When I look at my brother, he turns away, like he’s bewildered. My mother, like the time I hurt my sister, doesn’t say anything to my face. When Sakakibara praises my sister for her work as an SDF nurse, she answers that a lot of her fellow nurses have read his book, The Way to Truly Love Japan and the Japanese. Her voice is so faint it seems to be coming from an earphone, and her blush is so red it’s almost vulgar. Then Sakakibara thanks the whole family for accepting my move into the Headquarters, vows lifelong responsibility for me, and bids his farewell. I’m left with the family, who immediately want to know when I joined a rightist group and got to know such important people. I silence them all with a lie. “After sis went to work as an SDF nurse, I couldn’t stomach people bad-mouthing the SDF.” I realize I’ve gained the power to beat back my whole family with one good blow. Only five weeks have passed since the day of my seventeenth birthday, when my sister argued me down and made me cry. But a miracle has happened. I’ve become a different person. I am transformed.
My transformation has its most dramatic effect at school. Now that I’ve officially joined the Imperial Way, the big-talking Shintoho knows that I’ve found him out. He was never anything but an emotional sympathizer of the Party. Since then, he’s functioned as my publicity agent and biographer. According to Shintoho, I’ve been a rightist for years. My fiasco in the eight-hundred-meter race, which was such a humiliating experience to me, he turns into “a rightist expression of contempt for the coach.”
“This guy, you understand, on the square at Shinbashi Station, this guy single-handedly took on no less than twenty Commies who’d come to abuse the Right. Kunihiko Sakakibara considers him his personal successor. That’s why he’s at the Imperial Way Headquarters all the time. He’s a true, born Rightist.”
Before long, everybody in the school knows I’m a Rightist and a member of the Imperial Way. It turns into a major scandal in the staff room. When one of the teachers dresses me down about it, I tell him that if they’re going to tolerate left-wing students, then rightists shouldn’t be any problem. When a teacher breathes so much as a word of criticism about the Right, I ask him in a roundabout way if he’d mind my passing his comment on to Kunihiko Sakakibara. In more indirect terms, I hint at the influence of the Imperial Way. The teachers are even more deeply affected by Shintoho’s demagoguery than the students, so my hints are more than sufficient. Rumor has it that the world history teacher turns ultraconservative only when I attend class. It’s not that there aren’t people who show hostility to me for being a rightist. The members of the student council, who are scheming to link up with the student union and join in demonstrations, start arguments with me. But I always win simply by turning the doubts I used to feel about the ideas of the left-wing leaders on their head. The same way my sister trounced me on the night of my birthday, I trounce them now. They don’t have confidence in their own firm grasp of ideas about peace, about rearmament, about the Soviet Union and China, about America. All I have to do is attack their weaknesses. And I always hold a trump. “Most of the intellectuals in Japan are left-wing these days. The Right is in the minority. But I’d rather side with the farmers’ sons who join the SDF because they didn’t want to starve than with a progressive clique of big-shot university professors. Professors are honorable enough, and believe in principle, but is that enough? If your beloved professors rush to the UN to make an appeal, maybe they’ll stop some local war in the Far East. But I want to stand by those poor Japanese farm boys who’re getting killed in the meantime, in a matter of days, by the army of Syngman Rhee. Anyway, none other than your favorite hero Sartre says ‘What’s the point in talking about justice if you don’t intend to put it into practice?’ I may only be a weak, stupid human being, but I’m willing to risk my life for the Youth Movement of the Right. Is there one single one of you who’s joined the Communist Party, and is selflessly devoting himself to it? Aren’t you all planning to go on to Tokyo University, and eventually be executives in some big company?”
I recall how once, from behind these pale, dumbstruck geniuses, the proud Emiko Sugi looked at me with excited eyes that clearly showed her interest in me. “Old-fashioned right-wing boys like you,” she said, “go all the way to the Military Academy, don’t they?”
I told Kunihiko Sakakibara that I wanted to enter the Military Academy, gather a group around me, and eventually gain enough power to carry off a coup. Sakakibara responded to my ambition with an obvious look of deep gratification that warmed me with an intense feeling of joy.
