Spark

by Naoki Matayoshi

  “That was a hell of a performance,” Kamiya said without irony. He looked happy at the thought, then drained his shochu in one gulp.

  “I saw you crying,” I said, smiling at the memory.

  “Yeah, I was crying. Never seen manzai like it. The logic, the explosion of emotion… Two contradictory elements brought together like that. Sparks really nailed it.” Kamiya avoided looking at me, his voice was thick.

  “Nobody laughed. But if you say we did good, that makes me happier than anything.” I honestly felt that.

  From the very first sip of drink, Kamiya had done nothing but praise me. The cheap food at this place was comforting, just like it used to be.

  “Kamiya, I’m sorry.”

  He kept on eating the food with gusto and gave no reply. I wanted to know what he thought about me quitting manzai. After all, Kamiya had declared he would be a manzai artist from the day he was born to the day he died, and it probably never even entered his head I might quit the business because Sparks had broken up. Kamiya had been my sensei, the person who’d taken most care of me—I had to tell him, even if he was disappointed. I couldn’t run away from it.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do next, but I decided to quit comedy,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  He was giving me this tender look. I was glad the restaurant was noisy.

  “You already decided?”

  “Yeah. Yamashita’s the only partner for me. When he decided to quit, that was it for me too. Just the way it is.”

  I always was a sucker for Kamiya when he spoke kindly. After spending all that intense time hanging out together day after day, he’s the one who made me into the comedian I became. I felt fortunate to have met him. But I had no regrets about deciding to leave comedy without consulting him first. I’d stopped feeling guilty about things. Thanks to Kamiya I’d given up trying to speak fast. From him, I learned to be myself. He’d given me a very human, passionate and practical demonstration of a lesson so simple and obvious you might see it written on a poster tacked to the wall of a pub toilet. But very soon, I had to separate from Kamiya and make my own way in life.

  “Tokunaga.” Kamiya swallowed a mouthful of pork and looked up.

  “Yes,” I said, trying for the right tone.

  “There’s no retirement for me. But you, Tokunaga, spent ten years thinking up gags and kept people laughing in their seats all that time.” Kamiya’s expression was mild, but his voice was steely.

  “But there were days when no one laughed.”

  “There were. But you kept trying. Because you have acquired an incredibly specialized skill, like a boxer’s punch. Even unknown boxers can kill someone with their punch. Comedians are the same. The difference is the more we punch the happier we make people. So even if you quit the agency and make your living from other work, you still have the ability to knock people out with laughter. There’s no one else, anywhere, with a punch like yours.”

  I couldn’t believe Kamiya was using a boxing metaphor. “Knock people out with laughter.” Was that cool or not cool?

  But he was on a roll: “You can’t do manzai by yourself. You need at least two people. I can’t do it even with two. Sometimes I wonder if I would have tried so hard if I was the only manzai artist in the world? We got where we are only because we’re surrounded by people, amazing people, who somehow crazily share our vision. And we start thinking about what they haven’t done, or continuing what they started. It’s, like, a collaboration.”

  Where was he going with this?

  “Only a couple in each generation make it big, manage to make a mark. But you get compared, you come up with your own stuff and maybe you get knocked out along the way. It’s a big, terrible frigging contest, with winners and losers. But that’s why it’s interesting. Do we ever quit because we’re scared? The losers that get eliminated, they were never a waste. Maybe some of them wished they’d never tried in the first place—regret is powerful shit—but I bet most, even those who never scored, who maybe weren’t any good, don’t have regrets. It’d be piss-ass boring if there was only one duo in town. Everyone is necessary—even the ones who only ever go onstage once. And every comedian has people behind them, supporting them and making them into comedians just by being there. Lovers, friends or family.”

  For me it was Yamashita, and Kamiya, and my family, and kohai. And Maki, too. Anyone who ever touched my life helped make me into a manzai comedian.

  “Abso-fucking-lutely every single person is necessary,” Kamiya went on, stirring the ice in his glass with his little finger. “We’re connected to all the manzai comedians yet to come. Which means, doesn’t matter what you do: there’s no retirement.”

