Negoro didn’t think that the story he was currently pursuing was one that would have drawn attention from the underworld. The only thing he had done today that could be considered outside the scope of his reporting was contacting Takeshi Kikuchi on the phone.
Even if another reporter had taken Toda’s tip-off call this morning, the whole matter would have made its way to him once Toda specified “a reporter who knew about the Ogura-Chunichi scandal.” Negoro now realized he himself must have been the one Toda had intended to speak to all along.
In addition, the way Toda had contrived to mention Takeshi Kikuchi’s name at the beginning of the call had prompted Negoro to look up Kikuchi’s whereabouts, and then even to call him directly. Negoro could have just dismissed the phone call as odd and left it at that, but he had not done so. Could it be that his opponent had tested whether he would respond? Negoro considered how the tip-off call could have meant to goad him into action. But if so, why him? The only reason he could think of was the Ogura-Chunichi scandal mentioned in the call.
Back in the summer of ’88, before the shadow of the scandal was even looming, Negoro had been waiting for an interview subject in the lobby of the former building of the Akasaka Prince Hotel when he happened to cross paths with three men who were hurrying down the side staircase. He immediately recognized one of the men as the secretary to the representative Taiichi Sakata, of the eponymous S. Memo scandal, but at the time Negoro had no reason to know who the other two were. The secretary, with whom Negoro was acquainted, had met his gaze with a frantic look, and Negoro could still vividly recall the expression on his face.
Negoro later learned that one of the two men was the managing director and a founding member of the former Chunichi Mutual Savings Bank and the other was an ultranationalist who would act as a conduit of the transferred Chunichi shares, which meant the plan to bankrupt the mutual savings was already in play at that point. Then in ’91, when all the newspapers were reporting on the scandal and Negoro alone found himself the target of intimidation, he had always felt that it was the result of his chance encounter with those three at the Akasaka Prince Hotel—that they had misconstrued something about him. The Ogura-Chunichi scandal was a thing of the past, but the threat that suddenly loomed tonight suggested that, somewhere amid the chaos surrounding the kidnapping of Hinode Beer’s president, the same network had sprung back into action.
And it was highly probable that Takeshi Kikuchi was connected to whatever it was. If Kikuchi was indeed working for Yasui from the former Ezaki group, as the Osaka slot editor had said, it was equivalent to Kikuchi being under the influence of the Seiwakai and G.S.C., which gave Negoro reason to believe that Kikuchi had tricked him today by getting Toda to make the tip-off call.
Negoro recalled the voice he had heard today over the phone today, that of his former colleague Kikuchi—whose features were still hazy in his memory—and he thought of the watchful eyes of the men he had seen tonight. He contemplated himself, sinking into the deep backwaters of the city at night, his mind continuing to churn as he stood alone in the phone booth.
Four years ago, Negoro had been involved in a hit-and-run right in front of his home. The car was later found—it turned out to be a stolen vehicle—but the perpetrator was never identified. Negoro always maintained his testimony to the police that a car parked on the shoulder of the road had peeled out, aiming for and crashing into him, but the police steadfastly refused to file it as anything other than a hit-and-run, stating a lack of evidence of deliberate intent. Facing pressure on various fronts during his recuperation at the hospital, Negoro ultimately chose to remain silent. Tandem to that silence was the noxiousness of the era and society that he lived in, as well as of himself—a stench that now permeated him.
Negoro mechanically reinserted his telephone card and dialed a number he had not planned to call.
“I really appreciated your call last Friday night,” Negoro said. “Thanks to you, we were the first to report it.”
“Who knew it would turn into such a huge deal? It’s crazy,” said the chief of CID at the Setagaya Police Department, who had answered at his home in Komae.
“By the way, it seems I’m being tailed again.”
“Any idea who?” The chief’s tone shifted immediately. “Did you see his face? Where did it happen?” he peppered Negoro with questions.
