Spark

by Naoki Matayoshi

  Kamiya was lousy with his money. He spent without thinking, and often when we went out, he had to get a quick loan first. Ever since breaking up with Maki, Kamiya had been floundering. It was masochistic the way he didn’t seem at ease unless he was suffering.

  “He tries to look cool in front of you,” Obayashi went on, “but he doesn’t know when to stop, and if he keeps getting deeper and deeper in debt, we might not be able to do manzai any more.”

  Probably Obayashi didn’t want to be saying this kind of thing to a kohai, but maybe he thought he had no choice.

  “It’s my fault,” I said quickly. “He insists he’s supposed to pay for me.”

  Obayashi clamped his lips tightly together. “Nah, it’s not your fault. Kamiya, when he talks about you, is always pumped.”

  He was a good guy, Obayashi, and Kamiya was lucky to have a partner like him. He was ambitious, though. When he said, “I wanna be big,” I pretended not to hear.

  “Hey, it’s Shikatani.” Obayashi had turned to look at the television.

  I turned to look too.

  Shikatani had been discovered by a big-name programme host. The guy put him on his show and treated him like his favourite toy. And Shikatani was making the most of it, happy to be the darling of the moment. He had the knack of letting his emotions loose in a way that everyone made fun of. But that’s what everybody needed. He made them feel better. On entertainment programmes he laughed harder than anyone, cried more than anyone and was so restless he couldn’t sit still. Once on candid camera he was served sushi that had gobs of nasal-burning wasabi in it. He went crazy, shouting, “You shouldn’t ruin good food with too much wasabi!” Another time he fell for a woman who it turned out the programme had set up for him, but he wasn’t embarrassed about it in the least. “Don’t underestimate the power of love,” he said. He was loved by all and forgiven anything. Nobody could beat him at what he did. He had a pure kind of magnetism that you couldn’t pull your eyes away from.

  Obayashi watched his antics with admiration. “That Shikatani was born with more manzai gags than we could dream of in ten years,” he said.

  I hated that he was right. It made me want to scream. Instead, I gritted my teeth and said nothing, wishing I could grind my teeth into powder.

  * * *

  Kamiya’s thirty-second birthday. That night, I texted him birthday greetings. Almost at once I got a reply: there was four years between us when we met. funny how its still the same

  Then another text: you seem busy these days. still writing my biography?

  Of course. I had a stack of a dozen notebooks filled by now. In the beginning I wrote about Kamiya and Kamiya only, but then I started jotting down ideas for gags and odd thoughts, so now it was more like my own diary.

  Another text (which meant Kamiya must be alone): i suppose its not funny

  Make it funny, please I replied.

  dunno if i can

  You could run for governor of Tokyo

  nobody would laugh at that

  Since when had Kamiya turned into such a wimp? Was he drinking cheap booze alone? I should’ve invited him out earlier but thought he’d be out with the kohai from his agency. And I didn’t want him having to look out for me in case I couldn’t hold up in front of them.

  Sparks was beginning to get more attention after we started appearing on a late-night TV programme popular with young people. Magazines were mentioning our name, and it was getting to the point where a few people even recognized me on the street and called out to me. I was twenty-eight. If anyone was a diehard comedy fan, they might have heard of me now. But whenever somebody like the young hairdresser I went to asked what kind of work I did and I answered comedian, they said, “Wow, my friend’s going to comedy school.” I didn’t know what to say. I’d just sit there with a vague smile on my face, and stare at myself in the mirror.

  At the agency, new kohai kept arriving. At first they had been rather cliquish, but with each live show the agency put on, the barriers broke down, and now I was on easy terms with them. The more I talked to them, the more I realized how unique Kamiya was: he had high ideals and set himself to do big things. And there was no doubt about his talent and appeal. My time with him had been about learning the comedy world. But I also began to see how he might have been using me as a canvas for his theories about comedy—and how I was starting to suffocate.

