We walked through towers of cardboard boxes and up a steep and narrow staircase to a disorderly office area on the second floor, where I was offered a chair. Since I’d come to find a necktie, the manager personally fetched me a selection of skinny club ties from America, Germany, and Italy. A girl from the shop brought tea and asked me for an autograph. I signed her piece of paper and she slinked off. The manager told me to take my time and disappeared, leaving me alone with my decision.
Up there in the office, the bustle of Ginza kept its distance, and the music and the people dancing at the neighboring cabaret, separated only by a window, felt like they were in another world. I was alone, my head cocked staring at a mirror on the wall — if there’s a mirror in the room, I notice it right away and answer its passionate gaze. In that messy little room, it was like the ratty burlap sack of Ginza had been emptied inside out.
Again I felt the strange sensation of filming out of order. I stroked the fabric of a German tie in an elegant silvery gray and ran its length between my fingers . . . through the mirror, head still cocked, I took a careful look around the room.
But when I heard the manager climbing the stairs, I pulled the necktie from my pocket and carefully returned it to its box. Even if I’d really stolen it, no one would have labeled me a thief. The manager would merely have sent along an invoice and had a blast telling his friends about the funny trick I’d played.
Three rookie actresses — Aiko, Baba, and Chie — stood around me, dressed up in fancy outfits that gave them away as country girls too far from home. Soon each of them would “taste my venom.” They were trembling, eyes fixed on their scripts, no time to listen to the jokes I made.
When me and the first one, Aiko, were called to the lofted upper level of the set, Aiko almost lost her footing on the shoddy ladder.
“Hey babe, watch your step!” Ken said, touching her hips as if to catch her. “Tokyo is a dangerous place.”
The lighting crew always perked up for the bedroom scenes. You could hear them joking all around us, eyes peeled.
Takahama talked us through the scene.
“You two are sitting on the futon. Richie takes Aiko in his arms, but she jerks away, backs up against the wall, and says her line. Richie isn’t fazed and throws her down. Aiko lays on the futon crying. Watching her cry, Richie stands, casually undoes his tie, and takes his shirt off. Then he says his line. That’s it. Got it? Aiko puts up a front, but she’s already thrown open the castle gates. Alright. Lights!”
Aiko couldn’t get her part right, so we kept starting over. The clapper snapped and snapped. Working patiently beside her through take after take gave me a chance to reevaluate my own performance. I realized that when I tugged off the tie, I could wrap one end of it around my finger and fling the whole thing like a streamer through the air. I tried this out during the third test run and Takahama didn’t comment, meaning he approved.
“Hey, Kayo, grab my mints,” I yelled down to the lower level between takes. Kayo sat in a chair with the script open in her lap, quietly knitting her turquoise sweater, avoiding the banter between the set photographer and the guys from PR.
When people saw the sweater, they gave her a hard time, asking “Who’s the present for?” Kayo was ready with an evil eye and would tell them, deadpan, “It’s for me. Yarn’s cheap in bulk this time of year.”
From the upper level of the set, that turquoise sweater made a cheery blemish in the cloying blackness of the floor, which twinkled wet from everyone’s umbrellas.
Kayo knit the sweater sloppily on purpose. She made it fit wrong on her body, in a blousy shape long out of style. Knowing her, at some point later in the year, once everyone had forgotten all about her summer knitting project, she’d show up in the sweater and crouch down at the back of the studio, waiting to overhear their whispered laughter.
Because I knew what she was up to, that half-finished turquoise sweater seemed to me, from my vantage in the loft, like the very hue of her nefarious intentions.
This was apt knitting for summer. Her fingers maneuvered through the heart of it, as if secretly laboring to humiliate every worldly convention that the climate and the seasons had to offer.
But most of all this patch of turquoise yarn in the darkest corner of the set was a thing of beauty, like a virgin spring, a calm collection of her artifice.
