After the law was established, Hinode was of course included in the list of more than 300 firms designated by the Holding Company Liquidity Committee to be split up, but when it came down to it, due to the political climate abroad at the time—the birth of the People’s Republic of China, and the deteriorating relationship between the US and the Soviet Union—the standards of application for the Deconcentration Law were significantly eased, for fear of inviting a decline in Japan’s power. In the end, the number of companies that were split up was closer to a dozen. Hinode was not among them.
According to the reference materials, Hinode Beer had ridden out the postwar years, when the tumult of domestic industry and civic life was at its peak, in a state wartime-regulation-induced near-hibernation, and thus managed to avoid being split up thanks to the shifting situation in world affairs, not even shuttering any of their factories. When wartime regulation lifted and the country entered the age of free-market competition, Hinode was already riding the wave of the now-recovering industrial economy. All in all, the company had prevailed throughout its relatively fortuitous history. As Negoro contemplated Hinode’s progress, it seemed to him that the company had given little to no cause for its employees to incite a labor movement—no unrest about their employment or livelihood—but that made the existence of the flag-waving, dismissed Hinode employee Yoshinori Toda all the more peculiar. Negoro concluded that he would need to do more research on him.
By the time Yabe finally responded to the page Negoro had left with the Hachioji bureau, car headlights were lining up in early evening traffic along Uchibori-dori.
“Listen, about Hinode’s acquisition of the factory site in Saitama—would you mind digging up as many names as you can of land owners, tenant farmers, or any residents involved in that lawsuit?”
“You have a hunch along that line?” Yabe asked skeptically. It was a long-distance call—he was still out on assignment.
“There’s this guy from a segregated buraku community in Saitama prefecture who was at Hinode’s factory during the war. Back then, there was a pretty high bar to land a job at Hinode—even in one of their factories. If what I’ve heard is true, perhaps the guy is involved somehow. I’m sorry I don’t have more for you to go on.”
“What’s his name?” Yabe asked, suddenly curious.
“Yoshinori Toda. Born in 1916.”
Shortly before six in the evening, Negoro passed by the table where the slot editors from each section were gathered for an editorial meeting ahead of the bulldog edition. When Tabe looked up at him, Negoro signaled with his eyes that he was stepping out, and then he left the news room. It had been almost a year since he had left the company building when the evening was so young, and he was only doing so now because his boss had ordered him to get background information on the tip-off. As the automatic doors closed behind him, he felt like a monkey released from its cage—his nostrils flared in response to the welcome air, and his steps felt light.
Negoro went to a phone booth near the building to place several calls he hadn’t been able to make from his desk in the Metro section. He flipped open an old notebook and began to dial. The first four phone numbers he called resulted in a message saying that the numbers were no longer in use, but that was about what he expected.
The fifth number he called was to the third-floor editorial office of a securities industry news company, a building that stood along the bank of a sewage canal near the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Kabuto-cho. At those kinds of papers, after the markets closed at three, reporters scrambled to submit their stories for the final edition of the next morning’s paper by around four, and the early edition had already shipped by five—at this hour, the editorial department would be nearly empty. However, Negoro knew that right about now there would be a man lying on the sofa in a corner of the room, a book in one hand and a can of beer and rice crackers in the other.
“It’s Negoro from Toho News,” he announced when the call connected.
“It’s too early to pay your condolences,” the man shot back. “Though if the share price dips below fifteen thousand yen, I’m going to jump out this window here. But it looks like it’ll hold up for a while. So, I need you to sit tight a little longer about your money.”
“Never mind that. Consider it your funeral offering,” Negoro responded.
Five or six years ago—the end of the bubble era, shortly before the Ogura-Chunichi scandal came to light—the man had given Negoro a way into an investors’ group. In those days—when times were flush—he and many of his fellow employees in the securities industry news played the market, pooling cash and walking around with million-yen wads stuffed inside their suit pockets, all the while making out as if what they were doing was well within the realm of their profession as a reporter. The man on phone was only nominally a slot editor; during the day he lurked at the service counters of local back-alley brokerage houses and the coffee shops near the stock exchange, and at night he could be found in Ginza. He was so deep into stocks that even during a half-hour meeting he was never without an earpiece in one ear and a phone within reach. Negoro had heard that, sure enough, after dancing on the edge for so long, the guy was a few hundred million in the hole and had lost his apartment. The over-the-counter stocks he had convinced Negoro to invest his bonus in back in the summer of ’89, saying “this one’s a sure thing,” weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.
“More importantly, I can’t get through to Hamazaki,” Negoro said.
“I hear he’s in Singapore.”
“What about Shinoda?”
“Last time I saw him was in Kayabacho late last year. He said he was going to start up a seminar soon, but since I haven’t heard anything about him settling his debt underground, he must still be on the run.”
“So who’s left in the Ezaki group?”
“Probably just Takuji Yasui and Kazumi Koshino. A few guys might come back in later this year and start it back up, but with the market in shambles like this it’s tough—”
“You’re right. How would you be able to come back from this?”
