Free An Exquisite Sense of What Is Beautiful by J. David Simons

As did the sea. For his body was found washed up with the pebbles on the shore.
The Girl on Roller Skates
was Edward’s first published work. And Aldous never paid him a penny for it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    Tokyo, Japan
•
2003
    It was all around him. This ping-ding, flashing, Hello Kitty, Softbank-Sony,
pachinko-pachinko
, vending-machine, giant plasma screen, cartoon, Shibuya girls, 100 Megabits per second, nonsense. And the cars. Of course, he knew all about the cars. Even in alphabetical order. Daihatsu, Fuji, Hino, Honda, Isuzu, Mazda, Mitsubishi , Nissan, Suzuki, Toyota. The taxi driver had a stop-start Buddha patience for them while beside him Jerome appeared oblivious to the crazy world outside. It was noon yet electric lights rippled and spangled through the windows, staining the vehicle’s interior in shades of synthetic colours. Salary men in identical raincoats brushed past them. A girl with pink hair. A gigantic, lurid-green octopus painted on to the side of a building, its tentacles strangling the concrete. What was that all about? He didn’t belong in this jingle-jangle world. How did Aldous describe it? ‘The Japanese have an exquisite sense of what is beautiful and no sense at all of what is ugly.’ That was it. How these two sensibilities could exist in one culture was an enigma to him. He wondered how Jerome felt about all this rampant consumerism. After all, he had been in MacArthur’s advance party. He had seen first hand how Tokyo used tobe. A burnt-out firework with a few charred buildings left standing in the central district, most of which were instantly corralled by the military for their headquarters. It was an opportunity to build again, to create something magnificent.
    ‘What do you think of all this?’ Edward asked, waving a hand at the madness beyond the window.
    ‘A moment.’ Jerome blew loudly into his handkerchief. ‘It’s the air-con. Gets me every time. What were you saying?’
    ‘I was asking about Tokyo.’
    ‘Youth has taken over, Eddie. It’s not meant to be a place for old men. We’ve no right to criticise.’
    ‘All right then. But if you had to comment, what would you say?’
    ‘The crows got bigger.’
    ‘Is that it? The crows got bigger.’
    ‘You should see them now. They’re like vultures. Giant black eagles. Stealth bombers. It’s frightening.’
    ‘You exaggerate.’
    ‘Don’t bet on it. One of these days an enormous black bird is going to pick up a child, whisk him away. A shrieking, flapping figure fading away into a sky-high blot. That’s when the shit will hit the fan. When people will finally sit up and take notice.’
    ‘Are you serious?’
    ‘Damn right, pal. That’s my metaphor for the free-market experiment. A population under attack from giant crows. Pure sci-fi. And you know how the Japanese respond to this airborne threat?’
    ‘I don’t know. Shoot them down with air rifles. Poison them.’
    ‘They lay out plastic bottles of water by the garbage collection points. Rows of fucking bottled water. Can you believe that? The light glinting off the liquid is supposed to scare off the predators. You gotta laugh. Talk about treating the symptoms and not the cause.’
    ‘So why stay?’
    ‘I’m used to it, I guess.’
    ‘You’re used to it,’ Edward said resignedly, sinking back into the seat. ‘Never thought you’d get used to anything. Especially Japan.’
    ‘Why are you so critical? You were here at the beginning. You knew what was coming. The motor industry was probably the start of it all and they moved on from there.
Wakon-Yoshi
. Remember? Japanese spirit, Western ability. They’ve made a very rich living out of that, thank you very much. And what you see before you is the reward.’
    ‘That’s not what they do best at all. What they do best is find the beauty in the spaces, in the silences, in what’s in between. Not all this… how do you New Yorkers say it…? All this crap.’
    ‘Hey, Eddie, I know you’re a great author