by Ryu Murakami
He didn’t reply to this but reached out to touch my cheek. He looked a bit sad, or hurt, and I resolved never to tease him like that again.
Over in the glass-partitioned smoking corner, the senior citizen from out west is lighting a cigarette. His wife is intent on eating the cookie or whatever it is, and never so much as glances his way. His shoulder bag sits on the floor at her feet, but she doesn’t look at that either. Maybe her teeth are bad—it takes her a long time to chew her little snack. Her mouth and lips form an amazing variety of shapes as she chews. Meanwhile, her hands are busy with the cellophane wrapper. First she spreads it out and smoothes all the wrinkles, then she begins to fold it. She sits with her legs pressed modestly together and her head tilted forward, exaggerating her stoop, and she uses both hands to work on the square of cellophane. When the corners don’t line up perfectly, she spreads it out again. She’s completed two folds now, forming a square one-quarter the size of the original.
After our dinner in Shinagawa, Saito continued to reserve time with me through the club. We met at love hotels, and sometimes we undressed and sometimes we didn’t. He mostly talked about his company and his thoughts about life and so on, and never pried into my private affairs. He never tried to get me to have full-on sex with him either, or to go on private dates. About three months after our first encounter, we met up at a love hotel as always but then went to a little Japanese restaurant in Ebisu, a place with only one small counter. We had some sashimi—triggerfish and winter yellowtail—and drank hot sake from Ishikawa Prefecture in these lovely Shimizu-yaki cups. He got a little red in the face from the sake and said, more than once, “I feel so at ease with you, Yui.” I drank two cups, which surprisingly didn’t make me feel queasy at all. I guess it loosened me up a little, though, because I started talking about myself. I told him I was divorced and had a child, and touched on some of the things I always think about. He just listened, nodding, and when we parted he stroked my face softly and kissed me. I was relieved that he still did that, even after learning more about my situation.
The square of cellophane has been folded into one-sixteenth its original size when I hear the announcement: This is the final boarding call for ANA Flight 645 to Kumamoto. Ticketed passengers who have not completed check-in, please report immediately to Counter 15. I’m trying to keep my eyes on the automatic doors at the entrance, but I’m nervous and distracted and keep glancing back at the old woman. I’ve been doing that all this time, looking back and forth. There’s no one I know in the crowd around me, of course, and no one who knows me, and the voices of all these strangers, mixed with the chimes and the departure announcements, are starting to make everything seem a little unreal.
I wonder if I should have let Saito visit my apartment, instead of resisting. Maybe I should have introduced him to my little boy and gone with them to a department store or amusement park, as he suggested. “Would you like me to drop in at your place some Saturday or Sunday, Yui? I’d love to meet your son.” He said this in a very unpushy way, a few days after that night in Ebisu. I didn’t know what to say, so I just lowered my eyes, and he smiled and said, “I don’t mean right away, but at some point...” It scared me a little, to be honest. I wondered how long this man would continue to treat me so well. Maybe because I’d been through a divorce, I felt certain that no matter how good a relationship was, it was bound to go sour sooner or later.
Why are you so nice to someone like me, who has a job like this? I’d wanted to ask Saito that ever since our first few sessions, but I somehow sensed that I shouldn’t. There were other things I would’ve liked to ask too. We’ve been meeting two or three times a week, which means that including hotel fees he spends three to four hundred thousand a month just to be with me, and I have to wonder if that isn’t a problem for him. But who am I to question what he does, when, after all, he’s doing it of his own free will? Besides, it might seem as if I was trying to get him to say he loves me.
I’m wearing black half-boots. The old lady opposite is wearing red leather sneakers. There are six seats over there, and six different pairs of legs. I wonder what made me tell him about that movie poster. It was five days ago. We were lying naked in each other’s arms. “We can do anything you want,” I had told him, and we’d had real sex for the first time. I asked him not to tell the owner of the club, and he laughed. “Why would I do something like that?” he said. “You crack me up, Yui.”
It had been a long time since I’d heard a man laugh like that. Throughout the divorce, my husband was in a permanent state of gloom. Saito’s laughter made me happy, and in a lighthearted mood I told him the story that led to me sitting here now. I had taken my son shopping in Shinjuku one day, and as we were walking along the east side of the station, he said, “Look at the funny picture, Mama!” It was a poster outside a movie theater, showing a long line of Middle Eastern women in veils walking through the desert and, above them, prosthetic legs parachuting from the sky. (Saito said, “Prosthetic legs?” and I said, “You know, artificial limbs.”) The poster really puzzled me, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so the next day I went to Shinjuku by myself to see the movie. It was about Afghanistan. The UN had sent these prosthetic legs for victims of land mines, but the region was dangerous, with no roads, so the only way to deliver them was to drop them from the air. As I was watching the movie, I started thinking how great it would be to help make legs for people wounded by mines. The feeling was so strong, and so sudden, that it startled me.
