Fujitsu Word Processor

The Fujitsu Word Processor is the new, lightweight machine Tengo buys so he can begin rewriting Air Chrysalis. It gives Komatsu’s urgent assignment an immediate material form, but it also helps determine how Tengo works: he moves between the screen, printed pages, and pencil corrections, discovering that each medium makes the same sentences seem different. The device thus becomes both a tool and a measure of the labor required to alter the story without destroying what made it distinctive.

Purchase and Purpose

Komatsu tells Tengo to buy a word processor that very day, choose the make and model himself, and begin rewriting Air Chrysalis as soon as possible. Komatsu knows little about equipment and offers to reimburse him. When Tengo points out that even the least expensive machines cost 250,000 yen, Komatsu dismisses the price as unimportant. The expense makes the assignment concrete: this is not an abstract editorial proposal but work expected to start at once, requiring a dedicated machine.

At ten in the morning, Tengo goes to Shinjuku and buys a Fujitsu Word Processor with his bank card. It is the latest model and considerably lighter than earlier versions. He also buys spare ink ribbons and paper, returns home, places the machine on his desk, plugs it in, and checks that he knows how to operate it. Its functions are not fundamentally different from the larger Fujitsu machine he uses at school, so he can begin without learning a wholly unfamiliar system. At half past twelve, after setting it up, he starts the rewrite.

A Machine for Rewriting

Tengo begins without a settled plan for how to transform the novel. He worries that applying logical methods to so delicate and fantastic a work might damage its qualities and atmosphere, like giving a butterfly a skeleton. Yet the assignment is already underway, and he cannot spend his limited time only thinking about it. The machine makes the first practical step possible: he enters the opening pages up to a convenient stopping point, initially preserving their content while concentrating on syntax and style.

He treats the original as a structure to renovate rather than replace. His comparison is to rebuilding an apartment: the basic structure and essential connections remain, while surfaces and divisions can be renewed. On the screen, he adds explanations where the writing is difficult to follow, smooths sentences, cuts redundancy, fills gaps, and sometimes changes the order of sentences or paragraphs. He retains the original’s sparse use of adjectives and adverbs, adding a qualifier only when he judges it necessary. The machine supports extensive revision, but Tengo’s task is selective: clarify and reshape the prose while preserving the freshness he finds in some of its childlike expression.

The contrast between the author’s original and the rewritten text matters as much as the speed of typing. Tengo finds it easy to identify passages that seem weak, but he also recognizes that the very quality making parts of the original hard to understand can give other passages their freshness. The word processor is therefore not a device for automatic correction. It gives him a working surface on which he must decide what to retain, repair, or remove.

Screen, Paper, and Revision

Tengo works passionately until nearly three in the afternoon, then pauses to eat and drink coffee. Returning to the desk, he reviews the rewritten opening on the screen. He judges that the style has improved, but the draft still has flaws; in his mind, its weaknesses resemble a failing defensive position, with sandbags giving way, too little ammunition, and gaps in the barbed wire. The metaphor registers progress as provisional. A promising first pass is not yet a secure text.

He prints the pages, switches off the machine, and pushes it to the end of the desk. With the paper in front of him, he rereads the draft closely and marks it with a pencil. He crosses out what seems needless and expands what seems inadequate, then adjusts individual words to fit their passages. His comparison shifts from repairing a building to choosing a tile for a small gap in a bathroom: each choice must fit precisely, and a poor fit calls for reshaping. Small adjustments, he finds, can animate the prose without damaging it.

The printed page reveals something the screen does not. Tengo is surprised that the same sentences give him a different impression when printed, and he notices that words also feel different when written by hand rather than typed. He concludes that the text has to be examined from both angles. He plugs the machine in again, enters his pencil revisions one by one, and rereads the revised passage on screen. In this back-and-forth sequence, the Fujitsu Word Processor participates in a process of comparison: typing, printing, handwriting, and re-entry each offer a distinct view of the language.

The First Day’s Limit

By the time Tengo returns the corrections to the machine, he feels the sentences have acquired an appropriate weight and read naturally, without jolts. But the improvement is limited to the opening, and he knows the work is far from finished. Near five o’clock, with darkness beginning to fall and his concentration spent, he stops. He expects that another reading in a few days may reveal further changes, and decides to let the pages settle before continuing with another section the next day.

Rewriting only this beginning has taken almost a full day, longer than Tengo anticipated. He hopes the work will move faster once he has laid the rails and found a steady rhythm, but the new machine has not made the difficult opening effortless. Its significance lies instead in enabling a disciplined cycle of revision while making visible how much judgment and time that cycle demands. The day ends with a first passage provisionally complete, the machine ready for the next one, and Tengo still uncertain how Fukaéri will respond to the altered manuscript.