“I was not born in Hendaye exactly.”

Gabriel was watching the huge body of the hovercraft skipping over the surface of the English channel as he had turned to face Amanoyama.

“Oh, I was sure you had said Hendaye, Gaburieru san.”

Amanoyama looked perplexed. He had mentioned the name of this French town, the last South Western one before Spain, to Mary as well as to the others. This was why Mary had suggested going to Gabriel’s birthplace.

“Hendaye is now world famous among occultists for its cross. I wrote about it extensively in one of my books. Since I am Basque by blood and it is so well known I thought it would be easier for people to place me. I was actually born just across the border in a small town called Irun.”

This now made total sense of course. When Gabriel was born there had been no European Union and thus Spain and France were totally separated by the border. Gabriel was just barely Spanish geographically speaking. But he was most definitely a Basque. They had a strong sense of uniqueness among the Europeans and had produced many outstanding figures throughout history. Like Gabriel, most had emigrated. Now the Basque nationalists were getting a lot of press for their political activity.

“I know a little about the Basque story from my husband.”

Mary was sitting with Masami across from the three men on one of the large, comfortable chairs on this ‘flight’ from Dover. The minibus they had rented fitted with another 200 vehicles inside its enormous hull comfortably.

“Aren’t they terrorists or something like that?’ Offered Nijitora sarcastically.

Mary returned him a wistful smile. Freedom fighters on the side of a minority are usually labeled terrorists by the government they want to be relieved of. She knew this very well, working as she did for one of he largest terrorist groups on the planet-the USK governments.

Britain and America had long since ceased to actually function separately as governments. Some extremists would still say that the war of independence in America had been won not by Washington and his men, but by the crown. The money was always going to be in London, no matter which bank it was withdrawn from. President Bash himself had been a direct blood relative of a British King. But that was not her concern at this point. Hendaye was.

“In fact this little town connects us all in strange and wonderful ways.”

She gave them all a look of feigned amazement as she continued,

“My husband was a Jesuit and so were you Gabriel. The Jesuits opened up Japan to the West in the 16th century when the people were ruled by bloodthirsty shoguns.”

Then, looking directly at Gabriel first she asked,

“So who was the man who created the first Christians in Japan, and where was he from?”

“Is this a quiz Mary? Of course it was Francisco Xavier, born near Pamplona in the Basque area not too far from my town.”

“And who founded the Jesuits?”

For the benefit of the three Japanese Gabriel shared what they were saying and replied to Mary that of course it was another Basque born man, Ignatius Loyola who had founded the Society of Jesus, later known worldwide as the Jesuits.

Turning to Nijitora in particular Gabriel added,

“They were so successful at converting foreigners under very difficult conditions that became known as ‘God’s marines’.”

“That’s cool Gaburieru san. We will need a few more marines around here if your 2012 theories are right. And in your case, it looks like the Japanese converted the marines to me so what does that make us?”

He had a mischievous look in his eyes. Gabriel knew exactly what Nijitora was getting at.

“I guess that makes you Mr. ‘samurai persuasion’ Nijitora san.”

Amanoyama and Nijitora burst into laughter at this inside joke. The two women looked at each other and sighed as if to say that men were hopeless in any generation when it comes to matters of religion or politics. The fact was that Japan’s conversion record was dismal compared to other Asian countries like the Philippines for example. When a warrior culture actually makes death an ideal, like in Japan, it is ferociously difficult to scare them into conversion with stories of hell and damnation.

“There’s Calais. We’ll ‘land’ in France soon.”

Gabriel motioned to the group with his head.

The huge, billowing skirt of the Hovercraft was soon deflated to sea level and they drove off the ramp. They would be in Hendaye by nightfall.

“Oh, one other thing that Hendaye connects us all to that I forgot to mention. 2012!”
————————————————————————————————–

The Circle of the Sun

Nijitora was an amazingly skillful driver. He had told Gabriel that he was doing enough work already interpreting all day long and would be needed in the back of the minibus to communicate between Mary and the others. Since Nijitora was not a big fan of talking for talking’s sake, he had hooked up his ipod. He was easily following the highway signs in French as he grooved to hip hop. His favourite was gangster rap though. It figured.

Gabriel was once again pleasantly surprised by this man. He could see that Nijitora was pouring liquor from the small bottles he had picked up on the Hovercraft and it never seemed to make any difference to his abilities. In fact it was on that day that he decided to nickname Nijitora ‘the booze alien’. It was, he imagined, a new species of extraterrestrial that used alcohol as its main fuel on Earth. Gabriel would later find out that his joke was not that wide off the mark.

