Kamikaze (2 page)

Divine Wind

Tokyo, Japan

October 27, Now

Now in his eighties, Genjo Tokuda often thought back to the years when his father had taught him how to follow the Way of the Warrior.

He pictured the two of them in the Zen garden, a realm for deep contemplation amid serenity. The pond was streaked with lolling carp and edged with mossy rocks. Wisteria draped the vermilion bridge that spanned from earth to paradise. The path through the stone lanterns promised a mystic journey.

“Imagine a time,” his father said, “more than six hundred years ago, when the samurai were the knights of Japan, the shogun was their leader, and the emperor—as now—was divine.”

The boy pictured feudal Japan in his mind.

“Genghis Khan,” his father continued, “had conquered more land than any warrior before him. Mongolian horsemen thundered west from the Pacific Ocean to the far edge
of Russia. Kublai Khan, his grandson, wished to conquer more, so he sent an emissary here to demand that we bow to his rule.”

Father and son sat together in the teahouse by the pond.

“Did we?” Genjo asked.

“We refused to answer. So Kublai Khan dispatched forty thousand barbarians on hundreds of ships to enslave us. When the weather turned, a typhoon struck. Two hundred sinking ships drowned thirteen thousand men. The surviving Mongol invaders had little choice but to retreat back to China.”

“We won.”

“But not for long. Kublai Khan was not a man to stomach defeat. Seven years later, one hundred and fifty thousand warriors boarded a thousand ships, then sailed here to crush us. They landed on our beaches. We fought back. For fifty days, the battle raged. Gunpowder explosions blackened the sky. Arrows from their bows rained down on us. But we had
bushido
—the Way of the Warrior—the code by which a samurai transcends his fear of death. It gives him the peace and power to serve the emperor faithfully. And to die well, if need be.”

Genjo could see them in his mind’s eye.

Those samurai of the shogun, the “barbarian-subduing general.”

Way back when, in 1281, they stood in their helmets, breastplates, shoulder guards, and belly wraps on the sacred shores of Nippon, slicing and dicing the foreign invaders to pieces with the blades of their flashing swords.

Banzai!

“The emperor is divine. Heaven favors us. So as the battle onshore reached a climax, a wind howled out of heaven and attacked the Mongol ships. For two days, enormous waves pounded our coast. Ships rammed together or slammed against the cliffs. Swamped ships foundered on the rocks. Ships by the hundreds sank into the sea, drowning Mongols by the tens of thousands. Those who clung to splintered wrecks were picked off by our archers. Those trapped ashore were slaughtered or surrendered to become our slaves. A fifth of the vast fleet retreated home to China in defeat, and the myth of the invincible Khan was shattered throughout the Mongol Empire.”

“We won,” Genjo repeated.

“Yes,” replied his father. “We never lose a war. The Divine Wind. That’s what we called it. That storm of heavenly favor sent by the gods to save us.”

Kamikaze.

That was the name of the sword.

Kami
for Divine.

Kaze
for Wind.

Kamikaze.
The Divine Wind.

His next lesson in
bushido
took place inside the Shinto shrine that bordered the garden. Father and son entered through the
torii
gate, a pair of upright wooden poles topped with two crossbeams. As he passed from the outside world to the divine realm, Genjo eyed the lion-like stone
dogs on either side of him. One with mouth open, the other closed, the
komainu
guarded the sacred shrine. Pausing at the water trough, father and son purified themselves by rinsing out their mouths and washing their hands to show respect to the gods. In the worship hall, they tugged a rope attached to an overhead bell to let the
kami
know they were present. To show gratitude, each threw a coin into the offering box. After bowing deeply, they clapped their hands twice, also to ask the gods for attention.

Before them stood the
honden,
the main hall, where the gods were in attendance.

Genjo couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there.

His ancestors.

Samurai.

Warriors turned into gods.

On this side of the threshold, the
daisho
was mounted on a wooden rack. The big sword—
daito
—and the small sword—
shoto
—fused together as
daisho,
the sign of a samurai. Others were allowed to carry one sword or the other, but only samurai carried both.

Reverently, with both hands, Genjo’s father raised the big sword off the rack. In the stillness of the shrine, amid the serenity of the garden, the boy heard the glistening steel sing as the blade slipped free of its curved scabbard.

“Kamikaze,” his father said, invoking the name of the sword. “We make the best swords in the world. This sword began as iron mixed with carbon. Then fire, water, anvil, and hammer forged it into this. See how it curves? That’s for strength and sharpness. See how it shines? Polishing
adds perfection. Etched into the blade are the words ‘Four Body Sword.’ Do you know what that means?”

“No,” said Genjo.

“It means that the sword tester stacked the corpses of criminals one on top of another and—starting with the small bones, then moving up to the large ones—cut through them with this blade. ‘Four Body Sword’ means Kamikaze will slice through four men.”

“Why does it have a name?”

