Tokio Whip (7 page)

***

Ah, this city, Kazuo contemplates, Tokyo, Capitol, home of my family for how many generations? Yes, I will be true to you. I have my calendar of festivals. Would Kazuko be interested? Maybe not, she is from Kyoto, after all. But maybe. So I'll go. And bring her a present – a paper balloon, a spinning top, a dragonfly.

***

ABC 2

I've just got a couple of maps at home, says Roberta. The TIC one is just
Lang was showing me his map collection the other day, Arlene began.
It's one dimensional, it's two dimensional, it's three, it's four. I was hasty
fine. Then a couple of guide books, but those are mostly for visitors. I
Maps from the Edo Period, all military or festive. That great panoramic
of course to call it two. It's all your pictures and mine, a Great Mirror,
think you pick up the train system pretty quickly – the stations them-
photo, a city all black, flat, except for the fire towers. The map from the
yes, Roberta, as well as two facing mirrors, receding mirrors, Chinese
selves are the hard parts sometimes. I remember it took what seemed
earthquake, where the fires were, where people were lost – or assassinated.
mirror-lined boxes. Pictures on top of one another yes, perhaps, Arlene,
months before I felt confident making my way around Shibuya, and
The JTB overhead photos of the entire city, every seven years, trace the
pictures that obscure any seeing, but pictures that are all transparent too.
now I rarely go there. Then there are stations like Akasaka and Hibiya
rise and fall, what stood three years ago on this plot of land, for example.
Like Borges's perfect labyrinth that is a straight line, Tokyo is a great thick
where you can walk for miles, a real underground city. But no I have
The Yohan map, the TIC map, the Kodansha map, they each show a
volume of page after page of pictures that are all transparent. Perhaps the
really only one map: my neighborhood. I copied the basic plan out of
different city. And the bus maps! The train and subway maps; you know,
whole is empty, and the center, what? An empty emptiness? No matter.
Yanasen magazine, and now as I wander I fill in the shops and places I
you almost never see them together, it would be so convenient. I like the
The three regalia thrown into the sea at the end of the Heike Monoga-
like. There's the handmade ice cream place, as well as the “traditional”
maps in the subway stations – why don't they issue those? And the pock-
tari. Regalia that probably never existed, and therefore perfect. Shinto.
ice cream place which used to be in an attractive old building and is
et maps wallet size, the whole city the size of a credit card! The 3D map
But I like to think of it as being like those medical textbooks, you know
now in what looks like a clinic – ha, an ice cream clinic – “I'm going
of Ginza, the Pia maps and the BT maps. The “My Way” map: all white,
what I'm referring to, textbooks with those plastic sheets that you unfold
to the clinic for a check-up, Mom!” There are at least five tofu shops,
fill in according to need. Those real estate maps, every single detail, each
one after another: the sheet of skin, the sheet of muscles, the sheet of
four or five noodles shops, there's Hobos, where the woman sits at the
little house and shop, how do they do it? Those funny metal maps you
bones, the sheet of viscera. In my body-city we'd have the sheets of res-
spindle weaving. The kamameishi restaurant with the Klimt posters,
find every few streets – and people complain about no street signs; it's an
taurants, of cinemas, of bookstores. The sheet of memories, and the sheet
and Hantei of course – you know, the Pond used to extend so far. The
easy city to find your way around in – or get lost in, but that can also be
of desires. The sheet of crime and assassination. The jizo sheets, and the
New Year's walk of the lucky gods. That photo shop with the window
fun. Sort of. And the handmade maps, the type Barthes liked so much.
Yoshiwara sheets. The work sheets, dress well sheets, and the date sheets.
where he changes the display every three weeks. There's always a callig-
Scraps of paper, matchbox covers if anyone ever uses them anymore,
The sheet of foreigners who got it wrong, and the sheet of those who just
raphy scroll, a small rock garden, a seasonal flower arrangement. I visit
chopstick wrappers, meishi, cutesey stationery, a variety of surfaces and
accepted it. The Cafferty sheet: half a dozen homes, as many loves and
once a month and take a picture. Oh, and there's usually an insect, too.
scripts, each a map a kanji itself – what a jigsaw puzzle they could a make!
losses. And back to the spiral city, the book's cover, the winding sheet.

