ON-SITE: A MONTH IN TOKYO

by Lawrence Rogers

May 24, 2001

I'm startled on the train in from the airport by a sudden and violent blast of air that hits the train's windows as another train passes by in the opposite direction on the next track. You forget these everyday things when you've been away. The shock generates a haiku moment.

Two middle-aged women sitting across from me on this Ueno-bound train who I assume are Japanese chat quietly in what seems to be an obscure country dialect. Several miles down the track, I realize it's not Japanese, but Russian. They have four or five bags between them and have probably flown in on a buying mission. Flesh and blood evidence of the much-heralded Internationalization, albeit small-scale.

May 26, Saturday

Today was a day of firsts. After three days in Japan, I saw for the first time this trip a person wearing a face maska nose mask, reallyhygienic accouterments that used to be so common years ago. Interesting that it was a young woman, someone you might expect to choose appearance over health. She was at a subway station in the shitamachi area, the proletarian flatlands. And I saw my first woman in a kimono, also in a train station. Finally, first time this trip, a drunk attempted to strike up a conversation with me, a gaijin and therefore a natural target for the uninhibited. He sat down next to me on the Chuo line. He looked (and smelled) a bit shabby, someone down on his luck. He then whipped out the day's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's Wall Street Journal. Is he a casualty of the eroding lifetime employment system? I did not have the heart to ask him if he had once worked for Sumitomo.

May 27, Sunday

It is unrealistic to expect satellites to be equal to the planet they orbit. Back in Hawai'i, the Volcano House restaurant as a restaurant is not in the same class as the nearby Kilauea is as a volcano. So it was with at least one of the eateries that cluster around the Kokugikan, the great sumo arena in the Ryogoku area. I chose, unwisely, a sushi restaurant a few minutes from the arena. It had only a handful of customers. The usual place one finds under the counter for setting down small packages was missing, but that was a mere inconvenience. The food was a disaster. The rice fell apart on my plate, the shrimp tasted as though it had been raised in a well-chlorinated swimming pool, and the tuna was barely thawed, watery, and chilled to my disappointed lips. The pickled ginger and wasabi wanted character, but this flaw could well be attributed to the ungenerous frame of mind the experience had engendered. Curiously, the egg was fine. This is usually a bellwether for overall quality in a sushiya, but many sushi restaurants have their slabs of egg prepared elsewhere these days, and so they can't be considered a reliable guide. I confined myself to egg and beer.

In front of the sumo stadium, one of those right-wing sound trucks, the grandiose and righteous name of the group painted on all sides, blasts and berates the Japan Sumo Association for alleged yaocho, bouts in which the fix is in. Of course yaocho happen on occasion, but it is not clear why this should matter to right-wing crackpots. Well, yes, sumo has traditionally been considered the national sport, and so ultranationalists would take a dim view of anything that tarnishes its image. But I suspect what we have here is a simple shakedown attempt.

A sound truck belonging to an ultra-rightest outfit blasts and berates the Japan Sumo Association (photo by Lawrence Rogers)

A thirtyish gaijin approaches me as I wait at the roped-off groupies' entrance to photograph wrestlers as they get out of their taxis. Today is the last and crucial day of the tournament; the arena is sold out. The man, an American, asks if there are any scalpers from whom he can buy a ticket. I tell him I would guess there are, though I didn't see anyone selling tickets on the sidewalk. Many people are being turned away from the box office. Later I ask a cop outside the arena if scalping is legal. He says it probably isn't. I decide if it were illegal, he would know.

I had arrived early, around noon, and bought myself an A-level seat, right behind the railing on the second floor. Eighty-two thousand yen (roughly $70), beyond my usual price range, but today the two yokozunas (grand champions), Musashimaru and Takanohana, are to battle each other for the tournament title, and there'll be other decisive bouts. Prime Minister Koizumi is in attendance, and he is sitting in a VIP box. Koizumi's poll ratings are high, and his popularity among the fans here is obvious. People respond to the PM's wave, the regal, narrow-gauge, left-to-right-and-back-again motion that the Imperial familyand Japanese public figures generallyfavor. The crowd roars its approval when he is introduced, and again when he presents the PM's cupa huge vessel that he lifts by himself with obvious effortto the tournament winner. In the end, everyone is in a jolly mood. Favorite son and demigod Takanohana takes the tournament in a come-from-behind win, dispatching Samoan-born Musashimaru.


May 28, Monday

Signs of the apolitical times: men students shouting in unison in Jimbocho turn out to be a college track team running down the sidewalk, not, as I had instantaneously assumed, a phalanx of protesters snaking and chanting their way down the street, red banners flying.

May 30, Wednesday

A confrontation in the Reference Room of the Diet Library, of all places. A man from another table approaches a reader who is sitting across from me and asks in a whisper, quietly and politely, if he wouldn't mind flipping pages more quietly. He had been zipping through a reference work with audible gusto. The flipper tells the complainer, not in a whisper, that this is a library and people do flip through the pages of a book and not to worry about it. The complainer goes back to his seat, but the rustling of pages is a bit more subdued.

