Tokio Whip (16 page)

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Reject the art world the fashion world the music world the novel world the so-called thought and beauty worlds, whoring worlds all. You must reject them all – and still live the city.

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The Loves and Death of Ōsugi Sakae

The encyclopaedia tells us in reference to the end of his notorious four-way love affair, that one woman stabbed him, another divorced him, and a third married him.

Ōsugi Sakae (1885-1923) was a lover; a dandy (indeed, his prison nickname was “ohai,” derived from “haikara” ((“high collar”)) ); perhaps a masochist (he was fascinated by the idea of crucifixion; prophesied not inaccurately the manner of his death; as a child he enjoyed being punished by his mother); and was in other ways a sadist (or if that term is too strong, let us just say that he tended to either hurt or dominate others ((he was always ready for a good fight; spat in his teachers' faces, tortured cats; and then simply look at the way he tried to handle the affair with the women: they would abide by his rules of freedom)) ). He seems to have had little gift for friendship; he opened Japan's first Esperanto school (1906); was involved in nine different magazines; and like his father, he stuttered. His biographer tells us, “A more willful, independent, unpredictable, intriguing – in short, charismatic – Japanese is hard to imagine. One is either attracted or repelled by him, but never left indifferent.”

Contradiction and the lust for freedom define him. It is a shame that the Surrealists were unaware of his existence for they would surely have embraced him as one of their own, not only for his outrageousness and spontaneity, but especially for his defense of a love as free and mad as possible. In a lovely phrase, he wrote that the end of capitalism would release the “high scent of love.” “Hands off love!,” indeed.

And too there are the spiritual and artistic sides of the man (if we can separate them from the amatory). His flirtation with Christianity. His rebuke once to someone: “Historical materialism?,” he retorted, “Don't talk rot. This is a spiritual matter.” His remark that “Freedom and creativity are not outside of us nor in the future. They are within us now.” His sketches – especially that lovely self-portrait, some calligraphy, and the “Red Skull” – certainly reveal an imaginative hand.

Ōsugi was not born in Tokyo, but in then Kagawa prefecture in 1885. He came to live in Tokyo in 1902 after having been successfully expelled from Cadet School for fighting (and receiving his first stab wound), and for homosexual behavior. (A contradiction: his father was an army officer, and Ōsugi apparently wanted to follow in his footsteps – this from a man who obviously was unable to brook any authority throughout his life. ((There is a famous story – one that reveals more certainly about the Emperor than anything else – that one day the father fell into the castle moat and emerged all muddy, making the Emperor giggle with delight, “Monkey! Monkey!”)) ) Ōsugi's first arrest occurred – in true and proud Tokyo fashion; would that others might follow his example today! – when he joined in protests against a rise in trolley fares. (The author recalls that in the 1970s Italians rioted over an increase in cinema prices.)

When not borrowing money, his main source of income came from translating (for example, the work of the French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre), or writing articles. What writer would not be proud to have this said about himself: “His writing is usually simple and plain, true and coherent, open and aboveboard. Then again, sometimes he writes unexpected rubbish.” He also had the good sense to say that the intelligentsia had been co-opted by the ruling class, and if they really were intelligent they would play a receptive part in any workers'-instigated revolution. More interesting, and more in the spirit of this book, he has this to teach us: “Listening silently to a person's long speech is only to be swept up in a marching song: it is what is done vis-à-vis upper-class people. Among people of the same class, long speeches will disappear and short dialogues will succeed. From long monologues to short dialogues: this is the evolution of conversation. This is the evolution of humanity.”

Of course, the greatest contradiction of the man with his theory of the ever-expanding and creative and willful ego was how to reconcile it with the will and desires of others. But perhaps, in a world where conflict is all, the question must necessarily remain unresolved.

While married to Hori Yasuko, he began his affair with Kamichika Ichiko when he appeared one day at her doorstep saying, “I've lost my shadow today. It's alright if I stop in.” While he was most probably referring to his police “tail,” it is nonetheless a wonderful line for a seducer. Kamichika was called “the first adulteress.” Itō Noe, the third woman, was dubbed “the southern beauty.” When the affair exploded with Kamichika's stabbing of Ōsugi, so notorious had he become an advocate of free love that he was even blamed for other person's affairs, including that of Countess Yoshikawa with – so unimaginatively – her chauffeur.

The end is sudden and well-known. On September 16, 1923, in the wake of the fears aroused by the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1, and while people were mercilessly killing Koreans whom they accused of looting, Ōsugi Sakae, “the foremost anarchist of the Taisho period,” along with Itō Noe and his six-year old nephew Munekazu, were arrested by the military police, beaten and strangled; their bodies were then wrapped in
tatami
coverings and dumped into an abandoned well. It has never been established from how high up came the order to have Ōsugi killed.

***

They have debased that supremely mad metaphysical color, pink. But you, Arlene, have not forgotten. I know, because I can see it in your eyes, and yes, I can see it in your lips.

***

–
What if I go north – disappear? Would you come after me?

–
Yes, but not to Gumma Prefecture.

–
Say: Kiss me.

–
Kiss me.

–
Say: I want you.

–
I want you.

–
Say ...

–
No. Put your arms around me.

–
There's only two of us now.

–
Then we're stupid and we'll die.

–
We die then in Tokyo, stupidly or otherwise.

–
I have seen the Tannhauser Gate, the Shores of Aldeberan, and the fires of Orc, Roberta – and still you refuse to speak to me.

***

That particular sort of scruffiness that accompanies that particular sort of neatness and epitomizes the Japanese landscape, be it urban or rural.

– Paul Waley

***

–
God what a long, long walk.

–
What film is Kazue in?
La Jetée
or the Wenders thing on Ozu? You know, where she's mixing her famous Margarita.

