SEVENTEEN, 
by Kenzaburo Oe. 
Published in 1961

CHAPTER ONE, part one.

 Today is my birthday. I turned juu-nana-sai. In English, they call it sebentiin! My family - Father, Mother, and Older Brother - didn't even notice (or perhaps they pretended not to notice), so I didn't say anything either.  At nightfall, my elder sister, who works as a nurse at the nearby Military Hospital, came home. She poked her head in the bathroom, where I was lathering myself with soap, and said, "Hey, Mr. Seventeen! Don't you want to pinch your new muscles?" 

Elder Sister is extremely near-sighted, and her thick glasses make her even more embarrassed. She's already given up all hope of finding a husband, and that's why she works at the hospital. She can't deal with reality so, in despair, retreats into a world of books, even though that makes her eyesight even worse. Even the odd words she spoke to me just now, she probably got them from some book or other. But even though she's pathetic, she was the only one who remembered my birthday. 

Just knowing that one person remembered made me feel better, less like a "lonely showering guy." With her words echoing in my head - pinch the muscle, pinch the muscle - I discovered that my sex organs were hardening amidst the soap suds: bo-ki! I discreetly went to the bathroom door and locked it. It seems I get bo-ki all the time nowadays. It gives me a good feeling throughout my entire body - like energy is welling up and growing to the tips of my fingers. So that's why I like the bo-ki. And looking at the bo-ki too, of course. I resumed washing all the nooks and crannies of my body with one hand while "self-satisfying" with the other.  This is the first "self-satisfaction" of my seventeenth year.  The first time I ever self-satisfied, I worried that it might be bad for me, so I snuck a peek at a medical sex textbook in the bookstore. The book said that - apart from guilt - self-satisfaction caused no harm whatsoever. I was so relieved. 

And let me just say this: I can't stand the reddish-black, "totally nude" head of the adult penis, throbbing sickly when the foreskin is rolled completely back. For that matter, I can't stand the bluish head of a boy's penis - it looks like the bud of some sick, stinky plant. However, my own penis is another matter. The foreskin gently folds back like a loose sweater to reveal a magnificent turtle head the color of an elegant rose. And if the foreskin is worked correctly, the friction will melt some of the smegma, which acts as a marvellous lubricant.  Only a penis in peak condition can achieve such excellent self-satisfaction, so I'm very proud of it.  

When the school doctor came to teach my class about hygiene, everyone laughed when he explained how to clean off the smegma. Here is the reason: everyone in class finds their smegma an indispensable aid to self-satisfaction. As for me, I am an expert in self-satisfaction. So when I am about to ejaculate, I grab hold of the foreskin, the way one draws shut the mouth of a draw-string purse, and ejaculate into the resulting container. This is a technique I invented, myself.   Also I have cut a hole in the pocket of my trousers so that I can self-satisfy during the boring moments of class.  Furthermore, I possess a most excellent magazine, a magazine intended for marriageable women. This magazine has a special color supplement. The supplement concerns a newlywed woman who describes in detail the damage to her hymen and inflammation of her vaginal walls which was inflicted on her wedding night.I often recall her confessions when I self-satisfy. 

My bo-ki, gently wrapped in its foreskin (wreathed in faint blue shadows and whitish tinges) resembles nothing so much as the tip of a rocket - both in its shape and power. As I caressed it, I realized for the first time that the muscles in my shoulders were beginning to grow. For a brief moment, I stared dumbstruck at the tendons moving beneath my skin, like the latest model of rubber bands. I resolved to put my wondrous new muscles – yes, they’re all mine! -  to use, and resumed scrubbing my body with relish. What a shame I had no one else to share them with, I chuckled ruefully. Everyone! Behold my triceps, my biceps, and even my quads. They’re woefully tiny; just beginning to sprout, but if I take care of them, they will become as big and hard as you could possibly imagine. Perhaps I should ask Father to buy me an ‘expander’ or barbells as a birthday present.  But Father is quite stingy. He’ll doubtless make a sour face if I request athletic equipment.  But – perhaps it’s the warmness of the water and the smoothness of the soap bubbles, the wonderful, fascinating feeling on my skin? – in this good mood, I feel I can persuade him. 

By this time next summer, my muscles will be busting out all over. When I go to the beach, the young ladies’ eyes will follow me around. And when the boys see me, respect will grow in their hearts like a hot seed as they watch me.  The warm sand, the hot and salty summer breeze, the itch of the summer sun’s rays on my skin – I can feel it now! The smell of our young bodies, me and my friends, as we frolic naked in the surf! The splendid noise of our youthful untamed laughter as we gather, more and more of us, at the giant beach party. Suddenly, the feeling grows too much. Everything goes quiet and slow-motion. I am overwhelmed by such happiness, I have an attack of vertigo. Aah! Aah! Aaaaaahhhh!!!!!!!!!! 

I shut my eyes tightly, and grab my hot, firm sexual organs. In that instant, the force erupts from within, sending a gush of semen – my very own semen! I can feel a huge pile of it undulating in the palm of my hand. In that instant, I realized that my giant summer naked beach party had melted into the sea. The noonday sun and blue sky were replaced with the cool wind of fall.  My body was shivering as I opened my eyes. My semen was dripping onto the bathroom floor, where it quickly grew cold and grey, matching my mood exactly.  

I splashed water all over the bathroom, trying to clean every speck of semen. If the remaining spongy clumps were to enter the tile cracks, they could never be cleaned up. If my sister were to sit down while showering, she could become pregnant, I think! She’s abnormal enough as it is; if she were to be polluted by incest, what kind of woman would she become? By the time I’d cleaned the bathroom, I was trembling and chilled to the bone. I stood up, making sure to splash loudly so that Mother would know I was done with my bath – if I take too much time, she grows suspicious.  Then she’ll start saying mean things like, “That child! Just last year he was taking little bird-baths. I wonder what he found in there that’s so interesting?” 

I continued to noisily pick up my clothes, while quietly unlocking the door. In the instant of my orgasm, the boundary between my inside and outside disappeared, and I was filled with a sense of courage and good-will toward everyone. But now, the small remaining bits of amity and confidence were headed down the drain, along with the last of the semen-smelling hot water. There was a large mirror hung in the small clothes-changing room. I looked at my naked body in the yellow afternoon light, dejected by the lonely form I saw standing there. Who is this crestfallen seventeen-year-old, with his pathetic wisps of pubic hair? With his sex organs tucked inside his underpants? With the foreskin shrunken up, until it is nothing but blue-black wrinkles, looking like a pupa?

Smeared with water or semen or Lord-knows-what, my testicles hang nearly to my knees. What’s more, since my body is backlit, one can’t see my muscles at all – my silhouette is nothing but skin and bone. I suppose the light in the bathroom was more flattering. I am despondent! Unable to bear the sight any longer, I put on my shirt. As my head emerged from the neck-hole, I bent to scrutinize my face closely in the mirror.  A suspicious, hateful face it was – homely and pale. A truly repulsive visage!  First of all, the skin was so thick and puffy, like a pig’s. I wanted to look like those professional sprinters, with their chiselled features and sun-tans. Their skin clings so tightly to their face-bones, while my skin looks like someone stuffed a bunch of meat and fat under it, willy-nilly. Then there’s the matter of my forehead, which is low and sloping, like a cave-man. I’d try to cover it with bangs, but my hair is so coarse and ugly, such an effort would doubtless backfire. 

And then one can add to this my puffy cheeks and my womanly lips, small and reddish. My eyebrows are thick and low, growing in uneven clumps. The eyes themselves are ‘urameshi’ (full of jealousy, bitterness, and suffering), and the pupils are so beady that one can see the whites on all four sides. My ears are also quite meaty and protrude from my head like the feelers of an insect. In sum, I have the face of a girl – specifically, the kind of girl who is weak, spineless, and shrieks like a small bird at the slightest thing. 

I’m devastated every time someone tries to take my picture. I particularly dread the class photos at school. My face in those pictures always looks like I want to die. What’s more, when we take a family portrait at the photo studios, it is I alone whom they have to retouch! I gave myself one last hateful glare, and found that my face had taken on a pale, unhealthy color: the color of a chronic masturbator.  Whether at school or on the street, my sickly face announces to everyone, “Here comes the chronic masturbator!”  When they see my big, self-hating nose coming towards them, surely they must nudge their friends and say, “Hey! Here comes that guy! You know what he does all day, right?”  Surely they’re out there, right now, spreading vile rumors about me. Oh! I’ve returned to those days when I thought self-satisfaction was harmful to one’s health. If one thinks about it, really I haven’t made any progress whatsoever – I am still so embarrassed that I could die. 

The normal people’s eyes follow me as they mutter, “There goes the compulsive masturbator we’ve heard so much about! With his unhealthy pale skin and beady rueful eyes.”  Surely they get angry with me and spit on my footsteps the second my back is turned.  How I want to murder all of them! Take one big machine-gun and just mow them down! 

I try to force the words out of my mouth: “I want to murder you all! If I had that machine-gun, I’d kill him! And her! And you too! I wish I had a machine-gun right now!”  But I couldn’t make the words rise above a whisper – it accomplished nothing, apart from fogging the glass.

Instantly, my face, which was burning with anger, fell into a mask of despondency as I turned from the cloudy mirror.  How could I hide my shameful condition from the normals who constantly snicker at me?  And what a feeling of freedom it would be, to simply walk down the street with my head held up. But that would take a miracle. Barring divine intervention, everyone who looks at me will say, “You see that guy?” “Who? The compulsive masturbator?” “Yes, he does it all the time!” “He must be that ‘Seventeen’ guy we’ve heard about.”  With that mental image in my head, I realized that this was the most pathetic birthday I’ve had so far. Would the remaining birthdays all be this bad? Or would they be worse?   I wish I had never self-satisfied - all this regretting has given me quite a headache. Desperately, I began to hum “Oh, Carol!” while quickly putting on my remaining clothes. “You can hurt me, you can make me cry, but if you forget about me, I’ll definitely die, oh, ohh, ohhhh! I’m drunk on youuuuuu…”

At dinner, no one said anything about my birthday, even my sister. I began to realize that no one was going to say anything suitable at all. Of course, our family had a habit of not talking at mealtimes to begin with.  Father, who taught at a private school, disapproved of talking while eating. I think he considered it unforgivably low-class. My vigorous self-satisfying had left me exhausted and made my head ache. Perhaps I’m a despicable, polluted Seventeen, but I really wanted to tell them that quiet dinners are deeply unsatisfying. Of course this ‘birthday dinner’ wasn’t any colder than our usual dinners, I told myself. But, I decided to give up asking Father for an expander, and ate my kimchi instead. But in some corner of my heart, could it be that I really did still want a real birthday?  

After I finished reading the evening paper, I passed time by glaring at the TV, while still eating my kimchi and drinking my tea. When I was going to middle school in the countryside, a very tall Korean student called me a runt. After that everyone else teased me. I thought about this while eating my kimchi. On the TV news, the Crown Prince and Princess were giving a press conference from their overseas trip. Their message played on the screen. The prince, whose shifty little eyes darted this way and that, said, “People of Japan, during this time, make us proud of you. Do your best and work hard!” and so on.  Beside him, the Crown Princess smirked as she stared at us, the ‘people of Japan.’

I muttered angrily to myself: "What the hell does he know about work, that tax-robbing parasite! I won't do my best for him!" My sister, who had been sprawled out in front of the television reading a paperback, jumped up in a sudden fury: "Tax-robber?!?  What the hell are you talking about? YOU'RE the one who doesn't know anything!" I flinched before her onslaught, feeling that perhaps I had said a bad thing. My father, however, turned his head away unconcernedly and puffed contentedly on his cigarette. My older brother, who worked for a television company, was busy assembling a model airplane. Mother was working in the kitchen, but spent so much time craning her head to see the television that she accomplished nothing aside from looking foolish.  

In fact, the whole family gave us the cold shoulder, which irked me enough to pay my sister back tit for tat: "That's right! Tax robbers - the Crown Prince and his wife too!  Working folks like us don't owe that bunch a thing! And they're not the only parasites - the army is the root of all the problems! It’s always darkest under the lighthouse, they say.”

"Leave the Crown Prince's wife out of this," hissed my sister, her tiny eyes sparkling with fury from the depths of her coke-bottle glasses. To tell the truth, she was speaking in quite a calm voice. "Why is the army a tax robber?  If we didn't have an army, and America shut down its Japanese bases, who'd keep us safe? Moreover, what about all the second- and third sons of farming families that all work for the army? If the army shut down, what would they do for a living?" 

