Tokio Whip

by Arturo Silva

  TOKIO WHIP

  a novel by

  ARTURO SILVA

  Stone Bridge Press • Berkeley, California

  Published by

  Stone Bridge Press

  P. O. Box 8208, Berkeley, CA 94707

  TEL 510-524-8732 • sbp@stonebridge.com • www.stonebridge.com

  “Tokio Whip: Warp ’n’ Woof,” a helpful appendix to this book and a guide to its creation and understanding, is available at the publisher’s website, www.stonebridge.com.

  Front cover photograph courtesy of Yoshiichi Hara.

  Text © 2016 Arturo Silva.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  p-ISBN: 978-1-61172-033-4

  e-ISBN: 978-1-61172-922-1

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE (A). The Yamanote

  CHAPTER 1. KANDA–TOKYO

  Lang hadn’t wanted to come to Tokyo; but once he got here – well.

  CHAPTER 2. YURAKUCHO–SHIMBASHI

  Roberta was already here, you know; she’d lived in America, had done Europe, she and Lang, they were going nowhere standing still and falling – he couldn’t see it – she needed a change – there was a job available – here – maybe: and so she came.

  CHAPTER 3. HAMAMATSUCHO–SHINAGAWA

  Lang never wanted to come here; he had a passing, a professional interest in Japan, but winters get pretty gray in Vienna, or so I’m told, and the few letters from Roberta only added to things being that much more up in the air, too far for his comfort and he couldn’t abide that couldn’t abide being the vague-gray Lang at a loose end, and so he had to find out, to settle all one way or another – and so he came.

  CHAPTER 4. GOTANDA–MEGURO

  Roberta’d been here six months; she was feeling comfortable here, feeling herself, making her own way; as for Lang’s imminent arrival she was ambivalent, curious and felt I suppose she didn’t really have a choice but to “welcome” him, put him up for a while, see what developed – and so he got the little living room – until he up and left.

  CHAPTER 5. EBISU–SHIBUYA

  Lang didn’t even pay attention to Tokyo at first, he wanted something from Roberta but it wasn’t coming; and then he simply didn’t like her life here, didn’t like where she was living, somewhere between Shinjuku and Nakano and Yoyogi, “honcho” no less, he called it “nondescript” and she said yes, yes she thought it was wonderful for having no character, and one simply doesn’t say something like that to Lang, no way, and anyway, after all, he’d brought all his Euro-baggage and had no idea what he was getting into and she already into it, she was settled, the woman was moving she was becoming a real Tokyoite – and then besides, he didn’t like her friends. Oh, and the party.

  CHAPTER 6. HARAJUKU–YOYOGI

  It wasn’t easy but eventually Roberta had to ask Lang to leave and he was glad to, glad to get out, glad to get away from her for a while at least, at least to clear the air; so he found himself a place in Kichijoji, which he didn’t like either, all those foreigners, the discomfort of the easy living of it all, he thought (at first), at first he thought he’d be west of everything she or at least her Tokyo represented, but eventually, soon enough really, he came to like it, came to praise the place’s “charms” as he said – god he can be so condescending! – he came to see something of what all she’d been telling him: ha!, Lang came to like Tokyo – Tokyo was alright.

  PART TWO. Tozai! Tozai!!

  PART ONE (B). The Yamanote

  CHAPTER 7. SHINJUKU–SHIN-OKUBO

  So there was Lang in Kichijoji, and enjoying it; it wasn’t Roberta’s Tokyo and so it felt like a kind of truce; she had no interest in the west, and so Lang could feel like a pioneer, he’d made his discovery – and then she made her move – it wasn’t against him so much as it was for herself, she’d found a place she could finally call “home” – she moved to the low city, you know, the old city – nothing could have surprised Lang more, but Roberta was happy really, happy, she loved her new/old Tokyo – Roberta’d made her last move.

