Charlie Chan Is Dead 2

by Jessica Hagedorn

  Born in 1951 in Oakland, California, raised in Los Angeles, educated in Minnesota, KAREN TEI YAMASHITA lived for nine years in Brazil, the setting for her novels Through the Arc of the Rain Forest and Brazil-Maru. A third novel, Tropic of Orange, is set in L.A. “What if Miss Nikkei Were God(dess)?” is excerpted from Circle K Cycles, a book of mixed genres reflecting the lives of Brazilians in Japan. Currently, Yamashita lives between the San Francisco Bay Area and L.A. and teaches at U.C. Santa Cruz.

  But that was last year, and here she was, still at the same job, making multiple copies of Brazilian television shows for video rental distribution. The room where she worked was tucked away behind two storage rooms, warehouses for boxes of imported Brazilian products. To get to this back room, you had to negotiate a constantly changing maze around walled cartons of Cica tomato paste, hearts of palm, Knorr chicken soup cubes, Nestlé’s sweetened condensed milk, Kimura polvilho, and Sadia gelatin. The video thing was a somewhat clandestine operation, but no one seemed to be too concerned about it. The police probably knew about it, but they would only investigate if a formal complaint were made, and who was going to complain about copyright violations of television shows half the globe away? The Japanese police wouldn’t even know where to start. Who was Jô Soares to them? Or the Corinthians? Fantástico?

  Still, Miss Hamamatsu ’96, staring at walls stacked to the ceiling with JVC video recorders, dreamed of working somewhere else, in the open, in an office that had a window at least and young men passing to and fro who would of course turn their heads to appreciate her beauty. Such a waste, but then again, it was better than working in a factory, having to wear those ugly blue uniforms, subjecting her hands and nails to dirt and grease from machinery, bending over inspection lines of aluminum parts, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day. This was work her poor mother had to do. She had been spared such a fate, but she would make it up to her family one day.

  She was literally walled in by JVC recorders, 150 of them stacked in precarious towers of 10, side by side, a spaghetti of cables and electric cords snaking along the floor. In addition, scattered TV monitors of different shapes and sizes were lodged in between and on top of the VCRs, all flashing several different or identical shows. After two years of this, except for having to read the show titles on the tapes, she could probably perform her task in the dark, plopping fifty tapes into fifty VCRs at a time and hitting all the record buttons. Between recording functions, she was busy rewinding tapes, packing them for shipment, or slapping new labels over the old ones from a ticker tape of show titles run off a word processor / inkjet printer system. Used video cassettes got recycled over and over, and boxes of them were stacked everywhere. By the end of the week, last week’s shows had to be reproduced from masters, categorized, and separated for distribution. She had no idea how many stores rented these videos, but she assumed they must take these copies and make more of their own. Some dekasegi in Kyushu was probably watching a fuzzy version of his team’s winning penalty kick. Was it a goal or wasn’t it? Home was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, further away than she could imagine.

  At the moment, the blonde spectacle of Xuxa, a live Brazilian Barbie doll in a silver miniskirt and matching boots, bounced around a dozen of her prepubescent mini-replica Xuxettes. Like other girls her age, Miss Hamamatsu had grown up with the Xuxa Show, dreamed of being a Xuxette. She mimed the Xuxette routine on the small square of available floor space. One, two and kick and, three, four and turn, and . . . Miss Hamamatsu, like Xuxa, was a natural, and of course she loved little children. The Japanese had nothing like Xuxa. Miss Hamamatsu imagined she could bring this phenomenon to Japan as a measure of friendship. She would have Japanese and Brazilian children on her show, her little princes and princesses, talk to all the children out there, make heartfelt speeches about being kind to foreigners, bring those poor little kids who suffered from ijime1 onto her program and make everyone feel sorry for them. If things were going to change in the world, they would change because of children. That was going to be her message. The show was over. Stop. Eject.

  Stop. Eject. Stop. Eject. Stop. Eject. Stop. Eject. Stop. Eject. Stop. Eject. Stop. Eject . . .

  Jorginho popped his head in the door. “Oba!”