***

–
On occasion Hiroko simply likes to wander. She closes her eyes, lets her finger fall on the map, takes a train to the closest station, and from there hops on a bus. The custom comes from her childhood, when her grandparents were still alive; they'd take little Hiroko-chan on tour busses outside of Tokyo every few months. These days, she doesn't really like to go into the country, so she maintains the tradition by exploring areas of Tokyo unknown to her, and most likely areas never known by her beloved grandparents either. Today her finger fell on Yoga Station (Shin-Tamagawa Line), and that's where she got on a bus, having declined the Hanzomon Line, and so having willingly screwed up by taking a couple or triple of busses from Shibuya (the Toei 6), she first found herself in Shimouma, went back to Shinjuku and got on the 91. It all seemed so fresh and clean (and expensive, she was sure). She traveled farther afield. Baji Park to see the horses; an old man taking photographs from behind people. So many apartment buildings (on the bus trip back she looked up and saw the old man now shooting from his balcony). Back at the station she had some spareribs at Kenny Roger's restaurant. Good, but a bit messy.

–
Is that so?

–
Yeah. Ya' know her grandfather designed T-shirts. Taisho period. People were very fussy then.

***

Lang keeps telling me, “you must read Bernhard, Kazuko,” and I keep telling him to read Schnitzler. But he does seem pretty well-adjusted – to Tokyo, I mean. Oh, I'd love to be back in Vienna. When was it, three years ago? The Graben, the Belvedere, the Esperanto Museum. You go round and round, just like the Ring, the “girdle.” Walking, looking, shopping, stopping at a café; then you do it again; and then once more. The coffee might be a glass of wine, but the cycle remains true. What is it? “Situation desperate, but not serious.” We Tokyoites could learn a lot from the Viennese.
That's
the city we should have a sister relationship with. But no, maybe we're more alike than not, with our sentiments and silliness, our baby-talk and finger-food. Spoiled brats. The old and the new worlds meet and go crash, boom! Will I
ever
get out of here and back home? Will I ever see Vienna again? Maybe Lang is right, and I do find something of myself in the two cities. Shadows I'd never suspected before.

Oh, be careful, Kazuko.

And Joan Fontaine was oh so pretty!

***

Kazuo is in the San Francisco apartment of a friend. Or, rather, he is in a dream-combination of familiar apartments, rooms that he or friends have inhabited, both in San Francisco and even a few rooms from back in Japan, rooms he's seen in films perhaps, and that have obviously made a deep impression. Three women are cooking in the kitchen; in one corner a man and a woman are breaking up, laughing hysterically one moment, silent or sobbing the next. Kazuo takes the stairs that lead from the kitchen down through a bedroom, where the woman who was just breaking up is now sleeping peacefully. He descends finally into a large living room dominated by a grand piano in one corner and a bar in another; a party is going on. Country music is playing in the background: Roseanne, Iris, Dwight, Lucinda. There are no arguments here as to what constitutes this music. (Do people tap their feet in dreams?) He is not dressed for the occasion, and his embarrassment shows immediately. He tries to move to a corner where he will not be noticed, but an American (whom he does not know) comes up to him and begins asking Kazuo about “the market.” Kazuo detests this type of person: smug, successful, superior – superficial. Always speaking in initials (“Read DR in the JT today?”), or reciting statistics (“53 out of 89, I tell you, no less than 53 out of 89!”). But he can laugh to himself because the Yuppie is rapidly losing his hair, and growing stupider with each day. The woman who had broken up and then slept it off now comes over to Kazuo. She takes his arm and leads him away, saying, “I could see you weren't comfortable. Let's go over here and talk.” They walk off into the small garden of a
danchi
where a barbecue is taking place. They are in Funado, Itabashi Ward. Kazuo is drinking champagne, enjoying talking with the woman. He compliments her on her Japanese, but then learns that she is in fact half-Japanese. She tells him that she knows Kazuko, and knows what she is doing right now.

In Hiromi's dream she opens the door of a large auditorium, where she sees people milling about, drinking, small-talking. A band is on stage playing Country music (Dwight, Roseanne ...). Later in the evening there is to be an awards ceremony. Hiromi has no idea why she is here. She walks around and around the auditorium. Sometimes she takes an exit, but that too just leads around and around, from one snack bar to another. There are conventioneers sporting happy-face name-tags; sports fans with megaphones and pennants; kids dressed for a Rock concert, like in the magazine cover-story on London she once read. All she can do is continue looking for an exit. Finally one appears; she takes it. Funado, Itabashi Ward, another area of Tokio that the economic miracle passed by. If Nakano is the 50s, Funado is the 60s. Makeshift houses all falling apart now; factories with tall chimney stacks; rag-and-bone men. The nation's Self-Defense Forces has a large dormitory here; so too are there numerous schools for the mentally and physically handicapped. And
danchi
after
danchi
: those long, multi-building apartment blocks; 2 or 3LDKs, with whole families in them, everything falling apart, and no funds to fix any of it. Hiromi is aghast; Funado is not the Roppongi and Shibuya she hangs out in. When did she ever visit here? What's it doing in her dreams? Why can't she wake and get out of here? And besides, she doesn't even like Country music!

