Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan (26 page)

“Yeah, I speak the lingo,” I said in what I hoped was an equally gruff Osaka accent. It worked. His face spread into a wide grin, his gruffness being the thinnest of charades, and he happily checked me in. He went over the various charges and options and the endless rules, and then in a whispered aside he said, “There is an extra charge of five hundred yen if you want the ‘special’ videos.”

I had seen Japanese “special” videos before. “Are the good parts scrambled out?”

He shrugged philosophically. “They are. But if you squeeze your eyes together like this”—he showed me how—“you can kind of see what’s going on.”

“The capsules don’t have karaoke machines as well, do they?”

I was kidding, of course, but Ogawa didn’t brush the suggestion aside. He sighed. “Not yet. Maybe someday.”

And he was probably right. I could well imagine a Japanese salaryman, lying prone in a pod no bigger than a coffin, singing soulfully about his old hometown and the woman he left behind.

Ogawa didn’t have much use for karaoke. He was one of the few Japanese people I ever met who was openly hostile to it. Karaoke, it turned out, had cost him his livelihood. He hadn’t always been a capsule hotel manager. No, he was once an entertainer who travelled the showbiz circuit of Japan as—I swear I’m not making this up—a freelance accordion soloist. He had been involved with bands, but his rugged spirit and the constant back-stabbing power plays among the performers soured him on the group experience. No, he had to be free. Just him and his accordion. But, alas, karaoke had driven travelling musicians, such as himself, out of business. And the way he said it, you couldn’t help but agree that the end of barroom accordion artistry had been an irretrievable loss to Japanese culture.
“Nowadays,” he said, “when I try to play my accordion music, people tell me to stop. I blame karaoke for this.”

Having checked in, commiserated with the manager, and forced my much-beleaguered backpack into a locker, I went out to explore Himeji by night. The streets were alive with activity. At the end of the boulevard, lit up like a neon mirage, was Shirasagi-jō, the White Heron Castle, the finest castle in Japan—and possibly the world.

The city of Himeji was firebombed into ruin during the war. The castle survived—scorched, but intact. When, through the fire and smoke, the people saw that the White Heron was still standing, the castle became a symbolic rallying point. What they didn’t know was that the Americans had spared the castle. They needed it as a reference point for their bombers. Turn right at the castle and you were soon over Osaka’s shipyards. Turn left and you would be over Hiroshima.

Whatever the reason, the castle’s continued existence is a miracle worth celebrating. Built in 1581, and expanded in 1609, it remains the pre-eminent example of warlord architecture in Japan. It stands perched on a small bluff of land, like a bird about to take wing, and the nearer I got, the thicker the crowds became. Most were leaving, streaming out from the grounds, heady with cherry blossoms and rice wine, their faces a deep red—almost purple. So many Japanese get red-faced when they drink alcohol, because of a hereditary lack of the liver enzyme that breaks down acetaldehyde. It is this chemical byproduct of alcohol that causes their features to become flushed.

Some were singing, many were staggering; a few were hurrying to make the last trains; others, flagging down taxis. It was the type of charged atmosphere you find in a parking lot after a rock concert. I crossed the moat and entered the castle grounds. Stubborn party-goers were still active in the pockets of light beneath the sakura.

At Himeji Castle, the flowers were in full bloom and everywhere there was activity and laughter. Hands waved me in. Voices cried out. It was such a wonderfully friendly atmosphere. Long-lost friends I had never before met clasped my hands and smiled nostalgically. I made a few guest appearances, drank a bit of saké, shared a few laughs, and cadged a couple of cans of beer, but everyone was too far gone and I was still distracted by the castle itself, rising up in all its glory above the pink-and-white spray of sakura.

There are three thousand cherry trees around the castle, and I stood looking up in something akin to reverence. Fringed with flowers, it was so well presented, so impressively arrayed in spotlights, so
perfect
, that it was all I could do not to applaud.

Downtown in Himeji, the bars were closing and customers were being turned out. I headed back to the Capsule Hawaii. Along the way, I passed a man in a crumpled suit, reeling drunkenly. He was defiantly keeping his balance, as his eyes focused on mine.

