Popular Hits of the Showa Era

by Ryu Murakami

  When they reached Kumagaya Station even Sugiyama, who had been pouting all through the commotion on the train, came back to life and began dancing about, saying, “It’s the countryside! Even the station smells like country!” None of them knew what to do now, however. Intoxicated with Yano’s simple declaration—“You can buy a Tokarev in Kumagaya”—they had lost no time in liquidating all their assets and jumping on the Joetsu Line, but now what?

  “Yano-rin, where do they sell the Tokarevs?” Nobue said, ceasing for the moment to jump up and down. Yano too had been bouncing around and shouting, “It’s the country! Outside the station is a barbecue stand, not a Parco!” but now he stopped abruptly, extracted a notebook organizer from his briefcase, and opened it.

  “Sources indicate that Tokarevs can be purchased at a hardware store near the border with Gunma Prefecture for between fifty and a hundred thousand yen.”

  “That’s the country for you!” Nobue said, and resumed jumping. “Where else can you can buy a handgun at a hardware store?”

  They climbed on a bus to take them to the border. Each time the name of a local bus stop was announced, they clamped hands over their mouths to stifle their mirth. Though the resulting, oddly metallic ku, ku, ku, kutt! sound they made was plainly audible, the other passengers paid no attention whatsoever to the five of them. No matter how loudly they carried on, none of these young men ever stood out, imbued as they were with the aura of having been utterly ignored since childhood.

  The border between Saitama and Gunma prefectures was an indescribably desolate and lonely place. Kato was reminded of a movie he’d watched with his father when he was a kid—The Last Picture Show. He felt like he was going to burst into tears, and then he actually did. Before them was a big river with wide banks where weeds rippled in the wind, and nearby were a large pachinko emporium, a car dealership, and a noodle shop, the signs of which were all written in English. But the shape of the English script, the languid manner in which the weeds rippled, and the colors and designs of the exteriors of the buildings—as well as the cars, the tables in the noodle shop, and the clothing people wore—were uniquely depressing. Can there really be such insidious colors in this world? Kato asked himself in his inner newscaster voice as the tears flowed. What paints would you have to mix to come up with colors like this, and why would you do it? Why go to such lengths to make colors that strip away everyone’s courage and spirit?

  They were all feeling it. Nobue clapped a sympathetic hand on Kato’s shoulder. “Let’s go get that Tokarev,” he said, and then, choking back his own tears, began to hum the intro to “Meet Me in Yurakucho.” The scenery they walked through was horrifying. There wasn’t anything to rest your eyes on. It was the sort of scenery that seemed to rip all the beauty right out of the world, with shapes and colors that robbed you of the will and energy to act. Because they were all originally country boys, the scenery resonated with them and made them glumly pensive. How was the country different from Tokyo? they asked themselves. Well, Tokyo was so crammed with stuff that it was difficult to see the reality, and more care went into choosing building materials and English scripts on signs. That was about it, they realized, but still—it beat the country. For the briefest of moments they seemed to glimpse the truth of what had made them the sort of people they were. This was expressed well in Ishihara’s words as he set off walking toward a sign that read NOGAMI HARDWARE.

  “It’s not just that the country’s boring or shabby. It’s like it slowly sucks the life out of you from birth on, like mosquitoes draining your blood little by little. Heh, heh, heh, yeah.”

  At the entrance to Nogami Hardware was a sign in the shape of a huge hammer, and a thick old wooden plaque below it COMMEMORATING 250 YEARS SINCE OUR FOUNDING. “They’ve been selling hardware for two hundred and fifty years?” Yano said. He pictured people of the sort you see in period dramas on TV, men with topknots and women with blackened teeth and shaved eyebrows, rolling up to purchase sickles and spades, and he wondered how much things like that cost in those days and what sorts of coins they used and whether they got a receipt, and if they had something like the Ag Co-op to get discounts by buying things in bulk. With all these questions swirling through his mind, he led the way inside and strode toward the cash register. The storekeeper was sitting behind the counter and looked as if he might have been there for the entire two hundred and fifty years. He didn’t have wrinkles on his face so much as a face hidden among the wrinkles, a face that not even Hollywood’s most advanced special effects studio could have reproduced, with skin like a dust rag used for a century and then marinated in acid. He was reading a three-month-old issue of Central Review, and beside him was a portable TV tuned to CNN News.

