"Kami wo araitai no desu ga. Ii desu ka?" Tam peered through the doorway and nodded hello to the girl in the blue Imperial Hotel uniform. The hair salon was almost empty. Perfect.
"Hai, so." The girl, startled at the gaijin's accentless Japanese, bowed to the waist. "Dozo."
"Manikyua mo onegai shimasu." What the heck, Tam thought, why not go all the way, get a manicure too.
"Hai. Dozo." Another bob as the girl ushered her forward.
There was the plush, padded chair. Big, gray, and voluptuous. She sighed and settled back. Heaven. Perfect peace in the middle of hectic Tokyo. She knew that here for an hour or so she would be an honored guest, smothered with attention. One of the most incredible experiences in Japan.
While three of the girls began shampooing her hair, they went back to chattering about the new husband a matchmaker had just arranged for the petite assistant in the back. The bride-to-be was blushing and there were plenty of giggles all around, hands over mouths. Tam realized, though, that the girls were being a little circumspect. Who was this strange brunette gaijin, speaking Japanese with no accent. Maybe she understood what they were saying.
She did.
The woman who would become Tam Richardson was born Tamara no-name in Kobe, Japan, the somewhat embarrassing result of an evening's diversion for an anonymous GI. Her mother, equally anonymous, had prudently given her over for adoption rather than face the social awkwardness of raising a fatherless, half gaijin child.
She was eventually adopted by Lieutenant Colonel Avery Richardson, U.S. Air Force, and his wife Mary, proud Iowa stock, six years after she'd been stuck in the orphanage. That was during the latter days of the Occupation, but they'd stayed on in Japan through '54 while Lieutenant Colonel Richardson served as adviser for the rearming of what would be the Japanese Self Defense Forces. He'd also become a Japanophile by then, so he left her in a Japanese school rather than subjecting her to the "army brats" on the base. Finally they returned to the States, with a dark-eyed little daughter who'd spoken Japanese for almost a decade and being the achiever she was, read it virtually as well as a high-school graduate.
The thing she remembered best from all those years, though, was one word. Gaijin. It wasn't exactly that the modern Japanese consider gaijin inferior. They no longer dismiss Westerners as "red-bearded Barbarians." No, gaijin were merely unfortunate, luckless folk not part of the earth's elect tribe. You were either born a part of Japan, a full nihon-jin, or you were forever outside of it, gaijin.
But knowing it was one thing, and living it as a kid was something else. She wasn't one of them, and they made sure she got the message. Finally, however, she discovered the hidden secret of Japan. Most Japanese get very uncomfortable around a gaijin too fluent in their language or customs, since that outsider has penetrated their life without the constraint of relationships and obligations. No gaijin can ever entirely belong to their seamless culture for one simple reason: no outsider could ever be held accountable to the powerful social and family interdependencies that allow a population half that of the U.S. to get along in a place functionally smaller than California. So to survive there if you're not nihon-jin, you just play that fact for all it's worth. Then, like everybody else, you've got a niche; yours merely happens to be outside the system. As an almost-nihon-jin you're threatening; as a gaijin, you're safe. She'd finally learned this the hard way, from all those unsmiling little girls in blue school uniforms who used to hiss "gaijin." But thanks to them, Tam Richardson learned to be a permanent outsider. And a survivor.
Well, here she was again, ready for another bout. Round- eyed "Tama-chan" all grown up and still on the outside. Though she knew Tokyo well from times past, she was still trying to readjust. After checking into the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo's Hibiya section, she'd showered, changed, and headed out for some jogging-the best way she knew to see a lot of the city quick. Her major puzzle: where to look for the new impulse behind Japan's big drive, their meteoric move toward the target of dai ichi, "number one" in the world. Try to feel the vibes, she told herself, be a tourist and see the "New Japan" through fresh eyes. If it had been winter, she'd have gone straight over to Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park to watch the migratory Siberian waterfowl diving for fish among the clumps of floating ice. In spring she would have first monitored the radio to find out which park had the finest cherry blossoms, then gone somewhere else to avoid the sake-swilling crowds. And if it had been summer, she probably would have headed for the cool of the Imperial Palace East Gardens to catch the pink and red azaleas.