–
That she learned from her teacher in Ginza?, that bar behind the primary school behind the Imperial Hotel?

–
Right, that one.

–
Which one? There's a million bars in Ginza.

–
The one we're talking about, the one we know.

–
Ok, ok.

–
The city is a park writ large, a home writ large, Golden Gai writ large. A bar for every activity – one for journalists, one for communists, one for filmmakers, one for – whomever.

–
A bar for you and I, Roberta, a bar that's ours. Three
tatami
, five guests.

–
That's what the foreigners love, exotic Tokyo, in the middle of the highrises and electronic gizmos, these six-
tatami
wooden bars in a three-block area and it takes you twenty minutes to refind the place you got drunk in last month.

–
But that's as it should be.

–
And as it should not: Golden Gai will go, the skyscraper kids will wrap it up like dog shit on the street and deposit it on Dream Island.

–
Right, and there'll be a little ersatz shrine dedicated to dedicated drinkers.

–
One for my you-know-who – or is it whom? – and one for the road, then.

–
Really, what a walk to Roberta's nine
tatami
!, a whole world.

–
Is Shinjuku a desirable address?

–
For who? I'd feel in the middle of – what's the difference between a hurricane and a tornado? Which one has an eye? Which an asshole?

–
People get it wrong; there is no Shinjuku, unless you count it a city unto itself. It so folds in and back upon itself that it fades away. Borderless, decentered – Piss Alley doesn't up one's image – you're lost and found here.

–
Desirable then if that's what you need today. And today, I do not.

–
What would Roberta say, what do you think, eh? A few months here, and then the move to
shitamachi
, that was wise, what she needed, she's not a Shinjuku woman.

–
Is there such a song?

–
One for the road, and that mellowed walk now across Shinjuku –

–
From neon to dark to neon again –

–
Sex shows to ice cream parlors to mediocre sushi –

–
A group of drunk salarymen to kids on a spree. “Oh, I love scrapes!”

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To girls with permanent fits of the giggles –

–
Hey, there goes Araki into Dug!

–
A faux Mexican restaurant with the most glamorous toilet in the city, all silver and mirrors and hot-house flowers, and terrible food, Arturo's mother generously gave it a C-.

–
Here we go then, around a corner, past the love hotels, the acupuncturist's office, the Vietnamese restaurant –

–
The Thai whores –

–
The Russian whores, another corner, the condom vending machine, and –

***

Roberta's round midnight. Paper lantern, late Debussy, and her copying Kenko. What taste: she sees no conflict between Lady Murasaki and Sei Shonagon.

***

rivers and hills

slopes, canals

Cupid and Psyche

in conversation

***

Driving in from Narita yesterday, Kaoru remembers, I got stuck in one of the older sections of the city, and I saw one of those trucks that clean out the toilets of houses without flushing. The men wore spotless uniforms. Where do they haul it all? To Tokyo's own garbage dump, “Dream Island.” Wasn't there a movie about it a few years back? Does it all just stay garbage? Do they transform it into something? Something useful? Is it used for landfill? Is it sifted through? Or is it just piled higher and higher? Was it a Sci-Fi movie? In a thousand years explorers from the Planet Zonar come to the thousand-story high Dream Island, Tokyo's twenty-fourth ward, and there they read the history of the city, what we ate, who we made love to, the crimes we committed, the money we wasted, the junk we consumed and shat. The city we destroyed by ignoring. What is to become of us? Will we challenge Fuji with our trash? Hmm, my cigarette ash sometimes a miniature Fuji. I'll have to give this more thought.

***

R'n'L!!!!!!

Good old Langenscheidt. No, I don't mean the dictionaries. I mean the yellow crocodile balloon in my
genkan
, the house guardian. Marianne left it to me the last time she was over.

Gotta get some decent espadrilles. The cheap ones wear out so fast. Maybe this summer I can find some in Europe.

Things Fall Apart Dept. In one week I had the Panasonic man over to clean my fax machine … then the Yamaha guy came over to fix two of the stereo components … then somebody had to come over to fix the hot water button. High-tech life, my ass.

The mind roils (what a great word) in Tokyo. Everything happening at once – as we know it all does anyway – but here we're assured of it, we experience it. You do understand me, don't you? (God, what if you don't?!)

Made a mean pesto. Better come over and get some.

What's your favorite Elvis picture? Mine – well, one of 'em, one of many, of course – is that great photo of him and some girl kissing, their tongues stuck out, just touching. I wish I had gotten the poster of that when it was used as an ad for something a couple of years back. Was it a JR ad for the train system? Or was it for a magazine? Also wish I'd picked up that book – German, I think – of just photos of Him kissing a billion different women.

I missed that great typhoon in 1993 – when the trains had to stop and even the subways were flooded; I remember driving up to Hakushu with Akashi-san from Daitocho, and his potter friend, he of the beautiful wife (“beppin” – there's even a magazine named after her), and hearing about it on the radio; even hearing of Nakano-Shimbashi being flooded and thinking, christ, that's where Kazue lives, and she's in Hakushu probably unaware that she's seen the last of her apartment – and then wondering if she'd care. Anyway, all of which is to say that I sure hope I am not out of town when the big earthquake hits. No, I don't mean it morbidly or anything like that, just that, well, forgive me for getting sentimental, it's just that me and the city mean so much to each other, how could we be apart on such an occasion?

The day my script went “into development” and was never seen again.

I think I want to collect fans. I know some people collect
saké
cups or ukiyo-e or photographs or whatever, but I now have five fans and I think that I want more. But cool ones, not that sentimental, kitschy sumi-e stuff. I'd also like to get a few dolls; maybe just an Emperor and Empress set. Old, of course. And I'd love to have a Bunraku head. And one good tansu. That'd be enough.