Lonely Hearts Killer

by Tomoyuki Hoshino

  These abolitionist fantasies were relayed to the general public at the time through tabloid news reports on the personal lives and “habits” of anarchists. As literary and cultural theorist Chizuko Naitô explains in her award-winning recent study Empires and Assassinations, news reporting on anarchists in the early twentieth century fostered public fear of anti-establishment organizing, and even more prominently characterized anarchists as debauched deviants who were engaged in a scandalous “lifestyle.” She cites many newspaper articles, one of which entitled “The Unseemly Habits of the Kashiwagi Anarchists” appeared in the June 25, 1907 issue of the Tokyo Asahi Newspaper and included the following “evidence” of anarchist dissolution.

  First, one need only look to the time when Suga Kanno and Arahata lived together illicitly in a house in Kashiwagi. They would roll out of bed around ten o’clock in the morning and loaf around all day doing nothing. Before long, night would fall and suspicious-looking student types would throng into the house, reciting utterly subversive lines, carrying on, stamping their feet, and debating every night until two or three in the morning... (Naitô, Teikoku to ansatsu: jendaa kara miru kindai nihon no media hensei, Tokyo: Shinyosha, 2005, 287, translation mine)

  As Naitô elaborates, this anarchist “lifestyle” was depicted as an illness by the media, and women engaged in the “lifestyle” were singled out as especially sexually deviant. And if their personal lives were so unconventional and “sick,” surely, as readers were led to believe, their political goals must be every bit as pathological and twisted. The underlying message was: only “sickos” would want to kill the divine emperor. In Lonely Hearts Killer, characters in pursuit of alternative and autonomous communities are similarly portrayed with contempt and curiosity in the media. However, Hoshino makes sure we can’t rest easy with media storytelling.

  A report such as the one Naitô discusses might seem laughable to us today. (Many of us will also think the scenario described sounds like fun.) It might even be easy for those who do not consider themselves to be anarchists to understand why some people wanted to dismantle the emperor system at the turn of the last century given the changes underway in Japan at the time. But why now? Why is the emperor system still a problem in our neoliberal age? While no longer as blasphemous an act as it could have been only two generations earlier, critiquing the emperor system remains largely verboten in the world of Japanese literature. Yet many young Japanese people in particular, especially those who do not consider themselves nationalists, are baffled by any suggestion that the emperor is important (as either a positive or negative figure). Hoshino explains what led him to explore such questions:

  After writing [Lonely Hearts Killer], I was asked the following by my students and young writers. “We don’t understand why you’d want to problematize the emperor. Is the emperor really that big of a presence in the lives of people over thirty?”

  I felt the same way when I was younger. But then I wondered what would happen to the people of Japan if right here and right now the emperor system were abolished? (Bungei Tokushû: Hoshino Tomoyuki, 18, translation mine)

  The experience of having been a new reporter at the time when Hirohito (whose responsibility in the Pacific War remains contentious) died must have affected the development of this “what if ” question he also tells us about in the preface to this English edition. Hoshino’s fictional answer is not pretty in the short term even if abolitionism itself is a desirable outcome. Hoshino moves us in the direction of abolition almost imperceptibly at first. He does so with reports of the death of the young emperor, the unprecedented succession of his sister (a topical development given the debates about female heirs in Japan’s imperial house), and questions as to “what comes next” in a society increasingly defined and motivated by its obsessions with “security” and “unity.”

  A novel that asks us to imagine the end of the Japanese emperor system and perhaps even the collapse of Japan as nation state surely qualifies as anti-authoritarian. Hoshino’s fiction is also often characterized by critics and readers alike as “difficult,” which I take to mean his plots are sufficiently layered and complex so as to preclude a quick or simply “fun” read (although, as you will see, it is quite humorous at times). The greatest “difficulty” this novel presents may be its portraits of the institutions vested with the most authority today. Governments, mass media, policing apparatuses, and hipster coffee shops tend toward the grotesque in this work. These institutions and the brutality they engender elicit interpersonal brutality. The institutions and not the characters who commit shocking acts, Hoshino seems to suggest, are monstrous. In this sense, he couldn’t be more unlike Yukio Mishima (to whom he has been compared). Mishima often located the grotesque in the individual (see for example, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea). The characters in Hoshino’s novels might also be “sick,” but they are not plagued by inner badness or congenital ailments. Rather, they live in a literally crazy-making society. The novel thus asks us to think about defection – how do we get ourselves out of crazy-making societies?

