Red Shark

Park knew there were no other skippers qualified to command the Red Shark. Still, he chose his words carefully, knowing that if he didn’t say what the captain wanted to hear, he could end up in a penal colony.

Park saluted. “Comrade Captain, as ordered, I will prepare the Red Shark for the voyage and to receive the cargo.”

“Dismissed!”

Jake Scott said, “I used to speak pretty good Japanese. Not anymore.”

Fumiko gave him a test. In Japanese, she said something that required a stock response, heard Scott’s garbled reply, and said, “You’re right, your Japanese stinks. How long has it been?”

“Two years. Not only is my Japanese bad but Tokyo doesn’t look the same either.”

“Japan has undergone tremendous change. We almost don’t recognize ourselves. Are we Eastern or Western? Who knows?”

“Western culture has had an irreversible influence wherever it touches down,” Scott said. “I’m not always comfortable with the results I’ve seen.”

Fumiko wheeled a Nissan Cedric sedan belonging to the JDIH onto the Shuto Expressway No. 4. They’d been battling rush hour since she’d met him with the car at Yokosuka. “Yes, especially in Japan.” She took her eyes off Tokyo traffic to glance at him. “Have you been to the city of Ise, in Mie Prefecture, to visit the shrine of the Sun Goddess Ameterasu-Omaikami?”

“The creator of the Japanese Islands.”

“No trip to Japan is complete without a visit to the shrine.”

“I’ve been there,” Scott said, watching Fumiko thread through traffic. “A tourist trap is what I remember.” He recalled the rituals, the crowds of people clapping their hands in worship, and priests in pastel-colored robes intoning prayers in an ancient tongue. And busloads of camera-snapping tourists.

“It’s the price we pay for our Western ways,” Fumiko said. “No one I know in Japan believes in gods anymore.” She shrugged. “Younger Japanese have little respect for our bedrock traditions of duty and obligation to family and country, the very things that make us a unique and cohesive society.”

“It’s no different in the U.S.”

Fumiko exited the expressway at Kasumigaseki, the government quarter south of the Imperial Palace grounds. “But there’s been a resurgence of interest in Bushido.”

“The way of the warrior.”

“Bushido and its adherents are very controversial today because many Japanese associate it with the Pacific War. Even so, there are those who revere the Spartan devotion to the arts of war, self-defense, loyalty to comrades. It’s almost a religion for a group of older, wealthy Japanese who want to make national heroes of General Tojo and General Yamashita. Amazing, isn’t it, that behind our veneer of modernity are men who long for the lost glory and power of Imperial Japan.”

“Who are these men?”

“Have you ever heard of the Japan Pacific War Veterans Association?”

“No.”

She explained the association’s basic aims, then said, “Its members consist of a shadowy group that includes wealthy industrialists, financiers, barons of the ruling party, even former war criminals. Their identities are secret. It’s said that these men control Japan, that some even serve as personal advisors to the prime minister and the Diet. The polite term the press uses is genro, elder statesmen. In America you would call them a shadow government.

“Of course there’s nothing new about this. I mean, just look at the old secret societies like the Order of the Rising Sun, the Cherry Blossom Society, or the Black Dragon Society. Most Japanese are indifferent to the Pacific War, but there are others, members of the association, who see Japan as a victim of Western xenophobia, no matter that we are the most xenophobic people on earth. Our schools teach that Japan has nothing to be ashamed of for her role in the war. And since the right wing essentially rules Japan, they’ve effectively crushed any opposition to their point of view.”

“You mean no one questions the propriety of restoring the reputations of war criminals?”

“Jake, after two newspaper publishers asked why the association would honor war criminals assigned to Unit 731—”

“The unit that conducted medical experiments on U.S. and Chinese prisoners in Manchuria.”