Karuizawa, Nagano
In 1998 while teaching at Stanford University, Mizumura is approached by a young man, Yusuke Kato, who tells her that he met Azuma a few years before he disappeared in Karuizawa, Nagano where he mentioned he knew the novelist Minae Mizumura. Yusuke and Mizumura spend the night discussing Azuma and Mizumura, who had been struggling with her third novel, decides that Azuma's story would make a perfect novel. She explains to the reader that while she had originally intended to write an "I Novel", her work is a "True Novel", i.e. a novel that is pure fiction.