Dragon Dance Read online

  The other message was a strange one. It was brief, with no title and no signature.

  Blond goddess,

  You are looking so beautiful with your new hairstyle. But please stay away from Chiba City tonight. There may be a regrettable event at eleven o’clock. Incidentally I like the shape of your lips. What you could do with them makes me very excited.

  Martine gazed at it in distaste. She had indeed changed her hairstyle a month ago, going for a simple summery look with bangs that framed her face like a bracket. This weirdo must have noticed it on the video-clip that had just been uploaded to the Tribune’s website. As for that last comment, it was beneath contempt.

  The Tribune’s former CEO had a lot to answer for. Six years ago he had launched the “E-growth” strategy, designed to transform the stodgy conglomerate into a leading player in the new economy. That CEO, like the new economy he championed, was long gone now—golden parachute, Caribbean island, twenty-two-year-old aerobics instructor—but the legacy remained. Even now journalists were still required to offer “dynamic interactivity,” which meant answering questions live on the internet and fielding e-mails from readers all over the world. The problem was that the men who wanted to get interactive with Martine—and they were always men—were rarely interested in her stories.

  Martine deleted the message and closed the mailbox. The taxi driver turned around, his big shiny face creasing into a smile.

  “Hey—would you like to sing one of the sensei’s songs?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, we could do a duet. Look—there’s a karaoke built into the radio.”

  He pulled a bulky microphone from under the dashboard and thrust it at her. Martine smiled and shook her head.

  “Thanks, but I don’t have the right voice for this kind of music.”

  Which was true. Nozawa’s songs weren’t difficult to sing—if they were, they wouldn’t have been in such demand at karaoke boxes all over the [21] country—but there was a certain lilt to them that Martine couldn’t carry off. Most of his recent hits were based on the quavering melodies of traditional enka music, cleverly blended with elements of blues, country-and-western, reggae, techno, and rap. It was a formula that had revolutionized the Japanese music industry, appealing simultaneously to all segments of the market—from housewives to high school kids, from trendy office girls to shaven-headed judoka.

  “Are you sure? Your voice sounds very nice to me.”

  “But not as nice as yours,” retorted Martine.

  The taxi driver’s smile widened, revealing a chunky gold tooth. He took a CD case and pulled out the disc.

  “This is my favorite,” he said, waving the plastic case at Martine’s face. “It’s called ‘Wind of the Gods.’ ”

  Martine glanced at the CD case. The picture on the cover showed Nozawa in an old-fashioned pilot’s helmet, leather flaps down over his ears. He was smiling sardonically at the camera, a small white cup of saké in his hand. Behind him was the outline of a warship, its deck covered in flames and columns of black smoke billowing into a blood-red sky.

  Martine winced. The original “wind of the gods” was the providential storm that had saved Japan from invasion by Kublai Khan in the thirteenth century. It was also the nickname of the Japanese suicide pilots who had attempted in vain to halt the advance of the American fleet in the last months of the Pacific War. Martine had researched the subject for an article and had even managed to interview one of the surviving pilots, a man who had been on standby to fly when the surrender was announced. He had gone on to become a schoolteacher, and at the age of eighty-five he was one of the sanest people she had ever met.

  The taxi slid forward a couple of yards before coming to a halt again. The taxi driver pushed the disc into the CD player, and fiddled with the controls.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to do a duet?”

  “Positive,” said Martine.

  “All right, which one shall I sing for you? How about The Pilot’s Last Words to His Sweetheart’? That’s a very sad song. Last week I sang it with a customer I was taking to Kawasaki. He’d been drinking quite a bit, and he started crying in the middle.”

  Martine shook her head and glanced at the CD case. “Hmmm—how about the next one—‘Dried-up Rice Fields of My Heart’? Do you know it?”

  “No problem,” said the taxi driver happily. “I know the words to every single song. I could sing it in my sleep!”