***

Everything changes. What's the rest of the line?

The escalator of the Edo-Tokyo Museum is out of order. She climbs the hundreds of steps, and wonders, “What did people do before escalators? Maybe the world really was flat.”

***

I'd found a new way around the moat one early winter evening and decided to try it – there was so much I needed to mull over – to walk it over to Hibiya where Arlene was working late. (I used to love coming into San Francisco across the Bay Bridge. The slope, the ascent, the towering pillars and then the cityscape and skyline the ocean beyond and above and between and below it all the setting sun. But it was all anticipation and no fulfillment. It made no sense as to what a city might be; I knew the people too well.) Tonight, however, circling the moat counter-clockwise (without a sunset, happening in some other city perhaps) and thinking about all the changes that were to come in all of our relationships – the storm ready to burst, the chill to follow – I was suddenly lifted and briefly felt blissfully light, empty even: it did not matter what became of us here – what was this sudden glimpse of the city? – a corner turned a shot of light and we all forgotten against that silver wall – it wasn't the sun and it wasn't the moon, merely an effect of light, Tokyo light – that others too may discover going round the moat.

Or exiting a station, kissing goodnight, asking the operator for a phone number, a stranger for a light.

***

I have seen the traces of the city, Lang drunkenly boasts to himself, have traced the outlines of its stories and legends and multiple names. I have followed the rivers, eaten and slept in the black, long, low houses of the powerless, and bathed and made love in the mansions of the powerful; have seen Utamaro with hands bound, and seen him watch the naked pearl divers; have seen Taisho Tokio, mingled with Modern Girls and Marx Boys and ridden the trams of Ginza, and seen Sakae Osugi carted off to his terrible death. Can any other man say the same?

***

I can't afford to hate anybody. I'm only a photographer.

– Miss Imbrie,
The Philadelphia Story
(George Cukor, 1940)

***

the poet

alone with his word

in the crowd unknown

you take the train with your last goodnight

I wait for the cab by the station side.

Chapter 3

HAMAMATSUCHO–
SHINAGAWA

Lang never wanted to come here; he had a passing, a professional interest in Japan, but winters get pretty gray in Vienna, or so I'm told, and the few letters from Roberta only added to things being that much more up in the air, too far for his comfort and he couldn't abide that couldn't abide being the vague-gray Lang at a loose end, and so he had to find out, to settle all one way or the other – and so he came.

What bell, Bashō, was it, Shibuya?, Shinjuku?

Dutifully, she burst into tears.

***

A certain superficiality of expression in order to reveal the nature of the void hidden beneath.

– Toyo Ito

***

–
Lang, you said you loved me.

–
I did I do love you.

–
Lang, love is strong, isn't it?

–
Isn't it?

–
Why did you come to Japan, Lang?

–
I hadn't wanted to come, Roberta.

***

Coming out of the World Trade Center, where they've bought some art books at the annual sale, Cafferty and friends decide to visit one of his favorite galleries – Gatodo; spacious, separate, and tasteful, it reminds him of those in New York – and then to avoid at least some of the noise and traffic by strolling through the Hama Gardens.

–
So few people visit here, one of them remarks, but no one bothers to pursue the question and wonder why.

–
Let's –

–
– walk along the Bay –

–
– see how the construction's going.

–
Why not?

–
It's going to be an all new city.

–
Once again.

–
Kids are going to grow up knowing less and less of what came before. My wharves gone for bad or plain mediocre restaurants that'll thrive for six months and then the whole shebang'll be as shabby as, well, as shabby as my wharves are now. Damn the 80s, and all that money.

–
Horrible buildings.

–
I give 'em twenty years. It'll serve 'em right.

–
That Satoh kid's photos hit the right note – the glare of a city being raped –

–
Our typical Tokio attraction-repulsion effect, eh?

They decide not to avail themselves of the Keio University library; pass the Shibaura offices of
The Japan Times
where they run into Donald Richie, a passing acquaintance, and who's come to deliver an article. And further on.

–
Trudge on, you old Cafferty.

–
Donald was looking perky.

–
Yes, I was glad to see that; heard he'd been ill recently.

–
Well, I for one am beginning to feel the walk now. Are we really going as far as Shinagawa?

–
Look – pilgrims on their way to Sengakuji.

–
Well, 47
ronin
or not, this pilgrim's of another sort – taxi!

