Seventeen

by Hideo Yokoyama

  “That’s nonsense. You’re so ignorant. Subscription fees are insignificant. If you didn’t have the advertising income, no matter how much you all go on about the state of the world, you wouldn’t even be able to put out a single day’s edition.”

  “If we didn’t do a decent job with the real substance of the paper, do you think we’d attract a single advertiser?”

  Kurasaka flinched for a moment as Yuuki raised his voice, but quickly covered himself by violently shaking the advertising proofs in Yuuki’s face.

  “Never mind all that! What are you going to do about this? How are you going to cover our loss?”

  “I’ll pay my debt. Kindly ask General Affairs to bill me in monthly installments. But you need to understand one thing—if any huge event like last night ever happens again, I won’t hesitate for one moment to remove all the ads.”

  He’d given as good as he got.

  “You what?”

  “Have you forgotten, Kurasaka-san, what it’s like to be in the Editorial Department? You’ll recall that the editorial staff has complete authority in the matter of page layout. Might I suggest that it’s pointless to try to interfere?”

  “You little prick!”

  If the bedside phone hadn’t started to ring right at that moment, the two men would definitely have come to blows. The call wasn’t from the company night watch but from Totsuka, who had spent the night at the Uenomura village office. He was a reporter in his fifth year at the Fujioka City branch office.

  “They’ve almost finished constructing the emergency heliport on Mount Osutaka.”

  “That means they’re about to start airlifting the bodies out, then?”

  “Right. They’re aiming for an eight thirty a.m. start.”

  “Have the investigators got there yet?”

  “I’m sorry. Who…?”

  “The members of the Ministry of Transport’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee. When they get there, keep a watch on their movements.”

  He replaced the receiver and looked up. Kurasaka was standing in the doorway, looking subdued.

  “And I’d heard you were a decent person,” he spat out. “Someone you could talk to.”

  Yuuki was puzzled, but before he had a chance to ask Kurasaka to repeat what he’d said the advertising manager was already away down the corridor, leaving nothing behind but the irritated click of his footsteps.

  Someone you could talk to? Yuuki thought it over while he was putting his tie back on. Who could have said something like that to Kurasaka?

  He’d just stood up when his eye fell on the advertising proofs for the mall opening, still spread ostentatiously on the bed. He grabbed them, and tore them right through the middle. Then he turned and marched out of the on-call room, his head already switched into meeting mode.

  8

  Seven in the morning.

  There were three very sleepy faces in the editor in chief’s office. Kasuya was at his desk, talking on the phone. Managing editor Oimura and chief local news editor Todoroki were sitting on sofas positioned across the table from each other, pointing at the stocks column on the financial pages of the morning edition.

  JAL STOCKS HIT LOWEST LEVEL EVER …

  “Of course. Even All Nippon Airways has made a loss, just by association.”

  As Yuuki sat down at the far end of the sofa, he was struck by something odd. At some point, he had searched for elements of a father figure in all three of these men. It had been shortly after he started at the company. His real father had disappeared when he was still a child, so he’d felt a kind of connection to these senior figures: Kasuya, who’d then been at the local news editor’s desk, Oimura, and Todoroki, who were the lead police beat reporters. Although, considering their ages, they were all more likely to be older brothers than fathers to him, to him they’d seemed heroic figures and come to represent the father whose face he had never known. He saw them as tough and dependable; broad-minded. He believed that their whole existence as reporters was built on a firmness of conviction and purpose, and he had never suspected otherwise. Until—

  Kasuya hung up. He looked as if he’d just swallowed some very bitter medicine.

  “Yuuki, if you’re going to drop an ad, then at least give us a heads-up first.”

  It had been Ukita on the phone. Ukita was the Advertising Department chief and Miyata and Kurasaka’s superior. Apparently he’d been outraged to hear the story of the dropped ad from Kurasaka and had called to register his official indignation.

  “I apologize. I’ll be more careful in the future.”

