The Miko - 02 (34 page)

Makita nodded absently, said, “Good of you to come,” as if he knew precisely why Nangi had shown up. “It is time for my exercise.” He waved a hand in an aimless gesture. “I hope it will not inconvenience you overmuch if you accompany me outside.”

Sugamo’s version of “outside” was a narrow strip of courtyard between two buildings that rose up, bricked and barred, on either side of the lane. At one end was a brick wall too high for any human being to climb but crowned with corkscrews of barbed wire all the same. At the other end was a glassed-in guard tower. The tarmac on which they walked was hard and unyielding.

“Please excuse my silences,” Makita said. “I am no longer used to talking except to myself.” He walked with his hands clasped behind the small of his back, his enormous head down. Already he evinced the shuffle of an old man.

Nangi was no longer certain of his course. Could this burned-out husk of a man actually become his
sempai
? It seemed unlikely now that he had come in physical contact with him. It seemed as if his best days were behind him. Nangi was about to excuse himself, saying it was all a mistake, and accept his loss of face as
karma
, when Makita turned to him.

“So what is it about me that has caused you to seek me out here in the depths of the netherworld, young man?”

“
Kanryōdō
.” Nangi said it automatically, without thinking. “I am seeking my way in the new Japan.”

“Indeed.” Makita said nothing more for the moment, but his head had come up. They commenced walking again.

“You work for which ministry?”

“MCI, Makita-san, in the Minerals Bureau.”

“Uhm.” Makita seemed lost in thought, but Nangi noticed that he was no longer the shuffling old man he had been at the outset of the walk. “I’ll tell you what is most interesting to me, Nangi-san. The Americans are now more interested in the burgeoning worldwide Communist threat than they are in us as a defeated power.

“When SCAP first set up shop here they were adamant about one point. They claimed that since we had brought on our own economic woes, the Allies were not going to be responsible for setting us back on our feet, so to speak.

“Interesting, Nangi-san, because as soon as they found out that due to the complete collapse of our international trade that tack would only ensure a Communist revolution here, they switched one hundred eighty degrees and insisted that the state take complete control of all economic measures.

“Good for us who practice
kanryōdō.
But even better, they removed the largest thorn in our side, the
zaibatsu.
As you know, Nangi-san, these giant cartels were our biggest rivals before and during the war. They snatched economic power from us bureaucrats as often as they could. But by doing this they ensured their own destruction. SCAP rightfully decided that the
zaibatsu
were responsible for our wartime economy, and they have been banned. The ministries have their power now, and it must be like having stepped into the promised land.

“Now Japan is perceived as a bulwark for America against the further spread of Communism in this part of the world. As such it has come to my attention that SCAP’s first priority is to make our postwar economy viable.” Makita stopped and turned to Nangi. “And do you know how they propose to do that, young man?”

“I’m afraid I don’t, sir.”

“International trade, of course.” They began walking again, up and down beneath the gaze of the guards and the fulminating sky. “And that being the case, it seems obvious to me that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has outlived its usefulness.”

There was silence for a time. It seemed to Nangi that outside the prison walls the wind had picked up, but it was difficult to tell. Certainly the sun had been occluded by dense, dark gray clouds. He swallowed, aware that the barometer was falling. A storm was coming.

“Everyone at MCI is split into two camps,” Nangi said. “Half believe in the
seisan fukkō setsu
, reconstruction through production, and the commitment to heavy industry buildup; the other half are advocates of the
tsūka kaikaku setsu,
the control of inflation and a commitment to light industries that would take immediate advantage of our cheap and large labor pool.”

Makita laughed. “And which side do you adhere to, my advocate of
kanryōdo
?”

“Actually to neither side.”

“Eh?” Makita stopped and peered at Nangi in the gathering gloom. “Explain yourself, young man.”

Nangi steeled himself. This was just one of the ideas he had been formulating that he could not articulate to anyone at the ministry. Now he would see if Obā-chama had been right in guiding him to Makita.

