Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  Anna would tell me the following day that Staff Sergeant Goto’s polished boots and leggings came sharply to attention as he bowed deeply without uttering a single word.

  ‘Come, Nicholas, you are very drunk,’ Anna said, not entirely sober herself. Then she hauled me off, put two fingers to her lips and sent out an ear-piercing whistle towards the nearest taxi. In Japan this single action instantly placed her unequivocally beyond the pale. Two thimbles of sake, the seven-course fugu fish luncheon and three glasses of French champagne, as well as the relief and exhilaration of a triumphant outcome, had left her more than a little relaxed. Nevertheless, a passing taxi almost instantaneously skidded to a halt beside us, and I laughed drunkenly until I practically wept.

  During the ride home Anna’s high spirits continued, while I began to feel pretty ordinary. The passing streetscape appeared to be running on fast forward. Moreover, the cat had caught the lizard and my head was thumping like the clappers of hell.

  ‘Nicholas, you haven’t noticed,’ Anna said playfully, then brought her forefinger up to her earlobe and flicked it.

  ‘W-w-what?’ I said.

  ‘Can’t you see?’

  ‘Your diamonds?’

  ‘Look closely,’ she invited.

  I was having trouble focusing and squinted at the diamonds on the ears of both her heads. The light in the back of the taxi wasn’t extra good, either. ‘Yeah . . . same (hic) answer.’

  ‘Nicholas, what’s wrong? You usually notice everything. They’re pink!’

  I looked again, forcing Anna’s two heads to become one. ‘Well . . . I never . . . so they are!’ I pronounced haltingly. ‘Anna, did you know (hic) your diamonds have . . . turned pink? How . . . that happen . . . sweetart?’

  ‘They’re pink Brazilian diamonds, silly! A gift from Miss Sparkle.’ She giggled. ‘Our share of the Konoe Akira ransom money.’

  When we arrived at the Imperial Hotel, Anna was forced to commandeer two bellboys and the doorman to carry a legless Nick Duncan, the bum-sniffing sake champion Australian wonder dog, up to our hotel suite.

  I woke late the following morning with the mother and father of all hangovers. Rice, the staple food of half the world, may appear bland and innocent, but if left around at room temperature it can quickly grow a variety of bacteria that can lead to such a dose of the trots that to be more than twenty feet from the toilet for the next two days is courting disaster. Fermented into wine it can render you comatose as quickly as any alcohol and give you a hangover that is guaranteed to bring you whimpering to your knees in the shower the next morning.

  If I’d won the sake contest with Konoe Akira, it was at a high price. When I eventually managed to drag myself to the phone there were no seats left that day or night on any plane flying to Australia.

  ‘You could have called Qantas when you got up this morning,’ I grumbled at Anna.

  ‘I could have, but I had a better idea,’ she answered cheerfully, unaffected by yesterday’s lunch and her intake of sake and champagne. ‘I called Miss Sparkle and asked her to reschedule the Gojo Mura meeting for today and then booked us out on tomorrow night’s flight.’

  ‘What time today?’ I asked, dismayed. ‘Christ, I feel awful!’

  ‘We’re seeing Gojo Mura this afternoon at two-thirty, though I could change it to tomorrow morning if you prefer. Although it seems Fuchida-san is all set to go today.’

  ‘Nah, leave it,’ I decided. ‘But could you call the desk and ask them to send out for aspirin or whatever the Japanese equivalent is?’

  ‘Oh how the mighty have fallen!’ Anna declared. ‘It took two bellboys and the doorman to get you up here yesterday afternoon. I could have killed you when you threatened Konoe-san’s chauffeur.’

  ‘Chauffeur? I didn’t! Did I? Oh God! What happened?’

  ‘Well, the last time you met he karate-kicked you into Konoe-san’s vase. I daresay this time he could have sent you over the hood of his big blue motorcar, but like the gentleman you weren’t, he clicked his heels, bowed and remained silent.’ Anna paused and looked at me as if appraising the extent of my hangover. ‘You were in a terrible state, darling. You seemed perfectly fine until we left the restaurant . . . then . . . kerplunk! How much about yesterday do you remember?’

  ‘Most of it – a joint venture in several fish factories in the islands, your payback, schools for island kids . . .’

