The Changeling

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “Anyway, that was my initial response to that little book of yours, but in the meantime you and Akari, who inspired you to write This Fragile Thing Called Man, have been forging ahead with your own lives. And you finally managed to repair Akari, who was born a ‘broken thing.’ You equipped him so that he could become a functional human being, with his own unique way of living with his obstacles. When I’m listening to music with Akari, I’m always impressed that such a deep and intelligent young man even exists. And he composes those beautiful chords and melodies, music I couldn’t even dream of creating. Because of what you’ve done for him, Akari, who was broken, has been restored. Of course, Chikashi played a big role in that transformation, too, and I admire you both deeply, more than I can say. When Akari was born, I went to the hospital for a visit, and quite aside from the hell you yourself were going through, I really grieved for the dark future ahead of Chikashi. But you were able to put Akari’s situation aside when you set forth your insights in This Fragile Thing Called Man, and that’s what saved it from being sentimental mass-market treacle. I truly believe that. To be honest, though, when you wrote that book, in your younger days, I really don’t think you were predicting that Akari would end up as he is today. Yet with no real prospects of success, you all kept struggling valiantly, and eventually Akari was somehow repaired and turned out to be a truly captivating human being. I can’t help being profoundly impressed and deeply moved by that.

  “I honestly believe that Akari’s recovery was a signal from a higher power, far beyond mere humans, that was deciphered on this side. And no, this isn’t one of my hyberbolic exaggerations. I know it probably sounds like something out of a science-fiction movie, but I sometimes think that there must be a tremendous flurry of cosmic signals converging on this planet as we approach the end of the millennium. Or maybe it isn’t so far-fetched, after all—I mean, there’s no question but that the same sort of thing happened around the time of the birth of Jesus Christ! Every time this planet is on the verge of transitioning from one millennium into another, you have to at least admit the possibility that some kind of universal salvation might come to pass, don’t you? Of course the signals would be converted into some sort of secret code and beamed down to various locations on the planet. If we could unravel enough of that code, the human race should be able to gather the necessary wisdom to sustain the entire universe.

  “Anyway, I think that what you and Chikashi did for Akari is a prime example of a brilliantly successful deciphering of that code. The reason Akari’s CD is receiving such an enthusiastic reception all over the world is because he managed to tap into that scrambled cosmic code and translate it into music, and people are responding to that on an unconscious level. I realize there may be some resistance to the expression ‘breaking a code,’ so let’s put it this way instead: You and Chikashi took a mechanism that had fallen apart during its long journey from the cosmos to earth, and you repaired it and made it work—and work perfectly to boot.”

  Based on the strangers’ voices and the other ambient noise that could be heard in the background, Kogito imagined that this tape alone (unlike the others, which had evidently been recorded in Goro’s production-company office) had been made in his private room at the hospital. If that was the case, it was probably recorded after the yakuza attack, while Goro was still recovering from the worst of his external wounds. One day around that time, when Chikashi came home after visiting Goro at the hospital, she was distressed because one of the fingers that he needed in order to play his guitar wouldn’t move—probably because of some sort of neural-network misfiring caused by the deep cut on his neck from the yakuza attack—and she was concerned that this new complication would make his recovery even more difficult.

  So when Goro talked about Akari’s birth injury (that is, the broken part) and how it had been perfectly repaired, wasn’t he really making an appeal to Kogito on his own behalf, while ostensibly applauding Kogito and Chikashi’s tireless efforts to “fix” their son? Goro’s injuries weren’t life threatening, but some important parts of his body had been damaged (“broken”) and there was no guarantee of a full recovery. So it was no wonder that a man like Goro, who was past middle age, would rhapsodize on and on about Akari’s miraculous resurrection.

  It wasn’t just the physical part of Goro that was destroyed by the meaningless, unjust yakuza violence; he was also falling apart mentally as a result of this life-changing incident, while he struggled to figure out how to restore himself to normal. With the “unbreakable man” tape, surely Goro was trying to send Kogito a questioning signal: searching for answers, pleading for help. For Goro was clearly continuing to have a very real reaction to the ongoing pain and terror caused by the yakuza ambush—not to mention the vague feelings of malaise that haunted him long after his external scars had healed. He didn’t talk directly about it, but ...

