Tokio Whip (36 page)

Chapter 11

NISHI-NIPPORI–NIPPORI

And then Lang had to return to Vienna for a few months, there was no choice, an unfinished job, a previous commitment, I forget what but there was no choice– we all felt sorry about it, not knowing what would develop – Roberta seemed to take it alright, and I emphasize the “seem”– apparently they wrote and spoke regularly … but she was never sure if he'd return– and then she surprised us all, she visited him, they got away and were together –
wherever
they were.

***

He described to me his reunion with Tokio. Like a cat who's come back from vacation and as soon as he's back immediately starts to inspect familiar places. He ran off to see if everything was as it should be – the Ginza owl, the red “Tokyo” neon sign in “Asian lettering” just up the street from Ark Hills, the Shimbashi locomotive, the English books section of Maruzen bookstore, the Temple of the Fox at the top of Mitsukoshi department store, which he found invaded by little girls and Rock singers. He was told that it was now little girls who made and unmade stars, that producers shuddered before them. He was told that a disfigured woman took off her mask in front of passersby and scratched them if they did not find her beautiful. Everything interested him. He who didn't give a damn if the Dodgers won the pennant or about the results of the Daily Double, asked feverishly how Chiyonofuji had done in the last sumo tournament. He asked for news of the Imperial family, of the Crown Prince, of the oldest mobster in Tokyo who appears regularly on television to teach goodness to children. These simple joys he had never felt – of returning to a country, a house, a family – but twelve million anonymous inhabitants could supply him with them.

– Chris Marker-Silva,
Sans Soleil
(1982)

***

I remember seeing my parents making love, Hiroko recalls. That's when we lived farther out, all in that cramped room. My father on top and then my mother, and she just sounding so delirious and happy and he so happy in making her happy. And I just watched. I couldn't really see much, they were under the covers. I was happy to watch; I didn't want to say anything, I was just happy to see them happy, my parents. And they still seem happy. I saw myself make love once. In a hotel. I guess I seemed happy to myself too.

***

Kaoru has a day off. He wears only his underwear. He is sitting on the floor at the table, with a large can of beer. The floor is covered with newspapers, weekly magazines, and comicbooks. His wife has gone shopping with the kids. This Sunday he is too tired to accompany them. “I'll see the kids next Sunday,” he says without either contempt or apology. After another, smaller beer, he is bored enough to go for a walk. He walks down the five flights of stairs to the street. He sees the Christian neighbor who takes her wheelchair-bound husband to church everyday, their two boys following. He sees the young girl with large breasts talking with two boys on motorbikes, and wonders when she'll turn eighteen so he can see her in a porno video. He sees a couple of American soldiers from the nearby Yokota airbase. They are laughing, and he is sure the joke is on him. He silently curses them. A couple of Americans in the local liquor shop are singing a Country song that he vaguely recognizes. He thinks America must be a wonderful place if it can produce such music. He sees other families, apparently happy. Finally, he runs into his own family, and before they can say anything, he suggests they go out for spaghetti and ice cream tonight. He is in America, on a bus. An American acquaintance – some guy who works in the International Section – is a few seats before him. The bus stops. There's a bar. The American gets into a fight. The American is now black, he's fighting with a white guy. A knife, a death. Kaoru is in the car with the white guy whom he hardly knows but who seems to know Kaoru well. There's an exchange of knives. Kaoru is in a car in America with a knife in his hand, the murder weapon, wondering how he got here. He awakes in a sweat, his wife stirs for a moment. He goes to look after his children, sweeps the dream away, walks back to bed.

Hiroko is wandering around Yokota airbase in North-Northwest Tokyo. And then it becomes her old home in
shitamachi
. Her grandmother is adjusting the picture on the television. Her younger brother is reading a comic-book. Her mother is holding back tears. Her father is in the shop on the first floor. And Hiroko is supposed to be finishing her homework, but in fact she is daydreaming about a boy in her class and wondering how she can get out of the house tonight to see him at the school playground. Then, she has just said goodnight to him; she is restless. It is almost midnight. She runs to the station and gets the last train to Tokyo station. She walks to Hibiya, and wanders into the Imperial Hotel. She is fifteen years old, but she is a thinking woman. A businessman offers her a drink. She accepts. He invites her to his room. She refuses, but she does accept an invitation for a walk in Hibiya Park. There she allows him to fondle her, she gives him her panties. She accepts ten thousand yen for the twenty minutes. She returns to the hotel, and stays in the coffeeshop and lobby, reading Kafka, an author she's chosen just because she liked the name, “kafuka.” In the lobby, Hank Williams's “Lonesome Highway” is playing, again and again.

Hiroko, awakes in a panting sweat, remembering the night.

***

She sits dripping over his face, his eyes strain to still the image.

***

Van Zandt, that coincidental man went walking. One step after another, steady, certain in their grip of the ground below, but uncertain of their destination. At the train station he saw a young, rice-skinned woman in red and black on the platform opposite, and thought. A few hours later in another of the hearts of the city – it doesn't matter which – he saw her again shopping for a pencil. He was shopping for some paper. That evening in another – what we have called here – the “hearts” of the city, yes, he saw her again, alone, drinking, and he thought. One woman, three hearts; three hearts; one city.

One man, one van Zandt.

***

–
Not quite your kind of area, Hiro?

–
What, why do you say that?

–
Well, I can't really picture you spending too much time appreciating the finer delights of the older city.

–
Oh no?

–
Not really.

–
When was the last time you got stuck – I mean, you were here?

–
When we went to that all-tofu restaurant.

