Tokio Whip (27 page)

***

On March 30, 1989, while riding the Ginza line to work, he saw the ad for “Lang's Whiskey,” and, while not a whiskey drinker himself, resolved, out of pure auspiciousness, to not only get a copy of the ad – advertising so saturated his city – but also a bottle of this his whiskey, have it available for friends.

***

–
I've been saved by this neighborhood. “Woman saved by neighborhood!” Really, who needs the rest of the city?, needs the High City, the Yamanote? Who needs it? Ok, ok, maybe some people do – “Man Saved by High City” – but for now I can relax, wend my leisurely way – still can't figure out the way around the Jōmyō-in – is that it? – the way the road curves and then you're – where? – that's the point, isn't it? – a right way to live – history is made in the daytime too – just by walking along the wandering paths – let the history writers try to catch up with us – but they can't – they live outside of time – to them it's a thing – a timeline and all that – here it's just the living, the doing of it – it's own reward – no wonder the people are always so amused every time some foreigner or historian or whatever kind of academic comes up to them, asking some question about this or that – how many generations has your family made these paper balloons? – please tell us again the distinction between western and Japanese ice cream – would you mind being in a picture with me, please? – what, again, is Japanese swimming? – really, they are never exasperated – are they just amused at the human inability to get things? – or the weirder human desire to – to what? – well, not to know things, but to know things in these ways – and at the expense of knowing them by doing them – but again, they never get angry – would I? – yes, at this point – maybe not later, if I live here a few years – ah, the ice-cream place! – “Woman saved by Japanese ice cream!”

–
So, Roberta, what is Japanese swimming?

***

Ah, this city, van Zandt quickly reflects on a morning after, a walk through Sendagaya, run into Maria, we go to a bar, meet Stefan there, in comes Johnnie, jokes, obscenities – jeez, he knows the best dirty jokes!, some girls at the next table, flirt, a couple of name cards. Come home. Messages from Sabrina, Inez (who so rarely calls). Not a bad day.

***

Three Encounters.

1. I was approaching the station, eager to get on the train and to continue trying to read one of Calvino's early Palomar stories in the original. Two young men and a woman – art-school types – came up to me and asked if they could take a picture of me standing in front of a poster for a pop star's concert, the pop star silly, dressed in pink as a working woman in front of a refrigerator. I oblige. I give them my address, and they promise to send me a copy. (They never do; not intentionally, they're just broke I suppose.) As they're leaving, I ask them why they wanted the photo, or rather me, in it. One of the young men quickly responds, “because you're cool.”

2. I was on the train standing in front of a small group of boys, about ten years old. I am silently reading my Pushkin, occasionally glancing round the page at the boy's playing their silly games (or gazing anxiously into some distance, anxious about – what was it?, I wonder now). Most of the boys by now have gotten off the train. At one of my side glances, one of them grabs my attention with a smile that in a decade's time will stop women a bit too often, and I hope not cruelly. Silently, speaking with eyes and gestures, he gains my agreement to engage him in a fierce struggle of scissors-paper-stone. He does not smile; he is intrigued by this curious foreign man who somehow represents mysteries he feels he'd like a short glimpse into. We face off; two out of three. I trounce the kid. He snaps his fingers in mock-disappointment, reaches into his pocket, takes out a five-yen coin, hands it to me, and he gets off the train. He smiles at me from the platform and I return to my Russian.

3. I was going up what seemed to be an endless number of stairs and stairways in a station I had come to for the first time. Damn, I remember thinking to myself – it was during those first years here – not only am I climbing all these steps, I'll probably take the wrong exit, too, and then have to backtrack half a kilometer or more. Three-quarters of the way up a final flight of what look like hopeful stairs, I passed a group of three boys in school uniforms and those heavy leather book bags on their backs playing scissors-paper-stone. As one wins he gains a stair; as one loses he steps down. It occurred to me that this could go on eternally, and I imagined the boys, their mother's bringing them their meals, fellow schoolmates helping them with their studies (their diplomas delivered by motorbike messenger), phones and faxes set up on the stairs (they are portable, able to go up and down the stairs as the game proceeds – a shower and toilet too) so that the boys – men now – can work and support the families they have propagated (in the discretely placed beds, also portable) ... until finally, decades hence a small temple has already been installed anticipating the day when the three boys will become saints and worshipped as examples of friendship and stick-to-itiveness. I remember that I laughed to myself at the silliness of the fantasy I'd just fashioned and had just emerged from the station – aha!, it was the right exit. – and I heard a great triumphant shout, and a second later, an equally great moan. Had a soul been released? But it had been no fantasy: I really had been present at the birth of a myth: one boy had been liberated, up another rung closer to the light of day, while another had been sent hurtling so much deeper below. I make a mental note to come back to this station in a couple of days.

