A Lonely Resurrection

Hibiya, another centrally located place that lacks the amenities and flair of, say, the Seiyu Ginza or the Chinzanso or Marunouchi Four Seasons, but that compensates with size, anonymity, and multiple entrances and exits. The Imperial was also the last place I had been with Midori, but I chose it for security, not for sentiment.
    The next morning, I checked the secure site. Tatsu had given me the identity I wanted, along with the location of a bank of coin lockers in Tokyo Station, from under one of which I could retrieve the relevant ID. I memorized the message, then deleted it.
    I did an SDR that encompassed Tokyo Station, where I retrieved the papers I might need, and that ended at Toranomon Station on the Ginza line, the oldest subway route in the city. From there I caught a train to Asakusa. Asakusa, in the northeast of the city, is part of what’s left of
shitamachi,
the downtown, the low city of old Tokyo.
    Asakusa 2-chome was northwest of the station, so I approached it through the Sensoji, the Asakusa Temple complex. I entered through Kaminarimon, the Thunder Gate, said to protect Kannon, the goddess of mercy, to whose worship the temple complex is dedicated. My parents had taken me there when I was five, and the site of the gate’s ten-foot red paper lantern is one of my earliest memories. My mother insisted on waiting in line to buy
kaminari okoshi,
Asakusa’s signature snack, at the Tokiwado shop, whose crackers are reputed to be the best. My father complained at having to wait for such touristy nonsense but she ignored him. The crackers seemed wonderful to me—crunchy and sweet—and my mother laughed as we ate them, urging me,
“Oichi, ne? Oichi, ne?”
Aren’t they yummy? Aren’t they yummy?, until my father broke down and partook.
    I paused before the Sensoji Temple and looked back at the compound. Around me whirled the general din of excited tourists, of hawkers exhorting potential customers
“Hai, irasshiae! Hai, dozo!,”
of squealing schoolchildren being mobbed by the legions of pigeons that make the complex their home. Someone was shaking an
omikuji
fortune-telling can, full of hundred-yen coins deposited in the hope of good tidings. Incense from the giant brass
okoro
wafted past me, simultaneously sweet and acrid on the cool air. Clusters of people stood around the censer, pulling the smoke onto those parts of their bodies they hoped to cure with its supposed magical properties. One old man in a fishing cap gathered great heaps of it onto his groin, laughing with gusto as he did so. A tour guide tried to arrange for a group photo, but waves of passersby continually obliterated the shot. The giant Hozomon gate herself stood silent through it all, brooding, dignified, inured by the decades to the clamor of tourists, the frantic photographers, the guano amassed on her eaves like wax from immolated candles.
    I headed west. The din receded, to be replaced by an odd, depressing silence that hung over the area like smoke. Outside the tourist-fueled activity of Sensoji, it seemed, Asakusa had been hit hard by Japan’s decade-long decline.
    I walked, my head swiveling left and right, logging my surroundings. Hanayashiki amusement park sulked to my right, its empty Ferris wheel rotating senselessly against the ashen sky above. The esplanade beyond was given over mostly to a few pigeons that had wandered there from the nearby temple complex, the occasional flapping of their wings echoing in the surrounding silence. Here and there were small clusters of homeless men smoking secondhand cigarettes. A mailman removed a few envelopes from the back of a postal box and hurried on, as though vaguely afraid he might catch whatever disease had decimated the area’s population. The owner of a coffee shop sat diminished in the back of his deserted establishment, waiting for patronage that had long since vanished. Even the pachinko parlors were empty, the artificially gay music piping out of their entranceways bizarre and ironic.
    I turned the corner at the end of the street I was looking for. A heavily built Japanese kid with a shaved head, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, was leaning against the wall. I made him as a sentry. Sure enough, at the other end of the street, there was his twin.
    I walked past the first guy. After a few steps I turned my head casually to look back at him. He was watching me, speaking into a radio. This was a quiet street and I didn’t look like one of the pensioners who lived