Mary was quite remarkable herself. There she was suddenly on her way to a small Pyrenean foothills town after a snap decision in Cornwall. She was seventy years old, yet had the energy of a much younger woman. Her mind was as sharp as a razor and unbeknownst to everybody else, her Japanese ability had been known as ‘legendary’ during her time at the Royal Institute. She had the brilliant talent of playing dumb when she needed to. Yet under all her giggles and smiles there was an incredibly tough individual. All of her training with the USK ‘psychic task force’ had begun as a direct result of the ‘Russian transmissions’ as they had become known.

One item of information she had not mentioned to the group yet concerned the source of the light that the Russians had encountered. Basically they had been on the verge of death in Northern Siberia when the light began to appear in the utter blackness of the salt mine. Guards made sure that every day after they had received their meager rations there were no sources of light available to them. Light deprivation was part of their sentence. Darkness has a way of sapping a man’s strength.

She realized now that Gabriel needed to know more and that by the same measure the Japanese did not. There would be no point in confusing them with concepts that belonged squarely in the tradition of the West. She decided to give her notebook to Gabriel to read that night. It would help him greatly in deciding where to place his final alliances.

“What do you both know about Hendaye if I may ask?” Gabriel translated for Mary.

Amanoyama looked at Masami and she back at him as though they were not sure who would tell the answer.

“In a word Mary san, since we did not read Gaburieru san’s book on it, nothing.”

He was lying.

“Perfect!” Replied Ann

“That is always the best place to start when you have to understand something that is almost impossible to accept.”

“Impossible?” Masami looked bewildered. Her dyed hair had been ruffled by the trip.

“Tomorrow we will let Gabriel tell you the whole story. I already know. So if you don’t mind I will sleep in and catch up with my knitting so to speak.”

“Of course Mary san. You must be tired from all this traveling. We will meet you in the afternoon after our tour of the village with Gaburieru san.”

“Not the village, Masami. Just the village square. All you need to see here in Hendaye is in that square. It is only three blocks from our hotel.”

Pointing across the road they were now driving along Mary pronounced the name of their reserved accommodation.

“Le Cercle Du Sol- that means the Circle of the Sun. A bit like the ‘cycles of the Sun’ isn’t it?”

Mary was already preparing the Japanese ‘guests’ for the alchemical version of the apocalypse. But the Japanese were born into a solar culture and had their own prophecies. She would be finding out about the Sun Moon prophecy in due time.

“And now for some of that French Armagnac!”

Nijitora clapped his hands as he locked up their vehicle and followed Gabriel’s lead in to their ‘Sun’ hotel. The synchronicity of this particular hotel having been chosen was not lost on the yakuza. After all, Japan was a Sun worshiping culture and the Emperor himself was the ‘Sun God’ on Earth.

Mary had been wrong to think that mentioning the source of the Russian light would confuse the Japanese. They had always thought of the Jesus myth as being an allegory of the Sun God tradition. Father Sun had a representative on Earth after all…
————————————————————————————————–

“Does anybody clean this airport regularly?”

Gabriel was waiting for the car rental assistant at the desk to print out his contract and was making small talk. The scruffy looking but polite Englishman sighed,

“Nobody cares here any more sir. Most of the workers are immigrants who do the minimum for the maximum if you know what I mean. Pride in one’s work is a thing of the past.”

“Obviously” replied Gabriel.

“Ikimasho!”

Gabriel turned to the two Japanese men and Mayumi, signaling that they were about to get in the car and head for Cornwall. Nijitora was unhappy about the no smoking signs and brazenly puffed on his cigar in front of one until two security guards strode up to him. He squarely faced them and then let them have it in his inimitably guttural Japanese:

“Bakayarou!”

“Fucking idiots. No wonder the place looks like a diseased shit hole for ass poor immigrants. They have more security cameras here than anywhere in the world and what are they gawking at? Me, smoking a cigar? I could buy this crappy airport with three of my pachinko owner friends. Go stick your balding heads up your hemorrhoid infested assholes!”

Amanoyama, smiling as usual, tried to unruffle Nijitora’s very ruffled feathers.

“This is England Nijitora san. Please be patient with them. We are leaving now for the country.”

Throwing the security guards a look of utmost malevolence that was clearly disturbing to them, Nijitora stepped in the back of the white limousine Gabriel had hired. Mayumi obediently hopped in next to give comfort. She had a look of pained disdain on her powdered face. It was one that she wore at least half of every day. Nijitora was not to be toyed with. Maybe like Gabriel he had been bullied at school for being small, for being different. Gabriel knew how it felt since he had not sprouted up until 15 years of age.

The hefty body of Amanoyama was next in. Gabriel had chosen a small limousine but it had to have the drinks bar and the leather seats. It had to have the TV and video set up with gangster rap and black chicks wiggling their fannies. And of course it had to have ashtrays. Gabriel had paid 200 pounds extra for the cigar smoking. Only a limo company would let them do this. He would be the driver. He had done the trip on that first Westminster visit thirty five years previously and the M25 was still the same. After navigating the now horrendous mess around Heathrow, the twisted network of access roads and signs out of the airport, he was soon on the three lane motorway.