I think of these encounters now, think that I participated that small much in the real, the natural, the deep life of the city – but that in all three instances – being cool, winning five yen, seeing the birth of a myth – I had only a functional part. It was not me, it was not my life that was involved here, I instigated nothing: any other foreigner would have been just as cool; the kid would have a good laugh at dinner when he told his parents and then forgot me; the boys on the stairs took no notice of me, the myth was only seen by me, it will live its life without me. I was not, in short, a part of the city. I would that the city would love me back, and yet. These thoughts leave me bereft. (And in that do I become a part of the city? Is my bereftness that of a man or a boy? Am I that much more a part of the city in being ignored by it – and is this in fact an acceptance of some special sort?)

***

On his deathbed, near Uguisudani, the poet Masaoka Shiki wrote of the things he most wished to see: “moving pictures; bicycle races and stunts; lions and ostriches in the zoo; ... automatic telephones and red letter boxes; a beer hall; women fencers; and Western-style theatre. But I haven't time to list them all.”

***

SCENE EIGHT: MUSEUM

It's an opening at the Hara Museum. Japanese Art Deco, former residence of an Imperial relation. The art crowd, the diplomatic crowd, the fashion crowd, the hangers on crowd. A small crowd of people interested in art; a smaller crowd of artists. A small building with twists and turns, a spiral staircase that leads two ways, either a white-tiled, scallop-curved room, or the roof (one imagines as a helicopter pad, or a place for assignations: “Don't fret, no one's going to suspect we're up here, they came to be seen, not to see, to glide across carpets, not to walk on gravel.”) Two gardens. A café, a gift shop. Lots of people, lots of talk – no one looks another in the eye; instead, the eyes look in two different directions at once, one to make sure someone is looking at you, the other to see who has just entered and with whom you can engage in more small-talk; or is it the same at any opening? Probably so, so let's leave that at that. The only place to be sure of meeting someone at the Hara – or this or that museum or gallery or reception or cocktail (in one's “smoking” – even Gardel sings of it) – is the staircase.

And there she stands her ground. She can't miss him now, no sir, no way. She hears snippets of conversation. “Teaches at Musabi, but it's all crafts, you know.” “His wife is the real force.” “
Japan Times
? You've got to be kidding!” “Elemental, my dear, elemental, never seen anything so profound. So like our own artists – who did it first, you know” “He does stuff for boardrooms, eh?” “Well, she's kept up with her art magazines.” “Pretentious shit.” “Scribbles with a ballpoint, eh? And they call that art?” “My six-year old does similar stuff.” “She dresses weirder than her art.” “Korean, is he?” “Site specific? So, where's the site? Oh, here! Ha, ha!”

She can't stand it any longer. She thinks the art is good. Well, some of it. She wants to go back to the white room. Yes! That's where he'd be.

She enters. She is alone. No, she senses his presence. He is so silent, and she respects this silence. She cannot turn to look at him. It is something about the room, the white tiles, but warm in some soothing sort of way. He opens the door – and leaves.

But the white holds her back. White on white – she's changed costume for tonight, is herself a combination, white suit, white-on-white blouse – it holds her still. White, whiteness. The light to fit all. His steps, the closing door, such stillness.

She walks to the roof in order to recover, to feel the cooling air.

She re-enters the room. Now it is all dark, except for some flickering lights lining the wall. They are LEDs, numbers flashing continually, an installation by Tatsuo Miyajima. There is something eternal about it, high-tech and Zen, this garden of darkness and lights. And again she senses his presence, but is too transfixed by this odd, unexpected peace, this garden, to approach him. He exits.

She does not regret it, being so close, as she is so still now. But oh so close! And so unable to speak. (“Mister, is this your portfolio? I was on the train when …”) What is it that stops her, is it the room, the curve, the white?

She breaks free and rushes to the roof, sees the taxi speed away, off into the maze of streets, the city and its mysteries, lights flashing on and off, a mystery of signs saying nothing forever. Garden city.

In the cab, he wonders momentarily about his portfolio, if it will ever turn up. He shrugs the thought away, recalls the attractive woman who had entered the room, but admits that he left suddenly as a courtesy. It is not a room to be shared.

