Kuhaku, The Book
Groped, Sharon Moshavi
"I smacked him with the flat of my hand. Then I did it again, and again. He just stood there with bloodshot, drunken eyes. I got even angrier. I kept hitting him ... Where in the world did all that anger come from?"
That Floating Feeling I, Sumie Kawakami
Translation by Yuko Enomoto
Chieko Hamuro is a thirty-three-year-old homemaker in Tokyo. She was interviewed in her home in June 2003.
That day, my husband was reading National Geographic or something like that, and he said to me, "They say the chances for male births are higher during wartime." According to the article, there is a correlation between male births and stressful conditions surrounding a pregnancy. Because male mortality rates increase during a war, more boys are born.
"It's about preservation of the species," he said. "They say people are more likely to have sex during extreme conditions, such as war. If death were inevitable, one would be driven to leave behind a child or two. That's male instinct."
My husband sounded as if he had just attained enlightenment. That probably was the day I got pregnant.
Father Hunters, Roland Kelts
They revved and raced jacked-up, heavy-muffled, neon-lit Toyotas down the empty strips between skyscrapers after midnight, rendering a kind of slick, high-tech version of Saturday nights in midsized American towns.
Kuhaku, David Cady
Illustrations by kozyndan and Craig Mod
There are no eighteen-hundred-year-old pine trees lining this goddamn street, which is seven strides wide and has no sidewalks.
Garbage, Sharon Moshavi
My landlady, who lives on the first floor, was outside watering her garden. Her eyes took in the contents of my trash.
"No, today is Monday. It's plastics day," she said.
"Oh," I replied, "I guess they changed the pickup schedule."
Her eyes fluttered to the ground, studiously avoiding mine. No, Monday has always been plastics day, she said.
Over the next few minutes, in the muddled mix of Japanese and English we use to communicate, my landlady explained that she often would take my garbage away if I had put it away on the wrong day, store it in her house and then bring it out again on the proper day.
Answers to Correspondents, Cal Ranson
'Young Mother':
Whilst I appreciate the fact that your little emperor is undoubtedly a work of the finest art, I find it hard to condone his sleeping in the marital futon at the expense of his father. All right-thinking folk must surely be aware that an eight-year-old boy is no substitute for a spouse, no matter how whiskey-soaked either of the pair might be.
Try as you might to raise the lad respectably -- and reading between your lines, I sense a certain over-eager, not to mention illegal effort to squeeze the child into your husband's shoes -- your spawn must be left to his own devices and not mollycoddled to within an inch of his life. Continuing down this path leads only to moral bankruptcy and one more twig on the tinder pile of dysfunctional youth. Leave him be.
That Floating Feeling II, Sumie Kawakami
Translation by Yuko Enomoto
Naomi Kawai is a twenty-nine-year-old actress. She was interviewed in April 2003.
I did not cheat on my husband to hurt him. And in the end, thatÍs not why we got divorced. I was just very lonely. I realized it immediately after we got married: my husband will never be able to fill the void in my heart. That realization made me feel very lonely. My state of mind at the time was, "Maybe I should sell my body." We got married because we were in love, but soon afterward, it all came crashing down on us.
Blind Alleys, Sho Akuma
Late morning Kabukicho may be a touch on the quiet side, but it's great for seekers of discount action, my next doctoral field.
The desk staff at Hinomaru were more like hall monitors than pimps. I half expected to be forced to carry a wooden pass if I needed a leak. Given their fixed smiles, maybe they'd work out well at some airline.
"Sir, will that be screwing or non-screwing? With or without anal?"
"Thankyouverymuch, pleasetakeyourseatandenjoythetrip."
Fat chance. Fat girls too, but I'd managed to wring a few pearls from one of the legit customers -- something about the state of the economy being a blessing for sex shoppers like him, as it drove prices down and forced the women in the business to try that much harder.
"Customer loyalty is back with a bang," he told me.
San Man Down, Cal Ranson
She rolled the window to the top as he put a flame to the charcoal. He, tall and thin, with a face even a mother would turn from, swallowed his handful of sleeping pills greedily. She considered, then dismissed, the idea of slipping hers in a pocket. It had to look like a genuine attempt, after all, if she were to make her point. Down in one with a gulp of ocha.
Canned Coffee, David Cady
Santa Marta X from Nestle Japan Group
Chemical introductory notes give way to a pleasant bitterness and lingering ashy finish. Best suited to springtime walks between Meguro and Ebisu stations while listening to the Flaming Lips on headphones and wearing orange socks with purple polka dots in an attempt to give yourself a kooky, artistic air.
