But there are things you can interpret from their style of playing, and from what sort of music they prefer. Your choices as a tuner vary depending on the age of the pianist, the extent of their musical knowledge and level of playing, the characteristics of the piano itself and the shape of those characteristics, and the proportions of the room it’s placed in. You weave together all of these ingredients to create the most appropriate sound.

‘There are set types, you know.’

We were back in the music shop now and slap bang in the middle of one of our most earnest discussions about the essence of our work. And Mr Akino, our colleague, was taking over the conversation. He was in his early forties, thin, with silver-framed glasses, and a permanently stern look, which frightened me a little. Unusually for someone his age he had young children at home – a little girl and a newborn baby boy. Which was probably why, no matter how crowded the shop might be, no matter how busy we were, he always left exactly on time. During the day he was mostly out on house calls so I rarely saw him, had no idea how he approached tuning and what sort of sound he produced. I was waiting for the chance to hear those sounds and to talk with him more about his work.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked Mr Akino.

‘Types of clients.’

He’d often be in the office at noon, eating the bento lunch he’d brought from home. Today, he untied the gingham napkin around his bento box and held forth. ‘Most people are happy as long as the piano’s in tune and has a decent tone. Very few will request a specific timbre. So you have the type who has no special requests, and the type who does – there are two types, in other words.’ He wiped his mouth with his paper napkin and resumed chomping.

‘Do you modify the way you tune depending on which type they are?’

‘Of course. There’s nothing to be gained by working hard at something you haven’t been asked to do.’

‘So you only respond to requests when the client understands quality of tone,’ I said.

It pained me to think of those types of clients the tuner considers don’t understand tone – how they could end up with just a standardized, uniform type of tuning. Maybe they would come to understand quality of tone. It was possible that they would hear the sound Mr Akino created and awaken to the variety of possibilities.

If, back then on my first day of awakening, Mr Itadori had completed only a cursory tuning of the piano because it was just some rackety old grand in some school gymnasium, I wouldn’t have got to where I was. I’d no doubt have been somewhere completely different, in a world without pianos.