Tokio Whip

by Arturo Silva

  ***

  SCENE SIX: A TEMPLE

  The Woman awakes, after a heavy night of furious and fantastic masturbating, and staggers on to the bus to Jindaiji, the city’s second oldest temple, located, yes, near Kichijoji – the Western Kichijoji, that is. The heavy incense emanating from the old temple adds to her sedation. The many souvenir shops only annoy her; though she does make her annual purchase of a demon-dispelling votive charm. She barely notices the row of monks in procession (though normally, her sexual fantasies run along acolyte lines), the small garden, an especially enormous tree, and the susuki leaves, final remnants that once lavished the Kanto Plain, playground for the Shogun’s horses. Nor, of course, does she notice the man enjoying his cold jindaiji soba at the table next to her.

  ***

  MIROKU

  Don’t worry, Baby,

  Everything’s gonna turn out alright.

  – Brian Wilson-Silva

  PART TWO

  TOZAI! TOZAI!

  –That’s the shout, “Eastwest! Eastwest!” Everyone included. Good for any performance – going out at night, getting up in the morning.

  –And Northsouth!, Northsouth!? Shouldn’t that be included? After all –

  –You’re right, of course. And it is there, only more implicit. We go around the city, we go across, we wander all over – but one somehow doesn’t feel that other pull. Just think of the Ginza line: the fun north end of it, and the dull commercial south. So, we’ll follow the traditions in this respect, and keep that direction subtle. And, by the way, it should be “Southnorth!, Southnorth!” – Namboku! Namboku! I used to be able to get to shitamachi on the Namboku Line, get off at Todaimae Station. There’s a decent wine shop near where you emerge with foreign wines, including one of the few places I could get prosecco.

  –But if it’s all underground, then it’s all subtle.

  –Not necessarily. We know all about the underground cities of the train stations, those elaborate malls and hotels, porn shops and tea shops. But they exist too in the subways, though perhaps not as elaborate, a salaryman or a girl can still get him or herself fitted for an evening. Yes, the sun exists underground too – as many names and myths, tragedies and romances – after all, the city’s underground – just look at a map, think of the Yamanote as a circle, and the subway lines bursting out all around and within it – what do you see?

  –Uhm, ok a circle, squiggles, a rainbow of colors, the Tozai blue, the Ginza orange. What am I supposed to see?

  –A sun! And, considering that we’re considering the underground – it’s an anus. And after all, what is an anus but a sun spelt backwards?

  –A what sun?

  –Spelt backwards, an anus.

  –Uh … ok.

  –Comeon, let’s walk.

  –What, along the Sobu, east, and then down the river, along the bridges, sort of southnorth?

  –You wanted every direction, sure, why not, a proper mix. After all, neglect the bridges and the subways, you do not do the city justice.

  –But we won’t be taking a subway.

  –Oh we will – and we have quite a few choices: the Tozai, the Ginza, the Asakusa, the Hibiya, the Shinjuku lines, they all traverse shitamachi. And whether we do or not, the subway, as I’ve said, is implicit.

  –So, Tozai! Tozai!

  –Yes, appropriately. You know, the farther East we go, I see the West. It is implicit, always. The yellow Sobu grinds its way east. Here, Shōhei Bridge – these wonderful stone lamps, the thin river below – seen from the train it’s exhilarating, and at ground level too. You know, you leave Kanda, no not the bookshops, but the students mixed with the salarymen, and suddenly these stone markers – you’re not only entering Akihabara, you’re approaching the River, the Sumida, not the Kanda. Walk through Akihabara, ignore the noise and toys, the Liebeskind lamp warehouse – or is it Eisenmann? – the River is beckoning. It’s a hard walk, grimey, there are as many bill collectors as there are computer outlets, but the River is just a bit beyond, and that’s where your focus should be. Yes, we can do this eastwest and southnorth, it makes no difference, this is the Center.

  –You think so?

  –I have to. If the River goes – and it is – then Tokio goes, no more.

  –No more Tokyo?