  “Oi,” she answered, grateful that he hadn’t caught her dancing this time. Sometimes he would stand in the doorway watching her until she noticed. It was really irritating, but she had to appreciate his appreciation. He was just about the only one around who noticed her in this dungeon, slaving among the tapes.

  “Anything good?” he asked, rummaging through the week’s titles. “How about saving me a copy of this?” He held up a tape.

  She glanced at the title. Chitãozinho e Xororó. They were a popular country music pair everyone was listening to in Brazil.

  “Leandro and Leonardo are coming to Japan,” he nodded with inside knowledge about another musical pair. “I know the producers for the event. They’re planning a tour in seven cities. They’ve got big back ers, and they’re going to rake it in.”

  “Are they coming to Hamamatsu?”

  “If they don’t, it’ll be a big mistake. We’re one of the biggest Brazilian communities. They’ll probably get a sold-out event here. The fans will be clamoring.”

  “It won’t matter if you’re a fan or not. It’ll be something to look forward to for a change,” Miss Hamamatsu sighed.

  Jorginho pointed to the tape of Chitãozinho and Xororó. “Don’t worry, there’ll be more. I’m going to see about bringing these guys to Japan too. Just let me make my contacts.”

  She smiled encouragingly. Jorginho had big plans. Well, they all had big plans. If you didn’t have some kind of plan, you weren’t a proper dekasegi. Then she pouted. “What about the Miss Nikkei Contest? Have you already abandoned that idea?”

  “Worried?” he taunted her.

  Ignoring him, she examined a master copy, copying down its title for duplication. It was Monday’s episode of the current prime-time Globo novela: O Rei do Gado. It had arrived on a Varig flight that morning in a suitcase with other copies. She was possibly the first person living in Japan to see that episode. She had work to do. “It’s time to watch my novela,” she announced. “Don’t you have work to do?”

  “Oh my dear,” he spoke affectionately to her. “If there’s a Miss Nikkei in this world, it’s you. There’s not a day that passes that I don’t think of you.” He smacked her a kiss. “We’re going to get you out of this video hell and make a lot of money with that pretty face of yours. Speaking of pretty faces—” He presented her with a large envelope.

  “The photos!” she exclaimed.

  “Proofs,” he corrected. “Look them over, and we’ll decide which ones to reproduce.”

  She scanned the tiny representations of her face and body. There were luscious exposures of her full lips and eyes filled with desire. There were nude poses, poses in string bikinis, poses in miniskirts, jeans, fitted jersey dresses. It was enough to drive any man crazy.

  “And I’ve got some good news,” he started in with a bit of suspense. “I met this guy whose sister used to be a model. Well, she’s not a model any longer. Had kids. Put on weight. She’s maybe in her thirties now. She just got a divorce, and she’s thinking of joining this brother in Japan, see? So I got him thinking that he could invest some of that money he’s been saving in his sister and open up a modeling school.”

  “Is this for real?”

  “He showed me her old photos. She was a real stunner. Worked all over. New York. Paris.” He waved his hands toward those distant locations. “It would take someone like her who knows the ropes to make this happen. I went out with him this weekend to look for places to open shop. All she’s got to do is put up a sign. All the girls from the Miss Hamamatsu contest will come running.”

  “Including Miss Hamamatsu herself.” She did a mock model walk up to the VCRs and back.

  “Girl.” He shook his head. “All that Brazilian beauty. Ther
e’s got to be a way. Japan has this tropical gold mine and doesn’t even know it.”

  She looked at her watch. “Jorginho, really, I’ve got to do the Monday novelas, or I’m in trouble.”

  “How about it? Karaoke tonight?”

  “Maybe. I’ll let you know.” She brushed him off while shoving in the tapes for O Rei do Gado. It was the story of two Italian immigrant families coming to Brazil at the turn of the century. The Mezengas and the Berdinazzis. Antônio Fagundes plays the father Mezenga. Tarcísio Meira plays the father Berdinazzi. In the beginning they are friends with neighboring coffee farms. Then they get in a fight over the boundaries and become enemies. The son (played by Leonardo Bricio) and the daughter (played by Letícia Spiller) of the respective families fall in love, but of course it’s a forbidden love, a Romeo and Juliet story.