  ‘Good, that about sums it up. What’s your opinion?’

  I hesitated. ‘Anna, I told you I’d changed my mind. But I’ll have to talk to Kevin and Joe; it’s not solely my decision.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she replied. ‘But are you happy? I mean personally?’

  ‘Darling, I’d be awfully happy if someone would chop off my head.’ I groaned. ‘Could you send out for the local executioner, please?’

  ‘Nicholas, it’s important. I need to know I have your blessing. If your partners turn it down, well . . .’

  ‘They won’t!’ Hangover or no hangover, I could anticipate Kevin’s reaction: ‘Whaddaya sayin’, buddy? Dey gonna get us to make da harbour, run da fuckin’ place, labour recruit, management fee, transport rights, and we ain’t gotta put in no capital? No bribe to nobody? You sure you got dis deal sewn up real tight, Nick? What you mean ya ain’t gonna do da negotiation? Dat she gonna do it wid da government concerned? Nick, now hear me good, sonny boy. I’m gonna make da ultimate fuckin’ sacrifice. I’m gonna catch da fuckin’ aeroplane to dem cockamamie islands! We gonna make our own deals, man! Cain’t have no goddamn junkie doin’ da spruikin’ fer da biggest fleet in da whole fuckin’ South Pacific, ya hear me, buddy? Dem two freighters we got from da Japs, you done good woikin’ on ya own. We don’t need no fem fatal fuckin’ up da woiks. Anyone gonna stitch up dis fish factory it gotta be usselves!’

  Joe would think a while then say, ‘Nick, I tink yoh got us a gooood one, mah man. Lotsa labour re-quire-ment, and dat good foh da niggers! We can have us a school foh all dere piccaninny, I pro-pose dat be a part of da nego-she-ation wid da Japanese management fee. I cain’t see no problem wid doing dat job, man, I can do dat easy. Dem new freighters, Nick, con-grat-u-lation, even Kevin he goin’ a be a happy man foh a change . . . dem Japs payin’ foh da piccaninny schools and all dem new Uncle Joe scholar-ships dat’s gonna come! I’s gonna create a great aggri-vation foh dat muth’fucker, mah good brother, bottom-line Kevin!’

  Of course, while today our part in the fish factories would be considered pretty reprehensible, it must be said that in 1970 the rape of the seas by Japanese tuna-fishing boats wasn’t the issue it has subsequently become. Like North Sea mackerel, codfish and haddock, Pacific tuna was a natural resource that seemed inexhaustible. Whales were perhaps the only endangered ocean species at that time, as far as most people were concerned. Americans had encouraged the Japanese to eat whale meat during the post-war protein shortage. Now the world was just beginning to realise that some species of whale were threatened with extinction due to centuries of whaling.

  Many countries, such as Britain, Norway and Holland, finally stopped whaling not because of the threat of extinction, but simply because whales were so scarce that it wasn’t worth spending time and money hunting the few that remained. But Japan continued, for complex reasons, even though the economics were decidedly shaky.

  While nobody was surprised that it would take a long time for such huge creatures as whales to come back from the brink of extinction, most people thought that tuna and all the other fish of the oceans would be replenished as quickly as they could be caught.

  As for restricting the catch of that notorious predator of the seas, the universally dreaded shark, well, frankly, the fewer of them the better for all of us. Thank God for the Chinese and their love of shark-fin soup.

  Ouch! Today up to one hundred million sharks are caught each year simply for their fins – that’s a lot of noughts, 100 000 000! We are only just beginning to understand that the extinction of the shark could upset the ecological balance
of the oceans and eventually threaten humankind. All of this for a bowl of indifferent-tasting soup.

  As they say, it’s easy to have twenty-twenty vision with hindsight. I saw no evidence of the plunder of the environment. The jungle I knew so well on the islands remained as it always had, filled with birds, bees and butterflies; the destructive whine of the chainsaw was almost never heard and the giant hardwoods reigned on the silent slopes. As for dams, well, everyone knew that they were needed – the Aswan in Egypt, the Hoover in America, the Snowy in Australia.

  Of course, at this stage Marg wasn’t involved in the environmental movement and was still doing duty as the Admiral’s widow. I’d taken very little notice of newspaper reports of drowning a Tasmanian lake to make electricity. I was a philistine just like almost everyone else. But Marg was about to change all that soon after we returned from Japan.