  According to Obayashi, Kamiya tried to act cool in front of me. Partly that was just the way he was, but I was probably an accomplice in helping his vision of comedy balloon to the point where it became difficult for him to live it. His attitude, and his declarations that he didn’t give a damn what people thought, made it look like he believed he wasn’t losing even when he was. People were scared of him. And things that scare people have to be eliminated, so the fools and the weird get scorned. That’s how society works. Kamiya became the target of ridicule. He was called a fool, and laughed at for not following success.

  The big event at Zepp Tokyo, where young comedians gathered for the chance to show their stuff to the movers and shakers in the TV and theatre world. Each manzai duo got to perform two sets.

  The Doofuses drew loud laughter with their first act. But then for their second act they repeated exactly the same dialogue, except this time it was played over loudspeakers with Kamiya and Obayashi lip-synching along. After a while their lip movements became unsynchronized, eliciting uneasy laughter from the audience. Then halfway through Obayashi punched Kamiya in the head, and Kamiya held his head in both hands and stopped performing. But their witty dialogue continued pouring from the speakers, and now their actions were completely disconnected from their words. This got the most explosive laughter of the day from the audience. The judges, however, were not amused: “We watched one duo who used sound equipment. We would like to stress that this is not manzai.”

  Other comedians, though acknowledging the audience reaction, piled on, saying the routine was not funny. It was the safe thing to do: to dismiss the Doofuses as weird—a joke at manzai’s expense. Of course they were conveniently ignoring the first straight routine. They now had licence to put Kamiya down. “Don’t you wanna be a success?” they laughed derisively. Kamiya didn’t say anything, just looked displeased.

  None of it would’ve been a problem if the Doofuses had performed this as an action sketch at a gig put on by their agency. But to Kamiya, causing a disturbance in front of an audience who’d come to see manzai was in itself funny. That interested me—what could come next. How he could proceed to demolish something they had just done successfully, the orthodox way. Whether it really is manzai or not wasn’t important. This was pushing the boundaries, but nobody would give Kamiya a place to do it.

  Anyone who doesn’t pander is bound to make enemies, and Kamiya had his own theories and beliefs. No matter where he was, or whether the audience wanted to hear it or not, he always said what he wanted. Some comedians applauded this stance but others avoided him because of it. Me, I just wanted to be like him. Still, I was who I was—I could never be like him.

  Kamiya had other kohai under him at his agency too. Increasingly, they and the kohai from my agency came along when we hung out. I was a bit sad about this, missing his exclusive attention, but it was inevitable. I became friendly with the kohai from my agency who attached themselves to me, and when they expressed scepticism about Kamiya, I didn’t hesitate to doubt their talent.

  * * *

  Early one evening, I asked Kamiya if he wanted to go out for something to eat. He had a date lined up later, he said, but was happy to have a couple of drinks before that. We were to meet at seven o’clock outside Ikejiri-Ohashi Station, and when I got there, the leaves on the ginko trees were in their full autumnal glory. It was awesome, though I was disappointed at how prosaic my reaction was.

  Then Kamiya appeared, and I could hardly believe my eyes. His hair was a beautiful silver, and he wore a tight-fitting black shirt with skinny black jeans and black desert boots: in other wo
rds, he was dressed in my style! He could not have been unaware of what he was doing. I’d been dressing like that for several years now—going to some trouble over it—onstage and off.

  “Kamiya, what’s with the outfit?”

  “I didn’t know you had to bleach your hair before putting in the silver dye. My head sure hurt,” he said, running his fingers through his hair.

  He was dead serious—this wasn’t a joke of his, though it should have been.

  We went to our usual place, an old pub near the station. Its speciality dishes were Japanese—deep-fried pork cutlet with miso and hegi soba noodles—but for some reason, when you entered the pub, you were greeted with a line-up of old Western-style dolls. Since Kamiya was to have dinner at some girl’s apartment later, we only ordered some pickles to nibble on while sipping our shochu-and-water. Time went by as we caught up, the clock showed it was already past midnight, but Kamiya gave no sign of leaving. “Shouldn’t you go soon?” I asked.