  –No. No more. All the conversations of all the people who lived here and loved here and especially the people who never gave it a good goddamn, and the few who did, who bothered to remember a name or some women who burned or drowned, or children who made it and moved out, or the few rebels, even the foreigners who wrote so much bullshit but nonetheless had a glimpse of willow – oh well.

  –Oh well!?

  –Well, the city endures.

  –But you just said – ?

  –Did I? Maybe I’m wrong on all counts. Oh, it’ll endure – in its fashion. In memory. No, come back here in twenty years –

  –Only twenty?

  –You want thirty?, I’ll give you thirty – but little more. No, I suppose I suffer the same Kafu-Seidensticker nostalgia. It’s going – gone! How often can you write about “the stones underneath this shitheap of concrete underneath the next layer of dust under the following bag of bones” – what fire was it now?, what disaster? – well, anyway, under it all, they say, a certain legend is said to have occurred, though it cannot be verified because all municipal and poetic records were destroyed the last time a building to last for exactly three years was built on the spot, and on and on? That can not go on. Tokio does not want a memory – we know that. But by now it is so far gone that the memory itself has forgotten its job, forgotten to remember. What’s that illness dealing with accelerated growth, quickening senility. It repeats itself all over the city. Something new, virginal is built or born, grows fast, and within a couple of decades all memory of its origins is lost. It happens all over the place, is happening in so many millions of versions. And no records are being kept. All those memories lost –

  –“Like tears in rain.”

  –Yes.

  –All gone?

  –All. Gone. But that’s ok, as it should be.

  –No!

  –Yes.

  –But a new Tokyo – the spirit?

  –Ha! The “Spirit!” No, that’s precisely the problem. The Spirit dies too. Yes, Tokio may be found West, as I’ve been saying. But it keeps going West, and, ok, might redefine itself, but in the process comes so far from the first, that, well, it’s nothing like what it was. After all thirty million people – what balance can be found there? We’ve passed the Millennium, the subways are expanding –

  –Anus takes over the sun, and can’t be said to shine?

  –Ha, yes! So, it all gets out of hand. When Roberta and I lived here, those many years, wonderful years, I was overjoyed by the idea of twenty-five millions, of all the human parts of the great machine that had found the proper balance of chaos and order, what a maze! So much fun to be a hamster – though I’d also almost intuitively, I suppose, favored the chaotic – that is how it is you know, living here, at first you see only the chaos, then begin to perceive the order, then to feel the balance, and then, finally, you see that chaos is the real order of things, but by then you have become so accustomed to Tokio, you far more easily accept the chaos, the miscellania, all that that does not seem to pertain to any certain order – you welcome it, revel in it. You are a Tokioite. But the last time we were here for a visit, it suddenly seemed to me that I’d never seen so many people, where were they all coming from, how was one to make any sense of this place? Or maybe I’m just getting older. Would I feel that way had we never left? Probably not; I’d have grown with the place, never noticed the greater numbers. But it’s not my job anymore to help maintain the continuity and change – it’s yours.

  –So, was there ever something you can call a “Tokyo spirit”? Surely, there must have been. That’s what you’ve always been talking about, you and many others. Tokyo’s ways are not Japan’s, Tokyo’s special character …<
br />
  –Good question. Open question. “Was Tokio ever the Tokyo we imagine it to have been?” And when been? That’s the problem with we nostalgiasts. What Tokio are we speaking of? The night Kafu met so-and-so in Ogikubo? The morning of an execution along the river? That perfect day when the cherry blossoms …? The aborted coup? The lonely afternoon when the arrow sang? The 1927 opening of the subway? (The tickets were in four languages, by the way.) The fire – which fire? – the air-raids? The day Zonar opened? The day he arrived – and was as immediately swept away on the road to Gunma Prefecture only seeing the skyscrapers of Shinjuku, not even able to visit his grave in Zoshigaya, wondering when he would ever see the city he’d given so much thought to? The day she got the broke-heart letter? The day he finally lost his virginity?

  –Hold on.

  –No. I can’t. Do these make a Tokio? That’s what I have to wonder.

  –Well, do they?