I was check-mated. I went to the most liberal high school in Tokyo - we even had demonstrations. My gut feelings; my sentiments lie with the left wing. I've been to the demonstrations and written letters to the school papers saying that students should be allowed to attend the anti-military-base marches, which even got me called to the office of the sociology teacher who is the advisor to the student paper. But still, every time my class-mates criticized the army, I thought of my sister who worked at the army hospital, and I wound up defending it. That's why I was check-mated by Elder Sister: she was turning my own words against me!
 
"That's such a cliché argument. You're just recycling the LDP talking points that they repeat incessantly to deceive the people," I snorted derisively. "With your simple-minded naive head, you're just making it easier for them to steal from you!"

"Call me simple-minded if you want," she replied. "But let me ask you this, Mr. Complicated: If America withdraws its soldiers and our army disbands, who will occupy the military vacuum? For example, wouldn't South Korea have the advantage then? This is a fact: our fishing boats are already being captured at the Pusan line (the disputed islands between Japan and Korea) – and that’s WITH our army. So if some country sent even a small military force to our mainland, and we had absolutely no army, what would you advise us to do?"

"Call the United Nations, of course!” I retorted.  “As for the South Koreans, who cares? And these "small military forces" invading our mainland? Please! That's just a ruse; a rhetorical trap. These "enemy countries" only exist in your imagination."

"The U.N. isn't as almighty as you think,” Elder Sister shot back:  “After all, we're not being invaded by Martians!  If a country on Earth is invaded, the invaders will either be U.N. members themselves, or be allied with some U.N. members. It's not like they sit around all day thinking about what's best for Japan. What's more, the U.N. armed forces don't intervene until war has already broken out. For instance in the Korean war, or those wars in bits of Africa. If Japan is invaded, even if the U.N. comes after only three days, there will be countless Japanese already dead! But the U.N. armed forces don't really care - it's not their home country they are defending, is it?

“Anyway, someone will definitely want a base here – Japan is vital to everyone’s Far East policy. If America withdrew from Japan, therefore, your left-wing friends wouldn't feel safe. They'd invite Russia to set up a base, to "keep Japan safe," wouldn't they?" Me, I'm inclined to stick with the Americans. I trust them more than you, anyway. But of course the best thing of all would be to have no foreign army bases on our soil at all.  And that is why it's good to make the SDF a self-sufficient army. Well, and it's also good to give work to the second- and third-born sons of farmers."

I knew I was losing the argument and the knowledge of my immanent defeat tormented me. I hate to lose, and moreover I was certain that I was right.  When my friends and I spoke of such things at school, we always agreed that opinions such as Elder Sister's were full of errors. It was normal to simply ignore them or squash them. Now, though, I found I couldn't win even against such stupid opinions. Shit! Curse the cunning of women!   I was utterly unprepared for a discussion about re-militarization.

"It's the fault of the conservatives in the Cabinet that those farmers' sons are unemployed,” I improvised. “Those wily politicians disenfranchise the poor with their bad policies, then use the desperate unemployed that they created, to further their right-wing military aims. Fuck what you heard and act like you know!" I was getting really worked up.

"But, wasn't it those same politicians who oversaw Japan's post-war boom and economic development?" retorted Elder Sister, smoothly, without any of my panic. She continued, "Admit it: the conservative government is responsible for Japan's prosperity. That's why vast numbers of Japanese continue to vote and support the conservative party."

"Japan's prosperity is . . . . poo-poo!" I yelled, losing all composure. "And the Japanese who vote conservative? Also poo-poo! Nothing but sheep who believe lies!" I was shouting now, and tears fell from my eyes. I knew I had blown it. I couldn't think anymore; I was too consumed with self-hatred and shame. But neither could I stop my tirade: "This Japan should be blown to bits! These kinds of people should be all shot!"

Elder Sister flinched for a second, then her eyes grew ice-cold  and she began to stare at my still-dripping tears of shame. She stared with the pleasure that a cat takes in pouncing on a dead mouse, then dropped her gaze and began to re-read her newspaper as before.  Then she said, in a low voice, "If that's how you think, I guess I’ll never change your mind.
I think left-wingers are treacherous. They say they are for democracy but they obstruct debate in the Diet (congress) every chance they get.  Then they blame the results on "the tyrants": every other party but themselves. They say they're against re-armament because it would violate the constitution, but they don't bother actually trying to find other work for the SDF soldiers. It's like they don't really have a solution, they don't seriously want to disband the SDF, they just want to make trouble for the ruling party. 

“It's like the conservative party is a blender, and the liberals are happy to drink the sweet juice, but turn around and blame conservatives for the spicy juice: "Oh, your blender is broken, you scoundrels!" Honestly, I'd enjoy it if the progressives DID win an election for once, just to see them fall on their face. By all means! Kick out the Americans, liquidate the SDF, lower taxes while giving jobs to all the unemployed, and by-the-way, massively grow the GDP all at the same time. Let's see how that works out. If everyone hates the SDF so much, I’d gladly quit being a military nurse and become a ‘conscientious and progressive worker’ for ‘the people’ . . . if the left-wingers could fulfil all their promises, that is!”

My tears sailed from my face practically down to my posterior while I listened. I had  disgraced myself. My father and Older Brother had impassively watched not only my defeat but seen the depths of my shameful tantrum. My father must know his son is crying, but he irritatingly hides behind his newspaper. He doesn't even care enough to scold me. Perhaps he thinks he's demonstrating American-style liberalism? At the private school where he works, they order parents to adopt American style "liberal" parenting. In fact, they brag about this wanton meddling. I asked a fellow who had transferred from Father's school, if Father's students scorned him or acted up in class. He replied that Father was thought of as unreliable.  

In the past, police had caught no less than twenty of Father's students playing the "peach-color amusement game". (some sort of sexy truth-or-dare thing) The newspapers made a big stink about it, but Father matter-of-factly told them that it wouldn't be liberal to regulate their behavior after class. I find his beliefs irresponsible. Students my age might protest strict rules, and hide our true feelings, but the thing we primarily need is a teacher who pays attention to our personal problems and assumes the responsibility for correcting them. As for me, an exceptionally loud and irritating child, I feel that I definitely need someone to intervene in my behavior. I don't know anything about Americanism or this so-called "liberal trend," but in this case, clearly I am more like regular folks than like Father.  

Father never received any formal education. He supported himself with a great many menial jobs while studying alone after work. In this fashion, he was able to not only pass his GED, but to become a principal at a respected school. But in order to focus single-mindedly on this transformation, he had to tune out those around him. As much as possible, he refused to compete with anyone. Even today, he doesn’t want to get involved in the problems of his employees who are in trouble, or punish those who start it. So he wears his cold dignity like a suit of armor because inside, he’s terrified of being sent back to poverty and manual labor. He even wears it around his family: never showing emotion, getting involved in our problems, and only expressing himself through disdainful and analytical criticism. Does he really think that’s how his beloved American liberals act with their kids?

In order to better ignore my sister's continued gloating, I decided to stand up and move into the tiny shed behind our house and live on a cot.  Well, that is not strictly true. I decided to stand up, but I hadn't thought of anything beyond that: in fact, my mind was so full of shame and disgrace it had no room to consider anything else. However, in standing, I kicked our low dining table, knocking over the teacups. The tea dripped over the side with a sickening cold, yellow sound, like old urine. In that instant, I held my breath, and looked at Father. Instead of yelling at me, he laughed a scornful, cold little chuckle, while never even raising his eyes from his newspaper.

"Way to go, Mr. 8th-best-in-school," mocked Elder Sister.

With a scream, I turned around and delivered a strong kick straight to Elder Sister's face. 

She wound up flat on her back, hand still grasping her book, blood streaming down her face. I had broken the lens of her glasses and the glass had cut her eyelid.  Sister had always had an unbearable face that resembled a Mako shark. Now the blood from the thick eyelid that encrusted her useless eye was dripping down and collecting on the shelf of her un-naturally thick cheekbone. Mother came galloping out from the kitchen to wrap her arms around Elder Sister. I stood trembling, dumbfounded by my own actions, looking at Elder Sister's blood on my toes. From the toes, a creepy, itchy sensation was growing up my legs. Father finally put down his newspaper, with an agonizing slowness. I stood still, waiting for the rain of blows that would surely ensue. I resolved to not resist the many punches, even if I were punched to death.  

But in fact, father said this, in a very calm voice, and did nothing else: "You! You won't ever get any college money from your sister ever again! That means you'll have to study pretty hard to get into Tokyo University!  Of course, public universities are cheaper.  And the ratio of student applicants to scholarships is pretty high. But - it's not enough to just study hard. You have to have nerves of steel. If you panic, you have no one but yourself to blame. Can you make it to Tokyo University and get a great job? Or will you have to settle for Military University? But that's another story."

I felt a chill running from my bones to all my viscera, as I turned away from my family and walked to the backyard.  Beneath the summers' night sky was a second layer of rose-colored sky, as if two skies were overlapping. Humidity and dust rose from the ground, suffusing my lungs and obstructing the lower part of the sky a third layer - a sort of line of flickering light. The many lights of Tokyo shone under that. But such beauty was not for me - I was headed to the dilapidated shed, my new home.  There were no electric lights in the shed, so after I closed the door I had no choice but to make my way to the cot by touch.  

Since I had been exiled from my family, I had plenty of time to construct my shameful nest in the shed. It was three tatami mats in size (around six feet), but two tatamis' worth was occupied by towering heaps of rubbish. My hands felt a desk and chair, and many other stacked, nameless things. I could only live in the small space between.  It was rather like the narrow berth on a sailing vessel, I thought.  With my useless eyes wide open in the darkness, I opened the drawer to the desk, and pulled out an old wakizashi (a short sword that Samurai would keep tucked in their waist-bands).

  This weapon, this marvellous weapon which I had discovered while rummaging through trash, was only 30 centimeters long, and named Raikokuga (‘The Fang Which Came to Japan’). If the books at our school library are to be believed, it was the work of a sword-smith at the end of the Muromachi era, four hundred years ago. I drew out the blade, gripping it with both hands. Facing the empty space between the pillars of rubbish squarely, I stabbed the darkness again and again with all my might.  The shed filled up with my "killing feeling," and my heart raced.  Eiii!! Eiii!!! YaaaaaahhH!!  I yelled quietly, as I stabbed the darkness with Raikokuga.

Someday, I would slay an enemy with my Japanese steel. I would stab him in the most manly fashion. I believed this so strongly it began to seem like a premonition, sent to me from the future. But, where is my future enemy? Is it Father? My enemy, is it Elder Sister?  An  American soldier on one of those bases? A Japanese SDF man? Or a conservative politician? Where is my enemy? I will surely kill him, I thought. Eiii! Eiii! Yaaaaaaah!   

My enemies were packed as densely as lice crammed into the seam of a shirt, and I hewed them one after the other until, slowly, I began to regain my senses. As I calmed down,
I began to remember with regret the wound I inflicted on my sister. Was the wound bad enough to make her lose what's left of her eyesight?   If so, I would sacrifice my own eyes in a daring transplant surgery.  I had to make amends for my shameful action. He who refuses to pay for his deeds with his own flesh and blood is a contemptible wretch, no more than a beast.  I'll never be that kind of person, I thought. 

I put Raikokuga back in its white wooden scabbard, and laid it back in the drawer, took off my clothes by feel, and lay down sideways on the cot. Lying there in the dark, sideways, with my useless eyes open, making do with my ears, I realized that I could hear many diverse voices – like those of demons in the mountain forests that were said to lead people astray. I could practically feel their bodies swirling around me. The vision got more elaborate: I was at the bottom of a giant pestle, naked and exposed, and the horrific demons were about to grind me into powder.

Then I heard the sound of a record player coming from Mother’s room: the Miles Davis sextet, doing his what-you-may-call-it? His ‘modern jazz’ or whatever, which Elder Brother was so absorbed by. I remembered how he acted just before, when I kicked Elder Sister and got scolded by Father: He just sat on the tatami mat, absolutely ignoring all of us, and fiddling with the little bits of plastic and the tube of glue, making a model airplane on his lap.  Like a detail which escapes a cameraman’s notice until he later develops the film, my brother’s actions were documented. In my ‘memory file’, I discovered his odd behavior. 

