X.
They want me to come back, you know. They want me to be a part of this world and with my deep pockets, my ability to pick up an entire evening’s tab or even just buy outright some outrageously poor painting (and this though I am twenty-six!), a part of my heart has been closed now, and I will never throw myself into anything whole-heartedly again; I will never be carried away and lost to a fever of emotion, smitten and disregarding of consequences. What I will do is solely in that channeled and moated part of self, I can still see the crystalline beauty of things; I can still perceive the tragic necessity of it all.
“Ritchie, why are you talking like this? You’re twenty-five years old and you look like an eighteen-year old! You’re younger than the average age of the Fellowship holders!”
I nod my head and smile; I speak in low tones.
“See you’ve come from all corners of the world; you’re being paid to ‘produce art’ through the idealism of some rich Japanese foundation.”
“Yes…”
“But you yourselves are the work of art. Ironically all of you are rich—at least middle-class—Americans and Canadians… New Zealanders. You want all your life to be artists, but by definition, you are too young and too innocent to produce really deep art. All everyone is doing is producing minor works of beauty, without that tragic sadness that is necessary to produce truly deep art. But as a result of the path you are following, eventually you will fall further and further behind your classmates who are pursuing professional careers—and finally, at the end of your life, you will have reached genuine lamentation and the ability to produce truly moving art.”
Melanie smiles, faintly; most of the rest seem to at least somewhat agree with what is said, although there are looks of resentment.
“I consider my film a genuine exploration of the Blair case, because I think a lot has not truly been explored. I think the truth has been suppressed.”
“But it’s still a rich kid’s take on a working class situation, see?”
“I’m not so wealthy as you think I am.”
Like walking into a summer evening in the glorified perfection of small-town America, there is a buzz of happiness in this place, a profound sense of peace and future hope that I recognize for what it is because my heart is so filled with transience and loss. There is nothing remarkable about living in Ginza. There is nothing remarkable about being twenty-four years old. There is nothing remarkable about having a blackmailing hostess girlfriend or to support people even if you’re twenty-four if you have the money, however ill-gotten. What is strange, bizarre, psychology-wrecking is to have all of these things simultaneously. Tossing over trash cans in a group walking around Tokyo in the evening, the intervening police come to address not me (financier, non-Fellowship holder), but one of the older potters, apparently in his thirties and older looking still from outdoors work. “Excuse me sir, aren’t you supposed to have your group under control?” I ghost in and out of the studio; I observe with profound understanding that every single person present is doomed.
“This is my art-rock project, Ritchie.”
“It’s good.” (doomed)
“Check out my wood carvings, Ritchie.”
“Nice.” (doomed)
“Do you think maybe we can do found-art/installation art, mixed-media?”
(Doomed.)
“Okay, but what of you, Ritchie? What is your art, your glorification into permanence?”
I want to talk about half-moment and semi-memories. I am not a Fellowship holder; I am not subsidized into art. But there is that moment—click—when a sudden geography of one city block falls into place, and this is a moment invested with meaning. Of the seven hundred rock groups playing west Tokyo, maybe one, possibly none will last another five years. We will learn the name of that one, but the six hundred ninety nine others will become insurance salesmen and housewives, that is the numerical tragedy that itself invites a sense of profound defeat and pessimism. Why can’t people be satisfied with drear lives from the beginning? If they could, so much effort need not be wasted.
“So make a work about it. Create a film.”
“That itself is a wasted effort.”
Three years pass in this fashion. Hisako’s features become more settled, womanly. I work in my indifferent job and the topography of our apartment becomes altered; I begin to sleep in the guest bedroom. The fragrant rosemary tinge of a pot roast—that is a Sunday’s effort. In afternoon’s sunlight, Julian, welcome in our apartment, resting from a hard weekend’s filming, nursing a beer. Lowing light, a clink of dishes from the neighboring flat.
“I understand what you are saying, Ritchie, but I think you are missing the larger point.”
“That being?”
