Beretta 92 Pistol

The Beretta 92 Pistol enters the conversation between Aomamé and Tamaru as both a product of institutional change and a tangible instrument of force. Tamaru links its adoption by police to the bloody 1981 clashes near Lake Motosu, then describes a pistol he himself owns: heavier and more powerful than the revolvers it replaced, and dangerous in the hands of inadequately trained officers. The weapon turns an abstract account of police reform into a question about who possesses force, and what may follow when that force is used in public.

Introduction and Historical Context

Tamaru places the Beretta in the aftermath of fighting in Yamanashi Prefecture in mid-October 1981, near Lake Motosu. Local police confronted extremists armed with five AK-47s; the police had old six-shot revolvers. The disparity, as he recounts it, was devastating: three officers were killed, and the police were left humiliated. Special battalions of the Self-Defense Forces were quickly airlifted to the scene.

The confrontation became a turning point in policing. Prime Minister Nakasone sought to strengthen police powers, and the organization underwent profound changes. Special armed units were created, while ordinary officers received improved semi-automatic weapons, including the Beretta 92. Tamaru says that uniforms and weapons were renewed in the spring two years before the present conversation, placing the changes at roughly the same season as the exchange with Aomamé.

Design and Physical Characteristics

Tamaru describes his own Beretta as a fifteen-round automatic pistol chambered for nine-millimeter Parabellum ammunition. He notes that it is a well-regarded weapon, also adopted by the United States Army. It is expensive, though less so than Sig or Glock pistols, and its technical reputation is paired with a practical warning: this is not a weapon that just anyone can handle easily.

The contrast with the older police revolvers is measurable. Those revolvers weighed 490 grams; the Beretta weighs 850. The increase in weight accompanies a different capacity and greater performance, making the modernization visible in the object itself. Tamaru argues that issuing such weapons to untrained police officers is useless, and that using them in public places could have catastrophic consequences. The pistol thus figures not simply as a more capable replacement, but as a material change whose risks depend on the training and circumstances surrounding its use.

Tamaru’s Pistol and the Unanswered Question

When Aomamé asks where Tamaru practices with the weapon, he answers with an incongruous story: while playing a harp beside a spring, he says, a fairy appeared and gave him the pistol, instructing him to shoot a little white rabbit. Asked whether the tale is true, Tamaru replies that he tells only true stories. The exchange leaves the anecdote’s status unresolved, setting the pistol against a fanciful origin without explaining where or how he actually uses it.

The answer sits beside the earlier account of police firepower and its consequences. Tamaru has described the capabilities and dangers of the weapon with exact figures, yet evades Aomamé’s direct question through an implausible story. His account leaves both the pistol’s practical use and the boundary between joke and fact unsettled; it does not establish that he has fired it or identify a shooting location.

Significance in the Conversation

Aomamé’s questions about when police uniforms changed are not casual for her: she has no memory of the Yamanashi affair Tamaru recounts and is trying to align herself with the information he supplies. When he asks whether her concern is connected to the police, she denies it and says only that the change of uniforms had been bothering her. The Beretta discussion therefore supplies a precise date-marker as well as a history of police modernization, while showing Tamaru testing whether Aomamé will disclose what is troubling her.

The weapon’s significance rests on this overlap of personal possession and public authority. Tamaru owns the same model of pistol that became part of the police’s post-clash arsenal, but the conversation does not equate his ownership with official service or reveal his purpose in keeping it. Instead, its specifications and weight sharpen the stakes of the reform he describes: improved firepower may answer the disparity exposed at Lake Motosu, yet in public and without adequate training it may magnify the danger to everyone nearby.