The Samurai Strategy Part 11

Thus around noon the third day she finally got into street clothes and headed down to the lobby, then teeming with lagged-out Aussies in funny tour hats. She took one look, ducked around them, then made for the lower arcade and the shops.

And here she was. Already feeling recharged. Relaxed and . . .

Just then a short, excited hotel porter ducked his head in, bowed, and announced he'd just heard that the Emperor was about to be on TV.

His Majesty? The salon froze.

At first Tam thought the porter must just be playing some kind of local prank. Arcade high jinks.

Then she remembered the speculation in the papers. Could it be true?

She glanced at her watch; it was a couple of minutes before twelve.

The girls immediately dropped everything and clicked on the big Tos.h.i.+ba digital set suspended over the mirror. Service halted in midstream, just as in a soba noodle shop when the sumo wrestlers on the corner tube had finished glaring, thrown salt three times, and were ready to lunge. Then one of the hairdressers remembered Tam and--maybe still believing no _gaijin _could understand her language--reached down to snap on the small black-and-white Sony attached to the chair arm, tuned to CNN's Tokyo service. It was currently scrolling temperatures in the U.S.

Now on the big Tos.h.i.+ba overhead, NHK (the government channel) was announcing they were about to switch to a remote broadcast, live, from the sacred Yasukuni Shrine.

Uh, oh, she thought. Yasukuni! Has everybody here gone crazy?

Back before 1945, Yasukuni had been a memorial to the "master race,"

official home of the new "State s.h.i.+nto." j.a.pan's militarists had revised traditional s.h.i.+nto, a simple nature- reverence, to include violent nationalism, emperor wors.h.i.+p, "the Yamato spirit," the "way of the samurai": every warlike aspect of national character. These days Yasukuni enshrined the names of j.a.pan's two million heroic war dead, a roll call recently enlarged to include Tojo and others the U.S. later executed as criminals--which had turned the place into a political hot potato, resulting in an enormous flap when the prime minister tried to appear there in his official capacity. So, for the Emperor to show up suddenly, with heavy press coverage, was almost unthinkable. Besides, she'd just been by the place and hadn't noticed anything. This was very sudden.

Then the remote came on. The front of the shrine was roped off, right across the bronze _torii_ gate, with only cameras and press allowed inside. On screen was a shot of an elaborate new dais where an official from the Imperial Household Agency, the government bureau that kept His Majesty under its care and schedules his appearances, was just finis.h.i.+ng up a long-winded introduction. Then it was the prime minister's turn. After what seemed half an hour of absolutely content- less oratory (a j.a.panese politician's most respected skill) on the subject of the country's majestic Imperial past, the PM finally stepped aside to allow a tall, strikingly handsome j.a.panese man to approach the speaker's podium. Since the occasion had official significance, his walk was ceremonial, with his feet wide apart in the jerky samurai swagger necessitated in days of old by the two swords at the waist.

Meanwhile, everybody around him was bowing low.

His Imperial Majesty, wearing a formal male kimono, equivalent to morning dress at Ascot, looked truly august. He was also carrying a long silver box, filigreed.

When he finally started to speak, the girls around Tam gasped in astonishment. She noticed immediately that he wasn't using modern j.a.panese. Instead, his language was an archaic, highly ornate dialect: the court speech of long ago.

After his brief, almost unintelligible prologue, one of the Household officials opened the box for him and took out a long, scrolled doc.u.ment. The cameras did a quick close-up, showing a page of antique, flowered paper inscribed with brush and sumi ink.

It turned out to be a letter in modern j.a.panese from the president of a financial organization called Dai Nippon, International. As the Emperor read it to the cameras, it began with a recounting of the loss of the Imperial sword in the Inland Sea during the 1185 battle of Dan-no-ura.

That sword, it declared, signified j.a.pan's physical link to a Divine past. . . .

What? History 101 on TV?

Then came the bomb.

Abruptly CNN cut into their normal late-night programming for a live satellite report. Their reporter, grasping a mike and standing in front of the milling mob around the podium, was reading from a press handout that provided an English summary of the letter. Since the CNN signal was being flashed to the U.S. and then back to j.a.pan on the "bird,"

effectively circling the globe, it was a few milliseconds behind the NHK broadcast. She turned up the sound.

