CHAPTER FIVE
"_Kami wo araitai no desu ga. Ii desu ka_?" Tam peered through thedoorway and nodded hello to the girl in the blue Imperial Hoteluniform. The hair salon was almost empty. Perfect.
"_Hai, so_." The girl, startled at the _gaijin's_ accentless Japanese,bowed to the waist. "_Dozo_."
"_Manikyua mo onegai shimasu_." What the heck, Tam thought, why not goall the way, get a manicure too.
"_Hai. Dozo_." Another bob as the girl ushered her forward.
There was the plush, padded chair. Big, gray, and voluptuous. Shesighed and settled back. Heaven. Perfect peace in the middle of hecticTokyo. She knew that here for an hour or so she would be an honoredguest, smothered with attention. One of the most incredible experiencesin Japan.
While three of the girls began shampooing her hair, they went back tochattering about the new husband a matchmaker had just arranged for thepetite assistant in the back. The bride-to-be was blushing and therewere plenty of giggles all around, hands over mouths. Tam realized,though, that the girls were being a little circumspect. Who was thisstrange brunette _gaijin_, speaking Japanese with no accent. Maybe sheunderstood what they were saying.
She did.
The woman who would become Tam Richardson was born Tamara no-name inKobe, Japan, the somewhat embarrassing result of an evening's diversionfor an anonymous GI. Her mother, equally anonymous, had prudently givenher over for adoption rather than face the social awkwardness ofraising a fatherless, half _gaijin _child.
She was eventually adopted by Lieutenant Colonel Avery Richardson, U.S.Air Force, and his wife Mary, proud Iowa
stock, six years after she'd been stuck in the orphanage. That wasduring the latter days of the Occupation, but they'd stayed on in Japanthrough '54 while Lieutenant Colonel Richardson served as adviser forthe rearming of what would be the Japanese Self Defense Forces. He'dalso become a Japanophile by then, so he left her in a Japanese schoolrather than subjecting her to the "army brats" on the base. Finallythey returned to the States, with a dark-eyed little daughter who'dspoken Japanese for almost a decade and being the achiever she was,read it virtually as well as a high-school graduate.
The thing she remembered best from all those years, though, was oneword. _Gaijin_. It wasn't exactly that the modern Japanese consider_gaijin_ inferior. They no longer dismiss Westerners as "red-beardedBarbarians." No, _gaijin _were merely unfortunate, luckless folk notpart of the earth's elect tribe. You were either born a part of Japan,a full _nihon-jin_, or you were forever outside of it, _gaijin_.
But knowing it was one thing, and living it as a kid was somethingelse. She wasn't one of them, and they made sure she got the message.Finally, however, she discovered the hidden secret of Japan. MostJapanese get very uncomfortable around a _gaijin _too fluent in theirlanguage or customs, since that outsider has penetrated their lifewithout the constraint of relationships and obligations. No _gaijin_can ever entirely belong to their seamless culture for one simplereason: no outsider could ever be held accountable to the powerfulsocial and family interdependencies that allow a population half thatof the U.S. to get along in a place functionally smaller thanCalifornia. So to survive there if you're not _nihon-jin_, you justplay that fact for all it's worth. Then, like everybody else, you'vegot a niche; yours merely happens to be outside the system. As analmost-_nihon-jin _you're threatening; as a _gaijin_, you're safe.She'd finally learned this the hard way, from all those unsmilinglittle girls in blue school uniforms who used to hiss "_gaijin_." Butthanks to them, Tam Richardson learned to be a permanent outsider. Anda survivor.
Well, here she was again, ready for another bout. Round- eyed "Tama-_chan_" all grown up and still on the outside.