Autumn, though, was a time for swallowing the city whole. She started with the Meiji Shrine, that garish tribute to Japan's Westernization, then moved on to the Imperial Palace, itself a place that, like Tokyo itself, had something for all seasons. She passed through the East Gardens watching provincial honey- mooners snapping pictures for the parents back home, then worked her way across toward the Sakuradamon Gate so she could follow the Palace moat as she made her circuit back to the hotel. Along the way she passed the Diet Building and the Supreme Court, then decided to look in on the Yasukuni Shrine, buried in its own exquisite grove of cherry trees and mixed foliage. The massive bronze torii arch leading into the shrine was always surrounded by stalls selling those marvelous little rice cakes, sweet and leaden, she remembered as a kid. She stopped and bought two.
By then she was experiencing advanced jet lag, so she decided to head on back to her crisp-sheeted bed at the Imperial. Tokyo this time around was as impossible as always, maybe more so. Where do you start? The garish Ginza, the self-conscious trendiness of Roppongi, the skyscrapers of Shinjuku, solemn Marunouchi-all of it engulfing, awesomely materialistic. Each trip the city seemed to get bigger, louder, more everything. More cars, more neon, more… yes, more money. She could remember, almost, a time when this town was a burned-out ruin. Now…
She needed some time to think, to work out a game plan. Sure, clues to the phenomenon of modern Japan were everywhere-drive, self-confidence, competence-but how did they fit together? Change was coming like an avalanche. Who could keep track?
The best thing, she'd told herself, was to start with a clear head. Back off for a while. After all, the last year had been much toil and little play, with the latest book coming out, hassles at the university. She needed some unwinding. Maybe a little time spent thinking about nothing would be best of all.
So for a day she lived off room service, immersed herself in the local papers, magazines, TV, and just relaxed. She let Allan's hints about some ominous new development slip way down the scale.
One of the things she couldn't help noticing, though, was an odd stirring in the newspapers, something very much between the lines but all the more real for that very reason. In typical fashion, signals were going out that a major event was in store. The government, she knew, always used a kind of early-warning system for important shifts. Very Japanese. If the Bank of Japan was about to raise or lower interest rates, a move that would impact thousands of businesses and banks, for days in advance various unidentified "officials" would be quoted as speculating that maybe a change in rates might be possible. Of course they didn't actually say it was going to happen; they merely hinted it could be an idea to consider, it was plausible, conditions might well warrant… Anybody with any sense knew immediately this meant the decision was already made and citizens were being alerted to cover themselves posthaste.
Consequently, if "government sources" start hinting an event is conceivably possible, you can usually assume it's as good as fact.
But what was this about, she wondered, all these allusions to a new "interest" of the Emperor's? The standard elements were all there: leaks, guesswork, columns, unnamed "high sources." No doubt, something major was pending. And just to make sure nobody missed the importance of whatever it was, there was even speculation His Majesty might actually hold a press briefing.
That last possibility, she decided, was clearly farfetched. Just not done. A picture session, maybe, but that was it.
After a day of unwinding, she was ready to get out and start gathering some information. This time around, however, she wanted a different image. A shift from the staid-professor look to high-tech Japan. Start with a few clothes, something smashing/expensive/designer Japanese. And the hair. Right. A cut, a different style, a something.
Thus around noon the third day she finally got into street clothes and headed down to the lobby, then teeming with lagged-out Aussies in funny tour hats. She took one look, ducked around them, then made for the lower arcade and the shops.
And here she was. Already feeling recharged. Relaxed and…
Just then a short, excited hotel porter ducked his head in, bowed, and announced he'd just heard that the Emperor was about to be on TV.
His Majesty? The salon froze.
At first Tam thought the porter must just be playing some kind of local prank. Arcade high jinks.
Then she remembered the speculation in the papers. Could it be true? She glanced at her watch; it was a couple of minutes before twelve.