Even now, I can imagine him clearly, sitting in front of Mother’s hi-fi. He has it on endless-repeat mode and sits there, his head nodding unsteadily on his narrow shoulders like some kind of drug addict, utterly entranced. He would pause only to rip strips of caked model glue from the pads of his encrusted fingers. That’s what he’s doing right now, I bet.  He’s probably ruminating, worrying about, “I should punch Younger Brother,” or “I shouldn’t scold Younger Sister so much,” or something like that, while all the while fiddling with the bass and treble buttons, turning up the volume.  

Older Brother was always the one our family pinned our hopes on. And the year before last, he graduated from Tokyo University with a degree in Liberal Arts, and got a job at a television company.  At University, he was ferociously active, being the class student leader and organizing events for the school festivals. So when he joined the television company, he had ambitions to become a producer of special edition news shows, and threw all his effort into impressing his boss. At that time, I trusted and respected him.  I suppose one could say that I turned to Older Brother for the fatherly nutrition that Father himself didn’t supply.  Incidentally, last summer Older Brother began to complain all the time, “I’m tired, I’m tired,” and finally last fall he took a week off of work.  And, after his week off, he headed off to his job again, but he was a changed man. He was always silent, detached, and he developed an unhealthy absorption in modern jazz, coupled with a mania for model airplanes. I haven’t asked him a thing about his work since last fall, nor about politics.  He was so decisive, passionate, and loquacious, but has not spoken more than five minutes to me all this year.

 Last winter he said he would take me rock-climbing on a difficult slope of Mt. Tanigawa, but he has completely neglected his promise,  a fact which tinges all of  my thoughts of him with bitterness.  
As I think of him listening to his modern jazz, swaying like a drug addict, I can’t imagine him signing up to cross the most flat swamp, let alone a challenging mountain. Older Brother, what has happened to you? 

Ever since my brother changed, I feel like I’m totally alone in this family. Alone at seventeen.  This is exactly the time in my life when people should understand me, and help me to develop my full potential. But in fact, not one person is making any effort to understand me. I’m really in a pinch!

Faintly but distinctly, I sense that someone is outside the shed, trying to signal to me. I had quite forgotten about it, but there was a window above the cot – a simple circular opening carved into the wood, like the porthole of a shabby ship. With a growl, something leapt through the window and landed on the blanket by my feet: Gang, the local stray cat. 

Mother and Father are too stingy to let us have pets. The reason is, they can’t bear to give their food to someone else, even pet food. This aspect of their personality is cold-hearted. At any rate, I could only have a pet which would not eat our food. Last year I had a whole family of ants – some fifty in all – in a bottle. But, try as I might, I couldn’t persuade them to survive through the winter.  All I was left with was a bottle full of earth which had been carved by the ants into a superlative 3-d maze. I was so sad, I wept. After that, I began to keep company with Gang.   Gang was a gigantic male covered in tiger stripes. Since he was a stray, I didn’t have to worry about how to feed him. He would merely come by at night when he was tired.

I was thrilled that he’d choose to sleep at our hose – like he belonged only to me. I called him: “Chi, chi, ch-ch-chi!”  Gang heaved his considerable bulk off of my feet and came up to drink my spit. It seemed that he alone wanted to help me celebrate my seventeenth birthday, so I rewarded him with as much spit as I could summon. I began to feel sentimental, but it’s impossible to feel sentimental around Gang: he’s badder than Al Capone. As he drank my spit, he flexed his chest muscles, causing his giant claws to pierce the blanket. He kept changing his foothold, as if he might leap out of the shed at any moment.  

I’ve never hugged Gang. He’s more the kind of cat that will sit on your lap or chest. He purrs and narrows his eyes like a beautiful woman, he shakes his damp nose at me, but If I try to pick him up by his belly, he gets mad and runs away. He’s not the touchy-feely kind. I worry that if my pharynx ever runs out of spit, he will leap off my chest and never return. This would launch me into such a bottomless pit of loneliness that I would never recover.  To forestall this possibility, I made to throw my arms around his big stripey belly. In that instant, I felt like fireworks had gone off in my hands  as Gang’s claws struck my palms. I tasted the blood before I felt it. Gang aimed his huge head at the window and with one leap was gone, like a big stripey shark jumping out of a porthole into the Pacific Ocean.

My wounds hurt, but seeing Gang in full fighting mode was exciting! He is such a perfect villain, I filled with admiration for him. He’s the living incarnation of barbarism! Ungrateful and shameless, with the explosive force of a full-grown wolf. He doesn’t rely on anyone else. If he sees something he wants, he takes it. Being attacked by him made me remember why I respected him in the first place. Magnificent! Hunting in the darkness, his sturdy body is beautiful like a well-constructed fortress (!!!), but at the same time, he’s as quick and flexible as a rubber band. 

Just being glared at by him is enough to give me the jitters, although it pains me to admit it. I’m blushing just thinking about it. But in that fierce body, there’s a weak point, I’ll wager. Once, I watched from a hidden spot as he pounced on and killed a white cat. But even then he was very cool-headed and magnificent in his execution. I’ve often thought that I want to have a life like Gang’s, but I realize that it would take a miracle for someone such as I to accomplish the transition.  

There seems to be some kind of scared white piglet inside my head that fills me with weakness and worry. One minute I’m conscious of the inner piglet’s worry, and the next I’m worried about what society and other people think of me – the way they always look at me with their contemptuous stares.  I sometimes become paralyzed with this self-conscious worry. Then my body parts start twitching and moving of their own accord, impolite and un-coordinated. I get so embarrassed I want to die.  In fact, my mere existence – no more than meat with a soul -  makes me so embarrassed I want to die. 

 That's why I'd like to - if possible - live alone in a cave like a crazy Cro-Magnon. I want to erase the eyes of everyone who looks at me. Otherwise, I'll have to erase my own eyes. I don't think Gang ever gets self-conscious. He's only aware of his own muscle, dirty fur, bones and poo-poo. So he never blushes when people stare at him.  Although, perhaps somewhere in his powerfully built and battle-scarred head, he must have hopes and dreams. What is a cat's nightmare like? At the most it could only be a jumble of vague black-and-white images. By the way, the things I see in my own nightmares would make you pour sulphuric acid in your own eyes to blot out the visions. 

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the shed, the piles of trash around the cot took on the forms of terrible ghosts and spirits. In fright, I shut my eyes, but I was even more frightened of falling asleep. Before sleep could claim me, however, I had a sudden attack of terror: the fear of Death itself.  I became nauseous. Honestly, Death is my greatest fear; every time I think of it, I want to vomit so much I clutch my chest and abdomen helplessly.  I think it's not Death itself but what I imagine happens after Death: spending who-knows-how many millions of years as an unconscious "zero."  You'd have no choice but to tolerate it. 

This world, this universe - and other universes as well, I suppose - has existed for millions of years, and will continue to exist for millions more. So the thought of spending the rest of the universe trapped as a "zero" - it might as well be an eternity!  When I consider the limitless expanse of time that awaits me after my death, really it pushes my fear to its outer limits. 

When I took my first physics class, the teacher talked about the rockets that were being launched into space - floating out there forever.  Teacher described the limitless nothingness the rocket would pass through. No worlds, no people, no nothing.  Then Teacher explained what would happen in the end if the rocket travelled forever, never wavering from its straight line: it would finally end up right back on Earth. When I heard this, I fainted. 

Apparently I was also screaming and shitting myself. 

By the time I realized what had happened, I could feel the eyes of all the girl students on my filthy body. Even more, I could not dare confess the reason for my fainting: my all-consuming dread of the infinite cosmic nothingness of death!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111 

Instead, I desperately tried to convince them that I had merely had a nervous breakdown. 

Since then I haven't had anyone with whom to share my true feelings. Just like in my nightmares, I've become alone, floating through cold and endless space.  Incidentally, in my dreams, I'm always conscious of the stars that I pass in my endless solitary voyage through space.  At least the dead are not conscious of their eternal solitude. Whoever is inventing these dreams is certainly as creative as he is malicious, I tell you! 

At any rate, lying there in the cot, I tried desperately to think about something else. I remembered a newspaper article I had read, saying that Michiko was about to wed the Crown Prince. When I read it, it made me imagine Michiko flying away from me on a rocket-ship, bound for an impossibly distant star, through the black void of space.  Reading that article, I cried, and my body trembled with dread. Why was that, I wonder?  Maybe it was like reading that she had died. I have Michiko's picture on my wall, and prayed that she would marry me one day. But my tears are not from jealousy, oh no.  I'd also read an article about a young boy who threw stones at the Prince and Princess’ motorcade, and that also made my heart grow heavy and weep. Incidentally, I also have Michiko's picture hanging inside my closet. That night, I dreamed I myself was Michiko, and I was the stone-throwing boy. Why is that, I wonder? 

 And why can I not close my eyes from, why can I not escape from my constant dread of impending death? I hugged myself in the darkness and grimaced. But the dread I felt today, in the shed, was doubtless the worst terror-attack yet. I was covered in sweat. I prayed that someday soon I could find a girl, could get married. Even if she was unattractive. Just to have someone there in bed beside me, someone compassionate to watch me as I slept and prevent me from dying.

Aah, but how can I escape this omnipresent dread? I thought to myself.  What if, after dying, my body did not cease to exist, but instead was like a withered twig which was part of a giant and thriving tree which would continue to exist forever?  That wouldn't be so bad, I abruptly realized.  In that case, I could stop fearing death. But in this world, I have nobody.   Filled with anxiety, I doubt everything I see - perhaps because I can't comprehend how the world works.  And I feel like everything I desire is beyond my grasp. The world belongs to other people, and I can't do anything I want. No one is on my side. I'm a left-winger, so if I joined the Communist party, then I'd have a community at last, wouldn't I? But just now I'd used the best arguments of the top Communists, and been totally defeated by my near-sighted, loser of a nurse sister. 

It seems the Communists control the world, but I can't control myself in the same way. I don't know anything. I'm like a little twig who doesn't have the capability to find a huge pine to help him withstand the eternal winter winds. And as long as I still have even small doubts about the Communists, it wouldn't do to join them. And this frustration just makes me more neurotic still.  Besides, what would the Communists want with a runt of a boy like me, who gets beaten even by his near-sighted, ugly nurse of a sister? 

  Oh, how I wish someone in this big world would come along, clearly and decisively, and offer me a mission worthy of my passion! Despairing of my weakness, I flopped back down on my filthy cot, and rummaged through the blankets searching for my sex organs. Distractedly I played with my bo-ki. Tomorrow is the ‘tracking test’ which will determine who gets placed in the Advanced classes. Also, for good measure, the PE class will involve a hideous 800-meter run for some reason. As I contemplated tomorrow, I felt a vague sense of dread: If I self-satisfy a second time today, surely I will be too tired tomorrow, and the race will turn into a disaster. However at least for now I deserve some small respite from my night terrors, and self-satisfaction was my only option. 

Outside of my bedraggled shack, the big city growled in the night. The summer night revealed its essence in the dirty street air which seemed worn-out. From a distance, the smell of birch trees stimulated my muscles and mind – waking me up just enough to fully feel the ocean of dread which was sweeping me inexorably into the following day. I’m a really pathetic and lonesome Seventeen, I thought to myself. ‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to youuuu,’ I said, touching myself. ‘Congratulations, noble sir,’ I said. ‘Why, thank you, humble servant.’ I replied: ‘And would you be so kind as to fondle my crotch?’ ‘It would be a pleasure, Mr. Seventeen.’ 

 When participating in obscene activities of this nature, one must imagine something sexual. This time I imagined Mother and Father naked, groaning and huffing: Uun, uun!! Both of their anuses are pressed directly on the already stinky and damp futon. I was gleefully enjoying this image when suddenly a thought occurred: I was not born from Father’s seed, but rather I was the product of Mother getting gang-raped. I didn’t doubt that Father knew this from the start. This could completely explain his relentlessly cold attitude towards me. But as I neared orgasm, peach blossoms bloomed all around me. The onsen (hot springs bath) overflowed with invigorating water. A gigantic, Las Vegas-style light-show displayed its gorgeous radiance just for me. All my fears, doubts, anxieties, lonliness, alienation and angst melted away. Aah, aah, I want to orgasm as long as I live! How happy that would be! Aah, aah, always always orgasm! Aah, aah, aaaah, the launch of semen onto my damp crotch area! The lonely and pathetic Seventeen groans and huffs on his birthday: Uun, uun!!! And there in the decrepit shed, Seventeen began to weep his post-coital tears of shame.

