The weird thing is, it’s something you can learn to endure, that kind of abuse. You just tell yourself it’s not really you who’s getting beaten. If you concentrate really hard, you can actually get to a place where it doesn’t hurt any more. A lot of times she’d beat me with no warning, and that was especially scary, so I used to try to stay prepared all the time. I’d keep reminding myself: Mother’s going to hit me, Mother’s going to hit me. .

‘What bothered me most, though, was that I was the only one she hit. She never laid a finger on my little brother. As you know, we lived in this little town in the sticks, and the nearest city of any size was Odawara. In Odawara they had a department store with a Playland for little kids on the roof level. The three of us went there together a few times, but when I was about five or six my mother started locking me in the house and taking only my little brother. One time I climbed out the window and ran down the road chasing after them, and she dragged me back to the house and tied me to the water pipes in the bathroom. I remember that so clearly, like it was yesterday. I fell asleep right there on the tile floor, and when I woke up it was dark outside, and all I could see was that empty, narrow little road outside the window. .

‘Not long after that, a middle-school teacher of mine got me placed in a home for abused kids, and that’s when I started drawing. Right from the beginning I drew nothing but pictures of narrow roads at night.’ Kawashima bowed his head. ‘I’ve never told anyone about this before,’ he said, and Yoko took his hand and squeezed it.

They were married a year and eight months after meeting in Ginza. Yoko told her parents that in accordance with the values she and her fiancé shared she didn’t want a wedding ceremony, and they reluctantly agreed. But in fact it wasn’t really about values. She knew Kawashima hadn’t forgiven his mother and younger brother and didn’t want to put him in an awkward position.