http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otoya_Yamaguchi

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B5%85%E6%B2%BC%E7%A8%B2%E6%AC%A1%E9%83%8E%E6%9A%97%E6%AE%BA%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6

Seventeen part two: the Death of a Political Youth.

CHAPTER ONE

Just as summer was about to manifest, in the sky, in the faraway forests, in the sea, Seventeen – that is to say, myself – felt it in my flesh, as if someone had opened a fire hydrant of gushing water onto the parched pavement of my body.

This particular morning, after the rain, the left-wing National Student Alliance had given up trying to encircle the Diet (congress) building, and we were celebrating by drinking canned beer on the front lawn. I, personally, was drunk on nothing but victory itself. This gave my pleasure an even more lonely feeling. Inside my head, my chest, and the muscles of my whole body, an uneasy, hot feeling was welling up. 

The left-wingers had, like stone-age people, torn up pieces of the paved road and thrown them. Looking at the torn-up remains of the road, I beheld a vision, a phantom of the girl I’d stomped to death. 

There ought to be more dead bodies laying around her, I thought.  

During the leftist-inspired rioting, during the urban combat, and even in the continual snowfall, we should have used our guns for the glory of The Emperor, shooting them like dogs in the street. Just like the good old days of the “February 26th coup.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_26_Incident

I felt an odd loneliness. 

An intolerable feeling, like I’d been stabbed in the back. With a cold, hollow feeling gripping me, I took a long, hard look at the Diet building, standing there unscathed and tranquil, full of its own arrogance. This was truly a ‘castle of strangers’  which I was defending. Ever since the May battle,  (see the final part of Seventeen part one – ed.) I felt like we were on the same side as the Diet. But they had drifted back to their old ways, these old men who held our country tightly in their hands; they had become cold and distant to us. I felt like I’d been cooped up in the castle of these strangers for long enough. 

I spit in an empty tin can, crumpled it up, and threw it onto the stones which had been ripped from the road. The other fellows in our group, they had already grown used to this fickleness of politicians. I knew I was the only one who was filled with the cold, hollow feeling at this victory party. The used-up, unwanted can made an uneasy, futile sound as it met the cast-off stones.

We began to make our pilgrimage to The Emperor’s Palace, climbing a steep hill,  but morale was low. The aroma of the green April leaves wafting through the late-night air of an exhausted city cast a gloomy pall upon our march. I stared at my reflection in the windows of passing cars, in the puddles, and the shop windows. In the last few months, my body had started developing unstoppably; I was forced to acknowledge my robust growth. Even if I closed my eyes tightly, just by flexing my muscles, I could feel my chest becoming thicker and more manly, feel my flesh getting bigger, as well as “the details:” These too were developing nicely, and firming up. But even contemplating this was not enough to put me in a good mood at that particular time.

But, as soon as we reached the Palace grounds of Miyagi Field, my spirits lifted and euphoria came over me, a fullness of bliss that flowed through my entire body. I have been re-made! From the morning, (when I recite the Imperial Rescript

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Rescript_on_Education

 on Education), until the final moment of pleasure, (when I say my prayers to an Official Photo of His Highness, which dazzles my eyes), my life at Imperial Way Faction Headquarters is always accompanied by a feeling of brilliant light, thanks to The Emperor. If I ever start to feel loneliness, I remember that I am a Child of The Emperor, and am once again filled with bliss. And if that moment of bliss is clouded by the thought that I have no real-world connection to The Emperor, well, such a thought is just one of the many deceptions of this grey and fallen world. 

It’s not necessary for me to be friends with Him, only to see the world through His eyes and hear it through His ears. And the Imperial senses should not be wasted on considering petty, worldly affairs. Those affairs are for selfish people, and I loyally serve The Emperor with all my heart and soul, devoid of selfishness! I am utterly apart from contemporary society, which is so unconcerned with His Highness. That’s why those Commie teachers at my school call me a lazy, talentless youngster.  

Merely because I have better things to do than pay attention – or even attend – classes.  His Highness my blazing summer sun. He comes to warm me up far before “real” summer arrives. He is the blazing orb around which my private world revolves, with the radiant heat of the summer sun.

So you could say I’m on “Imperial Summer Vacation” every school day. 

Only for His sake will I put my engine into “full throttle position.” Other than that, I must carefully stockpile my energy. 

In the Imperial Way Party’s newsletter, there is an “Introducing the New Members” column.  What follows is the column about myself. I never dreamed that another person (the editor) could peer into my inner depths and see me as I saw myself.  It was the first time in my life that such a miracle occurred! Not counting, of course, the trivial moments-of-being-understood of childhood.  Ever since I fell into the clutches of the polluted devil called  “self-consciousness,”  I never dreamed that anyone would write things like the editor wrote about me:

“Seventeen is a youngster, but his activity displays a dauntless courage. He kicks the “leftist atoms” into pieces. He knows no fear, since we have taken him under our wing and made a warrior out of him. He’s the only person we have allowed to join at such a young age, but he is training hard to catch up to the general membership, and we have considerable hope that he will continue his remarkable progress. Although he seems very docile and taciturn in his daily life here at Headquarters, he is polite and thoughtful.  Someday he will spread his wings and fly.  After all, the talented person doesn’t need to show off. High-school seniors across Japan would do well to learn from his example!”

I was born into an intellectual, bourgeois family, which is the worst environment for a young warrior such as myself, who has the soul of a blue-collar man. It’s only because I live here at Headquarters that I was able to become the honorable person described in the article.

But recently, the Conservative Party Cabinet switched factions. And public opinion soon followed their new party line. Once again, the problem was Ampo (the treaty which allowed American bases to exist in Japan). 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_and_Security_between_the_United_States_and_Japan

 If the leftist scum could block even one delegate from the treaty negotiations, they could declare victory. That’s why they tried to encircle the Diet Building. One of the students at the leftist encampment was reading a whiney, tearful poem called, “Japan Has Become Wack!”  My “private summer sun”, which had actually been late to show up – later than real summer, in fact - began to brighten as I heard the poet’s hysterical weeping. And soon it was glowing with a brilliance as radiant as the shine on my uyoku armor, which I polish daily, as one should!

CHAPTER 2

The Imperial Way Party hosts regular “Discipline and Self-Improvement” parties for the younger members. At this party, there was a rare argument. I was lost in thought, in the farthest corner of the auditorium, when I heard the accusations fly all around my head, like so many lines in the most dramatic play.  

The younger Imperial Way fellows – those up to 30 years old -  had become very excited by all the fighting that our Youth Action Squad had done, and were moved to speak out very directly. As well, they voiced doubts about some of the older members, who seemed to have a very lukewarm attitude about our President, Sakagibara Kunihiko. Among these young voices, two theorists uttered the following dramatic lines:

Brother A (25 years old, son of a Shinto priest, college graduate, and a member of the unpopular Skeptic Faction of Imperial Way): 
I have doubts if we should all get happy and yell, “We won! We won!” next time.  I have doubts that this street-fighting with leftist kids is a real victory at all.

http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&biw=1213&bih=684&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=%E8%A2%B4%E3%80%80%E7%94%B7&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Brother B (30 years old, member of the Realist Faction, always clad in Haori and Hakoma (like a male kimono)  <<Actually, B. inspired me to wear my own haori to high-school every day, prompting my math teacher to grumble “That rightist ass!” out of the side of his mouth. This criticism made me feel noble!>>  At any rate, B’s Realist Faction was working with the Youth Crew Wing of the mainstream Conservative Party, and always consented to their demands. This, plus his tireless work, earned him the nickname “Mr. Politician.” Though B.’s formal education ended after junior high, he is an avid reader, since he was born into a merchant family from Numazushi):
Well, you can’t say we lost, can you?!? Their leader admitted defeat in the magazine! They said he cried wan, wan, wan, right there in front of the Diet building.   They really thought they could penetrate the main compound and start some sort of revolution!  Let’s think about this for a second, everyone: this Ampo treaty that they want to oppose. . . this treaty allows us to ask the Americans for help.

If they had gotten inside the Diet, we could have mobilized the American troops to kill all of them! We did them a favor by stopping ‘em ourselves. 

It’s thanks to our common sense, the common sense of the Ampo system, that they’re still alive! And Japan’s harmony was preserved. 

By the way, did you see ‘em crying about that dead girl? Didn’t they realize how close all 100,000 of them were to getting killed? But no, they just want to cry, wan, wan, wan.  I’d of liked to take that cry-baby poet, pick him up by the scruff of his neck, and knock him in the dirt! But I didn’t, because I didn’t need to rub our victory in his face. I’ll let him rush back to his little office and look through all his dusty books, trying to find a good comeback, “Oh, oh, what would Lenin have said?!?” Ha, ho, ho!!! Man, scholars like that need a good walloping.

Brother A. : 
Wanting to win these silly games, then being so proud of yourself, talking big about punching and walloping scholars, do you really believe that means victory for our cause?

Brother B.:
What’s wrong with believing we won? Sure, the newspapers have their assholes filled with Leftist poison, and they print lies saying we’re gangsters and thugs, but the regular workin’ folks are on our side. And at the next election, do you think the voters will let those lefties win? As always, the Conservative Party will take it – that’s how we let the people have their say!

Brother A:
As even you must know, the only people winning the election are the pus-covered venereal sores known as Conservatives. Not us! And certainly not our own President Sakagibara – they already decided they won’t even let him run on the Conservative ticket!!!

And yet you’re always running round with those pigs from the Conservative Youth Crew Wing. Helping them get their ‘Young Pig’ careers in Big Money Politics off the ground! Rolling around in the shit with them, does that feel good? When they smear it all over you, do you roll your eyes and moan, un, un, un?  I guess I agree with the leftists that the Conservatives are the enemy.

Brother B: This so-called ‘enemy’ of ours – after our May actions – gave us 200,000 yen. And that’s just a public contribution! They also funneled 500,000 yen to our “Committee to Re-Elect the Prime Minister.” That’s the reason we can continue our activities. You want to bite the hand that feeds you? (lit. –‘Even though they’re our enemies, they give us aid generously, are you so dishonorable that you would refuse it?’)

Brother A.(turning blue and quivering with anger):
Taking that 200,000 – 5000,000 yen is exactly what makes us no better than common thugs! You know damn well that the Conservatives are the ones keeping the Imperial Way Party from running our own candidates in the elections! We’ve been reduced to being the muscle for the pigs of the Conservative Youth Crew! We’ve been reduced to just another cog in their corrupt machine – the lowest level! 

Brother B. (also yelling apoplectically):
Well what the fuck should we do then?!?!?

Brother C: (jumping in seconds before the argument turns into a fist-fight, and capturing everyone’s attention by reading from a manifesto in an impossibly loud voice: in surprise, everyone instantly became quiet and listened)

Dark clouds loom over us! The red tide presses upon us from the west and north, threatening to swallow us up.  Our national defense is so weak, we can’t even respond to Rhee Syngman (president of South Korea)’s empty threats. The Communist Party, the Progressive Party, Big Labor, the Teachers’ Union, the All-Japan Students League, and even the self-styled “intelligentsia” all form a “fifth column”, undermining us with their conspiracies, squirming away in the darkness they’ve created!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column

Political rot rolls in from overseas, damaging our shores, here, and there. The stench can be smelled through our whole country. The Japan of today is living in a false reality. Who can really speak out as a true, sincere patriot? Japan! You are in danger! I can’t help but worry about you! The time is now! You too, don’t you think that we have reached the same conditions as the night before the May 15th Incident? The same conditions as the day before the February 26th Incident?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_26th_Incident

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15th_Incident

Look around you! Weakness, fickleness, laziness, and licentiousness envelop our country. Right before your eyes, people lazily misappropriate political power for their own ends. Greed devours them like a wild beast drunk on the most powerful sake.  They care for nothing but their own profit and self-interest, blind to the damage they cause. They forget that this will lead to the eternal downfall of our entire country – from peace and stability, they will plunge us off of the cliffs in their reckless pursuit of gluttony! No wonder many voices are calling for us to restore Japan! The pure of heart among us – the comrades, the youths - must take decisive action now! 

Brother A: 
That is so! I should ask them to reconsider their position and admit wrong-doing. I don’t like their dirty money, and when we beat left-wingers for them, we become as bad as the police. I strongly hope that President Sakagibara will take a more hard line against the Conservatives.

Brother C.:
What do you mean, a more hard-line stance? Like send a letter of protest to the Conservatives because they sent a Minister to the Communist countries on a diplomatic mission once?

Brother A: 
Harder.

Brother C:
Ah! A coup d’etat, then?

Brother A:
If possible, but. . . .

Brother C:
I’m not saying it’s possible, but there are those among us – right now -  who are writing theories about it! Essays about the inevitability of a coup d’etat. Compared to pre-war days, the military  now has around four or five times as much war materiel.  And in spite of that, they are subject to “civilian control,” instead of having The Emperor as Supreme Commander.

Today’s politicians are encouraging the common people to be unfaithful to The Emperor, and the people obey orders blindly, even as they are leading us to the execution ground! Are the “civilian controllers” really looking out for Japan? Or just their own power? We all have our doubts. That’s why it’s possible for us to spread dissent in the armed forces -  some people in the Army are bound to resent having to be subordinate to such leaders. 

If they don’t have confidence in the civilian leadership, rather than obey orders, the Army might well decide to take matters in their own hands: to re-form Japanese government. But which way of reform will they choose? No doubt there are some right now who want to bring the traditional “Emperor plus Imperial Army” structure of government back to life.  By the way, if there IS a coup, rather than a Communist one, it’s better to have a coup founded in ideas of Japanese nationalism. That’s my main point. 

President Sakagibara says the time is not yet ripe, but if we don’t start planning and maneuvering now, it’ll never be more than an idea. To say that it’s premature to even plan ahead, that is a sign of weakness! If we take the dirty money from the ‘ghosts’ of the Conservative Party, we’ll become their tool. Sure, maybe we’ll say ‘OK, tomorrow we’ll start laying the foundations for the coup,’ but then night will fall and the sun will rise and still we’ll be saying, ‘OK, tomorrow, tomorrow for sure. Any day now,’ and before we know it, we’ll be old men, like those spineless left-wing scholars who never live to see the revolution they’ve spent their whole lives writing about. I don’t want to die like those wimps!

The next time the National Student Alliance tries to surround the Diet building – if it’s possible for them to do a coup d’etat, they will. Am I mistaken? Am I confused? No – it’s plain for all to see! 

The right wing needs someone of our own, who can also say, “Aim for a coup for the regular folks!” . . Such a guy, if he were to emerge, couldn’t really oppose the National Student Alliance entirely. I don’t know who the scholar was that was crying when his group lost the fight, but when I stood there in front of the Diet, in the silence that followed the battle, I realized we’d crushed the seeds of a real rebellion by the little guys against the big guys, and I wanted to cry myself!  

These “Mr. Politicians,” who can only live inside the stinking filth of corruption that they generate. . . .if we could purify them, we could once again smell the sweet perfume of flowers in our face!  And that’s why I felt like crying.  A regular-folks’ coup, followed by a restoration of His Highness The Emperor to supreme commander of the military, would be a return to Japan’s true structure, and everyone would be in their true role. But such an “Ideal Program” could only be carried out by patriots and uyoku. If the left tries to impose their “Vision Of The Future” on Japan, it will be devoid of legitimacy. It won’t have the righteousness, the blessing of all the brave patriots who gave their lives in the war – fighting for the traditional system.  As for President Sakagibara, if he ever denounces my way of thinking, I will defect from the Imperial Way Party, and go underground to lay the foundations of a real coup d’etat. Everyone – are you with me?

Brother A.:
I think I’d probably go with you!

Brother B: I also would (Ever since Brother C. mentioned Supreme Military Command by The Emperor, I had been gripped by a sudden concern – this coup sounded like a much faster way for me to become close to The Emperor. But moving towards the coup would inevitably mean moving away from President Sakagibara! To my astonishment, this uneasy conviction was already growing and hardening in my breast.) defect with you, at such a time, and enroll in Military School, so we could influence the top brass from the inside! That’s how to lay a coup foundation!

Brother C.:
Well, then, you guys are brothers after all, aren’t you?

Since I’d joined the Imperial Way Party, this was the first time I’d ever heard of, and understood, the real ambitions behind it. And in that moment, I not only learned the truth of politics, but also I felt as if I’d gained a new mentor. More even than President Sakagibara, I felt that my new idol was the uyoku Program itself, in its ideal form. 

With the Program as my mentor, I would commit even more of my flesh and blood to the cause. I would become a more pure human – following not a fallible, flesh-and-blood leader such as Sakagibara but a pure concept. By making an idol of the Program, I could contact it directly, in a way I could never directly contact The Emperor!  Sakagibara was no longer necessary.  Like a disciple who has read all the world’s religions, yet can not settle on one church, I was drifting. In my faith, I wished to contact God directly, with no barrier or church between myself and Him. Of course, this God was The Emperor!

So to me, Brother C. was the ultimately desirable, pure Uyoku Human. In this capacity, he sat at the God / Emperor’s knee: a man with vast capabilities and cunning. I wanted to reach out my hand for his tutelage, become close comrades, and perfect our learning of the uyoku arts. To this end, I resolved to ask about him, and try to learn more about him, before approaching him directly. More importantly: what did he think of me when I first joined? And how about right now?  At any rate, Brother C. was an entirely different kind of person than the cartoonish, cookie-cutter uyoku that made up our unit.

Brother C’s real name was Anzai Shigeru. He was thirty-five years old. At the war’s end, he was forced to quit school and was sent to the font lines: a real member of the War Generation. He had an air about him that set him apart from the other Party leaders.

His favorite book was “Listen to the Voices from the Sea”. This book had been edited by leftists, which by itself was enough to set Anzai Shigeru apart from the rest of the Party leadership.

http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/kamikaze/writings/books/wadatsumi/index.htm

So, to us very young members, it was difficult to comprehend what he was doing in our group. We gave him respect, but kept our distance.  But even as we kept our distance, we couldn’t help wondering what this eccentric leader was up to.

