I understood where Mr Yanagi was coming from, though. The feeling that they should appoint tuners who were highly skilled, pure and simple, and not be complacent. But still, wouldn’t a technician from the company that manufactured a particular piano, a tuner who worked exclusively for that make, know their pianos best?

‘Yanagi.’ Mr Akino was looking at him from a desk opposite and his eyes narrowed. ‘So you are aiming for – what, exactly?’ He had now taken off his silver-framed glasses and was cleaning them with a special cloth. ‘I think your logic is a little off.’

‘Is that so?’ Mr Yanagi’s voice rose sharply at the end of his question. He obviously didn’t agree.

‘We aren’t the ones who set the goals,’ Mr Akino said. ‘Whether it’s for a concert or a competition, the piano exists on behalf of the person playing it. It’s not the place of the tuner to butt in.’

‘I’m not trying to butt in. I’m just saying there should be room for a goal we can all aim for.’

A goal we can all aim for. I, for one, couldn’t see it.

‘Also, the piano is not just for the person playing it,’ Mr Yanagi continued. ‘It’s for the people who will hear it, too – for everyone who loves music.’

The office suddenly fell silent and you could certainly have heard a pin drop.

Polishing the lenses of his glasses, Mr Akino looked up. ‘You think you said something cool, don’t you, Yanagi.’

Sitting at the desk facing his, Miss Kitagawa covered her mouth to hide a smirk.

‘Ah, you got me there.’ Mr Yanagi scratched his head, trying to paper over the dispute by acting as though he was simply clowning around. But the conversation wasn’t over.

Uncharacteristically, Mr Akino had more to say. ‘Every tuner would like to have a world-class pianist play the piano they themselves have tuned. But only a handful of us ever achieve it’ – he paused for a moment – ‘A handful of only the most blessed members of the trade.’

He’d said blessed, but wasn’t he trying to say something else? About tuners who had reached a certain level of excellence and skill?

The phone on Mr Akino’s desk rang, ending the conversation.

If it was a question of being blessed or not, then I guessed I’d be in the unsuccessful category. The nuances of sound that a highly skilled tuner must be able to distinguish and what I myself had been brought up with were worlds apart. The soft hotohoto-plunk of ripe chestnuts falling to the forest floor. The rustling sharashara of leaves brushing against each other. The chorochoro trickle of snow sliding down the lengths of a thousand creaking branches. I’m not able to illustrate those sounds quite precisely enough in words: the ear recognizes sounds far beyond what can be expressed through simple onomatopoeia.