“So why did you both think it so important to join me on this trip?”

Gabriel was not counting Mayumi as she was an appendage of Nijtora-joined mainly at the groin.

“We are practical men Gaburieru san. Nakaima has told us that you can help us make this base idea work in 2012. We have seen the aliens. We have seen all the base spheres. We have also seen what the USK groups are doing to prepare. To be quite honest we are still not quite sure where to place our final allegiances. We are funding FT base because it is a Japanese project. But the concept of telluric energy and galactic superwaves is a bit much for us. Nakaima said that this trip would enlighten us. I hope so.”

Gabriel saw the sign for Exeter and moved into the right lane. British drivers were fast. The average speed on this free highway was about 130 KPH. Their limo was very comfortable keeping up that speed. Mayumi and Nijitora snuggled in the back over his favourite Hennesey.

Amanoyama had moved in next to Gabriel after one of their pit stops. He smoked pensively as he continued with his train of thought.

“Gaburieru san do you know about our past problems?”

Glancing over to his right Gabriel detected a different expression on Amanoyama’s face for the first time.

“I was told you mended your ways by Nakaima. He said you had been the second in command of the Yamabushi gumi. He mentioned that you had killed a few guys before leaving the yakuza and started Buddhist training in the mountains. Is this true?”

Amanoyama slowly exhaled as he grasped the full measure of how much Nakaima had told the Spaniard. He was now wondering how to explain the intervening years.

“You must know that the dragon is a symbol of good luck and power in the Orient Gaburieru san. For us it is like cosmic energy, like a thunderbolt of power. But the most important thing about them is that all our emperors are thought to be descendants of dragons, starting with the first Emperor Jinmu. The emperors are also Sun Gods as you know. So you see the imperial mythology becomes quite complex and has many variations. My story does too. Nijitora’s also. As a young man all I wanted was power. So the three clawed dragon was the symbol I chose.”

“Chose for what Amanoyama san?”

Nijitora suddenly piped up very loudly from the back seat.

“EENGUREESH BEERU CHODAI!”

“Let’s have some English beer!”

Gabriel knew that jet lag must be setting in and he had already had half a bottle of cognac during the first half of their journey. Now moving through the quaint, rolling Devon landscape he could not have failed to notice the amount of pubs flashing by the window. He obviously needed an injection of a different kind of booze. Gabriel pulled in to the first one off the road.
————————————————————————————————–
The fight

It had all gone well until the three yobs walked in. Dirty looking youths dressed in a totally haphazard mix of whatever the Oxfam charity shop was selling that week they were obviously stoned and looking to augment the high with booze. The sedate atmosphere of a Devon pub is something to experience thought Gabriel when he brought his guests in. Several sets of male eyes had swiveled in Mayumi’s direction as her slim form had slunk past their table. She had a look of tiredness about her that somehow suggested to them it was time for oriental bedtime. One of them had whispered to his mates,

“Did you know that their pussies are slanted too?”

Racism had never left the proud shores of England and Gabriel knew this even as a young Spaniard. They had called him a dago. If you were black or brown it was of course worse but at least they had gone beyond Pakkies and Wogs for people from the India and Pakistan immigrant rush of the 60’s. Being a class stratified country, the lower you went towards working class the more chance there was of somebody saying the wrong thing. It was about to happen in the bar where Nijitora was, of course.

Nijitora had ordered several beers and was quite happily enjoying his fourth. Amanoyama was on a lesser quota, sipping the bitter much more slowly. Mayumi was on gin and tonics and proudly demonstrating her English skills every time she ordered for the group. Naturally Gabriel was on non-alcoholic cider.

The three yobs were walking past the Japanese on their way to the billiard table, beer in hand, when one of them had shot a look at Nijitora that suggested the Japanese girl needed a bigger guy to keep her company. Or three. He might have let it go, but the three started laughing immediately after they passed Nijitora.

“Kora! Temera no kuso yarou!”

Gabriel was on instant alarm status. This was what he had most feared. Here outside of the clear rules and obligations of Japan’s hierarchical structure all bets were off. They were not in the village anymore and one of them had been insulted. Nijitora had basically just called these three assholes from hell. It was what was said before weapons were drawn, previous to faces being forever altered, an antecedent to permanent injury or even death to those involved. The three turned at this outburst and the biggest of them stared down at Nijitora and barked,

“You fuckin talkin to us Nip boy?”

Nijitora quietly stood up and placed his beer on the table. He adjusted his shirt and removed his gold Rolex, passing it to Mayumi. Gabriel knew there was nothing to be done. Honour had been seriously challenged in this quiet Devon bar. Nijitora then said to the three in perfectly good English.

