Seventeen

by Hideo Yokoyama

  “I pretty much know the cause of the crash.”

  Yuuki couldn’t respond right away. If this was true, it would be an incredible scoop. He pulled up his chair.

  “Tell me.”

  “The pressure bulkhead was ruptured.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a hemispherical wall toward the back of the aircraft. It sustains the pressure in the passenger cabin.”

  “Could you explain a bit more?”

  “When the aircraft flies at high altitude, the pressure in the cabin rises. In other words, compared to the outside air pressure, the pressure inside is higher. So the bulkhead has a substantial load pressing on it from the inside toward the outside.”

  Yuuki could picture Tamaki, with his earnest face and neat side-parting. He’d graduated from Gunma University and was in his third year at the paper, currently covering the Maebashi City mayor’s office. That was really all Yuuki knew about him.

  “Explain the complicated stuff later. For now, what’s the upshot?”

  “To put it simply, the wall broke under the load. I believe that, with the wall gone, the pressure of the air in the passenger cabin blew off the tail.”

  Believe…? Yuuki lowered his voice.

  “You didn’t hear this from one of the investigation team?”

  “Ah, no … I heard the investigators repeating the word ‘bulkhead.’”

  “So you got it through eavesdropping rather than a proper interview?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “So they didn’t actually say that the bulkhead broke?”

  “No, they didn’t go that far.”

  Yuuki’s shoulders sagged. It was all no more than guesswork on the part of Tamaki. But there was also the possibility that he was spot-on.

  “Tonight, sneak into the hotel where they’re staying and try to collar one of the investigators,” he ordered Tamaki.

  “That’s going to be a bit tricky. All the media have journalists camped out there. There’s no way of getting past all the others.”

  “Just try anyway.”

  Yuuki hung up and turned to his neighbor.

  “Kishi?”

  “What?”

  “Who do we have in the Ministry of Transport’s press club?”

  “No one. We used to have membership there at one time, but…”

  “I see…”

  If this was true, there was nothing for it but to get hold of one of the members of the investigation team. Would Tamaki be able to manage it alone?

  Yuuki headed over to the regional news desk. A colleague by the name of Yamada sat there, his right hand absentmindedly in his trademark tousled hair.

  “Hey, Yamada, what’s Tamaki from the Maebashi office like? Is he a go-getter?”

  “Tamaki? Let me think … It’s kind of hard to get a sense of him. Not great, not terrible, either, I suppose.”

  Yuuki returned to his desk and looked at his phone. He knew there was only one person who would be able to answer his question properly—Sayama. He’d know what kind of a reporter Tamaki was: his temperament, his abilities, how credible his information was.

  As he was trying to decide whether to call Sayama, he heard someone calling him. It was that oily voice again. Yuuki mentally rolled his eyes and turned to face Ito, who had come right up behind him, as before.

  “I need to speak to you.”

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “Could I have about fifteen minutes of your time?” the Circulation chief asked, stroking his mustache. Yuuki frowned and looked up at the clock.

  “Look, I promise you it’ll take no more than fifteen minutes. It’s about Anzai.”

  Yuuki turned pale.

  “Has he taken a turn for the worse?”

  “No, of course not,” he said in his usual slimy way. “Nothing like that.”

  Ito nodded toward the door. Yuuki followed him out into the corridor. He had assumed that Ito intended to sit and talk in the break area, but the head of Circulation strode straight past the vending machines and started down the stairs. His self-confidence and egotistic manner bothered Yuuki. He was convinced once more that this man knew the truth about Yuuki’s late mother.

  Ito had prepared a space on the ground floor for them to talk. It was a little reception room where the Circulation Department met with their customers. Ito invited Yuuki to sit on the sofa. It was clear that he had some scheme in mind.

  “We’re really suffering at the moment. Anzai has left a big hole in our operations. Right now we’ve got three people running around trying to fill his shoes.”