  CHAPTER 8. TAKADANOBABA–MEJIRO

  Lang came to love Kichijoji, but it was only his own, he felt only more distant from Roberta, isolated, and after all he’d come here for her for them to see how or what they were, what they were going to do and there she was an hour’s train ride away and she happy rarely leaving her home her neighborhood – and so he became jealous of it all, jealous of the city for what it had done to her – had done to him.

  CHAPTER 9. IKEBUKURO–OTSUKA

  Roberta’s Tokyo – they’d meet once or twice a week, she chose the places, the classical café in Nakano, tempura at the Hilltop Hotel – you know, the writer’s hotel – they carefully avoided anything further West and ... and eventually they extended their borders, began to explore Nishi-Ogikubo, Kokubunji – and he began to explore the city more, both directions, came to be intrigued as she’d known he would and hoped he would, the Lang she knew, the Lang she suspected – Lang, liking almost all of Tokyo, her Tokyo, hers his.

  CHAPTER 10. SUGAMO–KOMAGOME

  Lang was changing, it was clear to us all, and Roberta liked it, liked this Lang, a Lang she’d always suspected; and Lang liked her: she was an unsuspected Roberta, a neglected Roberta, and a Roberta she too acknowledged she had neglected ... a Lang and a Roberta they both needed to know, to acknowledge, and more – a Roberta he’d long refused to see and one he now had no choice but – but for now they stay united on separate sides of the city – they have no choice but.

  CHAPTER 11. NISHI-NIPPORI–NIPPORI 291

  And then Lang had to return to Vienna for a few months, there was no choice, an unfinished job, a previous commitment, I forget what but there was no choice – we all felt sorry about it, not knowing what would develop – Roberta seemed to take it alright, and I emphasize the “seem” – apparently they wrote and spoke regularly … but she was never sure if he’d return – and then she surprised us all, she visited him, they got away and were together – wherever they were .

  CHAPTER 12. UENO–AKIHABARA

  Roberta returned to Tokyo; Lang finished his work – there it is – here they are!

  NOTE

  Many Japanese names occur in the course of this novel. Most are either people or place names, or the names of things such as food items or pieces of clothing. The reader really need not worry about their pronunciation or meaning – some will be familiar, some are explained in passing, others are not. However, two do require some orientation. Yamanote, commonly called “The High City,” is that westward area arcing around Shinjuku, and traditionally the wealthier and more modern side of the city. Shitamachi, or The Low City, is the older, more plebian and traditional side of the city, arcing east around the Imperial Palace and extending as far as and beyond the Sumida River. In this book they are also often opposed as the East and West sides of the city – but even those distinctions are questioned, as the reader will see. Yamanote is also the name of the train line that makes a loop around most of the central wards of the city (though not the entire city) – embracing both yamanote and shitamachi, twenty-nine stations in all, but here reduced to twenty-four. This Yamanote is what is referred to by the titles of the chapters that comprise Parts One A and B of the book.

  The Yamanote Line makes a loop through downtown Tokyo, traversing the High City (Yamanote) and Low City (Shitamchi).

  Tokyo is a city where one learns to gaze only at the immediate prospect, blotting out what lies beyond.

  – Edward G. Seidensticker

  Outside and inside abolished, talk can now begin: at last, at last the dialogue.

  – Julio Cortázar

  Ou
r language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.

  – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, 18

  We drink coffee with cream while suspended over the abyss.

  – Andrei Bely

  It’s funny how some things make you think of other things.

  – Carole Lombard

  PART ONE (A)

  THE YAMANOTE

  Chapter 1

  KANDA–TOKYO

  Lang hadn’t wanted to come to Tokyo; but once he got here – well.

  we began walking somewhere around sunset

  – Hey! This building wasn’t here yesterday.

  across the city

  – Say it again: the two most beautiful words: sunset, –

  to Shinjuku and Roberta’s party around Midnight

  – Better lost in Tokyo than found in any other city.

  and then further west, talking our way

  into the

  Sun-

  r

  i

  s

  e

  !