“All of you, outside. Now!”

Cackling like the fools they were they moved ahead of his outstretched arm pointing to the lawn outside the front bar. Everybody in the pub had stopped drinking and the barman was whispering something to his assistant about calling the police. Amanoyama simply smoked and said to Gabriel and Mayumi.

“Nothing to be done.” Shoganai yo!

There would be no time for any police. As Nijitora followed the last of the louts, all half his age, from the door to the lawn he grabbed his hair with his right hand, twisted his left wrist backwards so violently that the snapping sound caused two women to vomit on the spot, then rammed his face into the brick wall breaking his nose, teeth and jaw. The outburst of power immediately communicated itself to the other two who started to instinctively run but Nijitora was nimble. Though jetlagged and drunk he was no stranger to multiple opponents and these youths were barely opponents. They were walking trash, inside and out. Spinning the first one round, the other desperately looked for an escape. He could not make it since Nijitora’s left boot had just crushed both testicles. He opened his right hand in a V shape and slammed it into his friend’s unprotected larynx. This weakest point on the whole body was instantly pulverized leaving the yob gasping for air as he writhed out of control on the lawn. Clutching his groin the other vomited in spasms of pain.

“Ikou! I am driving now” Shouted Nijitora.

Gabriel and Amanoyama followed the very composed looking Mayumi to the limo. She turned to the assembled crowd on the lawn and bowing deeply said,

“I am very sorry for the trouble. Please forgive us.”

Five seconds later they were headed back to the motorway. The next major direction sign would be Bodmin and after that the turnoff to Truro. Nijitora poured another cognac.

“Is that what they call men in this country?”

They walked up the moss covered path to the partially obscured entrance. Branches from an old cherry tree hung low over it giving a brooding, lonely effect. The deep red was quietly matched with the faded brown of the door. It was classic wabi sabi. Gabriel had been asked by arriving gaijin so many times to translate this inscrutable phrase. His best answer had been rustic longing.

Nakaima pulled the sliding door to the right and went ahead.

“Douzo Gaburieru san. Ohairi kudasai”

He beckoned his guest in with a wave of his short arm. As soon as Gabriel got into the large, old fashioned genkan entrance he immediately felt a strong shift in energy. Nakaima was purported to be a world class geomancer. His considerable Feng Shui skills were sought out by a wide ranging clientele. Knowing where to put what and why was his forte. Therefore every single object placed in a room or a garden, including trees and plants, would have an effect on the overall ambience.

When a culture is as riddled with superstition as Japan then being extra careful which way your toilet pointed became a sure way not to get crapped on mused Gabriel. He could see some value in all this, but reckoned most of it was in the head of the perceiver. What wasn’t after all?

Unlacing his shoes before stepping up on to the one stone step into the house he remarked.

“Nakaima san this is wonderful. I had no idea you were this artistic.”

“When I was gay I used to hang out with interior design artists Gaburieru san.”

He had looked so dead pan when saying this that it took the Spaniard a moment or two to realize he had been had. Yet again. The guy was a master.

“Right, Nakaima san. Very funny.”

“Come on in! I have lots to show you inside.”

Nakaima seemed genuinely excited to have finally got Gabriel to the place he had been talking about all these years. They moved unshod over the shiny old tatami mats to another sliding door. It creaked a little when opening. No doubt this old house had shifted more than a little over the last three hundred years. Unlike modern Japanese houses the old country homes were very spacious. They had high roofs so there was always a feeling of expansiveness in them. This had almost totally gone from anything built after the war. In fact the Japanese themselves referred to their own houses as ‘rabbit hutches’.

“Wow! This is truly traditional Nakaima san. Where did you get that irori? And that hibachi over in the corner-it must be from the Meiji period. What about that amazing butsudan over there? I have never seen one that big!”

Gabriel was getting more impressed by the minute. His love of the Japanese antique was irrepressible. His widening eyes roved longingly around the deeply spacious room. A single massive beam arched across its top. Above that there was the musty darkness hanging below the thatch. The floor was in polished dark brown wood except at the edge of the huge, glowing irori firepit. There it was surrounded by worn out , yellow tatami mats.

Nakaima must have had somebody there to keep the place heated at all times. At this altitude keeping old houses warm was an art and a labour of love. There was no insulation to speak of.

“Slow down Gaburieru san! We have all day and I will explain everything. First, let’s have a cup of green tea. You probably don’t know that I am a certified tea master too. I used to join all the housewives in the Kyoto tea ceremony classes just to get laid. Just kidding, just kidding! Now relax while I get the tea ready.”

Fifteen minutes later Nakaima walked in, this time in a full length, dark kimono. He was carrying a bamboo tray with tea utensils perfectly set out on it. He laid this gently on the floor as he ceremoniously kneeled in the seiza position. The ninja gave a deep bow. Gabriel immediately assumed the same posture opposite him. The two men were getting definitely close to some kind of new understanding in this five year relationship he felt.

