pond croaked into the brisk air, he knelt on the viewing veranda in a
fine cotton morning robe, a _yukata_ emblazoned with his family crest
(an archaic Chinese ideogram meaning "courage") and began to center his
mind. He'd left his Kyoto headquarters early Friday evening, skipping
the usual after-hours-drinking obligation of Japanese executives and
grabbing the eight-thirty San-in Express to Sonobe, where his limo
waited to bring him the rest of the way home. Now he was up before
daybreak and readying his usual morning ritual. As he sat there, gazing
across the placid water dotted with lotuses at the foreshore and framed
with willows at the far horizon, his silver hair contrasted with the
marine blue of the robe to create a presence easily as striking as the
garden itself.
For a time he merely knelt, silently contemplating the view and
listening to the metrical drip of water from a bamboo spout situated
just at the edge of the steps. Finally he turned and picked up his
_sumi _stick, a block of dried ink made from soot, and carefully began
to rub it against the concave face of an ancient inkstone, till its
cupped water darkened to just the proper shade. When the fresh ink was
ready, he wet a brush in a separate water vessel, dried it by stroking
it against a scrap of old paper, dipped it into the dark liquid, and
looked down.
This was the moment that demanded perfect composure, absolute control.
Before him was a single sheet of rice paper, purest white, and now his
hand held the brush poised. He was waiting for that instant when his
senses clicked into alignment, when the feel of the brush merged with
his mind, much the way a samurai's _katana _blade must become an
extension of his own reflexes.
Although he would stroke only a few kanji characters, scarcely enough
for a telex or a memo, the moment required discipline acquired through
decades of practice. His Zen-style calligraphy allowed for no
hesitation, no retouching. It must be dashed off with a spontaneity
that was, in itself, part of the art. As with the swordsman, there
could be no time for conscious thought, merely the powerful stroke
guided by intuition. No decision that confronted him throughout a
business day would demand half so much mental control, inner resolve.
Just then, at the far end of the pond, the first sun flickered through
the wisteria. Suddenly, without his consciously knowing the exact
moment had arrived, as a Zen archer's arrow must release itself of its
own will, his hand struck. The dark tip of
the brush pirouetted down the paper, starting at the left and laying
down a mere five lines, twenty-two syllables.
_Inishie ni
_Once held_,_
_ari kemu hito no
_it's said, _
moteri cho
_by men of long ago,_
omitsuwa wo
_my ancient prize-- _
ware wa mochitari
_at last is near!_
_
It was done.
He sighed, leaned back, and reached for the cup of green tea that
rested beside him on the polished boards. The verse was in an archaic
style, a few syllables longer than a haiku, modeled on an eight-
hundred-year-old work by a court poet of the Heian era. The strokes
were perfectly nuanced, the flow of the brush precise, the intuitive
strength as natural as a waterfall.
Noda drained his tea, then rose to go back inside. His antique house
was tastefully "empty": its _tatami_-floored rooms, measured in
multiples of those standard three-by-six reed mats, were barren, a
museum to times past. They also were open to each other, their sliding
doors, _fusuma_, being pushed wide. The walls, too, were vacant
expanses of white plaster with only an occasional mounted six-fold
screen depicting poetry parties of the Heian era, that courtly
civilization portrayed in The Tale of Genji. And there were no overhead
lights, merely an occasional cypress _andon_ floor lamp to augment the
pastel glow of the rice-paper shop windows.
"_Asa-han_." He curtly ordered his gray-haired cook to bring breakfast,
then turned to mount the ancient stairs.
"_Hai_." She nodded and was gone.
Although he kept the lower floor exactly as it had been two centuries
past, the upstairs was a different matter entirely. It had been
converted into a high-tech office, hooked through a maximum security
TeleSystems TCS-9000 direct uplink (via the mid-Pacific Mareks-B
satellite) to the mainframe of his new NEC information management
system in the Kyoto headquarters, an augmented NEAX 2400 IMS, which
handled voice, data, text, image. He had scarcely flipped on the system
when the woman who managed his kitchen appeared, bowing, and deposited
a tray bearing _miso _broth, rice, an uncooked egg, and more tea.
He grunted thanks as he was checking a CRT screen for the current rate
on Fed funds, the cost of the money American banks lend each other
overnight to meet reserve requirements. No surprises. Then he turned
and cracked the egg over his rice, adding a leaf of dried _nori
_seaweed. As he leaned back, chopsticks in hand, he quickly glanced
through the Tokyo papers, followed by The Asian Wall Street Journal and
the satellite edition of London's Financial Times. Finally he tossed
them aside.