  He slid the microphone into a special holder mounted on top of the dashboard. The music started with the thump of a taiko drum and a slow descending riff on the shamisen. He hunched his shoulders slightly and started to croon:

  [22] The hometown is broken down, the schoolroom is empty,

  The train line is covered with weeds ...

  It was a surprisingly accurate rendition, capturing the swaggering melodrama of Nozawa’s delivery, from the quavering high notes to the earthy growls between the verses. Martine caught a few pedestrians glancing into the taxi as they hurried past. They could probably hear the muffled beat of the drums. They could certainly see the taxi driver leaning forward into the microphone, and the blond woman in the back nodding her head and clapping along with the rhythm.

  It was just past six when the taxi pulled into the hotel forecourt. The sun was setting over the western skyline, bathing the concrete and glass in a blood-red glow. This was the time of day when beer gardens on top of department stores and office buildings would switch on their signs, ready to serve hordes of thirsty office workers. The number of beer gardens, like every other kind of business, was steadily declining from year to year, but up there on the roof, with the warm breeze ruffling your hair and an ice-cold glass of beer in your hand, you could travel back in time, back through the years of crisis, past the decade of stagnation that preceded it, into the bygone era of growth when the whole country was brimming with energy and resolve and the future excited hope, not despair.

  The taxi driver turned to hand Martine her change.

  “I know your face from somewhere,” he said suddenly. “Didn’t I see you on TV a couple of weeks ago?”

  Martine shrugged. In fact she had appeared on a late-night TV panel discussion on the collapse of the yen.

  “Weren’t you in that drama series, the one about the high school teacher who moonlights in a Ginza hostess club?”

  “I’m not an actress,” said Martine, slipping the change into her purse. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  The taxi driver grinned. “Really? Well, you should be. You’ve certainly got the looks for it. Those long legs, and your neck is beautiful.”

  “My neck?” Martine resisted the temptation to scratch her left ear, which had started itching madly.

  The grin got wider, revealing a couple of glinting teeth. “You’re here on a date, I suppose.”

  “I’m here for work, actually,” said Martine.

  “You do your work in this hotel? Hah! Now I understand—you must be Russian.”

  There was a time when Martine would have been outraged by the implication. She would have said something sarcastic and flounced out of the taxi, [23] seething with rage. Now she didn’t even pause as she stepped smoothly out. One thing she had learned from Makoto was that there was no point in taking offense when no harm was intended. Much better to save your energy for when it was.

  “I’ll wait here if you want,” said the taxi driver merrily. “Afterward I can show you some interesting places, like a noodle restaurant where the noodles come shooting down a bamboo slide, or a bar with a shark in a tank.”

  Martine didn’t look around. He wasn’t expecting her to agree. He probably wouldn’t have known What to do if she had.

  Martine called Nozawa’s suite from the hotel lobby, then took the elevator to the thirtieth floor. When the doors opened she was confronted by two square-headed, square-shouldered men in black kimonos. They were members of Nozawa’s security team, what he called his “ministry of defense.”

  “Me
yer-san?” asked the first.

  “At your command,” said Martine with well-practiced meekness.

  “Before meeting the sensei, there are certain security procedures. Are you willing to accept a body search?”

  “A body search! What, by you?”

  The bodyguard stared at a spot on the carpet in front of him. “Of course not,” he said tightly. “One of our female staff is waiting for you in the next room.”

  Martine noted with amusement that the man was actually blushing.

  They led her down the corridor and into one of the guest rooms, where she was greeted by a tall young woman dressed in the same kind of dark kimono. According to the plastic badge on her chest, her name was Kawamoto.

  “I’m sorry to put you to this inconvenience,” she said with a bow. “But you can understand how it is, there are so many crazy people around these days.”

  “That’s for sure,” said Martine dryly.

  “We’re getting so many threats. So many people want to harm the sensei—it’s very disturbing.”