Though she knew Tokyo well from times past, she was still trying toreadjust. After checking into the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo's Hibiyasection, she'd showered, changed, and headed out for some jogging--thebest way she knew to see a lot of the
city quick. Her major puzzle: where to look for the new impulse behindJapan's big drive, their meteoric move toward the target of _dai ichi_,"number one" in the world. Try to feel the vibes, she told herself, bea tourist and see the "New Japan" through fresh eyes. If it had beenwinter, she'd have gone straight over to Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park towatch the migratory Siberian waterfowl diving for fish among the clumpsof floating ice. In spring she would have first monitored the radio tofind out which park had the finest cherry blossoms, then gone somewhereelse to avoid the sake-swilling crowds. And if it had been summer, sheprobably would have headed for the cool of the Imperial Palace EastGardens to catch the pink and red azaleas.
Autumn, though, was a time for swallowing the city whole. She startedwith the Meiji Shrine, that garish tribute to Japan's Westernization,then moved on to the Imperial Palace, itself a place that, like Tokyoitself, had something for all seasons. She passed through the EastGardens watching provincial honey- mooners snapping pictures for theparents back home, then worked her way across toward the SakuradamonGate so she could follow the Palace moat as she made her circuit backto the hotel. Along the way she passed the Diet Building and theSupreme Court, then decided to look in on the Yasukuni Shrine, buriedin its own exquisite grove of cherry trees and mixed foliage. Themassive bronze _torii _arch leading into the shrine was alwayssurrounded by stalls selling those marvelous little rice cakes, sweetand leaden, she remembered as a kid. She stopped and bought two.
By then she was experiencing advanced jet lag, so she decided to headon back to her crisp-sheeted bed at the Imperial. Tokyo this timearound was as impossible as always, maybe more so. Where do you start?The garish Ginza, the self-conscious trendiness of Roppongi, theskyscrapers of Shinjuku, solemn Marunouchi--all of it engulfing,awesomely materialistic. Each trip the city seemed to get bigger,louder, more everything. More cars, more neon, more . . . yes, moremoney. She could remember, almost, a time when this town was a burned-out ruin. Now . . .
She needed some time to think, to work out a game plan. Sure, clues tothe phenomenon of modern Japan were everywhere--drive, self-confidence,competence--but how did they fit together? Change was coming like anavalanche. Who could keep track?
The best thing, she'd told herself, was to start with a clear head.Back off for a while. After all, the last year had been much toil andlittle play, with the latest book coming out, hassles at theuniversity. She needed some unwinding. Maybe a little time spentthinking about nothing would be best of all.
So for a day she lived off room service, immersed herself in the localpapers, magazines, TV, and just relaxed. She let Allan's hints aboutsome ominous new development slip way down the scale.
One of the things she couldn't help noticing, though, was an oddstirring in the newspapers, something very much between the lines butall the more real for that very reason. In typical fashion, signalswere going out that a major event was in store. The government, sheknew, always used a kind of early-warning system for important shifts.Very Japanese. If the Bank of Japan was about to raise or lowerinterest rates, a move that would impact thousands of businesses andbanks, for days in advance various unidentified "officials" would bequoted as speculating that maybe a change in rates might be possible.Of course they didn't actually say it was going to happen; they merelyhinted it could be an idea to consider, it was plausible, conditionsmight well warrant . . . Anybody with any sense knew immediately thismeant the decision was already made and citizens were being alerted tocover themselves posthaste.
Consequently, if "government sources" start hinting an event isconceivably possible, you can usually assume it's as good as fact.
But what was this about, she wondered, all these allusions to a new"interest" of the Emperor's? The standard elements were all there:leaks, guesswork, columns, unnamed "high sources." No doubt, somethingmajor was pending. And just to make sure nobody missed the importanceof whatever it was, there was even speculation His Majesty mightactually hold a press briefing.
That last possibility, she decided, was clearly farfetched. Just notdone. A pict
ure session, maybe, but that was it.
After a day of unwinding, she was ready to get out and start gatheringsome information. This time around, however, she wanted a differentimage. A shift from the staid-professor look to high-tech Japan. Startwith a few clothes, something smashing/expensive/designer Japanese. Andthe hair. Right. A cut, a different style, a something.
Thus around noon the third day she finally got into street clothes andheaded down to the lobby, then teeming with lagged-out Aussies in funnytour hats. She took one look, ducked around them, then made for thelower arcade and the shops.