  Yuuki decided to sit and wait. So far there didn’t seem to be anything resembling a point in what Ito was saying. He deliberately studied his watch.

  “You’ve had ten minutes already. If there’s nothing you need, I’ll be getting back to my desk.”

  Ito looked unperturbed.

  “Dear me, you do seem to be in rather a hurry. I’ll get straight to the point.”

  “We’re run off our feet today.”

  Almost as if this was the trigger he’d been waiting for, Ito leaned forward and locked his fingers together.

  “You mean with Prime Minister Nakasone’s visit to Yasukuni Shrine?”

  Yuuki watched Ito carefully. The managing director’s spy—the phrase ran through his mind. Ito laughed, his eyes narrowing to slits as fine as thread.

  “We’re just a simple ramen shop stuck in the middle of two skyscrapers.”

  Gunma’s Third Electoral District. It was the favorite phrase of the politician Keizo Obuchi. Stuck in the middle of the Fukuda-Nakasone rivalry, always forced to fight extra hard. Ito had just compared the North Kanto Times to Obuchi’s position. He was laughing.

  “How’s it going to be covered in our paper?”

  Yuuki wasn’t at all surprised by the question. It was obvious that managing director Iikura had been dying to know what was happening in the newsroom vis-à-vis the Yasukuni Shrine visit and had sent Ito to find out. Ito had picked Yuuki to ask. In other words, he had been chosen as the Iikura faction’s source of intelligence.

  But why him? Because he hadn’t been treated well. They saw him as an outsider in the Editorial Department. And he was also the man who had been about to set off for the mountains with Anzai, Ito’s junior colleague.

  Yes, he was sure that was it. Anzai must also have been a supporter of Iikura. Hadn’t he looked up to Ito, calling him his “lifesaver”? He’d been Ito’s right-hand man. Yuuki had caught their attention because of his friendship with Anzai. Without his even noticing it, he’d been labeled “managing director faction.”

  “Hey, what’s the matter? No need to look so grim … So, are they going to make Yasukuni Shrine the lead story?”

  Yuuki looked straight into Ito’s narrow little eyes.

  “What on earth do you have to gain by asking me that?”

  But he already knew. His information would be passed on to the Fukuda side. Or, more to the point, passed on by a jumped-up little man acting under the supposed authority of Fukuda. Before the morning edition was printed, this sycophant would be explaining that “this kind of article is scheduled to appear.” The most trivial, useless piece of information, but, as a journalist, Yuuki got it. There was always someone who could use information. Even the most trifling piece of C-grade or D-grade information could be used to smooth relationships and win friends. A tiny piece of information could buy a tiny amount of gratitude. If the process was repeated enough times, it grew into a sense of obligation, eventually blossoming into reliance and trust.

  Yuuki stood up. Ito looked at him.

  “Fair enough, but I heard you made a big scene yesterday.”

  “What are you…?”

  “In the chairman’s office.”

  Suddenly everything was crystal clear. Ito continued.

  “You understand? The chairman’s a despicable man. We can’t let a sexual pervert like that run our company!”

  Yuuki was shock
ed into silence.

  “As long as Shirakawa is in charge, there is no hope of you getting anywhere in this company. In fact, after yesterday, come autumn you’ll probably be let go or, at best, transferred to the middle of nowhere.”

  Yuuki looked down at Ito.

  “Better than selling my soul,” he spat, and turned and headed for the door. The oily voice flowed along behind him.

  “Hey, didn’t you use to live in Nakashindenmachi?”

  Yuuki stopped dead and turned his head slightly. Ito’s eyes were wider now, like a cat that had just spotted its prey. But Yuuki couldn’t return his gaze. He looked quickly away.

  In that moment, he could see his mother’s frail form, and the shifty-eyed men who used to slip out of their back door.

  19

  Four in the afternoon, and the newsroom was bustling.

  Yuuki was at his desk, occupied with Kyodo News wires.

