by Vann Chow
“I have nothing to prove in the area of acting.”
“You should hear what he called you...” Arai whispered under his breath and looked away, torn between wanting to challenge the man and fearing of actually being heard.
“I have heard them all,” Smith replied.
“You'll be the Face of DaiKe, or at least we will try to take a few shots of you today like that. If you're any good, you will be on TV.” Tanaka said, “That's as good as any revenge you can get in a civilized way from these men that jested you.”
Tanaka continued, “You know, Japanese people dedicate their lives to the company. Once they go in, they don't leave. It is very difficult for them to see someone else come in at high level, and do better than them, especially when it is a foreigner who doesn't speak their language. But we want to be more than that, or at least that is my vision for the company. I am but a smallest, lowest manager of the ladder with thirty rungs. I want a foreign actor because I want to change the impression of the people of our company, and the impression of the people of the company they work for. If you cannot understand what the job means, then I will leave at your command.” He stood up and slid the chair back into its place.
“To what pleasure do I owe your confidence?”
Tanaka looked Smith in the eyes and said, “You have an honest, suffering face.”
His poignancy almost felt like a punch that knocked the air out of Smith.
11. Face Reader
Men often claimed that they dedicated their souls, their youths, or whatever else they could offer to their jobs as if there existed so many worthy employments around to sacrifice their lives over. What they really meant was that they had spent a lot of years on something that allowed them to pay their bills, and have a reasonable amount of domestic-problem-free time so they could dream up nonsense about all the world's would-haves, oblivious to the fact that those things they claimed to have sacrificed they would be willing to give up readily in exchange for a steady, carefree, or even boring life of a common working person when left without. Smith was old, and he had heard all tricks. He knew better.
And precisely because of that he found it the oddest that he should be in the center of attention in a trailer-turned-dressing room, parked by the Yokohama harbor where the filming of the commercial would be. All of a sudden there was glamour and show-biz in his life, pegged with a higher, greater purpose. Tanaka-san's little elevator pitch had got his head swimming with renewed passion. Him, in a sustainability commercial, representing one of Japan’s biggest heavy industry, promoting enviromental-friendly policies? The higher-ups had dumped a stack of white papers on him earlier this year. Occasionally, he would skim the papers again to seek out a paragraph or two, a bullet point or two that would be an excellent sales pitch for his many account visits to the suppliers or customers. But this? An actor could always shrug his shoulders to criticism of anything he sold, as a business development manager he had to shoulder the risks of the technical writers' literary flairs, and this was too much responsibility for the little pocket change he would get out of it.
A small man flung open the trailer's door and spoke, maintaining a hunched back, to the hair stylist that was messing around with whatever little twiddle that could be done to his dirty blond short hair which, fortunately for Smith, was still considerably full and thick despite his age.
“ ...tabun chushi sa rerudarou,” he said as he lit a cigarette. He appeared to be one of the production workers, coming here to gossip.
The stylist lifted the comb from Smith's hair and said in visible anguish, “ Ahh...Nani no tame ni hataraku? ” Smith sensed that her momentum of his extreme makeover was lost at the news the man brought.
“ Nani ga ada? What happened?”
“Oh...” From their reflections in the mirror, Smith could see two deers in the headlight, humanized. Then a switch seemed to have been flipped somewhere. The girl started to dance, or at least that’s what appeared to Smith as if he was a child and the trailer had transformed into a kindergarten.
“ Ame, ame. ” She stretched out her fingers and wriggled them in the air. “ Futte...fu...tsuu...te. ” She dropped her body and the objects that her fingers were imitating fell like rain. So that's what they were talking about. Rain.
Learn some new Japanese words every day, Smith thought to himself. He was grateful and said thank you to the girl who danced the word for him, who turned and chatted away with the man.
Sit and wait had never been Smith's forte. He got up and walked out of the trailer, to no one's protest. It was indeed drizzling. His eyes caught sight of the stormy clouds gathered not far from where they were, below it a clear layer of bright white light, as if the sky was caught in a war between two powers. Very soon, the dark clouds would arrive the harbor, and drench them all with her disapproval. Certainly, this was a good enough reason to call the day off, even before it begun. He took off the suit jacket that the costume lady had given him, and stood by the wooden handrail to take a good, deep breath of the fresh, crisp air, letting his lung be inflated by the beauty of nature's little wonder.
Only when he turned around did he notice that two men, one operating a huge video recorder on a tripod and the other, who was Tanaka-san in close inspection, holding an umbrella over the recorder, had been filming him from about ten feet away. Without breaking character, Smith smiled, hiding his surprise, and walked easily over to the side of the camera. Tanaka yelled cut and padded the cameraman on the back for a good take. The cameraman nodded and started packing up his equipment.
“You have been sneaky, I see,” Smith said.
“Real people, real moment. That's what I wanted to capture. Sore dake desu. That's all. ” Tanaka shifted over a bit to let Smith joined him under the umbrella.
Smith gave him a smile. Tanaka looked out at the water rolling with short white waves.
“And that's it for today. We have to film another day.”
