by Chris Tharp
“You want to listen punk rock?”
“Yeahhhhhh!” I yelled, downing it.
“Okay. You go to my friend’s bar. Tonight there is punk rock music.”
Koji wrote down some quick directions for me. I slapped him on the back and shook his hand, and Steve and I were off in search of the punk palace.
“How cool is this, dude,” I said. “We’re gonna see a punk show in Japan.”
“Yeah man. I can handle it.”
We hiked down the street according to the directions, until we came to the lobby of the building that housed the bar.
“This is it,” I said.
We boarded the elevator and rode it up to the sixth floor. As we exited the elevator, we stood in front of a door. Loud punk music blared out from behind. A skinny dude in black leather stood there, collecting the cover. He smoked Marlboro Reds and laughed with two buddies, who were also fully done up in the Japanese punk rock uniform. As we approached he politely pointed to the sign, which read: 1500 Yen (about sixteen or seventeen dollars at the time).
“It’s a bit pricey… but screw it, we’re in Japan, what can we do?” I slapped down the notes, got my stamp, and walked in, followed by Steve.
Like most of the places we’d been to that night, the joint was small, with a DJ spinning standard, vintage punk fare (Ramones, Buzzcocks) from a table up on a platform. We sauntered up to the bar and ordered a couple more beers, taking stock of our surroundings. A few Japanese punks were hanging out drinking, but otherwise it appeared to be empty.
We got our beers and walked around the black box of a room.
“Where’s the stage?” asked Steve.
“That is a good question.”
As we looked around more, we quickly discovered that there wasn’t one.
“I think we just paid thirty bucks to listen to a punk rock DJ,” muttered Steve.
“A punk rock DJ? Are you kidding me? There’s no such thing. DJs are the least punk rock people in the world.”
I gulped down my beer and glared at the guy in the studded leather jacket standing on the DJ platform. He fiddled with his laptop and bobbed his head. I fought the urge to jump up there, grab his headphones, snap them in two, and force them down his gullet.
Steve continued, “Well, that’s what the cover was evidently for. I don’t see any band.”
“Nah, nah, nah.” I felt the tequila-stoked fire burn in my belly. “Let’s ask the bartender.”
“If he speaks English.”
“He’ll speak enough.”
We went back to the bar and got the man’s attention.
“Hey,” I yelled, over the blare of Black Flag’s TV Party. “Tonight… band?” I mimed playing the guitar. “Punk rock show?”
He shook his head no.
“No band?”
“No,” he said, turning away.
“Fuck this shit.” I moaned to Steve. “We’re gettin’ our money back. Come on.”
Steve followed me to the door. I was now loaded on beer and tequila and on a punk-fueled tear. As I exited I turned to the guys collecting cover.
“Tonight, no band?” Again I mimed the guitar.
“No, no,” he waved me away.
“Then we want our money back.”
He looked at me, not fully understanding.
“Money back. Yen.” I slapped my palm. “We came for band. No band. No money.”
“No. You pay.”
“No. Money back.” Slap slap.
“No no. You pay! No money back!” Vehement head shaking.
“Give us our money back! You call yourselves punks? Charging money for a fucking DJ?”
“Uh, Chris, let’s just get out of here.”
“These little assholes have the nerve to call themselves punk rock? You cocksuckers don’t know shit about punk rock! Sure you got the uniform on but that doesn’t mean anything, you poser motherfuckers!”
The guy at the door had enough, and lunged at me, screaming in Japanese. His friends grabbed him before he could land a punch, and Steve pushed me into the elevator which opened up just in time. As the door closed, we heard a loud THUNK of the skinny dude’s boot against the metal.
“Holy shit, dude, you’re going to get us killed.”
“Sorry,” I gasped. “Punk rock my ass…”
“You’re crazy, Tharp.”
“Fuck it.” My rage now turned from hot to ticklish, and I unleashed the chaos in a series of deep belly-laughs, which echoed around the confines of the elevator.