“In Shimbashi. Two guys came within ten meters of me. I didn’t recognize them, so I don’t know who they’re working for. I think one of them might be foreign. Something odd about his hairstyle.”
“Negoro-san. I’m going to send one of my men to show you some mugshots. Once we know which hooligans we’re dealing with, we can start digging around. I’ll give you a call at 8:30 tomorrow morning.”
Negoro paused. The chief raised his voice impatiently, “Negoro-san? You there?”
He was thinking of how, after the hit-and-run four years ago, this friendly police chief had also been one of the people who told him to “just forget about it.”
“Thank you, sorry to trouble you,” Negoro replied generically, ending the call as once again he mulled over the powerlessness of the police force, of the victim, of the newspapers, and of this country, Japan.
He proceeded to insert his phone card again and dialed another number.
“It’s the Sanseido Bookstore in Kanda,” he said as soon as the call connected.
“This is the second time today. Is something the matter?” the special prosecutor asked.
“No, I just forgot to tell you this morning. I don’t think I’ll be able to go home for a while, so if you need to get a hold of me please call the Chidori-ga-fuchi news room. It doesn’t have to be today or tomorrow, but please make time to meet with me soon. And send my regards to Goda-san. Sorry to bother you so late.”
Negoro ended the call without waiting for the prosecutor’s reply and exited the booth.
Now should I chase down Kikuchi? he wondered to himself afresh, but he still couldn’t decide. Negoro knew that, ever since being threatened and almost run down by a car, his zeal as a Metro reporter had vanished. Instead, he had wandered into a dead-end, haunted by an apathetic cynicism about the ways of this country—beginning with its very existence as a nation down to the flavor of its instant noodles. Of course his cynicism included doubts about the quality of his writing over his twenty-three-year career as a journalist, but more than that, this skepticism stemmed from the fact that, above all, his heart was no longer moved by this society and era he lived in, overflowing as it was from every corner with stuff, noise, and greed.
Trudging with his bad foot along Sotobori-Dori in search of a taxi, Negoro continued to ponder whether to follow up on Kikuchi, but he knew he lacked his former motivation. His sentiments were predictable enough, but as he lost himself in a new train of thought, he began to feel somewhat ashamed. Did it make any difference in the end to rot from evil or to rot from hatred and cynicism? Was there any distinction between contributing to the contamination of society and the era he lived in, and spending his life abhorring such a state of affairs?
Negoro looked down at his watch and was surprised to see that it was already ten-forty. By the time he leaned into the street to hail a taxi, his attention had already turned to the deadline for the thirteenth edition of the morning paper.
3
Haruhisa Kubo
Tuesday, March 28th. When the phone rang at 3:30 a.m., Haruhisa Kubo leapt up from the sofa in the press nook and reached for the receiver.
“Hello, MPD division.”
“We’re sending over the morning editions now. You’ve been scooped.”
Every day before dawn, the Metro section of the Osaka bureau faxed the morning editions of all the national newspapers to the Tokyo bureau so they could check the front pages. These faxes were only ever appended with a phone call when the message was, “You’ve been scooped.”
S
cooped.
Since being assigned to the police beat two years ago, Kubo had lived in fear of this word, running around in a never-ending battle for stories. He still wasn’t sure whether being scooped was a matter of bad luck or lack of skill. Not that there was any room for such thoughts in his mind—the compulsory reaction of a police beat reporter upon learning that he’d been scooped was for the blood to drain from his face as the word “failure” floated before his eyes.
Still reeling from the shock, Kubo picked up the papers the fax machine had spat out. The vertical headline on the first of the Metro pages read: company grudge? suspicious tape from 1990. On the second faxed page, a horizontal headline: mysterious tape sent to hinode. On the third: trouble back in 1990?
Being scooped by three out of the six national papers would be enough to get him fired, depending on the substance of the articles. Kubo pored over the pages to see if his competitors had included anything more than what his sources had told him last night.
