Azabu residence is the Dowager’s home, a place where Aomamé encounters both a carefully cultivated quiet and the consequences of violence beyond its walls. The residence’s calm becomes more than a private atmosphere: nearby, the Dowager has turned an otherwise empty building into a refuge for women and children fleeing abuse.

Setting and atmosphere

Aomamé is accompanied to the solarium, where the Dowager sits in her training clothes, reading while listening to John Dowland’s Lachrimæ in an instrumental arrangement. The piece is one of her favorites and already familiar to Aomamé, who has heard it there several times. Their meeting unfolds over infusion poured by Tamaru into elegant cups; after he closes the door, the two women listen quietly and look out at azaleas blooming a vivid, firelike red.

The garden and the recurring music give the residence a distinct rhythm. Aomamé feels that each visit places her in a different world, where the air seems substantial and time moves in its own way. The Dowager connects that sensation to the music: people separated by four centuries can listen to the same composition, just as they can look at the same moon. The setting thus gathers private familiarity and historical duration into one still scene.

The residence as a place of conversation and routine

The solarium also hosts conversation that moves from history to the forces governing human life. The Dowager observes that genes shape how people live, while acknowledging the contradictions this creates. After the discussion, the women drink their infusion and practice martial arts. On the day described, dinner in the living room is deliberately simple, extending the visit’s quiet, unceremonious domestic character.

These details distinguish the residence from a merely decorative retreat. Music, reading, exercise, tea, and a modest meal form a repeated pattern of shared time between the Dowager and Aomamé. The house is a place where serious matters can be approached without displacing ordinary routines.

The nearby safe house

The Dowager’s work extends beyond the residence. In the year after her daughter’s suicide, she established a private safe house in a small, one-story building near her Azabu home. The apartments had been empty because she intended to have the building demolished; instead, she had it renovated for women who had nowhere else to go after suffering domestic violence. Some arrived with young children, including girls around ten who had been sexually abused by their fathers.

A consultation service for women experiencing domestic violence, organized chiefly by Tokyo lawyers, supplied the route into the refuge: volunteers took turns conducting telephone interviews, and the Dowager was contacted through the office when someone urgently needed shelter. Residents received essential food and spare clothing, helped one another, and lived together in a form of community. The Dowager personally paid all the costs.

Protection and practical support

Lawyers and counselors periodically visited the safe house to discuss future plans with the women. When she had time, the Dowager came too, listening to each woman individually, offering advice, and helping her find both employment and permanent accommodation. The refuge therefore offered more than immediate concealment: its support was directed toward a possible next life beyond the shelter.

The need for physical protection could also reach the Dowager’s circle at home. If a husband discovered where his wife was staying and tried to force her back, Tamaru intervened; the Dowager considered him exceptionally quick and effective at dealing with such situations. Azabu residence stands at the quiet center of this work, connected to a nearby shelter by the Dowager’s resources and to its most dangerous emergencies through Tamaru’s intervention.