  271 bodies recovered, 101 identified

  Joint Japan-U.S. investigation gets under way

  National public safety commission focuses on JAL’s possible criminal liability

  “Hey, kid, I heard your mom’s a pan-pan girl.”

  Of course. The high school kid he’d met in that park way back—it was Ito after all.

  He tried to keep calm.

  Ito had gone too far. It was conceivable that Yuuki’s secret was already out. The possibility of this happening had always been the thing that terrified Yuuki the most. But he realized that, if he were to discover that his secret was already out there, at least the worst part would be over. He was a forty-year-old man. How could whether his deceased mother had been a prostitute or not reasonably be seen as a blemish on his reputation?

  Yuuki reached for the next wire. The red pen in his hand never stopped moving.

  In the depths of his heart, there was a small wooden box.

  Inside it, he had stuffed all the shame and disgrace that threatened to ruin his life. For many, many years he’d lived in fear, desperately concealing the box, squeezing the lid down as tightly as he could. But now that the lid had been opened, he found that all it contained was grief. In the chaos of postwar Japan, her husband having vanished into thin air, left alone with a hungry, crying baby, she’d been forced to depend on men. And then, in the end, she had lain there alone, at a funeral that no one had attended.

  Yuuki kept on writing.

  Flight-path record reveals struggle

  Pilot’s desperate attempt to control engine

  Thorough inspection of jumbo jets launched

  “Yuuki-san?”

  He looked up to see Yoshii from the copy section. There was a worried expression on his boyish face. He was in charge of today’s front page.

  “Could you make the decision as soon as possible? Which one is going to be the headline, JAL or Yasukuni Shrine?”

  Yuuki craned his neck to check out the editor in chief’s office. The door was shut. All the senior management were holed up in there for the rest of the morning’s meeting.

  “Looks like they’re not ready yet.”

  “It’ll be a real problem for us if they don’t decide soon.”

  “For me, too. Looks like we’re all going to have to wait a bit longer.”

  “But I don’t understand why they’re even considering Yasukuni. Why can’t they just stick with the crash?”

  Yoshii looked at Yuuki through narrowed eyes. He was a veteran copy editor in his mid-thirties but, with his slight build and childlike face, he looked much younger.

  “If we stop leading with it after only three or four days, we’ll be a laughingstock with all the other newspapers,” Yoshii continued.

  “Laughingstock?”

  “Yes. I don’t think we should even consider any other headline until the other papers do. No matter how others may see it, it’s our local news story.”

  Yuuki began to feel a little guilty.

  “Yuuki-san, could you go and talk to the bosses about it? You are the desk chief, after all.”

  “Only in name.”

  It was painful to have to admit this. And saying it out loud made it even worse. He was frustrated at himself, too, for not being able to be fired up by this topic of conversation. Or rather, he knew what he ought to have the guts to say, but the words just weren’t there. Instead, he said something quite different.

  “So you’ll just have to prepare two alternative headlines, won’t you?”

  Yoshii returned to his desk, muttering under his breath. Yuuki let out a short sigh and glanced at the clock. It was almost five. Wajima still hadn’t sent over his article for the crash feature series. As he turned back to his work, something on the next desk caught his eye. He’d seen a leg; a leg with no body attached. It was a photo from one of the newsmagazines—maybe Friday or Focus. Nozawa was sitting there, flicking through a magazine. It was the Mount Osutaka special edition. Every time Nozawa stopped at a page, Yuuki’s eye was assaulted by a gruesome image of a different body part.

  “That came out today?” Yuuki asked.

  “I think we can use this,” Nozawa replied, holding it out for Yuuki to see.

  “Use it?”

  Nozawa flicked his thumb and forefinger at one of the photos.

  “This here, this is the JAL crash in a nutshell. Newspapers can’t compete with this stuff.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Ha!” Nozawa snorted scornfully. “Don’t you get it? Ever since they heard that five hundred and twenty people were killed, everyone’s wanted to see the bodies. The newspapers go on about how disastrous, how pitiful it is, they pile it on in platefuls, but they’re no match for a single photo.”