  Kawamoto gave a little shudder. Like most of Nozawa’s female disciples, she looked as if she had been chosen for qualities other than sincerity and diligence. She had large liquid eyes, a full, rather mischievous mouth, and thick glossy hair—“black as a raven’s wing,” as one of Nozawa’s lyrics went—cascaded over her shoulders. Martine guessed that she had started off as a devoted fan, the kind who hung around hotels and concert venues waiting for a chance to snatch a photo or, better still, to get invited to a private party. In other words, a groupie.

  Kawamoto emptied Martine’s bag onto the bed. Martine perched herself on the desk by the window and watched as her notebook, wallet, and lipstick were each scrutinized in turn.

  [24] “It must be fun working for Nozawa-sensei,” prompted Martine, swinging her feet back and forth.

  The girl’s smooth forehead was creased by a frown. “Fun? This isn’t some kind of game, you know. We’re working to restore Japan’s social, economic, and spiritual health—to cure the three cancers.”

  Martine nodded sympathetically. Japanese people seemed to have an affinity for sets of three—the three finest gardens, the three great generals, and so on. Now Nozawa had contributed the three cancers, as well as the three viruses (speculation, wastefulness, and individualism) and the three pillars of the economy (heavy manufacturing, rice farming, and nuclear energy).

  Kawamoto seemed eager to talk. Martine encouraged her with a friendly smile.

  “And you think you can restore economic health by refusing to buy imported goods?”

  “That’s a symbolic matter, a chance for people to show their patriotism. People everywhere should have pride in their own country’s products, don’t you think?”

  Martine said nothing. Being half Scots and half Swedish, born in Africa and educated in Oxford, Washington, and Paris, with her father now living in Sydney and her mother in Tuscany, she found the question impossible to answer.

  “So have you destroyed your passport yet?”

  “Of course,” said Kawamoto. “I did it on New Year’s Day. It gave me such a feeling of freedom.”

  This had started as a one-off publicity gimmick and had turned into a social phenomenon. Every few months, crowds of Nozawa’s supporters would congregate outside an office of the Japan Tourist Board or Japan Airlines and sing songs and set fire to their passports one by one.

  “Freedom? What kind of freedom is it when you can’t travel wherever you want?”

  Kawamoto shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand. For such a long time we Japanese have been enslaved by a certain idea of foreign culture and foreign countries. In order to restore the health of our national culture, we have to release ourselves from this slavery.”

  “So what happens if you want to spend your honeymoon in Guam?”

  Martine’s attempt at a joke fell flat. Kawamoto seemed positively insulted.

  “I would never marry a man who would even consider such a stupid idea! Can’t you see why I burned my passport? I made a commitment to be in Japan every day for the rest of my life. I will breathe only Japanese air, and my feet will touch only Japanese soil.”

  She sounded sincere, but that last phrase wasn’t her own. It was a direct [25] quotation from “I don’t wanna go to Narita,” the opening song on Nozawa’s last album.

  “That’s one good thing about this crisis,” went on Kawamoto hotly. “It has made us understand what we’ve lost. The Japanese people have become weak and selfish, and greedy for money. We must restore national pride and respect for our ancestors.”

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “Wait and see,” said Kawamoto, her large eyes shining with missionary zeal. “Nozawa-sensei is leading us forward. The world will be forced to take notice of Japan again!”

  “Ah.”

  “I would like to discuss this more with you, Meyer-san. I’d like to make you understand why Japanese people are supporting Nozawa-sensei so strongly. Unfortunately there isn’t enough time now, but please call me in the near future. It is important that the world should see the situation correctly.”

  Now Martine got it. Kawamoto was a plant, the equivalent of one of those Soviet-era Russian interpreters who were so eager to make friends with foreign journalists. Still, the offer was worth considering. The central mystery of the Nozawa phenomenon was how someone like Kawamoto—an ordinary young woman, no different from the fun-loving “office ladies” who stream through the boutiques of Shibuya and nightclubs of Roppongi—had developed the mindset of a reactionary. Understand that, and you would understand everything.

  “Thank you. I’ll be in touch.”

  Kawamoto opened a black attaché case and took out a metal detector.

