He often stopped off for a few drinks on his way home from work, so his family would wait until seven o’clock and then go ahead and eat without him. Konishi felt more comfortable having them do that than making them wait for him.

As intoxication began to settle in, Konishi thought about the funeral of one of his fellow workers that he had attended the previous day. Mimura had been Personnel Director at the company, and was the same age as Konishi – fifty-two. He had heard that Mimura’s blood pressure was a little high, but when the two of them had been tested together a year before in the company examination room, Konishi’s blood pressure had been 150, Mimura’s around 160. They had talked about how, by taking medicine, the pressure could be held below 200, and so there was nothing to worry about. But Mimura had died suddenly of a heart attack.

A photograph of Mimura, smiling and wearing a golfing hat, had been placed above the Buddhist memorial tablet surrounded by chrysanthemums. To one side sat the drooping figures of Mimura’s wife, dressed in mourning kimono, and his son, wearing his high-school uniform. As he pressed his hands together reverently and gazed at Mimura’s photograph, Konishi thought that this would be happening to him too before very long. Death, which had until now seemed still some distance away, had suddenly closed in on him with a whirr. In fact, two other funerals he had attended this year were for men in their fifties; he had to be on his guard.