May 29, 1978

May 29, 1978, marks Creta Kano’s failed suicide attempt, an episode she recounts years afterward and identifies as taking place when she was twenty. Its importance lies not only in the attempt itself but in the striking absence of pain she reports after surviving it, and in its coincidence with the month Toru Okada and Kumiko Okada married.

The Attempt

At nine o’clock that night, Creta went to her brother’s room and asked to borrow his new Toyota MR2. He was reluctant to lend it, but she took the key because she had lent him money to help purchase the car. It had barely a thousand miles on it, and she had chosen it for the purpose she had in mind.

Creta drove for half an hour to the Tama River on the outskirts of the city. At the end of a dead-end street, she found a high stone wall beside a condominium building. She gave herself room to accelerate, drove toward the wall at high speed, and crashed. The account establishes that she survived; it does not supply further details about the immediate aftermath.

The Reported Aftermath

The most consequential detail in Creta’s recollection is that she felt no pain. The brief statement does not explain why, nor does it establish that the absence of pain was permanent. Within the account, however, it makes the attempt a turning point: survival is followed not by a description of physical suffering but by an unexpected lack of sensation.

Date and Narrative Context

Creta later places the event six years in the past, in May 1978, and specifically dates it to May 29. The retrospective telling gives the episode a precise point in time while keeping its immediate consequences spare. The date becomes a hinge between her account of personal crisis and another history unfolding around her.

May 1978 was also the month Toru Okada and Kumiko married. The coincidence does not establish a direct connection between the marriage and Creta’s attempt, but it places the two events alongside one another in the narrative: as one couple’s life together began, Creta was confronting a crisis that would later be remembered for the absence of pain that followed it.