After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

This man may be envious of me
, Tengo began to think after a certain point. 
He’s 
jealous—either of me as a person or of the life I’m leading. But does a father really 
feel jealousy toward his own son?
As a child, Tengo did not judge his father, but he 
could not help feeling a pathetic kind of meanness that emanated from his father’s 
words and deeds—and this he found almost physically unbearable. Often he felt that 
this man was not only envious of him, but that he actually hated something in his son. 
It was not that his father hated Tengo as a person but rather that he hated 
something 
inside
Tengo, something that he could not forgive. 
Mathematics gave Tengo an effective means of retreat. By fleeing into a world of 
numerical expression, he was able to escape from the troublesome cage of reality. As 
a little boy, he noticed that he could easily move into a mathematical world with the 
flick of a switch in his head. He remained free as long as he actively explored that 
realm of infinite consistency. He walked down the gigantic building’s twisted 
corridor, opening one numbered door after another. Each time a new spectacle opened 
up before him, the ugly traces of the real world would dissipate and then simply 
disappear. The world governed by numerical expression was, for him, a legitimate 
and always safe hiding place. As long as he stayed in that world, he could forget or 
ignore the rules and burdens forced upon him by the real world. 
Where mathematics was a magnificent imaginary building, the world of story as 
represented by Dickens was like a deep, magical forest for Tengo. When mathematics 
stretched infinitely upward toward the heavens, the forest spread out beneath his gaze 
in silence, its dark, sturdy roots stretching deep into the earth. In the forest there were 
no maps, no numbered doorways. 
In elementary and middle school, Tengo was utterly absorbed by the world of 
mathematics. Its clarity and absolute freedom enthralled him, and he also needed 
them to survive. Once he entered adolescence, however, he began to feel increasingly 
that this might not be enough. There was no problem as long as he was visiting the 
world of math, but whenever he returned to the real world (as return he must), he 
found himself in the same miserable cage. Nothing had improved. Rather, his 
shackles felt even heavier. So then, what good was mathematics? Wasn’t it just a 
temporary means of escape that made his real-life situation even worse? 
As his doubts increased, Tengo began deliberately to put some distance between 
himself and the world of mathematics, and instead the forest of story began to exert a 
stronger pull on his heart. Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape. 
As soon as he closed their pages he had to come back to the real world. But at some 
point Tengo noticed that returning to reality from the world of a novel was not as 
devastating a blow as returning from the world of mathematics. Why should that have 
been? After much deep thought, he reached a conclusion. No matter how clear the 
relationships of things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut 
solution. That was how it differed from math. The role of a story was, in the broadest 
terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and 
direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would 
return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper 
bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and 

---

162
served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday 
he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart 
from within. 
The older he became, the more Tengo was drawn to this kind of narrative 
suggestion. Mathematics was a great joy for him even now, as an adult. When he was 
teaching students at the cram school, the same joy he had felt as a child would come 
welling up naturally. To share the joy of that conceptual freedom with someone was a 
wonderful thing. But Tengo was no longer able to lose himself so unreservedly in a 
world of numerical expression. For he knew that no amount of searching in that world 
would give him the solution he was really looking for. 
When he was in the fifth grade, after much careful thinking, Tengo declared that he 
wanted to stop making the rounds with his father on Sundays to collect the NHK 
subscription fees. He told his father that he wanted to use the time for studying and 
reading books and playing with other kids. Just as his father had his own work, he had 
things that he had to do. He wanted to live a normal life like everybody else. 
Tengo said what he needed to say, concisely and coherently. 
His father, of course, blew up. He didn’t give a damn what other families did, he 
said; it had nothing to do with them. We have our own way of doing things. And 
don’t you