Made In Japan

‘I don’t … I don’t think I should take any more of your time here.’

Mr Kami was surprised that such strength could come from her slim figure. He looked nervously over the shoulder of his check jacket. The landlord had undoubtedly heard the outburst.

How could she possibly live here and how could she remain marooned in the hotel?

‘I have a call to make and must get back.’ Josh took her by the elbow across the garden as if carefully leading an unexploded device that might go off at any time.

‘We have just been shown the ex-granny annex,’ she said, by way of excuse, and then turned towards the agent as he returned to join them.

‘How quaint. When was the house built, Mr Kami?’

‘I believe,’ he said, as threaded the leather strap of his helmet between his hands, ‘not long before the nineteen sixties. Nineteen twenty-three was the last big earthquake and the Great Fires, and not much survived that levelling. We are due an earthquake every fifty years.’ He tapped her hand in a kind of ‘nota bene’ consideration. Yes, she could work it out.

‘Today, in eighty-nine, we are a full sixteen years overdue a large-scale tectonic eruption, according to our best Japanese estimates.’ He seemed pleased to be imparting such usefully intimidating information.

The basis of this calculation lay with authorities ranging from folkloric to seismic analysts. His use of the first-person plural for a catch-all of one hundred and twenty million people had began to grate.

‘So, you like Hiroo Garden hills better now?’ He smiled victoriously.

‘I thought you had one more property to show us?’ she parried, as Josh’s perfunctory farewell kiss landed on her cheek from nowhere, in the way that his decisions often did. He could see she was well able to manage Mr Kami on her own.

‘I am going to have to go, Mr Kami. Naomi can take a look and then we can discuss whether she thinks it is a contender?’ Josh rattled the sabre that was his rolled-up Economist for emphasis. He nodded towards her. ‘See you later.’

As he left, almost as an afterthought, he called back his thanks in the agent’s direction.

Naomi turned to give Mr Kami her full radiant attention.

‘I hope the next property might be some way between the two styles? Is it somewhere between the two?’ She fanned herself with the city plan imperiously.

Mr Kami looked at her from under his barber-trimmed brows.

‘You are the student of architecture, Miss Naomi. You will tell me how is the style.’ He looked at her less-than-practical sandals and contemplated whether he should make them walk to the next viewing. She was so young, but with the controlling vote over such a large budget, he dismissed the thought and hailed a taxi.

That night, she wore her loose Indian cotton trousers; Josh took her arm as they walked as they often did under the railway arches in Ginza. They followed a noisy line of ten-seater restaurants as if the street itself were a menu card; shelves of moulded plastic meals; levitating chopsticks above glutinous dishes of cascading noodles, tonkatsu and ebi rice; the air warm from the charcoal braziers and the heat of the summer city. And she did not miss the electric blue of home skies at dusk.

‘I think you’ll like it.’

‘Well, after the shack you led us to this afternoon, I am going to have to take a look at it myself.’ He would never leave her to make a decision.

‘You don’t have time to see it,’ Naomi protested. She wished he would trust her judgment.

‘The presentations to the Aussies finish at the end of the week. And after the G7 summit it’ll go quiet.’

‘You’ll have to trust me, because it’ll have gone by then.’

‘What?’

And his complaint was lost as she drew him inside a ramen bar, sure that he would be easier to persuade once he had food inside him. They ate a simple dinner of yakitori and soba broth. But even so she could not get him to commit to the property.

Last thing that night, back in the chill of the air-conditioned room, clutching starched fresh sheets to her chin, she watched as he strode in his boxers to open the chilled drinks fridge.

‘Water?’

The head of an iceberg lettuce rolled out over his bare foot across the floor.

‘What is this?’ he moaned. The water was barely accessible.

She had stuffed a picnic lunch above the cans of Asahi beer and miniature whiskies and between the fresh tomatoes she had crammed wrapped slices of ham and a cucumber.

‘I can’t afford to eat out every meal and, besides, what happened to home cooking? Sometimes for lunch … I … look – we have to find a house soon, Josh.’

Josh had overlooked the fact that she might feel a need for money when he had so much. But in his defense he felt all she had to do was to ask him.

The cold, blue light of the mini fridge did not illuminate his response.

He finally answered as his head hit the pillow.

‘Okay, the architect gets to make the decision on the house. Go and see it again tomorrow and you decide.’

Chapter 19

Shimokitazawa, 2012

As she poured a mixer into the second Whisky Mac, the diamante on Hana’s short evening dress caught the bar spotlight like a cheap promise. She could carry as many drinks on the small, silvered tray as a Chinese acrobat now. While watching the effervescence Hana mentally measured her progress since leaving London: she had charted the temples in six districts of Tokyo and had to acknowledge what she could only describe as a personal insolvency. Living in Japan, with all its eccentricities, seemed an occupation in itself and she felt she was trapped sleeping or spending hours in the persistent half-light of the basement club.

