Tokutaro Kurata stood for a moment under the gracefully curved eves of the Yasukuni jinja, an architecturally unremarkable but politically formidable Shinto Shrine in central Tokyo. Like the 79-year-old Kurata, the jinja played a prodigious role in the rediscovery of the soul of the Japanese people.
Looking up at the dark scudding sky, Kurata's eyes followed the first marble-sized rain drops fall downward, watched them leave dark circles on the sand-colored pavement leading to the jinja. A respectful crowd erected umbrellas and stood patiently behind a rope cordon.
Despite the weather, the crowd had come to worship at the Yasukuni shrine that immortalizes Japan's war dead as kami orgods. Those here this day were a handful of the eight million Japanese who paid their respects every year. More than two-and-a-half million gods had been deified by wars since the jinja creation in 1869 by the Meiji Emperor. As Japan's most important gokoku -- "defending the nation shrine" -- Yasukuni focused national attention on what kind of nation Japan would become. Most Japanese revered Yasukuni and its beloved kami without thinking about wider implications.
Beyond the shores of Japan, however, the shrine was a source of international controversy and suspicion because many of the most beloved of Yasukuni's gods included those who planned the occupation of Korea, the rape of Manchuria and China, the Bataan Death March, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. At the godhead of this pantheon was General Tojo, executed as a war criminal after World War II.
Kurata smiled, gratified the crowd worshipping at the public areas of Yasukuni was so large on such an inclement day. He breathed deeply of the brisk typhoon air, delighted in the way the swirling gusts plucked at his dark business suit and combed through the generous shock of white hair that appeared so frequently in editorial cartoons both in Japan and in the international press.
As head of the Daiwa Ichiban Corporation, the largest industrial zaibatsu in Japan, Kurata commanded international influence and power. As a descendant of an ancient family whose members were carefully documented for more than 1,800 years, he loomed large in debate over the nature of the "Japan-ness" of the nation. It had been his destiny, he told his closest associates, that he had been chosen to help lead Japan's rebirth, its rediscovery of its sacred roots.
There was movement in the crowd now, and Kurata saw a small elderly woman dressed in traditional silk kimono recognize him. An instant later, a murmur rolled through the waiting crowd. Some pointed discreetly, others bowed deeply.
With this recognition, Kurata's well-dressed bodyguards discretely moved to his side; "the defender of Yamato," as the newspapers called Kurata, had many enemies among the leftists.
Kurata returned the recognition with a slight bow of his own. An instant later, he heard behind him the muted voice of the Prime Minister, Ryoichi Kishi, as he spoke with the Yasukuni shrine's Kan-nushi. Kurata turned and stepped back into the doorway. He waited for the two men to approach.
Like Kurata, the Prime Minister wore a modest dark blue suit. The faint illumination from the dusk-like noon shined off the prime minister's bald head and twinkled in the glass of the powerful politician's spectacles. Beside him walked the Kan-nushi, dressed in his formal robes. The head priest's flowing headdress bounced with each step. The two men stopped short of the doorway and bowed. As befitted his station and prestige, Kurata returned a shallower bow to each man. He faced the priest. "Your stewardship is most excellent. I am most confident the kami must be pleased with the ceremonies today and with the new exhibition in the Yushukan."
Just minutes before in the shrine's very restricted inner room, the head priest had finished conducting a private ceremony for Kurata, Kishi and more than two hundred jiminto. These Diet members of the Liberal Democratic Party included most of the Prime Minister's cabinet. Preceding the ceremonies, the group had toured the Yushukan, one of the buildings -- some said the most significant -- in the shrine complex. With the generous financial support of the Daiwa Ichiban Corporation and the enthusiastic political backing of the Diet, the Yushukan had become a museum that worshipped Japan's role in World War II.
"You are most kind,"The priest bowed deeply. "We are not worthy of your generosity."
"Please forgive my forwardness, but I must insist on recognizing your excellence."
"Of course. There is no forgiveness warranted, Kurata-sama," the priest replied, using the most honorific form of address.
Conversation rattled from the opposite side of the shrine.
"I am so very sorry," the priest said as he looked toward the source of conversation, "but if it is agreeable with you, I will supervise the exits of the jiminto."
Kurata and the prime minister nodded their agreement. With a deep bow, the priest left.
When the priest was out of earshot, Kurata said, "So it is, my old friend, that we meet again at Yasukuni."
"As it is always to be, the gods willing."
Since the founding of Yasukuni, warriors setting out on dangerous missions had traditionally parted with the saying, "See you at Yasukuni." They would meet again, inevitably, as spirits or in the flesh.
Kurata and Kishi had been youngsters in the final days before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They had met each other in a navy training school where they, along with hundreds of thousands of others had volunteered for a fight-to-the-death defense of Yamato, the spirit and essence of Japan.
The young men were inspired, as were their countrymen, by the valiant defenders of Saipan, who had fought the barbarian invaders to the last, then killed all of the civilians and children and, finally, themselves rather than suffer the ultimate indignity of being taken prisoner. So it was for every one of the thousands of islands in Japan.
For their part, Kurata and Kishi had been trained to ride special steerable torpedoes adapted for long-range distances. They were to set out slowly at night towards the Allied invasion fleet, heads just above water. In a last rush to destruction, they were to steer the torpedo at top speed into the nearest ship.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Emperor's recorded plea for cooperation with the Allied forces ended their hopes of meeting at Yasukuni as kami, but the prestige wrought by their willingness to die for their country had advanced the careers of both men and had shaped their deepest beliefs.
Now, sheets of wind-whipped rain hammered at the pavement as one of Kurata's security guards spoke into a lapel microphone, listened for a moment to his wireless earpiece, then turned toward the two men. He bowed, stood at a respectful distance and waited to be recognized. Kurata nodded, and the man stepped forward.
