The Changeling (16 page)
Kogito respectfully declined to participate, and he tried to explain his position to the disappointed students—noting that he had arrived at this conclusion while he was in a place far from Tokyo, and he hoped very much that he was wrong.
“The Japanese film world is currently dominated by directors of a certain age, who are a generation or so older than Goro, and they probably won’t view this incident as a terrorist act against the Japanese film industry,” he said. “I suspect that they’ll just see it as Goro’s personal misfortune. In other words, there isn’t likely to be any demonstration of protest or solidarity by film people. As for Japan’s university students, at this point I honestly don’t think they have the gumption to mount an organized protest against this incident, even if they do see it as a threat to culture and society.”
Kogito left Chicago the following day, and while he was on his way back to Japan—stopping on the way to give readings at UCLA and at two universities in the Hawaiian Islands—he happened to get hold of a Japanese newspaper. As he read the coverage of the attack on Goro, he realized that his brutally frank (some might say cynical) prediction had been right on the mark.
Whenever he was at his hotel, Kogito kept a careful eye on the news broadcasts, and he got to see a number of reports about the attack on Goro, with video sent from Japan via overseas feed.
One of those videos showed Goro arriving at the hospital on a stretcher, with his injured head wrapped in gauze that looked rather like a swimming cap—no doubt a temporary measure to cover up the wounds. That way of bandaging is probably common in hospitals today, but on Goro, the trendsetter, the bathing-cap bandage somehow gave the impression of being a chic new Western style that he was introducing to Japan. The entire scene came across as positive, even festive, with Goro going so far as to flash a triumphal V sign at the waiting throng of reporters.
He managed to transform the dynamics of the situation so that it seemed as if this wasn’t a passive or defensive mishap but was, rather, brought on by Goro’s own expressionistic action. The subliminal suggestion seemed to be that he might conceivably end up taking on the yakuza again, both in art and in life, with his entire being. Kogito understood that right away. The American television-network people seemed to pick up on that message, too—they had made the incident the lead story on this evening’s broadcast—but Kogito couldn’t help wondering whether the Japanese media would be doing the same. Probably not, he thought sadly. Rather, he suspected, Goro’s upbeat reaction would be viewed as a gratuitously over-the-top performance by his colleagues in the worlds of movies and television.
In the following scene, the news camera had captured an exhausted-looking Umeko, lagging slightly behind the media mob that was chasing after Goro’s stretcher and accompanied by Chikashi, in the role of her sister-in-law’s protector. Kogito could tell that Chikashi was in an extremely dark mood, but
her always-serene face showed only grief and gravitas. Watching his wife on the TV screen, Kogito sensed that she was trying to protect her injured brother, and at the same time she obviously felt that there was something unseemly about the overexcited way he was talking and behaving. She looked, too, as if she might be thinking about the fact that the video now being filmed would eventually be broadcast with voiceover reaction by the newscasters, and the emotional tenor of those comments probably wouldn’t be supportive of Goro.
Kogito never forgot a talk he’d had with his younger brother, on one of Chu’s infrequent visits to Tokyo. This was after Goro’s death, and Kogito’s brother expressed his deep sympathy about that loss and the yakuza disaster that preceded it. Especially toward Chikashi, the bereaved sister, he demonstrated a fond regard that was close to adoration.
The same Chu who had stared suspiciously at Goro from behind his sister’s skirts so many years ago, when Kogito brought his school friend home for a visit, had joined the police force right out of high school and had for many years been the officer in charge of the violent crimes unit in Matsuyama. Chu evidently had no intention of taking the requisite tests for advancing in the police hierarchy (the fact is, Kogito felt that Chu resented his older brother for having graduated from the Tokyo University Department of Literature, which was regarded by the outside world as the virtual equivalent of law school), and his life plan seemed to be to remain a rank-and-file policeman until he retired.
Uncle Chu, as he was called, was loved and respected by everyone in the family. He was a tough, hard-bitten policeman through and through, but while he was talking about the yakuza
attack on Goro, his face wore an expression of undisguised horror and anguish.