  Forgive my digression.

  With the help of headache pills and fizzy drinks I was reasonably okay by midafternoon when the big black Mercedes carrying Fuchida-san came to pick us up. It seemed that Miss Sparkle’s scolding had had the required effect and he was in an ebullient mood, his demi-tantrum forgotten. ‘Hai! Nick-san, this is a good moment when old things are forgotten and new things are now possible. Gojo Mura will no longer need to feel shame. I will tell him that the past must be forgotten and we will be friends again like we were as boys in the village.’

  ‘Oh, so you didn’t see him after you phoned me?’

  He looked at me curiously. ‘No, certainly not. Without you, Duncan-san, it cannot be made to work. We have found him so we can share this unifying experience, you and me and Gojo Mura, three brothers long lost from each other, come together at last, the old Japan, the West and the new Japan.’

  I now better understood his anger at my refusing to accompany him on the previous occasion. Gojo Mura’s predicament was a product of the Old Japan. By allowing himself to be taken prisoner and then afterwards returning to Japan, Gojo Mura had officially became a non-person.

  It should be remembered that Japanese casualties in the Pacific theatre were sometimes very high. While most of these men died of malaria, dysentery and starvation in the jungle, they had nonetheless died for their emperor and were rightly considered war heroes. But this was not the case for Japanese soldiers captured and interned. To surrender to the enemy and then to be made a prisoner of war was an unimaginable humiliation felt by the entire nation. In such circumstances a soldier’s official duty was to commit suicide. If he failed to do so, the state obligingly did it for him, removing his name from his village register and sending his parents an urn supposedly containing his ashes and at the same time granting them a small pension. So when Gojo Mura was repatriated to Japan, he found that he was considered officially dead.

  In Japan, a returned prisoner of war had no official way of proving that he existed, no identity papers to contradict the fact that his name appeared on the list of the Japanese war dead. He was unable to apply for a job or gain any further qualifications because there was unequivocal proof that he was konpaku [a ghost]. For many, this technical death seemed far worse a fate than the real thing and many ex-soldiers committed suicide.

  However, Fuchida-san was now determined to transform Gojo Mura from being the victim of the intransigence of old Japan to being a beneficiary of the tolerant and democratic new Japan. The most harmless Japanese fighting man ever to be sent to war was about to be brought back to life.

  In Fuchida-san’s eyes this would need to be done correctly. To resurrect Gojo Mura and restore him to citizenship he would replicate the way the post-war nation had recreated itself: Old Japan (Gojo Mura) + Western influence (me) = New Japan (Fuchida-san). This symbolism was obviously very important to him, and so it was hardly surprising that he thought my initial refusal to accompany him, preferring as I did to take care of a woman, was frivolous and unworthy, when I could have been bringing the officially and technically dead back to life.

  The number two oyabun for Tokyo undoubtedly possessed sufficient clout with the government to ensure Gojo Mura’s official restoration – at that time Japan did not have a national census, and births, marriages and deaths were kept in village registers – but Fuchida-san was a stickler for detail and insisted that Gojo Mura’s return to contemporary life should have a symbolic as well as a practical dimension.

  Fuchida-san explained that Gojo Mura had changed his surname to Gekko, retaining his initials and first name. A name such as Gekko Mura was so common in Japan that it would go virtually unnoticed. Even so, finding him had proved less difficult than expected. A wakagashira had visited the village where the now officially dead Gojo Mura and Fuchida-san had spent their childhood. He had contacted Gojo-san’s aged parents who were overawed to hear that the Tokyo oyabun, the most famous and powerful scion to ever emerge from any village family tree, wished to locate their son for a most honourable purpose, to submit his name for reinstatement on the village register, so that he could be resurrected from the officially dead. With this dazzling possibility in mind they admitted that their son had secretly kept in touch with them. Once every year during the Spring Festival, the old couple would travel to visit him for a single day under the pretext that they were visiting the Yakusuni Shrine in Tokyo to pay tribute to the name of their officially dead war-hero son. This is not unusual in Japanese society where, because something is officially true, people pretend that it is actually true, while those around them accept the deception even though everyone knows the truth.