  Yuuki wasn’t sure how serious Nozawa was. It could have been his form of revenge for not having been named JAL crash desk chief.

  “All those articles trying to make the readers cry—they’re all the same,” Nozawa continued. “Every day they write about the same thing—so and so, family member of the deceased. Who reads that stuff? No one wants to read the same shit over and over again.”

  “That’s a naive thing to say,” said Yuuki with a sigh.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nozawa, have you ever written anything with the serious intention of making your readers cry?”

  Nozawa began to say something but stopped.

  “The mass media has the tendency to report people’s deaths in the saddest way possible. Whether the public reads it or not, writing, assembling, distributing—that’s what a newspaper’s about. And if five hundred and twenty people have died, then we are going to write five hundred and twenty pieces that make the readers cry. That’s our job.”

  Yuuki’s heart felt as bleak as he sounded.

  “I’m sure there are people out there who cry about complete strangers. I suppose it’s a matter of personal taste whether you prefer to look at a photo or read some sentimental piece. We can’t get caught up in worrying about that kind of thing,” said Yuuki.

  There was a pause.

  “You’re being philosophical about this. Definitely out of character for you.”

  “Nozawa?”

  “What?”

  “I can hand in my notice anytime. If you want the JAL desk chief job, just let management know.”

  Nozawa folded his arms and looked Yuuki in the eyes.

  “I heard you had a falling-out with the chairman.”

  “News travels fast.”

  “Anyway, I’ve got no interest in taking over.”

  “This kind of accident happens only once in a lifetime.”

  “It’s too big. There’s nothing interesting about it. It’s fine—go ahead and cover it. Your way. To the bitter end, Don Quixote.”

  And with that, Nozawa turned his back on Yuuki.

  Don Quixote? If Yuuki hadn’t been the one sitting in this seat right now, he’d have laughed out loud at the name. Nozawa had nailed it.

  He gathered together all the articles relating to the cause of the crash.


  Ministry of Transport investigators rule out R5 door as cause

  Defect in tail connector may have created resonance

  Possible damage to tail linkage

  Vertical tail came off at the root

  Extreme pressure on the root; turbulence theories

  Horizontal stabilizer also damaged?

  U.S. Federal Aviation Administration: large aircraft suffer from fast deterioration

  Mystery of 30-minute “figure eight” flight path

  Full effort into wreckage investigation

  It took Yuuki a while to get through all these. The term “bulkhead” was nowhere to be found. He began to think he’d been misled by Tamaki.

  Next, he turned his attention to the articles dealing with the bereaved families.

  Slow progress in identification of victims

  Air crash dead return home

  He thought about how these two would seem to cancel each other out if they appeared together on the same page. If he was picking a headline story, he’d probably go with the former. It had a stronger impact. If he had to choose a second story only, AIR CRASH DEAD RETURN HOME would make a good sentimental piece.

  He finally looked up from his work. Kishi had just been to see what the situation was in the editor in chief’s office.

  “Have they decided?”

  “Looks like they’re leaning toward Nakasone. But they’re still fighting over the content.”

  “Did Kasuya meet with managing director Iikura?”

  “No. Seems he’s not at work today.”

  “Vanished into thin air, huh?”

  “Apparently. Seems he’s not at home, either.”

  “He’s like Jaws or Alien. Scarier when you can’t see him.”

  “You seem pretty laid-back,” said Kishi with a broad smile. “So you have the crash stuff sorted out?”

  “The Kyodo News part,” Yuuki replied. “How about you?”

  He took AIR CRASH DEAD RETURN HOME from the pile, convinced now that he was picking the second story.

  “We’re waiting to get the lead piece from Aoki in Tokyo. He must be having a tough time with it. He’s not as talented at writing as he is at talking.”

  Yuuki laughed.

  “By the way, Yuuki … Is it really okay with you?”

  “Is what okay?”