After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

concerned
about the moon lately.” 
“For no reason at all?” 
“Nothing in particular,” Aomame said. 
Tamaru nodded in silence. He seemed to be drawing his own conclusions. This 
man did not trust things that lacked reasons. Instead of pursuing the matter, however, 
he led Aomame to the sunroom. The dowager was there, dressed in a jersey top and 
bottom for exercise, seated in her reading chair and listening to John Dowland’s 
instrumental piece “Lachrimae” while reading a book. This was one of her favorite 
pieces of music. Aomame had heard it many times and knew the melody. 
“Sorry for the short notice,” the dowager said. “This time slot just happened to 
open up yesterday.” 
“You don’t have to apologize to me,” Aomame said. 
Tamaru carried in a tray holding a pot of herbal tea and proceeded to fill two 
elegant cups. He closed the door on his way out, leaving the two women alone. They 
drank their tea in silence, listening to Dowland and looking at the blaze of azalea 
blossoms in the garden. Whenever she came here, Aomame felt she was in another 
world. The air was heavy, and time had its own special way of flowing. 
The dowager said, “Often when I listen to this music, I’m struck by mysterious 
emotions with regard to time.” She seemed almost to have read Aomame’s mind. “To 
think that people four hundred years ago were listening to the same music we’re 
hearing now! Doesn’t it make you feel strange?” 
“It does,” Aomame said, “but come to think of it, those people four hundred years 
ago were looking at the same moon we see.” 
The dowager looked at Aomame with a hint of surprise. Then she nodded. “You’re 
quite right about that. Looking at it that way, I guess there’s nothing mysterious about 
people listening to the same music four hundred years apart.” 
“Perhaps I should have said 
almost
the same moon,” Aomame said, looking at the 
dowager. Her remark seemed to have made no impression on the older woman. 
“The performance on this CD uses period instruments,” the dowager said, “exactly 
as it was written at the time, so the music sounds pretty much as it did back then. It’s 
like the moon.” 
Aomame said, “Even if 
things
were the same, people’s perception of them might 
have been very different back then. The darkness of night was probably deeper then, 
so the moon must have been that much bigger and brighter. And of course people 
didn’t have records or tapes or CDs. They couldn’t hear proper performances of 
music anytime they liked: it was always something special.” 

---

192
“I’m sure you’re right,” the dowager said. “Things are so convenient for us these 
days, our perceptions are probably that much duller. Even if it’s the same moon 
hanging in the sky, we may be looking at something quite different. Four hundred 
years ago, we might have had richer spirits that were closer to nature.” 
“It was a cruel world, though. More than half of all children died before they could 
reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like 
flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren’t 
very many people who lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became 
toothless old hags by the time they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to 
violence to survive. Tiny children were forced to do such heavy labor that their bones 
became deformed, and little girls were forced to become prostitutes on a daily basis. 
Little boys, too, I suspect. Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to 
do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars 
and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with 
deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland.” 
The dowager smiled. “What an interesting person you are!” 
Aomame said, “I’m a very ordinary human being. I just happen to like reading 
books. Especially history books.” 
“I like history books too. They teach us that we’re basically the same, whether now 
or in the old days. There may be a few differences in clothing and lifestyle, but there’s 
not that much difference in what we think and do. Human beings are ultimately 
nothing but carriers—passageways—for genes. They ride us into the ground like 
racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don’t think about what constitutes 
good or evil. They don’t care whether we are happy or unhappy. We’re just a means 
to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for 
them.” 
“In spite of that, we can’t help but think about what is good and what is evil. Is that 
what you’re saying?” 
The dowager nodded. “Exactly. People 
have to
think about those things. But genes 
are what control the basis for how we live. Naturally, a contradiction arises,” she said 
with a smile. 
Their conversation about history ended there. They drank the rest of their herbal 
tea and proceeded with martial arts training. 
That day they shared a simple dinner in the dowager’s home. 
“A simple meal is all I can offer you, if that’s all right,” the dowager said. 
“That’s fine with me,” Aomame said. 
Tamaru rolled their meal in on a wagon. A professional chef had doubtless 
prepared the food, but it was Tamaru’s job to serve it. He plucked the bottle of white 
wine from its ice bucket and poured with practiced movements. The dowager and 
Aomame both tasted the wine. It had a lovely bouquet and was perfectly chilled. The 
dinner consisted of boiled white asparagus, salade Niçoise, a crabmeat omelet, and 
rolls and butter, nothing more. All the ingredients were fresh and delicious, and the 
portions were moderate. The dowager always ate small amounts of food. She used her 
knife and fork elegantly, bringing one tiny bite after another to her mouth like a small 