***

Then one night in a beer hall hallucination – a beautiful painter in the background – Cafferty sees Roberta and Lang, van Zandt and Arlene, Hiromi and the boy, and all the others together again after two or three decades, the dead the abandoned spurned lost, failed ... loves, brought again together for a moment – loves, once, lost.

***

Strange and rich, a phrase Hiromi stumbles upon. That's the way to go. Well, I have rich parents, and they're sure strange. I hope my clothes are. And I think my taste in Pop music is the taste of the nation's. I could learn a little more about shoes, though. I'd better talk to Hiroko about this.

***

Yes, of course I can understand him, I'm capable too, as Roberta knows all too well and ill, of such tremendous passions, overwhelming obsessions – Ophuls, Sternberg. By all means the city. To think I once wanted to leave – but then. My early, whining period. To get drunk, to love madly, to take that chance (at “a mistake as long as eternity”) – otherwise what?, dying and never knowing. But this question, this matter of loving the whole city the way he does, the kit and kaboodle as Cafferty might say in a lighthearted moment: ah, this is a different matter, more in kind certainly than in degree. Let me see: yes, I love the city. No, I do not love all of it. I do not know all of it, and I doubt that anyone ever could –without becoming an utter boor that is. No, I do not want to leave the city, but not because I love it so much as I find a certain freedom here; call that a love. Perhaps. But it's like a cat, the city that is. It does not require your love; you give it yours and it can just as soon walk away. Is she, to give the city a sex for the moment, is she a great mistress, a great courtesan? Ready to spurn, to crush the lover underfoot, after having reduced his dignity and wallet dry. Whatever Lola wants, indeed. Perhaps that might be the metaphor and the narrative he really should be writing. But would he then play Sternberg or Jannings to Tokyo's Lola? (Or Tokyo as Lulu?) Probably both. But to go back: yes, I can say that I “love” the city in a manner of speaking, but I will not allow myself to be ruled by it. And as much as I admire, am attracted to, desire to know ever more intimately the city, I can still all the meanwhile stand back, see it for what it is not – see, for example the drastic perhaps irremediable shape it is in – and see it for what it pretends to be, see the false lover behind the true (And thus see myself? Getting close here, Lang.), and be prepared to renounce it should that time and event ever become necessary, which I pray will not occur because, well – I love the city too much. Perhaps he is on to something – perhaps not.

Chapter 9

IKEBUKURO–OTSUKA

Roberta's Tokyo – they'd meet once or twice a week, she chose the places, a classical café in Nakano, tempura at the Hilltop Hotel – you know, the writer's hotel – they carefully avoided the west and … and eventually they extended their borders, began to explore Nishi-Ogikubo, Kokubunji, Kunitachi – and he began to explore the city more, both directions, came to be intrigued as she'd known he would and hoped he would, the Lang she knew, the Lang she suspected – Lang, liking almost all of Tokyo, hers his.

***

BOYS IN PINK HOUSES

A lingerie shop named Revenger

A mansion named Gloria

A studio named La Quan

***

My horrid ability to imagine the worst. Woke up this morning from a dream in which I discovered – I couldn't even be there with them! – that Lang and Roberta had died. Van Zandt had left me a note, and all he said was, “cut yourself out of it, man, cut yourself out as soon as you can!” And Arlene had left without a trace.

***

R'n'L!!!!!!!!!

I remember reading that Kyoto was never officially undeclared the capitol once Tokyo was so declared. Meaning that the country has two capitols. I thought it was in Waley, but my third reading of the book proves me wrong. (Now I am convinced that books are haunted and can read their reader's minds. I mean, I was
sure
that info was in Waley. Now I suspect that the reading ghosts or whatever they are read my thoughts and decided to play a trick on me. Or maybe we are each born with book hobgoblins. They aren't peculiar to each single book, but to each reader ((or lover, or film-maker or whatever)). I mean this has happened before – and I don't think it's a matter of a now-failing once-perfect memory. You know that book
Isles of Gold
? I was convinced – no, I
am
convinced – that I read in it the location of Hiraga Gennai's grave. Now: pfft!, can't find it. ((You don't know where his grave is, do you? Or was it the museum I was looking for?)) )

Where was it, in Tsukadajima?, that those three children just refused to be photographed, but kept teasing us to try? Finally got 'em though, and a good one. I even went back a week later to give 'em a copy, but couldn't find them anywhere.