  Kamiya looked embarrassed as he put the glass, which now contained only ice, to his lips.

  “Thank you. Wherever I go, I’ll knock ’em out with laughter,” I said, with exaggerated emphasis on the laughter.

  “You’re taking the piss outa me,” Kamiya said.

  * * *

  After quitting manzai I worked non-stop at two pubs to make a living. Yamashita went back to Osaka and got a job in a mobile phone store. Occasionally I contacted Kamiya. By now I had over twenty notebooks for his biography. More than half was about myself and Sparks and musings of the heart. But I thought if I put together all the anecdotes I had about Kamiya, I probably had enough for a biography.

  Problem was I still didn’t know how to write a biography and hadn’t read a single one. I had the poems Kamiya had written that he said I absolutely had to put in, but wondered if it was OK to put that kind of thing in a biography.

  In late November, when the wind became so cold you knew winter was not far behind, I got a call from Obayashi asking if I knew Kamiya’s whereabouts. He’d disappeared, and wasn’t turning up for work. Supposedly he was in debt to the tune of some 10 million yen.

  I tried calling Kamiya up straight away, but the line wouldn’t connect. That same day I went to his apartment in Mishuku, where it was clear from the gas and electricity notices hanging on the doorknob that he wasn’t living there any more. Maybe he was with Yuki in Sangenjaya, but if he was hiding out, I owed him the respect of letting him hide.

  I walked back to Route 246 where a cold wind left me whipped and chilled. Several taxis went by in a row, all empty. The driver of each one slowed down to peer at me as they passed by, making me feel as if I were some animal being hunted by enormous monsters. Where the hell was Kamiya?

  * * *

  Eventually, through an acquaintance, I landed a job with an estate agency in Shimokitazawa. I wasn’t much good at office work, but my experience in the entertainment business came in handy sometimes. Once, two young guys came to the office looking to rent an apartment. They were planning to move to Tokyo to try and break into comedy—and they actually recognized me, knew my work. As I showed them prospective apartments, they would say funny things and check my reaction. I was the perfect test audience for them, and I smiled throughout, but laughed only when they really did say something funny. They dazzled with their innocence and enthusiasm, proudly showing off each other’s humour, so sure of their talent. I took them to a place near Wadabori Park, which was great for practising their routines.

  Kamiya was still missing. There were rumours he’d been forced to appear in pornographic videos to pay off his debt, but I didn’t believe that.

  Then one evening, as I was sitting alone having a bowl of chicken giblet stew in Suzunari Alley in Shimokitazawa, I got a phone call from an unknown number. Instinctively I knew it was Kamiya. “Wanna meet for a drink?” he asked with all casualness. I hadn’t heard his voice for a year. Where would someone whose only interest is manzai go for a year? What had he been doing? I downed my glass of shochu, jumped into a taxi and headed for Ikejiri-Ohashi to a pub called Hana Shizuku near the station.

  Kamiya was sitting in the back, where the light was turned down, and he waved me over. His face was already alcohol-red, and he was wearing a loose sweater with the sleeves
rolled up, his jacket hanging over the back of the chair. He looked slightly thinner and wirier than when I last saw him. But something about him gave me a weird feeling. A sense of apprehension that something was badly off.

  “Kamiya, where’ve you been the last year?”

  My greeting sounded like a cross-examination.

  “Heard you went looking for me. That was the word from Obayashi anyway. You know, that bastard slugged me,” Kamiya said, pressing his hand gingerly against his cheek.

  Obayashi had been pissed off, having to go around apologizing to everyone, but he did keep their registration at the agency while waiting for Kamiya to turn up.

  OK, but what was this weird vibe I was getting?

  “Tokunaga, listen to me. This sucks. I went to the agency to apologize today, but they said they didn’t want me any more.”

  “Of course they wouldn’t want you.” There wasn’t a job in the world you wouldn’t get fired from if you went off for a year without a word, unless you had a damned good reason for it.

