1Q84

The book’s second perspective character and secondary protagonist is Tengo Kawana, a math teacher and aspiring novelist. A former judo champion, Tengo is tall and strongly built. His loveless upbringing and the loneliness he carries with him as a result mirror Aomame’s experiences as a child and young adult. Mirroring Aomame’s experiences with her mother, Tengo’s father forced his son to accompany him on his NHK television subscription fee collection routes, using young Tengo as a prop to encourage customers to pay their fees. Because his mother died when he was a baby, Tengo was raised solely by a man who is incapable of love in any meaningful sense. Meanwhile, Tengo’s only memory of his mother involves her in a sexual embrace with a man who is not Tengo’s father. At various intervals, this memory intrudes on Tengo’s consciousness, causing a panic attack.

Also like Aomame, Tengo’s adult relationships are heavily informed by the lack of affection he received as a child. He is reluctant to seek long term relationships, satisfied to have sex once a week with his girlfriend Kyoko, who is married with children and who expresses no desire to leave her husband. It is only when Kyoko becomes “irretrievably lost” in the words of her husband that Tengo makes a concerted effort to face his loneliness—first by visiting his father in a seaside sanatorium and later by trying in earnest to find Aomame. His love for Aomame is rooted in the moment when she holds his hand in the classroom, giving a small bit of affection to a boy who is absolutely starved for it.

Although it is unclear exactly when Tengo enters 1Q84, it appears to happen around the time that Kyoko disappears, offering support for the theory that 1Q84 is a place where individuals go to work through their loneliness. Drawn to memories of looking at the moon with ten-year-old Aomame, Tengo ascends a playground slide and sees a second moon in the sky, signifying his presence in 1Q84. Through what is either sheer happenstance or supernatural intervention, Aomame sees him from her balcony, setting into motion events that culminate in their reunion and escape from 1Q84.

Along with Aomame and Tengo, Ushikawa is a perspective character, albeit not until Book 3. On first glance, Ushikawa is not a necessarily a natural choice for a perspective character. In Books 1 and 2, he appears on the periphery as an agent of Sakigake, seemingly following orders blindly as he attempts to coerce Tengo into extricating himself from the entire Air Chrysalis affair. Moreover, his grotesquely misshapen head and his shabby overall appearance and dress is far removed from Murakami’s other fit and photogenic protagonists.

Yet when taking into consideration Ushikawa’s profound loneliness, he fits in perfectly with Aomame and Tengo. As the black sheep of his wealthy, attractive family, Ushikawa received little love as a child. This sense of loneliness persisted even after he married and had two daughters, both of whom now live with their mother and her new “normal”-looking husband. Like Aomame and Tengo, Ushikawa buries these feelings of loneliness for much of his adult life, focusing instead on his talents as a shrewd investigator.

However, Ushikawa reaches a tipping point when he sees Fuka-Eri through his camera’s viewfinder, staring into his soul with penetrating eyes. This intense yet fleeting spark of human connection is juxtaposed against decades of loneliness, as Ushikawa feels the full weight of that loneliness in a matter of moments. This leaves him physically and emotionally drained, as he is unable to move for several hours. This also appears to be the symbolic moment when Ushikawa enters 1Q84, as he sees the second moon the following evening.

Unlike Aomame and Tengo, Ushikawa takes no steps to change his life after being confronted with his loneliness. Rather than embrace the anti-logic of 1Q84, he accepts the second moon as merely a new premise of the same old reality. He continues his investigation of Aomame, still driven by the same professional arrogance that prevents him from telling his superiors about her connection to Tengo, eager as he is to find her himself. As a direct result of this, Tamaru kills him to stop that information from reaching Sakigake.

Born Eriko Fukada, Fuka-Eri is a 17-year-old young woman who at the age of ten escaped from Sakigake, the religious cult led by her father Tamotsu—also known as “Leader.” Although she is described as breathtakingly beautiful, she carries an odd and otherworldly quality that prevents men like Tengo and Ushikawa from desiring her sexually. She enters the narrative when her autobiographical novella Air Chrysalis is submitted to a literary competition and Tengo is asked to rewrite it.

If one assumes that Air Chrysalis is entirely based on fact, Fuka-Eri encountered the Little People at age ten when she was punished by the cult for allowing a blind goat to die. The Little People weaved an air chrysalis which split Fuka-Eri’s spirit in two, into a maza who escaped the cult and a dohta who stayed behind to be repeatedly raped by her father as part of the cult’s pseudo-religious rituals.

On its face, Fuka-Eri’s motivation in the present is to counteract the Little People’s power by spreading their secrets through the publication of Air Chrysalis. Yet her intentions become muddied when she paralyzes and rapes Tengo in a “purification” ritual resulting in Aomame’s pregnancy. Given Sakigake’s implied belief that Aomame’s child will be Leader’s heir and a new conduit for the Little People, Fuka-Eri may work with the Little People and not against them in the book’s latter half. These developments also call in question whether the Fuka-Eri seen by readers is a maza or dohta.

Born Tamotsu Fukada, the man called “Leader” by his followers is the head of Sakigake, a religious cult built around serving the Little People. He is a massively built man in his 50s with long hair. According to Leader, the Little People speak through him during violent rituals in which he rapes girls known as shrine maidens, hoping to impregnate them with a new heir to receive the Little People’s commands. It is implied that one of these shrine maidens was his own ten-year-old daughter, Fuka-Eri.

As a younger man, Leader was an academic with a bent toward radical politics and an interest in the Communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong. After becoming the head of the agricultural commune Sakigake, he helped pivot the organization away from radical politics as it amassed sizable assets in the form of cash contributions and real estate purchases.

In the one scene in which he appears, Leader defends his unforgivable crimes by suggesting he is a puppet of the Little People who wishes to escape this mortal plane by allowing Aomame to murder him. He also claims that his rape victims are dohtas birthed in air chrysalises and are therefore mere “concepts” not people. The extent to which Aomame is convinced of this defense is unclear; in any case, she carries out his murder believing it will save Tengo’s life.

Shizue Ogata, referred to primarily as “the dowager,” is a wealthy woman in her 70s who hires Aomame to murder abusive husbands and fathers. Her crusade is rooted in the loss of her daughter, who much like Aomame’s friend Tamaki committed suicide to escape a violent marriage. Aomame describes her as remarkably healthy and limber for her age, thanks in no small part to the physical therapy exercises they perform together.

The dowager and Aomame enjoy a surrogate mother-daughter relationship, and their desire to perpetuate that relationship is one reason they keep their professional partnership going for so long. The dowager’s desire for a daughter also manifests in her adoption of Tsubasa, a ten-year-old girl and a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Leader. When Tsubasa disappears, beckoned by the Little People to return to Sakigake, the dowager is so devastated that she never quite recovers.

Tengo’s father is a former fee collector for NHK, a Japanese public television station. Born in poverty, Tengo’s father builds his entire identity around his success as a low-level fee collector. He drags his son along on his fee collection route, using him to gain sympathy from people who are reluctant to pay their fees. As a result, Tengo has no one to model loving and nurturing behavior, causing him to feel intense loneliness well into adulthood.

Later in the book, when Tengo asks his father if they are related by blood, the older man refuses to confirm or deny it. Tengo takes this as confirmation that they are not blood-related, which allows him to move on from some of his childhood emotional neglect.