"The whole of
Japan is pure invention,'' wrote Oscar Wilde, who probably knew
better than anyone else considering that he was pure invention himself.
What he meant to say, of course, was that envisioning Japan—like
any object of infatuation—was (and is) open to the same suspensions
of disbelief, dramatic excesses and calls for poetic license as,
say, recounting an Arabian love story or a Renaissance duel. Life
and art merge. Substance takes a back seat to style. And the reader,
who considers himself a well-informed, three-dimensional thinker,
suddenly finds himself in nether realms imagined by the author—so
indistinguishable from his own sensibilities that he begins to wonder
where the author's imagination ends and the real world begins. A
fair assessment of the craft, you might say. Yet despite these techniques,
Wilde also reminded future writers that creativity—especially
a creativity involving the land of cultural superficiality—should
be tempered with a healthy dose of common sense: ``The actual people
who live in Japan,'' he concluded, ``are not unlike the general
run of English people.''
That issue,
in a nutshell, forms the core of one subgenre of postwar literature:
How different are the Japanese from you and me? Wilde certainly
brings artistic perception back into the equation. But perception,
you might recall, doesn't necessarily help us to understand the
Japanese any better, let alone break down the envy, anger and
resentment surrounding the ``Japan, Inc.'' mythos. Or so I thought.
Reading
Samurai Boogie, the latest novel by former Tokyo-based financial
analyst-turned-author Peter Tasker, left me wondering. Tasker first
made his mark on area studies with The Japanese: A Major Exploration
of Modern Japan in 1988. Studded with pungent epigrams, compelling
stretches of narrative and insights indebted to his first-hand experiences
of the country, Tasker soon went on to both entertain and instruct
with page-turning thrillers (Silent Thunder, Buddha Kiss)
and non-fictional best sellers like The End of the Japanese Golden
Era (1991).
Of
course, judging from this novel's cover, Samurai Boogie is
the kind of tacky title readers tend to ignore-with a book jacket
more befitting a cheap comic strip than a book-of-the-month-club
poster. But you can forgive Orion publishers for this small marketing
mistake, as the book reads like a sophisticated whodunit.
The
heart of the mystery surrounds the sudden death of Masao Miura,
a senior bureaucrat at the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Mori-san,
a down-on-his-luck private detective and recurring protagonist in
Tasker's novels, is called in to identify and secure the arrest
of the man likely responsible. Although the press reported Miura's
death as karoshi, death from overwork, his mistress, Kimiko Itoh,
suspects a cover-up. Why else would Miura's widow decline a proper
autopsy?
Mori-san
is on the case, employing the services of a motley band of has-beens
along the way. But never mind who done it. As you quickly discover,
the author's real villain is Western ignorance about the back alleyways
of Japan, as one fateful meeting between Mori-san and Richard Mitchell,
a foreign financial analyst, reveals: ``Mitchell talks about Japan
and the Japanese all the time-comparing, summarizing, judging. And
the Japan that he talks about is a place that Mori has never been
to in his entire life.'' Indeed, Mori's Japan isn't advertised in
travel brochures or highbrow university conferences. The scant amount
of attention his world does receive is virtually determined by the
language and investigative skills of the ``outsider.''
``That's
because there's no crime on the street of this city,'' writes Tasker.
``The serious people are busy with fraud, extortion, blackmail,
bribery, money-laundering, bid-rigging, loan-sharking, game-fixing,
insider-dealing, trading in weapons, endangered species, spoilt
meat, counterfeit software, forged currency, child pornography and
immigrant laborers. And these things require a high level of public
order to conduct properly.''
Sketching quickly, the author shows us a realistic snapshot of post
``bubble era'' Tokyo, where land prices, bullish stock markets and
intellectual hubris about Japan's cultural and economic superiority
all come crashing down at once. Sure, not everyone suffers. But
for the denizens of back-alleyway Tokyo, tucked quietly away from
foreign tourists and other inattentive eyes, suffering is relative.
In a 297-page
multi-layered plot with plenty of action, we meet Angel, a burned-out
whore sucked into Japan's seedy nightclub scene; Detective Shima,
a lazy cop more interested in shogi chess than his job; Taniguchi,
a maverick, alcoholic journalist operating outside the traditional
press-corps structure; and George ``the Wolf'' Nishio, an incompetent
yakuza struggling to reconcile tradition with the ``New Japan.''
None of these people is depicted as enjoying Noh plays, traditional
tea ceremony or geisha girls-if they even knew what they were,
for that matter.
Which brings us to the point of Samurai Boogie. Unlike
previous ``non-fictional'' fiction, like Michael Crichton's Rising
Sun (1992) or Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor (1994), novels
painting the Japanese in broad, unflattering brush strokes, Tasker
sketches a Japan with real-life, credible characters confronted
with—fancy this—real-life, credible problems. As individuals,
they brood, question and doubt themselves as much as any Englishman
would.
Of
course, if you still object to the Japanese being portrayed as anything
but unemotionally methodical ants bent on buying up America whilst
infiltrating the highest reaches of the White House, then Tasker's
opinion of some 125 million island inhabitants might disappoint
a tad. But as the author himself explained in Inside Japan
(1988), traditional stereotypes are the real enemy of creativity:
``The Japanese,'' after all, ``are the most innovative imitators,
the hardest-working hedonists, the lewdest prudes, the most courteous
and cruelest and kindest of people. Rich and yet wealthless, confident
but confused, they have just staged one of the greatest comebacks
in history.''
Indeed,
isn't it about time we welcome the Japanese to the human race? Get
hold of this timely book and keep it for that rainy day.
Paul J Scalise, "A whodunit
explaining who the Japanese are," The Asahi Evening News.
19 March 2000. Pg. 25.