  ***

  Rich and strange, strange and rich, Marianne muses, and once more rich and strange. Oh, Tokyo, damn you! Where am I? Here, yes, and one more step – there. Now I’m here, now there. Rich and strange you are, Marianne, a here and there myself. Bless you, Tokyo. Walking in step like a waking dream. A girl in her dreams talking to herself.

  ***

  –Oh, comeon, it’s not modern at all, all this brick, that wood. And look at those dives right under the tracks, that yakuza-type over there eyeing me – what a racket!

  –Still, if we can stay steady –

  –As she goes!

  –On yer feet!

  –Aye aye, Sir!

  –Tokyo Station should be just ahead.

  But Hiromi does not “stay steady,” thinks a detour will help, and though the tracks are generally still in sight, she and her friends have lost their way. She stares in the window of a shop selling medical equipment – all of it made of glass.

  –Orange Card, IO card, and why “SF Metro” card? – this isn’t San Francisco.

  –And mine’s all run out, now it really looks like we have to walk.

  –Well, try to enjoy yourself, Dear.

  –Eh?

  –That’s what my Granny used to tell me every morning when I left for school.

  –Let’s see, she says, as she finds the page in her compact Tokyo map-book. This must be that real old bridge; homeless people sleeping there now around all these banks. My city!

  –And mine!

  –Mine too!

  ***

  Tanizaki’s Dream: Orderly thoroughfares, shining, newly-paved streets, a flood of cars, blocks of flats rising floor upon floor, level on level in geometric beauty, and threading through the city elevated lines, subways, street cars. (But see also Tanizaki on Asakusa: “Its constant and peerless richness preserved even as it furiously changes in nature and in its ingredients, swelling and clashing in confusion and then fusing into harmony.”)

  ***

  Van Zandt is himself, that is, as he is now, though in the dream he is back in high school in Amsterdam, where he sees a classmate, Jenny, blonde and thin, whom he wishes he were not too shy to approach. (VZ often has this dream, and it is the one he hates most, because it reminds him of that long period that no one would ever guess now when he was shy and inarticulate, and rarely spoke to a female.) He sees the school auditorium; it is the night of the senior prom (and this scene looks as if it were taken from an American teenage genre film ((VZ in fact never attended any such dance; in fact, had never even known of the thing till he saw Carrie.)) ) The prom goes on, people dancing, and Van Zandt feels lonely. Then all the girls are told to get on stage. It’s time for “boy’s choice,” instead of the usual “ladies’ choice.” VZ asks Jenny to dance. They walk away (however much one would think the occasion demanded a dance). She takes his hand. They walk out of the auditorium and in the dark alley she stops and kisses him. He is surprised. They are walking through Akitsu, in Kiyose, in northeastern Tokyo, just there at the border with Saitama Prefecture. There are white box houses with pink motorcycles for Mom and that always mean the suburbs. The suburbs, a Frankenstein for the 1990s, with the rent of a 4LDK two-thirds of a 1LDK just west of the Yamanote. On a wall someone has spray painted the title of a favorite song “kimi ni mune kyun kyun” by YMO. There is much greenery, a clear stream – he sees fish in it as he peers from Maebara Bridge. And then in the dream where he sees the long rows of houses that look like military barracks (did he live in one once, see them in a home movie? ((these are private plots)) ), he sees a map made of books, and in a park public art the likes of which one does not usually see in Tokio: a “Peace Monument” (Showa 49), abstract, steps, two monoliths almost meeting as if hands closed in prayer. VZ and Jenny go to the house of some friends. They are no longer in high-school, but as they are now – or as he is and she as how he dreams of a girl whom he hasn’t seen in fifteen years. Jenny takes him into a corner and kisses him, forcefully, deeply. Her hand reaches down and grabs his crotch. Then Van Zandt is walking swiftly, muttering to himself, “How could this happen? How could my trip be so suddenly cancelled?” It is another city, another time. He walks into his home; the entire family is there, but everyone is busy and so they ignore him. (Throughout this last scene his siblings are as they are now, and all scurrying about the room.) VZ’s mother appears. Her hair is cut very short (like Falconetti’s, but that’s where any resemblance ends). She rushes up to her son, sobbing, “Why do they all say I’m guilty? What have I done? I’m not guilty. I swear. You believe me, don’t you?” And then VZ awakes.