Life with a Bilingual Dog, Robert Juppe
Once we had Boss, my wife began booking us at "pet pensions," inns that cater to guests with pets (they should actually be called "dog pensions." I have yet to see someone bring a raccoon or an arachnid). At these inns, your pet can go everywhere you go, including the dining room. At the first pet pension we went to, there were small anchors in the dining room to which you could hook your dog's lead. Everybody eats a French dinner and their dogs lie at their feet. The dogs are not allowed to eat in the dining room; they are merely permitted to help reproduce a Norman Rockwell-like setting. Well, Norman Rockwell in kaleidoscope, because there are fifteen couples and fifteen dogs.
That Floating Feeling III, Sumie Kawakami
Translation by Yuko Enomoto
Yukiko Makioka is a forty-two-year-old language school instructor. She was interviewed in May 2003.
I recently broke up with Yamamura, and he blamed me for starting it all in the first place. "It's all your fault," he said. "You seduced me." He was getting very agitated, and he screamed at me: "How are you going to take responsibility for all this?" I was just perplexed. I don't report directly to Yamamura, but he was a superior, so I was just being friendly to him in a noncommittal way, just like I treated everybody else. Imagine my surprise when he said, "That sort of nonchalance drives men crazy."
But this relationship was the worst. Yamamura was mentally unstable and towards the end, he was practically stalking me. He would be hiding in the dark, waiting for me to come home from work at night. On bad nights, he would ring the doorbell, and I would see him in the monitor standing in front of the house.
A Very Happy Life, Takehiko Kambayashi
For forty years, Mie Ueda worked as a telephone operator and raised three children. Once she retired, she filled her days with luncheons and teas with friends, trips to the local gym and aqua aerobics classes. She and her husband traveled to hot springs resorts and took occasional overseas trips. They finally had the time and money to relax and enjoy themselves. This was the ideal way to pass the autumn of their lives.
Or was it?
Lunch Break, David Cady
April fifteenth, 2003. Time for lunch. Leave office at 1:05 pm ... Buy pickled plum rice ball, fermented soybean rice/seaweed wrap, cup of yogurt, green mixed salad with broccoli and asparagus, string cheese, Perfect Plus "multibalance nutritional food bar," two packs of soy milk. Return to office, show ID to surly, racist guard at front entrance. The man literally refuses to acknowledge foreigners. Several earnest attempts to get the asshole to address me have ended in failure. He showers ohayos on employees as they stream in to work every morning, but as soon as he sees a foreigner, the bastard clams up.
Work, Bruce Rutledge
By the end of my dot-com summer, I was chain smoking and drinking during the day. I felt like a war correspondent in some godforsaken corner of the New Economy. I started the summer of 2000 with a dream of creating an online news service in Japan, and I ended it -- forty-seven days later -- with a hacker's cough, a new lawyer and a plane ticket to Cleveland.
Tokudaiji Days, Wil Fennell
Forty-three years. He'd been in Japan for forty-three years. I never understood why Gerald took such pleasure in the number, but he obviously did. "Forty-three years, and it seems like yesterday," he'd say to everyone he met. On those days when I was visiting Mike at Tokudaiji, we'd call Gerald and ask if he'd mind a visit. He always urged us to come by immediately, and we would -- after making the trek down the stone path into the village, where we'd procure provisions for the day: two 1.8-liter bottles of Mountain Mist, some beers, a couple of packs of cigarettes and perhaps something to eat.
Glossary, Ill: Peyote, Words: editors
Otaku -- Nerd, freak. This word is also a polite way to say "your house," but in the early 1980s, it began morphing into its current, more prevalent meaning. Journalist Akio Nakamori wrote a series of articles in 1983 entitled "The Study of Otaku" (Otaku no Kenkyuu) that talked about the qualities of hardcore anime, manga and video game fans. The term took on a more sinister twist in 1989, when Tsutomu Miyazaki was arrested for the murder of four preteen girls. His apartment was littered with thousands of anime videos and manga, including slasher films, rape fantasies and other hardcore porn. In 1992, the term was lobbed across the Pacific with a much more positive spin with the North America release of the anime classic Otaku no Video. This animated film tells the story of disaffected youth who find joy in creating anime. Promotion of the movie included this call to arms: "Fight! OtaKing! Defend the hopes and dreams of otaku everywhere!"