***

Hiromi is in an automobile. A Western woman unknown to her is driving. They are passing through Shinozaki-cho, heading east and about to cross the Edo River, and thence across the border. This area, so deep a part of Tokyo's past now represents its future: warehouses, bed towns, convenience shops; total, pristine anonymity, with dilapidated postwar housing still hanging around, forgotten (and looking like munitions warehouses); this Tokyo is a combination of
Blade Runner
and
Alphaville
. Van Zandt too is in the car, is in the rear, speaking to Hiromi. But the radio is too loud for her to hear what he is telling her. (It is playing a frenzied Clara Ward, live, moving up higher and higher yet.) She keeps trying to turn it down but it won't go; she keeps trying to point the driver's attention to this, but she seems to be totally incognizant of Hiromi's presence.

Arlene is dreaming of a woman who wants to sleep with her, but Arlene is not ready yet. She is at the woman's apartment; she looks out briefly as the view is so uninteresting, Shinozaki. Now Arlene is sleeping; she is in bed with two other women whom the first woman has chosen for Arlene to sleep with. The woman is watching, disinterestedly, not quite voyeuristically. Later, Arlene walks around Shinozaki, and revises her earlier opinion, having found some small interesting shops, an attractive office block, small children on tricycles. It is Sunday morning, and softly, the radio plays some Gospel, arousing, caressing.

***

The costs of confusion notwithstanding, Kaoru refuses to be confused, no costs, no confusion. Everything in order. Office-home-office-club-home. Business is done. How old are the boys now?

***

Passed the Chinese restaurant, you know, the one that caters to the theater crowd and the hostess always wears a different hat. It smelled like cotton candy.

He notices a passing woman and immediately starts thinking of how to seduce her when he almost as immediately sees a building and starts to film it – and loses the woman.

***

The Lady of Musashino
(
Musashino fujin
, 1951)

The past and the present and by obvious implication the future, the east and the west sides of Tokyo are one, Mizoguchi seems to be telling us in that final shot, a masterful pan that begins with the tall
susuki
reeds of the ancient Musashino Plain, and concludes with a view – the very first in the film – of the city itself. Morally, it is as if Mizoguchi is saying that the young hero of the film, Tsutomu, will choose the city and its excitement and relative freedoms over the insidiousness of rural family life. Moreso, Mizoguchi is making a reversal here: one usually views the city from East (good, tradition) to West (bad, novelty and expansion). In making this reversal, he is deepening the argument of union, a view with which this author is in complete agreement; after all, he lives in Kichijoji, where once those reeds and marshes flourished (they are still to be found in pockets here and there), and which was founded as an extension of an east-side temple.

We see the Plain; the deaths of the parents; the distant air-raids; the discovery of a skull. Michiko is played by the “enjoyably plump and radiant” Kinuyo Tanaka. Her cousin Tsutomu (Akihiko Katayama) has returned from the war, from Burma. Young, restless, and
good
, Michiko allows him to look after her estate.

Complications arise: her cousin Ono (So Yamamura), who lives nearby, has lost his fortune, for which his wife Tomiko (Yukiko Todoroki) is ready to abandon him for Michiko's husband, the unimaginative Stendahl scholar Tadao (Masayuki Mori), for whom, as Mizoguchi's biographer says, “adultery signifies stimulus.” Worse, Tomiko spreads the terrible rumor that Michiko and Tsutomu are having an affair. How absurd! They may certainly be fond of one another, but they could never even imagine such a thing. (Tsutomu's modest aspirations are for a young fellow student whom he visits either at her home or at “La Vie est Belle” café in the city.)

Things get worse. Michiko and Tsutomu go for a long walk. A thunder-storm erupts; they must spend the night together at an inn. Chastely, certainly. (There is a tremendous long shot of them walking in the fields as the daylight sky is lit up by lightning. One must wonder how long Mizoguchi sat there waiting to get that shot. If for no other reason, the film must be seen for this and the final shot. ((Of course, the author does not dismiss the film as readily as the biographer does. Perhaps it is not a major film, but it is certainly worth seeing.)) Anyway, back to the story.)

And worse. Akiyama and Tomiko steal away with the deed to Michiko's property. Tomiko obviously has no real interest in the weakling. Dejected, our Stendahlian returns home only to discover that – distraught over the
rumor
, Michiko has suicided!

And then Tsutomu takes that long walk east.

***

project myself into you

projector

seed city

bloom town

looking at ads rather than you

choosing a shirt in place of a word

***

–
Oh it's a nondescript area enough, I suppose, but I'm sure Roberta would have been charmed by it here.