He was of average height, but enormously fat, with gigantic shoulders and a low center of gravity. Furthermore, he seemed to project his strength out in front of him as he walked, pacing slowly with an air of barely controlled savagery. His skin was dark and rough, making him a perfect “Bull in human form.”  From behind very thick glasses, his big right eye would glare ferociously at nothing, while his big left eye was so myopic that its use seemed to strain the fish-eye-lens of the glasses to the breaking point from over-use.  

His rough face resembled nothing more than a giant, over-fed chameleon, if such a creature could exist. However, it had a certain charisma. Seeing him read a newspaper was frightening: cross-eyed though he was, the way he would intensely and painfully control his eyes, switching between them to devour the paper’s contents. . . . it made me feel like, what if he can read me as well, so easily? What if he can see right through me, to the deep truths in my soul? I’d be really in trouble! 

Furthermore, in much the same way, when he studied one’s face, one would feel as if a heavy weight had been placed on one’s chest, constricting it, and one would realize that one’s everyday lifestyle was very frivolous, insincere, and light-hearted, and one would start sweating profusely. In our weekly magazine, it was reported that Shigeru was the most politically extreme man in the organization, but it was also whispered among the elderly Party officials: 

 “That fellow could, any day now, decide to switch his allegiance to the left wing or the communists. He’s not concerned with the problems of today’s Japan – he’s still obsessed with his childhood friends from the “Taken-Out-Of-School-And-Forced-To-Fight-Batallion”  who all died in the war. Surely after all that, he must hate His Highness The Emperor a little bit, mustn’t he? There have even been rumors that he was planning to commit ritual suicide in front of the Imperial Palace!”

Eventually, Shigeru and I had become friendly, and I noticed that he was paying careful attention to my activities on the battlefield in front of the Diet building. He watched me with glowering, pained eyes that seemed to stick to me wherever I went. Then he bellowed his “tough love” at me:

“Hey! You’re acting like a rabid dog! Knock it off! I know you’re a courageous fighter, but you done worked yourself up until you get hysterical like a girl! You’re charging at ‘em again and again like one of those crazy women back in the Middle Ages, the whatchamacallem’s - the ones possessed by the Devil! – oh yeah, witches! You know what happens to witches?! They put ‘em on trial and hang ‘em!!!!”

“If it happened that The Emperor was the Devil, then I’d gladly be a modern-day witch or a possessed person,” I thought to myself. “Then after my misdeeds, I’d have to go back to Party Headquarters and do the Shuubatsu (Shinto exorcism)!” I indulged in these light-hearted, mischievous imaginings as I returned to the battle.

One day, Shigeru and I were assigned to make a ‘pilgrimage’ of sorts: we were to go corporations and ask them to donate money. We’d walk around and receive 5,000 yen from a certain commodities trading company, and 10,000 yen from a certain paper pulp company. I suppose that is how we were going to finance our activities for summer. 

As always, Shigeru had a copy of “Listen to the Voices From the Sea” tucked in his pocket. We were riding the train, holding onto the luggage shelf for support. Shigeru took the book out and used the luggage shelf as a sort of book-stand. I peered over his shoulder as he read a poem which he had circled in bright red ink. I saw his lips moving as he read it over and over. This continued for some four stops, until his lips trembled and were beaded with sweat. Feeling like a  immature child who has been excluded from an activity, I began to read the poem myself, uneasily:

O you sorrowful demons who defend our country
That terrible night in the rolling Spring thunder
Again you pick up your bayonets
From so far away, can you hear us yelling?
This one got shot in the brain, spilling all over
That one got shot in the chest, ripping apart
Your voices as you staggered and screamed
Thudded into my chest dimly
And pound still in my drenched and clammy forehead.

This Shigeru fellow definitely was that rare animal: an uyoku who didn’t care about The Emperor. But, I realized, he was no less full of valor, passion, and chivalry for it. But, even though I could only experience supreme bliss by drinking from the cup of Imperial love, I wasn’t offended. Instead, I thought to myself: “Isn’t it strange that a “war generation” fellow like Shigeru and a “post-war Seventeen” like myself can be in the same group? And yet in the end, it’s probably better that he doesn’t worship The Emperor. This way I’ve got Him all to myself. If I had to share Him with Shigeru, I’d probably get jealous!”

When I was at Party Headquarters, I began to work closely with Shigeru.  And often we would be alone in a room. I began to feel that the storm of President Sakagibara was losing its power, the wind dying down, the waters of the lake calming, the sand of hysteria gradually settling down. Eventually, every last drop of passion had evaporated, and I ceased wishing to behold a holy vision of the ancient and wizened body of The Emperor. 

Instead, I decided to give Him a new home in my young, vital flesh: the fresh body of Seventeen!  I would worship the Idea of The Emperor, a  ‘Pure Internal Emperor’, who would live inside me always! This way, Shigeru wouldn’t look down on me for idolizing the physical Emperor, and furthermore, I wouldn’t be troubled by those ghosts of Shigeru’s dead comrades who still cursed the physical Emperor. 

My forehead ceased to oscillate between drenched and clammy. In my co-habitation with Shigeru at headquarters, I began to know feelings of freedom, affection, and what it meant to be a grown-up. I continued to hear rumors that Shigeru was fed up with Sakagibara’s indecisiveness and was about to defect from the Party, and I swore with fresh resolve that if he left, I would go with him.

President Sakagibara and the other elders were away, preparing our strategy for the upcoming elections, and thus people at headquarters were losing their energy and direction. I, however, spent all day sitting in front of the Imperial Portrait, praying, feeling the emotional bliss. At night, I fell to sleep with the same triumphant exhaustion which I used to feel after masturbating ten times in one day, in my former life.  Only, this time, the night-terrors did not come to poison my nocturnal world.

CHAPTER THREE

In summer, my “internal golden Emperor” began to manifest himself furiously!

 As hot as the most blistering summer day was, I was hotter. 

In the cities and suburbs,  the Patriotic Youth Corps stuffed ourselves into our thick battle uniforms and roasted our heads in our steel helmets, the sweat stinging our skin, our hands tightly grasping our clubs. . . and then we set out from Tokyo. It was August, the Memorial Day of remembrance of the atomic bombings . . . and we had to protect Hiroshima from those left-wingers.

Even as we disembarked from the steaming train, Hiroshima was already hot. The sky blazed with an almost un-natural blueness. The clouds flitting across it had the same un-natural quality, as if I was looking at an inorganic photograph.  For that matter, the buildings, the rivers, the ground, and even summer itself seemed devoid of life.  The only living things were the people, who streamed by, steaming like locomotives against this static background. Especially, the survivors of the atomic bomb, they seemed to have sweat flying off of their whole bodies, as if their very existence was an extreme life.

On the night-train over, us young troops had discussed things: “Hiroshima, you can get good oysters there, I hear!” “What the?? You’re a hick from a broke family, how are you going to pretend that you’re a gourmet? Even us fearless uyoku don’t eat no damn oysters in August! Even Hiroshima natives have to be very careful with those damn oysters in damn August! Can you imagine, surviving the damn atomic bomb, only to be killed by a damn oyster?!?”

As we left the station, I took a long look at Hiroshima: the flocks of people, eking out a precarious existence, desperately clinging to life, gave them a fierce vitality. 
When I considered that these people had survived an actual bomb, it made me physically nauseous, to the back of my chest: they’re here, right in front of my eyes! 

As I thought about this, we organized our marching formations, and set off, shouting, “Oppose the Communism Which Is Dressed In The Disguise Of The ‘Big Peace Rally’!!” “Repulse the Red invasion of Japan!” 

As we began to march, I began to get worked up with “midsummer excitement.” And as the enemies appeared in front of us, my excitement grew hotter than the midsummer pavement. The Young Patriots Activity Squad was on the march! Holding our national flag and our Imperial Way flags high, with three cars full of Party officials leading the way!  From the cars’ loudspeakers blared all the hits: the Battleship March, the Patriotic Marching Tune, the Young Mens’ Song, and Across The Sea. While the music speakers screaming at maximum volume, the other speakers (broadcasting the Party Minister for National Affairs’ speech) had naturally to be also cranked to full volume, to keep up: 

“Citizens of Hiroshima City, heed our warning! The so-called “big peace rally” is leading you down the Communist path! The sayoku “country-ruining-squad” is trying to shove their politics down your throat! The Red conspirators are numerous! They pose as sincere folks who want to help the regular Japanese, but they have Red tendencies! This “big peace rally” is nothing but the work of Moscow, trying to soften us up before their invasion!  These so-called “peace movement” activists just want to disarm us so we can’t fight back! Citizens of Hiroshima, don’t be fooled by their disguises! Listen to this, the dearest wish of us sincere patriots: hear our voice kudasaaaaaaaiiiii!!!!!!!!” 

As we marched, we waved paper flyers of red and blue, with the slogans “Oppose the Communism Which Is Dressed In The Disguise Of The ‘Big Peace Rally’!!” and “Repulse the Red Invasion of Japan!!” printed in big black letters. The people stopped, dumbstruck, to watch us. They were curious, and chattered among themselves, but were afraid to reach out to us. So we began to throw the flyers, scattering them far and wide, sending them dancing in the wind. We threw so many, we wound up trampling many under our own feet: 
“Oppose the Farcical ‘Big Peace Rally’!!” 
“Repulse the Red Invasion of Japan!!”

Suddenly we could feel the presence of the enemy. We tensed, preparing for battle, instantly dropping all of our flyers.  Ahead of us we saw a giant building. The voice on the loudspeaker stopped ranting to the Hiroshima citizens, and instead addressed us, the members of the Patriotic Youth Corps: “Between the Hiroshima Baseball Field and the Children’s Culture Center is an open field. Watch it carefully! That’s where the National Student Alliance is preparing for tomorrow’s peace rally, making their placards. You, the patriotic young men of Japan,  take care of them!!”

We rushed ahead of the Party leaders’ cars, to find that, yes, next to the Children’s Culture Center was a field with more than fifty people milling around. Jeering us, yelling insults which reached our ears, screaming with inflamed passions through their megaphones at us. Suddenly, from behind, loud enough to deafen us, came the reply from our leaders: “Reactionaries, they call you! Thugs, they call you, the patriotic young men of Japan! These National Student Alliance guys are calling you shameless gangsters! Patriotic young men of Japan, are you going to let these pawns of the Red Chinese jeer at you?”

At this, we went berserk with rage and charged at them. 

Tear down their placards!  

“Overthrow the Cabinet?” Fuck you! (boom). 

“Abolish the Performance Evaluations for Teachers?” Fuck you! (boom). 

“Smash Imperialism?” Fuck you! (boom). 

“Don’t Consent To The Military Alliance With America?”  Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! 

Smash everything on this fucking field!  Stomp on all 4,000 of the National Student Alliance kids!!! 

You won’t forgive the atomic bombings? Fuck you! 

You want them to apologize TWICE???  

Are the ashes of death too much for you?? Fuck you! 

Tear up their flyers! 

You think we’re reactionaries? Out-of-date? Our movie has just begun! With an ass-kicker in the lead role, and a close-up of your scared little student eye getting punched the fuck in!  Girl students trying to run away, we’ll grab you by the hair! The background of the scenes: just screaming!  Kyaaaaaaaa!!! Aaaahhhh!!!!   The camera follows our prey in a long shot, as we chase him into a corner of the meeting-hall . It cuts to his POV as our clubs bludgeon his face!  In fact, let’s attach the camera to his actual head for maximum realism!  What? That asshole, how dare he hide behind a damn camera??? Let’s rip it off his head and stomp on it with the full weight of our body!  It makes a satisfying noise as it breaks.  Now we’re running towards the podium. We see the bouquet, the flowers arranged in the shape of a dove, which the students have hung from the ceiling. We leap up and cut the cord with a knife! Abruptly, the dove begins to sing a joyous heavy metal tune! The stupid students quake with fright!! The sky above us coalesces into giant black clouds, which crash down upon us. GUWANN!! GUWARANNNNNN!!!! 

At high noon in the big city, a flood of police sirens washes in upon us from all directions. I ran to the exit of the meeting-hall, to find one of our guys who was being surrounded by the students, punching and kicking him: the NSA counter-offensive had begun. There were three students blocking my path, so I make as if to go around them. They are wearing workman’s clothes with “Tokyo University” patches helpfully sewn on them. Screaming with all my strength, I assault them with my wildly swinging club.  GON, GON, GUSHARI! A faint pink mist of blood blows in the wind.  Their faces purple with rage and terror, a flock of NSA students advances on me. A close-up of my face fills the screen. I am punching and being punched, kicking and being kicked, lost in a frenzy of battle. I’m knocked down, dragged, and get back up again and again, hitting and being hit, moaning in pain and making my enemies likewise moan, then being knocked down again.  The head of the gang which is surrounding me, let’s do a close-up on him. But wait- the camera’s zoom seems to be broken.  Time stands still for an instant, then fades to black.  

Aah, my Emperor! Aah, I’ve been killed. Aah, my Emperor! 

As the screen once again brightens, we see a large crowd of policemen. The camera is supposed to do a close-up of their peering  faces, but zooms in too close, as if to slap the cheek of this swarthy-skinned officer. He says, in a very police-like voice: “Think he’ll wake up? They did him up pretty bad!  Those fucking student punks!” At that, the screen jumps into focus on the officer’s kind and sympathetic face. Although it seems that I can only see the screen with one eye! As if from somewhere else, I hear my voice speaking, narrating the movie: “Aah, my Emperor, you didn’t abandon me after all! My Emperorrrrrr…”

The heat, the agony, the un-natural, inorganic brightness, the stink of sweat, the screaming, the polluted air in my nostrils. . .all these things together . . . I was recovering from them. The movie began to disappear from inside my head, and the real Hiroshima of August began to re-appear once more. I looked at my hand, and saw a mass of blood and hair in my palm.  The policeman said, “That’s not your blood OR your hair!” 

I slowly shoved the hand into my pants pocket, and responded in a virtuous and modest young-man’s voice: “Thank you for looking after me. I think I can walk by myself.  Although I have been brutalized, I will seek revenge on my own. I don’t want to trouble you virtuous police Officers, who are so busy dealing with these communists who have come to destroy your city. Excuse me, may I rejoin my parade now?”

My perfect Tokyo accent made this young, provincial policeman hesitate for a second, but then his cheeks reddened and he said with a wry laugh, “Go on then! You can walk by yourself, can’t you. They really beat you bad, didn’t they? Those fuckin’ NSA goons. Crazy fucks!”

I exited the building between two lines of NSA kids, their chests thrust out, standing at attention. It was kind of like being a celebrity making a grand appearance, except instead of applauding, the kids were muttering insults under their breath. Once outside, the hot sun’s rays flooded me as I spotted my fellows, who were re-organizing into ranks to resume the parade. 

Standing by the Hiroshima Baseball field, our troops greeted my arrival with a huge, delirious ovation, as if the Hiroshima Giants had won the Japan Cup. The NSA kids lapsed into a despondent silence, standing in the ruined doorway of their Meeting Hall. This seemed the proper way for them to see us off on the next leg of our march. The sun, it seemed, had not moved even one inch since we begun our march, hanging in the sky as eternal as The Emperor himself. 

“Citizens of Hiroshima! Aah! We’ve come to warn you! The National Student Alliance are Red insurgents! They have provoked us with their challenges! This Red Terror Squad, as is its usual M.O.,  has spread its Red violence even in Hiroshima! On this sacred day when you remember your sadness, mourn your dead, and pray for their happiness in the next life! On this day of all days, when you want peace and tranquility to comfort the spirits of your dead family members, the NSA comes to turn your town into a battlefield in their so-called ‘class struggle.’ 

“Ohhh!!!!  

“We understand this is a solemn and holy occasion! We understand the importance of spirituality and traditions to the real Japanese people! The sacred ways which we Japanese have practiced forever! But these reds just use this holiday as an excuse to bring up unrelated political points, like overthrowing the Cabinet! They’re politicizing a sacred occasion!  They’re trampling on our sacred occasion!  These reds!  They’re  so deluded, they even picked a fight with us at their own Big Peace Rally!  

“Everyone says that the mass media is egging on violence – “showdown” this and “final conflict” that – but in fact, today we ourselves chose to fight back! So now, citizens of Hiroshima, let us pay our respects to the deceased. Pray with us, Hiroshima! Praaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy!!!”

An airplane was circling low in the sky, with an intimidating roar.  We continued to scatter our flyers of red and blue, with the slogans “Oppose the Communism Which Is Dressed In The Disguise Of The ‘Big Peace Rally’!!” and “Repulse the Red Invasion of Japan!!” printed in big black letters. We swung our heads skywards to see the plane, and found that it was trailing the Japanese Flag behind it, supporting us. The plane dipped its wings in greeting, in the un-natural deepening blue of the sky. The sunlight was painful to our eyes, when suddenly the sky turned from blue to a deep azure color, and then to darkness!

In the business district, we again came to blows, this time with the propaganda unit of the left-wingers. 

One of our Party members tried to jump on their “propaganda car”, and they ganged up on him. So of course we had to call reinforcements of our own to save him, and then we heard sirens of the police cars again. That’s when we heard the news: coming from Hiroshima Station, an unlicensed, “wild-cat” demonstration of NSA kids had encircled City Hall.  Excited to the limit, we formed ranks and began to run double-time to the open plaza in front of the Hall!  

It was truly a summer of verbal abuse, rage, and mayhem, and we were not going to be the first to back down! The reds had invaded one of the most sacred religious ceremonies of Real Japanese People, and we would defend it to the last! The Youth Action Squad of the Imperial Way Party was hotter than the hottest summer day, hotter than the summer sun,  pumped to the breaking point and ready to explode!!!  

Just as the City Hall came into view; just as we began to hear the jeers and boos from the NSA “wild-cat” demonstrators, I recalled the earlier, dramatic days of violence at the Diet Building, and  was possessed by the same spirit once again:  uplifted with the joy of the rapist, the magnificent heat, the deep orgasm which consumed both my spirit and my flesh. Suddenly I began running even faster, lost in a fearful fugue, panting and gnashing my teeth, “Aah, Emperor! My Emperor, aah, aaaaahhh!!!”

