by Barry Eisler
Someone must have found out about the connection, figured it was too risky to take out a foreign bureau chief, and decided to just plug the leak instead. It had to look natural, or they would have provided more grist for Bulfinch’s mill. So they called me.
All right, then. There had been no B-team. I had been wrong about Benny. I could let this one go.
I looked at my watch. It was not quite 5:00. If I wanted to, I could easily get to the Blue Note by 7:00, when the first set would begin.
I liked her music and I liked her company. She was attractive, and, I sensed, attracted to me. Enticing combination.
Just go, I thought. It’ll be fun. Who knows what’ll happen afterward? Could be a good night. The chemistry is there. Just a one-nighter. Could be good.
But that was all bullshit. I couldn’t say what would happen after her performance, but Midori didn’t feel like a one-nighter. That was exactly why I wanted to see her, and exactly why I couldn’t.
What’s wrong with you? I thought. You need to call one of your acquaintances. Maybe Keiko-chan, she’s usually good for a few laughs. A late dinner, maybe that little Italian place in Hibiya, some wine, a hotel.
For the moment, though, the prospect of a night with Keiko-chan was oddly depressing. Maybe a workout instead. I decided to head over to the Kodokan, one of the places where I practice judo.
The Kodokan, or “School for Studying the Way,” was founded in 1882 by Kano Jigoro, the inventor of modern judo. A student of various schools of swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat, Kano distilled a new system of fighting based on the principle of maximum efficiency in the application of physical and mental energy. Loosely speaking, judo is to Western wrestling what karate is to boxing. It is a system not of punches and kicks, but of throws and grappling, distinguished by an arsenal of brutal joint locks and deadly strangling techniques, all of which must of course be employed with great care in the practice hall. Judo literally means “the way of gentleness” or “the way of giving in.” I wonder what Kano would make of my interpretation.
Today the Kodokan is housed in a surprisingly modern and bland eight-story building in Bunkyo-ku, southwest of Ueno Park and just a few kilometers from my neighborhood. I took the subway to Kasuga, the nearest station, changed in one of the locker rooms, then climbed the stairs to the daidojo, the main practice room, where the Tokyo University team was visiting. After I threw my first uke easily and made him tap out with a strangle, they all lined up to do battle with the seasoned warrior. They were young and tough but no match for old age and treachery; after about a half hour of nonstop randori I was still consistently coming out on top, especially when it went to groundwork.
A couple of times, as I returned to the hajime position after a throw, I noticed a Japanese kurobi, or black belt, stretching out in the corner of the tatami mats. His belt was tattered and more gray than black, which indicated that he’d been wearing it for a lot of years. It was hard to guess his age. His hair was full and black, but his face had the sort of lines that I associate with the passage of time and a certain amount of experience. His movements were certainly young; he was holding splits without apparent difficulty. Several times I sensed that he was intently aware of me, although I never actually saw him looking in my direction.
I needed a break and made my apologies to the college students who were lined up, still waiting to test their mettle against me. It felt good to beat judoka half my age, and I wondered how much longer I’d be able to do it.
I went over to the side of the mat and, while I was stretching, watched the guy with the tattered belt. He was practicing his harai-goshi entries with one of the college students, a stocky kid with a crew cut. His entry was so powerful that I caught the college kid wincing a couple of times as their torsos collided.
He finished and thanked the kid, then walked over to where I was stretching and bowed. “Will you join me for a round of randori?” he asked, in lightly accented English.
I looked up and noted an intense pair of eyes and strongly set jaw, neither of which his smile did anything to soften. I was right about his watching me, even if I hadn’t caught him. Did he spot the Caucasian in my features? Maybe he did, and just wanted to take the gaijin test — although, in my experience, that was a game for judoka younger than he looked to be. And his English, or at least his pronunciation, was excellent. That was also odd. The Japanese who are most eager to pit themselves against foreigners have usually had the least experience with them, and their English will typically reflect that lack of contact.
“Kochira koso onegai shimasu,” I replied. My pleasure. I was annoyed that he had addressed me in English, and I stayed with Japanese. “Nihongo wa dekimasu ka?” Do you speak Japanese?
“Ei, mochiron. Nihonjin desu kara,” he responded, indignantly. Of course I do. I’m Japanese.
“Kore wa shitsuri: shimasita. Watashi mo desu. Desu ga, hatsuon ga amari migoto datta no de . . .” Forgive me. So am I. But your accent was so perfect that . . .
He laughed. “And so is yours. I expect your judo to be no less so.” But by continuing to address me in English, he avoided having to concede the truth of his compliment.
I was still annoyed, and also wary. I speak Japanese as a native, as well as I speak English, so trying to compliment me on my facility with either language is inherently insulting. And I wanted to know why he would assume that I spoke English.
We found an empty spot on the tatami and bowed to each other, then began circling, each of us working for an advantageous grip. He was extremely relaxed and light on his feet. I feinted with deashi-barai, a foot sweep, intending to follow with osoto-gari, but he countered the feint with a sweep of his own and slammed me down to the mat.