I like to have a mint before I film a kissing scene. Kayo always had them at the ready, and I got a kick out of seeing the face she made when she came running with them in her hand.
That face was her strength. No matter how prickly the circumstance, she remained stern and officious, without a trace of jealousy. I loved seeing her this way.
Kayo sped to the top of the ladder, legs pumping in those cheap black slacks, and handed me the case of silver mints. It was small enough that I could easily have kept it in my pocket, but it was my policy not to spoil the crisp lines of my clothes with even the smallest object. The slimmest prop could compromise the way the cloth fell or the way I moved, and when I gestured passionately the mics could catch the mints rattling in their case.
I assumed a stoic air, knotted my tie, rolled up my sleeves, and shook a few mints into my palm. Against my skin, these prosaic pellets felt like currency, little symbols of the kisses I relied on for my livelihood.
But the scene we were filming had no kiss. I was giving Kayo a hard time
“Actually, I’m kind of thirsty.”
“Why didn’t you just say so then? I’ll get some tea.”
With a glare that cut right through my mischief, Kayo’s eyes, for just an instant, seemed to harbor a faint resentment — the type of look that she learned to hide so well when we were filming. I thought it was funny.
“It’s fine. But let’s have tea next time. The two of us,” I said. I even winked.
Just then Ken walked by.
“Hubba hubba! Tea for two.”
We cut that one a little too close.
When the director shouted “Ready?” Aiko was already on the verge of tears. The lighting crew, who had been leering at us through the test run of the bedroom scene, burst into action and screeched commands. They rushed to adjust the lighting, to make sure that the shadow of the boom mic dangling from its bamboo pole didn’t drop into the frame, and that none of the lights dispelled the fantasy of the hotel room’s lone bulb by casting a layered shadow on the wall.
This restlessness before the main event was like the thrill you get from hearing circus animals stomp the earth before they march into the ring.
“Lights: you ready?” Takahama asked. “Let me guess — you need a minute.”
He spoke sarcastically to hide his annoyance, but no one was going to laugh at a joke so clumsy and barbed.
Under the lights, dust kicked up from the corners of the set glinted and danced like flecks of gold. Kayo came over silently and held the tiny mirror before me. I took a quick peek and was pleased with the condition of my makeup. For a second I practiced the expression I was supposed to make when the camera cuts to me.
Hanging on the hotel wall were tacky signs advertising “naptime” for 200 yen and an overnight stay, breakfast included, for 700. Beside the signs there were dirty poems written on tall strips of paper. A traditional doll of a woman carrying a basket used for making salt stood in a little alcove at the edge of the tatami floor. The cramped space — only three tatami mats — was lined with red and blue embroidered satin pillows.
Conscious of her inexperience, Aiko bowed and said she’d follow my lead. Her calico dress had too many pleats and a sweeping hem, like something a country girl had copied from a fashion magazine. But she was far from petit, and it suited her pastoral figure perfectly. Staring off into space, her plump arms bare, she drew shapes on the tatami with her fingers and practiced her one line to herself over and over. I hate witnessing ambition, even in a woman. I had to look away.
&nbs
p; “Action!” Takahama wailed.
The assistant director flashed and snapped a clapper with scene 71, shot 3 written on it in chalk. The buzzer rang, and the stream of artificial time gushed forth.
I took Aiko in my arms. In my embrace, her body quivered like a bowl of pudding. She was supposed to be writhing, but she wasn’t using enough force. I had to overcompensate and throw my hands back to make it look like she had flung me off. She bumped her back against the wall.
She was supposed to say —
“No, no! Stay away from me!”
— but instead said:
“No, no! Stay with me!”
“Cut!” the director yelled. “Cut! You’ve got it ass-backwards. Come on! I’ll cut you slack during the test runs, but once we’re using film, you’re accountable. Film ain’t free.”
“I’m sorry!”