_. . . noon here in Tokyo, and at this shrine sacred to all j.a.panese, His Majesty, the Emperor of j.a.pan (Cut to shot of the Emperor speaking. Reporter voice-over.) has startled the nation by announcing that marine archeologists working for an investment organization called Dai Nippon, International have just succeeded in recovering a famous symbol of early Imperial rule. A three-year secret project in the Inland Sea, funded by DNI, culminated five days ago when scientists brought up a watertight gold case containing what is believed to be the original Imperial sword. (Cut back to reporter.) Although no photos of the sword have as yet been released, we are told it is in virtually mint condition. (Glances down to read from press release.) According to the ancient j.a.panese chronicles, this sword was given to j.a.pan's first emperor by the Sun G.o.ddess Amaterasu-Omikami, sometime around the year 600 B.C., as a symbol of his divinity. Historians say it was later lost at sea in the 1185 Battle of Dan-no-ura. That b.l.o.o.d.y naval episode, the subject of much j.a.panese lore and tradition, marked the end of direct Imperial authority here and the rise of the first shoguns, military governors who would rule in his name. . . .

_

She rolled down the sound. Who needed some English press summary? She was watching the whole incredible event live as it unfolded. And her first thought was: Good G.o.d, that's like finding Excalibur, or maybe the Ark of the Covenant. Myth turned into reality. She glanced around the salon, and already the electricity in the air was crackling. But what happened next turned out to be the real news, the hidden agenda.

After His Majesty finished reading the letter, he pa.s.sed it

to an underling and switched back to his ancient dialect. Now, though, his speech was being "translated" across the bottom of the screen into modern j.a.panese.

He declared that since the Imperial Household, through the loyal services of Dai Nippon, International, had had restored to it that which it always possessed, namely the sword, he was pleased to honor the firm by allowing it to construct a new museum to house the sacred symbol at a site just outside Ise, home of the official shrine of the Sun G.o.ddess. On his authority, ground-breaking for the museum would begin immediately. However, until such time as it was constructed and consecrated, the Imperial Household would make the sacred relic available under heavy guard for viewing by the j.a.panese people in a temporary showplace located at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. . . .

By now shops had begun closing and the corridor outside was in tumult.

An excited young clerk from the flower stall next door burst through the door and, bowing to everybody, lavished bouquets on all the girls.

From the streets above came a cacophony of sirens.

But it still wasn't over. The most crucial part of all, totally missed by the Western news force, was yet to come. After His Majesty was bowed away from the microphone, another official stepped forward to elaborate on the Emperor's remarks (probably because His Majesty would not deign to mention anything so cra.s.s as money). As reward for restoring the sword to His Majesty, he said, Dai Nippon would be allowed to serve as trustee of an official, honorary investment instrument, to be known as the Eight-Hundred-Year Fund. Acting for His Majesty, DNI would direct those monies into endeavors "commensurate with the n.o.bility and ancient lineage of the j.a.panese people, as symbolized by the sword." Then a telephone number flashed across the bottom of the screen. The current subscription would be closed after eight hundred billion yen were pledged. The president of Dai Nippon had asked His Majesty for the honor of contributing the first billion yen personally. Finally, in a quick aside, he added that interest paid by the fund would of course be tax-free, as was normally the case for savings accounts in j.a.pan.

After a few closing formalities, interspersed with a photo session of the Emperor and the president of Dai Nippon, the historic occasion ended with a reverential shot of His Majesty being escorted to his limo.

Who was that silver-haired executive, Tarn wondered. The man was audacious, and a genius. He'd just turned the Imperial Household into an accomplice in some kind of nationwide collection, using the Emperor for his own ends much the way shoguns of old had done.

But she sensed he'd touched a nerve that went very deep. A fund in honor of the Emperor (that's already how everybody around her in the shop was describing it), something in which to take pride, not just a numbered savings account at the post office. Suddenly the girls and their j.a.panese customers were all talking money. Here was something they could do to show their regard for His Majesty.