“That the creation of art is not itself is not necessarily about success. In the end, I don’t really care if Shibuya Gray becomes commercially successful; I just want people to understand what happened. That there were consequences. That a member of our own group could be led to die.”
“And kill…”
“But that’s just what the media sold it. Jim was also a victim.”
“An unpopular stance.”
“But true.”
“I’m a bit more of mixed feelings.”
Jim, that Marine who drifted into the Fellowship so many long and haunted years ago, was a killer. This cannot be denied. But he was also cheap, of bad background, and unable eventually to find solace even in what possibilities existed with the friendship of the Aoyama Fellows.
“Julian, if you feel so sorry for Jim, maybe you’re making the wrong film? Film in Texas, show the dustiness of his past life; show how he was always forced into one career or another until he ended up in Tokyo and took his own life and that of his hooker girlfriend.”
“Possibly. Possibly there’s far more in the moment of the now, with all past history merely implied.”
Hisako cheated on me in north Japan, and we have reached a new compromise state. She is back to hostessing; her earnings are enormous, and she will peak in about five years. There is in one sense an expiration date on our relationship, then; you cannot get used to a certain way of living and then suddenly scale back when the income drops off. The crash, when it comes, will be sudden and dramatic—unless; unless, that is, there is one chance, and one chance only. It is time to set into motion certain projects of my own.
“Information! I have cash.”
“Ritchie! Ritchie Ufuo! I thought you had left Japan?!”
“Think again. There is information I need, and I am willing to pay.”
“Oh God. This.”
Two hundred foreigners brought over once a year on two-year Fellowships; thirteen million USD a year total administration costs plus the eighty-million dollar gallery under construction (now in its eighth year, yes, but still taller and taller every month.). Where is the money coming from?
“Okay, so it’s the Moriyama family. Toshio is the last descendent, and he’s spending the family inheritance on what he sees most important—East/West artistic exchange.”
“Thirteen million a year important?”
“Yeah. Basically. These people are on a completely different level than us.”
“Vulnerabilities?”
“One of the cousins, who might otherwise stand to inherit, is doing everything left and right to stop Toshio, but unfortunately, the laws are quite clear. As rightful heir to the fortune, Toshio—or Roshi-sensei as everyone calls him—can do whatever he wants.”
“Any other exploits?”
“Well…there is one matter…”
LeFauve, the old Republican commissioner and source of all evil in earlier dramas, now a rising star in national politics. Always bureaucratically powerful but cash poor, has sealed an unholy alliance with a real estate broker in Japan, cash for favors, and US support behind a popular real-estate ownership initiative proposed in the Diet. The idea is to raise middle-class ownership of land, but the means by which to accomplish this—low interest loans—plays directly into the broker’s hands.
There is one, perverse, complicated, planned-out way to interfere—and I will set it into motion purely for the asinine chance value of it. Broker will be at the gala dinner; with a known weakness for attractive women, Hisako is a chance to gain leverage into the situation—destroy Fauve, involve all other individuals into a complicated drama, and lay bare hearts for all to see. The question is of timing—and information gathering, and that is what unfolds as it does.
The argument against real estate loan reform is that debt is a sort of ongoing and rising collective addiction. Moreover, once it becomes accepted to take on a real estate loan after college, the price itself of real estate begins to rise, because more people are now in the market to get this desirable thing in the first place. The collective rise of what is once a small time affair (in the aftermath of World War II, plots in Shinjuku went for just a few years’ wages) benefits both the holders of that existing wealth and the group that finances society’s purchase of the same. With billions at stake, all other forces’ hands are tied except mine. Mine will be the hurricane of chaos that blows right into the heart of things, and carries away everything for a slimmest of all possible chances.
“How does it involve baseball players?”
“The brother of the current World Baseball Classic MVP owes an old club promoter friend of mine a favor. I have just enough pull—and I mean I’m exhausting all old favors—to get him there; this makes my table the center of action that night; that pulls in the broker; he gets introduced to Hisako, and then I broker terms to LeFauve, probably to include complete withdrawal from political life.”