“The people who utilize yakuza ... well, that’s already a bit of an oversimplification, because the problem is far more complicated than that,” he began. “But anyway, the politicians and other people who make use of the yakuza do so through underlings, of course, but sometimes the tables get turned and the higher-ups who were trying to make discreet use of gangsters end up being directly threatened or blackmailed by their own yakuza ‘tools.’ It’s a bit like the old story about the would-be thief who went into some Egyptian tomb to steal a mummy and ended up getting trapped and turned into a mummy himself, you know? Now, this kind of sophisticated terminology may sound strange coming from me, but in any case, there’s no need for me to tell you about the sheer rottenness of some of the people at the top of the ‘organizational structure’ that has yakuza at its base. I know you’ve met your share of famous politicians!
“This is a separate matter entirely, but the people who are on the periphery of the organizational structure that includes the yakuza—you might call them yakuza subcontractors—but anyway, they’re really a motley crew! I’m talking about pimps, touts, drug dealers, leg breakers, that sort of thing. They aren’t officially considered yakuza, but they might as well be. As for Goro’s world of show business, I really think the people who make movies that glorify and idealize gangsters, or who use organized crime as financial backers for their entertainment projects, are even lower than the lowest yakuza slime. Since Goro staged a direct frontal attack on the yakuza in his own films, I think it would be great to make a movie about him, with Ken Takakura in the leading role. If there were a young director whose talent and courage met
with Chikashi’s approval, and if she weren’t opposed to having Takakura play the part of Goro ...”
That prompted Kogito to ask Chu about something that was never far from his mind. “I really only ever talked to Goro about his experience with the yakuza attack on the most objective level,” he said. “And even then he was just kidding around, making reference to the young Japanese man who got bitten by a hippo in Africa as an example of feeling totally helpless. As for me, I simply didn’t have the guts to bring up the topic for a serious discussion. I mean, I’ve tried to think realistically about what Goro was going through in his own mind, but I don’t think I’ll ever really understand the most important thing—indeed, I think it’s probably going to end without my ever having managed to comprehend the motive behind his suicide. When I say ‘end,’ I mean that I’m going to die myself before too long, never knowing the answer.”
“So are you saying that you think Goro’s suicide is somehow tied in with the yakuza attack?” Uncle Chu inquired, in a voice that had something dark and cold swirling around in its depths, behind the usual calm stubbornness. Kogito had the odd feeling that he was seeing something in his brother’s facial expression for the first time, but surely that paradoxical tone was natural for a policeman who had spent most of his career in the organized crime division.
Kogito felt as if he was being cross-examined by a professional; that is, by someone very different from the gentle, easygoing Uncle Chu who, as he was greeting Chikashi (whom he hadn’t seen in quite some time), had praised her dignified conduct on the same video footage that Kogito had seen on TV in the United States. But he could sense that Chu already had an
answer to his own question firmly in mind, so he just nodded receptively and waited for his brother to continue.
“I’m pretty much convinced that being slashed by those yakuza was the direct cause of Goro’s suicide,” Chu said. “Since the main office of Goro’s production company was in Matsuyama, in the course of my official duties I’ve talked to a police detective there who has researched the background of the case. This is a bit off-topic, but when Goro was gathering material for his yakuza satire, he got to know some of the top brass at the National Police Academy. Later, one of those high-ranking officers was the victim of a terrorist attack by a religious cult, and I heard that while he was recovering in the hospital, Goro sent him a copy of Akari’s CD. After that, Goro proposed to the official that they sit down together, as two people who had both been attacked by terrorists, and have a conversation about their experiences, to be published in
Bungei Shunju
magazine. However, the official turned Goro down. Personally, I think that was the right thing to do, but ... anyway, I heard that the official wrote a letter to a third party, and apparently he said in the letter that he thought Goro was rather naïve but that he was a man of integrity, courage, and strong moral fiber. He also said that Goro was someone who had clearly made up his mind not to give in to violence. I heard this from a very reliable source, and the man who wrote the letter definitely knew what he was talking about, too. He was an extraordinarily strong man himself, both physically and mentally: someone who had his own violent encounter with terrorism when he was the chief executive of the national police but managed to bounce back. He’s still working, and he now holds a top job in the Foreign Affairs Ministry or someplace like that. The point is, someone of that caliber called Goro ‘a very naïve person’ after the yakuza attack.
