Tokyo Stirs: (Short Stories about Asia)

by Harmon Cooper

  The Nike commercial won’t be so popular in Japan. In fact, the marketing director who suggests airing it in the region will be fired (don’t worry; he’ll get a job at Adidas). Nike will see a small quarterly loss in the Japanese market, down .00002% from last year’s second fiscal quarter. They’ll make up for this the next quarter when they release Hello Kitty themed Air Jordans.

  A few years will pass and a music video director will discover the clip of Kodai running on Youtube. The director will use the clip for his latest music video from one of Britain’s up and coming pop starlets. The song will be called ‘Don’t Run’ and it will be as horrible as the title. People will eat it up and the starlet will go on to date a woman from Brooklyn who is the star of her own web series called Queen Bulldog. Kodai will even hear the song one day in a Starbucks near his home. Someone will tell him that he’s in the video, but he won’t believe them.

  ***

  We check back in with Kodai to find him running, or better, still running, from society, from the pressures of existence, from the police cars following after him, from the trouble that will come once he finally slows down.

  There’s Kodai in his underwear, sleeveless undershirt, high socks and black shoes, his knees moving up and down as his feet slap against the pavement, springing him forward, animalistic, pray or be preyed upon, push people onto the train or be pushed onto the train. He’s a hero to us all and at the same time, a stain on the supposed progress of order and humanity.

  A helicopter roars overhead, slicing through the humid summer like a blender. He’s thirsty, thinks about licking the sweat off his arm but decides not to. Too salty. His shoe catches on something in the road and he stumbles forward. Kodai lands on his left knee and the entire world stops with him. The cop cars behind him slow, the helicopter above him hovers, the people watching at home bite their nails or change channels assuming he’s finally been caught.

  Have no fear – Kodai stands triumphantly.

  With a grunt, he pulls himself back to his feet and starts running again. People cheer in his mind, the crowd goes wild and their roars tear through the fabric of conformity. In reality, the Japanese people who are watching the chase live on TV and the internet shake their heads – it is shameful to be doing what Kodai is doing, shameful to run so blatantly away from the things that are inevitable. Better to accept one’s position in life and steer through any hardship with your head aimed at a final destination.

  Herein lies the problem – Kodai never solidified a final destination in his mind when he took off on his now infamous run. Capture may be his only chance for escape. And as he continues his dash of defiance, he wonders what his punishment will be.

  It will likely be some sort of fine or public shaming; they will figure out some way to make sure a person never runs on the highway again. This is how most organizations respond: one person does something stupid and now they have to make a rule against everyone doing it. Humanity always dumbs itself down for the dimwits among us. This is why war, religion, optimism and despair are eternally en vogue.

  Predictably, Japan will respond to Kodai’s run by placing police guards at all the entrances to major highways. The guards will wear light blue uniforms and bullet proof vests. To make the operation somewhat cute –as are most things in Japan – the government will make the police booths look like giant smiling fish with their mouths open. The decorated booths will sugar-coat the true nature of their role. Highway running will be strictly forbidden.

  Let’s fast forward ten minutes.

  Kodai is still pounding tar with his black subway worker shoes. They’re holding up just fine, although the laces on his left shoe have come undone. He’s breathing hard now, his entire body covered in sweat.

  Fast forward ten more minutes.

  Yes, he’s still going. He is a healthy man who doesn’t need to retire; he could outrun a man half his age. Marathon runners around the world take note – this sixty-three year old man could beat you. He’s been running for over an hour now in ninety-five degree heat. The humidity alone is crippling. Kodai is a monster, he’s an animal, he’s…

  Slowing down. Kodai is slowing down. Even the sun has noticed. In a rare call-to-action, the sun waves over some clouds to block out his bright rays. It doesn’t want Kodai to give up, doesn’t want him to fail. It’s interesting to see a man running in protest of reality. How little Kodai matters in the whole scheme of things, the sun thinks. Encouraged by their bright counterpart, the clouds tear open, releasing thousands of gallons of water to the highway below.