The girls immediately dropped everything and clicked on the big Toshiba digital set suspended over the mirror. Service halted in midstream, just as in a soba noodle shop when the sumo wrestlers on the corner tube had finished glaring, thrown salt three times, and were ready to lunge. Then one of the hairdressers remembered Tam and-maybe still believing no gaijin could understand her language-reached down to snap on the small black-and-white Sony attached to the chair arm, tuned to CNN's Tokyo service. It was currently scrolling temperatures in the U.S.
Now on the big Toshiba overhead, NHK (the government channel) was announcing they were about to switch to a remote broadcast, live, from the sacred Yasukuni Shrine.
Uh, oh, she thought. Yasukuni! Has everybody here gone crazy?
Back before 1945, Yasukuni had been a memorial to the "master race," official home of the new "State Shinto." Japan's militarists had revised traditional Shinto, a simple nature- reverence, to include violent nationalism, emperor worship, "the Yamato spirit," the "way of the samurai": every warlike aspect of national character. These days Yasukuni enshrined the names of Japan's two million heroic war dead, a roll call recently enlarged to include Tojo and others the U.S. later executed as criminals-which had turned the place into a political hot potato, resulting in an enormous flap when the prime minister tried to appear there in his official capacity. So, for the Emperor to show up suddenly, with heavy press coverage, was almost unthinkable. Besides, she'd just been by the place and hadn't noticed anything. This was very sudden.
Then the remote came on. The front of the shrine was roped off, right across the bronze torii gate, with only cameras and press allowed inside. On screen was a shot of an elaborate new dais where an official from the Imperial Household Agency, the government bureau that kept His Majesty under its care and schedules his appearances, was just finishing up a long-winded introduction. Then it was the prime minister's turn. After what seemed half an hour of absolutely content-less oratory (a Japanese politician's most respected skill) on the subject of the country's majestic Imperial past, the PM finally stepped aside to allow a tall, strikingly handsome Japanese man to approach the speaker's podium. Since the occasion had official significance, his walk was ceremonial, with his feet wide apart in the jerky samurai swagger necessitated in days of old by the two swords at the waist. Meanwhile, everybody around him was bowing low.
His Imperial Majesty, wearing a formal male kimono, equivalent to morning dress at Ascot, looked truly august. He was also carrying a long silver box, filigreed.
When he finally started to speak, the girls around Tam gasped in astonishment. She noticed immediately that he wasn't using modern Japanese. Instead, his language was an archaic, highly ornate dialect: the court speech of long ago.
After his brief, almost unintelligible prologue, one of the Household officials opened the box for him and took out a long, scrolled document. The cameras did a quick close-up, showing a page of antique, flowered paper inscribed with brush and sumi ink.
It turned out to be a letter in modern Japanese from the president of a financial organization called Dai Nippon, International. As the Emperor read it to the cameras, it began with a recounting of the loss of the Imperial sword in the Inland Sea during the 1185 battle of Dan-no-ura. That sword, it declared, signified Japan's physical link to a Divine past…
What? History 101 on TV?
Then came the bomb.
Abruptly CNN cut into their normal late-night programming for a live satellite report. Their reporter, grasping a mike and standing in front of the milling mob around the podium, was reading from a press handout that provided an English summary of the letter. Since the CNN signal was being flashed to the U.S. and then back to Japan on the "bird," effectively circling the globe, it was a few milliseconds behind the NHK broadcast. She turned up the sound.