All three papers reported roughly the same story. In November 1990, Hinode Beer received a letter invoking the name of a certain organization and accusing them of employment discrimination during their hiring process. Hinode Beer also received a slanderous cassette tape from an anonymous sender, and the company filed a complaint for defamation and obstruction of business without naming a suspect. Immediately after the letter was received, said organization that had allegedly sent the first letter, responding to inquiries from Hinode’s main office and the police, had denied any involvement in the matter. The cassette tape was later revealed to have been an audio recording of the text of a letter written in “June 1947” by a “former Hinode employee” and sent to “Hinode Beer’s Kanagawa factory.” Among other things, how the letter ended up in the hands of the person who made the recording and their motivation to record it remained a mystery. Each newspaper concluded their report in the same manner: “Investigation headquarters is aware of the situation and has been conducting questioning of relevant persons connected to the case.”
Kubo perfunctorily jotted down “June 1947,” “former Hinode employee,” and “Kanagawa factory” in his notepad. The tip-off call that Negoro, the reserve chief, had mentioned crossed his mind, but for the time being his thoughts were swimming with more immediate suspicions. Did those three papers have a transcript of the tape? If so, where did they get it? From the police, or the family of the dentist from Setagaya? Was there a way for him to get his hands on a copy?
A call came through on the direct line from the news room. It was the overnight slot editor from the Metro section. “You let quite a bombshell slip away, didn’t you? What’s all this about a tape from 1990?”
Kubo cursed him under his breath and replied, “I’m busy right now,” then hung up the phone.
Kuriyama, wearing only his undershirt, descended from the top bunk bed in the nook. “How are the morning pages?” he asked. Then, his eyes still bleary with sleep, he picked up the fax sheets. “Oh, shit. The other papers really went for it, huh? But the chief was the one who told us yesterday to hold this story.”
“True, but I still gotta let him know,” Kubo replied. He fed the same pages back into the fax machine and sent them over to Chief Sugano’s home. Then he gave him a ring. Sugano would know what a pre-dawn phone call from the office signified.
“Hello. It’s Kubo. Sorry to wake you, but I’ve just sent over the fax. We’ve been scooped.”
“Yeah, I’m looking at them now . . .” Sugano paused for a few seconds before continuing. “My opinion hasn’t changed. Don’t worry about it.”
“But how will we do a follow-up story?”
“We won’t refer to it in the main article. We’ll discuss internally what to do with it on the Metro page. I’ll talk to you later.”
Sugano hung up the phone with a brusqueness that showed no concern for the caller. Kubo knew that Sugano couldn’t reprimand him for not reporting a story that he himself had instructed him to withhold, but the chief’s peremptory tone was still frustrating for whoever was on the receiving end. No doubt Sugano had his own justifications for why they didn’t need to write about this story yet, but he might have considered that this placed frontline reporters like Kubo in an uncomfortable position.
“What did the chief say?” Kuriyama asked.
“He said we don’t need a follow-up on the front page.”
“Even so, we can’t afford not to at least try to get a transcript of the tape, right? In any case, I’m going to get a bit more sleep. Today’s going to be another long day.”
Kuriyama quickly returned to the bunk bed. Compelled solely by the urge to get in at least another hour of sleep, Kubo lay back down on the sofa, the alarm clock set to 5:00 a.m. in one hand.
Kubo knew he had a tendency to be cocky, but as a reporter well into his thirties, he felt he’d been doing this long enough that, if they weren’t going to need a follow-up, he at least deserved to know why. Perhaps Chief Sugano, having worked in the field for far too long, no longer had the patience to explain every last thing to his subordinates. He reigned over this tiny nook with peace-keeping tactics that involved holding back his opinions and never revealing himself, skirting the main issue and simply barking out orders. With someone like that as a boss, Kubo always felt thwarted, as if he were being restrained by an unseen force, and from time to time he found himself on the verge of exploding.