  “I got into debt, deep deep debt, and there was no way out, so I went back to Osaka and ran around raising money.”

  “Did you pay it back?”

  “In the end I declared bankruptcy and just paid off the people you shouldn’t piss off if you value your life. Tokunaga, I tell you, stay out of debt. Debt collectors are like visitors from hell. They never leave you alone. This fuckhead, he left me phone messages, saying shit like, ‘I’m on to you, you little prick. I know where you live—if you can call that living. Don’t believe me? Check outside your door tomorrow. I’ll leave you a little token of cigarette butts, same as you’ve been leaving around town. Don’t fuck with me. Find some fucking cash.’ So the next day I open my door and see this pile of cigarette butts. My stomach dropped. I was shitting myself. But the brand wasn’t Short Hopes like I smoke, it was Menthol Pianissimo—a girl’s smoke. I started yelling, ‘Don’t fuck with me!’”

  Still, Kamiya looked happy enough chattering away, putting his spin on things. It was almost like old times—almost, because Kamiya seemed somehow very ill at ease.

  “You know what, though? After I got some cash to give the jerk, we sorta became buds. He invites me to go play pachinko with him one night, but when I started losing, I had to borrow from him, and I couldn’t pay it back, and he said I was shit after all, so every so often I get this friendly fucking call from him.”

  Why? Why was Kamiya so incapable of using the talents he was born with to make something of his life? How could he even be talking like this now?

  It was at that moment it hit me. The thing I couldn’t figure out, the thing that wasn’t right. Kamiya had leant back in his chair, and what I saw gave me a major shock. In the eyes of the world of course, it was little more than a sideshow, a stupid gimmick, of no importance. But for me, it changed everything.

  Kamiya then calmly removed his sweater to reveal two enormous breasts—if they could be called that.

  The despair I’d managed to put away for so many years came to me again with arms wide open, greeting me with nostalgia and affection like an old friend.

  “What?! Wh—what is that?!” I stared, unable to blink, unable to think.

  “They’re F cup,” said Kamiya, his hands holding them up, showing them off.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes, my ears.

  “What’ve you done?!” What the hell was he thinking?

  “Well, if you’re gonna do it, the bigger the better, eh? Go for the laughs. I got gallons of silicon pumped in.”

  Had he lost his mind?

  “You know I always rejected the idea of personas, but then I thought, I don’t need to. Something so funny it can’t be defeated by a persona is totally funny, right?”

  Seeing Kamiya go on so blithely about this left me with a mixture of… I don’t know… fear, frustration, speechlessness. I cursed the world with all my heart.

  “It won’t work. The eyes go straight to those breasts. It’s all you see. You don’t see anything else. You don’t hear anything.”

  I could hear how cold and cutting I sounded. From our first meeting, I knew Kamiya couldn’t make a go of living like everyone else. Maybe it was none of my business, but all I wanted was for this guy, who always twisted things to the point of foolishness—if I could be forgiven for wishing something so banal—to simply be happy.

  “Nobody’s gonna laugh at that,” I went on.

  “Why not? It’s funny.”

  “It’s not funny. Not funny in the least. It’s not a persona, it’s not anything. It’s just bizarre, weird—off-the-charts weird. Do you think that’s funny?”

  Nobody understood him. Jeez, he was frustrating! All that talent wasted. Should I have just laughed at him?

  “I thought I could get on TV with these.” He looked at me with clear eyes.

  “Hah, no way. Who’s gonna laugh at an old guy in his thirties with huge breasts?”

  Kamiya was an idiot. An utter lifelong fool.

  “While I was getting them done, the whole time I thought how fucking hilarious it was. I couldn’t stop laughing. But then I went to see someone afterwards, a salaryman friend—the only salaryman I know, matter of fact—and when I showed him and said I wanted to go on TV, he looked really turned off, like, disgusted, and that’s when I got scared.” Kamiya looked down.

  “So then?” My voice was sharp.

  “I got scared, thinking what have I done, but then I thought, Tokunaga will laugh.”