We were both hungry now, and hoped to grab a bite on our way back to the hotel. Japan isn’t as rife with late-night choices as many other Asian countries, but they still know how to rock some after-hour street grub. We soon came upon a tent lit by a single bulb. It was empty except for the man sitting behind several metal pans of steaming water, in which was floating an array of oteng—a kind of compressed fish paste. I had eaten the Korean version, odeng, on countless occasions; it was one of my favorite street snacks, but the way they served it up on the peninsula was no match for the sight before me.
“Oh my God! Do you see that? Is that odeng?” I drunkenly moaned.
Korean odeng comes in just one color: beige, and is almost always a square cut from a ribbon and stuck on to a wooden skewer. This authentic oteng came in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. There were squares and triangles and orbs made up of various shades of yellow, brown, and even red. Unlike their Korean cousin, none of them were skewered, but floated independently in the broth.
I had to have some.
“Wow. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I hovered over the hot vats of oteng in absolute fascination. “Where do you start? I want some.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“Hey, sssir!” I looked through blurry eyes to the man, who glared back wearily.
“Oteng. How much?”
He looked on, unmoved.
“Hey Tharp, I don’t think he speaks English.”
“That’s okay! I’ll just point to what I want! Don’t these look fucking awesome?”
“Never been a big fan.”
“Okay, sir! I want… lemme have… let’s see…” I tottered on my feet as I attempted to make up my mind. “Lemme have the… the big round red one.” I pointed, “…and THAT one… and… and… OH YEAH! The triangle one looks great!”
The man looked down and vigorously shook his head side-to-side.
“I don’t think he’s having it,” said Steve.
“What?”
“I think he’s through with you.”
“What? No way. Excuse me, sir? I’d like—”
He looked back up and shook his head again—this time more forcefully. He accompanied this with a dramatic waving of his arms, letting me know—in no uncertain terms—that my drunken ass wasn’t going to get served.
“Ah man! Come on! I just want some odeng!”
He muttered something in Japanese and further waved me away. Steve pulled me back out onto the sidewalk and we stumbled toward our hotel.
“This sucks. Motherfucker!” I shouted back.
“You were denied. You were refused odeng,” Steve said, laughing. “I’m not sure if that’s ever happened before, to anyone, anywhere.”
We ended the night in a noodle tent. Steve made me promise to ratchet it down a few notches before entering, to which I gladly obliged, having learned my lesson from the recalcitrant oteng seller. We both ordered bowls of ramen, which went down nicely after an evening of sushi and booze. When some Westerners hear the word ramen, they may picture dirt cheap Top Ramen, with its packets of MSG flavoring. That style of ramen is mainly eaten by the truly poor and broke students back home; it bears little resemblance to a real bowl of ramen sold in the tents of Fukuoka, or any Japanese city, for that matter. Proper Japanese ramen is tender to the tooth, served in a rich, savory broth, and topped off with a couple of thin slices of sweet, fatty pork. It’s a glorious thing to behold and even holier to ingest, and after an eve
ning of non-stop talking, Steve and I were left with no words—just slurping sounds—as we took down some serious noodles.
*
The Shinkansen rocketed at a velocity that seemed impossible. Steve and I relaxed, worked on a crossword together, and watched the Japanese countryside warp by in a blur as we headed north toward the main island of Honshu, enjoying this truly remarkable mode of transport. The bullet train lived up to its reputation, reaching speeds of nearly three hundred kilometers an hour. Often, when traveling by car or even airplane, you have no sense of how fast you are actually travelling. The Shinkansen, however, shattered all such ignorance. One glance out of the window toward the rice fields and houses flickering by, and we had no trouble comprehending the speed of our journey.
Hiroshima sits on a river delta and has all the features of a modern, lovely Japanese city. The wide, tree-lined streets play host to light-rail trams; the air is clean with a taste of ocean salt; like everywhere in Japan, the sidewalks are immaculate and the shops and restaurants give off the warm glow of prosperity. Hiroshima looked like a terrific place to call home, nothing like the scenes of destruction that I’d come to associate it with. For most of us, it is synonymous with misery and horror. To gaze at the present-day city was pleasantly jarring, however, since it looked nothing like the black-and-white photos of flattened and charred buildings, skeletons of vehicles, and the maimed, hopeless inhabitants that I had come to equate with the city. I knew the place had been rebuilt, of course, but I had no idea just how completely they had achieved the goal. Like Fukuoka, Hiroshima was nice. While its history may have been tragic, its present seemed nothing of the sort.