“The
katana
,”
his father said, “is the battlefield sword. This sword is a samurai’s most treasured weapon. It’s part of him. It’s the soul of his warriorship. So he gives it a name.”

“Kamikaze?” Genjo asked. “Why name it that?”

His father moved several feet away from his son and took up the stance of a samurai poised to strike.

“Close your eyes,” he said, “and listen well.”

Genjo closed his eyes.

Not a sound.

Then—
shhhhewwww
—he heard the blade whip past his face.

“Did you hear it?”

“Yes, Father.”

“That’s Divine Wind.”

Years later, just before Genjo went off to war, his father had summoned him to the Shinto shrine. On seeing the younger Tokuda arrive in his uniform, the man who had taught him the Way of the Warrior smiled from ear to ear. In the
presence of the
kami,
their ancestral samurai gods, the elder Tokuda raised the
katana
once more from the wooden rack and, with pride in his eyes, passed it to his son.

“Kamikaze,” his father invoked. “Strike down the barbarians with your Divine Wind.”

Genjo stuck the battle sword through his belt.

Returning to the rack, his mentor lifted the
wakizashi
off the lower hooks. The shorter sword was less than two feet long. It was the sword a warrior used to commit seppuku.

Seppuku.

Hara-kiri, in other words.

His last lesson in
bushido
had taught Genjo how to regain honor if he should lose a battle or shame himself. With his sword in front of him, sitting on a special mat, he would open his white kimono to bare his abdomen. Taking up the
wakizashi,
he would plunge the blade deep into his gut. The initial cut would slice from left to right, then he would yank the steel upward to spill out his intestines. A bow of his head would signal his assistant to decapitate him with a sweeping stroke of the
katana.

“Come home victorious,” Genjo’s father said. “Or do what must be done.”

He gave his son the short sword to stick through his belt.

Genjo had the
daisho.

He was samurai.

It used to be that you could spot a yak a mile away. In fact, the name yakuza says it all.
Ya
means 8,
ku
means 9, and
sa
means 3 in Japanese. Those numbers add up to 20, a losing hand in a game of
hana-fuda
(flower cards), so yakuza members enjoy being the “bad hands” of society.

Kazuya had laughed at paintings of the first yaks—the “wave men,” the “crazy ones”—of the 1600s. Their flamboyant clothes, hairstyles, and extra long swords were a hoot. Theirs was a time of peace, when samurai were idle, so leaderless
ronin
had wandered Japan, committing thefts and causing mayhem.

The yaks of the 1950s had looked outlandish too. The sunglasses, dark suits, white shirts, dark ties: they dressed like hoods enforcing black-market deals for Al Capone. Tough guys who endured hundreds of hours of pain for full-body tattoos shaped like long underwear. Thugs with less than ten fingers.

The rat pack was in by the 1990s. It was cool for yaks to flaunt punch-perm hair, shiny tight-fitting suits, and pointy-toed shoes, all so long out of style in America. With gang pins on their lapels and logo signs on their social clubs, they wheeled through the streets in big, flashy Lincolns and Cadillacs.

Until they got hammered.

As Japan’s national proverb says, “The nail that sticks up must be hammered down.”

Kazuya was a yak for the new millennium. That he was born to be yakuza was obvious from his name: in English, it had the same six letters as the Japanese mafia. Ostentation was a luxury of the past. It had died when Japan’s economic bubble burst—thanks to the yakuza
undermining the banking system through loans that swiftly turned into bad debts. Pissed-off politicians had passed a 1992 act aimed at dismantling groups with a certain percentage of members with criminal records. No longer could the yakuza depend on their open alliance with right-wingers in the political and corporate arenas. Japan’s National Police Agency had the teeth to go after them, so twenty-first-century yaks would have to blend in.

Yaks like Kazuya.

The new ninjas of Japan.

There wasn’t a tattoo on his body, and he had all his fingers. A lot of toned-down yaks dressed according to a code:
Shiro nara shiro. Kuro nara kuro.
If you wear white, wear all white, from your hat to your shoes. If you wear black, wear all black. Kazuya, however, was into deep, deep cover. So in a country where conformity was highly valued and outward signs of individuality raised suspicion, he dressed like a well-paid
salariman,
the sort of corporate high-roller who paid Kazuya handsomely for “comfort women.”

Kazuya was a business-suit yak.

His business was to cater to the kinky side of Japan’s overstressed, buttoned-down “salary men.” The hard-core pornography: he imported it. The sex tours to Bangkok, Manila, Taipei, Seoul: he ran them. When it came to “selling spring”—a Japanese euphemism for pimping young girls—he was without equal. Some were unwanted children from China, where boys were preferred in the one-child system. Others came from the Philippines, where girls
lured out of poor villages with the offer of good jobs ended up stripping and hooking in the bars and clubs of the
mizu shobai,
Kazuya’s “water business.” But what raked in the biggest bucks were his “date clubs,” places where, for a hefty membership fee, doctors, lawyers, and corporate execs could select and fuck a North American blonde.