---

193
bird. Tamaru stayed in the farthest corner of the room throughout the meal. Aomame 
was always amazed how such a powerfully built man could obscure his own presence 
for such a long time. 
The two women spoke only in brief snatches during the meal, concentrating 
instead on what they ate. Music played at low volume—a Haydn cello concerto. This 
was another of the dowager’s favorites. 
After the dishes were taken away, a coffeepot arrived. Tamaru poured, and as he 
backed away, the dowager turned to him with a finger raised. 
“Thank you, Tamaru. That will be all.” 
Tamaru nodded respectfully and left the room, his footsteps silent as always. The 
door closed quietly behind him. While the two women drank their coffee, the music 
ended and a new silence came to the room. 
“You and I trust each other, wouldn’t you say?” the dowager said, looking straight 
at Aomame. 
Aomame agreed—succinctly, but without reservation. 
“We share some important secrets,” the dowager said. “We have put our fates in 
each other’s hands.” 
Aomame nodded silently. 
This was the room in which Aomame first confessed her secret to the dowager. 
Aomame remembered the day clearly. She had known that someday she would have 
to share the burden she carried in her heart with someone. She could keep it locked up 
inside herself only so long, and already she was reaching her limit. And so, when the 
dowager said something to draw her out, Aomame had flung open the door. 
She told the dowager how her best friend had lost her mental balance after two 
years of physical violence from her husband and, unable to flee from him, in agony, 
she had committed suicide. Aomame allowed nearly a year to pass before concocting 
an excuse to visit the man’s house. There, following an elaborate plan of her own 
devising, she killed him with a single needle thrust to the back of the neck. It caused 
no bleeding and left no visible wound. His death was treated simply as the result of 
illness. No one had any suspicions. Aomame felt that she had done nothing wrong, 
she told the dowager, either then or now. Nor did she feel any pangs of conscience, 
though this fact did nothing to lessen the burden of having purposely taken the life of 
a human being. 
The dowager had listened attentively to Aomame’s long confession, offering no 
comment even when Aomame occasionally faltered in her detailed account. When 
Aomame finished her story, the dowager asked for clarification on a few particulars. 
Then she reached over and firmly grasped Aomame’s hand for a very long time. 
“What you did was right,” she said, speaking slowly and with conviction. “If he 
had lived, he eventually would have done the same kind of thing to other women. 
Men like that always find victims. They’re made to do it over and over. You severed 
the evil at the root. Rest assured, it was not mere personal vengeance.” 
Aomame buried her face in her hands and cried. She was crying for Tamaki. The 
dowager found a handkerchief and wiped her tears. 