–
Well, tell her, next time you see her, do.

–
Yes, I must.

–
But if she'd seen Kagurazaka first, would she ever have found her Yanaka?

–
Mmm, not likely.

–
And, she'd have lived in so many times: the past, the Roppongi of the 50s; the present, the science students –

–
The French students –

–
The British English students.

–
And the future: Yotsuya and all that
that
means just ahead –

–
The Palace and Marunouchi, and all that
they
mean back over there.

–
You think they're part of the future? Let's
hope
they're a thing of the past!

–
No, Kagurazaka would have been too much, not to her liking at all.

–
But to yours, Cafferty? – who knew it when!

–
I really must at least introduce her to it; she'd love the Meiji house, you know that
saké
restaurant where you get your own room.

–
Doesn't that Hakushu architect have his office in a Meiji building around here, too?

–
Oh, right, we have to visit him some day.

–
But look – what's this?

–
“Zonar” – a coffeeshop?

–
“Zonar”?

–
Sounds like a
manga
.

–
How would it go? … “When the planet Zonar was threatened by aliens from the planet Nozar ...”

–
Oh no – I'm sure Roberta would insist Zonar is a woman!

–
“When Zonar's lover Nozar revealed himself to be the interplanetary master criminal Rozan …”

***

Ah, this city, Hiro “thinks,” a bit bigger maybe, but no different from home, or even Takasaki, same shops, bars, girls. More or less. But I gotta make it here. No more years in the provinces. Those flat-feeted women. No, here. And I will if it kills me. Ha!, the old samurai spirit.

***

It was only nine o'clock and already Van Zandt was feeling the alcohol. The Chinese had iron rice bowls, and the Japanese iron stomachs. Though a strong drinker, his stomach had still not gotten the trick of mixing large quantities of whiskey, beer,
saké
, perhaps wine, and worse
shochu
. It's that
shochu
that does it all the time, tips the tipsy scale, he thought coherently for the last time that night, as he grabbed an Ebisu beer. Fortunately, given his good physical condition, VZ would remain in a slightly-over-tipsy state most of the evening through, and still not return home till after two. The next morning he would recall that everyone had been so
nice
, it had been such a
decent
party, the conversation so
level
. What's wrong with that?, he wondered to himself. Didn't he deserve a nice time once in a while? After all, he could be well-behaved and polite when called upon to be so. His reputation for rowdiness was certainly ill-deserved, he defended himself to no one in particular. Yes, people were pleasant, some girls were really nice, what's wrong with making light conversation? (Roberta's party had started that way, he recalled; he remembered a good conversation with Kazuo about Shinohara's Ukiyo-e Museum in Nagano, and the early houses.) Yes, Maybe he ought to try it a bit more, mingle in a politer society. He knew people, he could make his way. Wasn't there an art to keeping conversation at a certain level, not low certainly, but not too rarefied either – light, tripping (was that British English?) – smooth ... small, white breasts, a young girl surprised at her behavior. Yes, there was another angle to discover.

***

Ivy covers the tall smokestack. (Inokashira line)

The way you watch a newscast in English as if it were a messenger from the real world the forgotten tongue and you question again if you are kidding yourself your existence here.

***

Cafferty told me once in conversation that when he first set foot down here he'd felt his testicles fall to the earth, had felt himself for the first time a part of the real living world, had felt free to find out who he was or might be, felt that “he” was a no man who might be any man or any other being or thing, and wasn't that enough or more than might be expected to have or to feel at least one's testicles feel that – the testicles, the earth, you know. I thought of this tonight as I thought at home alone of how long I've been here and would, yes, call it “home,” but wondered how that had ever come about.

***

Lang didn't know if he was gaining or losing.

Roberta? The city?

This strange language.

She didn't want an orgasm, said it'd make her fall in love with him.

***

Hmm. Yes, to love. To love the city. All the varieties of something so singularly unvaried. A mother for her child. A man for his money. A musician for his art. Me for ... well. And he for the city. What does it mean “to love a city”? Many people “love” their city for its history or its beauty or its convenience or any number of other reasons. But basically, I would say that they
appreciate
the place they live in. How does he “love” Tokyo? I can say for myself that I do not mind the place, and sometimes I really do enjoy being here, and at others I can find it exciting; but I must also admit that I always look forward to those times I can go back for a visit to Kyoto. Only twice last year, and one of those for the funeral. But even our funerals are different. It's nice if he is happy loving the city, but I have to wonder if that love is the reason he is not married? We must be careful with our love, knowing where and when to give it, and not allowing it to go astray. Thus the gracious Kazuko.