A line was already forming at the phone. The way she heard sums being pledged, she calculated Dai Nippon would garner five million yen, more than thirty thousand dollars, right there among the shampoos and curlers. The typical j.a.panese, she recalled, banked over a quarter of his or her disposable income. Little wonder most of them had at least a year's salary in savings. At this rate Dai Nippon's "Imperial Fund"

would be over the top by nightfall.

That evening NHK newscasts claimed it had been fully subscribed in the first fifty-six minutes. After all, eight hundred billion yen was only about six billion dollars, scarcely more than loose change to a people saving tens of millions every day. It was, in fact, merely the beginning. The next day more "Eight-Hundred-Year" funds were opened, by popular demand. Soon the pension funds started to feel the heat, and a lot of inst.i.tutions began calling up. Yen flowed in a great river. All those homeless j.a.panese billions knocking around the world had at last found a guiding ideal. Some rumors even claimed the Emperor himself was actually going to manage the money.

Tam couldn't wait to get outside and see firsthand what was going on.

This was something Allan could never in his wildest dreams have predicted. As soon as she could get her hair dry she headed out; the girls didn't even bother to charge.

Tokyo, twelve million strong, was in the streets. Even in normal times the city could be overwhelming, but now . . . It was in pandemonium, an advanced state of shock. As she struggled through the crowds a lot of men were waving sake flasks, already gleefully smashed. The sidewalks had become one vast _matsuri_, festival.

Something else, too. She found herself feeling a little uncomfortable.

There were glares, and then as she pa.s.sed a withered old man running a noodle stand, she heard him mutter "_Gaijin_." What did it mean?

What it "meant," she reflected with alarm, was obvious. The world had just become a brand-new ball game. j.a.pan's long-silent Emperor had once more spoken to his people, just as he had at the end of the War. Back then he had broken two thousand years of silence to inform his battered, starving subjects "the war situation has developed not necessarily to j.a.pan's advantage." This time around he had confirmed j.a.pan's long Imperial heritage. The "meaning" was clear as day.

This wasn't a new direction. This was just getting back on track. Even though the Emperor had been humiliated and secularized after the Great War against the threatening _gaijin_, his people still thought of themselves as a single, pure family. For a time they merely had no focus for that ident.i.ty. Now they had it again.

Well, she thought, why not? National pride. Not so long ago we Americans had the Soviets telling us we were second best, so we blew a few billion in tax money to plant a man on the moon and straighten them out. The s.p.a.ce Super Bowl. Why should j.a.pan be any different? For years now they've heard half the world claim they're just a bunch of hard- driving merchants with a bank-account soul, when they knew in their hearts it wasn't true. Now here's the proof, straight from the Sun G.o.ddess. Time to get crazy awhile.

In the middle of all the bedlam and horns and sirens in the street, she yearned for somebody to talk with, somebody levelheaded enough to put this frightening turnaround into some kind of perspective. That's when she thought of Ken.

Of course! He was Westernized; he took the longer view. Why hadn't she thought of him right away?

So off she went for a quick surprise visit with Kenji Asano at the Inst.i.tute for New Generation Computer Technology, research headquarters for the Fifth Generation Systems Project. He and his staff would probably be in a holiday mood, just like everybody else. Maybe he'd loosen his tie and give her a little off-the-record rundown of what this was all about.

She knew the Inst.i.tute operated out of the twenty-first floor of a downtown Tokyo skysc.r.a.per. She'd been there before. She still had the address, and the subways were clicking along right on time, though the fare machines were off now in celebration. Half an hour later she was there. She pushed her way through the milling lobby and grabbed an elevator.

As she rode, watching the lights tick off the floors, she found herself wondering again what Ken was really up to. And what had happened to Dr.

Yos.h.i.+da? However, it was hard to think about something as boring as MITI and American defense vulnerability when people were whooping it up and pa.s.sing around paper cups of sake right there on the elevator.

Well, don't jump to conclusions. This paranoia of Allan's is probably just some grotesque misreading. Dr. Yos.h.i.+da got promoted, and Ken's merely filling in for a while till the Inst.i.tute can recruit a new director from some university. The work here's too important for politics. Intelligent computers are j.a.pan's lifeline--the "steam engine"

of the next century.