Below them twenty three of Nakaima’s staff members prepared a different kind of welcome.

“Do you liky tea or coffee?” His voice reverberated across the space between them.

Gabriel burst out laughing. Nakaima’s seldom heard English accent was brilliantly atrocious. He pronounced coffee like most Japanese as kouhee and do as dzoo. Of course no choice existed as they were about to have macha – the pure green tea packed with caffeine.

Nakaima moved gracefully across the floor towards his guest. From the door to the irori fireplace was a walk of about fifteen meters.

On his right, worn, brown wooden cupboards were inlaid flush to the wall to a height of two metres. All the household items for eating as well as clothing would be neatly stacked in them. Then there were six shoji doors, also on his right. They were made of wood slats and paper. They opened into the adjoining guest room. The ninja’s white tabi socks made almost no noise as he slid forward towards Gabriel, now sitting by the warm irori in the formal seiza posture. He passed the Buddhist altar, the butsudan and the old ceramic brazier with charcoal in it-the hibachi.

“You must have had a lot of traditional tea like this Gaburieru san. Did you know that our greatest chanoyu grand master sen no rikkyu had to do seppuku?”

“That was at the order of his samurai boss Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the shogun right?”

Gabriel remembered the chanoyu lecture at the ura senkei tea headquarters in Kyoto the second year after his arrival. Even today the tea ceremony leader is always a male out of respect for Sen Rikyu.

“I think the shogun was jealous of the great influence Sen Rikyu had at court. All we have of tea ceremony comes from him. He walked his talk.”

Gabriel was curious about what he meant.

“His death poem was composed to the very dagger he ripped his elderly guts open with. After giving an exquisitely final tea ceremony for his guests, during which he smashed his best tea bowl, he said: ‘Welcome to thee, O sword of eternity! Through Buddha and through Daruma alike Thou hast cleft thy way’. After disemboweling himself, he got the chop. Right there in the tea room. Covered the walls in bright red. Very aesthetic indeed. I would say that is ‘walk your chop!’ ”

Nakaima guffawed over his own joke once again before settling down to the minutia of the ceremony.

An iron pot hanging over the irori firepit was now at the boil. Nakaima picked up the small bamboo spatula on his tray. Inserting it into the tea container he scooped up the deep green powder then carefully deposited it in the bowl. Deftly manipulating the foot long ladle he transferred boiling water from the iron pot into the bowl. His body sat almost motionless, frozen with fierce attention as his powerful right arm gracefully proceeded to whisk the mixture at high speed. Placing the precision carved whisk carefully back on his tray he offered the bowl to Gabriel. Slowly turning it in a full circle he gestured to his guest.

“Douzo”

Three slurps later the bowl was set down in front of the host with perfunctory thanks and a bow. The bitter taste reminded Gabriel of the many times he had shared in this simple ceremony of the transitory, the effervescent and the aesthetic. If Japanese art was anything it was pure appreciation of the simple truth, ‘here today, gone tomorrow.’

“And now I will take you to the real lair Gaburieru san. Follow me.”

As they left the room he pointed to a shining katana ceremonially set on a wooden stand.

“That is the very sword his head was removed with Gabriel. My family were retained in the service of Toyotomi Hideyoshi at the time. We have always regretted the incident while we continue remaining loyal to the powers to be. The sword was a gift for that loyalty. 46 generations have passed since we began in ancient Japan. Now we are needed more than ever.”

———————————————————————————————-

Finally the aging Tokyo taxi driver had found it. Even with advanced navigation screens onboard that could bring up hotels, restaurants, theatres or public buildings there was no information on this place. “Tsugi, hidari desu!” The female voice coming out of the small screen, set next to his steering wheel, was suggesting left yet again. But the poor man was clearly lost. “Sumimasen, okyakusama. Moushiwake nai desu!” His long worded apology was of course taken in good faith by the Spaniard. He had been there so long some thought he was actually Japanese on the phone.

“No point at shouting at the poor dude. He is just barely making a living here.” thought Gabriel. And he was of course right. This driver would be up all night and well into the next day. Two days on. One day off. Two days on. He had to be in his mid-sixties at least..cut the poor sap some slack.

These days so many older guys were getting chopped from corporate payrolls that the taxi industry’s genepool was now desperately polluted by tragically inept drivers. The real pros had died off or just given up. They say an economy is best known by its taxi drivers. When business is good people jump in cabs. When not, they don’t – especially in Japan, where corporate expenses ebb and flow directly into the night life when times are good. So Gabriel had asked him on this tortuously long journey about the keiki, the economy. The grey haired driver had dismally uttered the oft repeated phrase , “mada dame desu!” As Gabriel had thought, the economy was still in the shit house. His was, for sure.