Reader survey on the Toei Asakusa line. The middle-aged man to my left is reading a sports newspaper; the young woman to my right, some sort of self-help-your-personality pocket book; the fashionably dressed woman directly across, a large glossy periodical, perhaps an expensive art magazine. Not a manga in sight. I am pleased, and reassured about Japan's future.

May 31, Thursday

Now one week in Japan. Not much accomplished today. Eager to stay dry, and willfully heedless of the exchange rate, I bought a $200 raincoat in a Ueno department store that was remarkably free of customers, at least in the men's department. Paying by plastic, I didn't immediately feel the pain I felt on reflection. In fact, for an instant, I experienced a flashback to my first years in Japan, when gaijin sorts seemed to have all the money and the Japanese exported children's toys made of old beer cans.

June 2, Saturday

Fashion notes. It is striking how many people in Tokyo, men as well as women, have taken to dyeing their hairand in colors ranging from everyday brown to radiant pink. A leading dye-maker claims that two-thirds of the women in Japan have taken to the bottle, double the number fours years ago. This may be self-promoting hyperbole, of course, but counting heads on the street suggests it may not be far off the mark.

And on the subject of heads, whatever the marginal benefits of those little porkpie hats that are so popular with both Japanese men and women of mature years, their wearers should be aware that such headpieces mark them as sartorially impaired. But perhaps the hats, with their narrow brims that offer scant protection from the elements, have a symbolic function, perhaps they are a sign of personal acknowledgment not that the wearers have thrown their hat in the ring, but that they have, on the contrary, thrown in the towel, that they will no longer be competing for all those things younger people compete for.

A beer, french fries, and namu-hamu from Hokkaido in the Lion Beer Hall in the Ginza district, then a stroll from the Lion, at 7-chome, to Shimbashi, buying two rolls of Tri-X film on the way. I am disappointed not to find the smokey back alleys I'd seen when I ambled through this area a year ago. The back alleys are still there, fortunately, but patronage is definitely down and the fabled smoke that should be wafting over the many grills is gone. It's Saturday night, and yet the little yakitori restaurant I so much enjoyed last year is dark and deserted. And so grimy and flyblown it looks as if it's been abandoned for months.

The clientele at Tounton, a Tokyo eatery (photo by Lawrence Rogers)

I stop in at one of my favorite eating places, the Tounton, for a bite and to take a few pictures. Most of the customers cheerfully mug for the camera, but as I get ready to leave, still shooting away, one man turns away from the camera, and the manager makes a crossed-arm batsu signstop, no, don'tand the young waiter tells me taking pictures like this, by which he means as I sit amongst the customers, is "not moral." I leave both mildly chastened and annoyed. I long ago lost the shell cultivated in my journalistic youth that permitted detached observation with little concern for the right of privacy of othersespecially a husband having a beer with his girlfriendbut I resent having my ethics scorned by a whippersnapper waiting on tables.

June 6, Wednesday

A camera store on the edge of Araki-cho is selling all sorts of old cameras and equipment, but not a single roll of black-and-white film. I resign myself to buying color, put it in the camera, then walk two blocks to find a corner drugstore that, indeed, has black-and-white. I buy three rolls of Fuji 400, but decide to leave the color film in and shoot exteriors of Araki-cho, where at least two new buildings are going up for housing, one eight stories, the other ten. Today's Araki-choa delightful enclave of older homes, elegant restaurants, and venerable tavernswill not be tomorrow's. I'd been charmed by the area when I stumbled on it a couple of years ago, but if this growth continuesas it surely willmy newly found old pearl will be lost. There is something to be said for stasis.

A sound truck bearing a Communist party candidate standing for reelection to the metropolitan assembly makes its way through Araki-cho and stops to let the candidate, Tomoko Oyama, make a speech at tiny Araki Park. The thrust of her short spiel is the need to undo the cutbacks in health care for the elderly and for a reduction of the consumption tax. I take pictures with my new secondhand Nikon and query her female aide. I point out that people are not gathering to listen. The aide contends it's too early. The election is on June 14, eight days away. Invidious comparison: a U.S. election campaign at that level would have already been going on for months and consumed barrels of money. And, of course, given the narrow spectrum of acceptable political currency in the

Oyama Tomoko, Communist Party candidate for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, making a campaign speech that draws few listeners (photo by Lawrence Rogers)

June 13, Wednesday

Heard my first shouted "haro" since coming to Japan three weeks ago, this from a young ladit's always the young malesin a kids' tour group visiting the Diet-building area. He and his schoolmates were doubtless from the provinces. No Tokyo boy would consider a gaijin a curiosity worthy of a salutatory probe.