… noon here in Tokyo, and at this shrine sacred to all Japanese, His Majesty, the Emperor of Japan (Cut to shot of the Emperor speaking. Reporter voice-over.) has startled the nation by announcing that marine archeologists working for an investment organization called Dai Nippon, International have just succeeded in recovering a famous symbol of early Imperial rule. A three-year secret project in the Inland Sea, funded by DNI, culminated five days ago when scientists brought up a watertight gold case containing what is believed to be the original Imperial sword. (Cut back to reporter.) Although no photos of the sword have as yet been released, we are told it is in virtually mint condition. (Glances down to read from press release.) According to the ancient Japanese chronicles, this sword was given to Japan's first emperor by the Sun Goddess Amaterasu-Omikami, sometime around the year 600 B.C., as a symbol of his divinity. Historians say it was later lost at sea in the 1185 Battle of Dan-no-ura. That bloody naval episode, the subject of much Japanese lore and tradition, marked the end of direct Imperial authority here and the rise of the first shoguns, military governors who would rule in his name…
She rolled down the sound. Who needed some English press summary? She was watching the whole incredible event live as it unfolded. And her first thought was: Good God, that's like finding Excalibur, or maybe the Ark of the Covenant. Myth turned into reality. She glanced around the salon, and already the electricity in the air was crackling. But what happened next turned out to be the real news, the hidden agenda.
After His Majesty finished reading the letter, he passed it to an underling and switched back to his ancient dialect. Now, though, his speech was being "translated" across the bottom of the screen into modern Japanese.
He declared that since the Imperial Household, through the loyal services of Dai Nippon, International, had had restored to it that which it always possessed, namely the sword, he was pleased to honor the firm by allowing it to construct a new museum to house the sacred symbol at a site just outside Ise, home of the official shrine of the Sun Goddess. On his authority, ground-breaking for the museum would begin immediately. However, until such time as it was constructed and consecrated, the Imperial Household would make the sacred relic available under heavy guard for viewing by the Japanese people in a temporary showplace located at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo…
By now shops had begun closing and the corridor outside was in tumult. An excited young clerk from the flower stall next door burst through the door and, bowing to everybody, lavished bouquets on all the girls. From the streets above came a cacophony of sirens.
But it still wasn't over. The most crucial part of all, totally missed by the Western news force, was yet to come. After His Majesty was bowed away from the microphone, another official stepped forward to elaborate on the Emperor's remarks (probably because His Majesty would not deign to mention anything so crass as money). As reward for restoring the sword to His Majesty, he said, Dai Nippon would be allowed to serve as trustee of an official, honorary investment instrument, to be known as the Eight-Hundred-Year Fund. Acting for His Majesty, DNI would direct those monies into endeavors "commensurate with the nobility and ancient lineage of the Japanese people, as symbolized by the sword." Then a telephone number flashed across the bottom of the screen. The current subscription would be closed after eight hundred billion yen were pledged. The president of Dai Nippon had asked His Majesty for the honor of contributing the first billion yen personally. Finally, in a quick aside, he added that interest paid by the fund would of course be tax-free, as was normally the case for savings accounts in Japan.
After a few closing formalities, interspersed with a photo session of the Emperor and the president of Dai Nippon, the historic occasion ended with a reverential shot of His Majesty being escorted to his limo.
Who was that silver-haired executive, Tarn wondered. The man was audacious, and a genius. He'd just turned the Imperial Household into an accomplice in some kind of nationwide collection, using the Emperor for his own ends much the way shoguns of old had done.
But she sensed he'd touched a nerve that went very deep. A fund in honor of the Emperor (that's already how everybody around her in the shop was describing it), something in which to take pride, not just a numbered savings account at the post office. Suddenly the girls and their Japanese customers were all talking money. Here was something they could do to show their regard for His Majesty.
A line was already forming at the phone. The way she heard sums being pledged, she calculated Dai Nippon would garner five million yen, more than thirty thousand dollars, right there among the shampoos and curlers. The typical Japanese, she recalled, banked over a quarter of his or her disposable income. Little wonder most of them had at least a year's salary in savings. At this rate Dai Nippon's "Imperial Fund" would be over the top by nightfall.
That evening NHK newscasts claimed it had been fully subscribed in the first fifty-six minutes. After all, eight hundred billion yen was only about six billion dollars, scarcely more than loose change to a people saving tens of millions every day. It was, in fact, merely the beginning. The next day more "Eight-Hundred-Year" funds were opened, by popular demand. Soon the pension funds started to feel the heat, and a lot of institutions began calling up. Yen flowed in a great river. All those homeless Japanese billions knocking around the world had at last found a guiding ideal. Some rumors even claimed the Emperor himself was actually going to manage the money.
