*WORD WOLF
How the scenery could shift in the course of a few hours! From the salty air of the bay, to the pungent stench of sulfuric hot springs in the hills, from the rugged coastline of murky ocean waters, to crystal clear alpine lakes, from the towering smokestacks of industrial wastelands to forested foothills, and now, to this promontory, overlooking a wide multihued valley, backed by a magnificent volcanic ice cone.
A small convoy of trucks and cars chugged along a narrow ribbon of road on the outskirts of the mountain, a mere scratch on an expansive sloped plain. After a series of deliberate detours threading through the lakes and hills around Fuji, the procession moved under the shadow of the mountain, but still had yet to reach the foot of the mountain itself. They had been following a most circuitous path, presumably for security reasons, playing ring around the mountain, moving in ever so slowly, circling ever so imperceptibly, as if captured in a low altitude orbit. There were retrograde twists and switchback turns, zigging to the left and zagging to the right, onward and upward thrusts, cutting straight lines of latitude across its curved surface, but it was circumnavigating, not climbing.
The backseat passenger was napping again, legs open, mouth closed, while the driver, who had yet to utter a word in any known language, was now humming quietly to himself. Staring at the squiggles on the dashboard satellite map, Collin could see the route taken so far was far more complex, far more roundabout than the simple geography required, but then there was security to contend with, manifested in the many roadblocks that popped up along the way.
The constant shifts in elevation made for picturesque scene changes, as diverse as the flora of a four-season scroll. One moment it’s fog rising off a wide lake, the next it’s blue sky over the treetops of a pine forest, one minute it’s rocky crags and steaming springs, the next it’s grassy slopes followed by a sudden lurch into a gurgling gorge webbed with lush vines and vegetation. Spruce and cypress, tender beech and towering cedar vied with rugged firs and dwarf pines as they honed in. Seeking hills beyond hills, valleys beyond valleys, inaka beyond inaka, they wound their way towards the singular snow-capped mound towering above it all.
Wanting to share the wonders of the view with someone, anyone, Collin broke the concerted silence to make some small talk with the driver. Surely they could find common human ground as they shared the splendor of the ever-changing topology, but the conversation quickly turned into an interrogation of sorts and the American found himself wishing he’d never opened his mouth. The driver’s English proved to be fluent enough, but riddled with the same-old, same-old obligatory gaijin gambit: How long have you been in Japan? When will you leave? Can you use chopsticks? Do you like to eat natto?
Put off by the rote routine, which seemed a mockery of his fugitive status, and not at all nuts about natto, the rewriter skewed his answers, responding that he liked Japan enough not to leave for a while, that he could catch a fly with his chopsticks but couldn’t stand fermented bean curd, and pretty soon he was immersed in blissful silence again, listening to the wind whip by. As if to make up for the faltering conversation, the driver hit the pedal and picked up speed, expertly coursing along the exquisitely engineered road. Pretty soon they were out front, with nary a car to be seen in the rearview mirror, but what with the heat, vibrations and whistle of the air rushing by, Collin, already in a daze, dozed off.
Just at the point where he had become immersed in a wild, hallucinatory dream, in which he found himself reaching for Jianhong as she dangled off an icy precipice but was immobilized and losing grip, he was jarred awake by a sudden deceleration and abrupt halt, followed by a series of loud shouts.
A roadblock. They were now being descended upon by a phalanx of armed police.
Was it ‘game up gaijin’ at last?
The men in uniform consulted the driver in a guttural language, more gangsterese than Japanese, at least to Collin’s clogged ears. The policemen alternated between checking the screens of their hand-held computers and shooting accusatory glances at him, the front seat passenger, the obvious gaijin, while taking no notice of the shy woman in the pretty party dress who slept, or feigned sleep, comfortably balled up in the back.
Not for the first time in his Japan life, Collin was being stared at for his looks. Were they onto him, or was it just the usual hereditary mix of curiosity and repulsion that officers of the peace had for fair-haired foreigners trespassing in a sacred land once patrolled by sword-swinging samurai?
Afraid they might have word of a fugitive who fit his description he fidgeted in his seat, alternately grinning at the guards and admiring their weaponry, as if to casually demonstrate his lack of fear and abundance of goodwill. He struggled to give the breezy impression of not being nervous precisely because he was so nervous.
A disjointed stare down ensued; they looked at him when he was not looking and vice versa. Getting soul-to-soul, eye-to-eye contact from the burly men in blue was proving more elusive than catching a wink from a mini-skirted model with her ears plugged up listening to music on the train.
The driver fielded the questions of the arrogant arresting officers in quiet, confident tones, and at no point did he lose his cool, which Collin knew to be a good thing. But when he heard them drop the ‘g’ bomb, he started to panic. It was the gaijin they wanted, and now they were asking the gaijin to step out of the car.
He reluctantly undid his seat belt, but was in no rush to surrender. Already beads of sweat had begun to form on his brow. It wasn’t until his driver snapped at him, ordering him out, that he did so.
A cool breeze blew across the exposed roadway. He was standing in the shadow of smooth-hewn torii that arched over the road to Fuji, marking the ceremonial entrance to the mountain proper. It seemed almost sacrilegious to erect a police barrier here, given the inspired geomancy of the gateway, but it was the act of being stopped by police that gave the man-made border to the mountain zone real meaning. With a geologic protrusion as prominent as Fuji, a towering mass that spread from the stratosphere to the sea, who was to say where it started and where it stopped?
The police were polite. It transpired that they did indeed have word of a fugitive on the loose. A gaijin. Would the “gaijin-san” in present company be so kind as to present some ID? Collin fished through empty pockets, buying time in a time-honored way. He glanced at the driver, fishing for moral support, but none was on the line.