“And this is all for…”
“Face it; everyone we know is smallest of all possible beans.”
None of them can see it. None of them are willing to face facts simply as they are. Caught up in the lie of their own creation, they define themselves as “artists,” but fail to understand their own incapability. It’s not just a matter of actual talent—although this is a valid concern as well. Nor is it simply something about situation (though again this applies rather strongly in certain situations). It’s about the choice they made being exceedingly common—they just being too simple to understand this. One walks into a beer garden in Queens, New York City, and sees hundreds of hipsters from Oklahoma wearing chops and ironic nerd-rock glasses. Um, this itself is an affectation? Doing so won’t generate genuine originality?
“You’re making a film about a murder because your own life itself lacks that drama. You were born wealthy, now you are on a rich kids’ junket, and all of this is insulating you from life itself. If you really want to make a film, how about living in a squat for ten years? Then you’ll see it all.”
“Who are you to say anything? Aren’t you living off a girl?”
“The difference is that I make no pretense to be an artist. I understand that social trends, numerical odds are unfolding in a certain way. My girlfriend is a hostess; she blackmails upper-middle class Japanese for financial support. Things will peak in five years, and then there will be a sudden crash. If I can pull off a larger score of blackmail, we’ll be set. These politicians; these donors and benefactors—they are the ones who control all of society. You take your three million, you don’t be greedy, and then everything is set.”
“Your plan has a one-in-a-million chance of success. And anyway, you’ve read me totally wrong. My father is a carpenter, my mother a housewife. We grow up dirt-poor. Being an artist is a choice about how to live life itself. And the murder itself is important, because you know it’s about the chance of youth itself. It’s about promise and hope, and the loss of that hope. I guess a conniver and manipulator like yourself can’t see what ordinary people think about; but then you were always good at profiting from every social situation, weren’t you Ritchie.”
“I am just a social realist, and I’ve paid my dues as they needed to be paid. Many thousands benefited from what I did, and all I ever asked for was the basic price of admission.”
“Take your head out of your own backside for a minute and look at the situation for ordinary folk. We were transformed by the murder. None of us had the same life afterwards, and the truth has to come out.”
Julian, the perpetual film student, now in his eighth year on private Fellowship, top most circle of the Fulbrighters, the JET programmers, and then the next levels afterwards of private gigs, backpackers on three month contracts. He lectures me about the practice of life, and then goes off to film with a cynical group of reluctant part-time actors. The film is eighty percent complete. He is engaged in film practice for incidentals as well; the drama with pretty actresses; the play with younger people. I smoke a cigarette and don’t care as he leaves; I lay in plans for the main chance.
Melanie, failure in the art world. Already showing signs of becoming middle-aged, her accent changing, the Taos godmother who shepherds young artists but does nothing original of her own. Also tragically collapsing into irrelevance. But yes Julian is right. There is authenticity in the earlier story. Maybe I should look at Blair, Jim. I suppose they were pathetic in their own way, but right next to the edge of genuine hand-to-mouth, wow, strange, artistic personalities as well! There must be intensity in just the way the sun looks after three months of basic training at Parris Island. Those jarheads, grunts, so much less than normal civilians on one hand, so much more on another; who will record their stories? Who to record their feelings? But that impenetrable world resists an outsider’s touch as well; one has to live; only the insider knows how one’s arm looks after a battle, the mere thrill of continued life, a gift.
I can write only about my own days and ways. I am a weaponsmaster. My weapon is a 5’3” Japanese girl, top name of her club, top personality of Shinjuku, Japan. Our earnings are 130,000 USD a year and we live in Ginza. Managing her defective personality is a full-time job, and I will direct this perfect sex-weapon right into the heart of the US-Japanese Establishment. A prime minister’s career will be ruined, and that is the desirable outcome. But aside from this, there is indeed the simple beauty of days and ways. Walking around for six months in the lead up, there is a deadly swagger to my gait. People stop and look at me on the street, even in ego-centric Ginza. The world itself is bending to my twenty-something will. And I, too, record that which is recorded.