  “Excuse me,” Yano said to the old man. An impartial observer might have said that there was a certain resemblance between the two of them.

  “Yes, what is it, the trivets are behind that shelf, the charcoal lighter fluid’s right next to them,” the shopkeeper said in a smooth and surprising baritone. It was the sort of voice that gets scouted by choral groups.

  “Eh?” Yano wavered at the subtle but intense power of the old man’s speech. “What’s a trivet?”

  “A trivet’s something you have to have if you want to grill meat over charcoal. You boys must enjoy barbecue parties like all the other young folks, yes?”

  Yano shook his head emphatically and said:

  “Do you have any Tokarevs?”

  II

  Central Review fell flapping from the storekeeper’s lap. His small eyes peered at Yano from deep inside the wrinkles. Then, with something like a sob in his baritone voice, he said:

  “I have. What do you want one for?”

  Yano’s eyes widened with emotion. He opened them so wide, in fact, that some of the dried blood vessels burst with audible pops.

  “You have?” he said, bending forward until his face was no more than five centimeters from the storekeeper’s. It looked as if he were offering him a kiss.

  “I said I did, didn’t I?” The storekeeper raised his voice, spraying spittle and moving his own face two-point-five centimeters closer. “And I asked you what you wanted it for.”

  The tip of Yano’s nose briefly came into contact with that of the storekeeper before he backed up, stood at attention, and saluted.

  “We seek revenge,” he said.

  “Revenge, you say?” The storekeeper fell back in his chair, a deep crease forming between his eyebrows. The crease was particularly conspicuous owing to the fact that all the rest of his wrinkles were horizontal. “Against whom and why? Speak!”

  His voice was even louder now, and he seemed to be getting angry—all the wrinkles were shifting toward vertical.

  “Our friend was murdered by a middle-aged Oba-san, and with an unprecedented weapon—a sashimi knife duct-taped to the end of a Duskin handle!”

  “What kind of Oba-san?”

  “What kind?”

  “The type whose husband left her and who’s hurting for money but can’t work in a massage parlor or soapland because she’s getting too old, and—”

  “According to our investigations, no. Not the type who buys her clothes at Ito Yokado bargain sales either, but rather at boutiques or specialty stores.”

  “Ah. So, not the sort of Oba-san who sits behind the counter at a stand bar preparing little dishes of pickled daikon strips, but the sort who puts on a nice dress and sings fashionable pop songs by people like Frank Nagai in a karaoke club with chandeliers?”

  “That’s correct. Frank Nagai or Nishida Sachiko or Yumin.”

  “And eats spaghetti with mushrooms in some restaurant with big glass windows that everybody on the street can look in through?”

  “Yes, sir. Also doria and onion gratin soup and Indonesian-style pilaf and so forth.”

  The storekeeper squeezed his hands into fists and clenched his jaw. He looked to be fighting back tears.

  “And why,” he asked more quietly now and between gritted
teeth, as his wrinkles ebbed and surged in complicated patterns, “would an Oba-san like that want to murder your friend?”

  “The reason isn’t entirely clear. Apparently she was bored.”

  “Gotcha,” the storekeeper said, and rose to his feet. “Wait right there a minute.” He shuffled into the back and soon returned with something wrapped in oiled paper, which he placed on the counter in front of Yano.

  “There are ten live rounds in the magazine. It’s a hundred and thirty thousand yen, but since your motives are pure, I’m going to give you a discount. Make it a hundred and ten thousand.” Yano collected money from the others, counted out eleven ten-thousand-yen bills, handed the stack to the storekeeper, and asked one last question.

  “Do you sell these to just, like, anybody?”

  The storekeeper laughed, his wrinkles fanning out like rays of the sun.

  “Hell, no. Only to people I feel good about. I like your spirit. They always say that when human beings are extinct, the only living thing left will be the cockroach, but that’s bullshit. It’s the Oba-san.”