“Pleased to meet you. Can I know the name?” Collin offered nonchalantly, but the officers only blinked.
He hoped beyond hope that a belabored conversation in English might buy him enough time for the other cars in the convoy to arrive. In the absence of all ID he needed someone influential to vouch for him.
“So, fellows. Who are you looking for?”
“Car In Be Wrong,” the police guard answered, squinting at a little screen, straining to pronounce the foreign name. “Ah-mare-re-cun.”
“Well, I’m Canadian,” he bluffed. “And, ah, I’m not in the wrong car.”
Given the fact that the vehicle in which Collin B. Long had been riding was supremely expensive, affiliated with Miki Matsu, with additional runes and markings indicating some sort of relationship with the Shadow Shogun, the police showed due deference. Being in the ‘wrong car’ turned out to be the right car, and with the arrival of other cars from the same convey, the matter was finally cleared up. The “gaijin-san” was given the green light to continue his journey without further question.
Standoff thus resolved, the driver exchanged a few final formulaic words with the guards in charge, and then got back behind the wheel. He gave a conspiratorial wink to the sweaty, pale-faced passenger up front, whose seatbelt was already securely fastened, and then gunned it.
Zooming through the tight white torii gate at full blast, Collin felt a sense of relief, as if he just slipped a knot, and in a way he had. He was as illegal as ever, but shielded by something stronger than the tinted, bulletproof windows of the sturdy sedan.
His mood picked up as they whipped along through mist, drizzle and bursts of sunbeam, entering deeper and deeper into the Fuji forbidden zone, destination blue sky. He knew from polishing the bull at VTR that access to sacred mountain was tightly guarded by grunts and toll-collecting trolls, but thanks to the garbage-in, garbage-out nature of the news, he had never been clear if it was meant to protect the people from the dangers of the mountain or the other way around.
They were climbing at a comfortable clip now, leaving behind the vineyards and fields of dry grass, leaving behind the realm of officious police and sullen immigration officers, at last encroaching upon the steamy lower hem of Fuji’s expansive skirt.
He’d done enough rewrites on restricted-circulation reports at VTR to know that the base of the vast nature preserve had been girded with guards, remote sensors and surveillance cameras, though not without cries of protest. Low-tech operatives aligned the old Luddite of the hill were frequently accused of trying to sabotage the hi-tech wiring used to monitor the mountain.
It was widely assumed that the anonymous one lived somewhere on Mount Fuji, but even Collin considered that unlikely, and he often said so, when regaling tea caddies with his logical bent of mind. Once you got up to the ice cap, it was one big bald mountain with nowhere to go. Sure, the crusty old man probably lived within view of Fuji, perhaps somewhere in the surrounding countryside, but then again the little guy could be hidden right in the heart of Tokyo and who would know it? Thanks to his mask, and the electronic magic of the TV process, he could be anywhere.
The facts of the man’s closeted existence were couched in ambiguity; a turn-off to some, a turn-on to others. The masked one’s reactionary philosophy was hard not to react to, one way or the other. It was philosophical fugu;one man’s fish was another man’s poison.
The back-to-nature movement, which was now informally known to the foreign media as MADE IN THE SHADE --thanks to a truly inspirational bout of spit and polish, modesty aside, by the word-wolf himself-- had been exalting the virtues of woodsy simple living for years now. The idea was to embrace nature and turn one’s back on the world of global commerce. It was, at first glance, a throwback to the old days, imbued with the isolationist ethos of Edo and the enforced austerity of early Showa.
But the old man was not one to see foreigners as the enemy, at least that’s what Miki once told him. Despite the antique samurai outfits and antiquated ideas the shadow shogun found modern broadcast TV an excellent pulpit for invoking the humanitarian mantra, “All men are brothers.” True, his lingo, whether in the original or in translation didn’t leave much wiggle room for the ladies, but, hey, embracing half of humanity was a solid start, especially compared to the neon-nationalists who claimed to favor trade but were really part of the “Japanese Only” crowd.
When it came to the natural world, the backward movement was not without its inadvertent appeal; there was a rustic side to it, making it kind of “green” in the modern parlance, though there was nothing modern in its stubborn and retrograde desire to go backward in time. The Shinto-styled green regime was regarded as something of a joke in slick city Tokyo, but it had found traction in rural Japan.
There had been late nights in the office on graveyard shift, when Collin was left wrestling with Nice News international news scripts about the man with no name, when Collin had tried to inject a touch of political correctness. More than once he changed “All men are brothers” to “All women are sisters” and when that didn’t work he tried “All people are people” but rarely did his emendations stick.
He kept at it anyway, punchy from all the obligatory overtime, hammering away in his own little way. Flush with success from the MADE IN THE SHADE campaign, he had came up with “No business like no business” --a deliberate dig at Nakayama and his developer friends, but his Zen gem got swatted down. The new school nationalists wanted big business free and unfettered. The old school activists wanted a green regime. Both camps were so set in their ways that resistance was futile.
Who else besides a nutty old anonymous man would have the stubborn gall to stand up to the meat-grinding juggernaut of rapacious material greed? What Collin didn’t like at first, but grudgingly came to appreciate, was that the reactionaries were not without reason. How else to anchor oneself in the ever-shifting riptides of turbo-capitalism?
VTR was one of the few media outlets that took the old man half-seriously, but Collin was enough of an insider to know that Miki, not Nakayama, was the true guiding hand.
Although CEO Nakayama was reputed to be a close confidant of the Shadow Shogun, and thus gallantly green-lit Nice News as a vehicle to broadcast the old man’s views, it didn’t take a resident linguistic genius at VTR of Collin’s caliber to realize that the Chairman’s championing of the old man was so much hot air.