The blinking neon arrow to the basement attracted mostly benign regulars. They were now on smiling terms with Hajime, who needed no encouragement to show off his broken tooth. The undernourished doorman had a prominent kanji character tattooed on his chin and she wondered what communication he had chosen to make ever so visible. He was paid to filter newcomers and the clients she had seen were fine. It was a relief that Tako had never once appeared. The job was just as it had been advertised: easy job; easy money.

Two months before she arrived, a hostess was abducted north of the city but she had stopped worrying that the same fate would befall every bar worker in Japan. She had Jess, and, besides, Wednesday night – their night off, when the transvestite danced – was as lively as it got.

Tom had rung, last night, and said he had issues with her working in a hostess bar. It was hard enough that eight hours behind, they didn’t speak often enough, but to have a disagreement too. His criticism was easier to bear than news that he was seeing a lot of Sadie. He had suggested the lawyer Ed should find some documentation: something with her name, or Naomi’s name … or his name. But there was nothing positive in the Helvetica Neue font that returned her text messages. Ed was out of the country. He was tied up.

Jess was over at the other end of the bar, picking her nails with a toothpick with great concentration. Backlit with amber light from the wall of whisky, she looked like someone Hana didn’t know. The bottles were tagged with personal labels for individual clients – Tanaka, Saito, Nakamura, Watanabe – warding off the impersonal among so many people. Jess slipped off her chair, pulling at her Lycra dress, to come and sit beside her.

‘Day off tomorrow. We’ll get a bento picnic from the 7-Eleven and take it to temple six hundred and fifty three?’ Jess’ enthusiasm was flagging.

Emiko, dressed as usual as a geisha hostess in her red kimono, brought them a tray of newly washed tumblers.

‘Polish those smiles.’ Her tone was pleasant.

The air was smoke-filled as Hana took up the lint cloth, behind her an enlarged print of an old woodblock, ‘The Diver’: an erotic dream of a geisha, lying in folds of generous kimono silk coupled with a giant octopus. Every tentacle, as she carried its weight, searched out an orifice. Emiko had explained that the kanji hieroglyphics floating like bubbles over the geisha, were moans of pleasure.

Emiko followed her disapproving gaze.

‘It’s okay, the artist got a month’s jail sentence for his efforts.’

Emiko motioned Jess to move causing her pretty hair ornaments to backchat in her heavily sprayed hair.

Aiming her toothpick at the ashtray Jess intended to offend.

‘Club rules. You girls can’t sit together.’ Emiko shuffled off in her two-toed socks and wedged geta.

Hana guessed the need for quiet respect among the shaky reality of lucky, nodding cats, of piped birdsong, of posters of tiger-maned genii gulping energy drinks, or large-eyed manga characters endorsing air-con systems. She had to invest in them herself and yet the references were still cold. She could not see how Naomi could possibly have belonged here.

‘Smile and play beautiful,’ Emiko called from the kitchenette, reminding them again to move apart.

‘We are starting to look like corpses,’ Jess complained of their nocturnal hours.

Her lips glossed a vampire-red made Hana giggle.

Emiko’s silken arm interrupted them to retrieve an ashtray from between them, her departure stiff, the ornamental cherry blossom in her hair shook indignantly. Hana gently pushed Jess until she slipped off her stool obediently.

‘I’m done here,’ Jess whispered vehemently out of the blue.

New clients arrived and the room became ionized with expectancy. Yoshi was a regular and his party tonight was Australian.

As Emiko had taught her to, Hana called out his regular beer order before Yoshi reached her: ‘Asahi, Sapporo, Sapporo.’ The longer the memory, the larger the tip. Was this the kind of man who might have known her father? The missing man who hadn’t even registered his name on her birth certificate? She had begun to toy with an identikit for him, which she revised and reconstructed at whim: the cosmopolitan business man lost to tragedy; the composer of international standing; the trading-company shogun.

Jess was to host another group of Australians from a shipping company as Hana wiped the condensation off the cold drinks. Deferentially she offered each man a glass as if it were jewel-encrusted. It was uncomfortable for her as she somehow found it sexually charged. Jess fell on the English speakers, as if she was dehydrated and they could quench her thirst.

The karaoke wailed.

Hana wanted to know what Hajime, the doorman, had stamped on his chin. At first Emiko left her to guess.

‘Mum. He is not so rough as he looks.’ She laughed.

She had to serve shabu-shabu stew, and as she stepped up to the tatami matting, across the smoke-filled room, waving from the exit, about to leave with one of the Australians, she spotted Jess,. Hana knelt to pour the hot sake. Why had she ignored their pact not to go off alone? It was about 2 a.m. and she hadn’t finished her shift. She couldn’t follow her.