Damn, he was fast. I rolled to my feet and we took up our positions again, this time circling the other way. His nostrils were flaring slightly with his breathing, but that was the only indication he gave of having exerted himself.
I had a solid grip on his right sleeve with my left hand, my fingers wrapped deeply into the cloth. A nice setup for ippon seonagi. But he’d be expecting that. Instead, I swept in hard for sasae-tsurikomi-goshi, spinning inside his grip and tensing for the throw. But he’d anticipated the move, popping his hips free before I’d cut off the opening and blocking my escape with his right leg. I was off balance and he hit me hard with taiotoshi, powering me over his outstretched leg and drilling me into the mat.
He threw me twice more in the next five minutes. It was like fighting a waterfall.
I was getting tired. I faced him and said, “Jaa, tsugi o saigo ni shimasho ka?” Shall we make this the last one?
“Ei, so shimasho,” he said, bouncing on his toes. Let’s do it.
Okay, you bastard, I thought. I’ve got a little surprise for you. Let’s see how you like it.
Juji-gatame, which means “cross-lock,” is an arm-bar that gets its name from the angle of its attack. Its classical execution leaves the attacker perpendicular to his opponent, with both players lying on their backs, forming the shape of a cross. One permutation — classicists would say mutation — is called flying juji-gatame, in which the attacker launches the lock directly from a standing position. Because it requires total commitment and fails as often as it succeeds, this variation is rarely attempted, and is not particularly well known.
If this guy wasn’t familiar with it, he was about to receive an introduction.
I circled defensively, breathing hard, trying to look more tired than I was. Three times I shook off the grip he attempted and dodged around him as though I was reluctant to engage. Finally he got frustrated and took the bait, reaching a little too deeply with his left hand for my right lapel. As soon as he had the grip, I caught his arm and flung my head backward, launching my legs upward as though I were a diver doing a gainer. My head landed between his feet, my weight jerking him into a semicrouch, with my right foot jammed into his left armpit, destroying his balance. For a split second, before he went sailing over me, I saw complete surprise on his
face. Then we were on the mat and I had trapped his arm, forcing it back against the elbow.
He somersaulted over onto his back and tried to twist away from me, but he couldn’t get free. His arm was straightened to the limit of its natural movement. I applied a fraction more pressure but he refused to submit. I knew that we had about two more millimeters before his elbow hyperextended. Four more and his arm would break.
“Maita ka,” I said, bending my head forward to look at him. Submit. He was grimacing in pain but he ignored me.
It’s stupid to fight a solid armlock. Even in Olympic competition, judoka will submit rather than face a broken arm. This was getting dangerous.
“Maita ka,” I said again, more sharply. But he kept struggling.
Another five seconds went by. I wasn’t going to let him go without a submission, but I didn’t want to break his arm. I wondered how long we could maintain our position.
Finally he tapped my leg with his free hand, the judoka’s way of surrender. I released my grip instantly and pushed away from him. He rolled over and then kneeled in classic seiza posture, his back erect and his left arm held stiffly in front of him. He rubbed his elbow for several seconds and regarded me.
“Subarashikatta,” he said. “Excellent. I would request a rematch, but I don’t think my arm will allow that today.”
“You should have tapped out earlier,” I said. “There’s no point resisting an armlock. Better to survive to fight another day.”
He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “My foolish pride, I suppose.”
“I don’t like to tap out, either. But you won the first four rounds. I’d trade your record for mine.” He was still using English; I was responding in Japanese.
I faced him in seiza, and we bowed. When we stood up he said, “Thank you for the lesson. I’ve never seen that variation of juji-gatame executed successfully in randori. Next time I’ll know not to underestimate the risks you’re willing to take to gain a submission.”
I already knew that. “Where do you practice?” I asked him. “I haven’t seen you here before.”
“I practice with a private club,” he said. “Perhaps you might join us sometime. We’re always in search of judoka of shibumi.” Shibumi is a Japanese aesthetic concept. It’s a kind of subtle power, an effortless authority. In the narrower, intellectual sense, it might be called wisdom.
“I’m not sure I’d be what you’re looking for. Where is your club?”
“In Tokyo,” he said. “I doubt that you would have heard of it. My . . . club is not generally open to foreigners.” He recovered quickly. “But, of course, you are Japanese.”
Probably I should have let it go. “Yes. But you approached me in English.”
He paused. “Your features are primarily Japanese, if I may say so. I thought I detected some trace of Caucasian, and wanted to satisfy myself. I am usually very sensitive to such things. If I had been wrong, you simply wouldn’t have understood me, and that would have been that.”
Reconnaissance by fire, I thought. You shoot into the treeline; if someone shoots back, you know they’re there. “You find satisfaction in that?” I asked, consciously controlling my annoyance.
For a moment, I thought he looked oddly uncomfortable. Then he said, “Would you mind if I were to speak frankly?”
“Have you not been?”
He smiled. “You are Japanese, but American also, yes?”
My expression was carefully neutral.