This was always the moment when he liked to take measure of the three
photos standing in a row across the back of his teak desk. The first
was his deceased wife Mariko--long-suffering, deferential, resignedly
selfless. A model Japanese woman. He still thought of her with
fondness, but as was expected of a Japanese helpmate, she always ran a
distant second in his affections. His work came first.
The next picture was very different. This woman's face was white, her
hair a lacquered wig, her lips a tiny red pout. Her name, Koriko, had
been assigned years ago in the Gion district of Kyoto, and she was
holding a three-stringed lute, a samisen, and intoning some classical
melody from centuries past. These days she purchased thousand-dollar
kimonos the way most office girls bought jeans, but she worked for the
money. She was a geisha, a real one, an artist whose calling required
years of training and commanded the awe of even the most modern
Japanese. Like a prizefighter or a matador, she'd spent long painful
hours perfecting style, technique, art. She had been Noda's one-time
protegee, beneficiary of his patronage. Now, though, she had other
"patrons." He still missed her, but the memory was fading.
The third photo was a face familiar to all of Japan's avid TV viewers--
Akira Mori. She was wearing a dark blue Western suit, her hair a glossy
pageboy cut, the conservative look of times past. It was the occasion
of her graduation from the School of Law, Tokyo University (Tokyo
Daigaku, or Todai as it's known), an important moment. Todai's alumni
represent a network, a _batsu_, of the country's ruling elite, who
compete with each other for the choicest, most prestigious government
ministries. Although she had chosen a more visible career, she still
relied heavily on her contacts in this governing clique, heads of the
leading ministries, including Finance, Foreign Affairs, and of course
the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, MITI.
Matsuo Noda himself had, in fact, once headed MITI, probably Japan's
most powerful ministry. He came from ancient samurai stock--fittingly
perhaps, since the bureaucrats of modern Japan are mostly of that
class. The samurai caste, men who served a liege lord and were
forbidden to engage in trade, were actually Japan's first public
servants. In between civil wars they became sword-carrying bureaucrats.
Many a modern bureau chief has ancestors who wore two swords and sliced
up a peasant or a merchant now and then with impunity, which may help
explain why the average citizen still views government officials with
such nervous awe.
A Todai honors man himself, Noda was a natural for MITI, which runs
what is in many ways a covert operation. The head offices are in a
nondescript, soot-covered building of tinted glass and limestone near
Tokyo's Hibaya Park, guarded by armed, helmeted members of Japan's
National Police. Inside it's mostly open floors and lines of gray steel
desks; no plush carpets and mahogany suites. MITI has twelve bureaus,
each devoted to a major industrial sector. If its officials decide
Japan's strategic interests would be served by a certain manufacturing
group's cutting production, lowering prices, altering product lines,
these "recommendations" are passed along. And it happens.
Noda began his career there by circulating through the different
sections, "going around the track" as it's called, after which he
proceeded to run the General Affairs office of various bureaus, by
which time everybody had him picked for a mover, on the "elite course."
Eventually he was promoted to section chief in the International Trade
Bureau, next on to bureau chief, and finally at age forty-seven he made
the top. Vice minister.
After he reached the pinnacle, he held the job for a mere five years,
then routinely left. He had to go; early fifties and you're out. MITI
is no country for old men. He moved on to head the Japan Development
Bank, JDB, where he financed various high-tech start-up industries.
Finally he retired and went out on his own.
Unlike most other retired government officials, however, he didn't
accept any of the lucrative private offers he received, the suddenly
"vacant" spot on a conglomerate's board of directors. No, he had his
own smoldering vision. In a dazzling and successful departure from
usual Japanese convention, he
founded Nippon, Inc., an adjunct to Japan's major financial players,
with headquarters in the commercial center of Kyoto. His new
organization immediately became a financial fixture in the new
postindustrial, high-tech Japan, and now, five years later, Nippon,
Inc. was a thriving force in the management of capital. These days even
the new generation at MITI routinely called him up for "consensus."
For Matsuo Noda now, everything was in place; he was at last ready to
pursue a lifelong dream. He'd never forgotten the end of the war, that
last day on Okinawa when Ushijima's 32nd Army was a dazed remnant. He'd
been in the cave above Mabuni when the general radioed his farewell to
Imperial Headquarters, then severed his own spinal cord. Matsuo Noda,
with anguish he could still remember, had burned the regimental flag
and told those remaining to scatter, to become guerrillas--repeating
Ushijima's last command to "fight to the last for the eternal cause of
loyalty to the emperor." Noda had declared that their struggle would
continue on for a hundred years if need be.