  As she walked back to her apartment from the karaoke club, Iwata Midori was thinking about her sex drive, or, rather, wondering why she didn’t seem to have one. Tonight the Midori Society had met at the usual club with the silvery microphones, and a young sales rep type had flirted with her. She had visited the beauty salon that day and taken extra care with her makeup. All the Midoris prepared in a similar manner for karaoke nights, and they always wore suits or one-piece dresses to the clubs. Iwata Midori wondered if she was the only one who felt such gratitude to the jacket of her suit. It efficiently covered her soft, bulging tummy and love handles, her dark, oversized nipples, and the three Pip Elekiban magnetic patches on her shoulders. Whenever the Midori Society met at a karaoke club instead of someone’s apartment, Iwata Midori would spend several minutes trying to decide whether or not to remove the patches, which did so much to relieve the age-related stiffness in her shoulders and neck. She only went to these clubs to enjoy the karaoke and knew perfectly well she wasn’t going to meet a man or anything, but—well, you never knew. What if she were to meet someone who was just her type and drink too much and lose her head and end up in a love hotel, and he, helping her undress, were to find the magnetic patches she’d forgotten all about? The shame would be unimaginable. It wouldn’t simply be a question of a man she was attracted to discovering her Pip Elekiban. The shame would be in the fact that, just when she’d managed to awaken her sex drive with alcohol, the man would glimpse her reality, thereby becoming a part of that reality, and she’d have to quit pretending there was any real libido at work inside her.

  But why was she thinking thoughts like these as she walked the midnight streets home? Iwata Midori paused beneath a streetlamp to take some slow, deep breaths and try to sober up. The karaoke club was just outside Chofu Station, an easy walk from her condo. The other four Midoris had piled into a taxi at the station, singing a shrill Matsuda Seiko song. She’d waved goodbye as their taxi drove off, and as soon as she was alone something unpleasant took hold of her. She called this unpleasant something “harsh reality,” but of course it was really just herself. She walked down the street in front of the station and turned the corner at a narrower, darker street, on the right side of which stood the grounds of a large shrine. The streetlamps were fewer and dimmer here. She passed a video store that had recently gone out of business. Separating the shrine from the street was a narrow concrete irrigation ditch, and on her left were darkened houses. Iwata Midori always enjoyed this ten-minute walk to her condo. It was muggy tonight, though, and her underthings began to cling moistly.

  She thought about the songs she’d sung, and the slow dance with the young sales rep type. Henmi Midori had shouted into the microphone, “All right everyone, it’s cheek-to-cheek time!” and launched into a ballad in English—she couldn’t remember the title, but it had a nauseating, syrupy rhythm—and a group of young men had approached their table and asked them all to dance. Some of the young men were better-looking than others, but the sales rep with short hair was the handsomest by far, and he had taken Iwata Midori’s hand. “Waah! Wataa! No fair!” Tomiyama Midori had cried, pushing out her lips in a mock pout. The one who’d held his hand out to Tomii was young but short and hairy and puffy-faced and looked rather dense. At first Iwata Midori had stood apart from the handsome young man with the short hair, holding his hands lightly, but he knew all the right things to say. He began by asking if she came to this place often. As they conversed, he slowly tightened his grip on her hands, then slipped one hand behind her back and let it wander a little, but his face was so beautiful that it didn’t feel creepy at all.

  “What a nice fragrance.”

  “Complimenting me on my perfume—you’re teasing me, right? Teasing the Oba-san?”

  “Absolutely not. I don’t normally care for perfume.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “My mother was a damn nightclub hostess.”

  “You shouldn’t talk about her that way.”

  “I respect my mother, of course. But you can’t make yourself like something you don’t like.”

  “That’s true, I suppose.”

  “I do like this fragrance, though. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt that way.”

  Iwata Midori became aware of herself standing under a streetlamp, smiling as she reconstructed the dialogue. She couldn’t have noticed Yano lurking in the shadows of the dark shrine, breathing quietly.

  “What kind of perfume is it?”

