Fukada

Fukada, the leader of the Pioneers and Eri’s father, is known in the novel chiefly through the silence that follows his daughter’s flight. Once a prolific correspondent and a trusted friend of the Master, he disappears from communication just as the formerly open agricultural community becomes secretive. Neither his fate nor his wife’s is known, and the unanswered question of what happened to them exposes the gulf between the Pioneers’ earlier life and its later, more threatening character.

Identity and Background

Fukada led the Pioneers and was the father of Eri. He had been a close correspondent of the Master, sending long letters about events inside the community as well as his own feelings. The relationship gave the Master a view of the Pioneers from within; the loss of that correspondence therefore registers not merely as a personal separation but as a break in access to the community itself.

Fukada and his wife had severed ties with their own families, and Eri grew up without knowing any of her grandparents. The Master says that the Fukadas loved Eri deeply and regarded her as their most precious possession. They had told her that, if necessary, she could go to the Master’s home for help, making his household the one place outside the community where she was known to have refuge.

The End of Communication

Before Eri fled, the Pioneers began, in the Master’s account, to withdraw from the outside world. The first clear sign was Fukada’s correspondence becoming delayed and then stopping. The Master continued to write, but received no replies. Telephone contact became difficult as well: even when a call was put through, there was too little time for a real conversation, and Fukada spoke brusquely, as if aware that someone was listening nearby.

After Eri arrived at the Master’s home, he waited until she seemed calmer before calling the Pioneers and asking to speak to Fukada. He was told that Fukada could not speak at that moment, but was given no explanation. A request to speak with Fukada’s wife met the same refusal. The Master did not announce that he was caring for Eri, deciding it was better to stay silent until he could speak with Fukada directly. He later tried repeatedly, by every means available, to make contact; none of those efforts succeeded.

Eri’s Flight and the Missing Family

Eri reached the Master’s home with some money and a scrap of paper bearing the address. Though she had been raised in an isolated environment and could not express herself, she managed the connections between different forms of transport and made the journey. The Master recalls that the people who helped at the house, including his daughter Azami, cared for her after she arrived; at first sight, it was clear that something terrible had happened to her.

The parents did not contact the Master to ask what had become of Eri during the seven years that followed. This silence seemed especially incomprehensible to him because they had loved her, had identified his home as a possible refuge, and had no other family ties through which she could be helped. The Master had been the only person able to shelter her, yet heard nothing from either parent.

Unknown Fate and Narrative Significance

The Master does not know whether Fukada and his wife are alive. He hopes the worst has not happened, but regards seven years without news as abnormal and fears that they may be held against their will or have suffered something worse. He emphasizes that the Pioneers are no longer the peaceful farming community they once were. When Tengo points to the armed clashes three years earlier and the dissolution of L’Aube, the Master agrees, but cannot explain the Pioneers’ radical turn or what happened to Fukada. The leader’s name has simply ceased to appear.

Fukada’s absence is thus both a personal loss and an unresolved measure of the community’s transformation. The Master’s recollections preserve the contrast between the man who once wrote openly about his feelings and the leader whose fate is now concealed behind a wall of secrecy. The novel provides no confirmation of what became of him or his wife, leaving the family’s silence as an unanswered part of Eri’s escape and of the Pioneers’ increasingly closed world.