Beauty. A quality existing side-by-side with certain forms of quantity. Beauty. A Mercedes S600 piloted through dark Japanese streets, one’s girl driven to exclusive mountainside resorts. Beauty. A quality of certain deadliness blown out of one’s core through aesthetic practice, through a desire to kill. “Utsukushii”—the collective voice of Japan staring back at me, the only American they bother talking to. I don’t have a MP7 locked and loaded in the boot of the car, but it’s as if I did, it’s as if everyone knows that I am practicing and practicing and practicing, years now as the Gallery keeps getting delayed delayed delayed for that one-in-a-million shot, the kill-team swooping in on the political faction, an actual ordinary person about to play politics with the lives of millions. Me? You? How could this happen? How could all forces converge in this way? It’s absurdity is all; I couldn’t have planned it better had I actually planned. But bridges are crossed, highway miles are left behind, and silent girlfriend remains silent, our relationship deepening to perfect individuation, the representation of forces behind us, left behind, but never forgotten unforgiving night.
“All I wanted was ever to get out of this place!”
Julian wants to film about Jim, the Marine whose killing of his hostess girlfriend (an American) sets into motion all other events. I point out that there is some process of self-consumption going on here; the program is now starting to write about itself since the Fellowship extended a grant to Jim, and so instead of breaching new art, it’s all self-contained Matroshka dolls, it’s all art about artists themselves. But he is convinced that thousands must be invested, dozens of lives must be dedicated to producing this film, and his research is the last, poignant argument.
“The whole point of filming Jim/Alissa is that people like that don’t have a voice. Jim was an orphan; he was adopted by a Marine officer and brought up to be a Marine. Alissa was a girl at his same military academy; after an act of political corruption by the superintendent and the town mayor, she took off for California, but the love affair brought them back together. Japan is the perfect setting because the decadence of Shinjuku life is the precise foil to Alleghany innocence. Everything is for sale, and extinction is the only possible outcome.”
“But in the end he’s just a killer who couldn’t cut it as an artist; he could have walked off somewhere and left everyone alone; instead he has to take Alissa with him.”
“Maybe Alissa wanted to die.”
“Maybe all victims secretly wish to be victimized by their assailants. Maybe if you get shot by a sniper tomorrow, we’ll say you secretly knew you were going to be killed and make a memorial art work for you.”
“Facile; murderer and victim knew each other.”
“And the media just needs a quick story.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Twenty black-clad assistants, a 16mm camera on rails, the admiring glances of the passerbys. This is coolness, of a sorts, an admiration public and expressed; the youthful foreigners being the epitome of cool. I admit I like the attention; I feel a part of the group. It’s just I don’t believe in the story. Film-making, film-making, film-making, when will Julian’s film be complete?
“The blue of the sky; a plane flying across; the dream of air cadets; the blue of Alissa’s eye.”
“How tired you are after basic; a Marine in Japan, lost.”
“The world five minutes from now; an alternate Japan, VWs and 60s neo-retro.”
“Aesthetic as concept itself, the film the makes itself without intervening filmer.”
“All of our lives affected by this; nobody ever to come up with a better story than the one already in our midst.”
“And that is it; that too is it.”
There are certain people, I think, who understand what is going on, or at least preserve enough inner cynicism to realize that nobody—Julian, myself, Melanie, the other Aoyama Fellows—will ever make it big. In the end there is another possibility—the retreat into craft or folk rather than urban and hip—and in the ensuing months some go down this route. Even Melanie starts with some comic/cute style Shibuya drawings but at the Comiket her work is passed over and doesn’t sell. I’m not sure exactly why; it is good; it may just be simply a matter of too much supply of such, not enough demand.
As the months pass, the opportunity only grows more fantastically perfect. Baseball is huge in Japan; I have a direct relative of the country’s current Koshien MVP under subordination. One shot on the broker, the key power-structure node whose fall will bring down LeFauve, decide the politics of Japan for twenty years. My weapon: a Hisako.