CHAPTER 2

 I did not open my eyes in a good mood the following morning.   My head was pounding, my body had a slight fever, and my arms and legs felt heavy. I felt like I was in a coma, and that everyone in society was having their cheerful breakfast, while talking about what a fool I was. I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen today. Until last year, every birthday I made a resolution to choose a new hobby or custom. But now that I'm seventeen, I don't feel like doing anything new. Some guys start going downhill at forty. Others are still climbing uphill at sixty.  But for me, Seventeen, it's all downhill from here! But the longer I keep my eyes shut, the more I feel like I'm sinking into mud, so eventually I decided to open them. Lacking the strength to rise or, for that matter, to shed my blanket, I merely stared sideways for a time. Until this year, no matter how bad things looked, I'd always been able to leap out of bed in an instant. I had a fire in my chest that felt like a bundle of good fortune had been stored there.

 I used to really love mornings. The bundle of good fortune gave me the energy to throw open the doors and run outside to greet the morning world. The radio exercise program announcer would recite the exercises in a cheery voice, and I'd cheerily follow along, his words for some reason making me want to exercise.  Somehow I would want to wish good fortune with others and greet them in an upbeat manner.  But now, listening to the wacky, giddy junior-high child-next-door playing his exercise program at high volume and singing along,  I am filled with rage.  No one has the right to tell me to sing along with anything! I want to tell him.

Sunlight streamed in through the cracks in the walls, and the roof as well, lending a golden sheen to the thick layer of dust on the seat of the kids' bicycle stored there.  It was my bicycle, back when I was light-hearted. I used to ride it around the roller-skating section of the park, trailed by a woman taking my picture. Then I took a break to rest beneath the wisteria, and soon the strange golden-haired woman came and patted the bicycle seat, while blushing and smiling at me. It seemed to me she wanted to touch my naked ass, but settled for the bicycle seat. I got embarrassed and ran home, forgetting to take the bicycle.  She chased after me, her high-and-low swooping laugh echoing in my ears. Listening to her words of praise, I got my first taste of the English language. It was scary at the time, but as I recall, she said: "Oh, puri reeru boi, kamu bakku! Puri reeru boi!" 

She said I was small and clean!  

Those carefree, fortunate times are behind me, but I still believe in my heart that I was truly small and clean.  The world was a sunny place and the people in it were kind-hearted.  As was the solar system, if not the entire cosmos, or so I felt at the time. But lying there in the decrepit shed, I could only see dark, evil things budding and breeding in the world, and inside of myself for that matter: headache, constipation, the feeling that every joint in my body was lined with innumerable grains of sand. Lying there with the ratty blanket still wrapped around me, my depression deepened. Hidden weeping in my blanket, nothing short of a miracle could turn my life around. While outside, it was like everyone in the world was deliberately taunting me with their good moods and early-to-rise cheerfulness.

Still, truthfully, I had to admit that an indefinite shed existence was sadly not possible.
Slowly I rolled out of bed, yawned, and wiped away the accumulation of liquids and solids - tears, eye snot, what-have-you - that had built up around my eyes. I put on my droopy pants, and noted gloomily that my genitals had shrunk up into my crotch as if they were searching for a trapdoor to escape into. Even though it's morning, I don't have morning wood - I have morning impotence, I noted with a masochistic glee. What a great omen for my seventeenth year. I imagined myself as a forty year old man, a redneck from some hill-town, lowering his pants to his knees in the dingy office of some quack psychoanalyst, his genitals entirely hidden inside his pubic hair. Rad!  

 From the direction of our main house's front hall, the sounds of an argument emerged: It seemed as if my sister was in a heated discussion with Father. Her ill-tempered whine versus his aloof,  irritatingly pedantic drone. But clearly Father was not feeling truly aloof, just pretending, imitating his American Liberal  role-models. Also, it sounded as if my sister had not in fact been blinded, (?!?!?! - ed) (how the fuck do you sound not blind) which made me feel relieved. It was possible for me to show my face that morning.

 I'm always worrying needlessly - whether there's an accident or an illness, I always imagine the worst. But what else am I good for besides worrying? I am simply incapable of succeeding at anything: I couldn’t even manage to kick out my own sister's eyes. But I regretted the incident, so I felt saved that she was not blind after all. I can't change the world even a little bit. Seventeen is useless to anyone. There's only two things that Seventeen can do: hide from normal people, and self-satisfy. 

 While I am lurking in the shack, normal people are out making the world happen, making it revolve, fortifying and re-building it like an architect. "Let's do this! Put it there!" they say, decisively.  Especially when it comes to politics, it seems like the normals can make anything happen, to make society go from here to there at their whim. What a job that would be! I have marched in demonstrations, but even then I felt alone, and useless to the cause.  Out of all the normal people, it seems politicians have the most confidence: whether in their parliaments or in their restaurants, they casually decide how things will go. They clap their palms together: "Put it there! Make it so!"  

You'll never catch me in a voting booth, believe you me. Even when I turn twenty, I'll abstain from voting until I die.  I realized that I believed my sister's well-reasoned arguments more than my own inarticulate rantings. Just thinking about it filled with shame.  My entire body - muscle, blood and all - filled with a sour feeling.  In the end, I know nothing about politics. I have no ideas of my own, just repeating what others do like a chimpanzee. Once again I felt a masochistic glee as I tormented myself with this realization. It was the same kind of glee I felt when the normal people cruelly mistreat me.

Head held high, I marched out of the shed singing "Oh Carol," under the radiant blue sky, into the radiant world of normal people.  "Oh Carol! You can beat me, you can make me cry, but just don't ignore me or I'll die! Oh, oh Carol, do your worst!! "

I was twenty minutes late to school, which was especially bad, as today was the college placement test, which had already begun. I entered the class in a total panic, received my test booklet, and took a seat in the absolute back of the room. I peeped at the adjacent fellow's answers as I sat. He had already completed over one fourth of the entire exam. It's really inconvenient for me, I thought. To try to calm my nerves, I arranged all my pencils in a row, and re-arranged them until they were in perfect formation. Now I was feeling good.  Until I started reading the test. 

Although it was a test of my mother tongue, just reading the questions was enough to make me panic. I read until the words couldn't even fit inside my head - the head seemed to be overflowing with blood. I kept re-reading the same question, but it kept getting brushed aside by the rising tide of dread. I tried to concentrate, but other thoughts kept bubbling up and floating around, like schools of ignorant fish circling my head in the blood whirlpool. 

Please write an essay analyzing these verses. Be sure to include the author’s name(s), date(s), and title(s) of book(s) or poem(s).

The moon it doth verily set-eth into thee mountainsydde, whilst Lady Sky be-eth most clear. I feel thee soothing Wynnde, and hear thee various and sundry chirruping of the insects which be-eth in the Reeds. With a ‘moyohoshi gao’ ( literally, ‘physical need face’), I realized I bear no Wyshh to Part from this wondrous Playce.  I stayed Awaykke as long as the Cricketts chirruped, and as thee Sun broke over the mountainsydde, my Tearres did verily mix with the Morning dew upon thee Pholiage.  He who ryddes upon the Clouddes (the Emperor or King) can do that which He pleases, but I am but a Byrdde in a guilded Cage, at his Beck and Call.

Now, who on earth wrote that? It sounds like Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, doesn’t it? But I can’t say I’m sure. And what’s this about a moyohoshi gao? It sounds erotic. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it’s dirty. That one time I read the magazine for free in the bookstore, there was one of those Sasa no Ha o Gin stories (no real English translation – a sort of slutty medieval adventuring lady?). The heroine was lusting after some Ronin or other, and she said something like, “Alas, I be-eth moyohoshi!”  At least, that’s how I remember it. 

At any rate, didn’t that test question combine the words of two different authors? Or was it all from one source? It isn’t fair to mess with us like that! At least they should put quote marks where one quote ends and another begins. That one paragraph – what was it? “Thee chattering of mickle Insekts builds and builds and builds, leaving Behynde merely thee Dewdrops in yon Grasse.” . .  reading it gives me the same sensation as right after I self-satisfy, and overflow onto my abdomen. I must have a really filthy mind. Some kind of sexual disorder found in a manual somewhere. . . . .  

Suddenly, the finishing bell rang, ending my reverie. I looked down and found that I had only completed one-third of the answers.  I tried to lighten my spirits with a joke. “’Seventeen! You’rrrrrre OUT!’ cried the umpire,” I muttered. But when I realized how true it actually was, I felt a throbbing pain in my chest.  I signed my name and turned it in.

The post-test classroom was a disgraceful place: everyone making a lot of noise, passionately turning in their answer sheets, with pink cheeks and glassy eyes, looking vaguely obscene, like the aftermath of a ‘heavy petting’ session! We were all headed heedlessly to extremes: triumph or despair. I was in the latter group, of course. Students began to gather in their respective cliques to discuss their performance. But I remained in my seat, head hung low. 

I saw the honor-student group, who were calmly deliberating the merits of the test. Until last year, I had been a member of this clique, but recently I didn’t have the courage to approach them.  But I eavesdropped on them now, straining the nerves of my ear to catch their words.  The honors students always knew the situation well: what kinds of tests the teachers were planning to give, what to study, and so on. They prided themselves on getting this information before the rest of us.  The way they talk about it, it’s quite disgusting – they’re not students, they’re technicians: the ‘good score technicians.’ In their pride, they pay not the slightest notice to people like me, preferring to talk arrogant nonsense such as this: “The answer to that one was ‘Kiritsubo’! I think my approach to the Chinese Literature problems was passable. And I definitely got the one about  ‘Oosakai’ right!” . . .  . and so on. At any rate, these fellows definitely filled out more than a third of their answer sheets. 

“If you score over the average – which most years is 80% - I heard they’ll put you in the Tokyo University-tracked advanced placement class. I probably won’t make it, though.” “Don’t be so modest! If you can’t get in the advanced placement class, no one at all is getting in!”

I couldn’t bear the ‘honor student’ conversation any more – it had reminded me of Father’s words last night: Tokyo University was now utterly out of the question for me. I despaired. Those fellows were being groomed to join very trendy American multinational firms, and have a happy future. In comparison, I was going to get tracked into the bonehead class, and still I’d have to struggle like a drowning man to even complete that! The teachers in those classes don’t even try.

“Still in all, it was a good test, wasn’t it? The questions were very high-standard.” “Mr. Hara’s getting better at writing tests! But, I bet that the actual college entrance exam is different than this. The questions about Myoubu weren’t hard enough. And the keigo (formal Japanese) questions were structured poorly – you couldn’t tell who was addressing whom.” “Speaking of the entrance exam, if I may be so bold, you’re a cinch to get into Tokyo University.” “You’re too kind, sir, too kind. First I’ll have to go to cram school, like all you other fellows.”

By this time, I was so angry that I could feel the taste of vomit working its way up from my stomach. The way those fellows get so excited by the test, practically licking each other all over. But besides them, there were other, more outgoing, groups of students.  Cliques where girls flocked around them, laughing. Funny and charismatic guys, talking in loud voices: “Yo, yo, yo! Yo man, in the test, I was getting a ‘moyohoshi gao’ – I had a ‘physical need’ to take a wicked piss! Of course in the Heian Era there were no public bathrooms, am I right? You had to hold it. I felt like I WAS in the fuckin’ Heian, right there in the classroom. I could feel the ‘mickle Insekts’ getting louder every minute! I almost made a ‘Morning dew’ . . . in my pants!”

This good-faced fellow who had everyone laughing, he was no doubt a weird kid. But unlike me, he knew exactly how to turn that to his advantage. His nickname was ‘Shintohou’ (the name of a trashy sci-fi and horror movie studio popular at that time) because he refused to see movies made by any other company. In fact, rumor had it that he’d travel to the edges of Tokyo – really scary neighbourhoods – just to catch the latest ‘erotic-grotesque’ triple features. 

“What was that part about, ‘I am but a Byrdde in a guilded Cage, at his Beck and Call’? Shintoho-san, help me understand!” demanded one of the girls surrounding him. Everyone waited for his no doubt hilarious response.

“Well, she got thrown in the ‘Cage’ by the cops, didn’t she? For a ‘golden’ fuckin’ misdemeanour, didn’t she– public urination!”

“Oh, Shintoho-san! Were there really cops in the Heian period?”

“You’re a pretty naive girl, aren’t you?” replied the popular boy.  “Anyway, the real answer is in a different section: ‘Thee chattering of mickle Insekts builds and builds and builds’  . . . that’s what Heian women used to cover up the sound of their peeing. Even as they were wiping themselves off, they’d tell you, ‘Oh, it must have been crickets that thou hadst heardst’.”

