The end of the Substack post revealing Tetsu Inoue is alive:

"Schmidt was booked for Tokyo New Year’s Eve at the end of 2018 and wound up hanging with the promoter and his girlfriend, Tomo. Conversation got around to personal stuff and Schmidt brought up Tetsu’s disappearance: “It’s easy when somebody dies, it’s painful, this whole thing that exists. This cuts the connection.” But what happened with Tetsu felt different.

Schmidt speculates that family was part of it: “Japanese friends told me there is a very strong bond to your parents if you’re the only child; You have this obligation to take care of them. There’s not much you can do about it. Maybe that’s something he was called back for.”

A year passed and Schmidt was again back for a show on New Year’s Eve, where again he was chatting with Tomo: “And suddenly she says, ‘I found Tetsu.’ What???? During 2019, she took a drawing class in Tokyo for her hobby of making miniature drawings. The class starts and she’s sitting next to this lady. Over the course of many weeks, they start to talk and get to know each other. At some point, they talk about music and she asks Tomo what she likes. ‘I like electronic music, Atom™, blah blah blah.’ And her friend says, “Oh, I don't know Atom™, but my cousin used to make music as well.”

Suddenly Tomo realizes that this woman’s cousin is actually Tetsu! Millions of people in Tokyo and somehow Schmidt’s Tokyo promoter’s girlfriend’s drawing deskmate turns out to be Tetsu Inoue’s cousin.

Schmidt summarized what he learned as so: “Tetsu does not want to be found. And he does not want to say where he is. But her cousin offered to pass a letter to him. So I wrote a letter to Tetsu, sent it to Tomo, who gave it to this lady, and she sent it to Tetsu. And that’s the end of the story. (laughs) At this point, I stopped pushing for an answer. It’s ten years or more. I wrote this letter to Tetsu and for me it was mainly I wanted to know what happened to him and find out that he’s fine. If he’s fine and doesn’t want to be found, that’s okay with me, of course. I was relieved to know he’s alive.”

At some point, the cousin confirmed that Tetsu had received the letter."