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About the Authors

NATSU MIYASHITA was born in Fukui Prefecture on Honshu island, Japan, in 1967. She has had a lifelong passion for reading and writing and has played the piano since she was very young. The Forest of Wool and Steel has won several prizes in Japan – including the prestigious Japan Booksellers’ Award, in which booksellers vote for the title they most enjoy selling in store – and became a bestseller. It has also been turned into a popular Japanese film directed by Kojiro Hashimoto and starring Kento Yamazaki.

PHILIP GABRIEL is an experienced translator from Japanese, and best known for his translation work with Haruki Murakami.

I

An Introduction to Piano Tuning

Enter the Forest

I inhale the scent of a forest close by. I can smell the earthy fragrance of autumn as night falls, the leaves gently rustling. I can feel the damp air of dusk descending.

The forest is not there. It is in my mind’s eye. Because right now I’m standing in the corner of a deserted school gym at the end of the day. I’m a lower-sixth student and I’ve just accompanied a man with a large briefcase into the building.

In front of me is a black grand piano, a little grubby in places where it needs a polish. The lid is open. The man stands beside it. He glances over at me, but we both remain silent. He gently presses down on the keys and the scent of warm earth and whispering leaves rises up in my mind, drifting from beneath the open lid of the piano.

Night has deepened. I am seventeen.

What if I hadn’t lingered in the classroom after school that day? What if the teacher hadn’t chosen me to help? I’ll never know. The second term of the year. Midterm exams were in full swing with after-school clubs suspended in favour of study and sleep, the corridors cool and still. I didn’t feel like going back to the boarding house where I lived alone, and had planned to visit the school library.

‘Sorry about this, Tomura,’ Mr Kubota had said, ‘but we have a staff meeting so I’ll be busy. We’re expecting a visitor at four o’clock. You just need to show him to the gym.’

I was often asked favours. People seemed to feel comfortable asking me. Perhaps I looked like an easy-going type, or perhaps I was just always available. It’s true I had plenty of spare time. And on the horizon, I had only graduation and the search for a job to look forward to. This is what was filling my mind at the time, though there must have been other things, too.

The errands I ran at school were never serious ones – important people did those. Ordinary work was for ordinary people. I assumed that the visitor that day fell into this category.

‘Who is he?’ I asked.