The uniform of the Imperial Way is modeled on the Nazi SS uniform. It gives me strength when I walk the streets, and an intense, memorable joy. I feel like I’ve gone to heaven, and my body is covered with an unyielding armor, like the carapace of a beetle. The tender, weak, vulnerable, unshapely creature inside is invisible to others. When people looked at me before, I’d blush in fright. I was captured by a timorous, miserable self-loathing. I was bound hand and foot by self-consciousness. But now, instead of seeing what’s inside me, others see the uniform of the Right. More than that, it instills them with fear. Behind the impenetrable curtain of the right-wing uniform I can hide forever the soul of an easily wounded young man. I am no longer ashamed, no longer hurt by the eyes of others. And gradually this sensation grows, to the point where, even when I don’t wear the uniform, even when I’m naked, the eyes of others have lost the power to hurt me with shame.
I used to think that if I ever got caught masturbating, I’d kill myself in shame. It was a tragic drama between the overwhelming power of the eyes of others, and the utter weakness of my own flesh, ashamed and afraid. But one day I have a decisive experience. It makes the crisis itself of this drama meaningless, and reduces it to dust.
It all starts with an exchange between Kunihiko Sakakibara and me.
“You must be bothered by sexual needs sometimes,” he says. “It’s useless to suppress them. Do you want to sleep with a woman?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, then. Let’s do this. You have a woman at the Turkish bath give your manhood a rub. Take this money and go.”
At first I can’t imagine it. I don’t believe my shame has really been rooted out. A fellow member tells me to go in uniform. The code of ethics says that the official uniform of the Imperial Way can only be worn in daytime. It’s night, but I feel shaky, so I follow his advice.
Clad in the armor of the Right, I enter through the decorated glass doors of a Turkish bath in the old red-light district of Shinjuku. Instead of having an erection, I’m pale and dizzy, like a pitiful child about to receive a terrible punishment. For the first time since I joined the Party, I resent the boss. But then the uniform of the Imperial Way becomes a sustaining weight, heavier than a lead diving suit. In the instant that follows, I know that for those others, the armor of the Right is something that sends up fear more violently than a leather straightjacket.
The girl’s face is pale and straw-colored, but she has a nice figure. Wearing nothing but a white bra and short pants, she welcomes me into a pink-walled room. For exactly five seconds, no more, she looks at my uniform in the glow of the bare, steam-wet lightbulb. Her face cringes, and she averts her eyes. She doesn’t lift them again. For the first time in my life I become undressed before the eyes of another. What’s more, I’m naked before the eyes of a young girl. At long last I feel that my brittle, naked body with its budding muscles is covered with a coat of mail, thick as the walls of an armored car. It’s the armor of the Right. I have an enormous erection. It is I, a man with his manhood (manhood is what Kunihiko Sakakibara called it) like a red-hot skewer ready to pierce through the virgin vagina of a newly wed bride. I will keep this erection through my entire life. It is precisely the miracle I had wished for on my seventeenth birthday, when I was smeared with pitiful tears. All my life will be an orgasm. My body, my soul, all of me will continue to stand erect.
In the jungles of South America there’s a tribe where the men always have an erect
ion. The gods, worried that the sex of these men would be a hindrance to hunting and warfare, attached them to their bellies, like the sex of dogs. I am a Seventeen of their tribe.
The girl guides me into the steam bath, washes and rinses me, puts me into the bathtub, rubs me dry with a towel, sprinkles powder over me, and has me lie down on what looks like the bed in a doctor’s office. During the massage, she starts to caress my manhood, gently and in silence. As quietly as if she were praying to a god, she peels back my foreskin, which is deformed from my masturbation habit. Her fingertips are apprehensive and afraid.
I lie on my back, proud as a king. The girl is blushing with shame, like she’s performing a vicious, embarrassing act. I’m reminded of a verse from a poem in one of my sister’s poetry books. I copied it in one of my letters to Emiko Sugi, although eventually I tore it up.