  In the background of VZ’s dream, as in the following dream, he hears the black death lyrics of Howlin’ Wolf: “Smokestack Lightnin’ shines like gold / I found my baby layin’ on the cooling board // Don’t you hear me talkin’ Pretty Mama // Don’t the hearse look lonesome rollin’ ’fore your door / She’s gone – oowhoo – won’t be back no more.”

  In Kazuo’s dream he is walking in Akitsu, turns, and there is a valley, and a river below. A group of people are happily swimming, gamboling. They are all strong swimmers, and the image is an almost ideal one of human physical grace. There are some steps, a large rock, a bridge down-river. It is a short, idyllic dream. And then Kazuo wakes.

  ***

  Kazuyoshi Miura: Murder in the Media

  With very few exceptions – most notably the Abe Sada story of 1936, known to most people through Nagisa Oshima’s film In the Realm of the Senses (1976), and the Imperial Bank Robbery of 1948 – murder in Twentieth Century Tokyo has been an unexciting affair. In recent years there have been the usual sushi-knife slashings, the occasional dismembered body parts (in one case, in thirty-four separate bags just around the corner from the author’s home), and the fortunately more rare true horror story (infanticide, cannibalism). One pop star (“idol”) did throw herself off of a building – to include suicide for a moment – after being jilted by another singer; that may have been “romantic” of her, but the jilter himself was so uninteresting, so predictably “cute,” hardly worth the adolescent gesture. Even with the brief wave of copycats, that story too soon lost public interest. A much more talented singer, Yutaka Ozaki, took a few pills too many one night mixed with too much alcohol and was found in the street next day near his home – no, contemporary murder has little glamour and less imagination these days in Tokyo.

  Perhaps the most interesting modern murder was that of Kazumi Miura, a murder that was allegedly set up by her husband Kazuyoshi. While having some interesting complications, the case is especially compelling for the huge role the media played in it – or roles, for it has doted on Kazuyoshi Miura as much as he has courted it; it has also been attacked by him in court; and eventually it was the media �
�� or one of its representatives – that cracked the case open. The story of Kazuyoshi Miura is a particularly relevant tale for our times.

  Los Angeles, November 18, 1981. The clothes importer Kazuyoshi Miura, age 34, and his wife of two years, Kazumi, 28, are on their “second honeymoon” in Los Angeles. (The Miura’s have a young daughter.) While taking photos in a parking lot – Miura will claim he just happened to spot a possible advertising location – Kazumi is robbed and shot in the head, and her husband in the leg. Kazumi falls into a permanent coma, and two months later returns to Japan. Within a year of the shooting she dies. Despite some suspicions, the Los Angeles Police Department is helpless – no evidence, no suspects.

  On March 31, 1994, Miura, by now 46, is sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to murder his wife. He is so judged on circumstantial evidence, the judge saying that it is “logical to assume” that Miura was the mastermind behind the death of Kazumi. The judge describes Miura as being “selfish and cold-blooded,” a man who has shown no signs of remorse over the death of his wife.

  The murder plot was simple enough; Miura is said to have hired an employee to do the job, including shooting Miura himself. Miura’s testimony however was shot through with holes (if we may be pardoned the expression). To take only one important example: Miura claimed that the assailants fled in a green car; witnesses of the scene – though not of the murder – saw only a white van. The suspected assailant had hired a white van the day before the murder.

  Miura is also believed to have made two other attempts on Kazumi’s life before his final success. Three months earlier in Los Angeles, Miura had asked a former mistress and porno actress to kill Kazumi in Tokyo in August 1981 by bludgeoning her with a hammer. The actress did so, but Kazumi recovered. He is also supposed to have asked two former employees to kill Kazumi.

  With Kazumi’s death, Miura collected one hundred-fifty million yen in insurance money.