CHAPTER 4

In the hopeless and enervating evening heat, a sense of gloom began to set in. Today’s fighting was over, and all the Party leaders were going to a traditional Japanese restaurant to confer with other “patriotic association” leaders about tomorrow’s official memorial service. I was escorting them, when I saw a depressed-looking middle-aged man slouch into the same restaurant. He was under so much stress, it looked like his whole body was composed of heavy and stiff metal wires which had been crammed into a human-shaped bundle. His depression was like a moon that had become full in a dead-black sky. Then he turned his head back to look at me, with the eyes of some dead bird-of-prey. His eyes were extreme but also glazed and dark. I nodded at him and sent the leaders inside. “That man, he’s like a demon . ..  a dark-blue demon from some swampy hell!” I thought to myself as I walked back to our lodging-house. 

Upon returning, I got a phone call, from one of the leaders I’d escorted:  “That person you nodded to just then? He said you looked young but you looked like you had guts. That’s a big deal, because he’s…” The leader said the man’s name.

 It was the name of a legendary assassin.  

My whole body shivered. My mouth went dry and my breath stopped. I recalled the feelings I had when the big test results were posted in school. Gripping the receiver with a trembling hand, I said, “That devil-looking depressed, stressed-out middle-aged man is the terrorist? The one that murders too? And he said my name?”

The doctor at the lodging-house counted twenty bruises on my body.  Some of the other fellows had broken bones, but the house was quiet as we awaited the return of the leaders and heard their report (we would not be fighting the expected show-down with the sayoku at their Big Peace Rally – rather we’d attend the city-sponsored  memorial service, and then purify ourselves at the  Shinto temple. We weren’t to do anything that might hinder the mourning of the pure native people). We then said our Shinto prayers, and went to sleep.

In the Hiroshima night, I overheard the fellows talking about a dog that was howling because it had detected traces of corpses. But I wasn’t listening to them – I was thinking. Specifically, I was thinking that I could myself vaguely smell the odor of everyone living in Hiroshima right now. This by itself was enough to keep me awake most of the night. It began to dawn on me that this strange odor was real. As if someone – that assassin? Had crept in our room under cover of darkness, and was waiting, lying down with his eyes wide open. The odor spoke to me like a phantasm, a vision: “That devil, he gave me a premonition of the future. Definitely it’s a true premonition of things to come, I feel.  I’m young but I have guts. Definitely I have big things in store for me.. . . .”

In the morning, we arose, did our Shinto purification rituals, bathed, hung our Party flag and the Japanese flag at half-mast, wrapped the flag-poles with traditional black sashes, and assembled into our marching formation. Then we began our parade with all due solemnity. We knew that, as per last night’s orders, today we would not have the opportunity to show our true strength to the enemy. We passed the Genbaku Dome (the memorial to the atomic bombing)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial

, but I soon forgot about it,  because  I was quickly becoming drunk with all the attention that our impressive phalanx was receiving from surprised and worried onlookers. 

In the end, to me, Hiroshima was merely another hot, second-rate city, like Sapporo or Sendai, full of people drenched in sweat.  As a young uyoku, I felt battle calling me: clashing with the dirty Reds, defending the glory of The Emperor, and so on. The tragedy of war, the atomic bombings, the pleas for peace, the whole humanist philosophy, it had nothing to do with me. 

I was a baby when the Second World War ended, anyway; I had no chance to partake in its splendor. The tragedy, the atomic finale, the chorus singing the tragic song, that had absolutely nothing to do with me, in the end. On the other hand, if we have to drop H-Bombs on New York, on Moscow or Peking, to protect our Emperor. . . if, for that matter, Hiroshima itself becomes a communist stronghold, I’d be the first in line to throw a second H-Bomb at it. That is righteous.  If the Commies had their way, and Japan turned into the ‘People’s Republic of Japan’, I would (after putting The Emperor in a canoe, of course) unleash a nuclear blast of such ferocity that it would equal a hundred thousand Hiroshimas, and blow each and every last Japanese into dust!!! For I am a righteous Child of The Emperor.

For a moment, that morning, at the memorial service, when I should have been mourning, I was instead looking at the flocks of people, at the group of Filipinos with the cameras on their shoulders, imagining them all dead, every single one, their bodies melted by radiation. 

“So there was this explosion. An atomic explosion. So what? So there were people dead. 300,000 people. What’s that all about? I’m standing here, breathing in a lungful of air. I’m sweating a little. Signs of life! All of us, the whole throng, here, alive.

 “And on the other hand? 

“An enormous pile of dead bodies, not even one person’s voice can be heard. 

“What connection do these two things have to each other? Seriously, why even compare them, they’re so different! What’s the point?”

After that, we were forced to do three entire minutes of silent prayer, at the pagoda housing the ashes, while the huge piles of bouquets visibly wilted in the heat, choking asthmatically on the cloud of incense smoke enveloping us.  And all I could think about was Noguchi Isamu’s ridiculously large concrete bridge,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isamu_Noguchi

To the Party member from Hiroshima, the “artistic” bumps molded into the side of the bridge must look like row upon row of  “man-roots” and “woman-shadows.” – they must be plenty sunburnt by now, under this un-natural and inorganic sky.  They’re huge -  at least three meters long! 

Can you imagine it? A hundred three-meter “man-roots” and a hundred three-meter “woman-shadows”, rising up one after the other, shouting, “Everyone’s been killed by the bomb! It’s up to us to repopulate the city. We have to get our bone on. . . bone, bone, bone . .! All morning, and all night, over and over again! And give birth, birth, birth, all over and over and over again!”

During the war, Elder Brother was evacuated to a small farming village. A lady pop-singer had been evacuated to the same village, and she’d taught him a “naniwabushi” song. 

Noguchi Isamu’s “art bridge” which he constructed in the dearest hope that it could prevent the downfall of humanity.  . . clearly this “naniwabushi” tune was the ideal theme song for the bridge! So I began to sing, in my best alley-cat voice : 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naniwabushi

“Shall we get our bone on? 
Did we bone already? 
Hellz yeah, hellz yeah,  we hella hella boned!  
Shall we pop out a infant? 
Did you already pop one out? 
Hellz yeah, hellz yeah, you hella hella popped that infant!”

Suddenly I felt a stranger’s trembling hand touching the back of my head. I turned around, and saw an unattractive middle-aged woman, sobbing openly, staring at me with dark, sorrow-filled,  blood-shot eyes. I grew dark with anger and quickly brushed the woman’s finger away, as if I had been touched by one of India’s “untouchables.” I made to kick her over too, but what was this she was mumbling, behind her flood of tears? “Aaah, how could this boy exist? Who could have given birth to such a boy?” 

 What utter rubbish!  With the endurance of a saint, and the kindness of a prince, I stepped ever so slightly back, without kicking anyone even a little bit.

The old lady attempted to shamelessly follow me, but suddenly stopped, paralyzed with fear. I knew she had read my armband, with the noble logo of Imperial Way Party sewn on it. And just like that, my troubles were over. I ran back to my brothers while spitting copiously.  

Then the mob of marchers crested over the hill, and as they passed beyond the row of colorful, shoddy incense-and-bouquet-selling stalls, the huge group of people became quiet and went rigid, as if thunder-struck. A silence swept over them. I looked back over my shoulder at the crowd and saw people even with their eyes closed, like idiots. They were doing what they’d been doing for decades at just this time: remembering the dead. 

Perhaps I’m bad, but I passed the time by thinking of the famous lines from Noguchi Isamu’s telegram, where he instructed his precious bridge’s builders to install some supplemental material:  “Please install the apparatuses so that, every year, on Atom Bomb day, at exactly 8:15, the row of Giant Man-Roots on the side of Big Peace Bridge should launch huge fountains of Instant Milk. Sort of like the giant fountains at the United Nations building. As for the row of Giant Woman-Shadows, kindly await my next brilliant telegram.” 

And would it kill Isamu to save one of those giant man-roots for me? I could do with a three-meter “concrete semen-pipe.” Even if it only had a one-liter limit.

Afternoon was our “free time,” empty and vacant. Lonely, I went by myself to see a movie. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Delon

I liked the scene where Alain Delon makes a face as if he’s smelling a delicious banquet as he stabs his fat friend right in the heart! 

But on the other hand, the theater was full of Hiroshima people. 

I felt I was suffocating! Escaping barely in time to save my life, I went to the Atomic Bombing Memorial Museum, but I could not even find any diversion from my troubles there, either: It was nothing but pictures of really poor, filthy people that had gotten fucked up by the bomb. 

I felt a sense of superiority as I realized that I – a child of the present age - knew much more about the details of the Bomb than they did.  

I wept when I saw pictures of the keloid-scarred horses that had been killed during radiation experiments. The only thing that put me in a good mood was the specimens of chickweed and grass which had been grown at Ground Zero. 

Even though their DNA and cell structures were damaged, their beautiful patterns gave me a calm feeling. 

And then, upon leaving, I became so overcome with disgust and irritation that I had to spend twenty minutes in a filthy toilet, vomiting. Then I went to a post-card store, and purchased one card: the naked, dead body of a Japanese sailor. I wrote a brief “sorry-to-be-absent-from-Headquarters” note to Mr. Shigeru, the man who rightfully should be in charge of our unit.

“Hiroshima is really hot; it’s the worst! The leaders are being weak, letting those communists-in-disguise do their big peace rally, while we just look on. It’s probably good you didn’t come. Yesterday was the only day there was actual violence, but it was exhilarating. The more extreme the better, isn’t that what our spirits desire? I went to the Atomic Bomb Memorial museum, to see the hideous photos of Japan’s shame exposed to the world. But I can’t forgive those craven conspirators for making His Majesty The Emperor visit such a depressing place. Such an action was unspeakable; they must be hanged! This is one of my firmest convictions.  Meanwhile, His Highness Emperor Meiji’s super-manly castle, now lying in ruins, is forgotten. I am exasperated by this fallen world, where the retainers have supplanted the lords!”

I went to the post office to mail the card, and then returned to the lodging-house, where the leaders, who had not yet gone outside, had become quite excited by the TV. 

Since noon, Hiroshima Television had been broadcasting a special Bomb Memorial Day variety show, including a bunch of novelists who had been invited to the studio. These novelists were having a round-table discussion. Nanbara Seishirou, the youngest (in fact, just graduated from college), was describing the incidents yesterday, making the Imperial Way Party sound like a bunch of ignorant hoodlums. He was still giving his report, speaking to audiences as far away as Tokyo, when I entered the room. 

The leaders could go to the TV station to formally object, I thought. And us Patriotic Youth Corps could find this youngster and make him apologize. He must still be in the studio, droning on and on.

It seemed that, out of all the Youth Corps, I was the first to return to the lodging house. Everyone else was probably at the movies, breathing that filthy air, struggling mightily with the resulting sickness. 

(I remembered seeing Elder Sister one time with one of Nanbara’s novels. I remembered his face from the author photo, too. In a newspaper interview, he was arrogantly mocking the Military Academy. To provoke Elder Sister, I took all of her Nanbara novels and sold them at the used-book store.)  

“That asshole! He’s just talking that rubbish to get paid! It’s like a trained-monkey show – with a dirty Communist bitch-ass monkey!” I complained to the leaders clustered around the TV. Perhaps I should just accost him myself? After all, he’s just a writer. One look at my valorous armband should be enough to make him tremble. I’d be surprised if he didn’t piss his pants and apologize on the spot.

I got on board the taxi that the Hiroshima Party Branch had hired for our use, and ordered it to go to the TV studio. Nanbara, (as if he had been waiting for me to come alone, looking for him! like some kind of date!!), was slouched in the corner of the studio’s “tea room”, easily visible from the street through the large glass windows, eating some peach sherbet with a forlorn, worried look on his face. 

I entered the tea room wordlessly, and sat in one of the plastic chairs facing him. 

“I’m from the Imperial Way Party, and I’ve come to object,” I said in the thick and hoarse voice of a classic young uyoku. Nanbara slowly raised his head and stared at me from behind his thick glasses, with his delicate, feminine, deep brown eyes, looking surprised.  His eyes, which at first seemed un-focused, slowly assumed an expression of vehemence. “This guy,” I said to myself, “is one of those people whose face reveals all the secrets of his heart. He was waiting for someone to pick him up, here in the dark corner where the sun wouldn’t hurt his precious eyes. And instead of that someone, I showed up instead! Ha! This intellectual, he’s the kind who would confess before the torture even started, all shrieking and crying. If the Communist Party is using this kind of fellow for its illegal operations, we’ll beat them hands-down!”

 As Nanbara’s eyes fuzzily tried to focus on a point midway between my own eyes, I prepared to unleash my second attack: 

“You’re the asshole who was just on TV saying that the Imperial Way Party was a bunch of hoodlums, aren’t you?  And you went on to accuse us of violence! As a Party member, it’s my duty to protest! You’ll have to pay for your actions!” 

Terror spread like a brush-fire across Nanbara’s eyes, and then fear oozed like a liquid from the depths of those same eyes. . .His almost grape-hued pupils expanded rapidly within his dark brown irises, like night opening and engulfing the light of high noon. Then the wave spread to his face, whitening his cheeks and making his forehead twitch. His lips grew moist and pulled back so far I could see his gums. 

Is he going to scream? For an instant I was thrown into confusion, but when he didn’t scream, I knew I had achieved a perfect (if somewhat excessive) victory: I had never seen a man stricken with such total fear. It was as if his “mental garage” had been stocked with a hundred people’s worth of “terror gasoline.”  

I grabbed the switchblade in my pocket, and pushed the release button. Without pausing, I shoved with the flat of my thumb, and with a distinctive “GACHI!” sound, the silver blade sprang open, causing over two centimeters of silver metal to rip out of my pants, the surface of it quickly clouding in the hot lobby air. I knew he could see it through the transparent table-top which separated us.

Nanbara’s shoulders clenched in fear, as his terror-stricken eyes darted to the blade and then shut tightly. I could see his wide, pale eyelids trembling. 

I became aware that his entire face had gone white and was covered in sweat. It was soaking – as if he’d dived into an ocean of horror.  

I felt like a hunter who had cornered the rabbit in its hole. 

There was no need to rush – maybe I should have a smoke. 

Like a spectator in a horror movie, just enjoy the show. Or – better yet – I was a peeping Tom, who had poked a hole in the screen itself and was secretly watching the horrified faces of the spectators!  

Next, from the eyes which had been shut in surprise, tiny tears began to ooze out, like mucous. It looked like the fun was about to reach its climax. I began to feel like laughing. To forestall this, I concentrated instead on the pain of his death – better yet, on how much I despised and detested this weakling, this left-wing traitor. 

I was nauseous with anger!  

I felt like the scene in the movie where the French actor stabbed an American boy to death on a yacht floating in the south French ocean, full of transparent green plankton. Like the handsome and dark-eyed Alain Delon, I wanted to pull my knife out and cackle with the maniacal laughter of a vicious dictator as I viciously murdered this fellow! 

“I’m going to stab you, asshole! You dishonored the actions of the Imperial Way Party, and now you’ve got to pay for it! With being stabbed! It’s an inexcusable insult to President Sakagibara, as well as other friends of the Party. I won’t kill you – just cut your abdomen. You should call an ambulance!”

His eyes were shut tight, but Nanbara Seishirou remained quiet, not responding to me. I clung to the enjoyment and the fact that I still had time to spare. I felt it throughout my body – my “gas tank” was 100% full of  “uyoku energy”. I could see directly into the trembling head of Nanbara – it was full of the murky water of fear.  Because I was the chosen child of The Emperor, and I was omnipotent!

“Hey asshole with your eyes closed! Hiding in fear . . .Like you’re burying half your head in a mud puddle, trying to avoid the burning heat of the sun. Your mouth is dry, the root of your tongue is inflamed. You’re scared of the light. You can’t take the heat. And now you’re feeling it in your whole body. You’re an anemic fucker who chokes on the pure air of a sunny day. The happy people on the bustling street fill you with envy and shame – you see life as absurd and meaningless because you’re alone and unloved. 

“You got the shakes, you piss yourself, the tears and snot drip endlessly down your face, making your throat itch. You’re making yourself sick! Why did you come to the big, hot city?  

“Well it’s meaningless to play “woulda, coulda, shoulda.”  You’re here now, paying the price. You want to go back in time, but you can’t. That’s reality! Too bad, isn’t it?  The voices in your heart keep saying, “I shouldn’t have gone on TV and said all that garbage,” but those voices are too late, aren’t they? “I should have retracted my comments before the show ended,” they say.  “I shouldn’t have gone along with what the other authors were saying, just to fit in.”” 

“You hateful little fuck! 

“The hot air, the sweat, the television makeup making you break out in a rash, the necktie which is already too tight, your young body already turning to fat. . .your plastic table, plastic chair, even the clitoris-looking plastic pink spoon you use to eat your precious sherbet, everything about you is lightweight and fragile! You’re so wretched, you make me want to scream! 

“Still you sit there, your lips and eyelids twitching with terror, your head completely dry and parched, trying to hold back your tears.

“Hmm!  I’m going to give you one chance to get down on your knees and make amends. 

“Well?”

Nanbara at last  lifted his red and tear-polluted eyes, opening them just a little, vaguely staring at my cheeks. He replied, in a serious, calm, slow voice:

“I have no intention of being stabbed quietly. If you try it, I’ll resist.”

I was dumbfounded. 

I’d been abusing him for thirty minutes, making him dive headfirst into the “ocean of terror,” and in the end, he has this attitude?!?  I’ve got the knife, he’s been afraid to even open his eyes, for thirty fucking minutes on and on, and now he’s acting hard?!? Perhaps he is recovering to some extent from the terror. But, so quickly? Or. . . was he just fucking with me . . . the whole time?? 

Either way, I had to change tactics.

“See that red telephone in the corner? Call the station. Tell them you were mistaken about the Party’s “violence.” Tell them you mis-spoke when you said we were ‘thugs’. Demand that they broadcast a retraction!”

