A Lonely Resurrection

in the neighborhood. The call felt routine: somebody’s coming, I don’t know who.
    I walked on and found the address—an unremarkable two-story building with a concrete façade. The door was old and constructed of thick metal. Three rows of large bolts ran across it horizontally, probably attached to reinforcing bars on the other side. The bolts said
Visitors Not Welcome.
    I looked around. Across from me was a blue corrugated shed, ramshackle, its windows caved inward like the sunken eyes of a corpse. To the right was a tiny coin laundry, its three washers and three dryers arranged facing each other in neat rows as though set out to be taken away and discarded. The walls were yellowed, decorated with peeling posters. Spilled laundry powder and cigarette butts littered the floor. A vending machine hung tilted from the wall, advertising laundry soap at fifty yen a packet to customers who might as well have been ghosts.
    There was a small black button recessed in the mud-colored brick to the right of the building’s door. I pressed it and waited.
    A slat opened up at head level. A pair of slightly bloodshot eyes regarded me through wire mesh from the other side.
    “I’m here to train,” I said in curt Japanese.
    A moment passed. “No training here,” was the reply.
    “I’m judo fourth
dan.
Your place was recommended by a friend of mine.” I said the dead weightlifter’s name.
    The eyes behind the slat narrowed. The slat closed. I waited. A minute went by, then another five. The slat opened again.
    “When did Ishihara-san recommend this club?” the owner of a new pair of eyes asked.
    “About a month ago.”
    “It took you a long time to arrive.”
    I shrugged. “I’ve been out of town.”
    The eyes watched me. “How is Ishihara-san?”
    “Last I saw him, he was fine.”
    “Which was when?”
    “About a month ago.”
    “And your name is?”
    “Arai Katsuhiko.”
    The eyes didn’t blink. “Ishihara-san never mentioned your name.”
    “Was he supposed to?”
    Still no blink. “Our club has a custom. If a member mentions the club to a nonmember, he also mentions the nonmember to the club.”
    No blink from me, either. “I don’t know your customs. Ishihara-san told me this would be the right kind of place for me. Can I train here or not?”
    The eyes dropped down to the gym bad I was carrying. “You want to train now?”
    “That’s what I’m here for.”
    The slat closed again. A moment later, the door opened.
    There was a small antechamber behind it. Cinderblock construction. Peeling gray paint. The owner of the eyes was giving me the once-over. He didn’t seem impressed. They never do.
    “You can train,” he said. He was barefoot, wearing shorts and a tee shirt. I placed him at five-feet-nine and eighty kilos. Tending toward the burly side. Salt-and-pepper crew cut, age about sixty. Past what I sensed had been a formidable prime, but still a hard-looking guy with no bullshit, no posturing.
    Behind the burly guy and to his right was a smaller, wiry specimen, dark complected for a Japanese, his head shaved to black stubble. I recognized the bloodshot eyes—the same pair that had initially regarded me through the mesh. Though slighter than the first guy, this one radiated something intense and unpredictable.
    The smaller guys can be dangerous. Never having been able to rely on their size for intimidation, they have to learn to fight instead. I know because, before filling out in the army, I had been one of them.
    The antechamber was adjacent to a rectangular room, about twenty feet by thirty. It smelled of old sweat. The room was dominated by a judo tatami mat. A half-dozen muscular specimens were using it for some kind of
randori,
or live training. They wore shorts and tee shirts, like the guy who had opened the door, no
judogi.
On a corner of the mat, someone was practicing elbow and knee drops on a prone, man-shaped dummy. The dummy’s head, neck, and chest were practically mummified with duct tape reinforcements.
    In another corner, two canvas heavy bags dangled on thick chains from exposed rafters. Large bags, seventy kilos or more. Man-sized. A couple of thick-necked guys with yakuza-style punch perms were working them, no gloves, no tape, their blows not quick but solid, the
whap! whap!
of knuckles on leather reverberating in the enclosed space.
    The lack of wrist and finger tape interested me. Boxers wear tape to protect their hands. But you get dependent on the tape, and then