after the quake

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of pregnancy termination, suicidal ideation, and sexual content. 

Yoshiya wakes up with a terrible hangover and is late again for his job. He is 25 years old and lives with his religious mother, Miss Osaki, who is out of town on an earthquake relief mission. They live in Asayaga, a residential neighborhood in Tokyo. Commuting home on the subway late that night, Yoshiya sees a man in his mid-fifties with a missing earlobe and follows him. He believes that the man may be his estranged father.

Miss Osaki was 18 when she had Yoshiya, and she raised him on her own. She claimed that his literal father was God, who watched over him from heaven. Mr. Tabata, the man responsible for his mother’s religious conversion, warned Yoshiya that if he were to lose his faith, his father would never appear to him. As a child, Yoshiya did not feel exceptional. He prayed to his father for the ability to catch fly balls during his baseball games, but God never answered. Mr. Tabata scolded him not to test God for tangible goals.

When Yoshiya was in middle school, his eccentric mother would often walk around the house with little or no clothes on and crawl into his bed on cold nights.