1Q84

Tengo hears from Komatsu that Fuka-Eri performed perfectly in her press conference following the announcement of her new writers’ prize. Komatsu adds that he is setting up a company so that Tengo—and, curiously, Ebisuno—can reap a significant portion of the profits from Air Chrysalis. Meanwhile, the literary magazine featuring Air Chrysalis sells out in a little over a day, an unprecedented event according to Komatsu.

A few days later, Fuka-Eri asks Tengo to meet her and Ebisuno at their usual cafe. Tengo asks Ebisuno why he agreed to let Fuka-Eri become involved in this act of literary fraud. More pointedly, he asks Ebisuno why he is further involving himself by being on Komatsu’s payroll. Ebisuno confirms Tengo’s suspicions that the professor’s intent is to draw information out of Sakigake about Fuka-Eri’s missing parents through the publication and popularization of Air Chrysalis. In essence, Air Chrysalis—and, by extension, Fuka-Eri herself—is bait. As Tengo and Ebisuno discuss what changed to transform Sakigake from an agricultural commune into a militant religious organization, Fuka-Eri interjects, “It’s because the Little People came” (235).

After parting ways with Ebisuno, Fuka-Eri insists on staying the night at Tengo’s apartment. Although he is initially reluctant, Tengo agrees after Fuka-Eri grabs his hand and says, “We are one” (238).

Tengo hears from Komatsu that Fuka-Eri performed perfectly in her press conference following the announcement of her new writers’ prize. Komatsu adds that he is setting up a company so that Tengo—and, curiously, Ebisuno—can reap a significant portion of the profits from Air Chrysalis. Meanwhile, the literary magazine featuring Air Chrysalis sells out in a little over a day, an unprecedented event according to Komatsu.

A few days later, Fuka-Eri asks Tengo to meet her and Ebisuno at their usual cafe. Tengo asks Ebisuno why he agreed to let Fuka-Eri become involved in this act of literary fraud. More pointedly, he asks Ebisuno why he is further involving himself by being on Komatsu’s payroll. Ebisuno confirms Tengo’s suspicions that the professor’s intent is to draw information out of Sakigake about Fuka-Eri’s missing parents through the publication and popularization of Air Chrysalis. In essence, Air Chrysalis—and, by extension, Fuka-Eri herself—is bait. As Tengo and Ebisuno discuss what changed to transform Sakigake from an agricultural commune into a militant religious organization, Fuka-Eri interjects, “It’s because the Little People came” (235).

After parting ways with Ebisuno, Fuka-Eri insists on staying the night at Tengo’s apartment. Although he is initially reluctant, Tengo agrees after Fuka-Eri grabs his hand and says, “We are one” (238).

After mentioning the Little People, Tsubasa grows silent again, refusing to answer the dowager or Aomame’s inquiries. The dowager explains that she plans to raise Tsubasa herself because the girl’s parents permitted and even encouraged her rape. They are members of what the dowager calls “a particularly vicious and dangerous cult” (242) known as Sakigake, and the head of the organization is Tsubasa’s rapist, whom its members call “Leader.” Having never heard of Sakigake, Aomame assumes it is yet another entity unique to 1Q84. The dowager adds that Leader raped Tsubasa “on the pretext of granting her a spiritual reawakening” (244). Furthermore, he rapes young girls systematically, lending an urgency to the dowager’s mission to remove him from this world as quickly as possible. Aomame is reminded of her own upbringing in a religious cult, recalling that while there was no physical or sexual abuse, “[v]iolence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood” (242).

That evening, with the dowager sleeping in the same room, Tsubasa’s mouth opens and a group of five Little People emerge from it and grow to be one foot tall each. All night long, the Little People pluck threads from the air to construct a soft white object that grows in size.

As Fuka-Eri sleeps in his bed and in his pajamas, Tengo sits at the kitchen table working on his novel. At two in the morning, Fuka-Eri wakes up and asks Tengo to read her a book. Tengo reads to her from Anton Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island, a nonfiction travel book about the titular island off the coasts of Russia and Japan. He selects a passage about the Gilyaks, the island’s indigenous people.