Nanbara frowned slightly, his reddened eyes seeming to stare at me from a very far-away place. Though he was a wretched and scandalous loser, I realized that he did possess a resoluteness in the face of terror. I’ve never met anyone like this fucker. With a small cough, he began to hesitantly speak: 

“I’m not going to retract my statements. It wouldn’t do any good: there’s already other witnesses that have testified to the Imperial Way Party’s violence yesterday. And as for  my comment about your thuggin’, if you really think about it, isn’t that exactly what you’re doing right now?”

Before I knew it, I’d been backed into a corner. Such utter, utter impudence! I felt like I was meeting the real Nanbara for the first time. I flew into a rage:

“You are . . . .a coward! That is certain! You were so scared you started weeping. And you’re still in the grip of a deep fear. Your lips tremble, your body curls up and shakes, you sweat and it drips off the tip of your nose onto the table because you didn’t dare wipe it!”

But Nanbara was carefully and steadily pushing back against the fear, as if establishing a base camp to hold his position.  Moreover, it looked as if he would never budge: he could crawl on painfully enduring the terror forever.  Strange fucker! There’s no one like him in our Party. For the first time since joining the Party, I felt a great unease: I’d never dealt with anyone like this before, and didn’t know what to do. I became embarrassed. 

“Well, OK, maybe we are violent sometimes, but aren’t the SAG violent as well?”

Nanbara’s red, tear-polluted eyes widened slightly. An impish expression passed across his face – in flash of insight, I recognized it as the face of someone who has pulled off a prank, but try as I might, I couldn’t grasp the meaning of it. I felt like I must be retarded somehow – as if I’d shown my true, weak, “Seventeen-self.” My uyoku armor failed to blind him with its radiant gleam.

“Fucking shit-ass! I’ve wasted thirty minutes trying to make this fucker break down!” 

I stood up roughly, almost knocking the chair over. Nanbara looked like he was ready to leap up too. I remembered he said he wouldn’t be stabbed without a fight.  I turned and stalked out, into the hot, hot air of the street. Finally I realized that the tea room’s air-conditioner, which I had thought broken, had been trying its best, the whole time.

From outside, I yelled, “I’ll definitely stab you someday! You traitorous left-wing boners can’t be allowed to survive!” 

And with that, I dashed into the taxi which was still waiting for me. 

Nanbara Seishirou was still sitting in his chair, lips trembling, like someone with a bad heart condition, no doubt still feeling the smoldering remnants of his terror. 

“You really went to town on him, didn’t you?” said the driver- the son of one of the Party members. But he said it as if he really were talking to a common thug, so I didn’t answer. Dark clouds were forming in my mind. Doubts were seizing me: “He was really timid, but in the end, he withstood thirty minutes of terror, sweating and on the edge of tears. It was as if he was in a “fear tunnel” and he kept crawling painfully, slowly down it, never stopping no matter what, sure in the knowledge that he’d some to the end soon. That’s how he was able to win. 

“There’s other youths like that,” I finally decided: “People that don’t turn their eyes away from the terror of reality, who don’t try to escape the disgrace and pollution of reality, people who crawl on their belly, slowly and painfully like pigs through the ugly mud of reality. By the way, I’m not one of them – I’ll run full-speed away from the terrible reality, and jump into the rose-colored radiant valley which is Emperor Worship. But maybe those guys are living more properly. . . .” 

this terrifying thought, powerful enough to make me shiver, kept circulating in the dark corners of my brain. To dispel these dark clouds of doubt, I started talking to the driver in a too-loud voice: “The boss of your company invited us to a cabaret club tonight – what kind of place is it?”

“Actually, the boss runs the club! With a jazz-man from Tokyo. It’s pretty wild, but I be a young guy like you can find something to enjoy there, eh?” he responded with a certain amount of sarcasm. “There’s plenty of the famous Hiroshima-style sake there, enough to ease your depression about the Big Peace Meeting!” 

That night, after all our Bombing Day activities were finished, we did, despite the sarcasm, enjoy the Hiroshima Branch Party Chief’s cabaret. There were other guests, but we were given the red carpet treatment. 

The Tokyo-based jazz-man turned out to be a young guy with a head of thick black hair, which had been lacquered with so much grease it resembled a hat. He was playing piano, but instead of jazz, we only requested military marching songs and “battleship jams.” 

When he played “Moon Over The Ruined Castle,” we all sang along. 

I, who had been drinking a great deal of sake, became quite concerned with the pianist’s face, which I decided carried the blue-black depression of a drug-addict.  

In spite of the cab-driver’s prediction, the sake did not mitigate my depression; in fact the doubts had, like a tumor, lodged deep in my chest and were beginning to send out roots. I resolved to kill them with alcohol. 

Then I began feeling ill, and, for the sake of improving my mood,  headed to the washroom to vomit. 

I passed a half-open door with “Musician’s Waiting Room” written on it, and inside I saw, sprawled out on a dirty couch, Nanbara Seishirou himself, clutching a bottle of whiskey and vaguely singing along with some jazz piano which was playing on a tape-recorder on the floor nearby. At first, I assumed this was just an hallucination brought on by sake.

But that head, that disheveled, dead-drunk, lolling head, bobbing in rhythm with the staggering, off-kilter wheels of the tape machine, mumbling along with the songs . . .could it be really him?  The painfully-crawling young author?  Where did the tape sounds end and his voice begin? It was ambiguous. I heard the young author’s voice saying, “That’s right, like that. Like that, make the phrase your own. Original! Like that, one more time, look! It’s like I can see what you’re thinking. One more time! . . . .” but at the same time, I could hear the drunk on the filthy couch saying, “That’s right, that’s you! That’s right, yeah, yeah, you’re a genius, go man, go!  Amazing, original!”

I tried to enter the room , but a waitress with a face like a bear started to drag me down the hall, saying, “Stop, stop, let’s go to my room instead. That guy is a pervert yo, he’s getting gay with the jazz-man. Let’s go to my room, quickly, ok?”

Nerves festering with the poison of alcohol, the man had to exert his utmost strength, several times, merely to take off his glasses, revealing the naked face of Nanbara Seishirou. 

Summoning all my concentration, I managed to kick the tape player over successfully, aborting the jazz tune. 

Roughly a minute later, Nanbara responded, in a voice which stopped and started intermittently, as if it were bobbing up and down in a booze lake:

“Are you the guys who made the wwwwonderful pianist play those battleship jams?  Yo, young uyoku, yo yo yo, you energetic teeeenager, have you come here to sing me the national aaaanthem too?”

Without speaking, I gazed down at the drunkard lying at my feet, while the bear-waitress continuing to huskily whisper, “These homos shot some dope laaaaaaaaate last night and made a recording together! They should sell that – the “High Homo Jazz”. Anyway, how about coming to my room and lying down for a while?” 

She giggled obscenely as I attempted to form my lips into a circular shape suitable for pouring whiskey into my face. Having accomplished this daunting task, I felt an overwhelming sense of superiority, and replied: 

“You! Ass! You can’t not, no, not . . not un-escape the terror! You try to escape with your . . . your  crawling  powers. . . but  you’re just crawling straight to drugs and whiskey and homo pianos! You try to cure your wounds in that filthy hot-spring! But even there you can’t hide from it. You just pickle your Johnson in a filthy chamber-pot. Your Johnson aims low. The one with the . . .  upward-facing Johnson . . . which gleams with radiant brilliance, is I   !!!” 

 “Hey, little uyoku! Why don’t you stab me? Do it now, while . .I’m drunk . . . so it won’t hurt me. You, on the other hand, will have . . . . an incredible hangover . . .  a-ha-ha!” the pig responded.

“I wouldn’t stab such a vulgar . . .asshole . . .as you! You’ll die soon from your own filthy lifestyle. I only stab the most . . .important. . . traitors,” I replied.

Suddenly turning serious, the pig asked, “Teenage uyoku, yo , why do you have the privilege to stab aaaaanyone??”

“I’m prepared to die for my country! It’s not a prilivage – privilege!  It’s a mission. We have to . . . the biggest poisoners of Japan . . . we will give our lives to stab  . . . mission!” 

With that, the doubts disappeared and I was instead surrounded with the rose-colored clouds of bliss: “I am the . . . winnnnnner!”

The pig raised his eyes, beheld my exhilaration, and promptly fell off the couch onto the muddy floor, and fell sound asleep, resting his head on the tape recorder.

I spit on his head, and allowed myself to be led down the hall by the bear-waitress.

She gave my limp “crotch warehouse” (股倉 =possibly the best slang yet! – ed.) a mighty thwack and screamed, “You’re not still a virgin, are you?”

Now that I had had my triumphant victory over that pig, I realized that I was too drunk to stand up. We found a dark, soft, good-smelling place to lie down. We tore off each other’s clothes, and she was as hairy as a demon. I debased myself with this primitive farmer’s daughter. She forced herself on me, and  with a  cry of “KYA!”  I was no longer a virgin. 

CHAPTER FIVE.

On the high-speed train back to Tokyo, my I thought about my ‘life-mission’. Like last night’s intercourse, my “life-mission” was like a stud-bull which impregnated many “idea-cows” in the “livestock-stable” of my mind.

My mission should be something that I am willing to lay down my life in order to achieve, I thought.  I could feel it like a hot fire burning deep in my body, while I sat like a rock on the cramped train-bench, hurtling through the night.

My mission should be something that I can ask President Sakagibara for. Perhaps I should enter the military academy, make a lot of connections, and then stage a coup d’etat?

On the other hand, I hadn’t been studying in school. Studying was something I couldn’t do by myself. However since I became an uyoku the teachers kept their distance from me, and my classmates feared and loathed me. They stayed farther away, whispering their hateful commentary: asking them for help would not be possible.  Military Academy’s entrance exams had been growing more and more difficult: some students had spent years trying and failing to pass them. Then there were other students who were “two-timing” Military Academy by trying to pass the Tokyo University entrance exams at the same time – those students must be really high-level. 

What’s more, the assignments at the Academy focused on my worst subjects: science, math, chemistry, physics, all with an emphasis on experiments.  I’d definitely go down in flames there. The vague fear that I’d felt began to come into clear, hateful focus: 

“AAAAH!!! There’s no way I’ll get into the Academy!”

But, I’m the chosen one of the right-wing! The owner of a true, pure uyoku soul! I’ve got good references from President Sakagibara and from that famous assassin! He said I was young but it looked as if I had guts – a pretty good review, I’d say. 

‘Destined for big things.’ There’s no way a guy like me can be without a mission of some kind!!! It’s absurd! Unthinkable! In a state of confusion I looked around for a Party member to confide in, but everyone was exhausted from the fighting and recreation, and all were sleeping, bent over uncomfortably in their seats. I stared at the scenery whizzing by in the window. My eyes were forced to endure visions of flying pebbles and ugly ochre walls. 

Somewhere in the very back of my eyeballs, I could feel the fluid gradually, continuously, uneasily moving, like oozing blobs of mercury.  I closed my eyes and thought back to the days when I was nothing more than an incapable, impotent high-school student: inferiority complex, fear of the gaze of others, no self-confidence, and depression: “Since I became an uyoku, did I really change my essential nature? Or did I just change my clique, leaving my insides still impotent and incapable? Where’s the evidence that I’m the chosen one of the right? Where is the proof of my ‘pure uyoku soul?’ Even if I’d stabbed that young-pig author, what would really change?

“I’d still have the same appearance, and I’d have become nothing more than a  small-time thug to boot.”  

What’s more, I had been drunk as a pig. Where was the honor in a drunk-sassination? 

When I awoke this morning, and discovered the diseased, polluted bitch of a woman lying next to me, with her lips open and her long, black nostril hair dangling over them, I was shocked, disgusted, filled with the poison of self-loathing. Plus I no doubt had contracted syphilis. 

Ever since I met that pig of an author, I had been gripped by doubts – my first doubts since I’d joined the Party. And now I was pulled back even farther - in the grip of self-doubt and intense gloominess. 

“AAhh!! I’ll never be able to find harmony!” I cried. 

I thought back to the wonderful peace and tranquility of that moment, in front of the Diet building, drinking the beers that the parliament members had given us, the quiet harmony after the battle had finished, and the sense of odd, cold hollowness that I’d felt. I thought back to Hiroshima, and the decision to pass up kicking everyone’s ass at the Big Peace Rally. I tasted the odd feeling – dissatisfaction, a loss of interest. I was groping in the dark, desperately searching for that feeling of radiant bliss, during those long moments between battles. For it was only during combat that the golden radiance of The Emperor manifested itself to me. And the Hiroshima fight was the first time I’d experienced it in its full splendor, filling my soul and body completely with the “orgasm of The Emperor.”   

“Oh, my Emperor! Tell me what to do! Help me find harmony! My Emperor! My Emperor!!!!”

That instant, a vivid, overwhelming smell of sea air penetrated my exhausted nostrils, filling them so much I thought they were going to burst open!!!!  I opened my eyes, and saw the ocean through the window. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAEmperor!” I screamed.

I truly believe I saw The Emperor himself,  wearing a color of deep crimson, decorated with shiny golden brocade, and full of enormous ruffles, in the style of 18th century European royalty

His cheeks ears and hair emitted a brilliant purple radiance, from his perfect white face.

His face appeared in the Setting Sun, which was at that very moment, just touching the Ocean.

Is that not absolutely The Emperor? As certainly as the sun is part of the Cosmos?

The setting Sun gave me a vision! A real vision! The Emperor himself gave me this setting sun as a vision, the very second that I asked Him for guidance!!!!!!!!!!!

 “I’ve had a revelation!!!!!!!!!!!!!”, I screamed, causing the other Party members to wake up and look around for possible intruders. Hastily I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep, but inside I was overflowing with delight – feeling the Revelation unfold and take shape in my chest. 

“My mission is to single-handedly destroy the poisonous ‘peace’ – and by doing so, reach out to The Emperor. My mission is to show everyone, to provide evidence, that I am the true chosen son  of the right wing, with a pure uyoku soul! My mission is to single-handedly make a celebration at the uyoku shrine, to make a great fearsome castle to defend the uyoku!”

I began to feel a revival of the same jubilation and righteous power which had seized me when I’d drunkenly hurled my words a that pig-author last night: I DID have a mission, I WOULD risk my life for it, I WOULD rid Japan of its poisons, and I CERTAINLY had the authority to STAB!!!

The words sped around and around inside me, echoing and picking up speed each time, like a vicious circle of revelation! I listened to them until I became filled with beatitude  . . . and in that cloud of bliss I heard a new voice:  a kind, sweet, gorgeous voice: 

“You who are willing to lay down your life to stab the poisoners of Japan – that is the most un-selfish act.  You show the ultimate loyalty. You who have plucked out the last shreds of selfishness from your flesh, and thereby become able to know true happiness. It is a marriage between you and the Gods.” 

Upon hearing this, I knew satisfaction and tranquility, and quickly dropped off to sleep.

We arrived back in Tokyo. While we rushed back to headquarters, I was still considering this revelation. I resolved to tell Shigeru. But Shigeru had already defected from the Party, while we were absent. Once we younger members found out this news, President Sakagibara, in order to forestall open rebellion, scheduled a special lecture in the main hall. This lecture did not deal with Shigeru’s defection directly, instead focusing on an incident related to the Japanese surrender of August 25, 1946, in which fourteen young men committed ritual suicide in a formal group ceremony.

“These younge Patriots – who faced certaynne defeat – did Mightly yell-eth their Apologies to His Highness The Emperor, and wanted to do some Thyngge that would make an enduring and famous Statement to that Effecyte. They didst Resolve to performeth a Group Disembowelment. At their fynalle Drinking Party, one of them didst Read-eth the famous death-poem of  Matsumoto  Sensei, one of the three Co-Presidents of the famous Imperial Loyalty Association 

“I die in thine service, My Emperor 
Telleth the future generations of my Deeds
Keepeth strong  the faythe
The wind doth bloweth mightily  through the pyne trees

“Then they didst Sygne, one-by-one, a collective Last will and Testament: “We doth nobly Pledge to  Selflessly offer our fourteen Spirits to defend-eth Thyne Imperial Castle eternally.”  The following Mornyngge, they didst verily March down to the military parade Grounddes – commonly known as “The Groundde of Nineteen Mighty Elms,”  in what be-eth now Yoyogi. And they didst verily Commit Hara-kiri. They didst this in Accordance wytthe  the Venerable Instructions of the Traditional Suicide Manuals, and not one Man Didst Survive. First, they didst Solemnly Delivvyre a ritual Prayre to The Emperor. Secondllye, standing in the grassy Playne full of autumn Flowwres, they didst make to Sytte in a Cyrcle, solemnly did they pull out their Blades, and they did Wrapp them in Cloth of Whytte.

Sakagibara then read the dialogue: 

“Sensei:  Be-eth you Ready? Hath any Man Last Worrdes?

The Group: *bows their heads in prayer*

Sensei: “Dost thou dedicate thine Souls to protecting the Imperial Lineage from now unto Eyterrnitie?”

The Group: “Gloryyye To Them!”

Sensei: Gloryye!”

“Then, acting in Pyrffect Unison, the men didst Disembowel themselves,  and forthwith, the traditional kaishaku (assistant) didst Helpp them end their Suff’ryng.

“Their Suicide Note didst declaim that, in Death their Souls wouldst find perfect Patriotism. Accordyngge to the Investigator who didst Performm the Autopsy: “Not in ancient Tymmes was there ever such a Superior, perfectly executed hara-kiri, nor will it be likely in the Future.” The Suicide Spot did, in the Course of Tymme, become-eth completely Covered by the Occupying Army, who did Build-eth an officers’ Quarters called Washington Heights. And verily, the only Trace of the Ritual was a memorial Stone – some fifty by thirty inches – which was Buried-eth deep in the Earrthe, in the Hope that it might someday Re-surface-eth.

