1Q84 (23 page)

The Professor continued, “Fukada was resigned to the likelihood that the operation of the commune would be tough for the first several years until they became accustomed to the area, but things went more smoothly than he had expected. They were blessed with good weather and helpful neighbors. People readily took to Fukada as leader, given his sincere personality, and they admired the hardworking young members they saw sweating in the fields. The locals offered useful advice. In this way, the members were able to absorb practical knowledge about farming techniques and learn how to live off the land.

“While they continued to practice what they had learned in Takashima, Sakigake also came up with several of their own innovations. For example, they switched to organic farming, eschewing chemical pesticides and growing their vegetables entirely with organic fertilizers. They also started a mail-order food service pitched directly to affluent urbanites. That way they could charge more per unit. They were the first of the so-called ecological farmers, and they knew how to make the most of it. Having been raised in the city, the commune’s members knew that city people would be glad to pay high prices for fresh, tasty vegetables free of pollutants. They created their own distribution system by contracting with delivery companies and simplifying their routes. They were also the first to make a virtue of the fact that they were selling ‘un-uniform vegetables with the soil still clinging to them.’ ”

The professor went on. “I visited Fukada on his farm any number of times. He seemed invigorated by his new surroundings and the chance to try new possibilities there. It was probably the most peaceful, hope-filled time of his life, and his family also appeared to have adapted well to this new way of living.

“More and more people would hear about Sakigake farm and show up there wanting to become members. The name had gradually become more widely known through the mail order business, and the mass media had reported on it as an example of a successful commune. More than a few people were eager to escape from the real world’s mad pursuit of money and its flood of information, instead earning their living by the sweat of their brow. Sakigake appealed to them. When these people showed up, Sakigake would interview and investigate them, and give the promising ones membership. They couldn’t admit everyone who came. They had to preserve the members’ high quality and ethics. They were looking for people with strong farming skills and healthy physiques who could tolerate hard physical labor. They also welcomed women in hopes of keeping something close to a fifty-fifty male-female ratio. Increasing the numbers would mean enlarging the scale of the farm, but there were plenty of extra fields and houses nearby, so that was no problem. Young bachelors made up the core of the farm’s membership at first, but the number of people joining with families gradually increased. Among the newcomers were well-educated professionals—doctors, engineers, teachers, accountants, and the like. Such people were heartily welcomed by the community since their professional skills could be put to good use.”

Tengo asked, “Did the commune adopt Takashima’s type of primitive communist system?”

The Professor shook his head. “No, Fukada avoided the communal ownership of property. Politically, he was a radical, but he was also a coolheaded realist. What he was aiming for was a more flexible community, not a society like an ant colony. His approach was to divide the whole into a number of units, each leading its own flexible communal life. They recognized private property and apportioned out compensation to some extent. If you weren’t satisfied with your unit, you could switch to another one, and you were free to leave Sakigake itself anytime you liked. There was full access to the outside world, too, and there was virtually no ideological inculcation or brainwashing. He had learned when they were in Takashima that a natural, open system would increase productivity.”

Under Fukada’s leadership, the operation of Sakigake farm remained on track, but eventually the commune split into two distinct factions. Such a split was inevitable as long as they kept Fukada’s flexible unit system. On one side was a militant faction, a revolutionary group based on the Red Guard unit that Fukada had originally organized. For them, the farming commune was strictly preparatory for the revolution. Farming was just a cover for them until the time came for them to take up arms. That was their unshakable stance.

On the other side was the moderate faction. As the majority, they shared the militant faction’s opposition to capitalism, but they kept some distance from politics, instead preferring the creation of a self-sufficient communal life in nature. Insofar as farming was concerned, each faction shared the same goals, but whenever it became necessary to make decisions regarding operational policy of the commune as a whole, their opinions split. Often they could find no room for rapprochement, and this would give rise to violent arguments. The breakup of the commune was just a matter of time.

Maintaining a neutral stance became increasingly difficult with each passing day. Eventually, Fukada found himself trapped between the two factions. He was generally aware that 1970s Japan was not the place or time for mounting a revolution. What he had always had in mind was the potential of a revolution—revolution as a metaphor or hypothesis. He believed that exercising that kind of antiestablishment, subversive will was indispensable for a healthy society. But his students wanted a real revolution with real bloodshed. Of course Fukada bore some responsibility for this. He was the one who had planted such baseless myths in their heads. But he never told them that his “revolution” had quotation marks around it.

And so the two factions of the Sakigake commune parted ways. The moderate faction continued to call itself “Sakigake” and remained in the original village, while the militant faction moved to a different, abandoned village a few miles away and made it the base of their revolutionary movement. The Fukada family remained in Sakigake with all the other families. The split was a friendly one. It appears that Fukada obtained the funds for the new commune from his usual unspecified source. Even after their separation, the two farms maintained a cooperative relationship. They traded necessary materials and, for economic reasons, used the same distribution routes for their products. The two small communities had to help each other if they were to survive.

One thing did change, however, shortly after the split: the effective cessation of visits between the old Sakigake members and the new commune. Only Fukada himself continued to correspond with his former radical students. Fukada felt a strong sense of responsibility for them, as the one who had originally organized and led them into the mountains of Yamanashi. In addition, the new commune needed the secret funds that Fukada controlled.

“Fukada was probably in a kind of schizoid state by then,” the Professor said. “He no longer believed with his whole heart in the possibility or the romance of the revolution. Neither, however, could he completely disavow it. To do so would mean disavowing his life and confessing his mistakes for all to see. This was something he could not do. He had too much pride, and he worried about the confusion that would surely arise among his students as a result. At that stage, he still wielded a certain degree of control over them.

“This is how he found himself living a life that had him running back and forth between Sakigake and the new commune. He took upon himself the simultaneous duties of leader of one and adviser to the other. So a person who no longer truly believed in the revolution continued to preach revolutionary theory. The members of the new commune carried on with their farm work while they submitted to the harsh discipline of military training and ideological indoctrination. And politically, in contrast to Fukada, they became increasingly radicalized. They adopted a policy of obsessive secrecy, and they no longer allowed outsiders to enter. Aware of their calls for armed revolution, the security police identified them as a group that needed to be watched and placed them under surveillance, though not at a high level of alert.”

The Professor stared at his knees again, and then looked up.

“Sakigake split in two in 1976,” he went on. “Eri escaped from Sakigake and came to live with us the following year. Around that time the new commune began calling itself ‘Akebono.’ ”

Tengo looked up and narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute,” he said.
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.”

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 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.