  A quarter of the island is behind Kodai as he runs through the piercing rain: Twenty-seven police cars, two fire trucks, six ambulances, five news vans, three police helicopters, two American Apache helicopters just in case he is a terrorist, five news helicopters and a live Japanese satellite feed co-sponsored by Google and Softbank.

  The falling rain rejuvenates him. Sure, he’s sopping wet, but at least now he can drink some water. Kodai sticks his tongue out; water plinks against his tongue and slides down his throat. He twists one of the pant legs that is hung over his neck. Once twisted, the pant leg releases water that tastes like cottony sweat into his waiting mouth.

  There are no longer any cars in front of him. They’ve travelled too far down the highway to bother with Kodai’s run. The police have blocked the highway entrances for the next ten miles, giving him an obstacle-free path to run on. Nothing but miles of tar await his eager feet.

  Not long after the rain lets up, Kodai picks up his pace. His blood is pumping to every limb of his body now. He feels vibrant, forty years younger, strong and fierce. He could run forever. Given rain and a little food, Kodai could make it to Sapporo and back. He smiles at his own thought. It is foolish and he knows it. He’ll have to end his run soon. Everything has its stopping point – a sad truth that is hard to swallow.

  There is a loud voice behind him coming from the police cars. The voice is telling him to stop, saying this in a very polite way, speaking quite formally to a man many have deemed mad. The English translation would go something like this: ‘Mr. Kodai, sir, please slow down. Please stop running and move to the side of the road, please. This is very dangerous. Please slow down. Mr. Kodai, sir, please stop running and move to the side of the road, please. This is very dangerous.’

  But I don’t want to stop, Kodai thinks. And this thought sends a vibrant shiver through him. That’s what this is about, that’s the reasoning behind his action. He doesn’t want to slow down. He especially doesn’t want to be told to slow down.

  So Kodai speeds up, and he does so for fifteen more minutes, fifteen excruciating minutes in which his calf muscles feel as if they may rip themselves from his legs and fall like shriveled boulders to the highway below his feet. His lungs take in more air, trying to oxygenate his blood in a way that would make doping Tour de France riders jealous. He tries his hardest to outrun and enemy that is inescapable.

  And much to our enjoyment, Kodai gets his second wind. His muscles release some of their tension and he continues running, one foot after another in a perfectly straight line. God if the world isn’t beautiful at that very moment, the moment in which the adrenaline fills his body to the brim. Everything has a golden sheen to it after the sudden rain, everything is vibrant and pure and crisp. Life, however brief, has true meaning. Kodai’s run, however senseless, has true life.

  He has known for quite a while that his retirement day would come. It wasn’t as if it was sprung on him out of the blue, but the actions of the day, this is what truly sent him over the edge.

  Not more than two hours earlier, the train doors were closing and a woman tried to cram herself into the overstuffed cabin. She managed to get halfway in, aside from her umbrella and her legs. Kodai, having dealt with this countless times before, ran up to the door and pushed her inside the cabin. The train sped off and his job was done, or so he thought.

  As the train sped off, he became cognizant of the fact that a man was pressed against the
inside glass of the sliding train doors. He would later harken this to how a fish would look if it had pressed itself against its fish bowl. The look in the man’s eyes tore through Kodai in a way he had never experienced before. The man, dressed in a suit and wearing a pair of glasses, was crammed against the door so tightly that his glasses broke. The image bore a hole inside Kodai.

  He had seen things like this before, but something about the rat race, something about the futility of it all resonated inside him. That precise moment was when he started running. He was trying to escape life and death at the same time.

  ***

  Back on the highway and Kodai knows his run can’t last forever. The question then becomes how to surrender. Should he turn and raise his hands? Should he simply slow down? Should he start walking just to mock the ridiculous amount of vehicles that are following him? Should he simply fall to his knees and put his hands behind his head?

  It’s time, Kodai.

