by Ben Stevens
He was seventy-nine or eighty – his age varied, depending on how he was feeling at the time he told you it – and slowly tiring. A true judo master, the belt of his dogi (the pajama-like uniform worn for many ‘traditional’ martial arts) consisted of red and white stripes – a sign that he was above even the legendary ‘black-belt’ status. In fact, that he was slowly, symbolically returning to white-belt level – the circle was almost complete, and he would then have to start the next chapter of his martial arts’ studies almost as a novice.
That’s what the red-and-white belt symbolized, in any case…
It was under Nakamura-sensei’s tutorage that I earned my brown belt, which is one below black. But often, during the lesson, we just talked. He spoke rudimentary English; I spoke rudimentary Japanese. We got by.
He was a stickler for neatness and general order; frequently I entered the dojo to find him using a pink vacuum cleaner on the tatami mats. He used a broom to chase away the cockroaches, millipedes and various other creepy crawlies that tried to nest under the ancient mats, which were ‘patched up’ in various places with thick tape.
Sometimes, during the day, one of the temple cats caught a bird, and carried it up to the dojo to torment it somewhere it knew it would be undisturbed. So later I’d enter to find the place littered with feathers.
Once I even saw a frog hopping around on the tatami…
If I hadn’t have come to the dojo, usually to be Sensei’s one and only pupil, he would still have been there. Sitting in his chair on one side of the dojo, just waiting – in case anyone should decide to pop in. Determined to do his duty, no matter what.
Once his class had been thriving, its members numbering young children to adults. But – as he sometimes told me – he was an old man now. It frustrated him that his energy was almost gone; he didn’t have what it took to run a large class anymore, and his students had consequently left him…
I wonder if it was the atomic bomb that caused his leukemia – or possibly just his advanced years. For as winter gripped Nagasaki and the dojo became cold as ice, the tatami brutally hard, he became noticeably frailer.
Once he demanded that I practice katagaruma on him – a throw where the partner is basically dropped from shoulder height – and then had great difficulty standing back up.
I felt extremely bad, realizing that I’d hurt him. But I hadn’t wanted to do that throw at all – even for a fit, young person, being used as a practice ‘dummy’ for katagaruma is not something to be relished.
Finally Sensei made his last trip to Tokyo, where he used to go about twice a year to see his daughter and her family. His wife had passed away some years before, while his ‘girlfriend’ (as Sensei introduced her to me – for I met her just once, when she came to the dojo) was a rather glamorous-looking woman in her sixties.
Sensei and I said to each other: ‘Mata rainen, ne’ (‘See you next year’), although we both knew that wasn’t going to happen…
Even when I last spoke to him – by phone, as he lay in a Tokyo hospital – he reminded me to ‘Watch your footwork, the next time we meet for a lesson’. His voice was so weak and hoarse I could barely understand what was being said.
Struggling to keep emotion out of my own voice, I answered ‘Hai, Sensei’ and ‘Wakarimashita’ (‘Yes’ and ‘I understand’) as naturally as I could.
Sensei died the following day. He was cremated in Tokyo, but his ashes were brought back to Nagasaki for a special service.
I attended shortly before my wife and I returned to live in England. During the service, he was referred to as ‘Judo Ojiichan’ (‘Judo Granddad’). He would have liked that.
A couple of years later, I visited Nakamura-sensei’s ohaka. It’s in one corner of a large cemetery near Shimabara, which contains Nagasaki’s famous white castle. It’s quiet there. I put my hands together, closed my eyes, and stood in front of the tomb for some time.
Then I visited the cemetery’s temple and again thanked the friendly monk who’d taken the time to find out where Nakamura-sensei’s final resting place was, and furthermore had escorted me there himself. I put something in the temple’s osaisenbako – ‘offertory box’ – before leaving.
I often remember Nakamura-sensei. He taught me an awful lot. And not necessarily just about judo.
The Festival of the Dead and Charisma Man
It’s the last day of Obon or the ‘Festival of the Dead’.