  “Nah, I’m feeling good. Haven’t been out with you in a long time.” Kamiya’s judgement always slipped grossly when he was drunk.

  I was happy to be there with him, but although I felt bad for the other person, I couldn’t very well force him to leave. I was drinking at the same pace as Kamiya and was now also very drunk too, but more than anything, I was hungry. Like starving. We’d been drinking while eating nothing but pickles for the last five hours. I could have ordered something, but then Kamiya’d end up fighting me to pay for it and I didn’t want him to do that.

  “I gotta piss,” Kamiya said, standing up. “Let’s have one more glass, then go.”

  Now was my chance. If I ordered something small, maybe he wouldn’t notice. Immediately I called the waiter over and ordered a sausage selection.

  Kamiya was slow in coming back—maybe he was vomiting in the toilet—so I had time. But when the waiter returned with my order, he brought a sizable tabletop charcoal burner on which I was supposed to grill the sausages. Which was the exact moment Kamiya got back to the table.

  “Wow, you ordered this?”

  I could’ve sunk through the floor. I was starving, but now I was embarrassed.

  “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know it’d be like this.”

  “If you’re that hungry, let’s eat up, and then you’re coming with me,” Kamiya said.

  And so it was decided that I would be a guest for dinner at the girl’s apartment.

  Next thing I knew, after two more drinks while we finished the sausage, it was three in the morning. We walked along the highway through Sangenjaya, entered Setagaya Avenue, then walked some more until residential areas appeared on our right. The girl’s apartment was on a corner. Kamiya climbed the stairs—he’d obviously been here before—and rang the doorbell. The girl, who I was meeting for the first time and who had been waiting so long, opened the door as if it was a normal hour.

  I apologized for barging in in the middle of the night.

  She looked at me. “Oh, wow, it’s Tokunaga,” she said smiling.

  Her name was Yuki.

  “Toldya he’s a buddy,” Kamiya boasted.

  The low table was set, laid out with a large plate of vegetables and a small hotpot over a gas burner. The cooking chopsticks and ladle stand were just like you’d see in a restaurant, and the sight of them filled me with embarrassment. Yuki, however, showed no sign of displeasure as she went efficiently back and forth to the kitchen, getting things ready.

  Yuki was fat. There was no other way to put it. The word chubby did not come remotely close to describing her. But her skin, under the fluorescence of the light, was beautiful, almost translucent, and gave off a feeling of total cleanliness. And, like someone else we knew, she laughed often. The sound of her laughter bouncing off the white walls began to merge in my mind with Maki’s voice.

  What a long way I’d come without realizing it.

  Racked by shadowy guilt and fear and with an uncertain future, somehow I’d clawed my way this far. I’d been fired from my late-night job after taking time off without notice to appear in an all-night programme, a gig that had come up suddenly. A kid younger than me at my next part-time job gave me a weird nickname. But lately, finally, I’d been making a living solely from performing manzai. If I could make a little bit more, I might be able to send money back home to my family. Maybe I could invite them to come see me in a theatre once, and afterwards we could go out for a nice meal.

  The trademark music of the manzai programme blared from the TV. “Sparks is on soon!” Yuki announced excitedly.

  She laughed indiscriminately at all the preceding acts, while Kamiya simply stared at the screen. Then it was time for Sparks. The intro music started up, and there I was, standing with Yamashita in front of the microphone. Yuki laughed even more now. Kamiya didn’t move, didn’t say anything. His face had turned pale. Laugh, I pleaded in my heart. But Kamiya didn’t laugh. The irritation churning in my chest dropped into my gut. I’ll slug him, said a voice in my head, this is making me mad. Why’s he wearing the same clothes as me? The routine finished.

  Yuki had laughed the whole way through. She was laughing even after our act was done. But Kamiya wasn’t laughing.

  “No good?” I asked, my voice quavering.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” Kamiya said, looking down as he skimmed the scum off the surface of the simmering broth. “Why don’t you do more of the funny stuff you like doing?”

  It was a sincere response. Then the ladle slipped from his hand and ended up upside down in the hotpot, looking just like a microphone in the soup.