  –I’m not sure. Maybe this is it. You lose your virginity, you die in a fire, you hear an arrow zing by, whatever … what makes it Tokio? What is a Tokio-specific experience? Not so much that you happened to be here, but – what?

  –That you associate the experience with the time, with the place?

  –No. That’s not it. But it’s close.

  –??

  –Maybe … that you associate, but you also realize – realize deeply – that while it may have occurred in almost any other place, there was also something eerie, uncanny, in that it could only have occurred here. Some special knowledge and association. I’m sure lots of people have lost their – what is it, “cherries”? – and I’m glad for ’em – well, when you’ve lost it here, you know there’s a difference, there’s a memory that includes Tokio.

  –That’s it?

  –Isn’t that enough?

  –Uhm …

  –No, you’re right. Maybe it isn’t enough. But you get the idea – ?

  –Yeah …

  –Ok, good, Then it’s enough for now. That’ll give you something to go on.

  –??

  –But you have to go with it.

  –But where’s that leave the future of Tokyo that you were speaking of?

  –Was I? Oh, well, I’ll be gone before that occurs. I have no doubt that the city will survive in one form or another; I wonder if I will like the changes, but I hope to be able to appreciate them. As for the rest, the real future, that’s up to you. Try to maintain a bit of the old and the new Tokios. Try to remember a few of the stories and legends. And add more! I’ll be leaving – with my Tokio – you’re staying, make your own.

  And so they talked, and so they walked, easwest, southnorth, the bridges and stations. He took his notes, brief, barely articulate, but he was grateful for the names and memories. He might look them up in a spare moment, but was only too aware that they were not his Tokyo – he kept to the conventional spelling – and while he was new at it – even his “cherry” intact (he liked that, that his cherry might blossom here) – he knew too that this Lang that he was speaking with, this foreigner who seemed now such an old-hand, had occasionally referred to a man named Cafferty, who Lang admitted that he had had briefly to rely on in the forms of some brief conversations (though it seems they were never really very close), a walk or two, and a small sheaf of notes:

  “Dear Lang:

  I’m too old and too used to my paths to help you now. I hear from Roberta that you’ve taken an interest in my beloved city, this old Tokyo I can barely discern now. Good for you. She further reassures me that your interest is serious.

  I trust her.

  I liked you from the first time we met – liked you, I should admit, from a distance. But, I have to admit, that I found you then too excitable. What was it? Why? That you seemed to need to intimidate her at the same time that you humbled yourself to her? Frankly – I’ll keep this short – that put me off from you. It was only her reassurances to me that, well, you were confused about being here, that lead me to let up on my earlier judgment of you. In time, of course, I saw you shake that silver mane of yours, and snap yourself out of it, saw the side of you that she treasures, the whole man, or almost all.

  And then we met casually a few more times.

  You are fine. (I’ve suffered the same way that I saw that you did.) I only wish the best for you and my own beloved Roberta, who will linger in my mind for a very long time – as long as I am given. She has told me that you have come to have a great passion for the city; not an ordinary passion, that is, as so many who come here experience and tarry, and then let go of. I suspect that you have also seen what it has come to mean to her – I mean the city, of course, but especially her few blocks of it. I trust now that you have come to respect that, those. She sees the whole city in those few familiar blocks– and you see yourself in, well, more. Both views are valid.

  I will trust you, Lang. Perhaps years ago – many years – we might have become good friends and done a bit of “pavement botanizing” together. But no more, not now. I am leaving, slowly. I reduce my apartments year by year till they reach the contentment of that small pine box. No desire to speak – what could I say?, who would listen? – oh, I know you of all might, but to what purpose? – and besides, sight leaves too. (This might be my last typed letter!) But seriously: Pride, dignity, respect: what matter?

  I lived in Tokyo.

  Lang, surely, isn’t that enough?