–
Oh yes, that was two or three years ago.

–
Excuse me, but I don't think that was quite the last time, Hiro.

–
Shh!

–
Oh, comeon, no need to keep it a secret.

–
Oh, alright.

–
What?

–
What?

–
Well, what's the main thing you notice when you're on the Yamanote Line and it swings past these stations, Nishi-Nippori and Nippori?

–
Uhm, the signs?

–
The ravishing beauty of the view!

–
That one can see Mt. Tsukuba from here without interference!

–
The clean air!

–
The silence!

–
The luxurious housing!

–
All the greenery!

–
The cables and poles have all gone underground!

–
The happy faces!

–
Relaxed!

–
Loving!

–
Everyone speaking English!

–
Or French!

–
Or any language, as well as Japanese!

–
Ok, ok, comeon, seriously.

–
Ok, ok, the same thing you notice from anywhere along the Yamanote Line.

–
The filth!

–
The garbage!

–
The human degradation!

–
The meanness and sullenness of the people!

–
Their evil insularity!

–
The concrete and steel!

–
Alright, alright, seriously now.

–
Ok, what?

–
???

–
The love hotels.

–
That's it?

–
Well, there are a lot in this particular area, don't you think? Between Ikebukuro and Ueno, all the spillover.

–
Mmm, I'm not so sure.

–
But other in-between areas have lots of love hotels.

–
Maybe they're just bigger here. Taller buildings, you know.

–
Maybe.

–
So, Hiro, what you're saying is that this entire area – which does have personality, and a lot of important history too – of all of it, all it makes you think of is its love hotels?

–
Well, uhm, yes, or all I'm saying is that that's what you notice from the train.

–
Not me.

–
?

–
?

–
?

–
I notice the light, endless. Look!

***

My cunt lies to the east, rises for you, easterly. Talk to me, cunt of mine, I want to be the little man walking inside you as you walk – easterly.

***

The costs of confusion notwithstanding, no place else I'd rather be, give me an address, make me a map on a scrap of paper, I'll find you, discern the system, read the signs,
chome
,
machi
, whatever, gizmo shop, soba shop, no confusion, no cost, Columbus-Lang discovers the city the way he unravels a memory or dream!

***

Baudelaire on the splendors and miseries of living outside the loop: “The complex elements which go to make up the painful and glorious decor of civilization.”

***

Stop, enough! One bead of cum; licked away, the rest for breakfast.

***

1657: The Fire of the Long Sleeves

“In every look that comes my way, every woman says: within my sleeves the whorl of pain.”

Tokyoites are not blessed with that capacity for memory that Kyotoites possess. In the ancient capitol, for example, if someone mentions “the war,”' you will not be certain if your interlocutor is referring to the Second World War or to one that occurred in the nineteenth century, or even the sixteenth or twelfth! As for Tokyo, if one speaks of a fire, well, that would probably refer to one that occurred just last week. But if one were to speak of a “great fire,” then most people might immediately think of either the air-raids of 1945, or the earthquake of 1923. But if one were to press the point, then memory – or deep reading in history – might bring to mind the Yoshiwara fire of 1911, or the Kanda fire of 1881 (Kanda was actually said the be the “best place for fires” ((in what respect, having them or viewing them?)) ), or the Ginza fire of 1872, or the fires of 1834 or 1829. Going even further back, one might recall the fire of 1682 that destroyed a great part of the city. (And it too is a story for which we must make space in this book, for it involves love.) But for the true Edophile, the greatest of all fires occurred in 1657: The Fire of the Long Sleeves.

“The Flowers of Edo” they're called. Could any other city create such a
festive
name for those disasters that have so often – “no fewer than ninety-seven major conflagrations between 1603 and 1868” – brought devastation to the city? The author knows something of the spirit. In Spring 1994 a fire destroyed a home just two houses away from my own. While people were concerned and somewhat afraid, there was too a definite ebullience in the air: the whole neighborhood out in its pajamas, people scurrying here and about for a better view, the excitement at watching those quintessential Tokyo heroes, the firemen, at work.

Edo was barely half a century old when it occurred; indeed, one might say that 1657 marked the city's second birth so great were the changes the fire brought about. A site that had been constructed as a military fortification suddenly had to face the fact that it was indeed a city of people: over-crowded Edo had to be expanded; firebreaks and fire-brigades created; whole areas had to be rethought, rearranged, removed. It was a moral lesson too: out were the flamboyant mansions done in the Momoyama style; in was a greater austerity. In fact, large parts of the present-day city only came into existence because of the fire. What is now the great fish market of Tsukiji had never before existed. Tsukiji was founded on reclaimed land as a result of the pressing need to expand the city. Scores of shrines and temples were moved out to areas such as Asakusa, Yushima, Yotsuya and Azabu. And besides the new firebreaks, most importantly, the first bridge across the Sumida was built, Ohashi (the “Great Bridge”). (Simply read Waley: like a running theme in his book we keep coming upon phrases on the order of “this came about in the wake of the fire of 1657.”)

And why “long-sleeves”? The reader might know that kimonos with long sleeves are worn by unmarried women. The legend is this: A certain kimono was worn by three separate young women all of whom lived in the area of Honmyōji in Hongō. The first woman died lovelorn; the other two both died after having just worn the same kimono. Before any more unfortunate deaths might occur, the priests of the temple decided to get rid of the kimono by burning it. While attempting to do so, however, a strong wind caught the flaming garment and whirled it here and there, to this roof and that as if it were the embodiment of the haunted, unsatisfied souls of those three young women.