I can see from the sixth-floor cafeteria in the Diet Library a number of cranes perched atop several buildings, doing heavy lifting, which suggests that Japan's depression is not quite yet the real thing. On the other hand, the Socialist Party's buildingpardon my memory, the Social Democratic Partyis grimy and sports rust stains on the side facing the library, although the sinographs proclaiming its name have to be at least ten feet tall. Given the plunge in the number of its members who have been elected to the Diet in recent years, the building presents a painfully honest picture of the party's fortunes.

June 14, Thursday

Tonight my wife, Kazuko, and I saw a new Ken Takakura movie, Hotaru (Firefly). It was a three-hanky tearjerker about an aging fishermanhe looks like John Wayne in his later yearswho had been in a suicide unit during the war. It was a drawn-out film in which the hero predictably wrestles with his survivor's guilt, but it was not without relevance today. The plot touches on rapprochement between Japan and Korea and recognition of the anger of Koreans at Japan's past sins. This is not the first acknowledgement of same, of course, but most of the soul-searching has seemed to be among the chattering classes. It's good to see it has seeped into popular culture.

We come out of the movie around nine o'clock to find that a good number of homeless men in the shopping arcade by the Sensoji temple are already bedding down, in store doorways and alleys, in their cardboard boxes. How many of these men are among those who had been chased away from the west side of Shinjuku station or Ueno station in the recent past? Not many, perhaps, since there seem to be a good number of homeless, if you know where to look. There are, for example, a half dozen shacks topped with the inevitable blue tarp along the banks of the Arakawa and Sumida rivers, and I've seen homeless around Shinobazu pond. The central government recently estimated the number at 5,800, but this is probably too conservative a figure.

June 17, Sunday

A young sumo wrestlerone unknown to mesaunters with the practiced insouciance of his calling along a Chinatown side street in Yokohama with his date and a black left eye. He is chewing bubble gum and blowing huge, robust gum-bubbles.

Grooming hints. Recently saw a TV commercial in which a matronly white woman sniffs the armpit of a younger woman, presumably her daughter, to test her deodorant. The implied message for the Japanese viewer is if it works for her, by god, it will certainly work for you. There's a similar ad down in the subway on the walls, a poster that depicts a dozen or so non- Japanese young men, black and white, standing around with their shirts off, again making the point that the deodorant works for them, so it is indeed powerful stuff. I had always attributed the heartbreak of osmidrosis to the Western diet, richer in meat and spices, and, yes, to a rather more relaxed bathing regimen, but scientists now tell us Asians have fewer apochine glands, the culprit in the matter, than non-Asians. Life can really be unfair.

June 18, Monday

Hot today, twenty-eight degrees centigrade. To the Diet Library, but to no avail. It is closed, as I would have known had I looked at the schedule. I descend quickly back into the cool depths of the Marunouchi subway line, where I encounter a tour group of more than twenty senior citizens, all of whom I tower over, save for one old man who is about an inch shorter than I am. I then get on the train and find myself amidst a large group of high school kids, most of whomthe males, at leastare as tall as or taller than I am. Is there another country where there is a greater physical difference between grandparents and grandchildren? And all attributable to Wonder Bread.

June 20, Wednesday

Kazuko and I see an early evening performance of Kumo no sujo, an adaptation of Kurosawa's film, which itself is an adaptation of Macbeth, at the Shimbashi Embujo. The music is unexpectedly Mahleresque/Death in Venice, but surprisingly effective, if now and again discordant. It reminds me in some ways of a Kabuki production and features many Kabuki actors: Ichikawa Danjiro and a number of Nakamuras. I feel vaguely out of place, not because of my passport, but because the audience is overwhelmingly female. The scarcity of men at this evening performance first strikes me as somehow odd; then I realize that in Tokyo a woman doesn't need to be overly concerned about her safety when going out alone at night and can venture forth without a man at her side.

We stop off at one of the Lion beer halls in the Ginza for beer and sausage. The hall hits its patronage peak around nine o'clock; thereafter, empty tables start appearing. We walk down to the Shimbashi area, then double back to the Higashi Ginza station for the subway home.

The building next to the Lion has been torn down, to be replaced by a new building. We hope this means that since the Lion itself still stands, it will be spared for a while. But Tokyo is change.

June 21, Thursday

Back to Hawai'i today. Off the plane, U.S. citizens whiz through customs, since there are only a handful on the JAL flight and we have our own exit gate. The other passengers, mostly Japanese, find themselves in very long, very slow-moving lines. Not an aloha welcome. I buy a couple of papers at the inter-island terminal newsstand. The clerk runs a marker of some kind over the twenty-dollar bill I give her. I ask why she does that, and she tells me she's checking for counterfeits, that she got one last week. Then she shortchanges me by seventy-five cents, which I point out. She apologizes and gives me the rest of my money. Welcome home.