But we hadn’t come to Hiroshima to marvel at its modernity: we were there for its past. We wanted to pay witness to this venue of unimaginable carnage and attempt to understand—not with our minds, but with our guts—what exactly had gone down at 8:15 in morning of August 6th, 1945. We wished to examine the scene of the crime, to pay our respects, and perhaps to give penance. Most overriding, though, was the urge to reach out as humans and attempt to make sense of what can only be described as the height of inhumanity.
So Steve and I disembarked from the Shinkansen and set out for the city’s Peace Park—a memorial to the atomic attack that lies along the banks of the slow-flowing Ota River near the city center. Steve consulted the map in his guidebook, and we were immediately on our way. This wasn’t easy. Now that I was actually in Hiroshima, I fought the urge to turn around and jump back on the bullet train. Did I really want to spend my afternoon thinking of such death and my country’s bloody hand in its creation? But this was more a pilgrimage than a pleasure trip, and we grimly pressed on, knowing our quest to be one of necessity.
The Peace Park is aptly named, for it was quiet, even by Japanese standards. The only sound was that of the breeze, some squawking seagulls, and the weird little pink sightseeing boats chugging up the river. Steve and I strolled along in contemplation, observing this unwritten rule of silence, hyper-aware of the fact that we trod upon hallowed ground. It was early spring and the cherry blossoms were just beginning to bloom, giving the surroundings a taste of life. But all I could think about was death. I tried to imagine the feeling of going about your business on a Sunday morning, only to be blinded by a flash, feel the air ripped from your lungs, and get hit with an incinerating blast of hellish heat. Multiply this feeling by tens of thousands of people, and the enormity becomes too much to bear. As I morbidly obsessed on these details—the melted flesh, the crisped skin, the people who were vaporized with their shadows burned into the sides of buildings—I was not overtaken with emotion. I felt no tears, no horror, no guilt even. I was strangely detached, bowing my head, walking in silence, but feeling little. I was reminded of attending mass with my family in my late teens, with the kneeling and genuflecting and mumbling of prayers. The process was supposed to infuse me with grace, but instead I was left feeling hollow and false in the knowledge that I was just going through the motions.
The most iconic structure in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park is the Hiroshima Prefecture Industrial Promotion Hall, which is the closest surviving building to the epicenter of the bomb’s detonation. It has since been renamed the Genbako Dome, or “A-bomb Dome”, and serves as a testament to the blast. The roof of the dome was sheared off by the explosion, but the frame remains, giving the building the look of a clean-eaten carcass, a warning to other prey. It’s the one remaining relic of that terrible morning, and to anyone viewing it, it sends home the reality of what happened. After snapping some photographs, I just stood and looked. The emptiness inside me gave way to a warm, sad understanding.
Eventually Steve and I wandered up to the Peace Park’s museum, where my earlier mental speculation as to the effects of the bombing and subsequent radiation on human beings was confirmed by many graphic photographs. These pictures served as exhibits—close-up shots of burned, poisoned, and misshapen people—all civilians, many of them children. I hadn’t eaten since the morning, but my hunger turned to nausea as I took in the photographic evidence of the crime. They were hard to look at but I forced myself, and I challenge anyone to do the same and not be sickened.
We spent about an hour at the museum, which included not just documentation about the victims of the blast, but information on the physics of the Hiroshima explosion, as well as extensive data on nuclear weapons in general. There were charts displaying which countries possessed the bomb, as well as the estimated size of their arsenals. Unsurprisingly, the USA topped the list. The museum strove to be more than a memorial, however. It attempted to inform people about the reality of nuclear weapons, and at the same time, it advocated for their total eradication.