He had overestimated the difficulty. The plan now poised had required
less than fifty.
As usual for a work-at-home Saturday (just another business day in
Japan), he was wrapping up loose ends from the week, finishing reports,
signing off on audits. Two printers were running, since he preferred to
work with hard copy, and he was reviewing the list of outstanding loans
NI was in charge of monitoring, checking for any early signs of
trouble. Had any credit ratings slipped? If a receiving corporation was
publicly traded, had its stock faltered? What was the overview:
securities, un-amortized discounts on bonds, cash on hand? Next he
paged through the weekly updates from the Small Business Finance Corp.,
the National Finance Corp., the Shoko Chukin Bank, various credit
associations and savings banks. It was all on his Kyoto information
base, pulled off the new fiber-optic network that linked Japan's
financial centers.
He was about to ring down for fresh tea when a priority override
flashed on the screen for his eyes only. This meant a coded message
that could only be unscrambled using a special module in the computer.
The Kyoto office knew he was on line, but they hadn't wanted to route
the information directly.
Highly irregular.
He punched in the code, called up the receiving routine, and waited for
the message.
There had been a call from ship-to-shore phone, the communications line
linking him directly with Dr. Shozo Takahashi, director-in-charge of
his top secret "project" in the Inland Sea. The director was requesting
that Noda-sama contact him immediately via scrambler. Top security. He
felt his pulse begin to race as he digested the news.
It had been so easy. Almost too easy.
He sat perfectly still for that timeless, historic moment, gazing at
the photograph of Akira Mori. A promise kept, from long, long ago. Four
decades now, and he had never forgotten what he had said he would do
for her.
He called down for tea, waited till it had been delivered, then punched
on the phone and switched it to the security mode.
But even on the scrambler, Takahashi began circumspectly. As the
esteemed Noda-sama was aware, their "project" had, over its three
years, contended with great difficulties and many disappointments. They
were working at the very limits of undersea technology. As Noda-sama
also knew, he went on, their early attempts at seismic vertical
profiling had been a complete failure. Takahashi took personal
responsibility for that. Next they had changed strategy and utilized
state-of-the-art microwave radar, hoping that minuscule changes in
density along the bottom might indicate what they sought. That too,
Takahashi apologized, had been unproductive from the start as Noda-sama
had been informed, and he, Takahashi, took full blame for the failure.
Noda cut in at that point, impatient and wanting to circumvent the
litany of apologies. Why was Takahashi calling?
The director paused dramatically, then declared he wished to inform the
august Noda-sama that their latest approach, the use of a new digital
magnetometer, had at last borne fruit. Only this morning they had
detected and brought up an "item." In the treacherous straits east-
northeast of Shikoku. It was a water-tight gold case embossed with what
appeared to be a sixteen-leaf chrysanthemum or _kiku_. The imperial
insignia.
Other confirming inscriptions? Noda nervously reached out and clicked
off the humming computer.
Yes, the formal script across one end appeared to be no later than
tenth century. Although they dared not open the gold case for fear of
damaging its contents, at this moment preliminary analytical procedures
were underway and the early results, including a makeshift attempt at
shipboard X-ray crystallography, suggested that the steel inside, which
clearly showed traces of copper alloy, contained less than a hundredth
of one percent of iron oxide. In short, it was possible the "item"
might be perfectly preserved.
It was theirs, Takahashi said, in that breathy, clipped language
inferiors use to signify great importance and great deference. It was
his extreme honor to announce to the esteemed Noda-sama that the most
important archeological find in the history of Japan now belonged to
Nippon, Inc., and they--
"_Chigau_," Noda cut him off, in the curt tone expected of superiors.
Incorrect: it belonged to its rightful owner and would now be returned.
And furthermore, he added, Nippon, Inc. had just ceased to exist. Since
the name for ancient Japan was Dai Nippon, "Great Japan," as of this
moment Nippon, Inc. had just become Dai Nippon, International. A
complete reorganization would begin immediately.
Finally he ordered a total blackout. Radios silenced. No shore leave
for crew or scientists.
He clicked off the phone and repressing a tremble, descended the
stairs.
And there on the garden veranda, using a new brush and perfumed _sumi_
ink from his rare collection, Matsuo Noda composed a very elaborate
letter, long swirls of black down a perfect sheet of thick, flowered
paper hundreds of years old. It was then sealed in a silver case and
hand delivered by special messenger to a fortress in, the center of
Tokyo.
Five days later its recipient read it before a nationally televised
press conference, and Japan exploded.