A Clean Kill in Tokyo

you see the threat America poses to
Nippon?”
    I regarded him, wondering if he was a crackpot rightist. You run into them from time to time—they profess to abhor America but they can’t help being fascinated with it. “Americans are… causing too many frank conversations?” I asked.
    “You’re being facetious, but in a sense, yes. Americans are missionaries, like the Christians who came to Kyushu to convert us five hundred years ago. Only now, they proselytize not Christianity, but the American Way, which is America’s official secular religion. Frankness is only one, relatively trivial, aspect.”
    Why not have some fun. “You feel you’re being converted?”
    “Of course. Americans believe in two things: first, despite everyday experience and common sense, that ‘all men are created equal;’ and second, that complete trust in the market is the best way for a society to order its affairs. America has always needed such transcendental notions to bind together its citizens, who have come from different cultures all over the world. And Americans are then driven to prove the universality of these ideas, and so their validity, by aggressively converting other cultures. In a religious context, this behavior would be recognized as missionary in its origins and effect.”
    “It’s an interesting theory,” I allowed. “But an aggressive outlook toward other cultures has never been an American monopoly. How do you explain the Japanese colonial history in Korea and China? Attempts to save Asia from the tyranny of Western market forces?”
    He smiled. “You’re being facetious again, but your explanation isn’t so far from the truth. Because market forces—competition—are what drove the Japanese into their own imperial conquests. The Western nations had already taken their concessions in China, and America had institutionalized the plunder of Asian with its so-called Open Door policy. What choice had we but to take our own concessions, lest the West encircle us and gain a chokehold on our supplies of raw materials?”
    “Tell me the truth,” I said, fascinated despite myself. “Do you really believe all this? That the Japanese never wanted war, that the West caused it all? Because the Japanese launched their first campaigns against Korea under Hideyoshi, over four hundred years ago. How did the West cause that?”
    He faced me directly and leaned forward, his thumbs hooked into his
obi,
his toes taking his weight. “You are missing my larger point. Japanese conquest in the first half of this century was a reaction to Western aggression. In earlier times there were other causes, even such base ones as the lust for power and plunder. War is a part of human nature, and we Japanese are human. But we have never fought, we have certainly never built weapons of mass destruction, to convince the world of the rightness of an idea. It took America and its bastard twin, communism, to do that.”
    He leaned closer. “War has always been with the world and always will be. But an intellectual Crusades? Fought on a global scale, backed by modern industrial economies, with the threat of a nuclear auto-da-fé for the unbelievers? Only America offers this.”
    Well, that confirmed the crackpot rightist diagnosis. “I appreciate your speaking frankly with me,” I said, bowing slightly.
“Ii benkyou ni narimashita.”
It’s been an education.
    He returned my bow and started backing away.
“Kochira koso.”
The same here. He smiled, again with some seeming discomfort. “Perhaps we will meet again.”
    I watched him leave. Then I walked over to one of the regulars, an old-timer named Yamaishi, and asked if he’d ever seen the guy before.
“Shiranai”
he said with a shrug.
“Amari shiranai kao da. Da kedo, sugoku tsuyoku na. Randori, mita yo.”
I don’t know him. But his judo is very strong. I saw your fight.
    I wanted to cool off before showering, so I went down to an empty
dojo
on the fifth floor. I left the fluorescent lights off when I went in. This room was best when it was lit only by Korakuen Amusement Park, which twinkled and hummed next door. I bowed to the picture of Kano Jigoro on the far wall, then did
ukemi
rolls until I reached the center of the room. Standing in the quiet darkness, I looked out over Korakuen. Just barely, I could hear the roller coaster ratcheting slowly to its apogee, then suspended silence, then the whoosh of its downward plunge and the screaming laughter of its passengers,