  “Please do. Seriously. They all spend their whole time trying to catch our mistakes. They’re giving me stomach ulcers doing it. Make sure you don’t give them any way in.”

  Kasuya spoke with real distaste, then proceeded to swallow some actual stomach medicine. He couldn’t bear even the slightest disagreement. The Conciliator and Chicken Liver were two of the names for him secretly used in the office. When his “tough boss” veneer had peeled away, it had affected Yuuki. His disappointment was deep, and it still affected him.

  “Right. Let’s get started.”

  Kasuya moved his large frame to the sofa, causing Oimura and Todoroki to sit up straighter.

  “Today’s layout. Yuuki, what do you think?”

  Yuuki gave a quick nod of his head and began to speak.

  “I believe we should run four headline stories.”

  “Four? That’s a lot.”

  Yuuki opened his notebook.

  “First, the airlifting of the bodies from the mountain. That’s about to start right now. Next, we need to cover Fujioka Municipal Sports Center, where the bereaved families are being reunited with the bodies of their loved ones. Then there’s the testimony of the survivors and, lastly, of course, the cause of the crash.”

  “We’re not really qualified to go into the cause of the crash. And besides, they’ve already decided it was a broken rear door, haven’t they?”

  “No, they’re saying it’s more likely to have been tail damage. I don’t know any more details, though.”

  “The tail, huh? Well, in any case, we’ll just have to sit back and let Kyodo sort that one out.”

  Kasuya relaxed his almost two-hundred-twenty-pound frame back into the sofa. Yuuki tried to lure him into the conversation again.

  “We can’t just give up before we’ve started. The accident investigators arrive on site today. The lower-level ones are staying overnight, so I’m planning to assign Tamaki—he’s an engineering graduate—to stick with them.”

  “I see. Okay, get him to do what he can.”

  “I will. Then, the removal of the bodies—”

  He was just about to explain when Oimura chimed in.

  “The reunions are more important than a bunch of airlifts. Sorrowful reunions—that’s going to be the topic of today’s section.”

  The Firecracker had started to sizzle already. As always, he was forcing through his own personal opinion with his aggressive way of speaking. He was a total contrast to Todoroki, who always kept his scheming secret.

  “They’re going to be lifting hundreds of bodies by helicopter,” Yuuki retorted. “It’s never been done before. It’s history-making.”

  Oimura’s eyes turned steely.

  “That kind of thing can be covered by a photo or two. Give ’em something to make them cry. Get it?”

  Yuuki kept quiet, so Kasuya the Conciliator stepped in.

  “Well, let’s not make any hasty decisions. What’s more important is to ask Yuuki here whether he anticipates being able to get hold of any survivors’ testimony.”

  “A direct interview is out of the question, of course, but I think today we may manage a short chat with some relatives. I’ve got staff on the hospitals. I’ve asked them to try to catch the family members on their way in or out.”

  “I see. It’ll be quite a scoop if you can get them to tell you what state the plane was in at the time of the crash. And one of them
was a stewardess, too. She’ll be able to give a professional viewpoint.”

  One of the rescued passengers was a Japan Airlines assistant cabin crew manager. She hadn’t been on duty but had happened to be traveling privately on Flight 123 that day.

  Oimura butted in again.

  “There’s no way we’ll be able to get a scoop on the other papers. The press are going to be all over the hospital. No point in wasting our time. Get everyone down to that city sports hall and have them interview the families.”

  In an attempt to change the subject, Kasuya turned this time to Todoroki.

  “How many foot soldiers do we have at our disposal today?”

  The chief local news editor always had the say over allocation of personnel.

  “About twenty, I think.”

  Immediately Yuuki replied, as firmly as he could, “I need thirty.”