For the past three days, spirits of the deceased have apparently been flying back to Earth in order to check on their living relatives. These relatives, meanwhile, have been busy cleaning their family tombs and hanging orange lanterns outside their homes to ‘guide’ the spirits to the correct address.
The temple is late closing today. I have to wait until everyone has left the nokotsudo or temple mausoleum, where orange lanterns are also hung outside the narrow tombs that are located in several long lines. Finally everyone goes, and I lock up the nokotsudo and the entrance that leads to it from the car-park.
Some dinner (ebi tempura – shrimp in batter, yum yum), and then I’m off out into Shianbashi to meet a friend for a few beers.
As mentioned before, Shianbashi is Nagasaki City’s main ‘drinking area’. It has quite literally several hundred bars – maybe over a thousand – located along streets bright with neon signs, up anonymous stairwells and down slightly sinister-looking alleys.
The name Shianbashi, incidentally, literally means ‘Indecision Bridge’. To get to it nowadays – at least if you’re coming from the temple direction – you have to cross a wide, busy street with two tramlines.
A few centuries back, however, this was a river you crossed by way of a stone bridge, so to get to Nagasaki’s own Ukiyo or ‘Floating World’. (The beautifully poetic name the Japanese gave to an area that basically specialized in providing alcohol and sex.)
Some spoilsport decided that this bridge should be closed after eleven at night – so those wishing to enter this particular Floating World had a hard choice to make.
Come home early – when the night was really just beginning – or else be obliged to wait until the bridge was opened again at around six in the morning, by which time you would probably have spent all your money and be feeling just a little ‘tired and emotional’.
So, before crossing the bridge, you first had to weigh up whether or not you really wanted to be heading into this particular den of depravity…
Hence, it was the Indecision Bridge.
This evening, I can’t get from the temple to the den of depravity quick enough. This is because (in an Obon tradition) crowds of people are setting off hundreds and hundreds of firecrackers on the ground. There is smoke everywhere. The noise is absolutely deafening. I see many Japanese wearing earplugs. Smart move.
I cross the wide road and enter the neon-lit Floating World of Shianbashi. I see the woman who is stood on one corner every time I come here, wearing an alluring dress which shows off her legs, handing out leaflets to passing salaryman for some overpriced snack bar.
She’s out here all year round; in winter she wears a thick jacket and ‘rabbit-style’ earmuffs. Whatever the weather, she’s got to smile and make it appear as though she’s having the time of her life – all part of that strange, false jollity that goes with alcohol.
But there’s no doubt that she’s got a tough job. Once I saw her crying.
She’s stood at the top of a long street that has any number of bars, and small restaurants. Some are better than others. The Chinese restaurant at one end of the street is nearly always empty, because it’s extremely overpriced and the food is just not very good. The only custom it gets is passing tourists, who leave feeling rather dissatisfied.
The ‘real-deal’ – where I sometimes go with members of the temple judo club – is a few doors down, and located up a narrow staircase. Only the more adventurous tourists find this place, although they get a cheerful welcome and very good food when they do.
Tonight I’m headin
g for a standing bar that’s close to the real-deal restaurant. The bar is narrow, but reasonably long.
As I enter I’m greeted by name by the two men serving. I come here every now and again – and I’m ‘that gaijin’ who works at the temple nearby – so we all know each other.
The two men working are dressed in long-sleeve black T-shirts with the name of the bar written in Japanese on the front. The boss (the ‘Master’) displays his elevated position by also wearing a dark-colored ‘apron’, tied around his waist.
This is one of the better bars. For example, there’s nothing like a ‘service charge’ randomly tacked on your bill; they won’t (to put it bluntly) try to rip you off. In fact, on one of the first occasions I came here I forgot my change when I left – and one of the guys came running after me along the street to give it back…
I order a beer and exchange a few words with the Master as I await the arrival of my friend. We agree that it’s ear-splittingly noisy in Nagasaki tonight, due to the firecrackers being let off in the roads.
(These are partially closed off to traffic, as ‘floats’ built in honor of people who have passed away this year are also being paraded.)