“Regardless, I think you can understand me. I know Americans admire frankness. It’s one of their disagreeable characteristics, made doubly so because they congratulate themselves for it ceaselessly. And this disagreeable trait is now infecting even me! Do you see the threat America poses to Nippon?”
I regarded him, wondering if he was a crackpot rightist. You run into them from time to time — they profess to abhor America but they can’t help being fascinated with it. “Americans are . . . causing too many frank conversations?” I asked.
“I know you are being facetious, but in a sense, yes. Americans are missionaries, like the Christians who came to Kyushu to convert us five hundred years ago. Only now, they proselytize not Christianity, but the American Way, which is America’s official secular religion. Frankness is only one, relatively trivial, aspect.”
Why not have some fun. “You feel that you’re being converted?”
“Of course. Americans believe in two things: first, despite everyday experience and common sense, that ‘all men are created equal’; and second, that complete trust in the market is the best way for a society to order its affairs. America has always needed such transcendental notions to bind together its citizens, who have come from different cultures all over the world. And Americans are then driven to prove the universality of these ideas, and so their validity, by aggressively converting other cultures to them. In a religious context, this behavior would be recognized as missionary in its origins and effect.”
“It’s an interesting theory,” I allowed. “But an aggressive outlook toward other cultures has never been an American monopoly. How do you explain the Japanese colonial history in Korea and China? Attempts to save Asia from the tyranny of Western market forces?”
He smiled. “You are being facetious again, but your explanation is not so far from the truth. Because market forces — competition — are what drove the Japanese into their own imperial conquests. The Western nations had already taken their concessions in China — America had institutionalized the plunder of Asia with the ‘Open Door.’ What choice had we but to take our own concessions, lest the West encircle us and gain a chokehold on our supplies of raw materials?”
“Tell me the truth,” I said, fascinated despite myself. “Do you really believe all this? That the Japanese never wanted war, that the West caused it all? Because the Japanese launched their first campaigns against Korea under Hideyoshi, over four hundred years ago. How did the West cause that?”
He faced me directly and leaned forward, his thumbs hooked into his obi, his toes taking his weight. “You are missing my larger point. Japanese conquest in the first half of this century was a reaction to Western aggression. In earlier times there were other causes, even such base ones as the lust for power and plunder. War is a part of human nature, and we Japanese are human, ne? But we have never fought, we have certainly never built weapons of mass destruction, to convince the world of the rightness of an idea. It took America and its bastard twin, communism, to do that.”
He leaned closer. “War has always been with the world and always will be. But an intellectual Crusades? Fought on a global scale, backed by modern industrial economies, with the threat of a nuclear auto-da-fé for the unbelievers? Only America offers this.”
Well, that confirmed the crackpot-rightist diagnosis. “I appreciate your speaking frankly with me,” I said, bowing slightly. “Ii benkyo ni narimashita.” It’s been an education.
He returned my bow and started backing away. “Kochira koso.” The same here. He smiled, again with some seeming discomfort. “Perhaps we will meet again.”
I watched him leave. Then I walked over to one of the regulars, an old-timer named Yamaishi, and asked if he’d ever seen the guy who was walking off the tatami. “Shiranai,” he said with a shrug. “Amari shiranai kao da. Da kedo, sugoku tsuyoku na. Randori, mita yo.” I don’t know him. But his judo is very strong. I saw your fight.
I wanted to cool off before showering, so I went down to an empty dojo on the fifth floor. I left the fluorescent lights off when I went in. This room was best when it was lit only by Korakuen Amusement Park, which twinkled and hummed next door. I bowed to the picture of Kano Jigoro on the far wall, then did ukemi rolls until I reached the center of the room. Standing in the quiet darkness, I looked out over Korakuen. Just barely, I could hear the roller coaster ratcheting slowly up to its apogee, then suspended silence, then the whoosh of its downward plunge and the screaming laughter of its passengers, the wind whipping away their cries.
The roller coaster was making its familiar ratcheting sound, the last of the light fading from the sky above it. It was past seven, too late for me to get to the Blue Note. Just as well.
9
I HAD NO special plans the next day, so I decided to stop at an antiquarian bookstore I like in Jinbocho, a part of the city best known for its warren of densely packed bookshops, some specializing in Eastern fare, others in Western. The shop’s proprietor had alerted me via pager a few days earlier that he had located and was holding for me an old tome on shimewaza — strangles — that I had been trying to find for a long while, to add to my modest collection on bugei, the warrior arts.
I picked up the Mita subway line at Sengoku Station. Sometimes I use the subway; other times I take the JR from Sugamo. It’s good to be random. Today there was a priest in Shinto garb collecting donations outside the station. It seemed like these guys were everywhere lately, not just in front of parliament anymore. I took the train in the direction of Onarimon and got off at Jinbocho. I meant to leave the station at the exit nearest the Isseido Bookstore, but, distracted by thoughts of Midori and Kawamura, I wound up taking the wrong corridor. After turning a corner and then coming to a sign for the Hanzoman line, I realized my error, turned, and rounded the corner again.