by Barry Eisler
http://www.wimsblog.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODCfOWTy8po#at=225
While we’re on the subject of combat techniques, as with everything else that appears in the book I’ve tried to convey Rain’s chapter 1 suplay as vividly as possible. But if you want to see the move in the real world as well as in your imagination, here are two nice examples—the first executed by a seven-year-old!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLkUbYTSexs
http://www.flowrestling.org/coverage/249282-Journeymen-Freestyle-Duals/video/632901-Araoz-5pt-Throw-SUPLAY
Also: for more on the Tueller Drill “21 feet” rule, here are two videos. I practiced this kind of drill with Simunition at Peyton Quinn’s Rocky Mountain Combat Applications Training institute, and it is eye-opening. Twenty-one feet is a lot closer than you might think:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwHYRBNc9r8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL1zX-SrBH0
To the extent I get violence right in my fiction, I have many great instructors to thank, including Massad Ayoob, Tony Blauer, and Rory Miller. Their courses and other materials are superb and I highly recommend them for anyone who wants to be safer in the world, or just to create more realistic violence on the page:
http://www.massadayoobgroup.com
http://www.tonyblauer.com
http://www.chirontraining.com
Rain’s notion of “Don’t insult him, don’t challenge him, don’t threaten him, don’t deny it’s happening, give him a face-saving exit” is courtesy of Peyton Quinn of the Rocky Mountain Combat Applications Training institute. Another great course:
http://www.rmcat.com
The flying triangle strangle in chapter 3 is courtesy of Dave Camarillo’s excellent book Guerilla Jiu-Jitsu: Revolutionizing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a must for any serious grappler:
http://www.amazon.com/Guerrilla-Jiu-Jitsu-Revolutionizing-Brazilian/dp/0977731588/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374452406&sr=1-2
I don’t know much about electricity, but learned a lot from this website on fatal electric shocks:
http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/safety/electrical/TheFatalCurrent.html
MythBusters was hugely helpful in helping me understand that yes, a dropped appliance really can electrocute you in the bathtub. Note, though, that the MythBusters didn’t get everything quite right. In fact, electricity in fresh water can be more dangerous than electricity in salt:
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/appliances-in-the-bath-minimyth.htm
http://www.boatus.com/seaworthy/magazine/2013/july/electric-shock-drowning-explained.asp
Tom Hayses and Dan Levin were generous in sharing their expertise on all matters electrical and helping me tune up the electrocution sequence. I’m not particularly technical and might have gotten something wrong anyway, but not for lack of trying on their part.
For Rain’s thoughts on the effects of proximity in killing, I’m again indebted to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman for his disturbing, original book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society:
http://www.amazon.com/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-ebook/dp/B003XREUV2/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1375672344&sr=1-1
Dr. Yoshikatsu Eto and Dr. Hiroyuki Ida, both of Tokyo’s Jikei University School of Medicine, were generous in providing a tour of the institution’s facilities and in answering my unusual questions about the disposition of the dead at and through the hospital. Obviously, the shenanigans that occur in the hospital’s morgue in the story are the product only of my (twisted, yes, I know) imagination, and in any event reflect a security posture from an era much more innocent than the current one.
Once again, Jeroen ten Berge and Rob Siders provided terrific cover design and formatting services:
http://jeroentenberge.com
https://52novels.com
Thanks as always to the extraordinarily eclectic group of “foodies with a violence problem” who hang out at Marc “Animal” MacYoung’s and Dianna Gordon’s No Nonsense Self-Defense, for good humor, good fellowship, and a ton of insights, particularly regarding the real costs of violence:
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com
Thanks to Naomi Andrews, Jeroen ten Berge, Alan Eisler, Koichiro Fukasawa, Dan Gillmor, Montie Guthrie, Tom Hayse, Charlotte Herscher, Mike Killman, Lori Kupfer, Dan Levin, Lara Perkins, Ken Rosenberg, Johanna Rosenbohm, Ted Schlein, and Alan Turkus for helpful comments on the manuscript.
Most of all, thanks to my wife, Laura, for damn near a quarter century of unwavering support, belief, and confidence, in every kind of weather. And awesome editorial, too. Thanks, babe, for everything.
Author’s Note
Part of my writing method has always involved extensive on-site research for all the locales I use, but obviously Graveyard of Memories, set in 1972, presented a challenge in this regard. The challenge was multiplied by my desire to use real places—bars and jazz clubs and coffeehouses—that readers could visit if they wished.
I decided on a threefold solution: use existing places that have been around since at least 1972; concentrate the action in the older parts of Tokyo, chiefly in the east of the city, which have changed less over the decades than those in the more cosmopolitan west; and peruse photo books of 1960s and 1970s Tokyo to get a better feel for what’s different and what is largely unchanged. For lovers of the city, I recommend these books (the translations, doubtless inelegant or worse, are mine):
(A Little in the Past of Tokyo: Images of the Downtown 30 Years Ago, Kouhei Wakameda)
(Tokyo Photo Book: The Story of a Changing City, 1948–2000, Minoru Ishii)
(1960s Tokyo: Memories of a City of Trams That Ran Like Water, Akira Ikeda)
The result, as always, is a series of locations that are described as I found them—but also as best as I could imagine they looked and felt when Rain was only twenty.