  Kogito had once written a short story about a young Japanese man who was working at a boat harbor on a large river in Uganda. When he was bitten by a hippopotamus—the hippo actually chomped down on the youth’s torso, with the head and legs hanging out of opposite sides of the beast’s huge mouth—the Japanese expatriate worker who was the model for the character in the story said later that he hadn’t been able to do anything except to scream piteously, “Aah, aah!” As Goro put it: “My impression is that those helpless, inarticulate syllables were the exact expression of what he was actually going through.”

  At the time—this conversation took place at the movie studio where Goro was directing the film version of Kogito’s novel A Quiet Life—Kogito and Goro had both averted their eyes and lapsed into silence. Obviously, they were remembering Goro’s horrific experience of being attacked by yakuza and having his handsome face slashed to ribbons.

  3

  “The other day I got a phone call from a freelance journalist,” Goro said. (This was before the Tagame era, and he and Kogito were talking on the telephone.) “He’s a weird, gloomy sort of guy and he’s obviously aware of that, so he goes overboard trying to lighten up. Anyway, he said that he wants to research an article based on your old novel about the young right-wing activist who assassinated a politician and then committed suicide in jail. He’s even got a charming little working title: ‘The Politically Hypocritical and Cowardly Life of Kogito Choko.’ His plan is to publish it first in a popular news magazine, and he said that he’s already gotten comments about the young Choko from a major critic from the conservative faction and from an international film director, too. You know who I’m talking about, but let’s be discreet and call them ‘Uto’ and ‘Mogusa,’ in case anyone’s listening. Then he said that he especially wanted to talk to me about Kogito’s ‘numerous character flaws,’ as he put it. He even boasted that he’s going to corner ‘that guy”(meaning you) and lead you around like a dog on a leash until you have no choice, this time, but to have a direct confrontation with the right wing. What do you think about that?”

  “Whatever I might think, you should handle it as you see fit,” Kogito replied in a tone of cool indifference. “To these young journalists, the sixties are ancient history, a past long forgotten. I wonder why he’s so gung ho about exhuming that old incident?”

  A few days later, there was another phone call from Goro. “I decided to go along with that journalist’s plan for the time being, so I had him come to the production office,” he said. “When we actually met face-to-face, you’ll never guess who he reminded me of. Remember back in Mat’chama there was a big, curly-haired guy called Arimatsu, who was always kind of pushy and obnoxious? Well, this reporter looks and acts a lot like him. If that Arimatsu had ended up struggling to make a living as a bottom-feeding journalist, he would probably have turned out just like this guy. Anyway, he acted as if being invited to my office meant that he was already in like Flynn. I don’t know why, but he has somehow convinced himself that I detest you, too, and so he’s confident that he’s someone I simply can’t do without. Anyway, he made himself right at home
in my office, and when I was about to leave for a previously arranged business lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant, he tried to tag along. At that point I realized it was time to put an end to the charade, and I blurted out, ‘Okay, Arimatsu, I think that’s it for today.’ (Like I said, he really reminded me of that guy in Mat’chama.) But, get this, he said: ‘Since you’re kind enough to call me by that nickname, I think I’d like to use it as my new nom de plume—but what would be a good first name to go with it?’ So I said off the top of my head, just trying to get rid of him, ‘How about Arimi?’ He said, ‘That’s perfect!’ and then he finally went away, in an obvious state of exultation.”

  Not long after that, Kogito heard that Chikashi, too, had inadvertently encountered “Arimi Arimatsu.” At the time, Goro was in preproduction, organizing the materials for his upcoming film, A Quiet Life, and when Chikashi took Akari’s sheet music for the score to the production office, Arimatsu happened to be there. Goro didn’t introduce Chikashi to him, but as the conversation went along the journalist apparently deduced that she was Kogito’s wife and promptly tried to muscle in.