“I’m only saying that the share price is about to bottom out, so this is the last chance if you were up for anything. But even if you went all in, trading is so light there’s no way to make any real capital.”
“I’m glad you’re aware of that. You know Yasui’s contact?”
“I haven’t seen him lately. Why don’t you poke around in Ginza or Shimbashi? What are you digging around for anyway? You’re not getting into corporate raiding now, are you?”
“This has nothing to do with that. I’ll talk to you later.”
Negoro hung up, staring at the rush hour traffic along Uchibori-dori as he replaced the phone. As always, the voice over the phone was as muddy as the banks of the sewage canal or the back streets of Kabuto-cho. The moroseness couldn’t be blamed on the bursting of the bubble and the subsequent recession; it had been the same when the service counter of every brokerage was overflowing with money.
The short call gave Negoro a rough idea of how his sources in the investors’ group were doing these days. He never had any intention of asking the slot editor at a trade paper about background on Takeshi Kikuchi and his company, GSC, Ltd. Negoro didn’t know how the mention of a former Toho reporter might be picked up as gossip. If he wanted to ask, he’d try for Yasui or Koshino.
When he left the phone booth, it was exactly six in the evening. He knew from experience it was a little too early to head to Shimbashi or Ginza, so he decided to take care of another source first. With his slightly stooped shoulders hunched forward, Negoro ambled over the Chidori-ga-fuchi moat on feet that did not carry him as swiftly as they had before his accident. The dank smell of the stagnant water rose to meet him. Now that it was dark, Kitanomaru Park was empty, and the edgy officers on patrol kept a watchful eye on Negoro, a middle-aged man tottering under the dark shadows of the trees surr
ounding the Imperial Palace.
Half an hour later Negoro arrived in the neighborhood of Kanda. He went up the staircase of one of the small buildings that lined the intricate back alleys of Uchi-Kanda. There was an iron door with a shingle on it, and when he opened it and stepped inside a female clerk at a steel desk looked up and gave him a friendly smile.
“Oh, you’re from Toho—” she said. “The director isn’t in right now.”
“Oh, I see. Does Professor Matsuda come around here these days?”
“Yes, nearly every day. He doesn’t seem to be writing much lately. He was here until just a while ago. He drank two cups of tea and told us everything that was wrong with our new titles. He said since he was out he might as well go have some soba on his way home. You know the noodle shop near the foreign language school? They’ve got the specials today. Oh, come on in. I’ll make some tea.”
“No, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll just take one of these press releases with me. Please tell the director I’ll stop by again.”
The list of new books published by the small press, which had only four employees, was a single sheet of pulp paper with typed words and phrases such as human rights, the Constitution of Japan, and democracy. Glancing at the titles of books he had no interest in reading, he stuffed the page in his pocket. As he did so, a certain long-forgotten sense of discomfort crept over him, and Negoro felt somewhat on edge.
Various configurations without origin, logic, or necessity—such notions as the emperor, democracy, discrimination, and so on—now seemed to Negoro to have mingled with car exhaust and the racket from karaoke bars, drifting through the current era like invisible fluff. While the dazzling light from the JR train streaked by above, and further beyond in the night sky a billboard with an electronic ticker flashed with news of the volatile sixteen-thousand-yen swing in share prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the ransom demand of six hundred million in the kidnapping of Hinode Beer’s president, that fluff settled in drifts beneath the elevated bridges, shuffled and stirred underfoot by the passing crowds. In that moment, Negoro felt an increasingly useless irritation toward the fluff of democracy. There was no doubt that democracy still existed, but in reality, as a system it had neither progressed nor diminished—no one dared get rid of it and there were some who remained caught up in the workings of it. However, the concept no longer had any societal relevance—the word itself had lost its evocative power.
On the sliding door of the soba noodle eatery that was near the foreign language school—just as the clerk had said—there was a sign announcing the specials of the day. A counter and four, five tables inside comprised the eatery. Back when he was a newly minted reserve reporter, Negoro would stop in there frequently to meet with Kazuhiko Matsuda, a lawyer turned critic who was a regular customer, and his circle of sympathizers.
“Well, if it isn’t the reserve chief!” cried out Matsuda, who was perched at the counter. He looked like a hunched-back silver-haired monkey. Two men sat beside him. Glasses of beer, edamame, and a small bowl or two were set out on the counter. The way that only the area surrounding Matsuda appeared to be cast in its own private, rather enigmatic shadow was par for the course.
“Come on now, have a seat!” Matsuda said. His manner never wavered—not today, yesterday, or ten years ago. Negoro greeted the two men with only his eyes, and they returned a small nod, looking slightly annoyed.