  The gold-rimmed spectacles turned toward Yuuki. Behind the dark lenses were two sharp pinpoints of light. Yuuki glared right back. Since entering this room, he had been avoiding making eye contact with anyone, but if Todoroki wanted a staring match, then he wasn’t going to hesitate. The anger he had felt the night before came rushing back. Todoroki hadn’t told Yuuki that the rotary press was broken and that there would be no extension of the deadline. Because of that, Sayama’s feature story had gone up in smoke. As for Todoroki, he surely wouldn’t have forgotten what Yuuki had said to him: “And you call yourself a reporter?”

  Todoroki was the first to break the silence.

  “We’re not a national newspaper. If we send thirty reporters out on this one, there’ll be no one left to cover the rest of the news.”

  “Twenty-five, then. Can you spare that many?”

  Yuuki compromised right away. He knew that, if the argument stretched on, Kasuya and Oimura would take Todoroki’s side.

  Todoroki picked up a file and began to flick through the pages.

  “Twenty-five people … I suppose I could manage that.”

  “Then we’ll go with that!” Kasuya announced.

  He asked Yuuki how he intended to divide his forces.

  “Ten to the sports hall, five to the hospital. I’m going to have the other ten climb Mount Osutaka.”

  “What?”

  This time the Firecracker exploded.

  “What the hell do you need ten people on the mountain for? Send more people for the interviews.”

  “The prefectural police have sent fourteen hundred people—half of their total force—to that crash site.”

  “They’ve got proper work to do. If we send ten people, what are they going to do up there? Go for a hike? You’ve been spending too much time around that damned Anzai.”

  For a split second Yuuki lost all ability to think. This was the second time Oimura had spoken ill of Anzai. Two days ago, he’d said, “Best to stay away from that one.”

  Intuition kicked in. He saw the connection between that phrase and the enigmatic words he’d heard first thing that morning from Kurasaka from Advertising. Someone you could talk to. It must have been Anzai who’d put that image of Yuuki into Kurasaka’s head.

  Yuuki regained his ability to think. Time to react to Oimura’s pigheadedness. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

  “What’s the problem if it does just end up a hike?”

  The three bosses looked at one another in astonishment. Oimura looked searchingly at Yuuki.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “That there is merit enough in being able to set foot on the site of the world’s largest accident. It’s only been thirty-six hours since the plane came down. I think we should send as many people as we can, before it’s too late.”

  “Huh, that’s a bit conceited, isn’t it? You’re suggesting we should use a real accident scene as some kind of training ground for reporters? We don’t have the manpower for something like that.”

  Yuuki had a ready response for that one.

  “Of course, I’m giving them work to do.”

  He tore a page out of his notebook and scribbled something on it.

  SITE OF A TRAGEDY: MOUNT OSUTAKA

  “I want a ten-day run.”

  “You mean a series?”

  “Yes. I’m envisioning an expansion of the usual eyewitness accounts. I want our reporters to focus on writing a different feature story under their own byline each day.”

  This speech was aimed at Todoroki. He guessed it had hit its mark, because a very unhappy voice now reverberated through the room.

  “The mountain’s going to be nothing but a repository for corpses and the monotony of them being airlifted away. There’s not enough material for a ten-day series.”

  Yuuki fixed Todoroki with a stare.

  “I don’t think that’s true. That mountain took the souls of five hundred and twenty living beings in a single moment. More likely to be too much material there.”

  “You can’t just say whatever your feelings tell you to say.”

  “You’re the one who’s all about feelings.”

  “What?”

  Yuuki psyched himself up for the attack.

  “This isn’t a site you can measure against Okubo or the Red Army.”

  Todoroki suddenly looked very severe indeed. Kasuya and Oimura’s expressions also changed. Yuuki looked at each of them in turn.

  “This crash site is beyond anything any of us could have imagined. Because we are sending people to cover something that is completely beyond comprehension, we have to make sure we get the highest caliber of reporting. That’s why I think it’s important for us to have an overwhelming force out there, outnumbering the rest of the press presence, keeping up the North Kanto Times’s proud eighty-year tradition.”