“That's it?”
“Of course,” Tanaka said resolutely. “Moments are better captured than recreated. It's a commercial, but to me, there is no difference between an art-house movie and a commercial. My directions are the same.”
“So that's a wrap, I guess?” Smith said, hiding his slight disappointment at the lack of theatrics from the shooting team.
“Wanna go grab a beer?” Tanaka offered. Smith obliged. On this rare break from tedious office work, he thought he might take up the offer. The working day could continue endlessly afterward, he thought to himself.
Tanaka cried some Japanese over the noise of the ever-thickening rainfall, and the team replied unanimously from all corners of the landing behind them like a team of well-trained soldiers, “ Yoshi! ”
They were not nearly as uptight as the unanimous cry of enthusiasm earlier had foretold. Smith was sitting in the middle of the wood bench that went around the chef of the Teppanyaki restaurant next to Tanaka. On his right, was who seemed to be his most trusted assistant Arai. They were flanked on both sides by the rest of the team for hire of the day, all of them from outside agencies. The hair stylist girl had taken up next to the mechanic. Beside her, the driver of the trailer was pointing at something in the restaurant and getting into an excited conversation with the make-up lady that Smith had yet to have a chance to meet, but could not for the life of him missed, for she was covered in tattoos from her eyebrows to her left bared shoulders. Then there were a few more men that took care of sound, lighting, and props.
“It was a pity that the weather was not nicer,” Smith remarked. “Was the shot you got okay?”
“I will have to take a more thorough look later.” Tanaka took a sip of his beer and let out a haa from the depths of his throat that seemed to be a very common way of signifying appreciation in Japan, like the slurping of noodles and the teeth grinding of meat with bones. “Making a film nowadays is a lot easier than how it used to be. As long as you have some raw materials to play with, you can tell any kind of story you want.”
“You are referring to all the photoshopping and editing,” Smith said.
“Something like that.”
“I must say, I could hardly come out a second time with you guys, despite my burning million yen-worth of passion for theater.”
“ Hai, hai. ” Arai conceded in an apologetic fashion. “We have a British actor, but the acting agency, how to say, damashu .”
“Extorted us with trickery,” Tanaka said.
“No honyakuka , no come today.”
“They wanted us to pay for a translator. This topic had never been raised before.”
“ Tanaka-san wa, aego ga joju, ” Smith said to Arai. “ Honyakuka histsuyao wa nai. There's no need for a translator.”
“ Hai hai. ” Arai nodded affirmatively to Smith's compliment to Tanaka. Indeed, without a common language, or a translator, it would be tough to carry on a longer conversation with them. Slowly, Arai's attention drifted to his Japanese colleagues on the right. Smith and Tanaka, the fluent English-speakers were quickly isolated.
“Where did you manage to learn to speak such good English?”
Tanaka let out a short chuckle as if it was the funniest thing Smith had said all day. “You should hear my French. I lived in Paris in my younger years.” Those obscured years he became obsessed with the movies from a certain French director and decided to become one himself.
“You speak French, too? I must say I am surprised at your multitudes of linguistic talents.”
“Talent was not involved. It was all hard work.” He explained. “When you want something, you put your nose to the grind, and you do it. There's no other way but to get your way. That's how life works.”
“Does your optimism works in all situation?”
“It's optimism mixed with a bit of tragic frustration.”
“Sounds familiar,” Smith smiled.
“As I have said, you have a face of honest suffering.”
“That's not the best compliment I have heard in the looks department,” Smith said. “I would prefer a simple, handsome face anytime.”
“Only the inexperience can be simple. You...”
“I know. I am well passed fifty. You probably know that already. It must be written all over my face.”
“There's more to a face than wrinkles, of course.” Tanaka lifted his gaze from his plate of grilled mushrooms. “I am a student of the studies of face, for many years now.”
“The study of face?”
“It's something most valuable to a man of my profession. Though the younger generations thought the art a scam.”
“It's understandable to have intuition about someone's character. But I wouldn't say it was not occasionally tarnished by prejudice.”
“It's more than intuition. It is a science.” Tanaka lifted his beer and jerked it in the direction of the mechanics. Smith stole a glance at the man's face. “Look at his eyes. They are protruding, like those of goldfish. He is dominating and reckless. He talks a lot, but his upper and lower lips are thin, it means he is tight-lipped about his own affairs, always taking the disguise of nonsense for hidden agendas.”
“And the girl,” Tanaka was now remunerating the facial features of the make-up artist sitting next to him. “She has a small forehead. Not very intelligent. Her ears, big, with earlobe, are sticking out more than the average Japanese woman – a hint of rebelliousness in her soul.”
Then he shouted loudly across the table to the girl. “Yumi-chan, I can kill this man for you if he kept pestering you!”
“ Ie, i.e., No, no.” She said. Smith caught the word for joking, jodan, from her reply.
At her reply, the mechanic got only more emboldened and started to tickle her bared shoulders, lined with mysterious oriental patterns.
“Crooked teeth and bucktooth. – Shy but conflicted. That made her the favorite blowjob giver in the entire Japan.”