  The theme song was beautiful. She could sing the entire song. There were scenes filmed in Italy. And scenes of coffee plantations and farm life in Paraná in the early part of the century. It was all so romantic. She felt it was her story too, the story of her Italian side. Imagine. Her grandmother could have been Letícia Spiller. Miss Hamamatsu sank into the full sensation of the novela moment; it was one of the perks of her job.

  The second week in March, she was making copies of director Tizuka Yamazaki’s film, Gaijin. “Tizuka will be in Japan next month,” Jorginho said, always in the know. “She’s going to travel around to decide on a site for the sequel, Gaijin 2. In the meantime, she’ll drum up interest for the old movie and try to get some sponsors for the new project.”

  Miss Hamamatsu had never even seen the first Gaijin. The heroine played by Kyoko Tsukamoto can’t marry the man she loves, so she gets on a ship headed for Brazil with another man she doesn’t love and leaves Japan forever. Like O Rei do Gado, this story is set in about the same time period. Kyoko has a hard life in Brazil working in the fields of a coffee plantation where Antônio Fagundes, this time, plays an Italian overseer who feels compassion for Kyoko’s difficulties. The husband she comes to Brazil with dies of typhoid fever. By now she has a kid, and she can’t pay off her debts to get out of her contract, so she decides to flee the plantation in the middle of the night. Antônio Fagundes follows her on horseback, but in the end helps her to escape. At the end of the movie, they meet years later in São Paulo. He’s a labor organizer, and she’s raising her child. Miss Hamamatsu wept at the end. It was her story too. Her mother was Japanese; her father was Italian. Her mother could have been Kyoko Tsukamoto; her father Antônio Fagundes.

  Jorginho continued, “I know the people involved in producing Gaijin 2. I’m going to talk to them and get them involved in the Miss Nikkei Contest. There’s a way this can work for everyone. We’ll attract every gorgeous Brazilian woman in Japan. Who knows who might turn up? The future face or faces of actresses for this new movie, of course.” He paused to reassure her. “I’m thinking of you, my dear, of course, but they don’t need to know that.”

  It all made curious sense. In the novela, O Rei do Gado, Leonardo Bricio and Letícia Spiller, despite their feuding families, marry and have a son. Then the novela jumps ahead several years, and Antônio Fagundes, who played old man Mezenga in the first episodes, loses 20 pounds in 2 weeks and returns to play the grandson, Bruno Mezenga, the man who becomes the King of Cattle. She imagined further episodes: the King of Cattle becomes involved in an even more impossible and forbidden love affair with a beautiful Japanese woman. She, Miss Hamamatsu, would be the love child of this forbidden love.

  Jorginho was ebullient with his ideas that day. “This is going to be a high-class event with high-class sponsors. Guaranteed. I’ve been talking to the KDD telephone people, to Varig, JAL, the Banco do Brasil. Everyone’s enthusiastic. This is exactly the kind of event they’re interested in promoting.”

  “Have you set a date and a place?” she asked.

  “I’m looking into the Act City Plaza concert hall. Leandro and Leonardo are going to be booked there, too.” Jorginho made a motion in the direction of the city’s center, a large phallic tower planted in a music complex built to celebrate Yamaha and its theme for Hamamatsu: The City of Music. The Japanese called it Akuto Shiti. While Yamaha probably had international pretensions for its music center, it probably hadn’t thought about a country music group from Brazil, not to mention a Miss Nikkei Contest. There in full regalia and pomp and circumstance, Miss Nikkei would proclaim her reign.

  Thus Miss Hamamatsu imagined herself crowned in a diamond tiara, gliding down the walkway in that grand auditorium, her jeweled gown and velvet cape trailing behind her. Everything would be golden and glittering, lights flashing, stereophonic music swelling.

  Meanwhile, she plastered labels onto video copies of Gaijin. The copies were probably illegal, but shouldn’t every dekasegi see this film? A romantic story based on our history.

  “I just thought of something,” Jorginho congratulated himself. “How about this? We get Antônio Fagundes and Kyoko Tsukamoto, the original actors in Gaijin, to be the judges in the Miss Nikkei contest. Can you believe it? Now all we need is the participation of a former Miss Brazil.”