“You,” he said, “are a foreigner.”

“And you,” I replied, “are drunk.”

But even as I walked away, I knew full well that in the morning
he
would be sober, and I felt deeply depressed.

Farther down, I came across something you rarely see in Japan: a fistfight. Well, it was more of a lapel fight, really. Two very drunk salarymen were grappling with each other’s jacket collars, while a third man, even drunker than they, was trying to get between them as he repeated, unconvincingly, “Stop it, stop it.”

There is a sad lack of profanity in the Japanese language. Just about the only bad thing you can call someone is “fool.” So around and around these two went, yanking at each other’s lapels, shouting abuse at each other as best they could.

“Fool! Fool!”

“I am not a fool.
You
are a fool!”

“Fool!”

I sidled up beside one of the spectators and asked, “Do they know each other?”

“Sure. Same company. Different departments.”

“Really? So what’s the problem?”

“They are having a disagreement about next year’s sales plan.”

And for once I was able to say, with no small amount of pride, “Well, you would never see two people getting violent over something like that back where I come from.”

Ogawa of the Lone Accordions was still at his post, and he gave me a grin and a wave when I came back in. (We were now old friends.) I went to the Roman bath, a luxurious affair with pseudo-European décor: fake marble, fake gold leaf, fake frescoes, and very real scalding water. After simmering myself for a while, I changed into the hotel pyjamas and went down the rows of capsules until
I found my number. I wasn’t really tired and I would have liked to lounge awhile in the common room, but it was filled with the hacking coughs of chain-smoking reprobates, so I declined. Instead, I purchased some clean underwear from a vending machine—just for the novelty of purchasing underwear from a vending machine—and climbed up into my space pod. It was a tight fit, what with the television set hanging down in my face, but I eventually worked my way in. Capsules are not for the claustrophobic.

Fascinated with the futuristic control panel, I pushed various cryptically marked buttons, I turned the radio WAY UP and then way down, I fiddled with the air conditioner and its sinus-numbing face-blast, and I set the alarm for exactly 06:48. I then clicked on the television set and I was suddenly staring at a huge pair of hooters. Mr. Ogawa, apparently, had decided to treat me to some adult entertainment. This would have been fine, except that I hate watching smutty movies. Everyone in them is always having so much more fun than I am. Hell, in most movies, the actors have more fun in the first ten minutes than I have had in my entire life. (I’ve suspected that the reason so many tight-lipped types get worked up over pornography is primarily sour grapes. “If I’m not going to get invited to a
ménage à cinq
, no one is!”)

Even worse, the movie Ogawa had chosen for me was an American flick, which meant everyone was completely naked within five minutes and there were at least four people in the frame throughout. This might have been exciting were it not for the fact that in Japan the naughty bits are video scrambled, so what I was staring at was in essence one big writhing abstract rendering. A Cubist orgy in my little capsule. From what I could gather, it was a religious experience of sorts. (“Oh, my God!” “Oh, my God!”) I tried squinting, which did focus the images but also gave me a severe headache and some very bizarre dreams.

3

L
ORD
T
OKUGAWA
was the inspiration for the James Clavell novel
Shōgun
, and Himeji Castle was featured prominently in the miniseries.

When Lord Tokugawa defeated his enemies in 1600, he established himself as shōgun (or ruling generalissimo) of a united Japan. His rule was still shaky, however, especially in the rebellious Western provinces, so he sent his son-in-law, Lord Ikeda, to take control of the trade routes and assert the Shōgunate’s authority.

The booklet from the Himeji Tourism Board described the castle’s long and illustrious history:

Before this castle galloped warriors on the feudal chessboard who fought with furious gusto and were parties disjointed and clashing, subject to no central or effective secular authority. Most of the men were inured to brigandage and found a life of gain by the sword irresistible.

Can’t you just see it? Samurai armies clashing on the plains, warriors inured to brigandage, the swords irresistible, the occasional high-pitched lapel fight. By the time I reached the main gate (named, I noted with approval,
Sakura Mon
, the “Cherry Blossom Gate”), I was quite taken with the drama of it all.