“Yon ritual Suicide was’t originally Supposed to have been Fifteen Mennye, but one of the Mennye dost Turned out to have Bynne a mean-spirited cowardly little bitch!” Sakagibara suddenly bellowed, widening his eyes until we could see the whites on both top and bottom of his irises. “Even though they had allowed him the use of a kaishaku, he still broke his sacred oath, forsake his responsibility, and ran like a bitchy-bitch man! But the other fourteen upright, selfless men chose to go ahead, unconcerned, indifferent to him, as if he were nothing but water that had run down the drain!!!

“They left that asshole run away like a mouse down a hole, to live out the remainder of his days, trembling in the darkness, in some forgotten corner of Japan!!! I trust you young fellows don’t want to be like that running-away mouse, do you? Hah?? You want to be like the fourteen upright patriots? The youngest of them was only seventeen, Just like you!”

From these concluding remarks, one couldn’t help but realize how close President Sakagibara had been to Shigeru. I didn’t believe that Shigeru had defected out of fear of death, but nonetheless the tale of the stout-hearted seventeen-year-old left a deep impression on me: in one day, I had been given not one but two revelations! I was moved to the point of tears.

It seemed as if President Sakagibara was talking directly to me, more than anyone else present, although he had mistaken the reason for my excitement. In any case, he was determined to chase me up the “escalator of emotions” until we reached the climax:

“Yon Patriotic seventeen-year-old, I verily did See-eth his Farewell scroll, Writtynne with traditional Ink, verily I didst Behollde  it with mine own Eyes! I didst Carrye it with me to the actual Site of the Ritual – I didst Beholld-eth the fresh Bloode-staynnes! It doth Struck mine Emotionnes like a Blowwe to the chest. I didst Sheddye tears, thinking of this most Excellent Youthhe. Verily didst I Lament-eth and Wail-eth!

“I didst Turrne in the Dyrecctione of the Imperial Palace, Intenndynge to Performme  the “Respectfully Present-eth  A Holy Thyngge to the Imperial God With all Due Reverence” ritual. But when I began-eth to speaketh the Prayre, I verily didst become Overcome with Emotion,  with Sadnesse and Dread – I didst become Carried away in a miraculous Floode of Tears, I had-eth no words with which to pay-eth Tribute to this true Imperial Child. It be-eth inadequate to Thynkke of Him resting in ordinary Heaven. It be inadequate to gazeth upwards, to weep-eth and kneel. He was’t trullye a Special variety of genius  – a genius of uyoku!!!  Cannot thou feel-est  compassion for Him?

“GOD DAMN IT!!!! The common people neglect God, they forget to say their prayers! The populace is disloyal to The Emperor, - although day in and day out He looks after them!  How dare they make Him worry so much? If they were, at long last, to – with wailing and gnashing of teeth – to kneel to His Highness and beg Him for forgiveness . . . .Now, it’s too late! What good would words do?

 “And as for us, for our own, modern-day patriotic youths, our simple naïve lads, what mission shall we entrust them with? Of course The Emperor must be officially restored to Godhood. Surely some people still believe in his divinity..

“That Seventeen, he signed his death—poem “From the Soumounoshin”  - soumounoshin is an old word meaning “The Opposition Party.”  And yet, the leader of that Opposition Party eventually became a Cabinet Minister! His suicide changed the nation! 

“The post-war period was one of confusion and chaos. So how was it that this “seventeen” was so decisive, so certain in his actions? Because he was a patriot, someone willing to die for his country, that’s why! The youth who committed seppuku, he was blessed with an abundance of faith in God!

“Another death-poem went like this:

“I vow-eth, in Death, to become like unto Ouchi Mountain.
Decorated with Deepest Greene, forever watching over
And protecting my People

I couldn’t take any more – I raised my voice and emitted a piercing sob. 

Frankly, the President’s speech was so full of ancient Chinese words that I couldn’t understand most of it. But, like someone gingerly plucking shoots of fresh grass from between the cracks of huge majestic rocks, I felt that something new was being born: A gentle, young, and pure voice could be heard. I grew more and more sad, until I snapped: I bellowed and wept! I cried until the fit was almost passed, only to be overcome once more when I recalled the emotions of Hiroshima, which was itself bathed in the purifying tears of sadness.

“That’s it!” I thought. “That other ‘seventeen’ – his certainty and his rights were guaranteed by his heroic seppuku. More than that: his suicide was his mission, his message to the world! I’m also Seventeen – I want to be enshrined as an uyoku god like that! I want to personally build and defend the “uyoku castle” too! Certainty! Action! Suicide by sword! That’s how I will show you all I’m a true Child of The Emperor!” 

I was swept away by the currents of revelation and tears. A blissful current indeed. After the lecture, President Sakagibara leant me a special book: “Seppuku Diary.” But clearly his lecture was not meant to inspire me specifically. The revelations I gleaned from it were my own, from beginning to end. That night, I returned to the lonely room  - - which I used to share with Shigeru. In my desk, I discovered a simple memo which Shigeru had left for me.

“I can’t take the conservative policies of this Party no more! I’m going to leave and put all my energy into starting my own Party. If you feel the same way, then I’ll introduce you to the Ashiyaoka Farm, where you can live temporarily. If you come in person, I’ll explain everything. I’ve drawn a map on the back.

Shigeru”

The following day, I got all my luggage in order and left Headquarters. Strong feelings welled up: I wanted to go to Ashiyaoka Farm, but I wanted also to travel to Washington Heights and see the suicide spot for myself.

I got on a train bound for Yoyogi.

At the site, I sat down on my trunk, looking through the barbed wire fence at the tall, grassy hill. The ritual-suicide spot had now been turned into a kindergarten for the children of American officers. Little blonde children played, smelled flowers, and sang songs. Watching the loveable foreign childrens’ happiness put me in a tolerant mood. The clean, fresh light of late summer shined on us all -  solitary me, the drops of water on the green grass, and the small wiggling shoulders of the foreign blonde children alike. 

Then I thought about that other Seventeen, fifteen years ago, on a summer’s morning, who followed the instructions: “Find the spot four centimeters below your belly button, and cut sideways fifteen centimeters, to a depth of 0.5 centimeters, which is to say, just the skin.” And then, his kaishaku would “Find the spot, in the center of the neck, between the fifth and sixth vertebrae, and cut the spinal cord.”

That Seventeen , who was now separate from his Party . . . all by himself in Heaven. Alone in his “uyoku castle” which he had caused to be built. I felt his solitude as if it were my own.

CHAPTER 6

At  Ashiyaoka Farm, I obtained the first chance of my life to perform manual labor, to experience the lifestyle of a peasant. I think everyone should devote some part of their life laboring on a farm, where one’s schedule is based on the sun. Especially for myself, it was one part of my giving my life for my country, I thought. 

I wanted for at least an instant to feel the feeling of, “Us peasants working quietly and obediently in the twilight, like sheep.” To feel the honest sweat forming and then drying on my forehead. To feel my soft feet develop calluses and become dirty – but at the same time, feel the cleansing effect of the mud. To feel my hot muscles cooled down by the snow of fatigue, the knowledge of a honest day’s work completed, to know that the sun was in the sky watching over me as I labored. I was eager to receive the physical-ness of the naked natural earth. 

Like a super-motivated nihilist in a graveyard, tearing up the earth to get to the soft bodies, I would scamper about, tilling the earth, planting the fragile seeds, secure in the knowledge that, the following spring, the sprouts would mature, a bountiful harvest born from my valorous labor.  And like a bumper crop, these visions of farm life sprouted in my head, grew to great heights, and in their full ripeness, I beheld this: us peasants, looking up to heaven, hearing the voice which we had prayed for: “Yes! That’s enough now, go on!” and in that instant, like some salmon which had finished laying eggs, we effortlessly scampered home to play.

At  Ashiyaoka Farm, I spent my first two weeks from dawn to dusk each day in the orchard, making fences to prevent the calves from entering. By the end of my second week, the persimmons were blooming, splendidly, feverishly. I realized that fruits were things which absolutely put all their strength into developing as fast as possible. I felt that I myself, in my mind and my muscles, was on the same path!

My next two weeks were spent raising livestock. And something in the livestock pens made an even deeper impression: the pregnant females, one pig and one cow, and even a pregnant dog, who lay in the straw, in the deepening sunshine outside the pens. They could only move slowly, with a very calm, harmonious attitude. Their eyes were full of a sort of great resignation, a sort of kindness or even love. The whole surface of their bodies, like the sun, radiated energy : a languorous slow motion, devoid of regret, full of life. 

This deeply moved me with an almost spiritual power. And I began to realize that I, myself, had begun to manifest a special trait in common with these animals: more than just dumb composure, it was a gentle quietness, a peace of mind. Afraid of falling over and having a mis-carriage, they would walk very slowly and carefully.  They must have had some premonition, some intuition, that , at length, they would know the agony and ecstasy of childbirth. I gave praise to these solitary mothers and their faint smiling expressions, caressing their heads, legs, chests, and everything else.

Of course I  wouldn’t literally say that I was myself pregnant with fruits or fetuses, but nonetheless, I had the feeling that something great, some potential, some destiny, was developing within me. Something enigmatic, like the ancient Buddha statue so beloved by  Ashiyaoka Farm’s owner, Mr. Matsumoto. But what I could definitely state was that I was free from the hyper-sensitivity and emotional volatility which had plagued me. I walked with a constant, small smile on my dark, sunburnt face, confident that my revelation was real, as I anticipated what form my own “childbirth” might take. And soon enough my destiny would arrive.  It was extremely clear to me, this premonition. Any minute now, the big voice would boom, “Yes! That’s enough now, go on!” and my new life would begin, as if born, fully-formed, from my body.

Mr. Matsumoto had a daughter-in-law, who was also part of the “circle” of pregnant organisms on the farm: she was entering her second trimester. Since I came to the farm, I had barely spoken a word to anyone. But occasionally this beautiful daughter-in-law would come by and make some quiet conversation. Like me, she shared a love of watching the pregnant animals, so she would sometimes come to the livestock pens where I worked.

Mr. Matsumoto was a former uyoku theoretician and strategist. As one might expect from such a man, he’d had a small Shinto shrine (Ashiyaoka Shrine) installed on his property.  The daughter-in-law, however, was a Buddhist.

As evening fell, I was in the already-dark pens, having finished shoveling hay, lying on top of the resulting pile. A smile played across my face, as I listened to the irregular breathing of the pregnant pig, while staring at the daughter-in-law, who wore a benevolent expression like that of the Virgin Mary: she also liked listening to the fat, moist, un-glamorous sound. As a Shinto youth, I was always the target of her mischievous Buddhist proselytizing. This time she said, “Hey you, do you know what the Buddhist teaching of ‘nengemishou’ (拈華微笑) means?”

I was shoveling massive amounts of cow feed into a pile when she said this, so I just rolled my eyes. She was always guessing things about me, and her guesses were usually completely wrong.

She continued: “Of course you don’t know. You’re in the “heavenly faction” like my father-in-law! Hey you!  You have a special soul. Shinto can’t refine it the way Buddhism can. But you uyoku don’t have the patience to study foreign concepts, right? “

“You’re a lazy one, aren’t you?” the daughter-in-law continued, “Nengemishou means ‘heart-to-heart’ communication.”  And now she laughed, because she’d seen me smile.

“Ah, you mean telepathy!” I responded: “A science-fiction Buddhism. Is your god a Martian, then?”

“Well, he did achieve enlightenment while seeing a falling star!” said the beautiful older woman. “Since you’re lying on your side in straw, like a pig, that must be a sign that you’re developing nengemishou powers! Maybe you can tell me what that pregnant pig is thinking?”

“What does any pig think about? Not enough hay, I want to eat some oats, something like that.”

“When I smile, I look exactly like a pig, don’t I?” she said, making a face. But of course this wasn’t true. “Actually nengemishou is hard to express with words, even if you can do it!”

It seemed to me that this lady and I were obtaining some heart-to-heart communication of our own, and then she pressed me further:

“You are still a child, but you already have something of a Buddhist saint about you. You should follow the gentle teachings of Siddhartha . I’ll lend you a book.”

“No thanks. I’ll even have a Shinto funeral! And they’ll name me Saint Whoever!” I said, recalling that the death of a young patriot was always around the corner. And, I have already had a Shinto revelation.”

“I’ll have a Buddhist funeral.” She replied.  “Shinto ceremonies are too raw, they’re scary. What I want you to understand is, and maybe you are the only one who can feel it:  ever since I became pregnant, I wanted to eat strange things, but just as much I keep obsessively picturing my own funeral.”

I understood exactly. Ever since I’d had my revelation, I had known that I might die during my mission. I’d often pictured my Shinto funeral, raw and scary as it might be.  

What’s more, I was now overcome with a feeling - like water-pressure – which was rising in my chest, causing me to shudder; a mysterious excitement! I searched, but could not find any fragments of dread, inside me nor in the mood of the day. We were just talking and smiling, having our heart-to-heart communication, and before we knew it, night’s curtain had fallen and we had become intimate friends, older-sister and younger-brother! Shoulder-to-shoulder, we walked back to the main dining hall, where the Ashiyaoka Farm’s oven spread its early-autumn aroma thickly through the air.

For the first time since I’d joined the Imperial Way Party, I had met a woman for whom my feelings were not sadistic. Instead, I felt love, respect, and a thin eroticism for this older housewife. She was the perfect image of allowable womanhood. I’d been working as hard as possible at the farm – like a bow stretched to maximum tension. But, as paradoxical as it might sound, when I was with her, I was more relaxed than I’d ever been, utterly free from the self-consciousness that had ruined my high school days. 

I was completely oriented towards this older woman. No longer did I think of Sugi Emiko. I no longer wanted Shigeru to whisk me off to Tokyo for a night of “king-and-prince entertainment” with the female slaves at one of the Turkish bath-houses. I didn’t have any impure desires. I scorned the small and solitary bo-ki, disdained the orgasm of onanism. 

Since my revelation, my entire existence was one giant bo-ki, and my orgasms (along with my seed) were being saved as energy for my mission, whatever it might be.  The bear-looking hick waitress at the Hiroshima cabaret had relieved me of my virginity, but that was just a superficial change. Here at the farm, I learned to sublimate sexual desire into honest labor, but at the same time, the blossoming flower of the owner’s daughter-in-law’s smile hardened my purity, cleansing me, making me more pure than any mere virgin. 

Smiling became second-nature to me, a recurring motif in the song of my life! Actually, that would make a good verse for my death-poem, I think. The poem could be done in the pastoral style, about my rapid development despite my short life-span, like that of my beloved fruits and animals here at Ashiyaoka Farm.

Even Mr. Matsuoka’s eldest son, who had a reputation as an uyoku-hater, had to admit I cared about these animals. This allowed me - alone among the uyoku – to develop a rough bond with him. One time he said, “Hey, put aside patriotism or whatever for a second. Just look at that soil, look at that grass and those vegetables, yo. Feel the soft and moist earth of the field under your feet. You got such skill with them! You were born to be a peasant. It’s a shame to waste your life on politics!”

Beyond the labor itself, Ashiyaoka Farm’s biggest influence on me was probably the mental environment: it was a place where individuals had the freedom to have their own ideology. The elder Mr. Matsuoka was a very strong uyoku, whose ideas had a certain magnetism, but I didn’t have to go to his lectures. I didn’t have political interactions with the other farmers either. I said to myself, “Right now, I’m not trying to hear rumors of the external world, not trying to talk to strangers too much. I’m only concerned with my relationship to  my internal world, because that’s where my revelation is growing, like a precious tree-seed which I must cultivate above all other things!”

And before I knew it, my “tree” had sprouted branches, and the branches grew full of leaves.  It was only then, for the first time since he brought me to the Farm, that I once again felt ready to meet Shigeru. 

Shigeru had been trying to put together a new alliance, which had kept him busy as a TV star, making appearances everywhere. And even if he had been able to meet with me, I was so far within my “internal world” that I would have had no room to deal with his ideas in any case. But now he was here. He silently took a long look at my face, then slowly let out his breath, and at length, began to speak:

“You are like a lone wolf, getting more and more extreme in your fanaticism. You’re so alone, building up pressure inside yourself. Your body is like a generator which can’t sit still, always making more power, and storing it away. And your isolation acts as a sort of rubber insulation, keeping your infinite voltage forever locked in, always ready to go off. You’re really like a lone wolf, looking at the moon, tensed and ready to leap over it in a single bound!”

I turned to look at Shigeru. When I arrived at the Farm, I had been intending to join his alliance. I vaguely knew that he was keeping tabs on me during my “insulated” phase. I realized now, that my hard work on the Farm which had undertaken to please Shigeru, had finally, without conscious deliberation, become an end in itself.

I  understood that this phase of my life was like that of some beast who was in hibernation: an activity which could only be done alone. And, what I was coming to understand was, once my development was complete, perhaps it was possible – even necessary? – for me to complete my entire Mission alone.

I enjoyed listening to Shigeru, this Shigeru who was now like a stranger to the “new me,” explain about his alliance. After I had heard enough, I might return to the Farm,  continue my peasant life, and with a smile, silently write my pastoral poetry . . . .

I felt that the ideology of Shigeru’s alliance much the same way that he felt about me: namely, that it was too extreme, too fanatical. To press the metaphor further, Shigeru was also like a lone wolf, who had broken off from the “herd “ of the Imperial Way Party, to gallop fiercely through the “forest” of Tokyo. I was tired from my long work on the Farm, and what’s more the extremism of the new alliance, not to mention the huge strain of building it, was showing on Shigeru’s face – I got the impression that he had gone a bit wild.

Every time I met him, he was burning with the maximum passion.  I sensed a lack of judgment, or self-awareness, when he spoke of his organization, as if his extreme physical and mental exertions were distorting his philosophy. His ideas developed only in one direction, and then had hit a wall. As quickly as his alliance gained members, he would expel old members. And when I say “old members,” I mean two or three weeks old!

When I asked him for the details, it became apparent that, besides himself, no one at all had stayed in the group for more than three weeks!