I remember always being aware of
Bringing Up Baby
, but I can't really remember when exactly I turned on to Cary Grant – saw the whole truth and shebang and accepted him as my personal savior (as should we all, and then, in Jackie deShannon's phrase, “the world will be a better place / for you ((bop bop)), and me ((bop bop)) / you just wait ((bop bop)), and seeee”).

The day I lost it completely!

Speaking of the 80s, I'll never forget all that late-night TV porno, the pantie diaries, the girls on their knees eating bananas. And besides the porn, remember the laughing prankster Jesus? Christ, can there have ever been a better decade in TV?

I remember getting drunk last night, but not the first time I ever got drunk. One should, I think. But I do remember my first drink. Which I can't tell you about. (Actually, now that I think of it, that was my second drink; the first I just remembered.)

I remember my first sight of Tokyo all too well, because we passed right on through it and boy was I ever disappointed. Can't quite remember the exact date of my first day here though, but it must've been about May 1980. Jeez, that's great, Spring, a new decade. Sweet.

My bed was always falling apart and I had to fix it every other morning, and one day I told Kathryn about it and we found out we were sleeping in the same bed – so to speak.

There's all that talk about Elvis's heroes being Dean Martin and Perry Como and the like, right? So what? They were every young pop singer's at the time. But don't also forget that Elvis said he wished he had a voice like Clyde's. Now dig
that
, my friends.

And I remember – oh, yes I do – Lang saying how anxious he was to get out of Tokyo. And then how anxious he was to get back.

I remember always thinking what a great memory I have, and then SJ proving me so mortally wrong.

Anyway, don't forget to put a little love in your heart. (Always did like Jackie de Shannon – gotta make “When You Walk in the Room” my ringtone.)

***

And they call me mad? A-ha! I like this now. Of course, he only wants to out-do me here. Show me your love. Heard that line often enough. Said it too. And had the love shown. Bodies, loves, tears, slop. Tra la la, the city goes tra la la and tumbles out of my arms. Tra la la I stumble to my bed and bid ye all ... Morpheus rises, and pins me against the walls of memory and dream; we embrace, fuck our ... fuck our what? ... and from our copulations the daughter-son called Tokyo is born. Is that what he wants to hear? Is that the love he professes? He may understand the city street-level, and even the vast underbelly; but what does he know of a city's dreams? Copulate and dream, hallucinate the city; see it for the hallucination that it is – not just the ghosts of history, not just the drunken roiling crowds, not even just the erotics of everyday life – but be hallucinated in turn by the city. The monk in Ginza with his begging bowl and hat that covers his eyes; the parking lot attendants at Seed; the college girl getting seven hundred yen an hour waiting tables at Cozy Corner: could he come up with them? And their dreams of life and the city? Or could they hallucinate him? Would they want to? But they in their own way also join Morpheus and together copulate with the city they give birth to. He has much work to do. Tra la la, Marianne.

***

Kazuo is blessed, a challenging job, international clients, good friends, and Kazuko. Once a week he joins his coworkers for a post-work drink, followed by dinner, and then on occasion an extra drink or two, The girls in the office – to whom he is invariably polite – could envy him, could desire him, but his own grace precludes those possibilities and only renders them the more selfless. His male and female colleagues like to work with him as he pushes them further without anyone getting hurt. They trust him. And his superiors keep their eyes on him, grooming him along for a future executive position.

Surely, there must be something wrong.

