"_Kami wo araitai no desu ga. Ii desu ka_?" Tam peered through the
doorway and nodded hello to the girl in the blue Imperial Hotel
uniform. 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 go
all 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. She
sighed and settled back. Heaven. Perfect peace in the middle of hectic
Tokyo. She knew that here for an hour or so she would be an honored
guest, smothered with attention. One of the most incredible experiences
in Japan.
While three of the girls began shampooing her hair, they went back to
chattering about the new husband a matchmaker had just arranged for the
petite assistant in the back. The bride-to-be was blushing and there
were plenty of giggles all around, hands over mouths. Tam realized,
though, that the girls were being a little circumspect. Who was this
strange brunette _gaijin_, speaking Japanese with no accent. Maybe she
understood what they were saying.
She did.
The woman who would become Tam Richardson was born Tamara no-name in
Kobe, Japan, the somewhat embarrassing result of an evening's diversion
for an anonymous GI. Her mother, equally anonymous, had prudently given
her over for adoption rather than face the social awkwardness of
raising 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 was
during the latter days of the Occupation, but they'd stayed on in Japan
through '54 while Lieutenant Colonel Richardson served as adviser for
the rearming of what would be the Japanese Self Defense Forces. He'd
also become a Japanophile by then, so he left her in a Japanese school
rather than subjecting her to the "army brats" on the base. Finally
they returned to the States, with a dark-eyed little daughter who'd
spoken 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 one
word. _Gaijin_. It wasn't exactly that the modern Japanese consider
_gaijin_ inferior. They no longer dismiss Westerners as "red-bearded
Barbarians." No, _gaijin _were merely unfortunate, luckless folk not
part 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 something
else. She wasn't one of them, and they made sure she got the message.
Finally, however, she discovered the hidden secret of Japan. Most
Japanese get very uncomfortable around a _gaijin _too fluent in their
language or customs, since that outsider has penetrated their life
without the constraint of relationships and obligations. No _gaijin
_can ever entirely belong to their seamless culture for one simple
reason: no outsider could ever be held accountable to the powerful
social and family interdependencies that allow a population half that
of the U.S. to get along in a place functionally smaller than
California. So to survive there if you're not _nihon-jin_, you just
play that fact for all it's worth. Then, like everybody else, you've
got a niche; yours merely happens to be outside the system. As an
almost-_nihon-jin _you're threatening; as a _gaijin_, you're safe.
She'd finally learned this the hard way, from all those unsmiling
little girls in blue school uniforms who used to hiss "_gaijin_." But
thanks to them, Tam Richardson learned to be a permanent outsider. And
a 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 to
readjust. After checking into the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo's Hibiya
section, she'd showered, changed, and headed out for some jogging--the
best way she knew to see a lot of the
city quick. Her major puzzle: where to look for the new impulse behind
Japan'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, be
a tourist and see the "New Japan" through fresh eyes. If it had been
winter, she'd have gone straight over to Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park to
watch the migratory Siberian waterfowl diving for fish among the clumps
of floating ice. In spring she would have first monitored the radio to
find out which park had the finest cherry blossoms, then gone somewhere
else to avoid the sake-swilling crowds. And if it had been summer, she
probably would have headed for the cool of the Imperial Palace East
Gardens to catch the pink and red azaleas.
Autumn, though, was a time for swallowing the city whole. She started
with the Meiji Shrine, that garish tribute to Japan's Westernization,
then moved on to the Imperial Palace, itself a place that, like Tokyo
itself, had something for all seasons. She passed through the East
Gardens watching provincial honey- mooners snapping pictures for the
parents back home, then worked her way across toward the Sakuradamon
Gate so she could follow the Palace moat as she made her circuit back
to the hotel. Along the way she passed the Diet Building and the
Supreme Court, then decided to look in on the Yasukuni Shrine, buried
in its own exquisite grove of cherry trees and mixed foliage. The
massive bronze _torii _arch leading into the shrine was always
surrounded by stalls selling those marvelous little rice cakes, sweet
and leaden, she remembered as a kid. She stopped and bought two.
By then she was experiencing advanced jet lag, so she decided to head
on back to her crisp-sheeted bed at the Imperial. Tokyo this time
around was as impossible as always, maybe more so. Where do you start?
The garish Ginza, the self-conscious trendiness of Roppongi, the
skyscrapers 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, more
money. 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 to
the phenomenon of modern Japan were everywhere--drive, self-confidence,
competence--but how did they fit together? Change was coming like an
avalanche. 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 and
little play, with the latest book coming out, hassles at the
university. She needed some unwinding. Maybe a little time spent
thinking about nothing would be best of all.
So for a day she lived off room service, immersed herself in the local
papers, magazines, TV, and just relaxed. She let Allan's hints about
some ominous new development slip way down the scale.
One of the things she couldn't help noticing, though, was an odd
stirring in the newspapers, something very much between the lines but
all the more real for that very reason. In typical fashion, signals
were going out that a major event was in store. The government, she
knew, always used a kind of early-warning system for important shifts.
Very Japanese. If the Bank of Japan was about to raise or lower
interest rates, a move that would impact thousands of businesses and
banks, for days in advance various unidentified "officials" would be
quoted as speculating that maybe a change in rates might be possible.
