, “but I don’t think he was completely unconscious.” 
“Why do you say that?” Tengo asked. 
“Well, he would sometimes send messages to somebody.” 
Tengo was standing at the window gazing outside, but he spun around and looked 
at Kumi. “Messages?” 
“He would tap on the bed frame. His hand would hang down from the bed and he 
would knock on the frame, like he was sending Morse code. Like this.” 
Kumi lightly tapped the wooden bed frame with her fist. 
“Don’t you think it sounds like a signal?” 
“That’s not a signal.” 
“Then what is it?” 
“He’s knocking on a door,” Tengo said, his voice dry. “The front door of a house.” 
“I guess that makes sense. It does sound like someone knocking on a door.” She 
narrowed her eyes to slits. “So are you saying that even after he lost consciousness he 
was still making his rounds to collect fees?” 
“Probably,” Tengo said. “Somewhere inside his head.” 
“It’s like that story of the dead soldier still clutching his trumpet,” Kumi said, 
impressed. 
There was nothing to say to this, so Tengo stayed silent. 
“Your father must have really liked his job. Going around collecting NHK 
subscription fees.” 
“I don’t think it’s a question of liking or disliking it,” Tengo said. 
“Then what?” 
“It was the one thing he was best at.” 
“Hmm. I see,” Kumi said. She pondered this. “But that might very well be the best 
way to live your life.” 
“Maybe so,” Tengo said as he looked out at the pine windbreak. It might really be 
so. 
“What’s the one thing you can do best?” 
“I don’t know,” Tengo said, looking straight at her. “I honestly have no idea.” 

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