---

194
“This is a strange coincidence,” the dowager said in a low but resolute voice, “but I 
also once made a man vanish for almost exactly the same reason.” 
Aomame raised her head and looked at the dowager. She did not know what to say. 
What could she be talking about? 
The dowager continued, “I did not do it directly, myself, of course. I had neither 
the physical strength nor your special training. But I did make him vanish through the 
means that I had at my disposal, leaving behind no concrete evidence. Even if I were 
to turn myself in and confess, it would be impossible to prove, just as it would be for 
you. I suppose if there is to be some judgment after death, a god will be the one to 
judge me, but that doesn’t frighten me in the least. I did nothing wrong. I reserve the 
right to declare the justice of my case in anyone’s presence.” 
The dowager sighed with apparent relief before continuing. “So, then, you and I 
now have our hands on each other’s deepest secrets, don’t we?” 
Aomame still could not fully grasp what the dowager was telling her. She made a 
man vanish? Caught between deep doubt and intense shock, Aomame’s face began to 
lose its normal shape. To calm her down, the dowager began to explain what had 
happened, in a tranquil tone of voice. 
Circumstances similar to those of Tamaki Otsuka had led her daughter to end her own 
life, the dowager said. Her daughter had married the wrong man. The dowager had 
known from the beginning that the marriage would not go well. She could clearly see 
that the man had a twisted personality. He had already been involved in several bad 
situations, their cause almost certainly deeply rooted. But no one could stop the 
daughter from marrying him. As the dowager had expected, there were repeated 
instances of domestic violence. The daughter gradually lost whatever self-respect and 
self-confidence she had and sank into a deep depression. Robbed of the strength to 
stand on her own, she felt increasingly like an ant trapped in a bowl of sand. Finally, 
she washed down a large number of sleeping pills with whiskey. 
The autopsy revealed many signs of violence on her body: bruises from punching 
and severe battering, broken bones, and numerous burn scars from cigarettes pressed 
against the flesh. Both wrists showed signs of having been tightly bound. The man 
apparently enjoyed using a rope. Her nipples were deformed. The husband was called 
in and questioned by the police. He was willing to admit to some use of violence, but 
he maintained that it had been part of their sexual practice, under mutual consent, to 
satisfy his wife’s preferences. 
As in Tamaki’s case, the police were unable to find the husband legally 
responsible. The wife had never filed a complaint, and now she was dead. The 
husband was a man of some social standing, and he had hired a capable criminal 
lawyer. And finally, there was no room for doubt that the death had been a suicide. 
“Did you kill the man?” Aomame ventured to ask. 
“No, I didn’t kill him—not 
that
man,” the dowager said. 
Unclear where this was heading, Aomame simply stared at her in silence. 
The dowager said, “My daughter’s former husband, that contemptible man, is still 
alive in this world. He wakes up in bed every morning and walks down the street on 
his own two feet. Mere killing is not what I had planned for him.” 

---

195
She paused for a moment to allow Aomame to absorb her words fully. 
“I have socially destroyed my former son-in-law, leaving nothing behind. It just so 
happens that I possess that kind of power. The man is a weakling. He has a degree of 
intelligence, he speaks well, and has gained some social recognition, but he is 
basically weak and despicable. Men who wield great violence at home against their 
wives and children are invariably people of weak character. They prey upon those 
who are weaker than themselves precisely because of their own weakness. Destroying 
him was easy. Once men like that are destroyed, they can never recover. My daughter 
died a long time ago, but I have kept watch over him to this day. If he ever shows 
signs of recovery, I will not allow it to happen. He goes on living, but he might as 
well be a corpse. He won’t kill himself. He doesn’t have the courage to do that. And I 
won’t do him the favor of killing him, either. My method is to go on tormenting him 
mercilessly without letup but without killing him, as though skinning him alive. The 
man I made vanish was another person. A practical reason made it necessary for me 
to have him move to another place.” 
The dowager went on to explain this to Aomame. The year after her daughter killed 
herself, the dowager set up a private safe house for women who were suffering from 
the same kind of domestic violence. She owned a small, two-story apartment building 
on a plot of land adjoining her Willow House property in Azabu and had kept it 
unoccupied, intending to demolish it before long. Instead, she decided to renovate the 
building and use it as a safe house for women who had nowhere else to go. She also 
opened a downtown “consultation office” through which women suffering from 
domestic violence could seek advice, primarily from lawyers in the metropolitan area. 
It was staffed by volunteers who took turns doing interviews and giving telephone 
counseling. The office kept in touch with the dowager at home. Women who needed 
an emergency shelter would be sent to the safe house, often with children in tow 
(some of whom were teenage girls who had been sexually abused by their fathers). 
They would stay there until more permanent arrangements could be made for them. 
They would be provided with basic necessities—food, clothing—and they would help 
each other in a kind of communal living arrangement. The dowager personally took 
care of all their expenses. 
The lawyers and counselors made regular visits to the safe house to check on the 
women’s progress and discuss plans for their futures. The dowager would also drop in 
when she had time, listening to each woman’s story and offering her advice. 
Sometimes she would find them jobs or more permanent places to live. When troubles 
arose requiring intervention of a physical nature, Tamaru would head over to the safe 
house and handle them—say, for example, when a husband would learn of his wife’s 
whereabouts and forcibly try to take her back. No one could deal with such problems 
as quickly and expeditiously as Tamaru. 
“There are those cases, however, that neither Tamaru nor I can fully deal with and 
for which we can find no practical remedy through the law,” the dowager said. 
Aomame noticed that, as the dowager spoke, her face took on a certain bronze 
glow and her usual mild-mannered elegance faded until it had disappeared entirely. 
What took its place was a certain