She watched Emiko pick her way through raw scallions and carrots cut as blossom, to adjust the flame. In her concentration Emiko’s red-pressed lips might have been made of plastic. She ceremoniously brought a lacquer bowl to Hana’s ear, pausing for her to appreciate a skittering noise, eliciting Hana’s soft revulsion. This had become a ritual performance and, as the crustacean slipped into the boiling stock, Hana’s foreigner scruples made it a regular party trick.

Emiko confirmed that Jess had indeed left the club. Would her anger or concern win?

Emiko’s patience with Jess had finally run out.

‘Don’t worry.’ Her ornaments trembled in frustration ‘She does this.’

Hana left, emerging from the basement with her eyes closed against the sharp morning light.

When she opened them she saw a lone policeman, on the first shift at the Koban, stretching his arms. In the silence of the early morning, an apprentice monk stood across the road, his Buddhist habit and white leggings shaded under a straw-brimmed hat. He wouldn’t see many people at this hour. so the alms bowl he cradled seemed useless. The futility of it all. All she could do was wait at the homestay for Jess. As she left, club music drifted up from the depths, reminding her of home.

No one, she realized, could accompany her on this journey if she never made a move herself.

But where was Jess?

Chapter 20

Hana headed towards the homestay, passing over the level crossing and down the deserted main street laced with its waste of utility wires. Stray branches of plastic cherry blossom punctuated the street at intervals, and were greying with dust. A pink promise stuck in the wrong season.

In the empty twin room she was surprised that she could drift towards sleep.

She woke involuntarily a couple of hours later and Jess still had not returned. Emiko, she reassured herself, had said this was typical.

Ignoring the cheap club dress, she grabbed her smock and ran to Miho’s hoping to find her.

Ziggy’s was full with post-school-run mothers. No Jess.

She joined a table just finishing their coffees.

Miho greeted her with her customary politeness while she cleared lipsticked cups and quietly drew the crumbs away from Hana’s side of the table. It was an act of servitude: the wrong moment to interrupt. Miho left to raise the mothers’ bill.

‘Itterasshai.’ Miho followed the women to the door lingering after they had gone.

Hana had to stop her as she passed.

‘Have you seen Jess?’

Miho seemed to read her face, as if she were searching to see what she understood. It was unnerving and she waited too long for a response.

‘Yes.’ Miho folded her arms and Hana’s tension release was instant and prompted her further. ‘Today, no.’

Hana’s concern racked back up a notch. ‘She left the club with some Australians. In working hours.’

‘Jess missing again?’ Miho’s response was unexpectedly flat. So this happens with Jess.

Hana was still concerned for her missing friend and Miho reassured her.‘She does this,’ Miho told her. Emiko would only tolerate this behaviour from a gaijin, and would never let non-foreigners get away with it. ‘More than once she has been in trouble on this. She’ll be walking in here before lunch, is my guess.’ Miho shoved her hands conclusively in the wide apron pocket that fell below her thickened waist. Perhaps Miho had been as careless herself once. It didn’t seem to trouble her. She had once told Jess that at her age it took time to work out which kite, among a bright sky of flying ribbon tails, to follow; it took time to grow in consideration and master the strings.

‘So, what is it to be?’ Miho said peremptorily.

Hana found that today Miho was rather impatient to serve other people. Her obvious lack of concern was some comfort, however, and Hana relaxed and ordered a green tea.

‘Sencha.’ Miho repeated, as if to no one in particular, as if thinking out loud to better tether her thoughts.

When Miho returned with her tea, Hana still felt like she was delaying her from another purpose. She would catch her quickly.

‘I wanted to ask …’ Hana began.

Miho turned back towards her slowly as if she were about to ask her something she could not countenance.

‘I came to Shimokitazawa because my mother lived here.’

Miho’s faced dropped to what might have been mistaken as an unfriendly jowl.

Hana persisted.

‘If I wanted …’

Whatever it was she wanted to raise, Miho didn’t want the half of it, her reticence to hear her out was palpable. Hana stopped short of giving more detail.

‘If I was looking … to find the records of someone living here …’ Hana took it slowly.

Miho waited, caught in the thin skein of Hana’s need.

‘… where would you start?’ My mother lived in Shimo in the late eighties?’

Hana thought Miho looked wounded; it might be concern.

‘That’s a long time ago. If you are looking for family you should go to the Municipal Record Offices. I have a relative there. I’ll give you his name.’ And she hurried off, calling ‘chotto matte’ to an unidentified customer at the back of the café, but glancing back at Hana as if in afterthought she said, ‘You want me to give you an address? It’s in Shinjuku ku.’

Hana did not want to delay her further.

‘I’ll find it. Thanks. And who should I ask for?’

Miho looked as though she were plucking a name from a long roster of relatives who worked at the Municipal offices. ‘Tachi. Ask for Tachi.’

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