Stand on the highest pavement of the stairs—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with pained surprise—
My manhood is the sunlight. My manhood is a flower. I’m seized by the pleasant sensation of an intense orgasm. Again I see the golden being floating in the dark sky. I cry with pleasure. His Majesty the Emperor! His Majesty the Emperor, the radiant sun . . .
When I finally recover from this hysterical hallucination, I see my semen spattered on the girl’s cheeks like glistening tears. Instead of feeling the usual postmasturbation depression, I’m lost in a triumphant joy. I don’t say a word to this female slave as I put on my Imperial Way uniform. That’s the correct attitude.
Tonight I’ve learned three lessons: I, the rightist young man, have completely conquered the eyes of others; I, the rightist young man, have the right to commit any atrocity on the weak others; and I, the rightist young man, am a child of His Majesty the Emperor.
I am driven by a passionate desire to learn more about His Majesty. Until now, I had always thought that the only people who have any relationship with the Emperor are those who were determined to die for him during the war, like my brother’s and older generations. Whenever I heard people from the war generation talk about the Emperor, I felt jealousy and antipathy. But that was wrong. For I am a child of the Right. I am a child of His Majesty the Emperor.
I start to spend a lot of time in Kunihiko Sakakibara’s library, looking for books that will tell me what I want to know about the Emperor. I read the Records of Ancient Matters, Anthology of Poems by the Emperor Meiji, and the books used to educate my predecessors of the Divine Soldiers and the Institute of the Great East. I read Mein Kampf. And at the suggestion of Kunihiko Sakakibara, I read Masaharu Taniguchi’s Imperial Absolutism and Its Influence. I’m beside myself with gratitude, since this book gives me what I’ve been yearning for. I cling to its essential principle: “Devotion and selfishness are incompatible.”
That’s right, I think, my passion ablaze. Devotion and selfishness are incompatible. I was a prisoner of impotence because of my selfishness, and couldn’t grasp the real world, trembling as I was with anxiety and the fear of death. My selfish ego made me feel weird, filled with conflict and swollen with incoherence, confusion, and obscenity. The anxiety was unbearable. Every time I did anything, I wondered if I hadn’t made the wrong choice. Anxiety, always anxiety. It was unbearable. But devotion is incompatible with selfishness. That’s right. I’ll throw away my selfishness, and offer my spirit and body entirely to His Majesty the Emperor.
Cast away selfishness, and forsake myself completely!
I feel the fog of gnawing contradictions that I’ve known until now being burned away. The fog that robbed me of my self-confidence is now blown away, and with it the mass of unresolved contradictions. The fog is swept away. His Majesty the Emperor has ordered me to cast away the fog of selfishness, and I have cast it away. The individual I is dead. Selfishness is dead. The instant I slaughtered my selfishness, the instant I locked the individual I into the dungeon, a new I was born, a child of the Emperor without anxiety. I feel liberated. I no longer know the anxiety of those who have to choose. His Majesty the Emperor makes the choices. Stones and trees don’t know anxiety, they can’t fall into uncertainty. By casting away my selfishness, I have become a stone, a tree of His Majesty the Emperor. I have no anxiety, I cannot fall into uncertainty. I feel that I can go on living without burden. I feel I can give a plain and simple interpretation of a real world that once was so complicated and incomprehensible. It is the truth that devotion and selfishness are incompatible.
The blessed reward of the man who has cast away his selfishness is devotion! I realize that in only an instant I’ve lost my fear of death. Death, which once made me tremble desperately with fear, now seems completely meaningless. The fear cannot be summoned or aroused again. Even if I die, I will not perish. I am only one young leaf on the giant tree of eternity, which is His Majesty the Emperor. I will never perish! My fear of death is conquered. Emperor, You are my God, my Sun, my Eternity. Through You I have truly started to live!
I have reached my goal, and leave Kunihiko Sakakibara’s library. I have no further need of books. I start to dedicate myself to karate and judo. On my training clothes Sakakibara kindly writes, “Seven lives in service of the country, long live His Majesty the Emperor.”
