Maladie d’Alzheimer du père de Tengo

Tengo’s father’s Alzheimer’s disease is presented as a concrete condition in the family history Tengo recounts to Komatsu: his father now receives care in a medical facility at the southern end of the Bōsō Peninsula. The detail fixes Tengo’s father’s present circumstances while underscoring the distance between them and the family story Tengo inherited.

Diagnosis and Circumstances

When Tengo tells Komatsu about himself, he explains that his father worked for NHK collecting reception fees and is now being cared for in a medical facility. The passage identifies the illness plainly, without describing symptoms or the course of the disease. Its specificity lies instead in the contrast between the father’s former occupation, which involved going from household to household, and his present dependence on institutional care.

Family History and Separation

Tengo also tells Komatsu that he grew up in Ichikawa, in Chiba Prefecture, as an only child. His mother fell ill and disappeared shortly after his birth, according to what his father told him. His father did not remarry and raised him alone. Alzheimer’s disease thus enters a history already marked by absence: the father who had been Tengo’s sole parent is now living apart from him and receiving care elsewhere.

Narrative Significance

The illness appears within Tengo’s account of his background, rather than as a scene focused on the father’s experience of Alzheimer’s. The novel supplies no further medical detail here; instead, it establishes the father’s condition as part of the circumstances shaping Tengo’s family life. That compressed disclosure makes the father’s present care and Tengo’s childhood upbringing part of the same account of familial separation, while leaving the nature of their current relationship unspecified.