And here she was. Already feeling recharged. Relaxed and . . .
Just then a short, excited hotel porter ducked his head in, bowed, andannounced he'd just heard that the Emperor was about to be on TV.
His Majesty? The salon froze.
At first Tam thought the porter must just be playing some kind of localprank. Arcade high jinks.
Then she remembered the speculation in the papers. Could it be true?She glanced at her watch; it was a couple of minutes before twelve.
The girls immediately dropped everything and clicked on the big Toshibadigital set suspended over the mirror. Service halted in midstream,just as in a soba noodle shop when the sumo wrestlers on the cornertube had finished glaring, thrown salt three times, and were ready tolunge. Then one of the hairdressers remembered Tam and--maybe stillbelieving no _gaijin _could understand her language--reached down tosnap on the small black-and-white Sony attached to the chair arm, tunedto CNN's Tokyo service. It was currently scrolling temperatures in theU.S.
Now on the big Toshiba overhead, NHK (the government channel) wasannouncing they were about to switch to a remote broadcast, live, fromthe sacred Yasukuni Shrine.
Uh, oh, she thought. Yasukuni! Has everybody here gone crazy?
Back before 1945, Yasukuni had been a memorial to the "master race,"official home of the new "State Shinto." Japan's militarists hadrevised traditional Shinto, a simple nature- reverence, to includeviolent nationalism, emperor worship, "the Yamato spirit," the "way ofthe samurai": every warlike aspect of national character. These daysYasukuni enshrined the names of Japan's two million heroic war dead, aroll call recently enlarged to include Tojo and others the U.S. laterexecuted as criminals--which had turned the place into a political hotpotato, resulting in an enormous flap when the prime minister tried toappear there in his official capacity. So, for the Emperor to show upsuddenly, with heavy press coverage, was almost unthinkable. Besides,she'd just been by the place and hadn't noticed anything. This was verysudden.
Then the remote came on. The front of the shrine was roped off, rightacross the bronze _torii_ gate, with only cameras and press allowedinside. On screen was a shot of an elaborate new dais where an officialfrom the Imperial Household Agency, the government bureau that kept HisMajesty under its care and schedules his appearances, was justfinishing up a long-winded introduction. Then it was the primeminister's turn. After what seemed half an hour of absolutely content-less oratory (a Japanese politician's most respected skill) on thesubject of the country's majestic Imperial past, the PM finally steppedaside to allow a tall, strikingly handsome Japanese man to approach thespeaker's podium. Since the occasion had official significance, hiswalk was ceremonial, with his feet wide apart in the jerky samuraiswagger necessitated in days of old by the two swords at the waist.Meanwhile, everybody around him was bowing low.
His Imperial Majesty, wearing a formal male kimono, equivalent tomorning dress at Ascot, looked truly august. He was also carrying along silver box, filigreed.
When he finally started to speak, the girls around Tam gasped inastonishment. She noticed immediately that he wasn't using modernJapanese. Instead, his language was an archaic, highly ornate dialect:the court speech of long ago.
After his brief, almost unintelligible prologue, one of the Householdofficials opened the box for him and took out a long, scrolleddocument. The cameras did a quick close-up, showing a page of antique,flowered paper inscribed with brush and sumi ink.
It turned out to be a letter in modern Japanese from the president of afinancial organization called Dai Nippon, International. As the Emperorread it to the cameras, it began with a recounting of the loss of theImperial sword in the Inland Sea during the 1185 battle of Dan-no-ura.That sword, it declared, signified Japan's physical link to a Divinepast. . . .
What? History 101 on TV?
Then came the bomb.
Abruptly CNN cut into their normal late-night programming for a livesatellite report. Their reporter, grasping a mike and standing in frontof the milling mob around the podium, was reading from a press handoutthat provided an English summary of the letter. Since the CNN signalwas being flashed to the U.S. and then back to Japan on the "bird,"effectively circling the globe, it was a few milliseconds behind theNHK broadcast. She turned up the sound.