The woman across from me casually drops the wrapper she’s been folding so carefully. Now about the size of a fingertip, it lands on the floor by her left foot. The lady to my right gets up with her daughter, and a young couple sits down in their place. Each has two pieces of matching, light blue luggage, and as soon as they’re settled they take cell phones from their jacket pockets. A chime sounds over the PA system again, and the announcement is repeated: This is the final boarding call for ANA Flight 645 to Kumamoto. Ticketed passengers who have not completed check-in, please report immediately to Counter 15. Afterwards, the name Kumamoto seems to hang over the airport like a mist, which wraps itself around me and seeps into my skin. The suitcases of the couple on my right are covered with stickers from foreign destinations: Phuket, Guam, Hawaii, Paris, Hong Kong. I’ve never been abroad.
I was taken aback by what Saito said after I told him the story. “In that case,” he said, “you should get a job making those things.” We were still in bed together, with perspiration on our chests and stomachs. I laughed and said it wasn’t possible. “Why not?” he said. I’d never really thought about it before, but the reasons seemed clear enough: I’m a high-school graduate, thirty-three years old, divorced, raising a four-year-old child, and I work in the sex trade. These facts define who I am and limit my freedom and possibilities. And I didn’t really want to think about all that. I felt sad, and moved closer to him and took his hand and pressed it to my cheek. I wished I hadn’t mentioned the movie. He stroked my face and whispered: “It’s not impossible.”
I turn in my seat, to take in the whole terminal. The ceiling directly above me is tens of meters high, but to my left are some escalators that lead to the open second and third floors, where all the restaurants are, and shops that sell everything you could ever need—from Persian rugs to tampons. In one corner of the lobby down here, a big flat-screen TV is showing a late-morning news program. Panelists on the show are discussing a twenty-one-year-old man who killed his wealthy grandmother by soaking her in gasoline and setting her on fire. The young couple to my right are both text-messaging on their cell phones. Maybe they’re honeymooners, letting some friends know how much fun they’re having. That seems normal enough. It’s also normal for the old country lady to wait expressionlessly for her husband to return from the smoking corner, and it’s normal for the TV panelists to register shock or sympathy as they discuss the murder. But a thirty-three-year-old single mother who works in the sex trade w
anting to make artificial legs for land-mine victims? That’s not normal. Which is why I’d never mentioned it to anyone else before.
“We talked about my job once, remember?” Saito said, taking his hand away, and I nodded. “What I do is come up with systems solutions. All kinds of different companies require our services, but one thing is always true: you can’t find a solution for something unless you’ve got a firm grasp of the problem. Most business managers have it all wrong. They assume that since they’re paying us pricey consultant fees, we’re supposed to show them some magical way to raise productivity; and a lot of them get angry when I ask what they think the problem is. Sometimes they’ll even start shouting: ‘I thought it was your job to figure that out!’ But that sort of reaction is just bluster, to cover up the fact that they haven’t really analyzed what’s wrong. In your case, Yui, you already know what the problem is. That’s why it’ll be easy to come up with a solution.” He was stroking my cheek again as he said this.
The check-in counter is to my right. In front of it is a machine with a conveyor belt, where people put their luggage to be X-rayed. When a bag comes out at the other end, a security guard puts an inspected sticker on it. My travel bag is an old Celine, the canvas kind, and it’s still got a crumpled rectangular tag attached, from a trip I took long ago. The tag says Sapporo. I traveled there with my husband before our boy was born. The factory was just a small operation then, but the recession had been going on and on, and he hadn’t had a vacation in ages. He remembered me saying before we were married that I hoped one day to see the big Snow Festival, and somehow he managed to arrange a couple of days off and take me to Sapporo. We walked through Odori Park, looking at all the giant snow sculptures, and had ramen at a shop near the Clock Tower, and for dinner we treated ourselves to the famous crab. That’s all, but it’s a special memory, which is why I never removed the tag.
Even after we divorced, he used to come by to visit the boy, and occasionally we’d meet for a meal, but lately he hardly ever gets a chance to do anything like that. Sometimes he phones, and when he does he always tells me he’s sorry, in a defeated sort of voice. He doesn’t talk about what’s going on, but there must be a ton of things to do in the wake of closing a factory down. He doesn’t know about my job, of course. I’m afraid that if I told him, he might try to take the boy away. When I saw Saito three days ago, I finally screwed up the courage to ask him if he didn’t disrespect me for being in this line of work. He was quiet for a minute, then said, “I think it’s better than killing yourself, or being dependent on someone else.” And he showed me a printout.
“People who make artificial limbs are called ‘prosthetic technicians,’” he told me, “and there’s a national exam they have to pass.” The printout was of a web page he’d found. To sit for the exam, you first have to graduate from a training school. It takes three years to graduate, and there are only five accredited schools in the whole country. He said he thought the one in Kumamoto was best. In the printout were photos of actual students making things. A female trainee was measuring the missing portion of a middle-aged man’s left leg. It’s funny, but somehow when I looked at that photo it all felt strangely familiar to me, and I told him that.