As we left the museum, we came upon the guestbook, which was an intriguing read. Messages from people around the world attempted to articulate the inexpressible. Most were short lines of sorrow and regret, with plenty of pleas for peace. Some of my fellow Americans left personal notes of apology, trying to put their shame and sense of guilt into words. One Canadian commenter did the opposite: she attempted to wash away culpability by reminding the world—through underlining, exclamation points, and all caps—that she was from Canada, NOT the USA, and that her nation had no hand in the bombing. The guestbook acted as part mirror, part Rorschach test. After reading comments for ten minutes, I was ready to leave my own. I picked up the pen and put it to the white paper, but paused. I attempted to form opening words, but they felt cheap and inadequate. Defeated, I set the pen down and walked away.
Stunned and somewhat shaken, we left the Peace Memorial Park and headed back into town. Though two hours of revisiting one of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century had tamped down our hunger, our appetites now returned with a vengeance. It was time to eat, and soon we found ourselves in the huge, covered Hondori Shopping Arcade, because nothing takes your mind off atomic catastrophes like the bright colors and strange flash of happy Japanese consumerism.
For lunch we went local, sampling Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, a kind of fritter layered with egg, cabbage, bean sprouts, sliced pork, and octopus, cooked on a hot plate as we looked on. It was hearty, filling, and delicious. This was some proper regional fare and made us feel more connected to the older, non-nuclear Hiroshima.
Bellies full, we left the little restaurant and joined the shoppers in the Hondori Arcade. We had an over an hour until our train back to Fukuoka, so this market looked to be the perfect place to kill some time. Steve was looking to pick up some souvenirs, but Japan had already sapped my wallet, so I was more than content to just window-shop and return to Korea empty-handed.
“I’m gonna check out that shop over there. Maybe pick up something for my students,” Steve said.
“Cool. I’m going to look on my own. Why don’t we meet back here in thirty minutes?”
I proceeded to walk down the arcade a couple of hundred meters until something caught my eye. It was a comic book store. While not a collector or even a huge fan of comics, I love the
stores that contain them. In America I’ve spent many hours browsing through store selections, from superhero stuff to alternative to erotica. I like to check it all out, and the more obscure the title, the better. I had never been to a comic store in Japan, though. I was familiar with manga (Japanese comics) and had dabbled in reading some years before, but here I was in Hiroshima, facing the entrance of the Manga Mothership. So I slipped through the threshold and proceeded to get lost.
It must be said that the Japanese are notorious perverts. They even outdo their old allies Germany in this regard. Some of the strangest sexual stuff on the Internet emanates from Japan. Whether it’s bukkake (a ring of men masturbating onto a woman—or another man), puke videos, or “tub girls,” with arcing shots of brown liquid from the subject’s assholes, the Japanese just seem to have an obsession with bizarre and forbidden, or at the very least, relaxed attitudes toward those who do. There’s a pervy, sexual vein running through Japanese society which they embrace openly. This was evidenced on the streets as well, with so many of the women wearing short skirts and stockings or knee-high heeled boots. So much of the fashion had a fetishistic sensibility. There’s just a sense of really kinky sexuality that pervades the country as a whole, and nowhere does this manifest itself more clearly than in manga. This comic shop took things to a whole new level. I thought I was prepared for what I was about to see, but, in reality, I was not. And bear in mind that this was no seedy shop near the train station or off some forlorn freeway exit. It was in the busiest, most famous shopping arcade in the city.
The bottom floor was made up of your run-of-the-mill manga, most of which featured cover illustrations of young teenage girls drawn in the form’s signature style—long limbs, slim bodies, full breasts, and unrealistically huge eyes. As I walked down the aisle and eyed the covers, I saw that the comics spanned countless subjects: high school romance, baseball, basketball, idol groups, fantasy, magic, martial arts, supernatural, horror, and many more. Like most manga, eroticism was inherent in even the most innocent of titles, though I only took in a few that featured swimsuit poses and camel-toed panty shots. They were in the collection, but in the minority, and as suggestive as they were, everyone kept their clothes on, even if it was just their underclothes.