Tengo

Fuka-Eri leads Tengo by the hand out of their train and into another train. He does not know exactly what she means by holding his hand, but he guesses that she is not trying to be romantic. Inwardly he considers the possibility that she may be able to read his thoughts or emotions through touch. Whether or not this is the case, the human contact makes him feel better. His panic subsides.

They disembark at a rural train station, and Fuka-Eri finds a taxi. The driver takes them to a house out in the hills, well away from any other buildings. Tengo admires the view but thinks that whoever lives in this place must not care much for other people’s company.

Tengo and Fuka-Eri enter the house, sit down in bare room, and wait. Eventually, an elderly man comes in. He introduces himself as Ebisuno and explains that everyone, even his daughter Azami, just calls him Professor. He is Fuka-Eri’s guardian.

After a bit of polite chitchat, the Professor turns the conversation to Fuka-Eri’s book. He says that the plan for the rewrite sounds unethical. Tengo agrees. He says that he would refuse to be involved in the project if it were any other book. However, Air Chrysalis speaks to him personally, and he cannot help wanting to work on it.

Eventually, the Professor grants permission for the revision plan to continue. He comments that she has dyslexia, but that nobody really knows it except for himself, his daughter, and Fuka-Eri herself. Fuka-Eri’s rural teachers never understood the concept of dyslexia, and they regarded her as mentally deficient. Because of this, she has not attended formal schools for years. Nevertheless, the Professor assures Tengo that Fuka-Eri is intelligent and even wise in a way.

The Professor tells Tengo about Fuka-Eri’s childhood and how she came to be living with him. Her father, Tamotsu Fukada, used to be the Professor’s best friend. Fukada got mixed up in communism and revolutionary activities, and he ended up getting sent to prison. When he got out, he took his wife and daughter to live at a strictly organized commune called Takashima. There he learned farming and the principles of commune living. However, he disliked the governance there. The commune was like George Orwell’s 1984. People were required to become “mindless robots.” It was “foot binding for the brain.”

Continuing the story, the Professor explains that Fukada and several followers broke away from Takashima and started a new commune called Sakigake. There they grew organic vegetables and lived a different kind of life. They were the first farmers to begin selling fresh organic produce in Tokyo, and they rapidly became successful. Fukada wanted only to provide a mental revolution, a lifestyle divorced from modern materialism. Unfortunately, some of his followers wanted a physical and political revolution. They broke away and started a more radical group bent on bloody overthrow of the government. This splinter group, at a commune called Akebono, eventually clashed violently with Japanese police. In the news, their shootout was known as the Lake Motosu incident.

Listening to this story, Tengo is overcome by a strange feeling. He recalls the news reports on Lake Motosu, but the memories feel oddly fuzzy in his brain. He feels “a wrenching sensation through his whole body,” much like the one Aomame felt at the beginning of the book.