  Miss Hamamatsu smiled. Imagine.

  The third week in March, Miss Hamamatsu was looking over the large head shots of herself in black and white.

  “My God, you’re photogenic,” exclaimed Jorginho. “There’s not a bad take in the entire batch.”

  “Except when I was making faces.” She made a face.

  “Even those are wonderful. Shows you have personality. There’s an actress behind that gorgeous face.” He patted her cheek affectionately.

  “Now what?”

  “Now we make up a portfolio. I’m going to print up a résumé for you.”

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “I know. I know.” He waved away her concerns. “I’ll have to make some of it up, but who’s going to check up on all the marvelous work you’ve done in Brazil?” He winked. “You’ll see how we impress them. Put it on letterhead. All very professional with a slick folder. We put together a bunch of small folders to give away, to send out into the marketplace, test the waters, you know, send to magazines and newspapers. Then we have a large portfolio to take to meetings.”

  “Jorginho, you know I give most of the money I make to my mother, poor thing, for expenses. She sends all her money to Brazil to take care of her mother and my little brother there. Sure, I’m saving something for myself, and every once in a while I really splurge, but what I’m trying to say is that I can’t go to meetings without dressing up a little.”

  “That’s why these photos are important. Maybe we can interest a clothing company to have you wear their line of clothing and of course get free clothing in exchange. I’m in touch with the exclusive importer of a Brazilian brand of lingerie. When they see these photos, you’re going to be their bra and panty pinup girl.”

  “It’s going to take more than lingerie to dress this girl.”

  “So, we start with the basics.”

  “And don’t forget makeup and hair.”

  “No problem.” Like a magician, he pulled out a magazine. “Here’s the latest copy of Nova, just in.”

  She flipped through this Brazilian version of Cosmopolitan. There was an article on skin care and nutrition, on shaping the face with cosmetics and matching makeup to skin tone, on pedicures, on hair color, on the latest in Fall fashions (it would be autumn in Brazil), and on orgasms. She sighed. Being beautiful was a full-time job. How she would like to check into a bona fide beauty salon once in a blue moon. Brazilian women went to each other’s houses. Her mother’s friend Arlete did hair and nails. Her girlfriend Flávia did depilation and face masks. They shared cosmetics and exchanged clothing. If she stepped into one of those fancy Japanese places, there was no telling how she would come out. There were Nikkei girls who you could swear were Japanese. They spent their money on the Japanese styles, and their bodies fit into those hipless pants and dresses. She was longer in the torso and legs
and wider in the hips and bust. Imported Brazilian clothing for an imported Brazilian body; it took some finances to keep up her looks.

  Jorginho looked over her shoulder at the magazine’s advertisements. “I had an inspiration this morning. All we need is a video camera.”

  “You want to tape me?” she asked in mock surprise.

  “Better than that. For example, this lingerie importer. We could do an ad for their lingerie. A commercial. I know a guy who used to work for Globo TV in Rio. I could get him to do the camera work.”

  “But where are you going to place this commercial? On Japanese TV?”

  “It’s amazing I never thought of it.” He put his arms up and looked around the room. “This is our mother lode. This is where it can all start!”

  Miss Hamamatsu gave him her full smile but looked confused.

  Jorginho pointed at the video tapes. “Like a trailer or intros, understand? Or we could slip our commercials in at the regular breaks. Can you imagine the kind of money we could make, not to mention the exposure? These videos go out to dekasegi all over Japan.”

  “Do dekasegi buy a lot of lingerie?”

  “Okay, not just lingerie. How about jeans? You look sensational in jeans.”

  “Can you believe it?” She patted the Brazilian tag on the pocket. “This imported pair cost me ichi man yen.”

  Jorginho calculated 10,000 yen—about 80 dollars. His eyes wandered lovingly over her bottom as she bent over to retrieve used tapes. “No wait! How about meat? We’re importing hundreds of tons of Australian beef into Japan every month. You could do a meat commercial. Wear a cowboy hat. Sing a country music tune with a barbecue going on behind you. I’m not kidding. I know the owner of a meat distribution company. Leave it to me.”