  He started out by saying something obsequious, like “Of course, there’s no need for me to say that Akari’s CD is beautiful,” as if he was holding back his real opinion. (Kogito suspected that the man was probably being cautiously ambiguous in stating his true feelings about the CD, for reasons unknown.) Then he went on to report, with the air of having some sort of hidden agenda, that a famous Japanese actor-composer, currently headquartered in New York City, had remarked in a published conversation that he really couldn’t bear to see the music of a mentally disabled person being foisted on the world under the banner of political correctness. (The interviewer was a trendsetting Japanese scholar and culture maven who had burst on the scene with his Japanized interpretation, dubbed “New Academyism,” of the movement associated with Derrida and Barthes.)

  It was hard to tell from the angle of the reporter’s body whether he was addressing his remarks to Goro or to Chikashi, but Chikashi made no attempt to reply. Goro, unable to stand by in silence, said, “And what do you think about that?” to which the journalist answered, in a forceful way, “I don’t have any truck with political correctness or New Academyism or any of that stuff. I’m just a backward pupil, myself—I’m Ari-matsu!” This was a double-edged witticism, replicating the “Sir, yes, sir!” cadence of a crisp, military-style response while also evoking a perennially popular cartoon character.

  Kogito, who found this very amusing, remarked, “There used to be a character in Fujio Akatsuka’s manga who was something like a custodian or janitor in an old-fashioned elementary school, remember? Before his transformation he had supposedly been a pine tree, so no matter what he was talking about, he would always add ‘matsu’—‘pine tree’—to the end of the word, as a suffix. That was hilarious. So it sounds as if this journalist must have been using that old joke as part of his own shtick. What a clown.”

  “No, that’s not it,” Chikashi said. “Apparently he only started talking like that since adopting the pen name of Arimatsu.”

  Kogito’s smile faded as he recalled the belligerent, confrontational article, written under that very pen name, declaring that if Kogito Choko was going to keep on talking like a progressive, he ought to go ahead and publish Death of a Political Youth, which had never been released as a complete book in Japan due to fear of violent right-wing retaliation. (It had, however, been serialized there in a magazine and published overseas.)

  Later on that same day, Goro had gone to the sushi restaurant at the Hotel Okura for lunch with his actress-wife, Umeko, and Taruto from his production company, and he invited Chikashi to come along. Something unexpected happened on that outing, although fortunately it didn’t turn out as badly as it might have.

  The elegant hotel’s sushi restaurant was a branch of a venerable sushiya on the Ginza; Goro was well known there, and they received the usual warm welcome. The party was given four seats at the right end of the counter, and when they had finished ordering beer and sake and were wiping their hands with the customary hot, damp towels, they heard a commotion behind them. Taruto was in the seat farthest to the left, and the six guests who had been sitting next to him abruptly stood up and moved to a table in the back of the restaurant. Observing this, Chikashi said in all seriousness, “Hmm, I wonder if someone from the imperial family is coming in for lunch.”

  Then, just as Chikashi and the others were about to pick up the first few morsels of sushi, the sushi maker behind the counter suddenly stood at attention in a most unnatural way, with his back concave and his chest thrust out, while a man who was apparently in charge of all the restaurants on that floor of the hotel poked his head in from the corridor and said to Taruto, “I’m sorry, but would you mind leaving these seats at the counter and moving your party to a table?”

  Without giving the stunned Taruto time to ask for an explanation of this unheard-of request, Goro (like the trained actor he was) responded in a sonorous tone that was at least an octave lower than his normal speaking voice. “No, we booked these seats for an hour. We’ve only been here for a few minutes, so we’ll just finish eating our meal here at the counter.”

  At any rate, the people who filled up the six open seats at the counter were all large, taciturn men wearing sunglasses. Chikashi complained later to Kogito that for someone like her who wasn’t drinking beer or sake, it was hard to bear sitting at the counter for so long, and she had inadvertently ended up eating too much. Goro, it seemed, had lingered longer than necessary, just to make a point.

  When they left the restaurant, even though there were plenty of conspicuously unoccupied seats inside, they saw a group of men in their prime, all dressed identically in gangsterish black suits and looking surprisingly lithe despite their rugged builds, lined up in the passage with their backs against the wall. Obviously, they were standing guard for some Very Important Yakuza.