At length, I came to comprehend the reasons for this: he wanted to start a new alliance for the sake of his student friends who had been forced to die in the war, but the only people who could truly qualify for such an alliance were those deceased friends themselves. In all of Tokyo, I doubt there  was such an extreme lone wolf as Shigeru, roaming its wastelands. This desperate, hopeless man, trying to make an organization by the elderly dead, for the elderly dead.  . .  out of young fanatic uyoku!  In the end, it became clear there was nothing more to his ideology than this: the only people he could tolerate in his group were dead class-mates.

One early fall afternoon, as Shigeru obsessively lamented about the evils of today’s society, I said something that perhaps I shouldn’t have, but it slipped out nonetheless:

“Where in all of Japan is there a damn comrade that meets your standards?!? You’ve been running around like mad by yourself, trying to drum up comrades . . . why can’t you just do your political activity by yourself in the first place?”

“It’s better to honorably suicide than to be all alone, I suppose. . . .” he replied. “If you’re all alone, why be a patriot? The individual himself is, hehhhh, without a fatherland.”

“So, OK, you don’t have any fatherland, then! Why don’t you get in your time machine, and go back fifteen years, and go back to die in battle with your class-mates?!?”

“Oh, and where’s your father-land? In the future? You’re as alone as I am, but your ‘friend’ isn’t dead yet, is he? ”

“His Highness The Emperor is alive now! My time is now! Because, if my father-land is really in an un-reachable future, then Japanese people have no meaning. The Empire doesn’t have meaning. The whole world. . . the whole Milky Way doesn’t have meaning!”

We sat quietly, smiling, for a while after this: me thinking about The Emperor, and Shigeru, thinking about his fallen comrades. One thing I liked about the “war generation” was, they could give real, first-hand testimony about their friends, the friends who are not with us today.

I finally got up, and shook Shigeru’s hand. He said, “I want to finish forming my Association by next May.”

I looked steadily at him for a good five seconds, smiling, and then we parted. Night was falling and I waited on the wooden bench for the train to take me back to the Farm. To pass the time, I watched the TV in the station : the chairman of the Progressive Party was giving a rather depressing speech from his fat throat, which looked like a sack of meat. It was a little unsettling that someone with such a lonely face and meat-sack voice could speak with such certainty and self-confidence.

“This man whose face comes to the TV from far away, by means of the cathode rays, he must live in Tokyo somewhere. He must live his day-to-day life here, and that means I can destroy it. This abstracted, black-and-white image of a fish-like face with its flapping lips. . .in real life, I can reach out and touch him. 

“Or stab him, as the case may be.”

In the end, I boarded the train headed away from the Farm. 

My family was largely uninterested in me, but they greeted me with a strange politeness when I arrived at their door. When I explained that I’d come home “for my seventeenth birthday,” they all – even Elder Sister - pretended to believe me. 

Father said he’d send me – as a present – a textbook of lectures relating to Chinese Language Radio. It was around then that the seeds of hatred began to sprout once more. 

Elder Brother was still acting like a cowering, beaten-down dog, sitting down reading a book about travel.  I thought to myself, maybe if I invite him hiking on a mountain over New Years’ Holiday, then I could postpone The Mission until after.

The newspaper on the table had a headline in large type announcing the results of a pre-election opinion poll, and I realized I truly hated that kind of thing. Politicians trying to bend to public opinion, with no convictions of their own. The public, thinking like a herd. My politics was more honorable, more resolute. I could change things single-handedly. And I felt the time was getting closer and closer. That bravery was one of the sprouts germinating in my internal world.

For the first time in many months, I laid down on the cot in the shed in back of the house, smelling the nostalgic stench of mildew. Soon I was digging through the piles of old junk. In the back of a drawer, I found the wakizashi  (short sword) which was named Raikokuga (‘The Fang Which Came to Japan’)

In the darkness, considering whom to stab, I felt like it really was my seventeenth birthday all over again. (see part one, dummy) Except that this time, I actually had the skills to use Raikokuga. Though it was dark, I could clearly see my progress:  through my anguish, I had become a resolute and manly man! But I hadn’t definitely decided to stab the Progressive leader. After all, the Teachers’ Union leader, the Communist Party leader, and those trade-union officials were also on the loose. For now, I stuffed the wakisazhi under my pillow and lay down. 

Soon Gang, the local stray cat, bounded in through the porthole-sized window. I could feel his silent weight on the blanket. I gambled that if I called him – “Chi! Chi!” – he’d come sit on my chest and wait to drink my spit. 

Then I’d grab him and punch his nose until his blood stained his fur! 

But he just played dead instead. 

In the faint coldness of the autumn night air, for an instant I was gripped with the sweats and the shivers! I still hadn’t decided my big plan yet, still was waiting for my revelation to tell me what to do, still didn’t know what shape my new life would take. . . still couldn’t do anything at all!!!

But, like one of those fast-motion films where you can see a berry ripening before your very eyes, I began to bellow like the cow at the Farm, beginning to deliver its calf. My interior tides overflowed, I could not resist them. The tides spun the “terror propeller” which seemed to be turning on an armature which pierced from the top of my head to my weak anus!!  Sinking to the bottom of the “fear river”, I frantically searched for the “stalks” which had grown from my revelation, but they were all up by the surface where the water was clear, out of reach now.  I was dumbfounded that the terrors which I should have overcome had returned with such force.

I thought of the other Seventeen, the one who committed honorable suicide at the place which became Washington Heights. 

“But at that time, Japan was in a state of terrible shock and confusion. That guy couldn’t imagine the stress, the responsibility of the boy who has to concoct a plan to destroy the false society, to take the problems of the world on his back. It’s better not to even think about that fellow! 

“Plus, that clown couldn’t imagine the stress, the awful responsibility of the boy who has to go on a mission to murder.

“AAAHHH!!! Those red demons will torture me brutally!  At that moment, I remembered the illustrated story in a magazine which was sponsored by the Americans: “The Brutal Suffering of the North Korean People.” I believed every last terrible thing. I might be crucified with metal spikes upon a willow tree, or have white-hot metal poured on my entrails. My throat dried up at the mere thought of it, but they might even eat my brains!!! What if they grind my sex organs under a millstone? There is nothing that these reds won’t do to their enemies.”

To muffle my sobs, I hugged Gang to my face. But then suddenly he broke free with berserk violence, a raging storm of speed, clawing at my chest and shoulders, wounding me so ferociously that I thought I’d die, leaving behind a body covered entirely in scars. With a bound, he was gone into the deepening darkness.

Gang had discarded me, much like the shit-filled post-war society had discarded those brave fourteen comrades. Better yet, he was like the stinking traitor who ran away and abandoned them. But this desertion, this abandonment . . .how long would it go on? Forever?!?!? Until they have their revolution and execute The Emperor? They won’t seriously stage an all-out revolution, will they? Tell me it isn’t so!

I wanted to run out of the shed screaming, as if I’d awoken from a nightmare where I’d been chased by demons: “Save me! Someone save me!  I’m not the one you want! I’m not the one you want!”

Instead I lay down upon my cot and strained my ears to hear some of Elder Brother’s “modern jazz.”  I wanted to go to him and confess everything: my bliss and my terrors both. But if he was still awake, he must have been using his giant pink plastic headphones, so as not to disturb my slumber.

I wanted to be a rocket, to soar in the night sky, prayed that  everyone in the world to forget about me once I was gone. I prayed to be a one-year-old baby again, or to be a nomad, without an Emperor, King or fatherland of any sort.

But of course such wishes were futile. I knew that well. The road upon which I was traveling had already been decided. The “old Seventeen” had returned, in all his hesitant and trembling ways: I was terrified of death and the eyes of strangers, exhausted by self-satisfaction and delusions, consumed with self-loathing. 

“AAhhh Carol, baby treat me wretchedly!” I sang.  

The demons of this world were dragging me back into their infernal courtroom: The daily judgments that wracked me constantly,  almost a year ago, before I joined the uyoku. At that time, I had not even a single grain of The Emperor’s divine and radiant dust sprinkled upon my heart, to give me passion. AAAH!!! Without His radiance, how could I have survived in this dark world? I would have soon dried up and perished. And now, less than a year later, here I was, embarked on a complex, abnormal, death-defying big adventure.

I began to  vaguely play with my sex organs, but, as if they had been worn out by all my previous self-satisfaction, they refused to grow red, or hard.  They lay limply and blackly on my crotch, ashamed. I furiously bent by head down, almost to my belly button, to scrutinize this emergency in detail, while massaging it, but still was unable to unleash the dazzling splendor of my bo-ki. I was impotent! But, this time it wasn’t just a figure of speech. My head hurt, I felt nauseous, and the wounds from that cat began to pulsate. This was the worst – just like on my real seventeenth birthday! 

Seventeen and impotent. 

As soon as I sunk  into a painful and shallow sleep, I beheld a dream that I was Crown Princess Michiko – it was the night before my wedding, and I was in front of my mother and father, terrified, trying to hold back tears. I woke up screaming, then returned to view another dream:

I was Tajima Mori, the patron saint of confectionery craftsmen, presenting the fruits of the most precious flower, which, through Herculean efforts, I had obtained from the very corners of the Earth, to a gown-clad Emperor who simply said, “Yuck, dirty!” and rejected me.

(Most sorts of Okinawan confectionery and those originating in Europe or China that use ingredients alien to traditional Japanese cuisine, e.g., kasutera, are only rarely referred to as wagashi.In ancient Japan, people ate fruits and nuts as confectionery and sweets, to supplement nutrition in addition to grain, such as rice, wheat and millet. In an excavation of a Jōmon period archeological site, the carbonized remains of what appeared to be baked cookies made from chestnut powder were discovered.According to the Kojiki, Emperor Suinin ordered Tajima-mori to bring Tokijiku-no-Kagu-no-Konomi (登岐士玖能迦玖能木實 a kind of orange) from the Eternal Land. 10 years later, Tajima-mori returned with the orange, but Emperor Suinin was already dead. Tajima-mori mourned since he could not carry out his mission and took his own life.[1] By tradition, Tajima-mori is worshiped as spirit like a patron saint among confectionery craftsmen.)

In the end, all I could do was lay there in the dark, cold shed, without even the strength to cry, miserably curled up with my cheek on my knees like some raped daughter. I kept repeating the Golden Words: “If one is selfish, one can not lose one’s self in devotion to The Emperor.” 

I repeated them over and over, until the faint chirping of birds and the signals of the first trains signaled that another day was beginning. And just then, I beheld a portrait of my imaginary “Pure Internal Emperor”: He looked like Emperor Meiji mixed with a demon. He really did exist!! His all-seeing eyes gazed upon me, Seventeen, his chosen one, right there on the cot in the shack!! His divine eyes were looking at me, weren’t they? I shrank back, cringing, wiping the crusty dark mucous from my own eyes.  In my exhausted, shabby, callow head,  He could no doubt see the wilted words began to bloom and flourish once again,  spreading like vines until my head was about to burst: “There’s no other way! I have to do it! If I’m going to walk out of here, I can not carry with me even one fragment of selfishness!!!”

And with that, I walked out into the warm morning sunshine of the backyard. I practiced karate and trampled the many varieties of chrysanthemums, and afterwards felt almost totally recovered. As if my fevers had receded. 

I took my karate club and wrote on it in Sharpie: “Imperial Year 2620.”
And on the other side I wrote: “Immortal Imperial State.”

The new sweat of honest labor washed away the old sweat of night terrors. I practiced my punching. I practiced today with especially quiet concentration, putting in maximum effort, until it seemed that the entire yard had been purified by my sweat. It was the only way to wash away the shame and fear. Wash it into some far-away, deep sewer pit, wash it down a deep shaft, with a gurgling sound like that of a sick cat. “EI! YAA! EII!! YAAA!” 

 “For the good of the Party, we Imperial Youths march to Death with a smile on our faces and our banners held hiiiighhhH!” I sang.  

That song was the best, even if I didn’t have the correct flag. 

I tried incorporating bits of my death-poem into my “karate attack yells” until I began to feel at last quite heroic.  I beheld a vision, bright as The Emperor’s own Sun, and I breathed in its dew-drops with every yell: 

“EII! YAAA! For the country! For the country!!! 
EII!! The Imperial Youths! 
EII!! YAAA!!! March to death with a smile!!!! 
EII!! YAA!! Our banners held high!!!!”

CHAPTER 7

Your assassination is shown over and over again on video tape, on the news, in the movie theatres – I heard that even the journalist who took pictures got a Pulitzer prize. All Japanese people are addicted to watching it, this never-ending drama  of assassination.  On TV, on the radio, through the speakers, in the newspapers, weekly magazines, the monthlies, the silver screen, people have gone crazy for your assassination; it’s got more energy than the atomic bomb.

Everyone in Japan has been poisoned by your assassination. Your assassination is like a toxic grey cloud which has spread over the entire Japanese archipelago.  You are the only one free from this furious poison. You had your gas-mask on from the beginning. At the Assembly Hall, the only person in the audience not watching, the only one who took action, was you.

And that first moment which has been shown over and over nonstop in every corner of Japan, broadcast from every outlet, is the moment that you yourself never got to see. And you’re in jail now, so you’ll never see it. This grotesque nonsensical assassination. This sudden attack by a political non-entity, you’ve become quite removed from it, haven’t you. 

When I first sat down to write you this letter, you were very far from it. And I’m going to try to bring you a little closer with my words, as if they were a “portable television screen.”

On Channel One, Your assassination is in constant play, both the live video and the still photographs. The chairman is giving a speech, in his deep, weary, yet vehement voice. In his words, you can hear defiance, blame, opposition, all burning together like gasoline. His passions manage to surpass his deep fatigue, his words fill with rage, the camera captures his words, his meanings, the audience in the background: full of skeptics, the faithless, the cowards and the insincere. In fact it looks as if even the speaker doesn’t believe his own words.

The Chairman is a big man with a loud voice, but at times he seems to act like a small timid man who is reading a manuscript written by someone else. One gets an impression of hollowness, vacuity. As if he himself is aware of this impression, the Chairman says, “We’ll probably lose this election. The Diet is entirely powerless. The industrialists, in their hubris, do as they please. They are treated as the driving force behind Japan’s economic growth. The many thousands of hardworking salarimen and farmers are also powerless, treated as childish consumers, who want nothing more than the newest electric appliances.  

“The ruling party with its money politics and secret cliques is handicapped. They aren’t good for anything but preserving the status quo. Those  self-promoters would never deviate from the straight line of their career path. They leave everything to the bureaucrats, who have exactly zero concern with what the public wants nowadays.  

“The opposition party has given up hope of reforms, preferring to cling to their seats in the diet, and turning a deaf ear to the demonstrators outside who are supporting them. The intelligentsia are satisfied to cheer us on from afar but don’t want to get their hands dirty. We know we can’t depend on them if we get in a tight spot.  There isn’t anyone left with a real sayoku spirit anymore. No one who wants to go in the true direction.  And that’s why I , after decades of service to this cause, sometimes even I feel like I’m doubting it myself. 

“In fact, now is one of those times. I simply don’t have that sayoku anger in me. 

“AAh, the People’s Republic of China. They turned sayoku into  a reality – they have over 600 million sayoku people! When I announced our Joint Sino-Japanese Declaration of Opposition To American Imperialism, how my voice burned with righteous anger. 

“I can’t summon that energy today.  

“Aaah, Japan, you humid zone! I’m reciting my lonely and futile speech to you! Shuddering at how banal and mediocre it is. There’s 90 million of you but not one is seriously considering my words.” 

The assembly hall filled with boos, jeers, bellows – the wild voices of the uyoku who came to disrupt the speech. While the moderator was calling for order, the Chairman stood silently, white and sweaty, looking like unbaked clay , his aged face an expressionless mask, and then finally dropped his head in a moment of deep shame. And in that moment he looked inorganic, as unliving as his spectacles. Soon he began his speech anew, his mouth opening and closing as meaninglessly as that of a fish gulping water : “The common people should turn out in great numbers to vote down all of these new proposals which have such a bad reputation. .  .”

(TV announcer voice): Hold on for a second, folks! A dark-skinned young man is clumsily running onto the stage, heading for the Chairman, still in mid-sentence. He runs into the Chairman. And again, a second time! The Chairman falls down! Now the guards roughly force the dark youth to the ground, inhumanely twisting his arm behind his back!  The cameraman is catching the entire event live! It looks like the Chairman has been hurt. 

Please hold on for a second. 

In the midst of the confusion, they are trying to carry out the overweight Chairman, but it’s too late. He’s already dead! 

The camera cuts to a close-up of a blood-smeared neck-tie, and then to an empty operating room. Then cuts back to the auditorium. 

No one is crying, but they are very energized with shocked curiosity, eager to see the drama unfold. Perhaps the dark youth, forced to the ground, is the only one shedding tears? 

Cut to one of the photos, taken at the very instant of the attack: the Chairman is turning to face the youth, with a confused non-judgmental expression, slightly blurred by the camera. The youth has a ferocious, beastly expression, his body bent almost double, as if a bow was bent as far as it could go, his hair standing on end, and a short sword clutched firmly in front of his chest. 

The next picture and the third  follow in quick succession: The Chairman’s spectacles fall off, his eyes are shut tight. The Chairman begins to turn away from the youth, begins to fall forward. A look of clear agony manifests on his face. 

The third photo shows only the back of the youth – all one can see are his ill-fitting, sacklike pants and his thick work boots. His pose is rigid like a pole: one can see a distinct, straight line running from his left foot all the way to his hand. One can also see the Chairman, groaning, desperately struggling to grab the knife handle as if to remove it from his belly. The composition of the photo is striking: the youth’s face, the Chairman’s face, and  the small chrysanthemum of blood blossoming in his chest form a perfect triangle. It’s as if the youth is inclining forward to hear the Chairman’s groans. 

Photo number four:  The youth now has turned to the camera directly, as if to attack again. The Chairman, in great pain and beginning to fall, tries futilely to turn himself to ward off a second blow. After the initial attack, the youth begins to act with the deliberate, unsettling calmness of the professional assassin. He plants both feet – in their huge boots – firmly on the ground, bends both knees, marshals his strength. His white t-shirt doesn’t match his high-school jacket, and the jacket itself is too small for his size.  He holds the short sword in his right hand, the thumb aligned with the blade. His left hand wraps around the right, perpendicular to it – both adding strength and acting as a rudder to help the blade aim towards the “stabbing point.”