Smith did not see that coming. He almost choked on his beer.
“What you can say over a set of ugly teeth, Tanaka-san!”
“Don't feign innocence. You know that already?”
“Know what?”
“Every other girl in Japanese pornography has bad teeth.”
“And I thought they worked so hard because they need money for their braces.”
Tanaka gave him a shrewd smile, then he said, “Before I work for DaiKe, and even a short time after, I participated in the productions of many of such movies. Forty-thousand-yen budget, twenty percent for the actress, fifteen percent to split among the actors, if there are more than one. The rest are for scenes, props, equipment, and an extra pair of hands if we need them. There was barely any money left for the director, producer, editor all-in-one.” Smith guessed that Tanaka meant himself. “Often I had to borrow money from the company that commissioned the films to live another day, before at last, when the film was out, and I got paid, which would just be enough to keep me in the clear for a few weeks. Then the cycle began again. If I cast a single malapert that drove the girl too hard or didn't know how to act, I would be essentially shooting myself in the foot. There is no room for error when you have no money. You started to learn how to read people you dealt with in this environment.”
“It's a fascinating story,” Smith said. “But are you sure you can tell me all these? You're not afraid that I would expose your past?”
“As long as you keep it to yourself.” Tanaka flashed that reassuring smile again.
Smith returned with a thoughtful stare.
“You do know that a guy from the company was fired because his wife was before they got married, a model.” Smith reminded him.
“Snakes laid in snares everywhere. You're not one of them. My assistant is not one of them.”
“I surely hope you give me no reason to use it against you.” Behind the facade of politeness, in any given Japanese corporation, there were intrigues and conceits at every nook and cranny. Smith had maintained distance from office politics but nonetheless remained vigil out of necessity.
“I am an artist after all. Perhaps it was expected of me, to have a frayed end somewhere.”
“Artists are forgiven anything, indeed.”
“I went from making dirty movies for pennies to working in a big corporation. Do you think it made me a better person?”
Smith was not prepared for such a question. He hardly knew the man.
“You are taking things too seriously, Tanaka-san,” he said. “I thought we were just two men drinking beers.”
“If you have my time to think,” Tanaka said, “You will start to take things very seriously, too.” It made Smith wonder if life on the second floor was really that miserable. “Tell me what you think? I trust you will be honest.”
Smith wondered what Tanaka saw in his facial features that conjured so much trust, but he was not about the crush it. To be honest, he was almost flattered by the expert face reader.
“I'm not in a position to judge anyone's character. Only God could divine that. But I hope the career change has made you happier.” Happy, a big word in just five alphabets.
Tanaka ruminated his questions for a moment, then asked Smith the same question.
“Are you happier? Here, then in America?”
“Yes,” Smith answered without thinking. He hated lingering on the topic of happiness.
Another knowing smile flitted across Tanaka's face. There was more in common between a Japanese middle class and an American middle class than met the eyes.
12. The Assault
With 1.4 million yen at his disposal, he felt ever more like a coward, wanting to slip inside every single Pachinko parlor that stood brighter and warmer than usual, on his way home. He used to attribute his desire to spend the evenings at the parlors to his theory of inevitability of luck. Now that he had proved that he could actually win money from Pachinkos, he realized that he simply had nothing better to do, plain and simple.
He could consider using some of his funds to do something meaningful. Still, 1.4 million yen was
a sum of money that was a lot on the account that he won it from doing practically nothing, but too little, just barely three months of his salary at DaiKe, to do anything radical. Nonetheless, it never hurts to have extra cash on hand.
A few punks had gathered around a boy fallen on the ground in one of the many dimly lit back alleys that he passed as he was walking mindlessly towards a parlor. They were kicking at the victim, albeit already motionless, sprawling haplessly on the dirty pavement. There was a waft of smokes in front of him that smelled of noodle soup.
“Hey!” He shouted. The speed that human instinct kicked in was a subject worthy of study. In the corner of his eyes, he had spotted a barbarousness unfolding and acted according to an innate code of ethics.
The perpetrators muttered something to one another. Smith only grasped that it involved the good old word for foreigner, Gaijin, a couple of times. Sizing up his potential attackers revealed that favors were on his side. He had no words for what he wanted to say in Japanese, so he blared some gibberish as loud and angry-sounding as he could. The words could have been Korean or Hindi. He hoped that regardless of his words, he had conveyed a clear message that said 'I am very angry, and you'd better run before I knock you into next week.'
“ Iko! Let's go!” One of them hustled the others to leave, and they did.
“Run you sons of bitches!” He blared after them and chased them away with a loud, menacing growl that would make the Hulk cringed.
The alley quickly became deserted.
There was smells of blood and sour and spicy soup.
Was it Tom Yum Gong? Smith crinkled his nose.
Smith would have just walked away, now that the bad guys had been chased off. After all, the business of the alleys was better left for the justice league of Japan's underbellies. He ought to have gotten calmly, in a quickened pace, out of the way, in case the assailants come back with backups to tend to some unfinished business, such as himself.