“Tell me, Negoro. Why won’t the newspapers write about things like this?” Matsuda said, his voice rising abruptly. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to display his power of influence, this was just his usual way of talking that he had acquired over his many years as a critic. Negoro listened quietly. “These two have been running around town in support of a candidate for the Tokyo Assembly election, but the candidate has decided to forgo official party recognition and instead run as an independent. And that seems to have put the balance among various supporting organizations and advocacy groups in disarray. But, as you know, we’re no longer in an era when a deep-rooted mainstream association would support a single party and willingly tie their own fate to a party’s political rise or fall.” Matsuda, after directing this diatribe to Negoro, seated to his left, Matsuda then turned his head to the two men on his right. “When it comes down to it, what generates political realignment are changes in the electorate’s social consciousness. You two are responding too late. The fact that you still place such importance on political parties is proof that you are leaning too much on your assumed ability to gather votes. Excuse me, another beer please.”
On the other side of Matsuda, the two men looked troubled—as if they did not want him making careless remarks in front of a reporter—and sure enough, as soon as Matsuda stopped talking, they got up from their seats.
“Well, anyway, professor, we’ll be looking forward to that article,” one of the men said.
Matsuda seemed to pay them hardly any attention, instead taking the fresh bottle of beer and starting to fill his and Negoro’s glasses. Negoro, for his part, felt self-conscious and mumbled an apology to the men for his intrusion.
“You guys are leaving already?” Matsuda asked, finally turning their way.
“We’re rather in a hurry.” The men bid them an innocuous farewell and left the eatery.
“Professor Matsuda. Which district are those men from?” Negoro asked.
“If I tell you that, you’ll figure out the name of the candidate.”
“Are you writing something for the party’s rag?”
“I’m the kind of man who believes that human rights are inherently political, in that they are just one of many interrelated affairs mandated by law. In that way I’m fundamentally at odds with the majority of human rights organizations. Heck, the article I’m writing is about a campaign speech given by that particular politician, and I only agreed to do it because I know him personally.”
“I see.”
As he pretended to listen to Matsuda’s patter, Negoro stared at the menu, whose offerings left much to be desired. “Say, professor. They’ve got seared skipjack tuna, first of the season. Shall we have some?” he asked.
“I forget what a high earner you are. Sure, you can afford to treat me once in a while,” Matsuda said.
Negoro ordered the seared tuna, simmered vegetables, and tempura.
Shortly after Negoro transitioned to the reserve section from the kisha club at MPD, he was assigned to a team in charge of a special feature on the constitution that had commissioned articles from several experts in both the revisionist and protectionist factions. Negoro was assigned by draw to oversee the article by Matsuda, who was infamous back then as a staunch human rights lawyer with a sharp tongue. That had been their first encounter. Since then, however, Negoro had come to realize that political journalism—not limited to the work of Matsuda—which tended to criticize A then propose B and conclude by predicting C, lacked a certain skepticism even if it always provided a lucid, albeit haphazard, argument. In his early thirties at the time, Negoro recognized political journalism was not for him, given his inability to approach things in a straightforward manner, though he still wondered if simply having a clear-cut view meant being correct.
In addition to his work as a lawyer, Matsuda still penned miscellaneous items for various monthly and weekly journals as well as for the rags of particular parties and organizations and special interest groups. But he had long been alienated from the pages of Toho News, ever since running into trouble over the use of real names in reporting on a minor human rights issue. And yet Negoro still made periodic visits to the soba shop, because there were valuable resources among Matsuda’s network of organizations and labor unions such as the General Association of Korean Residents and the Buraku Liberation League.
“At odds with them, professor, I guess that’s one way of putting it,” Negoro joked a little, and poured Hinode Lager into Matsuda’s glass. That reminded him—when wou
ld Hinode Meister, whose full-page ad had run in yesterday’s morning edition, go on sale?
“A critic can change his mind too, you know. We just don’t admit that we’ve changed it. What’s the use in talking to you about these things anyway?” Matsuda’s shoulders shook as he laughed. “Skipjack tuna, huh . . .” Matsuda said, shifting the conversation. Negoro responded with a wry chuckle of his own.
Matsuda had said that human rights were interrelated with many things, but to Negoro, it seemed that over the last dozen years or so, the subject in and around this counter had not been the nature of these interrelationships but the very essence of concepts such as human rights themselves. Just like the bottles of beer, the glasses, the warm hand towels, or even the bits of fluff outside the eatery—talk of the constitution, democracy, and human rights had been consumed here every night as surely as the beer had flowed, but without any reflection or skepticism, without any of these things improving or disappearing.
According to several of Negoro’s sources, at some point there had been a flow of money to Matsuda from the Korean peninsula, but no matter how Negoro hinted around—whether it was a function of the professor’s enormous and animating ego or of the typical naïveté of intellectuals—somehow Matsuda remained oblivious to the fact that someone might have dirt on him, or that he might be involved in shadowy business.
The menu had described the tuna as “freshly caught” but perhaps it was still too early in the season, for it did not have much fat on it. Negoro poured a little more beer into Matsuda’s glass, worrying that the fish was not even good enough for Matsuda, who was indifferent to gastronomy.
“By the way, Negoro. How’s your health these days?”
“Well, being this busy, I don’t even have time to be grateful for being alive.”
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 52