“It seems to me that we must devote ourselves to the expansion of heavy industry, if only for the greater value of the finished products. But to ignore currency reform would, in my opinion, be a grave error, for if inflation is allowed to spread out of control it won’t matter what kind of industry we are beginning to build. It will all collapse like a house in an earthquake.”

Makita stood up straight, and Nangi got the impression that the other man was looking at him as if for the first time. In the ensuing silence, a rumble of thunder could just be discerned, muffled as it was by the high walls. Once trapped in there, however, it reverberated in blurred overlapping waves like the echo of a temple gong, calling the gods for supplication. It was very dark now, a premature evening or the first slide into an eclipse. Nevertheless, Makita’s eyes glittered fiercely like diamonds at the bottom of a well.

“An interesting theory, Nangi-san. Yes. But to carry it out we would need a ministry that went beyond MCI, the Board of Trade, or any other now in existence, do you not agree?” Nangi nodded. “We would need a ministry with broader powers. A large ministry whose primary function was the manipulation of international trade.” His head came around like that of a great predator. “Do you see that, Nangi-san?”

“Hai. So desū.”

“Why?”

“Because of the Americans,” Nangi said immediately. “If they are suddenly in such desperate need for us to become a viable country again—to protect their Far East flank—then it will be their international trade which must pull us up. Nothing else will work as quickly or as completely.”

“Yes, Nangi-san. It is the Americans we must make our closest, though unwitting, allies in this venture. For SCAP will help us create a ministry able to wield
denka no hōtō,
the
samurai
sword. That status accorded us will bend both government and industry to our will.”

Then rain came with a great surge of moisture and almost no wind because of the narrowness of the space. Within moments they were drenched, but neither seemed to mind.

Makita came closer to Nangi and said, “We are from the same prefecture, Nangi-san. That is as good as a blood bond. No, better. If I cannot trust you then I can trust no one, not even my wife, for her second cousin married one of my chief rivals not more than two weeks ago.” He huffed. “So much for loyalty among family.” The rain pattered against the tarmac, soaking their socks and making their shoes squeak when they moved.

“Now, there are two immediate problems. One is that as long as I am in here I am not as well informed as I might be. Go back to your job at MCI, Nangi-san, and in your spare time gather dossiers of as many of the ministers and vice-ministers as you can. I know where you work and you are only down the hall from the central file.

“The second problem is mine as well. I am being depurged by a most difficult man, a high member of the SCAP team, a British colonel by the name of Linnear. He is a very thorough fellow, and his annoying attention to detail is holding up my release.”

Makita smiled. “But I will make him pay for prolonging my incarceration.” He put a hand on Nangi’s arm for a moment, an unusual gesture. “When finally I am released, rest assured that this
iteki
shall hand over to me the information we will need to complete our files and begin our own
mabiki,
our weeding-out process.”

The Board of Trade that Makita had mentioned was a fascinating institution. Because of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration which Japan had accepted as part of its surrender, no private Japanese could engage in international trade. Everything had to go through SCAP.

Therefore the Occupation Forces created a Japanese organization in charge of accounting for and distributing imports brought in by SCAP and handing over to SCAP exports manufactured by local manufacturers.

Nangi had never had much to do with the BOT, and Makita’s mention of it was in fact the first time he had thought of that bureau in quite some time. However, when he returned to work at MCI, the Board of Trade was to become a major force in his life.

As it happened, Prime Minister Yoshida, a long-time enemy of MCI’s since he had a distinct distaste for their linkage to the old wartime ministries, had appointed his administrative advisor Torazō Ōdato head the BOT three months ago in December of 1948.

As Ōda began to clean house at BOT under the guise of removing some improprieties he was purported to have discovered there, it began to circulate that Yoshida planned to elevate the status of several ministries under his direct control to help decrease MCI’s power.

This the powerful ministers at MCI would not tolerate, and on the same day that Nangi was out of the office interviewing Makita in Sugamo Prison, there was an emergency high-level meeting at MCI.