  This brings me to the subject of another earlier Japanese writer to whom Hoshino is not often compared, the proletarian novelist Takiji Kobayashi. Takiji (he is known, for some of us affectionately, by his given name) was tortured to death by the military police in 1933. Conventional wisdom might tell us these two writers could not be more different. Takiji’s direct style of realism is considered simple, straightforward, and, to his detractors, sentimental and propagandistic. Hoshino, on the other hand, is considered “difficult,” heavily influenced by magical realism, and expressly “literary.” Yet these stark contrasts don’t hold up to close inspection. One can find stunningly rich and very literary descriptions (of colors, smells, sounds, etc.) in both of their works. Neither has skimped on adjectives. Each writer also dares to explore complex feelings about uncomfortable and tender subjects. Above all, both writers demonstrate a great deal of trust in their readers. They take us through painful journeys, showing us what is wrong or crazy and how some characters respond, but leave to us the work of imagining what comes next. While we always have agency as readers (to imagine different endings, sequels, etc.), some writers (like Mishima) suffocate us with their visions. Hoshino and Takiji insist on participation and dialogue, on a more mutual relationship between text and reader. In his preface to this English edition, Hoshino makes this clear.

  This is not to say that Hoshino makes our job as readers easy. We have to stop and think a great deal. For example, his names for nations and relationships are deliberately disorienting, as are his ways of referring to emperors. The emperors in Lonely Hearts Killer are referred to throughout as okami. Okami means “emperor,” the “higher-ups,” or “the powers that be,” but also “proprietress” or “female manager” (of a restaurant, bar, etc.). While tennô may be the more common way of referring to the emperor in Japanese, okami lends itself to several themes developed in the novel. Okami is written phonetically in katakana throughout, which leaves available room to invest it with multiple meanings. If written as the term for an emperor in kanji (Chinese characters), the character for “above” or “top” would be used, underscoring political and social hierarchy and differential power (jôge or “top-down” relations). The homonymous “proprietress” also proves significant, as one character notes, when the young emperor is succeeded by his sister. The structure of the emperor system and the sense of a “continuous” and “uninterrupted” national and cultural identity it suggests have often been invoked to assert “Japaneseness.” To some, nothing could be “more Japanese” than the emperor system. The narrator of the first chapter, Inoue, tells us that nationalist youth are calling for a “Restoration” (harking back to the Meiji Restoration of 1868) not long before the okami’s death. Mishima seemed to hope for the same. In this novel, Hoshino directs us toward very different possibilities, but he leaves us at the point where we must make significant interpretive leaps and choices for ourselves.

&nbs
p; After considerable handwringing, I decided to translate okami as “Majesty.” “Highness” might have worked just as well. Neither, as is the case with so much in a novel written by someone who bends and stretches words in unexpected and new ways, is a perfect match. Readers familiar with classical Japanese, for example, might quickly recognize the character names Kisaragi and Udzuki as quirky. They are pre-modern names for the months of February and April. Surely anyone translating serious literature faces similar dilemmas. Do we leave more untranslated and rely on explanatory footnotes? How closely should we adhere to the original sentence structure? Because Lonely Hearts Killer is so rich and so complex in the original, I opted for minimal explanation. Hoshino demands quite a bit of his readers, and it seemed only fitting that the translated version reflect that. For my students and me, figuring things out in this novel has been part of the fun.

  In an ideal world in which more resources were invested in sharing and communicating the relevant than the comforting or commercial, you would have several translations of this novel to compare and the time to read them all. As it stands, English language readers are not afforded the opportunity to read much contemporary Japanese fiction that challenges stereotypes or demands serious self-reflection. The comforting and the pleasantly distracting sell in Japan and the United States, and many publishers fuel and maintain the parameters of the “marketable” by feeding us that which we are coached to want. I translated this novel because I felt a profound sense of urgency. I wanted my students to read it. I felt (and still feel) like people need to read it. I wish my students had many translations of works by “difficult” Japanese writers like Hoshino and Yoriko Shôno. We are all fortunate that PM Press has made this novel available to English language readers at a time when many bigger presses do not trust that we will want to read and can handle “difficult” literature.

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE

  For all of you reading this in English.

  I had several motivations in writing this work.

  Among them was the question: what would happen to Japanese people if the emperor system was abolished today and the emperor disappeared from Japan? I’d been holding onto this question for twenty years, ever since my student days. There are few people in contemporary Japan who think of the emperor as Japan’s raison d’être. Yet I’ve felt that if the emperor system suddenly vanished, Japanese people would start racing towards emperornationalism – much in the way that people thronged to Judeo-Christian nationalism in America after 9-11. For me, this work was an attempt to make sense of how national identity functions and exists beyond awareness at the unconscious level.

  Another motivation was hypothesizing what would have ensued had the Columbine High School incident occurred in Japan. The profound impact that incident had on me stemmed from the likelihood I saw of something similar happening in Japan too. Japanese youth are placed in the same kind of environment as Eric and Dylan (although I suppose this isn’t limited to youth). The only difference would be that such an incident wouldn’t result in as many deaths because of Japan’s strict system of gun control. I wondered then: what form of violence might Japanese Erics and Dylans resort to? This novel is an exploration of that question as well.

  I feel like Japanese and American societies, and our entire world today for that matter, have gone mad. When the majority is overtaken by madness, it becomes all the more difficult to explain what madness is or how it manifests. For that reason, I turned to the novel as a venue for trying to make the madness visible.

  Unfortunately, serious literature is faced with extinction everywhere in our world, including in Japan. People want to believe they are not crazy, and readers seek out tales that allow them to avoid confronting the madness. And writers respond to such desires and demands by offering comfort.

