Rainfall

particularly well known.

If this guy wasn’t familiar with it, he was about to receive an introduction.

I circled defensively, breathing hard, trying to look more tired than I was. Three times I shook off the grip he attempted and dodged around him as though I was reluctant to engage. Finally he got frustrated and took the bait, reaching a little too deeply with his left hand for my right lapel. As soon as he had the grip, I caught his arm and flung my head backward, launching my legs upward as though I were a diver doing a gainer. My head landed between his feet, my weight jerking him into a semicrouch, with my right foot jammed into his left armpit, destroying his balance. For a split second, before he went sailing over me, I saw complete surprise on his face. Then we were on the mat and I had trapped his arm, forcing it back against the elbow.

He somersaulted over onto his back and tried to twist away from me, but he couldn’t get free. His arm was straightened to the limit of its natural movement. I applied a fraction more pressure but he refused to submit. I knew that we had about two more millimeters before his elbow hyperextended. Four more and his arm would break.

“Maita ka,” I said, bending my head forward to look at him. Submit. He was grimacing in pain but he ignored me.

It’s stupid to fight a solid armlock. Even in Olympic competition, judoka will submit rather than face a broken arm. This was getting dangerous.

“Maita ka,” I said again, more sharply. But he kept struggling.

Another five seconds went by. I wasn’t going to let him go without a submission, but I didn’t want to break his arm. I wondered how long we could maintain our position.

Finally he tapped my leg with his free hand, the judoka’s way of surrender. I released my grip instantly and pushed away from him. He rolled over and then kneeled in classic seiza posture, his back erect and his left arm held stiffly in front of him. He rubbed his elbow for several seconds and regarded me.

“Subarashikatta,” he said. “Excellent. I would request a rematch, but I don’t think my arm will allow that today.”

“You should have tapped out earlier,” I said. “There’s no point resisting an armlock. Better to survive to fight another day.”

He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “My foolish pride, I suppose.”

“I don’t like to tap out, either. But you won the first four rounds. I’d trade your record for mine.” He was still using English; I was responding in Japanese.

I faced him in seiza, and we bowed. When we stood up he said, “Thank you for the lesson. I’ve never seen that variation of juji-gatame executed successfully in randori. Next time I’ll know not to underestimate the risks you’re willing to take to gain a submission.”

I already knew that. “Where do you practice?” I asked him. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

“I practice with a private club,” he said. “Perhaps you might join us sometime. We’re always in search of judoka of shibumi.” Shibumi is a Japanese aesthetic concept. It’s a kind of subtle power, an effortless authority. In the narrower, intellectual sense, it might be called wisdom.

“I’m not sure I’d be what you’re looking for. Where is your club?”

“In Tokyo,” he said. “I doubt that you would have heard of it. My . . . club is not generally open to foreigners.” He recovered quickly. “But, of course, you are Japanese.”

Probably I should have let it go. “Yes. But you approached me in English.”

He paused. “Your features are primarily Japanese, if I may say so. I thought I detected some trace of Caucasian, and wanted to satisfy myself. I am usually very sensitive to such things. If I had been wrong, you simply wouldn’t have understood me, and that would have been that.”

Reconnaissance by fire, I thought. You shoot into the treeline; if someone shoots back, you know they’re there. “You find satisfaction in that?” I asked, consciously controlling my annoyance.

For a moment, I thought he looked oddly uncomfortable. Then he said, “Would you mind if I were to speak frankly?”

“Have you not been?”

He smiled. “You are Japanese, but American also, yes?”

My expression was carefully neutral.

“Regardless, I think you can understand me. I know Americans admire frankness. It’s one of their disagreeable characteristics, made doubly so because they congratulate themselves for it ceaselessly. And this disagreeable trait is now infecting even me! Do you see the threat America poses to Nippon?”

I regarded him, wondering if he was a crackpot rightist. You run into them from time to time — they profess to abhor America but they can’t help being fascinated with it. “Americans are . . . causing too many frank conversations?” I asked.

“I know you are being facetious, but in a sense, yes. Americans are missionaries, like the Christians who came to Kyushu to convert us five hundred years ago. Only now, they proselytize not Christianity, but the American Way, which is America’s official secular religion. Frankness is only one, relatively trivial, aspect.”

Why not have some fun. “You feel that you’re being converted?”

“Of course. Americans believe in two things: first, despite everyday experience and common sense, that ‘all men are created equal’; and second, that complete trust in the market is the best way for a society to order its affairs. America has always needed such transcendental notions to bind together its citizens, who have come from different cultures all over the world. And Americans are then driven to prove the universality of these ideas, and so their validity, by aggressively converting other cultures to them. In a religious context, this behavior would be recognized as missionary in its origins and effect.”