You approach Himeji Castle through a maze of stone wall canyons that lead you astray by their very lack of apparent logic or overriding plan. Labyrinthine inner walls send you through narrow passages, past ambush points, and up to the main doors and then, just as quickly, turn you around and force you to make a 180-degree
rotation so that—Zen-like—the only way to get to the castle is to walk
away
from it. These complex ground plans at Himeji are unparalleled anywhere in the world.

No one has ever taken Himeji Castle by force—or even bothered trying. One of the reasons the Tokugawa shōguns lasted as long as they did, and stamped their oppressive mark on Japanese society so effectively as they did, lies within these complex walls.

There are legends, scandalous, sexual, and supernatural, associated with the castle. Himeji has ghosts the way some places have mice. The best-known legend is centred on a stone drinking well, inhabited by the spirit of a young maid. Her name was Okiku, and she was tossed down the well for breaking one of her lady’s plates. At night, when the winds blow through, you can hear the voice of Okiku counting, endlessly counting, her mistress’s plates:
ichi-mai
…
ni-mai
…
san-mai
…

From the main tower, I made my way back down to the main gate, and I was about to leave when a thought struck me, much in the way that a gong is struck. I looked up at the walls that swept above me like a wave about to break, and I thought to myself,
Ninjas had it easy
. The walls at Japanese castles are made of irregular boulders, and though the stones at the corner edges fit as tightly as joinery, the sheer face of the walls—often four stories high—is a rough-and-tumble jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t look particularly difficult to scale. As a teenager I had read books about ninja assassins and I was always amazed at how they were able to “scale castle walls by their bare hands.” But castle walls in Japan have all sorts of handholds.

To prove my point, I decided to climb up. To make sure I had evidence of what I assumed would be a triumphant feat, I accosted a Japanese tourist and asked him to take my picture. He was a bit nervous because his tour group would soon be departing, but I assured him he could just take the picture and leave my camera on the bench. Before he could protest further, I scampered over and quickly made my way up the face of the wall. It was easy. Incredibly easy—at first. I had failed to notice that, although the walls began on a gentle curve, they soon turned and ran straight up—where overhanging eaves blocked a final ascent. I got about three stories up in the air when I suddenly realized I was clinging to what was, in effect, a sheer vertical surface. I couldn’t go up, I couldn’t go down, and—
in the middle of this—the Japanese tourist had called security guards who were now yelling at me to return. I was a cat up a tree. Coming down would be much more difficult than going up, and I was now in a state of barely contained terror. Slowly, painfully slowly, I descended, groping for space with my feet and refusing to look down, or up. I was hugging the wall the entire way, and as soon as I was back on stable ground, my knees went weak.

The Japanese tourist handed back my camera, angrily—and rightly so—and then raced off in search of his group, which had long since vanished and had probably already visited a dozen temples, several museums, and at least one souvenir shop by now. The guards, meanwhile, were berating me for pulling such a stupid stunt, and all I could say was, “I was trying to be a ninja.”

4

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
, I tried to outwalk the urban clutter of Himeji City, but after hiking for over an hour I was still beside a traffic-choked, exhaust-bathed, stop-and-go disaster. I stood there with my arm held out, fighting to keep a smile on my weary, dusty, sticky face, and wishing desperately someone would pick me up. Someone did.

He was a repulsive little man, and I will change his name to—ah, fuck it, he’ll never read this. His name was Sukebe Hashimoto. He was a carpenter and—he claimed—a world traveller who had sailed the Seven Seas and visited every brothel and flesh house from Bangkok to Amsterdam. “Women like it as much as men,” he said within minutes of our having met. “You just have to remind them who’s the boss.”

When he grinned his mouth curled up past his ears and his brow furrowed like the Grinch in the Seuss book. His teeth were yellowed piano keys and his breath reeked of stale cigarettes and old fish. Every time we passed a female, whether she was sixteen or sixty-one, he would nudge me in the ribs and ask me if I wanted to have cheap, meaningless sex with her.
Of course
I wanted to have cheap, meaningless sex, but he made it sound so dirty.