  We were driven to an impressive building in the downtown area of Tokyo, the home of the giant manga [comic book] publishers Skip. We were met at the front of the impressive building by the owner, Shozo-san, a short, fat and unctuous man with eyes that all but disappeared behind his plump shiny cheeks. He wore the usual blue serge suit, but surprisingly a pink shirt, pink tie and pink braces. He was sweating – plainly overcome – and more than a little apprehensive about the visit of the oyabun, who was purported to run the Tokyo area. He had begun bowing while we were climbing the numerous front steps to the entrance of the building and had repeated the gesture at least six times before we finally reached him.

  ‘Welcome, honourable Fuchida-san, to my humble building. Your guests are doubly welcome. This is a great occasion of momentous importance to Skip!’ The welcome was shouted and had obviously been carefully rehearsed.

  Fuchida-san returned this sycophantic welcome with a barely perceptible bow, more a jerk of the head. ‘Ho! May I introduce my esteemed colleagues Duncan-san and Anna-san.’

  Two more bows followed. ‘Welcome! Welcome! Please follow.’

  We were ushered through a foyer that contained several giant vases, where ten secretaries in bright pink smocks with Skip embroidered across the left breast stood in line. All bowed simultaneously as we crossed the black marble tiles and walked down a short hallway, lined with more of the grotesque six-foot-high vases vying to out-uglify each other in a grotesquery of design and colour. Finally we were shown into a very large conference room. Space is at a premium in Japan and large by Japanese standards can seem small by our own, but this was a large room by any standards.

  Arranged in a circle were ten dark leather club chairs, about three feet apart, each with a low table placed in front of it. At the centre of the circle, standing on a black polished marble plinth, was a twice-life-size bronze image of Shozo-san, the founder. In his left hand he was holding a Man Alive magazine, the bronze painted red and black, to represent the sexually explicit young men’s comic book that was the basis of his considerable fortune. Started in 1959, it was selling over two million copies a week. His right hand was pointing at the ceiling where the garish covers of all his other titles were painted. In Western terms, Skip was a porn publisher, although in Japan pornographic comics were a popular and long-established tradition and raised few eyebrows.

  Around the walls stood at least fifty grandfather clocks, averaging between five and seven feet high, all in elaborate burnish
ed steel, polished bronze or carved wooden cases, all with inscribed and decorated faces showing the phases of the moon and other superfluous information and with various and equally complicated brass pendulum designs. Fifty large clocks ticking away made a bizarre sound, like an army of death-watch beetles trying unsuccessfully to match each other’s rhythm. All of them were set to the local time.

  These, I was to learn, are one of the traditional gifts from large Japanese suppliers to their valued customers. Thus, the supplier for newsprint, the ink manufacturer, the glue supplier, and so on, would send one each year, the size and overall decoration of the giant timepieces indicating the worth of the supplier’s annual business. Judging from the display of clocks in the room, the Skip organisation was obviously an esteemed customer to many large suppliers, some represented by more than one of these appalling monstrosities. The vases in the foyer and hallway I imagined were from lesser suppliers, although you never know with the Japanese – they may well have been the premier marks of customer esteem.

  Japanese art, with its emphasis on minimalism and negative space, is perhaps the most esoteric of any national art style. But the Japanese predilection for expensive grotesquery in excruciating taste undoubtedly leads the world.

  I glanced at my wristwatch, which, in retrospect, seems a curious thing to do. It was just after 2.30 p.m. – we had just thirty minutes to go before what I imagined would be the hourly grand cacophony: fifty grandfather clocks each attempting to out-chime the others in tribute to the statue of fat Shozo-san.

  I glanced at Anna, who returned a small conspiratorial smile. Later she would remark that it wasn’t quite the Japan Konoe Akira had inculcated into her as a girl.

  Once seated, six young women appeared, again dressed in the ubiquitous pink smocks, each of them carrying a small pink tray with a pink pot of green tea, a pink cup and two miniature cakes topped with pink icing. Pink was obviously very important to Shozo-san, although curiously it didn’t form a part of any of the ceiling illustrations. The young women came to stand in front of each of us, bowed in unison and silently placed the tray on the table in front of them, poured the tea, then stepped back smartly, bowed again and departed, marching with arms swinging in crocodile formation out of the conference room.