  “You thought I’d laugh at that?” I replied honestly, though I felt the prickle of tears. He was so vulnerable.

  “Tokunaga, whaddya think? Don’t you think I could get on TV?” Kamiya asked, looking me in the face, pleading.

  I took a deep breath. “Kamiya,” I began, “I know you didn’t mean to be offensive. I say that because I’ve known you a long time. I think you did this because your sense of humour doesn’t have normal bounds and you actually thought it’d be funny for a man to have gigantic breasts. But there’s a lot of people out there who have a real-life hard time trying to work out stuff like their gender and sexuality and all that. Then you come along shaking those breasts? How do you think they’re going to feel?”

  These high-minded words coming out of my mouth were a surprise to me, but I made no effort to wipe away the tears that were beginning to roll down my cheeks. “Kamiya, I’m revolted.” I barely managed to get those last words out.

  Kamiya’s eyes were wide open and red. Maybe I’d touched a nerve, I don’t know. His shoulders heaved a little.

  “You didn’t do it to be nasty,” I went on, “but people out there, people dealing with these matters, they have families and friends. If everyone was like you, crazy, no holds barred, maybe no problem. Or maybe if you did it because you wanted to be a woman, maybe no problem. But that’s not how it was, right? The world knows, and we know, there are mean terrible fuckers who do make fun of people who aren’t so-called normal, who have stuff to work out. Anyone who doesn’t know you might think you’re one of those fuckers. Because they don’t have any other way of knowing you. They see your enormous breasts, they see you think it’s a joke, they judge you by what they see. I know you, Kamiya. I know you have a heart. I know you’re not one of those lousy fuckers. But public opinion counts. Ignoring public opinion is the same as being unkind. By definition, that’s almost the same as being unfunny.”

  “Tokunaga, stop. Please don’t say any more.”

  “I’m not accusing you.”

  “No, I’m bad. This was my bad. I’m a real fucking fool.”

  Crushed. Kamiya was on the verge of crying, taking care not to shake his breasts. “This is how it happened, Tokunaga. Apart from you, for years no one’s said I was funny. The reason I never quit comedy is that you always said I was funny. I was always looking for a way to get across what I thought was funny. But those fuckers out there who decide who’s funny, what’s funny—they didn’t get it. I wanted them to get it. I wanted them to say, �
��That fool Kamiya is a gas—he’s really funny.’ I didn’t know how to do it. Then, before I knew it, I had these tits. What the hell am I going to do with them? I’m so sorry.”

  A young couple sitting across from us were eating soba with such seriousness and manners they could have been having a last supper. At the biggest table in the room, a group of office workers were drinking noisily, keeping the waiting staff busy with their orders. The clamour coming from the kitchen, too, was a reminder of ongoing life.

  Kamiya had never been able to blend into his surroundings. And once again I was there with him, in a space apart from everyone else, feeling wretched about the enormous breasts that were there too, and thinking back over the last ten years. In that moment, which felt like eternity, we sobbed our hearts out.

  Kamiya was wearing an oversized jacket over a thick sweater to hide the swellings on his chest. We were on the Kodama bullet train, swaying along the tracks, en route to a hot spring for the New Year’s holiday, a trip I had suggested to celebrate his birthday and to take a break. What I really wanted was to go to some tropical island, but since that was not an option, we were headed to Atami.

  Kamiya was in high spirits, determinedly squeezing enjoyment out of every moment. Even though the train ride was less than an hour, he insisted on having a glass of shochu and opening up a packet of dried squid to go with it.

  “Tokunaga, I’m sorry. It’s gonna be weird for you going into the hot tub with me,” he said.

  “Oh, zip it,” I replied.

  “I don’t even know whether to go into the men’s side or the women’s.”

  “The men’s, of course.”

  “What if people freak out? You know how I hate causing trouble.”

  “But you’re a genius at causing trouble.”

  In fact I’d anticipated trouble and planned ahead, booking us an expensive room with a private outdoor tub that had water from the hot spring piped directly into it. And I’d learned that at certain times of the day, the communal outdoor tubs could be reserved for private use.