Summary

Chapter 12, “Merry Christmas” (190), opens at the event featuring Jun Aizawa, which Natsuko attended. Aizawa explained that the father who raised him passed away when he was 15 and that he found out later, at the age of 30, that his biological father was a donor. He explained that in Japan, it was rare for children who had been conceived through donor sperm to learn the truth about their parentage. A woman in the audience argued, from a religious perspective, that children deserved to be raised in “real homes” (194), a comment that prompted Natsuko to spontaneously point out all of the problems that could occur in biological families and to question what constituted a “real” home. By the end of the exchange, she realized that she was shouting.

After the event, Natsuko apologized to Aizawa, saying that her comments had probably seemed “out of line” (195). He...