I don’t know how many times, after seeing the movie, I thought about searching the Internet to find this same kind of information. But then I’d get nervous just thinking about it, and in the end I never did anything. I was afraid to take the idea too seriously, I guess. Saito suggested we go to Kumamoto and have a look at the school. “When you’re actually at the place,” he said, “maybe it’ll feel even more familiar.” Then I looked at the costs involved, and sighed. Entrance fee, half a million yen; yearly tuition, six hundred thousand; lab fees, four hundred thousand, equipment and facilities fees, two hundred thousand. A total of 1.7 million yen was needed right from the start. Completely out of reach for me. When I said as much, he smiled and said, “Yui, there’s no point in worrying about that now. There’s an entrance exam and an interview process, and you won’t even begin that till next year. So why not worry about costs later?”
The old man returns from the smoking corner. His wife stands up with the same blank expression and lets him have the seat. He says something to her, and she rummages in her handbag and pulls out another little snack, wrapped in cellophane. He removes the wrapper and hands it back to her. The young couple on my right have finished text-messaging, and the guy is slumped over one of the big blue suitcases. His companion, putting her cell phone back in her pocket, glances up at something behind me. I feel cold leather on my cheek.
“It’s freezing out there.”
Saito’s wearing leather gloves. The square of cellophane in the old woman’s hands is about to become half its original size.
First English publication
Grateful acknowledgment is given to the periodicals that published earlier versions of some of the works included here:
“Whenever I Sit at a Bar Drinking Like This, I Always Think What a Sacred Profession Bartending Is”
—Words Without Borders, August 2004
“I Am a Novelist”
—The New Yorker, January 3, 2005
“It’s Been Just a Year and a Half Now Since I Went with My Boss to That Bar”
—ZOETROPE: ALL-STORY, Winter 2004
“No Matter How Many Times I Read Your Confession, There’s One Thing I Just Don’t Understand: Why Didn’t You Kill the Woman?”
—ZOETROPE: ALL-STORY, Winter 2010
“Lullaby”
—FICTION, Number 56 (2010)
“Penlight”
—ZOETROPE: ALL-STORY, Fall 2011
“The Last Picture Show”
—Words Without Borders, March 2011
“At the Airport”
—ZOETROPE: ALL-STORY, Summer 2009
“Swans”
—FICTION, Number 56 (2010)
Acknowledgments
Run, Takahashi! was one of the first Japanese books I ever got really excited about. Sometime in the late 1980s I translated all eleven of the “Takahashi” stories, certain that someone would publish the collection in English. No one did, but I managed to receive an NEA grant for the work. I’m still thankful for that, if only because it encouraged me to go on translating my favorite Ryu Murakami stories even though no one was asking me to. An early supporter of the translations was the amazing Jin Auh, thanks to whom several found homes in nice magazines, and I began to dream of publishing a wide-ranging “best of” omnibus. I quickly found out that publishers are wary of short-story collections, however, and was getting pretty discouraged until I met the noble and selfless Edward Lipsett of Kurodahan Press, who liked the idea. Ryu generously gave his blessing, and this book began to take shape. I reworked the translations until I felt they were as good as I could make them, then sent them to Stephen Shaw—the unsung hero of Japanese fiction in English—for a final edit. Stephen’s suggestions were invaluable, but I didn’t always listen, and any infelicities or false notes are of course entirely on me.
— Ralph McCarthy
Copyright Information
Tokyo Decadence: 15 Stories
Copyright © Ryu Murakami
Translation copyright © 2016 Ralph McCarthy
Edited by Stephen Shaw
This edition copyright © 2016 Kurodahan Press. All rights reserved.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be sold or used in any way in any other work or product without explicit advance written permission from Kurodahan Press. Thank you for helping to protect the author’s rights.
FG-JP0049E
ISBN: 978-4-902075-79-3
Edition: 1.1
Cover photograph by the author.
RoughTypewriter font by JibbaJabba Fonts, used with permission.
Kurodahan Press
Kurodahan Press is a division of Intercom,
Ltd.
#403 Tenjin 3-9-10, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka 810-0001 JAPAN
http://www.kurodahan.com
Contributors
Ryu Murakami (村上 龍) was not yet 24 when he won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for his debut novel, Almost Transparent Blue. He has now published some forty novels, a dozen short-story collections, an armful of picture books, and a small mountain of essays. Ryu hosts a popular and long-running weekly TV show focusing on business and economic topics, and has for many years promoted tours and produced records for Cuban musicians. He has written and directed five feature films, of which Topaz, a.k.a. Tokyo Decadence (1992) is probably the best known, and many of his novels have been made into films by other directors (notably Takashi Miike’s Audition).
Ryu Murakami novels published in English include Coin Locker Babies, Sixty-nine, Piercing, Audition, In the Miso Soup, Popular Hits of the Showa Era, and From the Fatherland, with Love.
Ralph McCarthy lives in Southern California. He has translated several novels by Ryu Murakami, including Sixty-Nine, In the Miso Soup, and Popular Hits of the Showa Era, as well as works by Yayoi Kusama (Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama and Hustlers Grotto), Teru Miyamoto (two of the novellas in Rivers), and Osamu Dazai (Blue Bamboo and Otogizoshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu).
