A Lonely Resurrection

tendencies. He dropped out of high school to train in sumo, but couldn’t develop the necessary bulk. Then he took up Thai boxing, where he had a short but unspectacular professional career. About five years ago he became involved in a so-called ‘no holds barred’ sport, something called ‘Pride.’ Do you know of it?”
    “Sure,” I said. The Pride Fighting Championship is a mixed martial arts sport, based in Japan, with televised bouts held every two months or so. The idea behind so-called mixed martial arts, or MMA, is to pit against each other a combination of traditional martial disciplines: boxing, jiu-jitsu, judo, karate, kempo, kung fu, Muay Thai, sambo, wrestling. Audiences for Pride competitions have been growing steadily since the sport was founded, along with interest in related events, like King of the Cage and the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the States. The sport has had some difficulty with regulators, who seem more comfortable with a boxer being beaten unconscious than with an MMA guy tapping out to a submission hold.
    “What is your impression?” he asked.
    I shrugged. “The competitors are strong. Good skills, good conditioning. A lot of heart, too. Some of what I’ve seen is as close to a real fight as you can get while still calling it a sport. But the ‘no holds barred’ stuff is just marketing. Until they decide to allow biting, eye-gouging, and ball shots, and until they start leaving weapons of convenience lying around the ring for the contestants to pick up, it’ll have its shortcomings.”
    “It’s interesting that you say that. Because the individual in question seemed to have the same concerns. He left the sport for the world of bare-knuckled underground fighting, where there really are no holds barred. Where as often as not the fight truly is to the finish.”
    I had heard about these fights. Had once even met someone who participated in them, an American named Tom, who was practicing judo, for a time, at the Kodokan. He was a tough-looking but surprisingly articulate guy who shared some interesting and valuable unarmed combat philosophy with me. I had defeated him in judo, but wasn’t sure how things would have turned out in a less formal setting.
    “Apparently this individual was highly successful in these underground contests,” Tatsu said. “Not just against other men. Also in bouts against animals. Dogs.”
    “Dogs?” I asked, surprised.
    He nodded, his expression grim. “These events are run by the yakuza. It was inevitable that our man’s skills, and his cruel proclivities, would come to the attention of the organizers, that they would then recognize he had a higher calling than killing for prize money in the ring.”
    I nodded. “He could kill in the wider world.”
    “Indeed. And, for the last year, that is precisely what he has been doing.”
    “You said he had a more sophisticated set of skills.”
    “Yes. I believe he has developed capabilities I once thought were your provenance only.”
    I said nothing.
    “In the last six months,” he went on, “there have been two deaths, apparently by suicide. The victims were both high-level banking executives in soon-to-be merged institutions. Each seems to have leaped to his death from the roof of a building.”
    I shrugged. “From what I’ve been reading about the condition of the banks’ balance sheets, I’m surprised only two have jumped. I would have expected more like fifty.”
    “Perhaps twenty years ago, or even ten, that would have been the case. But atonement by suicide now exists in Japan more as an ideal than as a practice.” He took a sip of his tea. “An American-style apology is now preferred.”
    “‘I regret that mistakes were made,’” I said, smiling.
    “Sometimes not even ‘I regret.’ Rather, ‘It is regrettable.’”
    “At least they’re not claiming taking bribes is a disease, that they just need treatment to be cured.”
    He grimaced. “No, not yet.”
    He took another sip of tea. “Neither of the jumpers left a note. And I have learned that each was concerned the actual size of the nonperforming loans of the other party was significantly higher than advertised.”
    “So? Everyone knows the problem loans are much bigger than the banks or the government admits.”
    “True. But these men threatened to reveal the problem data as a way of blocking a merger that had no sound business rationale, but which was nonetheless favored by certain elements of the