It was, as one uyoku member later pointed out, it was a textbook assassin’s posture: the slightly crazed face, as if looking forward to the Deed, the left shoulder inclined slightly forward, like a baseball hitter preparing for a tricky pitch, keeping his eyes on the ball, his eyes narrow, as they fix on the left side of the Chairman’s chest. The youth’s face has the unreal expression of a Noh mask or a traditional demon,  almost cartoonishly fiendish rictus. 

http://www.google.com/images?q=noh+mask&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1213&bih=714

He bares his teeth. The muscles on the back of his neck are coiled, ready to release. His eyes have a black expression of grief, an almost bottomless sadness to them, but then again they resemble the orgasmic eyes from the erotic shunga pictures of the Edo era.

http://www.google.com/images?q=shunga&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1213&bih=684

His general posture is that of the “gaki” demon from the “hell pictures” of the Muromachi era, one realizes. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaki 

The Chairman is still falling forward, gazing in bewilderment at his spectacles, dangling around his upper lip, both hands raised to fend off another attack from this demon which appeared so suddenly. 

This posture leaves his large, almost pregnant-looking torso undefended. In contrast to the assassin, the Chairman’s whole body appears weak and entirely human. He seems to already be losing consciousness – most likely the first wound by itself was enough to have killed him. 

He wobbles unsteadily. 

The youth’s short sword glares white against his black jacket, the pale silhouette clearly outlined by the lights of the television cameras. Now, several men are running to subdue the murderer, but without much passion or ferocity. 

In the left corner of the photo, one can see another cameraman, standing with a relaxed posture. His only exertion is to raise one finger,  pushing the button on his camera, exactly capturing the nightmare tableau of perpetrator and victim.

On Channel Two, they filmed many different peoples’ reactions to your assassination. The mainstream media all ganged up on this poor patriotic youth, calling him a “violent right-winger.” But other voices could be heard as well:

“As for me, I found his actions to be splendid. It was an expression of the blood of the Japanese people, an expression of Japanese-ness, a scream announcing that the era of justice and righteousness has come.” 
– leader of a certain uyoku group.

 “One after the other, news reports pass hasty judgments, claiming that this incident was planned, that the youth had been trained. But I’m from “the war generation.” Who among us hasn’t trained with bayonets or something of the kind?”
 – Komatsu Shigeo

“If the assassin was thinking such as, “This guy isn’t useful for Japan so he should not be allowed to live,” then by that reasoning, he could kill any politician!  These assassins are mostly only in it for publicity, or other dishonest motives. Of course, some of them carry out terrorism for pure ideological reasons. . .”
-Hirotsu Kazuro

“Well, it would have been best if he’d used a single, decisive stroke, like BOKAAAA!!!. Even with a short-sword, it’s the best strategy. It looked as if he was trying to BOKAAA, to do a precise cut, but. . .I mean, two stabs isn’t terrible, it hit the mark eventually, but it’s not really good form, is it? It wouldn’t have killed him to practice a little more, would it? ‘Naamean?” 
– uyoku association member

“He says he killed a bad guy . . . for my sake! But he’s, like, even worse! No different than the Devil. That’s what I think, anyway. So that that’s why I think that kid is, pretty amazing. I mean, wow!”
- member of a certain uyoku group

“When I heard he had been assassinated, I felt deep despair.” 
– Uramatsu Samitaro

“Do you remember that university student (demonstrating at the Diet) who read a  waka-style poem, entitled “Japan has become wack?”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waka_%28poetry%29

The young assassin also published his own poem in a weekly magazine – which went something like, “Many people died for their country so that us young people could live.” 

If you compare the two poems, I think you’ll find – leaving aside the murder – that the right-winger is much more wholesome.  

I’m very interested in literature and often read waka poems. They say that Seventeen has filled many notebooks with waka in praise of His Highness The Emperor. That is magnificent! How can anyone call him a thug, if he does such artistic things? A thug! It’s a very rude nickname to give to such a cultured young man. 

I mean, just look at the things other people publish in the weeklies. Like the young man Fujimori Yasukazu. His poem goes like:

It’s forbidden!
The policemen will get angry at you.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
It’s strictly strictly forbidden.
You know, if His Highness The Emperor rode past on His horse, he’d know what you were up to.
Do you think His Highness doesn’t know about that?
Hey, Grandmother, don’t do it!
The Emperor is human after all. You think he doesn’t know about that stuff?
It’s disgusting! 
Grandmother, stop!
Don’t do that!
You know . . . .that!
Don’t do . . .the funky chicken!!!!!!

If you compare this perverted trash to the poems that Seventeen writes in his cell, which are about devoting one’s self to The Emperor, I think you can see for yourself which is best for society!
- a housewife

CHAPTER EIGHT

I was taken to the Municipal Police Station, and then to the Tokyo Public Prosecutor’s Office for interrogation. And thence to the Public Safety Bureau #2, Special Investigation Bureau #4, Marunouchi Central Office, and many other places besides, so that all the police in Tokyo could come running to let me feel their hot air. 

They’re very passionate about their work; they put their soul into it. They even went to Ashiyaoka Farm to question the elderly farmers. But it’s a huge pity that the police weren’t also farmers. They have the same hick manners and single-minded dedication.  By a fortunate coincidence, I was the only person at the police station who perfectly understood their passion and “I-was-born-for-this-job” attitude. We shared a common root, and I resolved with maximum enthusiasm to establish warm relations with them!

The investigating Detective showered me with a non-stop patter about how he understood me, and I silently, kindly sat and nodded at every word. Suddenly I got the feeling like we were two door-to-door salesmen, pitching at one another. As if the Detective was going to give me a pat on the arm and say, “Thanks for your time, I know you’re busy!” and then grab his brief-case full of samples and head out into the street.  When I saw the gentle smiles of these police officers, shadowed by an enormous fatigue, I felt a lump in my chest. They must have to deal patiently with so many thousands of people.

I gave a speech to myself: “The opinion I’d like to express to today’s people – who have somehow survived into the 21st century, as well as to the people of the future, is this: “When we go to open our first embassy on Mars or other planets, we should choose a Police Officer as the ambassador! Out of all the people, an Officer projects the most “goodwill, camaraderie, and human fellowship” energy, so necessary for a good first impression. 

“Furthermore, they know everything there is to know about all the bad people on Earth, so they should be able to quickly assess if the aliens pose a threat to us. 

“Also, the Officers would resemble New-Generation Salvation Army workers.”

But please don’t misunderstand – I had absolutely no impure, personal motive to feel such a deep sense of kinship with the Officers. If anything, I went out of my way to not feel tied down to anyone. In between interrogations, I stayed in my solitary-confinement cell. 

And what a cell it was! 

Compared to my parents’ shed or the dismal brothels that Shigeru took me to, the cell was the most cheerful lodging-place I had found in all of Tokyo. 

You could say that I had secluded myself, but you couldn’t really say that I’d been locked away. (the reason being,  this had been my intention all along. I’d been segregated, yes, but I’d been taken away from the gruesome outside world and isolated in the best part of the whole prison system by the best Officers). 

I had always been hoping for a quiet place where I could live a spiritual life of quiet contemplation, and now I was in a cell, where no strangers would barge in on me, where I could sit all day and meditate. To me this was freedom. 

What’s more, I didn’t have to do any kind of work; my lodgings were paid for by other people who did have jobs. Isn’t that what freedom is? 

If someone had asked me if I wanted to go outside, I would have said no! In fact, that’s what I dread the most. Staying isolated is more than a freedom, it’s a privilege, one normally reserved only for salarimen. I can entertain myself. 

I remember my childhood, sitting in a corner of the backyard with my chalk,  drawing a one-meter box on the concrete, and sitting down in the middle. I resolved not to leave my enclosure until sundown. It was still mid-day, and that seemed like an very long amount of time back then. Like a lost dog, my fears ran off the leash, barking and yelping. My mother called me to come to lunch. Eventually, I gave up and left. I was hungry and needed to use the toilet. But really, I had stayed a long time. I was always drawing those enclosures with the dull white chalk, and staying inside them all day. 

Of course it was possible for me to leave at any time, however I got a certain strange, sad excitement from staying inside of it, alone. And when you compare it to my current situation, it’s as if nothing had changed.  Somewhere in a deep, profound part of my soul, the past and the future mingle freely like green leaves falling into a steep ravine. 

It seems that the guards and Officers who come to my cell understand my feelings of “freedom in solitary confinement.” The prison guards are generally grandfather-aged, while the Officers tend to be little more than children, but they seem to understand my heart. I don’t believe this because we talk about it, but it’s a feeling I can taste on my tongue. I feel a sharp sense of sadness or pathos lurks under their uniforms. 

I feel them briefly peeping at me through the window, as I sit in the traditional style in the very center of my cell. 

They never call out to like this: “You can lie down, yo.” “All that traditional sitting will make you weak and tired, yo.”  They know that such comments are inappropriate. They are always silent, but in the occasional glint of their eyes, I can read the following message: “Ah, you want to sit traditionally, so you do it as much as you like, eh? If you wanted to run a marathon, you’d be out on the highway running all day, wouldn’t you?”

When I was young, I was obsessed with a picture-book which Elder Brother had received from the American pastor at church. The main characters were seals. The lead seal’s name was – I’m fairly certain – Olly. The illustrations were superb, full of emotion, with black ink and thin strokes of watercolor. My favorite part of the book were the dotted lines on the map which showed Olly’s travels around the globe, which was printed on the inside of the thick cardboard covers. Olly worked at the circus or something like that (when I read the book, I had no command of English language, moreover my memory is hazy in any case). 

In the Great Lakes region of Lake Ontario and Lake Eerie, he had been set free to swim downstream to the distant oceans. He traveled over virtually every part of the world before finally returning to his birth-place in the Arctic Ocean. The details escape me, but it was one of those kinds of stories. 

If  I’d set my heart to it, I  too could have traveled the world like that, with crazed zeal, like a hard-working sea mammal. But, I had now to accept, with tears of sadness bursting in my chest, that the dream which sprang from the pure heart of that little boy would never be possible in this life.

I ate the meals provided by the jail, refusing the beef-bowls that the elderly jailers offered me (from their own terribly small salaries), as well as refusing the bento (box lunches) that Father or Sakagibara sent to me. When he saw my refusal, the guard said:

“You’re a willful one, aren’t you? Selfish, but determined not to rely on anyone else. That’s definitely your nature, your happiness. There’s not many  guys like you left in society, you know?”

I could see in his eyes that he believed I was free. On the other hand, gazing at his face, cut by the small peeping-window into one eye, a cheek, one ear, and bridge of the nose, I felt like he was not free. 

He has to wear the uniform, the hat, the big ring of keys and all the other paraphernalia, he can’t go outside in the open air and sunshine when he wants to . . . .he definitely is not free. It’s quite hilarious – to these guards, I am an important person, but to me they’re nothing more than interchangeable zeros. 

Like random trees in the forest, like salarimen doing arbitrary duties at a firm, these guards walked back and forth day after day watching me.  Interchangeable little zero-men: it didn’t matter which one was doing it.

And I wasn’t just free only in my cell, either. I felt free when I was taken to the interrogation room as well.  The lead investigator had a very humane attitude. As I said before, he was very kind. And I never tried to betray or deceive him. I spoke with him earnestly and truthfully.  For example, I told him about the day I first saw the Imperial Way Party. I informed him that Shintouhou was there, that it took place the day after my seventeenth birthday, and explained what kind of fellow Shintouhou was. The investigator was laughing so hard I thought he was going to cry. His face was beet-red. 

But my declarations were never enough to satisfy him. His kindness went hand-in-hand with an almost tireless, machine-like personality, manifested in his enthusiasm for his work. He would return again and again, most obstinately, to certain questions.

For example, the issue of complicity and co-conspirators. 

I always insisted that I’d acted alone, because in fact that was the case. “It’s true that I joined the Imperial Way Party, and President Sakagibara helped raise me. It’s also true that I received a deep influence from Mr. Shigeru. But I was unsatisfied with the weak attitude of Sakagibara. That’s why I left his Party in the first place. As for Mr. Shigeru, he was obsessed with justice for his old classmates who were sent to die in the war. That was the only reason for his new Alliance. It was as if he wanted to construct it out of their souls, so I simply didn’t fit what he was looking for. 

“As for the Ashiyaoka Farm that allowed me to lodge on the premises, I never talked to Mr. Matsuoka about politics. Moreover, I never discussed any sort of assassination plan with anyone – the specifics or even in general terms.  And no one tried to tempt me to try something like that. It’s very important to me that I was able to do it entirely on my own.”

Another example was the issue of my personal motivations. I agreed to tell him, but it was more difficult than I’d imagined to explain it, and I became quite flustered immediately as soon as I’d begun. I eventually realized it was in fact quite impossible to explain it to him. 

Even more vexing, because the motivation was so obvious to me. 

I did it for the glory of The Emperor.  To murder the one who was trying to disgrace Him and betray His country. This was so simple, it shouldn’t even need to be said.  That The Emperor deserved glory, duh! 

The middle-aged detective gave me a really interesting reaction.  He seemed to understand that the glory of The Emperor was of course also the glory to Japan. And he replied, “Ah, so that’s why you sometimes write Shinshuu (literally “god’s country” – meaning “Japan is the one  true country founded by The Emperor in the name of Shinto Gods”), or Shinshuu Fumetsu (“Eternal Country of God”), in your notebook, isn’t it?” 

I grew very excited, eager to explain to the detective the important and complex differences between the two concepts. As a man of the law, surely he would appreciate the importance of nuance and precise wording. Moreover I didn’t want to be misunderstood by him on such a vital matter: 

“I was brought up in the post-war democratic environment. We were trained not to think of The Emperor, the country, and the people together, but as separate, unrelated concepts. We were trained not to feel those emotions. Concepts like ‘shinshuu youth’ and ‘eternal shinshuu’ were just words from old poems, nothing more. 

“I love The Emperor, I would die for Him.  But even so, because I was raised in such an environment, I can’t connect the dots, so to speak. I have a direct connection to Him, but don’t really care that much about the Japanese country or the Japanese populace. He alone is my motivation, and it’s for His sake alone that I stabbed.  I had no thoughts of improving politics, or, for that matter, raising the salaries of you Police Officers. 

“My actions are between me and Him, pure and simple.” 

The Detective briefly scowled, but then composed himself and continued: “Well, in that case, uh, why the Chairman?” 

I could feel my heart begin to palpitate but I answered without hesitation: “It didn’t have to be him. It could have been a big man in the Teachers’ Union or a big Communist. This might sound extreme, but anyone who didn’t pray for more glory to The Emperor would have done just fine. The problem wasn’t finding a worthy target. The only problem was finding a target that I could easily get close to!”

The Detective suddenly went cold. In a low, sharp-edged voice, he said, “That is the most fucking perverted thing I ever heard.”  I patiently explained, “Please retract that comment, otherwise I will have to exercise my right to remain silent.”

The Detective refused to retract his comment, and that day’s interrogation ended in a stale-mate.

During the interrogations, sometimes it was the Detectives, not I, who became angry.  For instance, when the investigator kept asking me why I did my Deed in early Autumn, and not some other time. I answered, “In summer, on the train home from Hiroshima, in the steam-filled window, I saw the sun sinking into the ocean, I beheld its sublime radiance, and in that instant that the sun touched the ocean, the sublime radiance transformed into His face. I screamed, “Oh! His Highness The Emperorrr!” I had had a revelation directly from Him. Now that I reflect back on it, the time and place of the Deed was decided during that moment of revelation.”

The detective became irritated and spat out the next query: “So you’re saying you saw a hallucination of The Emperor, right!?!”

It appeared that I had to be more concrete and specific to satisfy the Detective: 

“To put it bluntly, I saw a vision of The Emperor. This vision is my only accomplice. He is my guide in all things. I really want you to understand about this ‘phantom Emperor’, but it’s difficult to explain, so please give me time to think.”

“…”

“I suppose you could say that The Emperor is my accomplice. If you’re looking for people behind the scenes, you’ll find no one but Him pulling my strings.”

No sooner had I uttered these words, than the Detective flew into an insane, brutal rage, thrusting his head in my face so quickly I thought he was going to head-butt me. He bellowed: “The Emperor is your accomplice? He’s your co-conspirator?!!?!? Asshole, you’ve never met him! He’s never paid you any money! Look, fuckface, I’ve been nice with you so far, but it’s made you arrogant! Don’t fucking play dumb with me! Don’t try to lie, you little mope!”

I resolved to give the most unadorned confession possible, speaking only to deny the Detective’s false statements. As coolly as I could, I gazed back at the red, steaming face of the Detective, which was beginning to form some purple spots.  

In fact, it seemed that the more frank and honest I was in my confession, concealing nothing, the more bewildered the Officers became. 

If this was truly the case, what was the use of heartfelt human relations? 

Realizing this, I became very quiet whenever I was brought to the interrogation room, speaking only when necessary. In fact, I’d already told them everything I could. And I’d been interrogated fifteen times, so it’s safe to say my enthusiasm for the process was waning.

I said to myself, “Try as I might, I can’t make the Officers believe in my revelation which I had as the sun was falling into the sea that evening. I tried to give them testimony that I was the Chosen Youth with the perfect uyoku soul; tried to explain that, with my Deed, I’d been trying to ‘build the internal uyoku castle’ and ‘realize the dream of an internal uyoku shrine’, but it seemed that they were utterly incapable of comprehending this. 

”Fine, I’ll just remain silent. I don’t care if they can’t understand me. I  already have  constructed my shrine and castle. I’ve already proved that I’m the Chosen uyoku child.  And now I am bathed in the supreme bliss of Imperial Glory.”