Of course they didn't actually say it was going to happen; they merely
hinted it could be an idea to consider, it was plausible, conditions
might well warrant . . . Anybody with any sense knew immediately this
meant the decision was already made and citizens were being alerted to
cover themselves posthaste.
Consequently, if "government sources" start hinting an event is
conceivably 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, something
major was pending. And just to make sure nobody missed the importance
of whatever it was, there was even speculation His Majesty might
actually hold a press briefing.
That last possibility, she decided, was clearly farfetched. Just not
done. A picture session, maybe, but that was it.
After a day of unwinding, she was ready to get out and start gathering
some information. This time around, however, she wanted a different
image. A shift from the staid-professor look to high-tech Japan. Start
with a few clothes, something smashing/expensive/designer Japanese. And
the hair. Right. A cut, a different style, a something.
Thus around noon the third day she finally got into street clothes and
headed down to the lobby, then teeming with lagged-out Aussies in funny
tour hats. She took one look, ducked around them, then made for the
lower 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, and
announced 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 local
prank. 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 Toshiba
digital set suspended over the mirror. Service halted in midstream,
just as in a soba noodle shop when the sumo wrestlers on the corner
tube had finished glaring, thrown salt three times, and were ready to
lunge. Then one of the hairdressers remembered Tam and--maybe still
believing no _gaijin _could understand her language--reached down to
snap on the small black-and-white Sony attached to the chair arm, tuned
to CNN's Tokyo service. It was currently scrolling temperatures in the
U.S.
Now on the big Toshiba overhead, NHK (the government channel) was
announcing they were about to switch to a remote broadcast, live, from
the 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 had
revised traditional Shinto, a simple nature- reverence, to include
violent nationalism, emperor worship, "the Yamato spirit," the "way of
the samurai": every warlike aspect of national character. These days
Yasukuni enshrined the names of Japan's two million heroic war dead, a
roll call recently enlarged to include Tojo and others the U.S. later
executed as criminals--which had turned the place into a political hot
potato, resulting in an enormous flap when the prime minister tried to
appear there in his official capacity. So, for the Emperor to show up
suddenly, with heavy press coverage, was almost unthinkable. Besides,
she'd just been by the place and hadn't noticed anything. This was very
sudden.
Then the remote came on. The front of the shrine was roped off, right
across the bronze _torii_ gate, with only cameras and press allowed
inside. On screen was a shot of an elaborate new dais where an official
from the Imperial Household Agency, the government bureau that kept His
Majesty under its care and schedules his appearances, was just
finishing up a long-winded introduction. Then it was the prime
minister's turn. After what seemed half an hour of absolutely content-
less oratory (a Japanese politician's most respected skill) on the
subject of the country's majestic Imperial past, the PM finally stepped
aside to allow a tall, strikingly handsome Japanese man to approach the
speaker's podium. Since the occasion had official significance, his
walk was ceremonial, with his feet wide apart in the jerky samurai
swagger 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 to
morning dress at Ascot, looked truly august. He was also carrying a
long silver box, filigreed.
When he finally started to speak, the girls around Tam gasped in
astonishment. She noticed immediately that he wasn't using modern
Japanese. Instead, his language was an archaic, highly ornate dialect:
the court speech of long ago.
After his brief, almost unintelligible prologue, one of the Household
officials opened the box for him and took out a long, scrolled
document. 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 a
financial organization called Dai Nippon, International. As the Emperor
read it to the cameras, it began with a recounting of the loss of the
Imperial sword in the Inland Sea during the 1185 battle of Dan-no-ura.
That sword, it declared, signified Japan's physical link to a Divine
past. . . .
What? History 101 on TV?
Then came the bomb.
Abruptly CNN cut into their normal late-night programming for a live
satellite report. Their reporter, grasping a mike and standing in front
of the milling mob around the podium, was reading from a press handout
that provided an English summary of the letter. Since the CNN signal
was being flashed to the U.S. and then back to Japan on the "bird,"
effectively circling the globe, it was a few milliseconds behind the
NHK broadcast. She turned up the sound.
_. . . noon here in Tokyo, and at this shrine sacred to all
Japanese, His Majesty, the Emperor of Japan (Cut to shot of the
Emperor speaking. Reporter voice-over.) has startled the nation by
announcing that marine archeologists working for an investment
organization called Dai Nippon, International have just succeeded in
recovering a famous symbol of early Imperial rule. A three-year
secret project in the Inland Sea, funded by DNI, culminated five
days ago when scientists brought up a watertight gold case
containing what is believed to be the original Imperial sword. (Cut
back to reporter.) Although no photos of the sword have as yet been
released, we are told it is in virtually mint condition. (Glances
down to read from press release.) According to the ancient Japanese
chronicles, this sword was given to Japan's first emperor by the Sun
Goddess Amaterasu-Omikami, sometime around the year 600 B.C., as a
symbol of his divinity. Historians say it was later lost at sea in
the 1185 Battle of Dan-no-ura. That bloody naval episode, the
subject of much Japanese lore and tradition, marked the end of
direct Imperial authority here and the rise of the first shoguns,
military governors who would rule in his name. . . .
_
She rolled down the sound. Who needed some English press summary? She
was watching the whole incredible event live as it unfolded. And her
first thought was: Good God, that's like finding Excalibur, or maybe
the Ark of the Covenant. Myth turned into reality. She glanced around
the salon, and already the electricity in the air was crackling. But
what happened next turned out to be the real news, the hidden agenda.