Aiko’s voice was shaky, but I didn’t feel particularly sympathetic. When it was someone else’s fault, I breathed easy and sided with the director. Takahama’s displeasure could sometimes verge on the majestic. He towered over this trembling amateur actress, drowning her out like the crash of a symphony. Slip-ups like these, blunders that ruin a take, seemed to make him feel like the glass castle he was laboring to construct was shattering to pieces. He planned his scenes shot by shot, like a criminal plotting out the perfect crime. When he hit some obstacle along the way — a mouse, for instance, kicking a tin can off of a shelf onto the floor — he would reject this unsolicited detail, however realistic, as his sworn enemy.
I loved watching the agonized expression that came over Takahama’s face when he had to throw a scene because an actor flubbed a line or made the wrong expression: it was the grimace of swallowing the bitter reality of incompetence. And ruined celluloid.
“Alright. Action!”
The clapper snapped and the buzzer rang. Silence rippled through the set.
When I cradled Aiko in my arms, she flung my hands away and threw herself decisively against the wall, whipping back her pale jaw. The shock made her nod mechanically, like a doll someone had tossed. Her teeth clacked like ceramic.
“No, no! Stay away from me!”
I was sitting with my feet free, ready to stand, before she’d even spoken. I sprang up flawlessly and towered over her. The camera shot us from the side, filming Aiko’s trembling face as she watched me with an expression that the script described as “full of fear and anticipation.”
I turned toward the camera and dropped my hands onto her shoulders, to push her down. Aiko was too stiff and didn’t understand how to go down gracefully. It felt like I was yanking on the handle of a creaky pump that badly needed greasing. But I had to make my movements fluid, effortless, and strong.
Once Aiko had fallen to the bed and started crying (though in a way that left much to be desired), I took center stage. Finally, I was able to move without resistance.
I looked down at the crying woman at my feet and smirked. She arched her back, pushing her chest out just enough to accentuate her breasts. I twisted up my lips, shiny with lip balm, ran my fingers through my hair, and tugged apart the tie, in the rakish way I’d worked out during the test run. I took care not to rush, loosening the knot in three deliberate motions, each gesture dripping with my readiness to enjoy this woman’s body.
But I had to keep from appearing to be a villain. A heartthrob must always be supple; his face must never lose its natural innocence. I ripped open my shirt, nearly popping off the buttons. The amber muscles of my chest, prepped earlier with body makeup, gleamed lustrously before the camera.
I freed my arms from my sleeves and delivered my line: “Quit crying. You know I’m gonna treat you right.”
“Cut!”
Takahama took a sharp breath. In the usual sulking way, he let out his reluctant signal of approval.
“OK.”
4
It’s become a tradition for me to pin up the life-size poster from my current project right inside the front door. Every night, when I get home, I’m the first one there to greet me.
As we neared the end of filming, the posters kept coming. That night, I found the life-size color poster of me waiting in the mail. The format was always the same: I stood alone against a white background. Theaters everywhere would paste these onto sheets of plywood, cut around my body with a jigsaw, and stand me up outside the entrance. On windy days, there was nothing worse than passing a movie theater on the edge of town and seeing myself knocked facedown on the pavement.
On this particular poster, I wore the standard suit, but with a crimson polo shirt under the jacket. The neck of the shirt was open, and a solid gold pendant of a skull was glinting from my chest. This composition was yet another masterpiece from our set photographer. He’d really made it come alive by shooting from a low angle, to make me taller. The PR Office had been picky about the face I made and asked for subtle adjustments until finally giving this one their approval. My cheeks were rosy, my smile sober.
Coming home exhausted late at night to find this cheery character waiting gave me a boost of energy, because I knew that when we took that photograph I was equally exhausted — my carefree grin a total lie.
The next morning, the house was blanketed in fog. I was standing out front, annoyed that my taxi was running late, when a group of schoolgirls emerged from the fog and started pinching at my thighs. I heard myself shriek, and in that instant the white trim on the backflaps of their sailor suits vanished into the mist.