“Oh, this guy is a serious perv,” shrieked the girls, getting all excited, and they all ran out of the classroom together. The popular guy bathed in the applause, pushing both palms down in the ‘calm down, calm down’ gesture that American TV emcees used to hush the crowds. 

But despite his silly answer and his popularity, it was clear he had understood the test question much more deeply than I. How miserable! And here I am alone in my stupid seat – I can’t bear it. But I could not rise – it was as if I was sand on a narrow road, which had giant pits on each side – half the sand trickled into the Pit of Anxiety, and the other half fell into the Pit of Weakness.

 I couldn’t show my exam-failing face in the honor student group anymore. And yet, back when I was an honor student, Shintoho had invited me to join HIS group, I turned him down! I felt he - this popular guy, this gifted entertainer – was beneath me, and how dare he invite me down to his level? I turned my back on him. Of course I regretted my conduct, and bitterly criticized my arrogance. I’m really alone now, like a turtle with no shell. Easy to hurt and unable to fight back. That’s when the bell rang again, signalling the beginning of the next test. Overwhelmed with anxiety and dread, I had to return to class.  My mathematics results were even more dishonourable than my literature results, so I had now to re-take the test. Mazui! 

After the math test, I sat holding back tears until the lunch-bell rang. However, as I reflected on it, I had to acknowledge: the worst was yet to come. After lunch was PE.

PE was, naturally, my worst subject. Not only was I uncoordinated and unconscious of what my body was doing, but the gym shorts were only one layer thick, so how could anyone concentrate on sports when a bo-ki could visibly manifest at any moment?  The mere thought filled me with a constant dread. My second-biggest PE phobia was the ‘compulsory 800 meter race.’ Which was today. Besides the horrid length, this race was on the main field, where the girls and the ‘sight-seers’ could watch us. The main field was right next to the local shopping mall, so the adult shoppers who had nothing better to do could while away their time by laughing at our pain. The school even provided them bleachers for this! One would think they’d only use the bleachers to watch the pro games, but they seemed more entertained by the spectacle of awkward struggling teenagers losing our dignity while being yelled at by odious coaches. 

I assume they all had abusive husbands, bullying bosses, or terrible lives. Why else would someone be so desperate to forget their personal dishonour, and take fleeting pleasure in the pain of others? I imagined I could hear their snickering even now. We gathered in the center of the field to do warm-ups, waiting for Coach to emerge from his shack, wielding his stop-watch and his ‘devil notebook’ (the notepad where he writes the names of students who will get detention). 

We milled about like a herd of cattle – some quaking with dread, some gathering their courage, some vacantly taking in the late-summer sun, lying down like stray cats.  The honor students, enfeebled by their test-study, shaded their eyes with their hands and winced in confusion. When they realized the length of the race, they almost turned blue!  Everyone in class thought these nerds were too tired-out from their constant study to run such a punishing race, but only I knew the secret: even they could endure more punishment than I. 

The members of the track team had arrogantly proclaimed themselves the leaders of our warm-ups, and, overflowing with confidence, shouted out the cries of “One, two! One, two!” In particular, the fellows who had broken the citywide track record last year strutted around, just like the honors students after the literature test, preening and full of themselves. They would do a long jump and then exaggeratedly make a show of checking their knees and ankles, adjusting gauze tape and stretching. I knew it was all theatrics, but it still had its intended effect: I was overcome with jealousy. My inferiority complex had been pushed into even higher gear. 

Then there was the last clique: the fellows who just didn’t care. They lay on the field, soaking up the sun’s rays, with the same attitude of utter disdain that they had shown for the morning tests. They had been told they were worthless for so long, that the scorn no longer had any effect whatsoever. No matter who judged them, they just shrugged it off – in their shamelessness, there was an almost Zen-like detachment from the material world. In our grade, I alone didn’t belong to any group. Thus, I was more scared than everybody – I could only hope that we’d get this race over with soon.

Between the main track and the gym building, protruding like a nub, was a small exercise field where the girl students were playing volleyball. They were made to wear headbands and very un-cool bloomers which made them appear ducklike. As always, a small number of girls stood to one side of the game, wearing their regular school uniforms – coats and skirts -, watching vacantly, like a pack of retarded livestock. It must be their time of the month, I thought scornfully. This was an ‘open secret’, since everyone at the school knew! 

Every week, Shintoho went ‘on patrol’, diligently writing the names of the ‘skirt-wearing spectators’ in his notebook. Finally he tallied the results and printed them on a single paper, which contained the menstrual dates of the entire female student body. After that, Shintoho announced, “Using this paper, we can calculate the ‘safe days’ for each girl, and then apply the rhythm method accurately.” With a total lack of shame, he would then add, “I’m always free, so if you feel the urge to unburden yourself (of your virginity), give me a call!” The girls would forgive him even for that ! 

Being a popular guy, he had the power to say such things as if they were acceptable.  If I were to say something like that, I would be totally ostracized from the very next day, and would have to drop out of school altogether. Why would they forgive only him? Perhaps because he’s also the most experienced guy at school. Even when we were children, we’d go to the same Sunday school, and in the school play, he got the role of ‘Satan.’ The human characters were made to repent and suffer for their bad actions, but only Satan could rampage obscenely and scream heresies without any punishment. Ah! I wish I could be the Devil, too. But it seems that the role of ‘teenage devil’ is also taken.  

When he graduates, what kind of job will he find? Honestly, I have no idea which company Satan would work for, in this day and age.   I considered this carefully as I did my warm-ups. Perhaps he’d be a serial killer. 

Meanwhile, the current version of Shintoho was – as always – surrounded by other kids and joking around. “It’s fucked up, yo! It’s all fucked up! That A-bomb test in Nevada must have thrown off all my calculations. . . .it looks like Sugi Emiko is wearing a skirt ahead of schedule - maybe the bomb gave her diarrhoea I’ll have to revise my ‘safe day’ report to take into account these extraordinary events!!”

My ears pricked up, and I – along with every boy in class – turned my head to look at the girls’ exercise field. Emiko’s unmistakable face looked back at us unflinchingly. In the middle of the sick, damp, ashamed skirt-wearing group, only one girl had her head raised proudly. I felt a wave of heat rush through my chest.  The boys all sighed in unison, emitting a wave of humid air.  

Every grade has its own ‘queen,’ if you will, and Sugi was ours.  Not just beautiful, but possessed of an overpowering, almost regal majesty combined with a flirtatious powers of enchantment. As one would expect, the girls are jealous of her and the boys all desire her. Of course, I was not immune either. I was one of many boys on the ‘written her love letters, then torn them up, lacking the courage to even mail them’ team.  If she so much as glanced my way, I’d spazz out disgracefully, and my knowledge that I’d blown it once again only added to the suffering. If we boys stared at the bloomer-wearing girls, they could potentially overcome the embarrassment of their white fat legs and spotty faces. But if we stared at the menstruating girls, who held their skirts down with both hands, shamefully, they would quickly flinch and turn away. There was only one skirt-wearing girl who could meet our stares, confident that she had absolutely no weak points, and that was Sugi.

“Why does Sugi Emiko stare at us dudes so passionately?” Shintoho continued. Though his face was dotted with filthy acne, it beamed with the benevolent radiance of the sun when he spoke of our beloved Sugi. With a wink, he included me in his final attack:  “Because, yo, I put a copy of the Kinsey Report in her desk when she wasn’t looking!  It said that dudes who beat off a lot get exhausted faster. Now that that chick knows the facts about fuckin’ sexual problems, she’s watching our race to see who’s the biggest jerker!”

Just then, Coach came running up, bringing terror with him. The 800-meter race began.  The track was 200 meters long, and we were going to race in groups of ten, going up and down twice, before the next group could start.  The starting line was right next to the girls’ area, but the goal was the farthest from them.  All the greedy, mocking adults began to cluster by the starting area, leaning on the fence.  I lined up on the starting line, my throat parched, my feet itchy on the burning-hot earth, staring at the endless expanse of track in front of me. When the starting gun fired, we were off, rubbing our sweaty arms and legs against those of the boys next to us, hurtling forward willy-nilly, our chests already on fire. I was soon outpaced by my cruel and merciless classmates. The distance between me and them was already shamefully large, and continued to grow.  

Life is Hell, I reflected. Society is Hell too, and the Devil is a fat man in immaculately pressed sweatpants and a baseball cap, holding a flare gun, and there is no escape for the likes of me.  The other fellows in the first group were so far ahead, they began to pass me in reverse, on their return trip. That’s how slow and alone I was. My legs were moving slowly – like in a nightmare where one is being pursued by a Kaijuu (Godzilla or etc.) and can’t get away. My head was burning, and I realized that I was groaning audibly as I ran. 

As I approached the girls’ field, I somehow found the strength to improve my posture and raise my legs high. But as soon as I passed them, I resumed running like a spaz, my head tilted back, arms hanging limply at my sides, legs flapping out all pigeon-toed, and my belly sticking out as if it was trying to win the race all by itself. And of course the wheezing. It was in that state that I reached the halfway point, where I could see the entire rest of the class was waiting for me to finish, before they could start their own races. This made me self-conscious, but I didn’t have the energy to do anything apart from stare frantically from one face to another, a hangdog expression on my thick face. 

“Hey! Run like a man! Suck in that belly!” Coach bellowed. 

“You look sick! You’re turning pale!” shrieked the kids of the mall shoppers from across the fence.  At this, I began to run even slower. Everyone was staring at me. I was the butt of the joke once again.  Everyone in the world was snickering at Seventeen, with his pain-whitened face, his dirty tears of shame, his flapping pigeon-toed legs, and his girlish gait: “Look at this dirty fellow, saliva dangling from his mouth like a dog, belly thrust out,” they said. Or could it be that I was imagining things? At any rate, God could see my disgraceful race, as surely as He saw my red-faced and obscene fantasies when I self-satisfied, as surely as He saw my anxiety and cowardice and lies. The normal people had started yelling: “ There’s nothing about you that we don’t know! You’re a huge pervert, a chronic self-satisfier, you’re rotting from the inside out, your crotch is soggy, and what’s more you constantly talk about yourself!”

On my final return trip, I arrived at the girls’ field, and they were staring too. I prayed to be struck dead with a heart attack, but Lady Luck did not smile upon me. Instead, I had to stagger past the girls – my suffering made even vaster by self-consciousness. When I finally staggered across the ‘goal line’, I felt relief well up from my chest like a wet, warm liquid.  With a cruel laugh, Coach pointed behind me and laughed. I refused to smile back at him, vowing to merely nod manfully. However all I could manage was a dopey, shit-eating ‘eh-heehhh’ face and a shrug. It was then I discovered a long, black trail behind me: I had pee-peed on myself.

Like a great storm crashing through the forest trees, word of my urination resounded through the school, and I was at the center of their mocking laughter. I had sincerely tried my best, tried so hard I thought I might die, just to finish their un-cool 800 meter race, and yet my only reward was this humiliating treatment.  Certainly I am a horrible and pathetic Seventeen, but it is the normal people who made me this way. I can no longer cling to the hope that if I search hard enough, I might still find some goodwill in today’s world.  I was sinking in a bottomless pit of disgrace and too exhausted to fight it. Besides, my soaking gym shorts had grown chilly and it was making me sneeze.  At any rate, I repeated my usual pledge with even firmer resolve: return all hostility with hostility, and all abhorrence with abhorrence, because if I don’t, I’ll surely break down crying. 

Chapter 3
  
“Wanna be a sakura, yo?” came a voice from close behind me. (sakura: literally cherry blossom, but it’s also a slang term for a militia temp-worker: someone hired to beef up the crowds at right-wing rallies)  I was waiting for the train. As usual I was all alone, since I lacked the courage to attend the odious post-PE-test class meeting.  I whirled around, and saw Shintoho looking at me with an unusually earnest expression on his face. He flinched as if I were about to punch him, and began to explain most loquaciously, putting my fears at ease.

“Chill out, bro! I didn’t want to go to that dumb-ass PE meeting either. I saw you at the ticket gate so I followed you in here. You know, you’re a pretty courageous motherfucker!  I really changed my opinion of you today. What you did and all. All coaches are human garbage, but this coach has an especially bad attitude. 800 meters? Are we fuckin’ horses, man?? Making us run like that – they should call him Violence Coach. They say he got dumped by that cute music teacher, that’s why he’s taking it all out on us. I was thinking about that the whole time I was running, dude! I got pretty mad. Everyone was happy when you peed – it would have been better if the whole class had peed. That Violence Coach lost face!” This made me feel better, and then Shintoho continued, in a hushed voice, “I sometimes hang out at right-wing meetings. There’s one today near Shinbashi station. They’re hiring sakura, yo. 500 yen! How - How about it, dude? I’m dead serious yo.”