The ministers decided that they needed to forestall Ōda and Yoshida, who they knew were working in concert against them. To this end they were in agreement that they needed to put one of their own inside BOT to keep an eye on Ōda and report back to them his every move. That way, they felt, they would always be one step ahead of him and therefore could deflect him.

There were few candidates to choose from, principally because the list of qualities this man must have was so unusual. He must be highly intelligent, with a quick mind. But just as important, they knew he had to be someone relatively young and without the usual
gakubatsu
connection that would inevitably bring him under Oda’s scrutiny as a possible rival. In short, the candidate had to pass through BOT virtually unnoticed.

They came up with only one name: Tanzan Nangi.

When Nangi was summoned to Vice-Minister Hiroshi Shimada’s office, he was in the middle of amassing his
mabiki
file. In fact he had just unearthed several interesting tidbits about the newly appointed vice-minister’s wartime activities at precisely the moment the summons came.

He listened blank-faced as Shimada’s proposal was given. There was really no question of not accepting. For the bureaucrat as well as for the common worker
Aisha seishin
, devotion to the company, obtained. It was an essential part of
kanryōdō.
Yet even if Nangi had had an actual choice to make, he would have leapt at this opportunity, for he immediately saw in this what Sun Tzu called
k’ ai ho
, to open the leaf of a door. Thus he determined to swiftly enter this gap afforded him, his eagerness masked by humbleness and his evinced dedication to serve to the best of his abilities Vice-Minister Shimada and his bureau.

But in truth it was Yoichirō Makita whom Nangi was sworn to serve. The way of
kanryōdō
was paramount with Nangi just as it was with Makita. Each recognized in the other that which was inside himself: the spirit of the direct descendants of the Tokugawa Shōgunate elite warrior caste, the true
samurai
-bureaucrat.

Nangi’s subsequent appointment as chief of the Trade Section of the Bureau of Trade did not long deter him from continuing with his compilation of dossiers. In fact it provided him with a new source of confidential information. So that by the time Makita was depurged, he had a four-inch-thick stack of folders within which were revealed the peccadillos, petty and not so petty, thievery, connivery, and outright bribery by perhaps two dozen bureaucrats of the first and second
dan.

On the day after Makita became a free man, before he and Nangi had a chance to review this parade of malfeasances, Nangi was summoned to the office of Torazō Ōda. What the minister of BOT had on his mind came as a total shock to Nangi.

Tea was served on a polished tray of filigreed European silver, in cups of bone china, poured from a tall acid-etched silver pot with curling feet. The set seemed grotesque and immensely overstated to Nangi, as all things European appeared to him, yet he smiled like a monkey and heartily complimented the senior bureaucrat on his exquisite taste, though the words threatened to stick in his throat and make him gag. The tea, too, was not to his liking. It was an execrable and ill-advised combination of several teas, dominated by Orange Pekoe, that somehow managed to cancel each other’s aromas. He might have been drinking used dishwater.

When he complimented Ōda on the tea, the older man told him it was an American import called Lipton.

“The importance of America cannot be overemphasized, Nangi-san,” Ōda said. He was a heavyset man with the overbearing paunch of a
sumō.
He was impeccably dressed in a three-piece pinstripe suit hand-tailored for him on Savile Row. His black wingtip shoes shone like mirrors. “It is time for us to put away our kimono and
geta,
time for the Rat’s Head, Ox’s Neck, time for us to begin thinking about more than our gardens and the perfection of the tea ceremony.”

He watched Nangi for a moment as if gauging his response to this speech. “We have a job to do here, and since the
gaijin
Joseph Dodge has stopped our runaway inflation with his extensive reduction of demand, we have only the future to think about again. And our future, Nangi-san, the salvation of the new Japan, lies in one area: international trade.
Tsūshō daiichi-shugi
, trade number one-ism.”

He paused for a moment to sip some of the unpalatable tea. “Tell me, Nangi-san, do you speak English?”

“No, sir.”

“Then I think it high time that you learn. The Prime Minister has created a number of courses for bureau personnel. He recommends joining, and so do I.”