At last a massive, brand new, resort hotel came into view. What that term meant was surely anybody’s guess in 21st century Tokyo. Japanglish was famous for its incongruous mating of strange words. Gabriel de Sosaya was escorted into the reception area by two London style doormen, wearing their Ritz hotel copycat uniforms, complete with the white gloves. The taxi driver had been questioned by them before being let in. This was very rare. Gabriel knew this as he was a taxi aficionado of sorts. He hated Japanese subway trains with a passion. They stank of tired bodies and exhausted souls. You could get ill down there in the guts of Tokyo. Hop a taxi and rent a moving office..a much smarter idea all around that could add years to your lifespan..

“Okyakusama wa dochira ni ikaremasuka?” In flawless Japanese Gabriel replied to the taller of the two that he was headed for the private party being held in the penthouse suite.

“The host’s name is Amanoyama san. That’s all I know” he said.

The highly trained doorman immediately crisped to attention, “Wakarimashita !”

As he was being escorted in Gabriel looked around. Obviously this place was stacked with money. The sumptuous decor included Italian renaissance art on the walls and plenty of tropical plants – perfectly positioned to promote relative privacy. Then he noticed the tastefully secluded areas near reception. There guests would no doubt be readied for their journey up into Tokyo’s elite world, to the penthouses above. Once there, they went into the very private milieu of the ura shakai. It was, literally the behind-the-scenes society that ran things in this country. This newly built ‘resort hotel’ was not a place just anybody could check into. You had to buy the rooms first..that much Gabriel had quickly surmised.

Gabriel De Sosaya was about to rapidly be initiated to the next level of yakuza contact. ‘Gangster’ was no longer the really appropriate translation for this most avoided of words in Japanese. Dangerously creative businessman, yes, that might actually be more to the point. Creative indeed, dangerous-oh absolutely, and for sure these characters were exceedingly wealthy. This was not Gabriel’s first encounter with them so he knew these facts to be true to character.

“Kochira desu” said the tall doorman as he pressed the gold elevator button. “Arigato”  Gabriel answered with a slight bow as they whirred up 45 floors. It came totally naturally by now-the bow that is.

Holding the edge of the elevator door with his white glove, his job now over, the doorman left with a perfunctory, “Goyuukuri”, meaning literally, take it slowly, implying that he was to have a relaxed evening. He was about to have an evening that would both shock and arouse him. But most of all tonight would confirm in him a long held suspicion; Japan, like everywhere else, runs on pure money politics. No secret there really, but in the case of this country there really was a secret. And he was most definitely the only gaijin, perhaps the one and only foreigner in the country who could not only understand it, but become part of it.

Though by no means a total stranger to places like this he had to wonder why he had been specifically invited here.

One shot-that’s all you’ve got.

Of course one shot at a time..like life.

A lot miss…like life.

Some hit…like life

The point?

Whether you hit or miss you give it your full attention..

Thirty years on…still not right..

Victoria, B.C. Circa 1982

The view from the garden was simply exquisite. In front of his shovel he could see the US mainland on his right and its majestic Olympic Mountains stretching to his left. The pride of Washington state, Mount Baker, was scintillating in the morning light, snow-capped as always. The air was rich to his (Osaka) oxygen starved lungs. Gabriel drove his spade deep into the Earth and sighed in sheer delight.  After fifteen straight years in Japan, he had hit the wall. It was 1982 and he should have known it would come. When you take the fiery disposition of the Spanish and you put it in a box, even a highly cultivated yet very small box called Japan, sooner of later the shit will hit the fan. It had.

For fifteen straight years he had done nothing but learn Japanese. He definitely had some ability at picking up new languages. By the time he had arrived in Japan there was already a smattering of Swahili, French, Spanish of course, and English.  Travels in other parts of the world as a young missionary had alerted him to a simple fact; if you want to really get to grips with a language you just have to open up to it, like a sponge to water.

The first word he remembered every having uttered in Japanese was ‘kitte’ which meant ‘stamp’. But being a damnably complex language to learn, it had twists and turns of pronunciations that were sometimes hilarious. If he had said in his baby Japanese, ‘watashi, kitte kudasai’ even a little bit off kilter, it would have meant, ‘would you please cut me!’ Imagine-harakiri requests at the local post office, and by a gaijin!

At least the demure assistant at the counter did not laugh. But there were other times in his early language explorations where people could simply not control their mirth. Was it a long vowel or a short vowel? Did you want to say ‘koumon’ , which means ‘anus’, or did you want to say ‘komon’ with a short vowel sound meaning, ‘adviser.’