This week's office party is not unlike any other. The round of beers, the variety of foods, the good cheer and jokes, the flirtations, the bosses leaving early (though not before leaving a good sum towards the bill) so that the younger workers can relax. At a neighboring table, one of the girls notices some former university classmates, and invites them over. Among them are a recently arrived foreign couple. They are young and fresh; they've come to Japan for two years to teach English and pay back their student loans. Their Japanese is awful and so everyone has a good laugh. The man is interested in high-tech gadgets, and has heard a lot about Japanese TV comedy shows; his wife finds bonsai fascinating, and also wants to take flower arranging lessons. She has bonsai at home, in fact is a member of an international bonsai society. No, they don't know much about Japanese advertising, though there certainly seems to be a lot of it, the man remarks, “I mean, we've been bombarded with it since the minute we got off the plane. You hear messages from loudspeakers on the streets, all the neon everywhere, the ads on the trains, gee, it's just really everywhere, and a lot of it in the four different writing systems. But the beer commercials seem very good.” With that another round is ordered. Kazuo takes it upon himself to offer a few remarks about the Japanese approach to advertising, and also manages to introduce his own firm's work, the client-company relationship, the top-level art directors, the independents and mavericks. The couple is surprised to learn that one can find advertising industry magazines on the racks in bookstores, and copywriters and art directors, pop stars in their own right, appearing on TV talk shows. Talk turns naturally to pop culture. The couple is also amazed – “weirded out,” as they put it – at all the cuteness they see around them. Kazuo is unable to offer any sort of explanation. A couple of the office assistants try – to no avail. This frustration results finally in an order of
saké
, and more foods, and naturally, a discussion of Japanese food. Both of the Americans like it – or much of it. “Boy, one of those sushis was so tough I must've chewed it thirty or forty times, and I still couldn't swallow it easily. Finally, I just had to wash it down with a good slug of beer.” This amuses the Japanese, and Kazuo remarks that there is no special method, no one can soften up some of those “sushis,” and that the thing to do is chew it only a couple of times and then – yes, wash it down with a – “slug?,” a good swallow – of beer. “Well, I'll be!” exclaims the man, a remark which no one of the Japanese seems to understand, but to which they nod agreeably. Some
eda-mame
are ordered and this the couple likes very much, their hands going back and forth repeatedly popping the soy beans into their eager mouths, a couple of the girls hiding their giggles. The woman then remarks – flatteringly, it must be admitted – at how good all of the people at the table speak English. This everyone quickly denies. One of the women asks if it shouldn't be “well” – and the Americans exchange puzzled looks, without answering. Kazuo replies that their English may be just passable, and that he and his colleagues have no illusions about their lack of facility in the language. (Though in this regard
he
is being overly modest.) He adds though that his company sponsors English lessons for all of his colleagues, an offer that most of them take advantage of. Reciprocally, he wonders if the couple plan to take Japanese lessons. The woman answers that before leaving home they took a three-month crash course, but now that they're here, it's like they're back in class, day one. But they'll give it a good try. And then she orders a little more
saké
, and more of “these here green beans.”

More and more good cheer.

Surely something is not right.

But there isn't.

And Kazuo sleeps well that night.

***

You've been tried and thrown over, Tokyo, but I won't be, Hiromi defies.

***

No, not for the first time in the two or three weeks since he's returned from those four months in Middle Europe, does van Zandt pick up a paper to discover five stories on his small, generally unheard of hometown. In the six years she has lived in Tokyo, Roberta has come across seven such items concerning her equally small town in Northern California, the last being the September before last, this being Halloween midnight, she sees no end in sight.

***

–
No, no, I'm sure it's here somewhere.

–
I think they tore it down.

–
No, they wouldn't have.

–
But we don't seem to be getting anywhere near it.

–
Well, was it by Ikebukuro or by Otsuka station?

–
Or in between?

–
Uhm …

–
Oh, Kaoru!

–
Maybe it's just between his ears!

–
A point of light, eh?

–
And you say you saw it once from the train and thought you could see all of Tokyo in it?

–
Definitely between his ears.

–
What kind of light? A point? There must be a million points of light around here. It's certainly as bright as Ginza or Shinjuku.

–
Or Shibuya.

–
Right, how do you expect us to find one single light?

–
Well, I suppose we have to let it catch us off guard.

–
Oh, so we're not really looking for it –

–
It's looking for us?

–
This was after a little boozing, was it?

–
No, no – it's got to be here somewhere. How could I make up anything like this?

–
That's a point.

–
I remember a nice bar here. I looked into a glass and thought I could see the next five years – and I did: lost my girl, lost my job, had to move back to the country and start all over again.

–
Are you sure you want to find this point of light, Kaoru?

–
Hey, I've been to the same bar!

–
Must've drunk out of the same glass.

–
Yeah, let's go look for a glass of whisky.

–
Hold on just a bit more, guys.

–
Ah, we're getting closer to the porno theaters. You can see a lot there, a special perspective.

–
Front row, and you can see the world.

–
Is the Seibu here still the world's biggest department store?

–
Why?

–
Just wondering.

–
No, I think the Sogo in Yokohama is now.

–
Well, I suppose it doesn't matter.

–
Why would it?

And they continue in the long curve from station to station. Kaoru was drunk that night, but he wasn't in Ikebukuro, and he did see the light.

–
Now can we get a drink, Kaoru?

–
Yeah, how 'bout it? There are lots of places in Otsuka.

–
Yes, but you have to be careful, there are lots of gangsters around here.

–
And not only Chinese.

–
Look at that old lady with all the cats.

–
Say, here's where that great acupuncturist has his office.

–
He's Banana Yoshimoto's acupuncturist, you know.