"Begging your forgiveness, Kurata-sama, but I believe it is safer for you to board your car at the rear entrance. There are no crowds there."
Without hesitation, Kurata shook his head. "Your concern is appreciated a thousand times, but a true son of Yamato does not flee from danger. He welcomes it."
"As you wish, my lord," the security guard said as he bowed deeply. It was a ritualized conversation that had repeated itself countless times in thousands of places. It was more than a challenge to keep alive a man who insisted on embracing death itself.
"Also please alert Kishi-san's driver that my old friend wishes to ride with me," Kurata added.
"Hai, Kurata-sama," the security guard acknowledged with a deep bow. From long experience, he knew that when the most sensitive matters were to be discussed, words were most secure when spoken inside Kurata's limo.
Knowing all this, the security guard murmured into his lapel and scanned the crowd to make sure his men had unobtrusively worked their way to the front of the crowd.
Seeing his men in place, the guard again spoke into the lapel microphone; seconds later, Kurata's armored Mitsubishi limousine pulled up to the entrance followed by the Prime Minister's car and security retinue. The very large security guard who rode next to Kurata's chauffeur leaped out before the limo had come to a halt and fought open a very large umbrella, fought to keep the wind from wresting the umbrella away.
A cry rose from the crowd as Kurata waved the umbrella away and, with Kishi at his side, walked proudly into the slashing rain, past the opened door to his limo and directly into the crowd, whose cries of adoration rose above the howls of the wind and rain. As the rain hammered down on his head, Kurata bowed, he shook hands, he said his thanks to those who wished him well and told them he intended to keep their faith and justify their trust in him. Most paid no attention to the Prime Minister.
"They adore you," the Prime Minister said when they had climbed into the Daiwa Ichiban Corporation limo. The men wiped their heads and faces with towels. Kurata looked at his old friend. "Ah, but I am merely a symbol. They adore not me, but the restoration of the Yamato damashii, the spirit of Japan, neh?"
Buttoned down in its armor, air-tight and sandwiched by security cars front and back, the limo moved gracefully away from the Yasukuni shrine. The Prime Minister watched the shrine's crowd recede in the limo's tinted glass. He shook his head slowly, then turned back to Kurata:
"Please overlook my contentiousness, old friend, but it is you they love," said Kishi, distracted and, to Kurata's ears ... envious? Kurata also noticed the Prime Minister had slipped back into his native Osaka-ben accent, a sure sign he was fatigued, perhaps worried. Osaka-ben was considered a coarse variation of the Kansai-ben spoken by the people of the Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe region. Some found the dialect offensive. Indeed, Kishi's national influence had floundered until he engaged a speech pathologist who taught him to speak flawless "standard" Japanese, actually a modified Tokyo dialect. By contrast, Kurata spoke Kyoto-ben, considered the most elegant form of the language, the only "true" Japanese, by language purists and the new neo-national movement.
Kurata found the envy in the Prime Minister's voice an unbecoming, disappointing loss of personal control, but Kurata showed no recognition, no emotion.
"You inspire," Kishi said. "I merely administrate."
Kurata was silent for a moment as the limo merged into the jammed traffic of Uchibori Avenue, inching its way toward the Diet building.
"One must believe to inspire," Kurata said tne fell silent for a moment. You and I are different parts of the way to the same goal. There is the wind, the kite and the hand on the string. Yamato damashii is the wind; I am the kite; you are the hand. Without all three, there is no flight." And the Daiwa Ichiban Corporation steers your hand so that I fly where I wish.
"Old friend, you and I have spoken often of the need to renew the national spirit," Kurata continued. "Without a shared myth of who we are and where we came from, we cannot remain great. A culture defines itself through its shared illusions. "Without the myth, there is no culture.
"Just look at the Americans: even though they allowed the genetic pollution of their bloodlines by intermarriages, for many years they were a great nation because their different peoples made personal origins secondary to a shared national illusion of who they were. Now, they are spinning apart like the Balkans because no one wants to be an American first; every group insists on the primacy of its own origins, rituals, culture, ethnicity."
Prime Minister Kishi nodded solemnly. He looked out the window at the torrential rain that slammed into them sheet after sheet, drumming a tattoo on the limo's roof.
"Of course," Kishi said finally, "the mixing of so many disparate peoples laid the seeds of this destruction. We cannot allow that to happen here."
Just then, the telephone rang. Kurata nodded his agreement with Kishi's statement and picked up the handset. The LED indicated this call -- like most of his -- was encrypted to bar prying ears.
"Moshi-moshi ," Kurata said into the mouthpiece. "Hai," he responded. "Hai, hai, ichiban! He hung up the telephone.
Kishi gave no notice that Kurata had engaged in a telephone call, no matter how short. To acknowledge this would be impolite, an invasion of privacy.
"The cleansing proceeds as scheduled," Kurata said. Kishi raised his eyebrows. "This is the tenth day; there are no more new cases of the Korean Leprosy. It is according to what my scientists assured me. And not any cases -- not a single one -- among Japanese."
"What of that -- "
"Not Japanese at all," Kurata said quickly. "That entire family was Korean; they tried to pass by using counterfeit documents. They fooled the government. They fooled their neighbors. They could not fool the Slate Wiper."
"Congratulations," Kishi nodded. "It has underscored to the general population the dangers of allowing gaijin to live permanently in our midst and the ... wrongness of accepting them. This is a great thing for Japan that you have done. History will mark this very June day as the moment the kiyome began.
Kurata shook his head. "The
purification is not yet done," Kurata said. "Only ready
to begin."