Hard Rain

would seek to build redundancy into the system."
    "Even if Murakami had been a total replacement."
    "Which you say he is not."
    "So the dojo Murakami is running, the fights ..."
    "It seems they constitute a training course of sorts."
    "A training course ...," I said, shaking my head. I saw him looking at
    me, waiting, one step ahead as usual.
    Then I saw it. "Assassins?" I asked.
    He raised his eyebrows, as if to say You tell me.
    "The dojo is the course introduction," I said, nodding. "And with the
    kind of training they do there, they've already selected for
    individuals predisposed to violence. Exposure every day, sometimes
    twice a day, to that regimen desensitizes the individual further. Being
    a spectator at actual death matches is the next step."
    "And the fights themselves ..."
    "The fights complete the process. Sure, the whole thing is just a form
    of basic training. Better, in fact, because only a relatively few
    soldiers who pass through basic training experience combat and killing
    afterward. Here, killing is part of the curriculum. And the cadre you
    create is composed only of the ones who survive, who are the most
    proficient at what they've learned."
    It made sense. A resort to assassins wasn't even original. In past
    centuries, the shogun and daimyo employed ninja in their own
    internecine struggles. I remembered Yamaoto from our run-in a year
    earlier and knew he would probably be flattered by the comparison.
    "Do you see how this development fits in with Yamaoto's longer-range
    plans?" he asked.
    I shook my head. It was hard to think through the penetrating heat.
    He looked at me the way you might look at a slow but still likeable
    child. "What are Japan's overall prospects for the future?" he
    asked.
    "How do you mean?"
    "As a nation. Where will we be in ten, twenty years?"
    I considered. "Not so well off, I suppose. There are a lot of
    problems deflation, energy, unemployment, the environment, the banking
    mess and no one seems to be able to do anything about it."
    "Yes. And you are correct in distinguishing Japan's problems, which
    all countries have, from our powerlessness to solve those problems, in
    which respect we are unique among industrialized nations."
    He was looking at me, and I knew what he was thinking. Until recently,
    I had been one of the causes of that powerlessness.
    "All that consensus-building takes time," I said.
    "Often it takes forever. But a cultural predisposition to
    consensus-building is not the real problem." I saw a trace of a smile.
    "Even you were not the real problem. The real problem is the nature of
    our corruption."
    "Quite a few scandals lately," I said, nodding. "Cars, nuclear, the
    food industry ... I mean, if you can't trust Mr. Donut, who can you
    trust?"
    He grimaced. "What was happening at the TEPCO nuclear facilities was
    worse than a disgrace. The managers should be executed."
    "Are you asking me for another "favor"?"
    He smiled. "I must take care in my phraseology when I'm talking to
    you."
    "Anyway," I said, 'didn't the responsible TEPCO managers resign?"
    "Yes, they resigned. While the regulators remained the same regulators
    who get a cut from the funds allocated to the building and maintenance
    of nuclear plants, who only just publicized dangers they had known
    about for years."
    He pulled himself up and sat on the edge of the tub to take a break
    from the heat. "You know, Rain-san," he said, 'societies are like
    organisms, and no organism is invulnerable to disease. What matters is
    whether an organism can mount an effective defense when it finds itself
    under attack. In Japan, the virus of corruption has attacked the
    immune system itself, like a societal form of AIDS. Consequently, the
    body has lost its ability to defend itself. This is what I mean when I
    say that all countries have problems, but only Japan has problems it
    has lost the ability to solve. The TEPCO managers resign, but the men
    charged with regulating their activities for all those years remain?
    Only in Japan."
    He looked pretty down in the mouth, and I wished for a moment that he
    wouldn't take this shit so seriously. If he kept it up, he'd have an
    ulcer the size of an asteroid. I sat down next to him.
    "I know it's bad, Tatsu," I said, trying to give him a little
    perspective, 'but Japan is hardly unique when it comes to corruption.
    Maybe it's a little worse here, but in America, you've got Enron, Tyco,
    World Com analysts pumping their clients' stock to get their kids