power.”
“You used it, then?”
“I knew my lord would understand. I had to know the blade, and to know a blade one must kill with it. And now I know the blade.”
“Was it risky?”
“No, Lord. It was well planned. The woman was alone; she had no relatives. She was a Korean prostitute working in one of Otani’s clubs. It worked out very well.”
“You say it cut well.”
“‘The moon in a cold stream like a mirror.’”
“That well, eh?”
“Musashi himself would have been well pleased.”
“I hope we haven’t lost too much time.”
“Lord, I have made arrangements. Even now the blade will go to old Omote, the best polisher in Japan; then it will go to Hanzaemon, who makes koshirae like no other man alive; then finally, to Saito, the saya maker, again the best. Normally these men take forever, if at all. They will work quickly, however, for the Shogun.”
“Excellent. I trust you in these matters.”
“When it is done, it will be magnificent. When you make the presentation-”
“You must understand how important this is,” said the Shogun. “What is at stake. I stand for a certain Japan. That Japan must be protected. I am that Japan even as I protect it. I cannot lose my power, and the presentation of the blade will guarantee my position for years and years to come, plus win me the adoration of the masses.”
Kondo had heard this speech many times, but he pretended, for the sake of everybody, that he had not. “If you play your cards right,” he said, “it might even win you the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum from the emperor.”
“Hmmm,” said the Shogun. “I think the Supreme is a little much to hope for. But one of the lesser badges. That would be very nice.”
“Lord, I promise you. I am your samurai, to you I am pledged, and I will make this thing happen. I will not fail you.”
“You too stand for the old ways, Kondo-san, and I will never forget it. With you at my side, I can do anything. You give me strength. You, too, are Japan, the old Japan.”
“My reward is your happiness.”
“Is that so?”
“Well, your happiness and the four million dollars you’re paying me.”
“Four million buys a lot of loyalty.”
“It bought mine, I’ll say.”
“All right, then. The blade is secure. No suspicion attaches to you or to me. The blade will be restored and I will make the presentation and the people shall love me and my position and my clan’s importance will be guaranteed. Imperial will go away and die. The Americans behind it will go away and die. We will have won a great culture victory. Our Japanese art will stay forever Japanese.”
“I pledge myself.”
“Excellent.” The Shogun checked his watch. “Now I must hasten. I have a crisis to attend to. You know, Kondo-san, all this rough business, all this maneuvering and plotting and violence, I hope it never affects the artist in me.”
It wasn’t the boy, it was the teacher.
It wasn’t her clothes: her clothes were perfect. She had on low heels, a pair of panty hose from Tashiroya, a severe skirt cut just to her knees, a white silk blouse, some very nice pearls, and a conservative jacket. She wore glasses-the glasses were so important!-and her hair was up, pinned securely. Her makeup was exquisite.
It wasn’t the set. It looked exactly like any other classroom: the phalanx of desks, the chalk-frosted blackboards, the maps, the flag on a pole in the corner. It had the dusty, shabby look of thousands and thousands of classrooms and any Japanese male would grasp its essential reality in seconds.
It wasn’t the lighting. Technically, his people were very good. Here, for example, at the casual pinnacle of their professionalism, they had duplicated exactly the pale wash of the ubiquitous high school fluorescents, though with enough soft underlighting to give everything within it a kind of white, dull gleam. For some reason, some magical reason, in this bath of lucidity, flesh itself took on an almost alchemical palpability. Even as each detail was revealed, each flaw, each hair follicle, the end product never looked raw or sordid. It had a kind of majesty to it, classically Japanese (as were all the other motifs) as if delicately painted on a silk scroll by a master in a satin kimono sometime in the koto age.
It wasn’t the director, an old pro, it wasn’t the camera, the stagehands, the experience level, it wasn’t any of these things, but it took the Shogun’s expert eye to see in a second what the problem was. It was the actress.
“Sakura-chan,” he spoke gently to her, “I know this is difficult. But the transition is so important. You have ripened into womanhood. Your flesh has acquired gravity, density, solidity, and amplitude. You have a woman’s body. Your eyes have wisdom, your beautiful face has knowledge, your hair a silky glisten. Our makeup people have transferred your already shocking beauty into something beyond shock; you are truly mythological. Do you hear, my dear?”
“Yes, Oyabun,” said the beautiful young woman chastely.
“But I see from the rushes that something is lacking.”
“I understand.”
“You are holding back.”
“It is difficult.”
It was difficult. Sakura had been in the business three years and was a star. She had a following, was a celebrity, had several magazines and photobooks devoted to her, could get a good table in any restaurant in any city in Japan. The Shogun had invested a great deal of money in her, had her dentition fixed (she’d had a gap between her two front teeth), sent her to the best dermatologists, the most sophisticated manicurists and pedicurists, hired a trainer to develop the muscles of her already willowy, utterly desirable body.
“I understand how difficult it is,” said the Shogun. “Shirley Temple couldn’t do it. Sandra Dee couldn’t do it. Some even believe that the great Jodie Foster hasn’t done it. It is the hardest thing there is. Only Judy Garland was able to do it cleanly and completely.”
“I am trying so hard.”
Her problem: Sakura, in Schoolgirl Sluts nos. 3, 9, 17, and 26 (26 had been a huge hit!), had always played a victim. She had come up the hard way, through entry-level bukkake roles, moving on to her specialty, the schoolgirl rape victim, moving boldly to the geisha motif and quite successfully into a series called Cutie Rangers, where in polyester sci-fi outfits with holes cut so that her perky breasts showed constantly, she moved product in the millions. But her breasts had simply gotten too big and beautiful to continue to play in kilts and ponytails. She had to become an adult woman or she was through.
It was the third day of filming Woman Teacher in Black Sakura and it wasn’t going well.
“Possibly you try too hard, my dear,” he said tenderly.
“I miss the pixels.”
It was like working without a net. In all her other films, Sakura had been pixellated: that is, in postproduction, a computerized mosaic had been appliqued over her most private parts and the most private parts of her male costars. Of course it was psychological, for on the set, all things were displayed routinely, but somehow knowing that at a certain point the delicate obscurity of the pixellated smear would be applied and that one’s most intimate areas were to be protected had helped liberate her to the incredible frenzy that her directors and her millions of fans so admired.
But at a certain point in an actress’s career, she had to move beyond the pixels and enter the world of 100 percent nudity. Such product was of course technically illegal in Japan, by mandate of the Commission of Motion Picture Codes and Ethics, but since the commission was under the control of the All Japan Video Society (AJVS) and since the Shogun was president of the AJVS, in fact its dictator, he could sell such product without fear. He was both the criminal and the police in the issue. It was good work if you could get it, and he had gotten it.