I felt that Shintoho was scared of me right then.  I’d never seen him speak with such and earnest face and such an urgent, pleading voice. He saw my sceptical, silent face, and spoke to me as if I was the superior person. “Let me tell you about where I’m coming from: I’m not a ‘rightster’ – more an anarchist, like those American Beatniks.  But, yo,  the progressives and the communists are always talking bad about our military, and that gets me mad. You sometimes stand up for the army at school, right? When you said that your sister’s a military nurse, I was happy. But I’m kind of a coward, so I didn’t back you up. But the truth is, my dad is in the Army- he’s a colonel. That’s why I want to crush the progressives and fuckin’ commies. And since the uyoku want that too, sometimes I go to their rallies. I heard about this outfit, called the Imperial Way Faction. Their boss is Sakagibara Kunihiko. During the war he was the head of the Secret Service.  He’s been friends with Prime Minister Oka since their days in (occupied) China, but he doesn’t want any power for himself – just to help Japan.”

I realized that Shintoho was much more naive than I’d ever imagined. Despite being popular, he was just another dumb kid after all. I felt great – like I had effortlessly caught a splendid bird who simply flew into my arms. The train came, and I nodded at Shintoho. We got on together. After all, I couldn’t bear going home by myself. What did I have to go home to? Even hanging out with someone I had nothing but contempt for was less wounding to my self-esteem than being all alone.  It was like a drunk, drinking sake to forget his troubles.  Once on the train, Shintoho changed completely: he was quiet. The idea of being hired by the right-wing was exciting – not that I believed in them – but I felt like I was going to be a spy in their midst!  And that  popular Shintoho – who was always talking to everyone – never mentioned his uyoku connections to anyone but me. If he’d told anyone else, half the school would have known by the next morning. Mr. Acne-Face Shintoho and I, we beamed at each other, with our secret knowledge, until our chests filled with pride. I realized  for the first time that his greasy, hard pomade hairdo was a trick to make him appear taller. In fact, I was actually taller than he!

This is a strange thing to say, but realizing this consoled me, and a feeling of relief swept up from the bottom of my heart. As the train neared Shinbashi station, we remained silent, each lost in his own exciting thoughts. Even though it was the heart of Tokyo, the mid-afternoon train platform quiet and deserted, lending it a mysterious feeling. We walked out, our chests swollen with manly pride. We were going to do something naughty after school – like those kids playing the ‘peach game’! But at the same time, I had a feeling that suddenly the most important incident of my lifetime was just around the corner. Just thinking of the possibilities exhausted me. And yet, to the old man sweeping up the train station, and looking at us, we were just two regular high-school boys off to do some mischief. 

However, as soon as we arrived, I could tell that Mr. Imperial Way Sakagibara’s speech was a total disaster.  There was nobody in the audience! Just an old man, perhaps in his fifties, roaring and yelling energetically. He seemed utterly unconcerned that passers-by paid him no attention, standing by himself and bellowing things whose meaning was unclear.  Instead of looking at the people, he aimed his fury at the trains running back and forth on the elevated tracks. Perhaps Mr. Sakagibara was trying to win an award for “First Man To Be Louder Than The Shinbashi Train,” I thought. As sakura, we should have been clapping manfully and yelling encouragement, but we were so bewildered by the strange sight that we forgot. We forgot that we were hired to be ‘human lions’ who intimidated people with our shouting and mean facial expressions.  The irresponsible passers-by, and for that matter, Shintoho himself, were overcome with curiosity about this solitary ranter, and stared at him for a long time. I was especially amazed that he could boldly face large numbers of people,  their cold expressions, their snickering, and their total indifference to his words. And yet he was not in the least fazed:  he raged at them, like an army on the attack. I was overwhelmed with surprise, particularly because he had no one beside him. Also the stage was barren – his Japanese flag didn’t even have a pole. On the wings of the stage were young men in black shirts, as well as some broad-backed elderly men, but instead of paying attention to Sagakibara, they mostly watched the nearby race-horse scoreboard. Perhaps they were dreaming of winning big on a horse named “Imperial Way.”  But there was one sakura who remembered to take his duty seriously. At first, this  cold, pinched looking young man was just sitting right in front of the stage in the center of a concrete bench, with his knees pulled up to his chin. Sakagibara, meanwhile, was yelling so hard his throat hurt and spit flew out of his mouth, with a look of increasing resentment in his eyes, while glaring off into space. When Sakagibara paused for breath in the middle of an important point, the young man suddenly burst into wild applause, his solitary clapping hung awkwardly in the air, but soon his outburst began to cause a sort of scandal. . . . a minor scandal, but enough to arouse curiosity in even the bystanders who had acted as if they had sworn a solemn oath on their father’s deathbed to neglect Sakagibara! People began to gather around Sakagibara in a semi-circle. As the circle began to close, Shintoho and I decided we’d better get seats for ourselves while there was still time, and managed to snare a bench in the very back of the seating area. We were sakura, but I began to doubt whether Shintoho really ‘hung out at’ these ‘rallies, yo.’ He seemed to lack the passion he’d had on the train, and seemed much more quiet and timid than one would expect of a veteran sakura. I looked at the twenty or so men seated on the benches in front of us.  Those that were clapping and shouting praise seemed to be mainly paid sakura like us. But not like us exactly – they had the look of day laborers; men who kept all their worldly possessions in the duffel bags that they perched identically on their laps like so many pet cats. Every time the fanatical boy in their midst began to shout encouragement, they remained silent, causing him to make a very uncomfortable face. 

I felt that Shintoho should have begun clapping as well by now, so I stared at him until he began to applaud. While doing so, he explained that the other guys – just like us - had been hired: “It’s sunny today, but Sakagibara often does rallies in the rain. Because these broken-down day-laborers need a place to keep dry! Then, Sakagibara always talks about how the rain is tears from heaven, which God is crying because of this degenerate age we’re living in. Or he’ll talk about how he is cursed with some sort of ‘rain jinx’, but they’re so loyal to him they’ll turn up anyway, and so on. These dudes need shelter anyway, so they usually don’t get mad at what he’s saying, but there are times when they do!” I had no idea if any of this was true.  All I knew was, rain makes people more mellow. In particular, when there is a hot, muggy rain, with low atmospheric pressure conditions, I find myself to be much more tolerant of others. “These decrepit day-laborers are happy too, yo!” continued Shintoho: “They don’t have to do some back-breaking work – just sit quietly and clap sometimes. Pretty fuckin’ sweet for them if you think about it.” It was as if he knew exactly where my doubts lay and was trying to convince me. I knew perfectly well Shintoho was trying to pressure me to enjoy the show, but I wasn’t depressed about it. Actually, I recalled my feelings of disgrace on the PE field, and how much better – released, almost – I felt being here instead.  I was so overflowing with shame that  I might have killed myself tonight!  This event felt like I had been given a ‘stay of execution.’  The old homeless guys, sitting on their benches with their knees tucked under them, staring resolutely at their hands, I wondered, did they feel the same way?  These guys, do they feel the stares of passers-by penetrating them like a thousand arrows, into their back and shoulders? Do they feel the afternoon summer sun’s radiance on their head, pulling them down like a low tide, until finally the winter’s dusk and cold lead them to utter despair?  Especially in big cities like Tokyo, the alienation and sense of futility can rise until it fills one’s whole body.  Only the younger sakura could – in spite of all this – manage to applaud and bellow encouragement. On stage, Sakagibara was still yelling, and as we continued to endure the weight of his gravely voice, our eyes drifted to the waning sky and soared. 

At the far edge of the area, men who had nothing better to do were watching and scoffing with their cold faces. I was drifting between wakefulness and sleep. All the noises of the big city began to blur together in my ears. It was as if I was the warm, heavy ocean of a summer night, and the noises were peeling off of me, and drifting upwards towards the ocean surface. I forgot about the mocking men behind me, forgot about Shintoho beside me, forgot about Sakagibara in front of me. It was if I was just one insignificant grain of sand in the desert of the big city: I couldn’t change the desert with my tiny ‘grain power’, but I could use it to achieve piece of mind, and forgive everything that had happened to me thus far in my life. I took all the hatred and contempt and let it seep out of me, distributing it back to the desert from whence it came. All my self-blame was cast out, all my self-loathing and my weak points were blown loose by the desert winds. My rotten parts, my perverted filth and the relentless critic who lived inside of me,  were all suddenly gone from my heart.  I was a puppy, I thought.  A puppy covered in gaping wounds, futilely licking itself and consoling itself. I was barking and biting at the world and those who mocked me, but the whole time I was searching blindly for a Papa-dog who could heal me. In my half-awake, dreamlike state, I was spellbound by my revelations.  As if in a dream, I heard all the abuse that I’d ever hurled at the normal people and the society that had mistreated me; all the hatred and detestation. I was dimly aware that - out in the real world - it was Sakagibara’s voice, but inside my head, his bellowing took on the form of my own voice-  all his hatred and detestation became the cry of my own heart. In his emotions and gestures, I felt a strength began to enter my entire body, and I began to hear his screaming for the first time: “These guys, these shitty-ass fuckers, these low-lifes are selling our country like a cheap whore!!! These heinous fuckers! This is God’s land! This is where we keep our women and raise our children! But the way we raise them is wrong, isn’t it?!? The Japanese who do business with those beasts from Russia and China, they should retire! Because I’m not going to stop kicking them right in the asshole! Those faggots are getting butt-fucked by Kruschev so hard they don’t even have time to fart!!! They’re taking dirty money from that hoodlum Mao Zedong, and using it to bribe workers to strike! And I’ll bet you within two years all these Commie faggots will be betrayed – their friends will turn on them for ‘leaning to the right.’ They’ll be forced to go to ‘self-criticism sessions’ and purged, and it serves them right! Look at you now, Commies! They say we’re Yakuza, that we’re violence gangs. But who’s really doing the violence? Who is doing the protests and the strikes? Who is doing the terrorist bombings? Us or them? Without even a word of warning, these leftist pigs kill many people.  Nazis aren’t the only ones with concentration camps, you know! The Soviets are worse!!! These dirty Commies go to China and infect the Chinese with their ideas. Then the Chinese commies enslave the people and live off their sweat and blood! The Japanese military had to come in and crush them – massacring and killing! The Commies called it the “sankousaku” (literally, ‘three alls strategy’: kill all, burn all, loot all). And yet, the Commies perpetrated those same atrocities, and even worse, on their own people! And they have the nerve to say, “Forgive us, because the Japanese army did worse. Let’s all blame everything on them!”

In the name of the Imperial Family, we must strike back! My friend – a Manchuria veteran -  begged me, “Make me rape their women and kill the men!” These back-stabbers are betraying Japan. These shameless toadies, these fork-tongued lackeys, these irresponsible murdering swindling homosexuals!!!!! It makes me want to vomit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have taken a solemn oath to kill them, to torture them, to rape their women and feed their children to the pigs! It’s the only righteous thing to do!!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s my responsibility as a man!!!!! It’s the mission God gave me!!!  To send them straight to helllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!!!!111  Why did God put us here on Earth? To make sure these Commies burn at the stake! There is no other reason!!!!!!! God put us here  to send them to hell! There is no other reason!!!! We are few, but we’ll find a way, because it’s divine providence. Lenin is the only god these pigs have – they call him Uncle. Weak though we are, we will gladly give our lives to take theirs! We are righteous!!!!”

And with that, the music came on – ferocious, hateful, and at a volume that threatened to break the speakers, it reverberated throughout the entire city. “We must kill them to save our own lives! It’s the only righteous thing to do!” We shouted as we stood to applaud. From the stage, the demo’s leaders spurred on our hysterics, until we felt as if we had been in a dark, deep tunnel, until Sakagibara had emerged - a Golden Man - lighting the way with his golden radiance, to save us. Our applause and shouts were echoed by our brothers, lending us more strength. We are righteous! This is righteous! To avenge the dreadful things they’ve done to our souls, this is righteous!

“Look at those ‘uyoku’ guys. They’re starting ‘em young, aren’t they?” “Looks like they’re doing it for the money.”