So Gabriel gaily walks into an office one day and he figures that he has enough Japanese under his belt to ask to meet the principal company adviser. Well, it did not quite work out that way. Taking a deep breath at the front desk of Echizen Corporation, he proudly piped up and said , “I would very much like to meet your main anus.” Well that was one of the occasions when they could not suppress a smile. How many anuses can you have? All was forgiven of course. The Japanese have a level of forgiveness-rich genetics that merit a Guinness book entry.

But for those first fifteen years getting to grips with this language was to prove to be one of the most singularly challenging exploits of his whole academic life. Sure you can study in a seminary for six or seven years and go into the bowels of theology, medieval hagiography, Christology, and all of the incredibly diverse spiritual literature that a priest has to come to grips with. But that was all fairly logical and just required time, effort and of course at the base of it all there had to be a faith. A faith in what he was studying being real.  How do you lose that? Somehow the amorphous atmosphere of the Japanese culture had eroded his certainty that God ever had a son. In fact by the time those fifteen years were up his favourite expression was all about the void, about how everything passes away and all is a dream of emptiness. Shogyoumujo..

Yokohama, Japan Circa 2009

Gabriel was beginning to feel slightly nervous. The six men in the Cadillac stretch limo now speeding towards Yokohama were obviously feeling it too. Nijitora was driving. He had been drinking all day as was his custom every day, every week. That was the old school of gangster boss in Japan. Or had he actually graduated from the Yakuza? This was what was weighing on Gabriel’s mind, having only met him a week before. Now he was unwittingly, and yes, perhaps even dangerously embedded in this very different world. Shit!

The six men were all watching gangster rap videos in the back of the aged white limo. They all had identical and rather pretentious blazers on. Were they recruits in some bizarre new kind of private army? “ Shades of harakiri author and die hard imperialist, Yukio Mishima anybody? ” , mused Gabriel to himself as he pulsed to the music with them. “These guys would not know Mishima from Colonel Sanders the way they were brought up.” He could not help but sardonically add to this internal dialogue. Unknown to them, Mishima, who for many represented the soul of Japanese literature, had dressed up a lot of his gay friends and followers in military uniforms and had conducted training camps for them.

Then he had busted into the ministry of defence, took hostages and stood on the roof  exhorting post war Japanese to get their bushido shit back together or else. Yeah, the way of the warrior alright! Then he had slit his guts and after a lot of badly aimed hits, got his head chopped off by his lover. It was on the cover of Paris Match. His head that is.

But these characters, well, they lamely sported matching badges which read ‘neosapiens’ meaning ‘new’ people. That would be right in this culture of rigorously maintained sameness, yeah right, new humans. Some of them, even a year or two before, had been living the lives of the impossibly regular salaryman. That was like just about every other man in this amazingly well controlled culture.

Some had been in corporate advertising, net business and computers, some even in banking. Yet, God knows why, they had dropped everything to follow this wiry and charismatic punk. It was he of course who now drove this old style status symbol at near suicidal speeds towards the port city. What was the payoff for them? Were they just idiots for punishment and humiliation? Gabriel really could not see it. But who gave a shit, he was not being paid as a shrink here. These days successful yakuza drove Bentleys and top of the line Mercedes Benz with smoked windows. One such car cost what a neo sapien in a blazer paid for a house over 40 years of indentured, corporate slavery. Gabriel could not quite figure these guys out. Not yet. But he would.

Majime, that was the word heard every day about guys like this. Hard working, diligent, steady going. So how come they had reneged on all of that social stability to follow this hood? I mean the guy was obviously a wild outlaw in this perfectly predictable culture of homogenous obedience. That, Gabriel was to discover, was the whole point. Maybe that was why he was here too..

Nijitora’s motor control was really quite astonishing. Well, considering the amount he had already drunk it was a fortunate twist of fate that Gabriel was still alive at all. He had said,

“ Yoshi, Ore Yokohama iku zo! ” Quite suddenly he had announced that they were all to follow him to Yokohama two or three hours previously. There, from the 45th floor of his luxury Ginza area apartment complex in the centre of Tokyo the city stretched its chaotic, ugly concrete face in every direction. This was his mission control. This was the place where he ran all those highly questionable operations from. Like being an Amazon.com number one selling writer? Yeah, after he had ordered all his staff to buy online to get that number one spot for just long enough to grab a printout!

Just pathetic. But hey, 21st century gangsters were no different from the rest. Everybody was up against the wall. Bullshit flies as a result. Gabriel was no better. He was selling Armageddon for Christ’s sake! So he was in no position to be hurling rocks-surrounded as he was by the glass windows of his own highly questionable past. This was to be about live and let live. But it would take a few more twists on this adrenaline rich trip to Yokohama to get to that…

TO BE CONTINUED

The first shock Japan delivered was in 1974. It was a hot September. As a young traveler I had come in search of its cultural treasures. At this point in my history those were related to Zen Buddhism. So my aim was to enter a monastery and pursue a lengthy course of training.