  “It’s called Mitsouko.”

  III

  Iwata Midori was a little surprised to find that she remembered practically every word of her conversation with the young man with the short hair. In her mid-twenties she’d been married to a man whose face she could no longer remember clearly. The divorce had been such a foregone conclusion that there was no way even to explain to friends who asked, “Why? What went wrong?” Not only had she forgotten what he looked like, she couldn’t recall if he’d been a trading company man or a securities firm man or Ultraman or what, and couldn’t care less anyway. She was unable to remember a single conversation she’d ever had with him. It wasn’t that they’d never talked, of course. He was the type of man who liked to talk at noisy sidewalk cafés rather than a quiet bar or a park at sunset or the bedroom at night. He would sit in the sunlight drinking his coffee—refill after refill—and going on and on about all sorts of different things. Not inherently boring subjects like baseball or model trains or board games, but subjects that most people would consider interesting—powerful childhood experiences, for example, or the proper approach to interpersonal relationships in the workplace, or what exactly were the things that made human life worth living—but Iwata Midori, walking along this dark, empty street, couldn’t bring back a single word of any of it. And yet she remembered every detail of the silly, desultory conversation she’d just had with a young man she’d met and danced with at a karaoke club. Part of it, of course, was merely a question of time. Eight years had passed since she’d split with her husband, their marriage having drained away as naturally and inevitably as sand in an hourglass, but it had been only half an hour or so since she’d permitted her dance partner a little kiss goodbye. Time was huge. In fact, maybe time was everything. Wasn’t that what they always said? That time heals all wounds (and “wounds all heels”)? But Iwata Midori wasn’t so sure. A lot of songs too were about time solving problems or healing wounds, but the truth was that problems were solved by somebody taking some sort of concrete action, and as for wounds—well, for physical wounds there were white blood cells and whatnot. And for wounds of the heart? The only way to stop obsessing about hurtful things was to focus your energy, and your hopes or whatever, on something else. It wasn’t that time did the work for you, it was just that the deeper the wound, the longer it took to heal.

  If I’d been trying really hard not to forget him, I’d probably remember some of the things he sa
id, she thought. Or, then again, maybe not. In school I used to write down things I wanted to remember, things I’d heard or read that seemed really important, and now I couldn’t tell you what any of them were. And what do I remember about all those books that made me cry when I read them back in middle school? Nothing. Words themselves aren’t that important. Even if somebody says words that shock you, or make you want to kill them, or make you tremble with emotion, the words themselves you tend to forget in time. Words are just tools we use to express or communicate something. Or no, they’re not even tools, they’re more like means to an end. Maybe words are like money. Money’s just a tool for transactions, right? What’s important is the thing you buy with the money, not the money itself. So what’s important about words is the thing they communicate…which is—what?

  She was reminded again of the scene in that trashy novel. The adulterous protagonist, before going out for her afternoon rendezvous, had sat at her dressing table applying perfume to her private parts. It was just something in a cheap, soft-porn novel, and she’d had difficulty believing that anyone would do such a thing, and yet she still remembered it so vividly. Why would she still remember a chapter out of some third-rate serialized novel she’d happened to read in a magazine long ago? It’s not about the words, but about something much stronger than words, Iwata Midori was thinking, slowing her steps again. At the heart of that much stronger “something” was sex, to be sure, but sex wasn’t just about two people getting naked and tangled up together. A lot of other things were involved, things that make you feel so good you forget who you are, and things that feel so creepy you literally get goose bumps, and things you hold so dear you’re afraid to go to sleep, and things that make you so happy you want to bounce up and down—layer after layer of things like that, all mixed up into a sticky mess with the blood and sweat and love juice. Those things got imprinted in your body—not the way the brain remembers words, but engraved or branded on your internal organs. She remembered the anatomy pictures in science class all those years ago—the reddish brown liver and red and blue blood vessels, and the nerves like tree roots, and the cells. An emotion occurred, and the nerves threw switches to alter the blood pressure and heartbeat, and electric pulses shot through the cells, so it wasn’t just a metaphor—these things got imprinted in a solid, physical, biological way.