That said, here and there I had to cheat a little, and this is the place to come clean. So: although Taro, the jazz club to which Rain takes Sayaka in Shinjuku’s Kabukichō, is long gone, its successor, Body & Soul, also opened by Kyoko Seki, is alive and well in Minami Aoyama. It’s one of Tokyo’s best and worth the trip:
http://www.bodyandsoul.co.jp
Also, as far as I know, the exterior of Kabaya Coffee in Yanaka is unchanged from at least 1938, when the shop opened in the tiny building it still occupies. The interior, however, has been updated. Accordingly, Rain’s description of the inside of the shop is a product only of my imagination. But I recommend the shop, the kind of kissaten—old-style coffeehouse—found only in Japan, and also recommend the entire Yanesen (Yanaka, Nezu, Sendagi) area where you’ll find it:
http://www.toothpicnations.co.uk/my-blog/?p=6778
And here’s some more information on the places that appear in the book…
Kamiya in Asakusa, where Rain meets with his case officer Sean McGraw after getting jumped in Ueno, is Tokyo’s oldest western-style bar. Big, boisterous, and unpretentious, with communal tables. If you’re a foreigner, you might be a bit of a novelty. Try the denki buran—electric brandy—or stick with the draft beer:
http://travel.cnn.com/tokyo/drink/kamiya-bar-849180
http://www.kamiya-bar.com
A nice photo tour of contemporary Uguisudani, where Rain first meets Sayaka at one of the area’s numerous love hotels:
http://pingmag.jp/2013/03/25/welcome-to-uguisudani/
Taihō Chuuka Ryōri (Chinese Cuisine), the second place Rain meets McGraw:
http://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1316/A131602/13001670/
Lion Coffee in Shibuya, where Rain retrieves a critical file:
http://blog.uchujin.co.uk/2010/09/lion-cafe-–-tokyo’s-worst-“best-kept”-secret/
http://www.tokyofoodlife.com/?p=1829
A wonderful photo tour of the Arakawa line, Tokyo’s last surviving public tram:
http://ldersot.smugmug.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumID=25699252&AlbumKey=mLnMtm
And another:
http://lifetoreset.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/aboard-toden-arakawa-one-of-tokyos-remaining-street-car/
An article on some of Tokyo’s best sentō. This is where I learned of Daikoku-yu, site of the electrocution hit (and a great place to visit for an afternoon soak):
http://travel.cnn.com/tokyo/visit/sento-spectacular-tokyos-amazing-public-baths-199776
A nice article about a walk through Kita-Senju, home of Daikoku-yu sentō:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2011/01/09/environment/the-narrow-roads-of-senju/#.UdAtQhaHoUw
Café de l’Ambre, a classic Tokyo kissaten, and a good place for a dead drop, too:
http://www.tokyofoodlife.com/?p=323
Kabaya Coffee—another classic McGraw favors for dead-drop communications:
http://www.timeout.jp/en/tokyo/venue/8951/Kabaya-Coffee
A very cool photo blog of the Nakagin Capsule Tower:
http://www.ignant.de/2013/09/05/1972-by-noritaka-minami/
And a report from two western architects who managed to secure and live in one of the apartments there:
http://www.domusweb.it/content/domusweb/en/architecture/2013/05/29/the_metabolist_routine.html
Here are some amazing photos of student demonstrations in Tokyo, 1968–1971:
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2TYRYDMD2HVR
For inspiration about the vibe of Tokyo’s 1972 jazz scene, I loved this photograph of a young Terumasa Hino, along with a few other legends of jazz—Shinjuku Dug, 1968:
http://openers.jp/culture/tips_event/artdish0617.html
And Hino’s “Alone, Alone and Alone,” the piece he and his quartet perform at Taro in the book, was wonderful to write to. Gorgeous, haunting music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn-LQpFhGIY
Politics
More on the CIA’s long-standing financial role in Japanese politics:
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world/cia-spent-millions-to-support-japanese-right-in-50-s-and-60-s.html
The CIA underwriting foreign politicians is nothing new. Here’s a recent revelation, this one from Afghanistan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/world/asia/cia-delivers-cash-to-afghan-leaders-office.html
A brief history of the Lockheed bribery scandal in Japan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals#Japan
A brief history of the Church Committee. Senator Church said in 1975, “I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
Today, for any overseas behavior the U.S. government might want import to America, it has only to cite Senator Lindsey Graham, scholar, savior of the Constitution, and inventor of the profoundly Jeffersonian slogan “The homeland is the battlefield”:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/04/19/sen-lindsey-graham-boston-bombing-is-exhibit-a-of-why-the-homeland-is-the-battlefield/
About the Author
PHOTOGRAPH BY NAOMI BOOKER, 2007
Barry Eisler spent three years in a covert position with the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, then worked as a technology lawyer and start-up executive in Silicon Valley and Japan, earning his black belt at the Kodokan International Judo Center along the way. Eisler’s bestselling thrillers have won the Barry Award and the Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of the Year, have been included in numerous “Best Of” lists, have been translated into nearly twenty languages, and include the #1 bestseller The Detachment. Eisler lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and, when he’s not writing novels, blogs about torture, civil liberties, and the rule of law. http://www.barryeisler.com