  “I can’t,” I said. Blood rushed to my head. I can’t. If Kamiya was going to tell me my manzai wasn’t funny, well, there was nothing more I could do.

  I was different from him. I wasn’t a total nonconformist, but on the other hand, I wasn’t so smooth that I fit right in. I wasn’t proud of that either. Because it wasn’t honourable for a man to tell lies. And yes, I do know how banal that sounds. Still, although I might have felt bad, it was impossible to do the kind of stuff he wanted me to do. Recently I’d learned to put ego aside. I’d learned the trick of pleasing an audience, and could do it without compromising, pretending or lying to myself. If Kamiya would just pat me on the back for that, I’d be a happy man. As if. I was getting the laughs, so I thought maybe Kamiya would laugh, too. But no, he never cracked. I could make him laugh offstage, hopeless fool that I was, but when I got onstage, I might as well have been…

  What did he think was funny anyway? What did I have to do to make him laugh? If he said it was funny to spoil a beautiful scene, I went and spoilt a beautiful scene. He was right. As a performer, it was the right thing to do.

  But maybe I’d been lying to myself.

  Kamiya was a genuine fool. He repeated his fool’s mantra in that musical voice of his, and he scraped a living on what little he made. I desperately wanted to be like him, I wanted to throw off everything unnecessary and live like that, too.

  I also wanted to be funny, but interesting too. The sort of person who could pull it off in any situation at any given moment: that was Kamiya—the embodiment of funny. He was always funny when we were together, and when we were onstage together, he at least tried. I was faithful to what he taught me and I wanted to be like him—the kind of entertainer who pursues their art head-on and makes no excuses. I wanted to be funny in the purest sense, with no impurities.

  Kamiya’s idea of funny was the words he hadn’t yet spoken. The creative thought that hadn’t been expressed. In other words, anything that reached beyond his own talent. He challenged himself all the time, he pushed his limits and he was always in the moment, enjoying it, which is why he was irrepressible. You couldn’t hold the guy back. He created something, then wrecked it, as if he couldn’t give a shit. It was totally refreshing. There was nothing like it.

  Not everybody liked it. They said Kamiya was avoiding responsibility, but they were missing the point. Kamiya never backed away from what he believed was
genuinely amusing. He always gave 100 per cent trying to make people laugh his way, even if his audience was a red-faced baby. Maybe he was misunderstood, but he wasn’t running away from anything.

  He wasn’t playing to the public, he was after something you couldn’t touch, something that someday might make society pay attention. He lived a pure kind of life, solitary, lonely maybe, but maybe loneliness was the inspiration for him. That wasn’t for me, though. In the end I couldn’t ignore public opinion. That was where the real hell was, but Kamiya didn’t understand that. As long as society was reflected in my eyes, he couldn’t escape it though. He fought public opinion without compromising his ideals.

  For someone like me, who could only be conventional, the only option was to put everything into following that path. It was noble of Kamiya to flatly reject it; that was his business, but I couldn’t help hating him for it, damn him…

  He had this thing about the reason a path existed was so we didn’t have to follow it. Finally, it was dawning on me that the path he was on, way ahead of me, was the path I needed to get off.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  His voice was like a reality jolt. The manzai programme was over, and an infotainment programme was now on. Yuki, maybe sensing the tension, had left the table.

  “It wasn’t that funny, I guess,” I said. But despite saying this, I knew that I had to take a stand against him.

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t funny,” he said. “But I know you, Tokunaga. You are funny and you can do better.” He spoke softly, as if the words were difficult to say.

  “So why don’t you go on TV and try.”

  He made a dismissive sound through pursed lips.

  “Why don’t you go audition and be funny on TV instead of just complaining about me not being funny enough?”

  “Yeah, right.” Kamiya did not look at me.

  “I’m just like you. And it’s not just me—all entertainers like us have routines we think are funny. But what’s the good if people don’t hear them? If you don’t make the effort to be popular, and nobody hears, it’ll be like the genuine funny stuff never existed.”