Strangely, the usually-boisterous Shianbashi seems almost quiet in comparison – its winding roads and alleyways like some boozy oasis of calm…
An offer of another drink now comes from ‘the Captain’, a middle-aged gentleman who dresses in a slightly eccentric, old-fashioned golfer-like fashion and who smokes a pipe. I’ve no idea why he calls himself the Captain, but that was how he introduced himself to me one evening, and so I’ve called him that ever since.
He’s a nice enough old feller, although he can never quite remember my name. I am, variously, Ron, Bill and Charlie. (These are, I presume, names of other gaijin the Captain has met.)
The Captain told me before that he fully understands how I feel being a gaijin, an outsider in Japanese society, and he wasn’t trying to make a joke.
For although he appears to be completely Japanese, his grandfather was in fact Russian – and that’s enough to make him slightly ‘gaijin’ to all those Japanese who can boast (as they often do) of not having one drop of foreign blood in their veins.
I can imagine the Captain at school, all those years before, when the news concerning his grandfather’s ‘gaijin-ness’ got out. It would have been only a few years after the Second World War, when Japan was even more touchy about issues of race and such. Immediately the Captain would have felt himself excluded – would have no longer felt wholly Japanese.
I don’t know of any other nationality quite so obsessed with race as the Japanese. Or, to put it another way, with that age-old notion of ‘them and us’.
Always, sooner or later, you’ll hear – ‘Ah, but for you gaikokujin…’ and ‘Ah yes, but for us Japanese…’ Just something to subtly remind you that – however well you’ve been treated, looked after, wined and dined, and overly-flattered for whatever marginal skill or ability at something you possess – you’re still on the outside looking in, and that you’ll never be in.
Accept that, or you may as well just give up and go home. Rule Numero Uno for anyone planning to stay long-term in Japan…
My friend, Paul, arrives. We meet up on occasion; he’s an American soldier stationed in Sasebo, who gets leave from base only sporadically. A former high-school wrestler, he is extremely interested in trying out judo at the temple, but has yet to get the chance.
I introduce Paul to the Captain, and go to get a round in, but the Captain says he has somewhere else to be and leaves.
Paul and I have not been talking long when another gaijin enters the crowded bar. He appears to be in his mid-twenties, and has in tow a young Japanese woman, whom I suspect is not quite yet out of her teens.
He greets Paul; the two men apparently know each other. Paul makes the introductions: the other guy’s name is ‘Todd’, while the Japanese girl is called Yukiko.
Todd orders up two beers, as I ask him: ‘So, you on holiday here?’
Todd looks pained; he replies in an American accent. ‘No, man, I’m not on holiday! I live and work here, man.’
‘So… what do you do?’ I enquire.
‘I’m in translation,’ he states, with a strange-sounding tone of general importance. Clearly, people are meant to be very impressed by what he does for a living.
Todd then starts talking in fluent Japanese to the bar Master.
He’s being very friendly – overly-friendly, really, which is proving slightly confusing to the Master, who evidently has never met him before.
‘Please… what are you do… in Japan?’ Yukiko asks Paul and me in halting English.
In slow and patient English (he speaks only very basic Japanese), Paul explains what he does in Japan. When it’s my turn, I say in Japanese that I work at a nearby temple.
This causes Yukiko to clap her hands in mild delight.
‘Oh, you speak my language – and what an interesting job!’ she says, in Japanese.
I’m about to ask what she does (university student, I suspect), when Todd remarks to her – in superfast Japanese he evidently thinks I’m not going to ‘get’ – ‘Guy just means he does weeding or something, on a volunteer basis.’
Ah-ha – I get it now. That strange ‘attitude’… that distinct air of self-importance… the over-chumminess with the bar-staff…
All has been made perfectly clear. Because friend Todd is the genuine article: a real ‘Charisma Man’. A gaijin male who comes to Japan in order to become popular among Japanese women purely for the fact that he is, err, foreign.
