A sublimation process governs the innermost region of the dusty torus of active galactic nuclei .
However , the observed inner radius of the torus is systematically smaller than the expected radius by a factor of \sim 1 / 3 .
We show that the anisotropy of the emission from accretion disks resolves this conflict naturally and quantitatively .
An accretion disk emits lesser radiation in the direction closer to its equatorial plane ( i.e. , to the torus ) .
We find that the anisotropy makes the torus inner region closer to the central black hole and concave .
Moreover , the innermost edge of the torus may connect with the outermost edge of the disk continuously .
Considering the anisotropic emission of each clump in the torus , we calculate the near-infrared flux variation in response to a UV flash .
For an observer at the polar angle \theta _ { obs } = 25 ° , the centroid of the time delay is found to be 37 % of the delay expected in the case of isotropic illumination , which explains the observed systematic deviation .