Tam couldn't wait to get outside and see firsthand what was going on. This was something Allan could never in his wildest dreams have predicted. As soon as she could get her hair dry she headed out; the girls didn't even bother to charge.
Tokyo, twelve million strong, was in the streets. Even in normal times the city could be overwhelming, but now… It was in pandemonium, an advanced state of shock. As she struggled through the crowds a lot of men were waving sake flasks, already gleefully smashed. The sidewalks had become one vast matsuri, festival.
Something else, too. She found herself feeling a little uncomfortable. There were glares, and then as she passed a withered old man running a noodle stand, she heard him mutter "Gaijin." What did it mean?
What it "meant," she reflected with alarm, was obvious. The world had just become a brand-new ball game. Japan's long-silent Emperor had once more spoken to his people, just as he had at the end of the War. Back then he had broken two thousand years of silence to inform his battered, starving subjects "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." This time around he had confirmed Japan's long Imperial heritage. The "meaning" was clear as day.
This wasn't a new direction. This was just getting back on track. Even though the Emperor had been humiliated and secularized after the Great War against the threatening gaijin, his people still thought of themselves as a single, pure family. For a time they merely had no focus for that identity. Now they had it again.
Well, she thought, why not? National pride. Not so long ago we Americans had the Soviets telling us we were second best, so we blew a few billion in tax money to plant a man on the moon and straighten them out. The space Super Bowl. Why should Japan be any different? For years now they've heard half the world claim they're just a bunch of hard-driving merchants with a bank-account soul, when they knew in their hearts it wasn't true. Now here's the proof, straight from the Sun Goddess. Time to get crazy awhile.
In the middle of all the bedlam and horns and sirens in the street, she yearned for somebody to talk with, somebody levelheaded enough to put this frightening turnaround into some kind of perspective. That's when she thought of Ken.
Of course! He was Westernized; he took the longer view. Why hadn't she thought of him right away?
So off she went for a quick surprise visit with Kenji Asano at the Institute for New Generation Computer Technology, research headquarters for the Fifth Generation Systems Project. He and his staff would probably be in a holiday mood, just like everybody else. Maybe he'd loosen his tie and give her a little off-the-record rundown of what this was all about.
She knew the Institute operated out of the twenty-first floor of a downtown Tokyo skyscraper. She'd been there before. She still had the address, and the subways were clicking along right on time, though the fare machines were off now in celebration. Half an hour later she was there. She pushed her way through the milling lobby and grabbed an elevator.
As she rode, watching the lights tick off the floors, she found herself wondering again what Ken was really up to. And what had happened to Dr. Yoshida? However, it was hard to think about something as boring as MITI and American defense vulnerability when people were whooping it up and passing around paper cups of sake right there on the elevator.
Well, don't jump to conclusions. This paranoia of Allan's is probably just some grotesque misreading. Dr. Yoshida got promoted, and Ken's merely filling in for a while till the Institute can recruit a new director from some university. The work here's too important for politics. Intelligent computers are Japan's lifeline-the "steam engine" of the next century.
How would Ken react to her just showing up? After all, Kyoto was two years ago. He'd claimed to be a widower, but was that merely conference fast talk?
Best thing is just to play it straight, she told herself. Strictly business. Let the rest fall out in time.
As she stepped off the elevator, she was relieved to see that the offices were still open. Well, she thought, my first finding is that Ken Asano runs this place with an iron hand, just the way Yoshida did. Total dedication. Through floor-to-ceiling glass doors she could see the receptionist at the desk, now excitedly chatting on the phone. Tam waved, and the smiling woman immediately buzzed her through. Just like that. No different from the last time.
Doesn't look to be any MITI conspiracy here, she thought. What exactly had made Allan so worried?
She bowed and handed over her meishi, her business card.
"Asano-san, onegai shimasu."