  “Good. Now please take off your necklace and wristwatch. This won’t take long.”

  Martine did as she was told, then slipped off the desk and held her arms in the air.

  Five minutes later the two male guards led Martine to a room at the end of the corridor. There was no number on the door, just the characters for “Shogun” embossed in ornate gold script. One of the guards rang the bell then moved aside, eyes glued to the carpet. It was as if glimpsing the interior of the room would be an act of lese majesty. The door swung open, and Martine stepped inside.

  The room was buzzing with activity. There were around twenty people present, among them senior guards in kimonos, earnest-looking researchers murmuring into cellphones and tapping away at laptop computers, and political operatives in dark suits with slicked-back hair. Martine glanced around. Nozawa was not present, but she did recognize the three people sitting at the table by the window.

  [26] On the left was Eiji Yamazaki, the godfather of Japanese pop music and producer of Nozawa’s last ten albums. With his round face, androgynous features, and blank expression, Yamazaki looked rather like a space alien who had come to earth to study the behavior of the natives. Back in the seventies he had been a member of the Silver Robot Dance Band, the legendary pioneer of computer-generated music. From there Yamazaki had gone from strength to strength, winning Oscars for his movie scores, performing duets with Pavarotti and Sting, staging multimedia extravaganzas—complete with lasers, giant holograms, and thousands of extras—in Venice, Kyoto, and in front of the Egyptian pyramids.

  It was Yamazaki who had masterminded Nozawa’s rise to superstar status. Before he took over as producer, Nozawa’s career had been in the doldrums. The fresh-faced young folksinger had been reduced to a mere purveyor of sentimental ballads, indistinguishable from dozens of other has-beens on late-night TV. Yamazaki had positioned him at the leading edge of musical fashion, blending musical influences so seamlessly that it was impossible to tell what came from where.

  Yamazaki seemed to sense Martine’s presence. His eyes flicked over in her direction, held her gaze for a brief moment, then returned to the screen of his laptop computer. It was like being scanned by an insect.

  The man in the middle
was Professor Suzuki, an academic from Tokyo University who served as Nozawa’s economic adviser. He had made his name by developing the “endogenous social capital model,” a controversial theory that, if taken to extremes, could be used to justify trade barriers, government control of wages and prices, and the closure of financial markets. His most recent proposal was the “Social Protection Program,” by which companies that kept to the traditional Japanese system of lifetime employment, seniority pay, and obedience to the bureaucracy would be rewarded with subsidies. These would be financed by special taxes on companies guilty of selling at “unfairly low prices” or making exorbitant profits.

  But at least Suzuki was a genuine expert, a man whose work had been widely debated in academic circles all over the world. The man sitting next to him was something else entirely. Jiro Yasutani was, in Martine’s opinion, little more than an opportunist with a talent for self-promotion. Originally a writer of manga comics, he had scored a huge success with Sacrifice, the tale of a patriotic raccoon dog set in the closing days of the Second World War. Nozawa wrote the theme song for the movie version, which was repeated on TV almost every month.

  These days Yasutani’s smirking face was everywhere. He was on commercials for everything from saké and soy sauce to five-year bank deposits that carried an interest rate of 0.1%. His most popular forum was a Sunday night [27] TV show that featured bizarre conspiracy theories and paranormal phenomena, such as UFOs, poltergeists, and continents under the sea, all described without a hint of skepticism.

  Yasutani’s latest interest was paleontology. The TV cameras had followed him to the mountains of central Kyushu where, trowel and chisel in hand, he had made a series of sensational finds. The shards of stone he uncovered proved that Japan had been populated hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously thought. The conclusion was obvious: the Japanese were not merely a distinct race, but originated from a different, earlier branch of Homo sapiens. According to Yasutani, Homo nipponicus was highly cultured, peaceful and cooperative, and communicated through a form of telepathy that still existed, though in much weaker form, amongst Japan’s modern inhabitants. Forget about Lucy from East Africa; the common ancestor of the Japanese was Keiko from Kumamoto Prefecture.