  Therefore: I am enclosing a few notes – garnered from this and that, from a time I thought I could write – but then you read Hölderlin or Rilke, and realize the responsibilities of poetry, and it’s better to simply walk away and not embarrass yourself. When you go deeper, however, you’ll notice the small references. A little something to get you going – this city, unfortunately – perhaps – leads you straight into poetry; or so I have found. Maybe that is why I chose finally only to follow the city, and leave its poetry to others better than I. Can you do it? I wonder. Defeated by poetry, and won by the city, can not, certainly, be the worst of fates. I am sorry I have no more to give you – like so many lives in this city, mine too went up in flames. Long ago.

  FLAMES

  Of passion, certainly;

  Flames too of accident.

  Eastwest!

  All the best,

  Cafferty

  The young man then looked through the envelope of notes that Lang – this new acquaintance – had handed over to him. After a short while, he was able to figure out their order, but not their poetry. He decided, finally, to leave them stand.

  A.

  SENJUOHASHI

  “Senju Big Bridge”

  “When we disembarked at Senju, my heart grew heavy at the thought of the thousands of miles that lay ahead, and tears welled from my eyes on leaving my friends in this world of illusion.”

  – Basho

  The Great Thousand-armed bridge was the first across the Sumida, 1594, very north, and near an old Edo execution ground. (For serious crimes, the authorities really did parade the criminals through the city, as in Mizoguchi’s, Chikamatsu Monogatari.) Now this is interesting: the temple, the Kozukappara Ekō’in, that the criminals were then buried in, was affiliated with the Ekō’in, which is the one that honors those who died in the Fire of the Long Sleeves. Not bad company for arsonists, robbers and murderers. Another: that Hiraga Gennai is also honored – if that’s the appropriate word – here; after all, he was a murderer.

  NB: How it all comes together along the river and the bridges and subways. The bridge in fact later became known as the Kozukappara Bridge, a bit more colorful than Great Bridge, perhaps, but the color seems a morbid hue.

  (Anyway, the Bridge was washed away and doesn’t exist anymore.)

  B.

  SHIRAHIGEHASHI

  “White Whiskers Bridge”

  1.

  AKIHABARA

  The kiosks are all different and none have Snickers, there is a “milk bar” in the station, an incongruous Akihabara supermarket and department store, but it
is the warrens spelling our future that the place is known for. I prefer the small stalls in and around the station: thousands of cables, or clips, or doo-dads that only specialists understand, and the true Tokyo types selling them. They are of course dwarfed by the big stores, screens, and constant shouting (by those other “true” Tokyo types).

  The Occupation, once again, did not know what it was creating when it moved a bunch of open-air shops from Kanda to Akihabara. Now it’s all here, the nerd-geniuses.

  C.

  SAKURABASHI

  1987

  “Cherry Blossom Bridge” – yes, the blossoms here are lovely, but couldn’t they have come up with a better name? No, probably not.

  D.

  KOTOTOIBASHI

  “Asking-for-Word Bridge”

  The poet Narihara sent a Miyako-dori – a seagull – asking for word of – appropriately – the capitol (but the other one).

  Green, poetic (tragic?)

  Mukojima, Basho’s hut, Tamanoi renamed Pigeon Street, and Kafu’s great story, east of the river. (Where was Fuji Ice, his favorite café?)

  New Year’s crafts fair, a walk along the river, happier days for us all.

  (All that nostalgia for the Yoshiwara too – 18 Great Connoisseurs! – astringent indeed when you think of the women behind cages, all ready for fine “conversation.” Query: why did footbinding never find a taste here?)

  2.

  ASAKUSABASHI-EKI

  At the foot the Stationary Museum, where one knight fells another with his lance, Castell. Here too two realms are united: love and writing: the Belle Grande Hotel and a Kokuyo billboard. Sorobans and felt-tips battle forever against the calculator and computer. (A flying skull?)

  E.

  AZUMABASHI

  “Bridge of My Wife”

  “Alas, my wife!” – a self-sacrificying deity.

  1774, later 1887, steel girders.

  The view of the bridges from here glitters like some pink and green lace, lingerie.

  It is best viewed from a middle distance, looking east one sees the land higher than is the bridge.

  F.

  KOMAGATABASHI

  “Colt-Shaped Hall” (or “Cuckoos over Komagata”)