  I don’t believe that is the role of the novel. I think the novel is meant to help us understand that we are crazy. After all, we must begin by recognizing our state of affliction if we don’t want to surrender to the madness.

  This work is arranged in three chapters. The narrator of the second chapter critiques the narrator of the first chapter. The narrator of the third chapter gives perspective on the narrator of the second chapter. By the same token, I ask you as readers to think about the enigmatic narrator of the third chapter.

  Tomoyuki Hoshino

  March 30, 2008

  Translated by Adrienne Carey Hurley

  LONELY HEARTS KILLER

  ONE: THE SEA OF TRANQUILITY

  Even when His Majesty died I wasn’t fazed, not even un poquito. Devastated youth were showing up in droves according to the TV and newspapers, and we were bombarded with the predictable over-the-top sympathetic blathering and condescending pep talks, but I was the same as ever, going about my business as usual. Put simply, I busted out my video camera. As was my habit when hitting the streets, I put the video finder up to my eye in lieu of glasses and recorded everything I saw just as it was. And I saw what you’d expect: people in His Majesty’s forest mourning, repeatedly dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs, chanting to the Amitabha Buddha, making the sign of the cross, and preaching in the streets. I was called out by some thugs, all dressed in school gear and old enough to know better. “Hey you, what the fuck do you think you’re doing, bringing a camera in here like that? People are in mourning.” “Heartless.” “Disrespectful!” “Inhuman.” They told me off while beating me up. But I got those bastards on film and affixed the caption: “After His Majesty’s death, there are still strong young men in their prime.” I shaded out just their eyes and had the footage streaming on my webcast site. It was pretty unusual for me to be victimized like that; my presence is negligible, and my camera is small enough to fit in my hand, so it’s rarely the case that anyone takes notice of me.

  What struck me as really strange came on the Monday two weeks after His Majesty died when I went in the Isetan department store in Shinjuku. The number of customers wasn’t significantly less than usual, but it was incredibly quiet. The silence didn’t register with me at first. It just felt like society as a whole was grieving and the atmosphere was somehow heavier, but before long I noticed that couples, families, and friends were not saying a word to each other. They shopped in silence. Employees were not barking out sales pitches and, when they did have to explain something, kept their words to a minimum. Inoffensive classical music played in the background, and beyond that there was nothing to hear except the sounds of shoes shuffling, merchandise being handled, the escalator running, and the electric hum of the lights.

  With this new awareness, I looked around to find that no one was having conversations on the trains either. All the more unnatural was how few people were sending email or talking on their cell phones. I hardly received any messages or calls on my own cell. And virtually no one was reading manga or books; all the passengers were basically lingering in a daze. I couldn’t stand the feeling of being inside a train with other people who were doing nothing but staring vacantly. I wasn’t afflicted with whatever had a grip on them, so I opted to get off a stop early and walk. I anticipated more of the same on the streets, but residential neighborhoods were always relatively quiet before anyway, and on the busier streets, the noise of passing cars would make the eerie silence less noticeable.

  The silence spread steadily over the net too. The volume of my incoming mail decreased as the number of un-updated homepages and e-zines on hiatus increased. Message boards saw a drop in contributors, and while it was all well and good that a “His Majesty’s death” thread was added to a satirical forum, some pathetic guy, who was probably just role-playing to provoke a reaction, unfurled his grandiose diatribe only to have it bomb in the end when no one responded.

  It felt like the number of words in the world was decreasing. I can’t explain it well, but it was as if there was nothing to talk about — no topics begging to be discussed, no need to chat. The motivation to mutter unnecessary things was gone. I was already someone who thought small talk was meaningle
ss, so I didn’t really care, but now that meaninglessness was overpowering, and I remained silent. It wasn’t like this after the deaths of Their Previous Majesties. And that must be further proof that His Young Majesty was different.

  His Majesty died a sudden and premature death. Without the slightest warning sign, his lifeless figure was found as if he were asleep, still tucked in bed in the morning. It was determined that he suffered a heart attack while sleeping, but the cause of the heart attack remained unknown. Or at least there was no official announcement. There were no signs of suffering, and people said he must still be dreaming. At the time, I lightheartedly thought I’d like to have the kind of dream that makes you not want to wake up.

  Their Previous Majesties had all conformed to the national life expectancy and lived a long time, declining little by little and fulfilling their geriatric quota of normative years. We had become accustomed to heirs succeeding after the age of sixty. As a result, the length of time they served as Majesty was never all that long. They reflected the aging population of today’s world, and people were halfway resigned to this pattern.

  After this quietly unchanging series of plain and similar Majesties, we finally got someone young. His Young Majesty who just died was born after His Previous Majesty had passed forty, so he himself was only around forty when he succeeded. His Previous Majesty hadn’t planned to produce an heir late in life so that the next generation would succeed at a younger age. He just happened to remain single until his forties and finally married only after the health of his father, His Majesty before that, was uncertain. Only the deceased knows his true motivations though.