“I’ll have to defer to you, as a graduate of Tokyo University, on the finer points of using foreign words, but even I know that ‘naïve’ doesn’t carry the most positive connotations. On the other hand, we have someone who has himself experienced terrorism calling the victim of a separate terrorist act a man of integrity, courage, and strong moral fiber. I think that’s a pretty impressive assessment, and I’ve never forgotten it to this day. Nevertheless, the fact is that same strong, courageous person ended up snapping and committing suicide over a trifling matter. Even so—and I don’t mean to keep flogging the same point over and over—regarding Goro, whatever may have happened in the end, there really isn’t any doubt that he was a brave, intrepid, upright man ... I mean, who better to judge than a career police officer who was himself injured by terrorists? That’s what I believe, anyway.
“The things that my colleague in Matsuyama came up with in his investigation were really just those sort of tabloid-level truths. But he gathered together a pile of flimsy rumors and then somehow managed to solidify that squishy mountain of gossip into something that seems as if it might contain a kernel of truth, although it’s probably the sort of thing a sharp prosecutor could make mincemeat of in no time. I’m talking on the level of gossip now, but if you look at it objectively, on that tabloid level, what you see from any perspective is an already late-middle-aged man who is talented, accomplished, and successful in his career, getting hopelessly entangled with some slightly disreputable woman. At the beginning it’s just supposed to be a lark, but before he knows it he finds himself trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea. That sort of thing happens all the time, right? There are men who get involved with the kind of
woman who figured in Goro’s tabloid scandal, and even though it’s a dreary quagmire that they got into of their own free will, they make no effort to escape and they end up being resigned to their unhappy fate. Someone who is gifted and accomplished, who has a lot of pride and self-respect and who is also a ‘very naïve person’—that’s exactly the type of man who gets dragged into that sort of situation. But of course this is just the mundane speculation of someone who exists on the level of the weekly tabloids,” Chu said half jokingly, then added in all seriousness: “Please tell Chikashi that for a cop like me who’s been dealing with violent crimes for a long time, this is the easy, conventional interpretation—especially when you have this kind of spiteful woman’s plot and when there’s an unsavory man in the mix, as well (in this case, the woman’s scheming boyfriend). Because in his suicide note, Goro flatly denied any intimate involvement with the woman in question, and you have to respect that!
“So what I’m left with, Kogito, and it’s such a cut-and-dried conclusion that it literally makes me feel sick to my stomach, is that after all is said and done, Goro’s suicide was a direct result of having been slashed by the yakuza. Because if he hadn’t been subjected to violence by the yakuza, surely he wouldn’t have gotten it into his head to perpetrate such a violent act upon himself.”
“I haven’t allowed myself to think about what you’re saying, even in my daydreams, but it all rings completely true,” Kogito said. “You’ve had a lot of direct experience with the terrible specificities of yakuza violence, and the fact that you haven’t even touched on that topic in this conversation just makes me feel more acutely aware of its terrible menace.”
Uncle Chu had been drinking steadily all this time, and that may have been a factor, but now he got a strangely gleeful look in his eyes—a look Kogito remembered from when they were children and which he found, in the grim context of their discussion, distinctly off-putting.
“The thing is, big brother,” Chu said tipsily, “among the huge number of people who have been violently attacked by yakuza, there isn’t anyone who’s died as a result. Everybody has survived, even the ones who have been repeatedly stabbed or slashed or have been shot in the back by snipers—not a single one has died! I mean, the victims have been subjected to the most extreme sort of terrifying, ghastly violence, and they’ve still managed to go on living without losing their sanity. To be perfectly frank, I really think that’s amazing!”