Thinking about it that way, as I sat in my dark solitary-confinement cell, I saw the four walls, the whole Metropolitan Police Station, the Officers, the Tokyo Public Prosecutor’s Squad, the whole justice system, all of it vanished in a cloud of smoke, like the scene in the Aladdin’s Lamp manga which I’d read. The only thing which remained real was my freedom, the freedom of solitude. Only by thinking of myself as the assassin, by contemplating the Glory conferred on me as a human-who-was-capable-of-assassination, could I obtain mental peace and tranquility as I sat there.

The first time I beheld a real ‘human-who-was-capable-of-assassination’ was in Hiroshima, when I’d accidentally seen the legendary assassin with his dark and depressed face. I had thought to myself, he looks like some sort of demon. I wondered if I – a young man and still scrawny – looked like a demon to others? 

Then I suddenly realized: that legendary assassin, who had murdered a politician with a pistol some thirty years ago. . . at the time he must have been almost as young as me!! A real ‘little demon’, if you will. 

He must have gotten his depressed and dark face in the thirty years since his Deed? 

Eyes half-shut to the point where it looked as if he couldn’t see, walking stooped as if carrying an enormous burden, that’s what those thirty years of enduring in the shadows did to him, this ‘human-who-was-capable-of-assassination.’  It seemed as if he had endured thirty years of Hell, and kept living somehow. This man, has he spent thirty years, every day thinking, ‘What should I do today?’ and every night thinking, ‘What should I do tomorrow?’. 

For quite some time, I thought about nothing but that man. Eventually I fell into a sort of day-dream where I conversed with him in the blazing summer heat of a country town square. 

In the dream, I asked him, “What’s been the most difficult part of those thirty years?” The assassin, the elderly ‘demon of depression’, answered, in an anxious voice, as if he was scared of losing his ‘assassin’s badge of honor’, as if he would soon lose his composure:  “You know that Jew’s story? Fellow wakes up transformed into a rhinoceros beetle? Kafka, that was the Jew’s name. Well, I’m also worried every morning, that I might open my eyes and find out I’m not a real ‘human-who-was-capable-of-assassination.’ This terrifies me. After all, I only killed a man one time. If I lose my ‘badge,’ I can’t get it back. Maybe they’ll start saying, ‘He’s a coward,’ ‘He’s not loyal,’ ‘He’s a pervert.’ You have to understand: If I lose my ‘assassin’s reputation,’ what have I got left?”

And then I had another dream: instead of getting admitted to Tokyo University, and seeing a counselor to decide my major, I had been admitted automatically to the Assassination Department, and when I went to the Department office, a staff member approached me, telling me that he’d seen my ‘entrance application’ on television and was quite impressed: “But,” he added, “It’ll be tough for you to keep such a high GPA for your whole life, won’t it?”

With eyes closed, I began to contemplate myself, slowly becoming an old, depression-wracked demon, but the second I began to imagine it, my mind turned around and ran full-speed in the opposite direction.

This went on day after day, until one day I awoke trembling with cold. Initially I thought that winter had begun, and dawn would soon break over the outside world. I’m like one of those beasts that lives underground – I can tell the time of day instinctually. I rubbed my goose-pimpled body and hugged myself until I could feel my warm blood pumping. I started yelling to myself:

“Hey you! Saint Seventeen! You liked those scenes in the movies – the sun rising over the American desert, back in the Age of Pioneers! The aftermath of the winter storm! The sunrise approaching, peach-color mixed with the color of a dove’s breast! The weak light flowing out from the sky, scattering the inky black mist of night! The trembling of the fir tree, upon which swings an empty noose from which witches are hanged!”

I smoothed my bedding and went back to sleep. Unexpectedly, I dreamt of Ashiyaoka Farm, more specifically the young pregnant Buddhist lady. What if the shock of my Deed had made her miscarry? I was seized with ghastly fear at the thought. At the same time I hoped the animals were safe as well. And I dreamt of Ashiyaoka Farm as it would be in winter:

That day at ten AM, in the interrogation chamber, with its inadequate charcoal stove, the Detective’s cheeks whitened, not from the endless cold but from stress, as he said to me, “The interrogation officially ended last night.  Thanks for your cooperation.  Now the prosecution is moving on to the next stage. I’m submitting a report which concludes that you had to have acted alone. I think you are a bewildered young man, you got carried away by the current political situation and the left-wing activity. Today is your last day here in the Metro Station, so if there’s something you want to say to me, say it now.”

“I am willing to throw away my body in the service of honor and righteousness. I have already achieved my objective, so I am at peace with myself,” I replied. But almost instantly I recalled that morning’s dream: the execution ground where witches are hanged from the fir tree. And I had a vision that, when I left the Metro Station, the guards were going to take me there.

Out loud, I said, “Have President Sakagibara or Mr. Shigeru been arrested or otherwise harassed?”

“I can’t answer that,” he said. “But I can tell you your Elder Sister was forced to resign from the Army Hospital.”

I thought of my ugly and neurotic Elder Sister: no one would marry her, and now she had no job. How could she survive? My mood darkened: Elder Sister was the only one in the family to remember my Seventeenth birthday, and I wound up attacking her. I was never a good younger brother, and I’d like a chance to apologize to her.

 In my mind, I vividly pictured the American hanging-ground once more – but this time from a first-person perspective. Great crowds of people enthusiastically milled around as the witch-hunters strapped the noose around someone’s neck, and that someone (perhaps me?) was yelling apologies to Elder Sister.

Around two PM, a car came to take me away. Not to the American witch-hanging-tree, but to the Tokyo City Family Court for a hearing to determine my punishment.

But until that hearing, I was going to be transferred to the Juvenile Detention Center. “The JDC is no joke,” I reminded myself. “Even hard thugs get the blues there.” But on the other hand, I wasn’t going to the gallows after all. But on the third hand, my period of ‘special treatment’ was over. They’ll probably throw me in with common delinquents, I thought. 

I was assailed by fear.

 “All the worst bullies, kids that have been hitting and humiliating weaker kids since kindergarten, are packed into this building like ants in an anthill!  I’ll be knocked out and stomped on almost instantly. My uyoku ‘magic’ won’t help me here – these little hooligans don’t have respect for anyone. They might even call The Emperor “Em-chan!” . . .they might even do it while farting!!!! What a disgrace it will be to get bullied by such people!”

I recalled the moment, after my Deed, when the men in suits came dashing past the still-snapping cameramen and wrestled me to the ground, pinning my arms behind me and choking me. No doubt JDC would be like that, but forever. For the first time since my arrest, I began to contemplate escape!

But I soon realized that my uyoku ‘magic’ must still have been working on the adults which ran JDC, for I continued to receive special treatment. The warden personally met me to explain the rules. A weak-looking assistant stood by his side, making notes on a memo pad with a filthy pencil.

The Warden spoke; “Answer commands briskly, have a good attitude. Likewise, do not make any plans to escape or commit suicide.”

Then I was led to the dormitory, where I was given a private room – my first taste of the sheer amount of ‘uyoku magic’ which pervaded the JDC. 

Just like at the Metropolitan Police Station, I was protected from the general population. JDC was a place in which the patterns of childhood repeated themselves – if you were, as a youngster, likely to get beaten up on the playground, your past would follow you like one of those dreams where one is being chased by demons and can’t escape. And so, in JDC, you’d once again get beaten up, and treated terribly. Since I had been a short and scrawny child, I’d almost given up hope of surviving JDC.

And yet, here I was, with first-class accommodation, and peace and quiet in which to meditate all day. 

I felt peaceful and blessed. Every ten or fifteen minutes, a guard was supposed to peer in the peep-hole, but he’d just write “No abnormal behavior” and take the opportunity to relax and have a smoke instead, so I was almost entirely left alone. The afternoons drifted by quietly like a slow, oily river, and I gradually came to know the peace of mind which had defined my existence at  Ashiyaoka Farm. 

“At that time, I too was one of the pregnant creatures, and like them, I’ve already ‘given birth’ to my Deed.  Everything is so tranquil now – it reminds me of the Jean Francois Millet painting so beloved by my father. Almost too quiet –  like my belly is empty and I’ve got a bit of post-partum depression.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Millet

Nonetheless, I was bathed in a river of quiet tranquility as the days went by: this was probably the most quiet and trouble-free time of my whole life. Like I had climbed into a canoe and was leisurely floating downriver, this river of slow oil. .  . 

First I was a quiet boy, then , a youth who dreamed, and of course finally a person-who-is-capable-of-assassination. 

And now, I was the tranquil man, who sat in the traditional Japanese style, as evening draped itself over Tokyo Youth Correctional Facility Solitary Confinement Room Number One. 

As evening grew into the blackness of night, I contemplated my ideologies, which floated before me like dimly radiant nebulae: 

“In the instant before I did the assassination, and in the time afterwards, I never directly faced the question of ‘What shall I do afterwards?’  I realize this now.  When I look at my future, what do I see? Death, of course, eventually. But a man without selfishness is also a man without fear of death. I will have a blissful death, because The Emperor Himself will invite me to the afterlife. To the faithful, Fear has no fangs. Even death becomes decorated with the bunting of bliss. 

“I am beginning to realize that  My death will have the aroma of flowers, the sweetness of pastries. And when I am called to the House of Death, and I look back over my shoulder at this life the only thing I will wave to is my Deed.”

  This morning, I habitually chanted my uyoku slogans: “Abandon yourself, embrace righteousness,” “The selfish person can never achieve true loyalty.” 

These both mean essentially the same thing: take my pitiful soul, so full of dread and terror, and throw it away! Throw it in the gigantic furnace of the Pure Emperor, and then you will know the grace and ecstasy, the total absence of anxiety, known only by the Chosen Ones. Your life will be a constant orgasm, a trance from which you need never awake. Every waking moment an orgasm. 

Every instant will be an eternity, so when the breath of Death blows you into the next world, your existence will be unchanged. 

The instant I committed my Deed, my bliss leapt into the fourth dimension, for I knew I had secured my place in this afterlife! I might already be dead, for all I know: I have achieved a state where there is Zero difference between life and death.  since I am sanctified, my body and mind will be the same two hundred years from now, I suppose. Perhaps I have died, and the cell at Tokyo Metropolitan Police Station was a sort of purgatory. That would make JDC yomi (the underworld), wouldn’t it? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yomi

Elder Sister had a paperback book once. and there was a line in it which went something like, “Here is the City Beyond Sadness,” which she’d underlined in red. Supposedly that is the slogan written on the door to the underworld. I’d used my short sword to assassinate the Chairman, but apparently the sword also functioned as a passport through the gate. The dancing of my blade was a sort of magic which allowed me to enter this new realm – only for me it was a City Beyond Happiness!”

From some distant part of the JDC, a singing voice reached my ears, and I was instantly caught up in the melody. Oh! It was the same melody I always sang to myself: 

Oh Carol! 
You can wound me, you can make me cry, 
but if you leave me, I will surely die! 
Oh, oh Carol, you treat me terribly!

Those guys who are singing my song, they must be the same age as me – there’s probably a lot of fellows my age here. And tomorrow, I already feel like I could make some small contact with them. We could be friends! And when I get acquitted, a huge crowd of Seventeens will throw me a party – and I’ll be in the very center!

As I continued to listen to the song, bit by bit, the old familiar sense of terror began to well up in my chest.

Oh Carol! You treat me terribly! Oh, oh Carol!

I should be a demon of the Kingdom of the Underworld, and as an assassin-demon, I should fearsomely proceed down the most magnificent hell-path. I should be continuing on a path ever deeper, ever darker, to the heart of the Kingdom. But instead I seem to be galloping ever upward, ever more light, until finally I am dragged back in the real world, listening to Oh Carol once more.

What I ought to be hearing instead – perhaps what I AM hearing in the Kingdom, is a deep, dark, masculine growl, saying “Enterrrr your Name onto the Sacrrred Scroll of Misty Ssssouls!!!  Make the Pillllgramage to  the Palace of the Imperrrrial Prrrince!!! Offer your Serrrrivices to the Imperial Will for Eterrrrrnity!!!”

I should be taking this fateful Oath, but instead I’m hearing Oh Carol. Oh, oh, ohh Carol.  Suddenly the singing voices stopped. Probably they’re getting yelled at by the teacher. JDC was not entirely unlike the outside world: if you sang, you’d get scolded. 

For now, I’m exiled from the yelling and jeering voices of the television, from the excitement and violent noise of the cameramen, newsreels, microphones, pictures, pencils, and the whole one-thousand ton weight of the mass media. But someday I’ll be released from this prison, and thrown smack-dab in the center of that violent clamor, that media assault. Aaah!! I just thinking about it made me exhausted. I would probably end up like that depressed old demon of a man. 

Once again, I thought of that legendary assassin. In the dark of night, how did he quell the terrors? How could he have endured thirty years? What was his technique? If I make even one mistake, might I not also lose my “assassins’ badge of honor?” And I’d be expelled from the ‘uyoku castle’, dragged out of the ‘uyoku shrine’!!!  My Deed was my only evidence that I was the Chosen One, but there was one hundred times more evidence which pointed to me being a boring piece of garbage, a habitual masturbator, an impotent crybaby, an imbecile with a huge inferiority complex, and generally a BAKA dog.

I was seized by panic, like the flurry of activity in the heart of the big city- I screamed and jumped up, hurling my body at the walls again and again, finally throwing myself down on the ground and making beastly noises, before finally collapsing altogether and moaning, ‘No, no, no!  Don’t do this to me! It’s all meaningless! The Emperor has abandoned me forever! Don’t do this to me! Don’t do this to me! Don’t exile me forever from the dirty outside world! Give me the death penalty! Do it now! Call the executioner!!”

The artificial, inorganic lights came on, breaking the darkness into pieces and scattering it. The light was encased in a sturdy metal housing, and my bed sheets could be turned into a sturdy rope, I realized. At that moment, my panic dissolved with a ferocious speed, like clumps of snow melting in hot water, leaving behind only a faint, hazy mineral odor.

I heard someone running in the corridor. Nimbly, I jumped up, facing the door, assumed the traditional sitting position, and composed my face in a quiet smile.  The guard viewed me from his peep-hole with a suspicious, confused expression.

I sat quietly, breathing very shallowly so as to conceal the raggedness of my breath, savoring the flavor of this, the final revelation of my short lifetime: 

“I should commit suicide! 

“It’ll be my final shock to the bestial mobs of society. 

“I will spend eternity as a ‘fresh green shoot’ on the Imperial Tree of Life, so I don’t fear death. Being forced to live out my whole lifetime is more dreadful by far!  I’ll kill myself! After ten minutes, when the guards leave. 

“If I can endure ten more minutes, using all the strength of my ‘true uyoku soul’ to do it, then I can die honorably and live forever, having totally completed my transformation into the Chosen One, Son of The Emperor!  

“If it’s just ten minutes, I can endure any kind of mighty pressure, any kind of fierce terror! Because my ‘uyoku castle’, my ‘uyoku shrine’ will never crumble! 

“I will enter the magnificent womb of His Highness The Emperor, and the vast universe contained therein! This universe is a pitch-black ocean, where I can drift like an as-yet-unborn baby, forever unconscious, basking in the radiance, the golden and rose-colored, the magnificent unearthly purple radiance, ahh!! 

“The Emperor Has a most luxurious womb! My Emperor! My Emperorrr!!”

The Officer, instead of peeping in once every ten or fifteen minutes, was now watching me steadily.

In my hysteria and bliss, my vision had acquired remarkable new properties: on the insides of my closed eyes, I was now able to see Heaven’s Gate looming in front of me, with the gorgeous splendor radiating from within. 

I can’t go in there yet, the Officer is still watching me. Yet, thinking furiously, I can see clearly the implications: if he continues to watch me like this, he’ll be late for his rounds to the other cells.  So that’s why he’s watching me so intently now – because next time around he won’t have time to spare. My face, which he was watching so intently, with my eyes closed, my color starting to turn pink, streaming with sweat, beginning to drip off the tip of my nose, in a deep trance both blissful and frenzied, .. . this must be what he sees.

When I heard his heavy footsteps receding down the corridor, I leapt to my feet and commenced my activity.

I took my cotton sheet and with a heroic sound, tore a sturdy strip off of it and created a narrow loop. A wire noose would bring a quicker death, but this humble cloth seemed somehow more gentle.  The sturdy metal housing of the light was at the correct height. Tomorrow, the laborers will no doubt be called to remove the suicide-enabling housings from all the cells. They’ll have  to struggle  fiercely to remove them, because they’re as solid as mountains. 

Using toothpaste, I wrote a message on the wall with my finger, my passion rising in my chest savagely. I felt like I was about to explode with energy – my body felt ten times its normal weight; ten times its normal size. So I wrote with a giant’s energy, making enormous golden letters, while listening to the guards down the hall calling out peoples’ names, and the young men answering the roll call.  

Horiguchi? Hai!
Yasukawa? Hai!
Oomoto? Hai!
Miyake? Hai!
The other Miyake? Hai!
Sakata? Hai!

“Banzai! Long life to His Highness The Emperor! May I die for Him seven times, and return to fight yet again! “

My eyes could no longer see the letters I was writing – they burned so fiercely with unearthly heat.   I saw His Highness appear as a mightily roaring jet airplane, glowing golden in the black sky above the United Nations building.

I would float in the internal tide of the Imperial Womb, as black and vast as outer space! I would become a virus inside Him! Tears of pure happiness caused His image to reflect a million times like a fun-house mirror. It’s 8:05. in fifteen minutes’ time, my pure uyoku soul will have completed its transformation into the Chosen One. My ‘uyoku castle’, my own ‘uyoku shrine’! Oh my Emperor! Oh my Emperor! Oh, oh, aaaaahhH!!!!!

CHAPTER NINE

Obituary:

Seventeen, eternally plunging downwards, splashing into the dark nebula of the womb of his Pure Internal Emperor, his body forever jerking; a sorrowful expression on his face! Death finally captured him at 8:18. The serial child molester in the next cell heard the faint moans of orgasm and was moved to tears. Exclaimed the child molester:

“Oh, what have you done?
Beautiful, beautiful Seventeen…”

The middle-aged guard who came to cut the body down could smell the semen.