I whirled round furiously to see who was mocking us, and saw three office ladies, who flinched under my gaze. Ah, so! I’m considered a real right-wing militia guy, eh?  My body suddenly swelled with pride and joy. I finally knew who I was. A rightist. I took one step towards the girls, and they shrank back in fear, raising their small voices in protest. In front of everyone, I boldly walked forward. The girls and the men surrounding us looked at me with hatred but no one dared to say anything. Everyone is looking at me, because I’m a real rightist! And even though they stare, I do not feel flustered, nor do I blush. It’s as if I’m becoming a new person.

I’m an adult now – able to stand up on the same Earth as everyone else, and look them in the eye, and demand respect. I’ve found some hard, hard armor I can wrap around my weak and petty self, forever. The normal people will never see the real me hidden safe inside the armor – the armor of uyoku!  And what is more, I can scare office ladies so bad, that their legs become paralyzed and they can’t even run away from me.  I could practically hear the pounding of their hearts, feel the hotness of their blood, see their fear changing to sexual desire! And I took an extreme spiritual pleasure in this.  I bellowed at them, “What do you know about uyoku? Hey, do you think you’re better than us, you whores?” The girls ran off into the crowd, weeping under the darkening evening skies. The men around me muttered angrily but at the same time they tried to hide their anger. I could see they were afraid of me. The normals were finally afraid of me!  I had successfully put an end to the ‘calling-them-some-whores’ scandal.  Just then, I felt a muscular hand clap me forcefully on the shoulder. I turned and saw the kindly faces of members from the Imperial Way Faction, wearing their festive armbands. 

As I looked at these older men, I was overcome with emotion. We had the same blood running in our veins, the blood of Yamato. Even though I was just a little boy, the man who had given such a violent, hateful speech spoke to me with a kind chuckle: “Thank you!  You young patriotic men are the essence of valor!  The stout-hearted Japanese youth who love His Majesty The Emperor. You have real Japanese spirits, so I feel you have been chosen for this duty!”

The voice revelation had spoken! Combined with the din of the city – the screeching trains, blaring loudspeakers,  the babble of passerby – it overpowered my senses. I relapsed into hysteria. My eyes blurred and I witnessed a beautiful, benevolent vision: The evening city was sinking into a murky swamp of darkness, and then , just when all was lost – like a brilliant light cleansing a vulgar brownish-yellow stain,  the rays of the sun manifested, their brilliant radiance burning away the swamp. The sun took the form of a Golden Man: His Majesty The Emperor. You’ve been chosen because of your valiant spirit, to protect His Majesty, I thought to myself. You are the future of Japan.  You are the young man who has been chosen for his true Japanese spirit.

CHAPTER FOUR IN THA HOUSE
  
After I swore my allegiance at the Imperial Way Faction’s headquarters, Sakagibara said to me, “Now you’re officially the youngest member of the Organization.” But, it didn’t look like I was their first attempt at recruiting youth: besides me, I quickly discovered that there were three shifty-looking twenty-year-old fellows also at the headquarters. But they didn’t fit the teenager-y image of ‘Imperial Way Youth’ as much as I did. These ‘teen rightists’ were stern and solemn to the point of arrogance. They never failed to have a ‘more stern and solemn than thou’ expression smeared on their faces. I tried to talk to them about movies, jazz and pop culture, but they scorned these topics ferociously. They swore at me, calling me a frivolous and juvenile new recruit. I was a bit disappointed, but at the same time this just made me want to try even harder to live up to the name of ‘rightist.,’ and bury  myself deeper inside the uyoku anthill. The reason for this is simple: they were absolutely right! Before I joined The Organization, I was a terrible daydreamer, always having silly visions born from movies and such. So I was determined to – from this point on – be as serious as possible, even if it killed me.  Years ago, I’d seen a commercial for the movie ‘Emperor Meiji and the Russo-Japanese War.’ Recalling this, I asked the ‘young Rightists’ if they’d seen it, figuring that this might well be my ‘in.’  Just so – they replied enthusiastically, how many times they’d seen it, how perfectly the lead actor played his part, how moved they were by it.  From then on, we were buddies. But in fact, they seemed to have completely confused the movie with the actual event, treating it as some sort of historical document. “His Majesty Emperor Meiji was concerned about the troops. It was with the greatest regret that he sent them to war.”
 Or, “General Nogitaisho ‘s horse was amazing! Mr.  Tougou Gensui was never fatigued, even on the battlefield.” They would earnestly debate these topics for lengthy periods. It turned out that these fellows would go see movies after all, if the movies were about wars or Japanese history. Their hearts would leap as the Japanese soldiers rushed onto the battlefield:  they were about to learn about new weapons, or at least new techniques for killing with old weapons!  They honestly didn’t care about  Western movies or current Japanese films, because these films had nothing but pistols.  
They considered it more honourable to kill face-to-face, using traditional Japanese swordsmanship. And at any rate, Sakagibara had forbidden them to have pistols.  　　　In particular, there was one  ‘rightist youth’ who carried a diagram of the human body, covered in crimson dots, similar to an acupuncturist’s chart.   I wondered what the meaning of the dots was, until one morning when the newspaper carried a report of a stabbing death in Shinjuku. And then I saw this fellow very diligently making a new mark on his body-chart: each of the crimson dots represented a stabbing from a news report! “Hey you, would you ever stab someone?” my new friends asked me: the very question was a mark of my new coolness.  He was staring at me intensely like one who was making a silent prayer.  Then he began muttering to himself (though he was still facing me): “Those fuckers, they’re silly. Those leftist fuckers! If they keep getting more silly, where will it end? If they won’t stop, I’ll have to stop them myself.”  I really wanted to tell Elder Youth that ‘silly’ was not the best choice of words for such a matter, but couldn’t find a better expression. We both sat for a moment with our brows furrowed and frustrated expressions on our faces. Finally, he had an idea: “If they don’t stop, I’ll stop them myself!” he repeated.  And that was the Imperial Way Faction Rightist Youth Corps in a nutshell: eloquence was not necessary.

After all, our boss’ job was to be eloquent, and the managers were charismatic as well. As rank-and-file members, our everyday duties did not require eloquence or even being talkative.  Instead, we would stand quietly at the speeches, only talking to cheer on the speaker. Between bellows, we stood with our shoulders squared and frowns on our faces, as if the enemies were right in front of us, heavily armed, and we were ready to protect our leaders. We would  glare intimidatingly and yell, “It is our duty to stop those silly guys from doing any more mischief!” Often we would be asked to co-operate with the Youth Corps of the Conservative Party at large events. We would be absolutely silent and grim; in contrast the Conservatives would try to passionately and loquaciously sweet-talk passers-by. In their hearts, they thought we were light-weights. More than conservatives, they seemed to be in the “I Want To Get A Promotion And Raise” party. Privately, we made fun of them: “Those guys don’t want to fight, all they care about is their career. That’s why they’re so pushy and always talking. Their un-stoic, un-chivalrous attitude reminds me of the leftists. Maybe they’re also a bunch of silly guys. Maybe one day we’ll have to get them, too.” I remembered a post-card I’d gotten from an acquaintance  in the Conservative Youth Corps – we grew up in the same village. He had red cheeks, and was a truly irritating slick-talker. He confessed that he had his future planned out to the last detail: 

“I’ve finally managed to set aside 200,000 shares of stock. And already they are steadily increasing in value. I’m 24 now. By 25, I’ll be an assemblyman. By 30, a representative, by 35, a Minister .  I should be able to accomplish my ambitions, because I’m a pace-setter and can prioritize my work-stream :  getting the stocks gives me the financial power. The financial power gets me the job of ‘Tokyo Youth Corps Director of Advertising and Public Relations.’  Ultimately, I want to start my own faction. I’m a firm believer in the merit system, so as soon as I join the main Party, I will start a controversy. 

The other day I was at a certain downtown restaurant with the Party Secretary, and we discussed world affairs for no less than two hours. His knowledge boggled my mind! Once, when I went to see the Parliament in session, I started to imagine - - what if you became a powerful behind-the-scenes fixer?  How funny would that be?!? That’s when I decided to write you this card. Let’s get together sometime and really discuss the big issues. Hash out the new paradigms. If you want to get into the stock market, I’ll introduce you to Corporate Director Matsugawa. But if you’re more interested in politics, I could to introduce you to our Regional Director of Public Relations, Mr. Ikiyama.”

This was without a doubt the single craziest thing I had ever heard. This odious clown was clearly a country bumpkin who was frantically grasping for sophistication. From time to time, we’d argue about the difference in philosophy between their group and ours, and, after we completely lost, we would glare at them, physically intimidating them. That’s how we let them know that our cause was most righteous. There was no honor to be gained from dealing with those slick-talking ‘sales-people’ rightists. Our boss will teach us everything we need to know. He’ll pick our books to read, from which we will acquire wisdom. It’s not a lot of wisdom, to be sure, but it comes from the Golden Man.

 So that’s all we need to confirm our faith, to strengthen our passion, to rivet the message firmly to the backs of our skulls.   Especially I, who had undergone such a total conversion. One evening in late spring, I was finishing a book that Boss had loaned me, to better understand his ideals.  I wanted to understand his essence. Everything else, I hated and abhorred, and absolutely refused. 

I think I got an exceptionally warm welcome from Mr. Sakagibara, and that’s why I returned his enthusiasm with so much passion of my own. As he said, “If you’re going to fight for our ideology, you have to drink every last drop, like a bottle of fine sake. You can’t break the bottle or spill the glorious liquor. You have been chosen! But, all of us uyoku have been chosen. We have such faith, that we can stare directly at the sun! That is the way of righteousness!”

From that evening, for several weeks, Sakagibara indicated that he’d like for me to live in the headquarters, where he would be responsible for me. He even went to my house, and persuaded Father and Mother. Father, in his American liberalism style, explained that he had no intention of meddling: I was free to choose my own road in life, provided that I was not a nuisance to the family. And when it came to politics, patriotic activity was probably better for my health than communist activity, Father added, sounding not unlike Sakagibara himself. I considered asking Father if permitting minors to go to dangerous demonstrations was going to get him in trouble as a teacher (a clear violation of the rules for his own students!) , but decided against it. Also somehow I resisted the temptation to point out that his liberalism was promoting my conservatism. I suppose that’s just one of the contradictions of the American way. Older Brother stared at me with what I took to be a look of dismay. Mother had been looking at me that way ever since I wounded Elder Sister, but she had never directly said a word to me. Sakagibara endlessly complimented Elder Sister on her work at the military hospital, until she finally said, “My co-worker has read your book, “The Japanese Who Truly Loves His Country Is Walking The Path Of Love!” She said this with an obscene blush, in a voice so small and high that it sounded as if it came from headphones.   Thus, Sakagibara secured the permission of my family. I was now legally independent, and Sakagibara assumed responsibility for my upbringing. Then my family asked me when I had joined the rightist group, and how I had come to know such an important person as Sakagibara. I prepared a lie for this occasion, which I hoped would shut them all up: 

“I joined up when Elder Sister started working at the military hospital, because I couldn’t stand people talking badly about the military anymore.” With this one strike, I was able to make them all retreat, I knew. On my birthday, Elder Sister had defeated me, but now the tables had turned: I was an entirely different person, and victorious. My miraculous  conversion was total. It was hard to believe only five weeks had passed.

At school, my conversion led to an even more dramatic triumph. As Shintoho said, my formally joining the Imperial Way Faction was simply a felling like the Shinpa drama.  Joining the Faction finally let me realize who I was, to see things from my own point of view, and to  stand up for myself. Furthermore, once Shintoho  realized that I was a hard-core right winger, and not a casual fan like himself, he became my public relations agent; my biographer.

He told everyone, “Homeboy went to the demo at Shinbashi station, man! There were twenty fuckin’ communists that came looking for trouble, but my man took them all on single-fuckin’-handed! So then the Imperial Way President,  Sakagibara, said he was thinking about appointing my man to be the fuckin’ successor of the whole group! Now my man is living at their headquarters. He’s hardcore, yo!”