That day we were supposed to shoot the final scene at Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park, but the foul weather made us stay on set for two more days, until it cleared and we could finally head out on location. Here, Neriko, in a last-ditch effort to convince me to leave the yakuza, drags me to a bench by the edge of the pond and confesses her deepest secret, which I never saw coming: her brother was the reason I wound up in jail. He was my role model, my idol — and the one who talked. The guys who killed him had their own agenda, but unbeknownst to them, they’d settled my score.
I shake my head at the stupidity of this world of crime. Taken by Neriko’s emotional sincerity, I help her into a rowboat and paddle us out into the pond. She offers me a piece of gum, which I refuse; she insists, and finally I accept it and proceed to chew the gum with a huge grin on my face. “the end” floats up from the surface of the water and begins to grow, but in the foreground, back at the water’s edge, you see the figure of a plainclothes cop cupping the photo of me that the precinct circulated when they billed me as a pimp. As he sizes up our little boat, the black back of his jacket swells like a thundercloud to fill the screen as “the end” peaks in size, and the movie ends. I thought this philosophical comment on the fleeting nature of contentment wasn’t such a bad way to wind things up. It was a message that appealed to the lucky and the unlucky alike.
At lunchtime on the day we shot the pond scene, a film columnist from a classy women’s magazine met us at a sushi bar in Ueno to hold an interview. Squeezing through the throngs of fans peeking through the windows, she joined us at the counter, taking her seat with an obvious air of education. When she was finished with her questions, she peered at me through her glasses, sighed, and said, “I feel bad for you. I really do.”
Plenty of stars would fall for this sort of line — they’re tired of being simply adored or envied and are quick to take a sign of sympathy as proof of being understood. Not me. All she would get from me was a naive young celebrity, complacent with his fame. When she stood up to go, Kayo, who’d been eating sushi beside me, started coughing in the most believable way, and sent two or three beads of rice flying at the woman’s back.
The studio kept things moving and was already abuzz with preparations for the next production. As soon as things are wrapping up, you dive right in again.
The next movie was a romantic tragedy set in high society. Once we were finished shooting at the pond that evening, the pr
oducer, thinking I could learn a thing or two about the upper crust, took me along to a fancy party. The gathering was hosted by a former prince at his former palace, now a hotel, where once a month he held gatherings for the families of the former nobility and those of solid pedigree.
When we arrived, the producer carted me around making introductions and schmoozing with everyone we met. I’d never had so many people fail to recognize me — somehow no one knew my name, and the elegant young ladies claimed they’d never seen my films. The second we were introduced, they resumed their conversations.
On the ride home, the producer was suddenly a champion for the common man.
“Oh how the mighty have fallen! On a normal night at home those assholes are probably roasting herring on sticks around a fire pit. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Movies are about the make-believe. Forget about imitating anyone or anything. Just give us a pure, gallant young gentleman, okay?”
As I sat through his pep talk, my mind drifted back to a moment at the party when the producer had introduced me to one of the beautiful young women without mentioning my profession. She’d tilted her neck ever so slightly as she looked me over. This was a breach of manners, no matter how you saw it. If she really didn’t know my name, custom would have kept her from betraying it with such a gesture. Tilting her neck like that, so elegantly you could almost miss it. She knew what she was doing. Her features were chilly and refined; she had the trim nose and flat brow of an antique doll, and her little red lips looked like a spot of red ink left by a dropper.
“Maybe she’s just being coquettish,” I thought. “The neck thing is just a tease.”
But I wasn’t going to fall for it. I bet she thought pretending that she’d never heard of me was certain to entice me. Most stars would take the bait. Not me. If she didn’t recognize my face or know my name, I didn’t exist, at least not to her — but a girl has to be pretty damn arrogant to try and seduce you by denying your existence, and I’m not some dreamer who would chase a girl like that, since I meant nothing to her. Maybe Kayo really was the only one for me.
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