Free Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan by Unknown Page A

Destroy jobs, lives, countries, whatever.
    You say the unsayable.
    The Deep Throat to my Woodward and Bernstein was a salaryman named Izutzu. After six too many American beers at a Roppongi expat dive that did a good line in ironic karaoke and overcooked burgers, Izutzu announced to everyone with a pair of ears and a knowledge of Japanese (because heaven forfend we speak English in an expat bar) that I should look into sumo.
    “Really?” I said. “I mean, I know I’ve been putting on weight, but—”
    He slammed the bar. “It’s rotten. ”
    “I see.”
    “To the core .” Izutzu’s lips buckled with wind. “It’s a yakuza racket. Always has been. They fix fights.”
    “So?”
    Another slam of the hand. “It’s our national sport!”
    The man had a point, and one which became the crux of my own pitch to Shima: “People say that baseball’s the new national pastime, but what about sumo? How about I write something for the expats, play up the Shinto connections, the history, get them interested and their rumps on seats? I’ll treat the whole subject with the dignity it deserves, Shima-san, I promise. What do you say?”
    Shima regarded me for a long time. The half-smile never left his face.
    I waited. Knew if I spoke again, I’d blow the pitch. For us brash foreigners, silence was subordination. We sought to dominate with loud voices and urgent opinions. But I’d come to learn that stillness could be a great source of power. And I was ready to wait as long as it took if it meant a shot at—
    “No,” said Shima.
    I resisted the urge to put his head through the wall, bowed sarcastically, and stalked out.
    The Daily Shimbun was no place for quality journalism anyway. I toasted my perception by dulling it at the dive. When Izutzu sauntered in after a hard day’s work of napping on the Metro, I told him the news and we drank together until he was loose enough to coerce. Then I made him call round all the sumo stables to secure a visit on my behalf, the idea being that the stable masters would be more open to a native. One eventually said yes, a guy by the name of Hideo Yamashiro, who’d just opened a new stable with the old name of Wakamatsu. From what Izutzu said, it sounded like this Yamashiro guy was hoping to follow in former Wakamatsu master Ō zeki Asashio’s footsteps and coach some top-division wrestlers. It also sounded like he was desperate for publicity.
    I was only too happy to oblige.
    The stable opened at five. Didn’t leave me much time to sober up and sleep was out of the question. I left Izutzu in a heap in the corner of the bar, then scored some Chinese ice that punched like a panic attack and boasted a four-hour hit. I doubted it. Time was, you could score semi-decent speed from the Persians who used to hang out down the right side of the 109. Now I had to make do with little and, often, bumps and breaths of toxic shit that could ravage mind and body if you weren’t careful. I’d seen better men than me model tin foil and chew their fingers to the knuckle. I was careful. I tempered that shit with liquor.
    Somehow time shuddered away from me. I arrived an hour late. Yamashiro wasn’t happy. He’d dropped most of his fighting weight and now looked like a Shar Pei. The only reason he didn’t toss me out on my ear was that I brought him a bottle of Blanton’s Special Reserve as a thank-you gift. He smiled, we bowed, he gestured to the viewing platform, and I took a seat.
    The practice area of the stable looked like a dirt-floor basement, strips in the ceiling, windows opaque with grime and morning light. A clutch of free weights littered one corner, a sumo ring occupied the middle and, on the right, a cushion sat between an ashtray and a newspaper. Yamashiro settled on the cushion and lit a cigarette.
    Just like everywhere else, the stable had its rules. If you were there to observe, that was all you did. No photography, no questions or commentary, and definitely no snickering at the