Fuka-Eri is gone when Tengo wakes in the morning, much to his relief because his married girlfriend is supposed to come by in a couple hours. As he eats breakfast, Tengo feels a heaviness in his heart, and he wonders if he may be in love with Fuka-Eri.

After learning that Sakigake’s leader is a serial child abuser, Aomame returns to the library to research the organization. She reads about how Akebono split off from Sakigake, only to be obliterated after the Lake Motosu Incident. In the press, Sakigake distanced itself from Akebono, casting itself as a harmless religious commune and characterizing Akebono as a radical remnant of outdated Marxist thought. The police conducted a comprehensive search of Sakigake’s grounds but found no evidence connecting it to Akebono’s recent crimes or any other illicit activities.

Aomame calls Ayumi and asks if she can use her connections in the police department to uncover anything about Sakigake that the press missed. Although Ayumi is only a traffic cop, she will see what she can do. Three nights later, Ayumi calls to say that while Sakigake is embroiled in numerous civil lawsuits concerning land deals, it has skirted any criminal charges.

Komatsu calls Tengo and tells him he has good news and bad news. The good is that Air Chrysalis is atop the fiction bestseller lists. The bad news is that Fuka-Eri has been missing for three days. Komatsu seems less worried about Fuka-Eri’s wellbeing and more worried about the increased scrutiny this will bring concerning the book’s publication. Ebisuno hasn’t reported the disappearance to the police yet, but once he does the media will be in a frenzy over a missing 17-year-old bestselling novelist.

Tengo doesn’t tell Komatsu, but he suspects that Sakigake, possibly in collaboration with the Little People, may have kidnapped Fuka-Eri.

Aomame and Ayumi continue to engage in one-night stands with men they meet in bars. On a night when suitable partners are difficult to find, the two chat amongst themselves about Sakigake. Ayumi says that the more she looks into Sakigake the more suspicious it seems. Her suspicions center on the fact that Sakigake brings in enormous amounts of money from its church members, even though the religion itself has no doctrine or substance. Instead, their members’ devotion revolves around the charisma of Leader. Without explaining herself, Ayumi says, “I’ve got it! Let me dig into this a little more in my own way” (292). Later in the evening, Ayumi reveals to Aomame that her brother and uncle sexually abused her as a child. Both are now policemen, and her uncle is a highly-decorated veteran of the force.

A couple days later, Tamaru calls Aomame to report a bizarre and grisly occurrence: Bun, the German Shepherd guard dog at Willow House, was found that morning dismembered, as if a bomb had exploded from inside her. Tamaru has no idea how this could have happened without waking anyone up; nobody heard a blast, nor did they hear the dog bark, which she always did when approached by strangers.

Around three weeks after Fuka-Eri’s disappearance, Tengo finds an envelope in his mailbox with a cassette tape inside. It is an audio recording made by Fuka-Eri in which she explains that she is in a safe place. She adds that she is like the Gilyaks, a Manchurian ethnic group, walking in the forest far away from roads. Cryptically, she adds, “Important things are in the forest, and the Little People are in the forest, too. To make sure the Little People don’t harm you, you have to find something the Little People don’t have” (299). Fuka-Eri concludes by saying, “The Little People may be mad that they were put into writing” (299).

Later that day, Komatsu calls to say the police have launched an official investigation into Fuka-Eri’s disappearance, and therefore Tengo should be prepared for anything, should be the media uncover his connection to Air Chrysalis. Tengo withholds the existence of Fuka-Eri’s audio recording from Komatsu.

Tengo’s married girlfriend comes over for her weekly visit. She asks him about the book he’s writing, which he says is about “a world that isn’t here” (306) with two moons in the sky. Practically speaking, the purpose of the two moons is to signify that the novel takes place in a world separate from recognizable reality. When the girlfriend asks what’s the point of conjuring a separate world, Tengo replies, “The point of its being a world that isn’t here is in being able to rewrite the past of the world that is here” (308).