Instantly, everyone at school knew who I was. My conversion was the biggest scandal of our grade. My counsellor – who didn’t at all mind if students voiced leftist opinions – took me aside and warned me not to continue my activities. He said that I should quit the Faction. I hinted that I would inform Sakagibara of this, and even more indirectly hinted that the Faction would retaliate.  These hints sufficed to stop the pressure. As it happens, the teachers were even more susceptible than the students to Shintoho’s propaganda: a rumor soon surfaced that the history teacher would say conservative things, but only when I attended class. Of course it could not be said that there was no opposition to me on campus: the local National Youth Union guys who sometimes illegally attended left-wing demos came up to me to argue. Back when I was a leftist, I used to be scared of the ‘boss’ of the leftist crew, so I ‘won’ the debate merely by having the courage to talk back to him.  I managed to baffle them using the same arguments that Elder Sister used on me, back on my birthday.  Whether the topic was peace, re-militarization, the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans. . . those NYU fellows could not hold tightly to their convictions. I administered a shock to their whole philosophy!  Then I played my trump card: “By the way, Japan’s intellectuals are mostly left-wing, right? But, they don’t do anything for the impoverished farmers’ sons who have to join the army. Even though they’re very prestigious and teach at famous universities, I want to do more than them. These professors you like, if there was a small war with South Korea, maybe they could prevail on the United Nations to help stop it. But in the two or three days it would take for the UN to arrive, how many Japanese would be killed by Syngman Rhee’s army? How many women and children and impoverished farmers’ sons? Someone’s got to be on the side of these people. You guys like Sartre more than anyone, right? And isn’t this exactly what he would do in this situation? You’re always talking about putting his ideas into practice, right? I’m just a weak and stupid boy, but with the Imperial Way Faction, I’m putting my life on the line for my beliefs. Who among you would make this kind of sacrifice? You’re all just playing politics while waiting to get into a nice corporate job at some multinational, aren’t you?”

They looked nervously at one another, these straight-A students, for once completely at a loss for words. Behind these fellows I saw the unmistakable, haughty face of Sugi Emiko, looking at me with curiosity, and, perhaps, a hint of passion.

“That’s easy for you to say, you anachronism! Your kind is lucky if you get accepted to military school, let alone Tokyo University,” she said.

 As a matter of fact, Sakagibara had been pushing for me to go to military school – to make contacts with the officers in preparation for a coup d’etat -  but that was ultra top-secret! Sakagibara understood my desires like no one else, and I repaid him with my passion for his cause. Our uniforms were patterned on the Nazis’, and when we walked down the street in formation, I felt an almost overpowering joy. Like a beetle encased in impregnable armor. No one could see inside the armor: my weakness, my wounds, my un-coolness, and my craven disgrace. I was safe. This must be what heaven feels like, I had thought. I used to be terrified of passers-by judging me. I would cringe and blush. My self-conscious-ness would cause me to spaz out and act disgracefully.  But nowadays the normal people don’t see anything but my uniform – and they’re scared of it!  I’ve drawn a curtain over the weak and wounded youth I used to be, hidden it away forever. Over the course of time, the limits of my confidence increased: I found I was not wounded by shame, even when out of uniform. Perhaps I could win my battle with shame even if I was nude! 

Before, my self-satisfaction filled me with such shame I wanted to commit suicide. I was so shin-skinned, and so convinced that normal peoples’ eyes were the most powerful thing in the universe . . .just thinking about the possibility of being caught filled with me with terror. My embarrassment and shame were like a drama being played out on my very flesh. But one day, I had a crucial realization: I realized that this drama and shame were meaningless, and they collapsed. It began with a comment from Mr. Sakagibara: “You’ve got a lot of sexual tension, haven’t you? Suppressing it isn’t any fun. You should get yourself a woman.” “I don’t really think about that, sir.” “No girl, eh? Well if that’s the case, let’s go to the soapland (brothel), so you can get your root wet! Take this money and get going!” I’d never even thought it was possible that a fellow such as myself could go.  I never imagined that sexual frustration could be the root of my feelings of disgrace. The other fellows said, “Put your uniform and get going!” It was already evening, but still I dilly-dallied. When, at length, I had exhausted the last of my counter-arguments, I donned my ‘armor’ and headed to the Shinjuku red-light district by myself, looking for a ‘Turkish bath.’ 
As I walked in the gaudily ornamented glass doors, I realized I had no bo-ki: I felt like a small child who was suddenly put in front of a firing squad. Or a new recruit being screamed at by the General. I paled and the blood rushed to my skull.  My Imperial Way Faction uniform felt heavier than a diver’s wet-suit. We uyoku rely on this uniform, this armor, like a diver relies on weights to pull him down, I realized. We are wrapped tightly in our uniforms, but the normal people are even more tightly bound by their fear!!!
A girl with her hair bleached to a straw-color, and a nice body entered the private room, wearing nothing but a brassiere and ‘short pants.’ Her sexuality was very evident!  She gazed at my uniform for precisely five seconds, in the steam swirling around the exposed light-bulb, and then, despicably, turned her head without saying a word. She never looked at me again. I took off my clothes, the first time I had been naked in front of another person since I was born – and it was in front of this terrible, judgemental girl. However, I noticed that my muscles were finally beginning to develop, making me feel a bit like an armoured car. Deciding that this muscularity was a result of joining the uyoku, I developed a monumental bo-ki. It was the kind of bo-ki that could effortlessly rupture the hymen of my future wife on our wedding night! (a serious ‘root,’ as Sakagibara might say). Yes, this was the kind of bo-ki I had prayed for on my juu-nana-sai birthday, and had received instead only self-pollution and tears! But it was mine now. I vowed that I would keep this bo-ki for the rest of my life! A life-long orgasm – in my mind, my soul, and throughout the fiber of my entire body. IN South America, there is a barbarian tribe who don’t wear clothes – instead, they keep their penises inside giant cones. These cones are inconvenient when it comes to hunting or making war, but their god requires it of them. So they strap the cones to their bellies, like a dog’s penis, pointing to their heads rather than dangling down. I felt like a Seventeen who had joined that tribe. The girl helped me get nit the steaming bath-tub. And washed me in the water. When I got out, she covered me in baby powder and led me to a bed, the kind used in medical examinations.  Then she gave me a massage, and silently stroked my ‘man’s root.’  I’m sure she would soon notice that the foreskin was all mutated from too much self-satisfaction, and silently prayed to God to pare it back down to a normal size. I laid on my back like a king, absolutely passive. The girl began to blush – I suppose she had some bad habits of her own.

I remembered the love letter I had written to Sugi Emiko. In the letter, I had copied a poem which I had plagiarized from one of Elder Sister’s books. Though I wound up throwing away the love-letter in shame, I still recalled one particular stanza of the poem: 

Standing on yon lofty precipice
I espy thee
resting athwart the flowerpot
Thee  radiance of the Sunn entwined with thine golden locks
The pain in mine Emptyy Heart, lo!
As thou takest thine hands and pluck a single Flower

My man-root was the radiance of the sun!  Furthermore, it was the flower as well!  It was a fierce and vehement proponent of orgasm! I felt the orgasm approaching, and left my body. I was floating in a darkening sky. I saw the Golden Man hovering before me with his unearthly radiance! Aah! Ooh! Your Majesty the Emperor! My Emperor shines with the dazzling brilliance of the rising sun! Aah, aah, ooh!  When I recovered from my hysteria and opened my eyes, I saw the girl had what appeared to be tears scattered across her cheeks. This turned out to be my semen. I felt my usual post-self-satisfaction sense of triumph. I jubilantly put my uniform back on without saying a word to the slave girl. That evening, I had learned three lessons. First: I, the rightist youth, had completely conquered my fear of being stared at by normal people. Second: I, the rightist youth, had the right to do any sort of atrocious act to the weakling normals, and therefore, Third: I, the rightist youth, was truly a son of His Majesty the Emperor.  I burned with desire to know everything about His Majesty. I think my generation – more than Older Brother’s generation – will be the ones to restore a real connection with His Majesty in society. We – not Older Brother’s generation – will be willing to die for His Majesty even when there are no wars to be fought. We become hot with jealousy when we hear the stories of older people who actually got to fight a war for Him. 
But, I am a child of the right, therefore I am one of His Majesty’s children, so I’m willing to wait for Him to start the next war. I devoured the books of secret lore in 
Sakagibara’s garage: the Imperial Vice-Chancellor’s History Chronicles, the Meiji Honorable Scroll Collection, writings of veterans and military tacticians from the Imperial Army. It was as if my new classroom was the Imperial Palace and the Imperial Army academy. And of course, Mein Kampf. Sakagibara kept hinting that I should tackle  Taniguchi Masaharu’s formidable “Treatise Regarding Influences of Imperial Absolutism,”  so I was working on that as well. And when I successfully finished “Only Through Abandoning Selfishness Can One Truly Grant Fealty To Lords”, I was so moved by my own achievements – I had mastered the fundamental principles of Rightism.

I burned with passion for the cause. By no means would I allow selfishness to pollute my fealty! I don’t have the fear of death that holds back the people of today’s corrupt society! I have overcome the feelings of helplessness.  The old me-  the selfish me –was abnormal, contradictory, incoherent, muddled and vulgar. And these flaws were clearly visible to everyone around me.
No matter what I decided, it was always a mistake, because my thinking was clouded by selfishness. The anxiety fed on itself, creating more anxiety, until it was unbearable. The new me replaced the selfishness with fealty to a higher cause. I cast out the selfishness and felt the energy of His Highness The Emperor fill my body and soul. All my contradictions and muddled thinking has been burned away by a cleansing flame! The confusion which had robbed me of my self-confidence, the unanswered questions of life, these had all flown away. Your Majesty, sweep away my selfishness and confusion! Save me from individualism! The instant that I murdered my selfishness, I was released from my dungeon of isolation, and a new, anxiety-free Son Of The Emperor was born. I feel freedom! I no longer worry about which choice to make in life – His Majesty makes them for me. I have become like the stone or the tree, unable to experience confusion or fall into despair. I am a rock or tree. . .for His Highness The Emperor!  This modern world, which was so baffling and complex, has become simple and easy to deal with. Yes! Yes, that’s it exactly. Only he who foregoes selfishness can know the supreme bliss of submission. Moreover, I have become freed from my overpowering fear of death, and the unthinking despair which this fear injected into my every waking moment.  Even if I die, I’ll live on as part of His Majesty The Emperor – for He is my mighty giant and thriving tree that would continue to exist forever! And I have finally found my tree, for I am one of his many young branches. I will never fall through the endless void of non-existence which is Death. I have triumphed over my death-phobia! Aah, Emperor! Emperrorrrrrr!! You are my God, my Sun, my Eternity!  I live only for you! Shake that ass! 

Having had my epiphany, I left Sakagibara’s garage. I had no more need of books: now was the time to learn karate! When he saw my training uniform, Sakagibara said, “Shichishoukoku! (literally: even if I die seven times in battle, I’ll keep coming back to fight for Japan)! May His Highness The Emperor live ten thousand years!!!!” It was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I am the Chosen Youth who will save us with my true Japanese warrior spirit!!!!!

In May, the leftists will have their country-wide demonstration. In high spirits, I decided to join the Imperial Way Faction’s Counter-Demonstration Youth Group. I don’t care if they’re red laborers, red students, red intellectuals, or red showbiz people, I will charge at them and kick them until they fully disperse!! The charter of the I.W.F.C.-D.Y.G. is taken from Heinrich Himmler of the Nazis, and is as follows: 
Article one: loyalty
Article two: obedience
Article three: courage
Article four: reliability
Article five: integrity
Article six: love your comrades
Article seven: carry out your responsibilities joyfully
Article eight: work diligently
Article nine: don’t drink
Article ten: defending the Emperor and patriotism is our duty. Anything else is not important.

We will stomp the reds with our feet, we will knock them over, stab them to death, strangle them, burn them alive!  I fought with courage and honor, and a wooden sword with nails pounded into it. I turned to the mob of high school normals and  hatefully brandished my club. I strode into a knot of female students and knocked them down with it, stomping on them as they tried to escape. 

I was arrested many times, and each time I was released, I went straight back to attack the demo again.  The I.W.F.C.-D.Y.G. has more courage and brutality than those hundred thousand leftists, and Seventeen has  more courage and brutality than all twenty of the other twenty  guys in I.W.F.C.-D.Y.G.! Seventeen is the rightist of the right, the free-for-all in the middle of the night, the fear and suffering and, the violence, bellowing, the screams of abuse and the howling of the victims in the bitter black dark confusion of battle, the Golden Man shines and guides my way with a brilliant and holy luminescence, and Seventeen is the only one who is able to see him: His Majesty the Emperor.  

In the evening, a light rain was falling, and the mob fell into confused silence as a rumor spread that one of the girls had died. The rain began to fall in great torrents, and the leftists grew weary, sad, and lost their will to fight. While crying, they prayed for her survival, while I – on the other hand – felt the triumph of the rapist’s orgasm, and beheld a wondrous Golden vision: He told me that I would kill them all someday. I am the chosen one. I am Seventeen.

To be continued in Part Two: Death Of A Political Youth.