Most of the men wore suits, most of the women wore suits. He knew they were called salarymen; they worked like slaves, they made the country go, they conformed, they never let loose, they always stayed on track.
You know where that leads you. All that repression, all that discipline, all that pressure to conform, all that rigidity. It builds, it builds, it builds, and so when they blow, they blow. Examples of the blow are rife in history: thus a Nanking, a Pearl Harbor, a kamikaze. No prisoners. Australian pilots beheaded for the cameras. Killing ten enemy soldiers before you go, thus choosing death over life every damn time.
And when the wiring blew sexually, it really blew.
On the JR train to the suburbs, which arrived on the minute, probably the second, he sat next to a fellow who could have been an accountant, a salesman, a teacher, a computer designer-neat suit, horn-rimmed glasses, hair slicked down, unself-conscious, focused, driven. But Bob saw what had the fellow’s interest; it wasn’t the Wall Street Journal but some comic book about bound teen girls being violated by other teen girls with tools that were exactly what they seemed, only bigger, the drawings voluptuous and specific and amplified. It could get you arrested in some places in America; here, a fellow who looked like he understood mortgages read it casually, apparently following the story with some kind of rapture. Bob looked up and down the crowded car and saw at least two other men reading books with brightly colored, almost gaily cartoonized rape scenes on the covers. No one noticed, no one cared.
Last night he’d wandered into a sex zone, a place called Kabukicho, where all this stuff was ramped up ever higher in blue neon, on billboards and videos in store windows, in the dives where the barkers tried to entice visitors into entering. Yet no one talked to him or beckoned him; he got the sense that the Japanese may have a sexual imagination next to no one’s on earth and elaborate means of satisfying it, but it was a Yamato-only thing. No gaijin need apply. The alleyways and unknown byways and unnamed streets of the strange little empire of Kabukicho, lit by an infinite replication of vertically arrayed signs with names like Prin-Prin and Golden Gals and Club Marvel, were coagulated with flesh hunters: they wanted to see it, smell it, stroke it, lick it, suck it, fuck it, or maybe even eat it. It was a carnivore’s glee, a raptor’s urgent need, and its passion amazed him, and maybe frightened him a little.
Now he rode the train with a million or so other souls and got off at a far station, carrying his bag. He checked the instructions written out for him in painful English by the hotel’s concierge, a gentleman of much dignity and precision who had made the necessary phone calls.
He knew: leave the station, find a cab. There wasn’t going to be any driving in Tokyo’s mad traffic, even in the suburbs, made more lethal for Americans by the fact that it required driving on the left, not the right. Why didn’t MacArthur fix that?
The cab was driven by a man in white gloves and was spotless. Even the seats were lined in white doily. Commercial buildings and elaborate buses floated by, and uniformed attendants were everywhere, queuing lines, directing traffic, pointing to parking spaces; again the sense of all the room being neatly organized and partitioned, controlled by some central committee somewhere, so that no odd-shaped parcel went underutilized.
Finally, they found it. It was a big house, set back from other big houses-Yano was clearly well-off-and not nearly so jammed in as were most of the other houses in Tokyo. It was surrounded by an elaborate garden in which someone took a lot of pride.
He checked his watch: 7 p.m. Tokyo time, that seemed about right.
He paid, went to the trunk, took out the canvas travel bag, opened it, and out came the sword wrapped in a red scarf.
He headed up the walk; the big low house with all its wooden crosshatching and the precision of the garden absorbed him. He knocked on the door.
There were sounds from inside, and in a few seconds, the door slid open and there, in a kimono, absolutely astonished, was Philip Yano.
The retired officer looked the same out of a suit as in one: every hair in place, face extremely clean shaven, muscular under the blue-white pattern of his kimono. He wore white ankle socks. His right eye opened in stupefaction while the damaged one stayed flat.
“Mr. Yano, sir, remember me? Bob Lee Swagger. Sorry for barging in like this.”
“Oh, Mr. Swagger!” Yano’s mouth fell open, but he regained control in an instant. “I am honored to have you here. My goodness, why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I was expecting some kind of letter. I am astonished.”
“Well, sir, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that the occasion demanded a personal visit. Both our fathers would have preferred that. It’s my pleasure.”
“Please, please, come in.”
Bob stepped into a ground-level vestibule, removed his shoes, then turned as Mr. Yano quickly summoned the family.
The first thing Bob noticed was a pair of eyes peeping out at him mischievously. A girl of about four peered around a corner. His eyes met hers, and her face dissolved into delighted laughter as she ducked back, giggling. Then she peered around again.
“Hi there, sweetie,” Bob said to the child.
Meanwhile, two strapping teenage boys in jeans and sweatshirts came in, barefoot.
“Mr. Swagger, may I present my sons, John and Raymond.”
“Hi guys,” he said, bowing.
A young woman arrived.
“My first daughter, Tomoe.”
“Ma’am.”
“And the little devil down there is named Miko.”
Again Miko giggled, then buried her face in her mother’s dress.
Bob had an immediate response to her. She was one of those dynamos. She hadn’t mastered her culture’s reticence yet and might never do so. She was, he could tell, a bold, brave child, full of beans, as the old saying went.
“Howdy, little girl,” he called, and she found that very amusing.
“And my wife, Suzanne.”
“Mr. Swagger, sir, we are so honored and pleased-”
“As I was telling your husband, the honor and the pleasure are mine. I hope I haven’t come at the wrong time.”
“No, no, no, please, do come in, it’s so nice to see you.”
There was a lot of bowing and smiling, a lot of awkward but well-meant politeness, but he felt overwhelming warmth.
Yano spoke quickly to his wife in Japanese, then turned to Bob.
“I remind her what an extraordinary man you are, how honored we are to have a marine of such accomplishments visit our humble house.”
“You’re so kind, but all that’s way past. Anyhow, I found this. I wanted it returned to your family.”
With that, he turned the bundle over to Mr. Yano.
“I think that has to be your father’s. It was in the possession of the son of the commanding officer of the unit my father was with that day. I have a later letter from him stating that my father gave him the sword on Iwo Jima, probably February twenty-seventh, nineteen forty-five, in an aid station where he was awaiting evacuation. I found that letter in some effects of an aunt and from that I traced it back to the commander’s family and located his son and heir; I traveled out there and found the sword.”
“I don’t know what to say. It was such a generous thing to do.”
“Well, as I told you, I don’t think I could ever be the man my father was, but I wanted to do something that would honor his memory and your father’s memory. Both were brave men. I hope I have.”
Yano held the thing, feeling its weight, its balance, but still hadn’t unwrapped it. It was as if he was forestalling the moment.
“I do want to warn you,” Bob said, “there’s not much to see. As you said, it’s a military relic, much abused, pretty grimy. The scabbard needs paint, the grip is all loose, the hilt rattles a little bit, the wrapping around the grip is pretty shabby, and it’s missing that little metal loop through the end of the handle where I believe a tassel or something went. The blade has seen hard usage too; it’s all scratched, nicked up, has a few bits missing at the