  The three managers stayed silent.

  There was a knock at the door and Chizuko Yorita from the editorial administrative support team brought in tea. Reading the sensitive atmosphere in the room, she didn’t offer her usual charming smile. Instead, she gave a quick bow, placed the teacups on the table, and left the room as quickly as possible.

  Kasuya let out a tiny sigh, incongruous with his giant body.

  “Understood. Let’s do it.”

  It was Kasuya who had made Yuuki desk chief for this case. He clearly realized that it would be ridiculous to destroy him now, after setting him up.

  Oimura tutted his frustration, but that was all. Todoroki was looking at the wall. Apparently he had nothing to say.

  Yuuki suddenly felt as if a weight had been removed from his shoulders. It was the first time he had ever gone up against these three and been able to express his opinion so openly.

  “However, are these reporters going to be able to make it to the crash site?” Kasuya asked. “Yesterday, only two made it, didn’t they?”

  “The Self-Defense Forces and the police have already started work on a cable ropeway from Sugenosawa to the summit. If our reporters use that, I believe they can make it up in two to three hours.”

  Oimura snorted at Kasuya and Yuuki’s exchange.

  “All this talk about feature stories and bylines! Let’s just call a spade a spade. It’ll end up being a load of froth, sucking up to the SDF and the police.”

  Oimura’s allergy to the Self-Defense Forces was well-known at the newspaper. A while ago, there’d been a dispute over whether or not to publish an SDF recruitment ad in the newspaper. Following his vehement opposition, it had ended up being cut.

  “Yuuki. I’m just going to say this—I think you should concentrate on the bereaved relatives. You shouldn’t get too carried away. It’d be less shameful than a bunch of vague, unfocused pages.”

  With this parting shot, Oimura got to his feet. Todoroki followed suit. Throwing Yuuki a glance full of loathing, he followed Oimura out of the room.

  “Well, try to get it done without too much fighting,” Kasuya offered, a faint smile on his lips. His expression showed none of the tension or excitement that a journalist ought to feel on coming face-to-face with the
biggest air disaster of all time.

  9

  It was a little after 7:30 a.m. In the newsroom, the early morning sun lit the dancing dust particles that followed everyone around.

  It was quiet this morning. Right now the world’s biggest plane crash existed only on the TV news. Yuuki reflected that it wasn’t only Kasuya and the rest of the senior management who didn’t seem to grasp the full reality of the accident. Even he hadn’t, and he was sure it was because he hadn’t been to the crash site in person. If he took the Kan-Etsu Expressway, he could get there in around two hours. However, Mount Osutaka couldn’t be measured in distance or time; it had become something more distant, far more complicated, than that.

  Yuuki sat down to begin the process of selecting the twenty-five reporters for his news crew. He already had twelve out in the field, so he had thirteen more to choose from the various branches scattered throughout Gunma Prefecture. He was picking the ones who seemed to have a history of doing good legwork, but he also had to consider a balance of the regions and not take too many reporters away from either the east or the west of the prefecture. There was no way of knowing where and when the next big story might happen.

  The young administrative assistant Chizuko Yorita had offered to page everyone for him, and he had just handed her the completed list when Kishi’s narrow face appeared in the newsroom. He put his shoulder bag down on the political editor’s desk.

  “It’s just as hot today!” he exclaimed.

  Yuuki was momentarily surprised by Kishi’s sweaty forehead. He himself hadn’t set foot outside the office building for two days straight and, sitting there in the comfort of the air-conditioning, he’d forgotten about the midsummer heat.

  “It’s boiling out there. Hey, you don’t look too good, Yuuki. Did you get any sleep?”

  “Yeah, I slept. Anyway, you got a call this morning from Aoki in Tokyo.”

  “About Yasukuni Shrine, I guess.”

  “Yeah. Prime Minister Nakasone’s going to visit the inner sanctuary, but he’s going to keep it simple. Just a bow, apparently.”