  He begins to slow down and all the vehicles behind him follow suit. He’s barely jogging now, waiting for the vehicles to get just close enough as to make his next move. At the moment when everyone behind him assumes that he has given up, he turns and starts running directly at them.

  He blazes past the first string of police vehicles before anyone can react. He’s past the fire truck now, heading deeper into the miles of traffic he’s created.

  Panic ripples through the stopped vehicles. The policemen scramble out of their cars, moving on foot in their bullet proof vests, dark blue pants, light blue shirts and golden badges indicating they have the undeniable ability to interpret the law in the way that it is meant to be interpreted.

  One of these mighty law enforcement officers, the youngest policeman following Kodai that day, reaches his heels before some of his colleagues can even get out of their vehicles. He does what only seems rational at the time. The young police officer pulls his baton out and whips it against Kodai’s left calf.

  The pain. The pain of police batons will continue to send criminals, would-be-criminals, innocent people, profiled denizens and political protestors to their knees from now until eternity. This same searing pain quickly brings Kodai down.

  The smack of the police baton is blood curling, loud enough for a nearby news team to capture it with the microphone on their camcorder. The police officer skids to a halt, looking down at his baton as if Kodai was the first person he’d ever hit.

  Kodai’s run has finally come to an end. Everything around him blurs as the rain picks up again.

  ****

  The pointless nature of things still frustrates, confuses and somehow comforts Kodai. He doesn’t think about this all the time, but every once in a while, as a car passes in the streets below his apartment, the thought stirs in the depths of his mind.

  The suddenness of it all, the nature of movement if you will, of water passing through the chiseled grooves of a tire, the sound his feet made as they carried his body along the highway, the intense pain of the baton as it met the back of his calf – a sense of futility tingles on the tip of his brainstem in the hazy space between waking and supposed sleep.

  It metastasizes.

  It collapses.

  If those moments could be bottled, the world would collectively open its eyes and commit suicide. If only those moments could be bottled.

  Modern Nomads

  [4]On the night before her cosmetic surgery, Nanda was finishing her shift when a pair of street children dashed in. The youngest smiled at Nanda with a chattering mouthful of rotten teeth. She was a ratty little thing with shiny red cheeks and a vulpine face. The older girl was tall, pale moon white, pock-marked and boney. Her eyes were large almonds.

  ‘It’s so cold outside,’ the youngest said, exhaling a cloud of gray air. ‘Terribly cold.’

  ‘You two have to leave,’ Nanda said. She ran her hand along her neck, adjusting the orange bandana that all the female workers wore at the Modern Nomads chain of restaurants in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

  ‘Do you have any food?’ the oldest homeless girl asked. A yellow scab had formed at the side of her mouth. When she spoke the scab almost stretched to the point of tearing.

  ‘No, sorry,’ Nanda said.

  ‘We have some leftover carrot salad and some old bread,’ Enkbat, the bartender, said from behind the cash register. He turned, and the Mongolian flag tattooed across the back of his neck followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘Sit there,’ Nanda told the street children. They sat and the oldest began running her fingers through her oily hair while he youngest pressed her hands on top of the radiator next to the window.

  With Mongolia’s economy based heavily on the future of a single copper mine in the Gobi Desert, the currency had fluctuated to the point where Nanda’s Korean plastic surgeon had asked for the payment in US dollars. This translated into an extra two months of work to pay a staggering 939,000 Mongolian Tugriks. A small price to pay for a new pair of Western-style eyes.

  In front of the bar now, Nanda began double-checking that all the placemats had been cleaned. Behind her: a wooden mask decorated with argali horns. Near the street children: souvenir mugs sitting on top of a display case filled with orange and black noodle shells. Next to the door: a coat rack and an orange Modern Nomads banner.

  ‘Are you sisters?’ Nanda asked out of curiosity.

  ‘Yes,’ they said.

  ‘You look so different.’

  ‘I know. My eyes,’ the oldest said, smiling. Nanda felt the pang of jealousy that she always felt when she saw a Mongolian with naturally large eyes.