I could not have known then that the idea of lengthy was really long! Now , 36 years later the training continues every day. You do not learn about a culture and then stop of course. It is not an academic course that Japanthropology points us to. It is rather a way of life now.

I am not Japanese and never will be. Yet most of my life has been spent with this culture. It has shaped me and in a small way I have also shaped it.

In 1974 ‘gaijin’ (as we mainly caucasian foreigners were called) were really rare. Kids would point at us and yell ‘ look at the gaijin!’

This never happens any more so at least we can say that our presence here is no longer that alien. In fact without these gaijin working in factories and doing menial jobs – work that the Japanese no longer can stomach-Japan would be in a state of acute labour shortage.

I have shaped this culture as it has shaped me. Like any decent marriage we influence each other. But there was never any doubt who wore the pants in this cultural marriage. It was Japan. And like a traditional Japanese marriage when the husband speaks the wife shuts up and listens. So as the wife in this story I listened and learned. I talk back more now. We are an older couple after all. We are learning how to live with our differences. Could the rest of the world do this? Why not?

Many Japanese Buddhists and lay people alike undertake a long pilgrimage on the island of Shikoku to recap their lives. It is like walking through your own karmic past and making amends for all the foolishness, the pride and the sins of youth. Theheart sutra is recited at each temple as a way of expressing fidelity to the Budhist tradition and also as a way to purify the soul of the pilgrim. How exactly does it purify? Through its inherent power of truth I believe.

If we look at its meaning we can see that it speaks of universal truth. In essence it is saying that everything which appears to be real and solid in our world is in fact a fleeting display of apparent form.

When Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was practicing the profound Prajna Paramita, he illuminated the Five Skandhas and saw that they are all empty, and he crossed beyond all suffering and difficulty.

Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form.

Now this is not at all a surprising text to any quantum physicist or indeed to any one who realizes that the universe, and all matter is 99.9% pure, empty space. It is one field. One mind. One reality. Beyond all duality. It is here. It is now. It is everywhere the same and different. Forms may change but the essence is unchanged.

Pilgrims intone it all over the island. The island is thus the heart sutra capital of the world perhaps! If sutras have the power I imagine them to have, including the power of healing, then just going to Shikoku might be a good idea.

I cannot claim I was healed walking from temple one to eighty eight and back to one. Upon my arrival at the first temple, having done the entire circuit, I was simply exhausted. I was shocked too. What on Earth had all that walking really been about? I certainly had not got enlightened.

Perhaps that is why the hard core pilgrims keep coming back to Shikoku. They know that to really understand the heart sutra may take many lifetimes. They do one more circuit of 1300 kilometers! Yes,  still we must make that stronger effort. And we must do it both alone and in community with others. Nobody else can do it for you , as the Buddha always taught his disciples. But a good, strong community certainly helps. That is kind of what Japan represents to me.

One expedition led here

Japan, we can all understand the meaning of the word no doubt. Anthropology is a fairly common word too. Though to be fair, we might want to check it on an online dictionary like Webster’s:

Etymology: New Latin anthropologia, from anthrop- + -logia -logy

Date: 1593 So we can immediately see how old this word is. As of writing it has been in use for 417 years. The definitions of anthropology are:

1 : the science of human beings; especially : the study of human beings and their ancestors through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental and social relations, and culture

2 : theology dealing with the origin, nature, and destiny of human beings

I am a Japanthropologist, the first of a kind but there are potentially many others. We are the ones actually in the field. Any true anthropologist worth his academic salt must actually live with the ‘tribes’ he ‘studies’. We Japanthropologists eat, sleep, pray and play with the Japanese. We speak the language, we know the hidden rules. We cannot learn much about the real Japan in universities or colleges so we came here to experience Japan, to actually live within its very peculiar confines.

I have thus literally moved through time and space in my ‘study’ of these human beings called Japanese. I have met the ancestors too. I am deeply familiar with the environment, the physical character of the land, the complex web of social relations and I live and breathe culture 24 hours a day. I am a Japanthropologist for sure.

And my mission is to share several decades of such experience with you for a singular purpose. It is one that actually relates to part of the theological definition in Webster’s : the destiny of human beings.

That purpose is to uncover the amazing secret of how Japanese can live in such profound harmony. For it is clear to me as a cultural anthropologist (one by default) that we can have no destiny without harmony. Secret is a badly overused word I realize but in this case its use is merited. There really is a secret to harmony. It is blatantly obvious that most of the rest of the world cannot live in harmony. Japanese do. Every day.

With a massively dense population on extremely limited land the Japanese have a track record in harmony that is hard to beat and even harder to understand. That is why I am writing a book called simply, The Japanthropologist. It is a novel. I do not consider myself a scholar. More of a highly curious traveler who got shipwrecked by the allure of Japan..

And so we begin.