Wow! What an achievement! Back home he was Mr. Average, just another schmuck – but in Japan, he’s a star! At least, he is in his own eyes…
In any case, Charisma Man is extremely wary of any other gaijin male, who might potentially steal whatever crappy ‘thunder’ it is he imagines he possesses.
Paul is so laid-back that I think Todd is at least semi-accepting of his presence…
No real ‘threat’ there…
But here I am speaking Japanese and detailing my ‘unusual’ job, causing Yukiko to become a little animated…
No, no, no. Todd the Charisma Man does not like that at all…
‘Well, yes,’ I say, in Japanese. ‘I do some weeding – it’s something most gardeners have to do, after all – but I actually do get paid for my work. I’m officially employed, I assure you – tax and all.’
‘Oh, right,’ grunts Todd, the shrug of his shoulders adding an obvious Whatever.
Then he turns his attention to Paul, who because of his limited Japanese hasn’t been following the recent conversation.
‘Hey, man…’ says Todd in a musing tone, as he starts to stroke his slightly too-tidy facial hair. The sort of thing that signaled: Warning! Potential douchbag! the moment he entered the bar – although I wouldn’t like it to seem as though I usually judge people on mere appearance…
‘That girl a few weeks back, at karaoke,’ continues Todd. ‘The Texan chick…’
‘Sarah, right?’ ventures Paul.
‘Yeah! That’s the one,’ agrees Todd enthusiastically. ‘What’s the score there?’
Paul shrugs, takes a sip of his beer. ‘Well, to be honest Todd, she’s kind of got a boyfriend already and…’
Todd’s face darkens. Obviously, every woman in the world whom he meets is supposed to feel an instant, overpowering attraction towards him.
‘What do you mean?’ he demands.
‘Don’t take it personally, dude,’ says Paul mildly. ‘She’s just not… into you, I guess.’
‘You asked her?’ asks Todd, tightly.
‘Yeah – just like you asked me to,’ returns Paul simply. ‘And the answer was… Well, no.’
Yukiko watches Todd in obvious confusion, as he whips out his gleaming iPhone.
‘I could get on this, now, and have ten Japanese chicks come down here in less than ten minutes!’ he declares, brandishing his phone in front of
him as though it’s an extension of his cock.
I now realize that the signal being transmitted by Todd’s too-tidy facial hair was, in fact: Warning! Definite douchbag!
‘Hey man, I’m sorry,’ says Paul, giving another small shrug.
Then Todd evidently decides it’s best just to be a little philosophical about the matter.
‘Oh well,’ he says, putting his iPhone back in his pocket. ‘I picked up this’ – he motions with a ‘discreet’ movement of his head in Yukiko’s direction, as she takes an oblivious sip of her beer. ‘I’m hoping she’ll put out later on – back at my place, all going to plan.’
He gives an ugly, leering grin, which needless to say is returned by neither Paul nor me.
What an utter twat this guy is.
I feel sorry for the young, still-impressionable Japanese woman. A ‘Gaijin Killer’ she most definitely is not…
(Quick explanation: ‘Gaijin Killer’ is the name given to a certain type of Japanese woman – young or not-so-young – who deliberately targets gaijin males for casual sex. Gaijin Killers can be very upfront in stating their intention. Said sex will then most likely take place in a room at the nearest ‘love hotel’, which can often be rented in blocks of thirty minutes, depending on how amorous the Gaijin Killer and her prey are feeling…)
…If young Yukiko sticks with Todd, she’ll very likely end up hating all gaijin for the rest of her life.
What a shame.
Then Todd puts his beer on the bar and loudly announces that he’s ‘off for a piss’.
The toilet is next to the entrance; and when Todd shuts and locks the door, Yukiko suddenly asks Paul and me:
‘Is he… nice man?’
I can’t help but raise my eyebrows in mild surprise. Maybe she’s not as oblivious as I thought. Maybe Todd is in fact radiating his ‘Hey, I’m a total dick!’ factor through some universal language.
‘I mean is he… gentleman?’ tries Yukiko again, in halting English.
I feel almost mild despair. I want to say something but… I can’t.
Not my place; not my business.