  Once Chikashi and her companions were finally alone in the elevator, Umeko explained what had happened, with a serious smile that seemed to reflect her tired, somber mood. “In the group that came in after we did and chased away the people who were eating at the counter, did you notice the one in the middle wearing superdark sunglasses? He’s the head of a yakuza crime syndicate, and because Goro was so stubborn about refusing their request to take over all the seats at the counter, even though he’s in a court case against them right now, I was really expecting to die at any moment.”

  “So if Goro had agreed to give up our seats, you would have followed?” Chikashi asked.

  “After spending an hour and a half eating sushi like it was going out of style, I think I’m going to have to go on a diet for the next week!” Umeko groaned, nimbly evading the question.

  Goro had no plans to share this near misadventure—which could so easily have turned into a hostile confrontation—with the media, but an article about the incident turned up in a popular tabloid magazine, bearing the byline of Arimi Arimatsu, as Goro had dubbed him. Presumably the journalist must have overheard some unguarded conversation as he was lurking around the production office. Kogito, who was no stranger to threats from unwholesome organizations, couldn’t help wondering whether Arimatsu might have written the story in the hopes of stirring up the yakuza—not the top brass, necessarily, but the feisty, trigger-happy younger members. Because in the same article, the journalist once again leveled the charge that Kogito had conducted his life in such a way as to avoid being physically attacked by the right wing, and he went on to announce that Kogito really ought to try to emulate his courageous brother-in-law, who was willing to risk being slashed again over a matter of principle—even something as seemingly trivial as the seating in a sushi restaurant.

  Chikashi shared Kogito’s thoughts about this with Goro, and during the same conversation she broached the theory that the people who write that kind of article seem to be actively hoping that something terrible will happen.

  To which Goro replied:
“You’re absolutely right, Arimatsu and his ilk are probably praying that something terrible will happen. You know that big-shot journalist who’s been denouncing Kogito for all these years? He used to write a so-called humor column for the weekly magazine of a certain newspaper. It was called, tongue in cheek, For the Gentlefolk of the Right Wing, and among the other drivel he wrote was a blatantly provocative essay about the increasing dilution of the imperial family’s blood by intermarriage with commoners. He actually challenged his right-wing readers, saying something like, ‘Are you going to stand by quietly and let this happen?’ And then he went on to state the obvious fact that the new crown princess is of common birth, and he even asked the inflammatory question outright: What are you going to do if she gets pregnant? If there were some right-wing ‘gentlefolk’ who took that seriously, isn’t it possible that they might stage some sort of heinous terrorist act to prevent the childbirth from taking place? Of course, that isn’t something a normal person would dream up, much less encourage, but his type of right-wing journalist—the self-styled ‘moral crusader’—really is a breed apart.”

  4

  One day, Kogito got a call from Goro (a rather rare occurrence of late), saying that he wanted to get together to discuss some business having to do with “societal matters,” as he put it. Surprisingly, the meeting place Goro suggested wasn’t his usual hangout, the little Italian restaurant next to the office building where he worked—the same restaurant that would later be splashed all over the tabloids in surreptitious photographs of Goro’s “secret rendezvous.”

  As it happened, Kogito had a favor to ask of Goro, too. An American film student, whom Kogito had met when he gave a lecture at the University of Chicago as part of its centennial celebration, had come to Tokyo for the express purpose of interviewing Goro Hanawa. When Kogito explained the situation, Goro graciously agreed to the interview (he was always very good about that sort of thing) and that may have been his reason for suggesting a classier meeting place. The location he chose was the coffee lounge on one side of the lobby of the Imperial Hotel, and when Kogito arrived he found his brother-in-law already deep in conversation, displaying his fabulously fluent English, with Oliver, the young man from the University of Chicago. Oliver was actually quite proficient in Japanese, but when Goro initially addressed him in English he probably hadn’t had the nerve to respond in Japanese. In any case, Kogito suggested that they switch to Japanese, starting immediately.