I believe the time is now right for me to cry out to myself the words Sakakibara once spoke to me: “It is you, the Chosen Boy with the true Japanese soul!”
May. The leftists have started organizing regular marches on the Diet. I eagerly join the Youth Group of the Imperial Way. Red workers, red students, red artists, red actors—beat them, kick them, pursue them!
The steel code of ethics of our Youth Group is based on the speech the Nazi Himmler delivered, roaring like a lion, at a congress of SS officers at Poznan on the fourth of April, 1943.
One, loyalty; two, obedience; three, courage; four, sincerity; five, honesty; six, comradeship; seven, responsible joy; eight, diligence; nine, abstinence from alcohol; ten, what we view as important and consider our duty is our Emperor and our patriotism: There is no need for us to heed anything else.
Trample the Reds, knock them down, stab them to death, strangle them, burn them!
I fight like a hero. I wield my stick of malice at the students, I swing my nail-studded wooden sword of hostility into a group of women. I trample them, I pursue them.
Time after time I’m arrested, but as soon as I’m released, I take up my attacks on the demonstrating mob. Again I’m arrested, again I’m released.
Twenty members of the Youth Group of the Imperial Way stand against ten thousand leftists. I am the most heroic, the most ferocious of them all. I am the Seventeen, more Right than any other. Rampaging through the riots, deep into the night, I’m the one and only blissful Seventeen who sees the radiant Emperor appearing with a golden halo from the darkness of this gloomy, intense night of insults, screams, and cries of pain and fear.
A drizzling rain is falling in the night. The rumor that a female student has died instantly returns the confused crowd to stillness. When the weeping students hold a silent prayer, drenched by the rain and crushed by discomfort, sadness, and pain, I experience the orgasm of a rapist. To my golden vision I promise a bloodbath. I am the one and only blissful Seventeen.
J
PART ONE
The big ivory Jaguar came rushing headlong through the darkness to the edge of the cape’s ridge. Facing the night sea, it turned right and disappeared down a side road that dropped with the sudden steepness of a waterfall. The Jaguar was headed toward Miminashi Bay, which was hidden like an armpit under the south side of the cape. A 16-millimeter Arriflex movie camera was packed in the car. The camera, like the car, was the property of a young man of twenty-nine whom everybody called J. J, his wife, J’s sister (who was driving), a middle-aged cameraman, a young poet, a twenty-year-old actor, and an eighteen-year-old jazz singer—seven in all—were on their way to J’s vacation house. They were going there to sh
oot a few scenes for a short film J’s wife was making.
The jazz singer was completely naked. She was singing a drunken song. Since nobody was listening with very much interest she was convinced that everybody in the Jaguar was mocking her, so she decided to try a dirty story she’d had some success with once before. For the four hours that they’d been on the way from Tokyo everybody (with the exception of J’s sister) had been steadily drinking whisky. The eighteen-year-old singer had been the first to break from the ranks of the drunks and now was running alone in the lead. This was what always happened. She lacked self-restraint.
“Once when I went to do a job at this politician’s party,” she said, “there was this sixteen-year-old girl who was with me in the dressing room, without any makeup on, and she was sitting there with this Ping-Pong ball and a blue vinyl costume across her knees. So we became friends. When it was her turn to go on the girl still hadn’t put on any make-up. She just took off her clothes. She pulled her costume, which looked like a blue vinyl sleeping bag, over her head, and she had me pull the zipper to the lower part of her back. The blue dress was really a frog costume that hugged her body, with a hole that looked like a fish mouth between her legs. The politicians all looked at this blue frog with a girl’s privates, and then she put the Ping-Pong ball inside herself. And, if you can believe it, she croaked like a frog in time to her dancing!”
The other six passengers raised their voices in a dispirited laugh. They all knew that if they didn’t respond, the singer would start crying and fly into a rage.
Cheered by their laughter, the singer went on.
“That frog dancer had marvellous technique,” she said with a look of triumph, as though she was building to some climax. “Truly marvellous technique.”