As of last night Kubo had had no intention of writing the article either, but he certainly would have had there been any corroborating evidence. Regardless of whether or not there was any connection to the Hinode president’s kidnapping, it was obvious that they should write about it. The possibility of discrimination during the employee hiring process and the involvement of corporate extortionists who may have attempted to take advantage of the situation was of no small social significance, and what’s more, it was impossible that a letter addressed to Hinode from right after the war would surface and be transformed into a tape of its own accord. Wasn’t the existence of the tape newsworthy enough? If he were chief, he would definitely order reporters to find backup and write the story. These thoughts caused another wave of defeat to loom over yet another day, and he felt a rumble in his stomach that he knew would only be satisfied by binge eating.
城山恭介 Kyosuke Shiroyama
For the first time in many years, the Shiroyama family slept in the same room, their three sets of futon quilts laid out on the tatami floor next to one another. Though his wife and son slept soundly, barely stirring until dawn, Shiroyama lay awake in panic most of the night, seized by hallucinations that he was still captive inside the hideout. Soothed by the sight of his family at rest, he was able to fall back asleep, only for his eyes to pop open again and again as an inexorable fear weighed heavily on his chest.
When his wife, an early riser, got out of bed, he had to pretend to be asleep for a while. She deftly arranged her hair in the half-light that passed through the shoji screens and left the room without making a sound. Moments later, he heard her movements in the kitchen. Beside his pillow, there was the sound of his son’s breathing as he enjoyed a deep sleep, and above his head, among the trees in the garden, the high-pitched chirp of the first sparrow of the morning. When Shiroyama smelled the moist air waft in from the gap between the closed shoji screens, a sense of impending suffocation made him want to dash outside, but he shifted his head on his pillow instead.
Even if no one raised their voice, when people gathered in large numbers their presence was palpable—the movements of the press corps staked out beyond the ground of his home had reverberated all the way to his bedside throughout the night. What’s more, the home to which he had returned last night after three days was beset with the traces of countless outsiders who had been coming and going during his absence. He also learned that the police had outfitted all the house phones with recording devices that were wired to outside lines. His wife acte
d nonchalant, saying, “They all mean well,” but as the man of the house, Shiroyama could not easily dismiss the incursion into his own domain. Last night, after convincing his wife to get some rest, he stayed up for a whisky with his son, Mitsuaki. Father and son, neither of them much for talk, conversed briefly before succumbing to the power of alcohol.
His wife had been worried that, since she couldn’t go out shopping, she would be unable to prepare anything special for their daughter, who hadn’t been home in quite a while, and his son relayed that he planned to pick up some things on his way home from work. During thirty-three years of marriage, the family had established a familiar pattern, but last night—with the return of his son, who lived nearby but seldom visited, and his self-sufficient daughter, who rarely sent so much as a postcard—Shiroyama had witnessed a sudden shift that was both physical and emotional. Had the head of the household not been kidnapped, he doubted there would have been a chance for the family to reconnect this way. Recognizing this as the true, unfeigned image of the family he had worked so hard to create, Shiroyama adjusted his head once again on his pillow.
Mitsuaki, sleeping peacefully with his mouth half-open, was approaching the ripe age of thirty-two. As of the first of April, he would be director of the tax office in Ibaraki prefecture. Over the next few years, he would make his way from one regional agency to another, eventually returning to Tokyo, where he would join the Budget Bureau at the Ministry of Finance, and if all went according to plan, his promotion to budget examiner would be guaranteed.
Shoko, who was two years younger than Mitsuaki, was the same—both of his children had been capable since they were young, never causing trouble for their parents or seeking attention and indulgence, and before he knew it, they had decided on their path in life and set out on their own. Shiroyama had his share of parental opinions but his offspring were more than fully fledged before he even had the chance to express any of these, so that on the rare occasion when he did see them, it was all he could do to mutter a few questions about what kind of work they were doing now.
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 54