  ‘My eyes are too small,’ the youngest said.

  ‘So are mine,’ Nanda said as she arranged the napkins on the table. Enkbat appeared behind her with a bag of food and handed it to the oldest.

  ***

  The next day, Nanda’s father drove her to the Korean hospital near Zaisan, the rich part of Mongolia’s capital city. The traffic was dense, as it always was in Ulaanbaatar, and it took almost an hour just to pass through the main intersection on Peace Avenue.

  Her father drove by the newly erected KFC and Nanda pointed at the line of people waiting to get inside. They talked on cellphones, burrowing their faces deep into their scarves.

  ‘Is the chicken really that good?’ she asked, but her father didn’t respond. He was smoking a cigarette, humming along to an old Russian song playing on the radio called Million Roses. They arrived at the hospital and found a good place to park next to a yellow Hummer with chrome rims.

  Nanda’s doctor had recommended the full incision method, a procedure in which excess fat was removed through precise cuts over each eyelid. The removal of this sliver of flesh made the eye open wider, giving the appearance of an extra fold – a crease which many Asians weren’t naturally born with. The only downside to the cosmetic surgery was the recovery time.

  A few hours later, Nanda emerged from the hospital wearing a pair of large sunglasses, and holding onto her father’s lean arm for balance. Plaster had been smeared like butter over her eyes to keep the sutures in place. Despite the stinging sensation across her forehead, the operation had been a success.

  Nanda now had Western-styled eyes.

  Once they arrived back at their tiny apartment in Bayangol District, Nanda quickly fell asleep on the couch. She awoke an hour later to the sound of her father dicing meat in the kitchen and moved to the bathroom, where she pressed her body into the front of the sink.

  Nanda washed her hands, dried them and leaned into the counter until she was close enough to the mirror for her breath to condensate. Her finger came up and she began scratching lightly at the plaster that had been applied over her eyelids. For the next fifteen minutes Nanda studied her face, trying to imagine what she’d soon look like with her new eyes.

  Three days later, the Korean doctor removed the plaster and showed Nanda her new eyes using a hand mirror. A thin line like the frown of a scarecrow stretched across each of her eyelids. Her eyes were large and beautifu
l now, movie star full. Perfect. She smiled at the doctor and thanked him as he handed her a small packet of cotton swabs and ointment.

  ‘Come back on Saturday to get the stitches removed,’ he said to her in near fluent Mongolian.

  ***

  Nanda returned to Modern Nomads the following day, wearing her oval sunglasses. Her female co-workers – Tuya, Saruul, Moogie, and Zola – were all impressed by the outcome of her eyelid surgery. Two of them even confessed that they’d been planning to get the surgery themselves.

  ‘They are so much larger than they were before. You can really tell, even with your sunglasses on,’ Saruul said as she scrubbed water stains off the inside of a metal sink.

  ‘My sister just had hers done.’ Zola walked past with a goat’s skull that had been cracked open in the middle. Meat and vegetables had been arranged in the hollow of the skull. Steam roared off the cooked flesh like salty waves over jagged rocks.

  ‘That’s right,’ Nanda said as she poured milk tea into a white ceramic cup.

  ‘She recovered so quickly,’ Zola called over her shoulder. ‘You went to the Korean guy in Zaisan, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So did my sister. He’s the best.’

  After work, Nanda caught a taxi home with Zola, who lived just two buildings down from her. Arriving home, she found her father and his best friend, Gana, drunk off a bottle of cheap vodka. The two were playing a Mongolian card game in the living room and laughing loudly, reminiscing over a shared story from their childhood in Selenge Province.

  ‘Let me see!’ Gana said as soon as Nanda shut the door. The TV blared in the background.

  ‘My new eyelids?’ she almost sang, happy that someone wanted to see them. Nanda pulled off her high-heeled boots and slipped into a pair of felt sandals.

  ‘Oh, that’s horrible! They’re way too big now,’ Gana said, laughing. Her father laughed alongside him.

  ‘What?’ She decompressed.