After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Akebono. I’m 
absolutely certain I’ve heard that name, too
. But the memory was vague and 
incoherent. All he could grab hold of were a few fragmentary, fact-like details. “This 
Akebono … didn’t they cause some kind of big incident a while ago?” 
“Exactly,” Professor Ebisuno said, looking at Tengo more intently than he had 
until now. “We’re talking about the famous Akebono, of course, the ones who staged 
the gun battle with the police in the mountains near Lake Motosu.” 
Gun battle
, Tengo thought. 
I remember hearing about that. It was big news. I can’t 
remember the details, though, for some reason, and I’m confused about the sequence 
of events
. When he strained to recall more, he experienced a wrenching sensation 
through his whole body, as though his top and bottom halves were being twisted in 
opposite directions. He felt a dull throbbing deep in his head, and the air around him 
suddenly went thin. Sounds became muffled as though he were underwater. He was 
probably about to have an “attack.” 
“Is something wrong?” the Professor asked with obvious concern. His voice 
seemed to be coming from a very great distance. 
Tengo shook his head and in a strained voice said, “I’m fine. It’ll go away soon.” 

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119
CHAPTER 11 
Aomame 
THE HUMAN BODY IS A TEMPLE 
The number of people who could deliver a kick to the balls with Aomame’s mastery 
must have been few indeed. She had studied kick patterns with great diligence and 
never missed her daily practice. In kicking the balls, the most important thing was 
never to hesitate. One had to deliver a lightning attack to the adversary’s weakest 
point and do so mercilessly and with the utmost ferocity—just as when Hitler easily 
brought down France by striking at the weak point of the Maginot Line. One must not 
hesitate. A moment of indecision could be fatal. 
Generally speaking, there was no other way for a woman to take down a bigger, 
stronger man one-on-one. This was Aomame’s unshakable belief. That part of the 
body was the weakest point attached to—or, rather, hanging from—the creature 
known as man, and most of the time, it was not effectively defended. Not to take 
advantage of that fact was out of the question. 
As a woman, Aomame had no concrete idea how much it hurt to suffer a hard kick 
in the balls, though judging from the reactions and facial expressions of men she had 
kicked, she could at least imagine it. Not even the strongest or toughest man, it 
seemed, could bear the pain and the major loss of self-respect that accompanied it. 
“It hurts so much you think the end of the world is coming 
right now
. I don’t know 
how else to put it. It’s different from ordinary pain,” said a man, after careful 
consideration, when Aomame asked him to explain it to her. 
Aomame gave some thought to his analogy. The end of the world? 
“Conversely, then,” she said, “would you say that when the end of the world is 
coming 
right now
, it feels like a hard kick in the balls?” 
“Never having experienced the end of the world, I can’t be sure, but that might be 
right,” the man said, glaring at a point in space with unfocused eyes. “There’s just this 
deep sense of powerlessness. Dark, suffocating, helpless.” 
Sometime after that, Aomame happened to see the movie 
On the Beach
on late-
night television. It was an American movie made around 1960. Total war broke out 
between the U.S. and the USSR and a huge number of missiles were launched 
between the continents like schools of flying fish. The earth was annihilated, and 
humanity was wiped out in almost every part of the world. Thanks to the prevailing 
winds or something, however, the ashes of death still hadn’t reached Australia in the 
Southern Hemisphere, though it was just a matter of time. The extinction of the 
human race was simply unavoidable. The surviving human beings there could do 
nothing but wait for the end to come. They chose different ways to live out their final 

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120
days. That was the plot. It was a dark movie offering no hope of salvation. (Though, 
watching it, Aomame reconfirmed her belief that everyone, deep in their hearts, is 
waiting for the end of the world to come.) 
In any case, watching the movie in the middle of the night, alone, Aomame felt 
satisfied that she now had at least some idea of what it felt like to be kicked in the 
balls. 
After graduating from a college of physical education, Aomame spent four years 
working for a company that manufactured sports drinks and health food. She was a 
key member of the company’s women’s softball team (ace pitcher, cleanup batter). 
The team did fairly well and several times reached the quarterfinals of the national 
championship playoffs. A month after Tamaki Otsuka died, though, Aomame 
resigned from the company and marked the end of her softball career. Any desire she 
might have had to continue with the game had vanished, and she felt a need to start 
her life anew. With the help of an older friend from college, she found a job as an 
instructor at a sports club in Tokyo’s swank Hiroo District. 
Aomame was primarily in charge of classes in muscle training and martial arts. It 
was a well-known, exclusive club with high membership fees and dues, and many of 
its members were celebrities. Aomame established several classes in her best area, 
women’s self-defense techniques. She made a large canvas dummy in the shape of a 
man, sewed a black work glove in the groin area to serve as testicles, and gave female 
club members thorough training in how to kick in that spot. In the interest of realism, 
she stuffed two squash balls into the glove. The women were to kick this target 
swiftly, mercilessly, and repeatedly. Many of them took special pleasure in this 
training, and their skill improved markedly, but other members (mostly men, of 
course) viewed the spectacle with a frown and complained to the club’s management 
that she was going overboard. As a result, Aomame was called in and instructed to 
rein in the ball-kicking practice. 
“Realistically speaking, though,” she protested, “it’s impossible for women to 
protect themselves against men without resorting to a kick in the testicles. Most men 
are bigger and stronger than women. A swift testicle attack is a woman’s only chance. 
Mao Zedong said it best. You find your opponent’s weak point and make the first 
move with a concentrated attack. It’s the only chance a guerrilla force has of defeating 
a regular army.” 
The manager did not take well to her passionate defense. “You know perfectly well 
that we’re one of the few truly exclusive clubs in the metropolitan area,” he said with 
a frown. “Most of our members are celebrities. We have to preserve our dignity in all 
aspects of our operations. Image is crucial. I don’t care what the reason is for these 
drills of yours, it’s less than dignified to have a gang of nubile women kicking a doll 
in the crotch and screeching their heads off. We’ve already had at least one case of a 
potential member touring the club and withdrawing his application after he happened 
to see your class in action. I don’t care what Mao Zedong said—or Genghis Khan, for 
that matter: a spectacle like that is going to make most men feel anxious and annoyed 
and upset.” 

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Aomame felt not the slightest regret at having caused male club members to feel 
anxious and annoyed and upset. Such unpleasant feelings were nothing compared 
with the pain experienced by a victim of forcible rape. She could not defy her 
superior’s orders, however, and so her self-defense classes had to lower the level of 
their aggressiveness. She was also forbidden to use the doll. As a result, her drills 
became much more lukewarm and formal. Aomame herself was hardly pleased by 
this, and several members raised objections, but as an employee, there was nothing 
she could do. 
It was Aomame’s opinion that, if she were unable to deliver an effective kick to the 
balls when forcefully attacked by a man, there would be very little else left for her to 
try. In the actual heat of combat, it was virtually impossible to perform such high-
level techniques as grabbing your opponent’s arm and twisting it behind his back. 
That only happened in the movies. Rather than attempting such a feat, a woman 
would be far better off running away without trying to fight. 
In any case, Aomame had mastered at least ten separate techniques for kicking 
men in the balls. She had even gone so far as to have several younger men she knew 
from college put on protective cups and let her practice on them. “Your kicks really 
hurt
, even with the cup on,” one of them had screamed in pain. “No more, please!” If 
the need arose, she knew, she would never hesitate to apply her sophisticated 
techniques in actual combat.