Death Sentences (4 page)

Here it is not my intent to recuperate the zeitgeist of early rg8os Japan but to stress the performative aspect of Death Sentences as a text. Although I have considered the magic spell or speech act of Who May's poems, it is Kawamata's novel that really demonstrates the performative aspect of language, by prophesying and creating the later history of Japan's postmodernism. Tsutsumi Seiji's Seibu department store aroused consumers' interest in Dadaism and surrealism with an exhibition of Arshile Gorky's work in July and August 1963 and a Marcel Duchamp exhibition in September 1881. Therefore, it is highly plausible that Kawamata Chiaki noted the popularity of Duchamp caused by this exhibition and incorporated this genius into his new novel. Nonetheless, while the Seibu Group as led by Tsutsumi enjoyed its heyday between 1975 and 1982, the fatal decline of the economy in 1991 required him to retire and pay Seibu's debts, amounting to ten billion yen (about $ioo million). Contemporary cultural historians tend to assume that it was Tsutsumi's post-leftist progressive ideology that functioned as the engine for accelerating Japan's high-growth economy and eventually exploding its late capitalism, which ironically passed the death sentence on Japan's postmodernism.

With this historical context in mind, readers may note that the fate of the Seito department store's exhibition "Undiscovered Century" in Kawamata's narrative unwittingly but miraculously predicts the fate of Japanese postmodernism nurtured by Tsutsumi Seiji's Seibu Group. Indeed, Death Sentences is primarily a kind of speech-act novel in the tradition of the linguistic science fiction cultivated by Stanislaw Lem, Samuel Delany, and Ian Watson. And yet this novel not only describes an alternate literary history created by Who May's magic poem but also performs and produces Japan's real contemporary history, much earlier and much more vividly than Haruki Murakami, whose new novel 1Q84 represents another take on 1984.

I hope you will share my pleasure on your own fabulous trip through Kawamata Chiaki's masterpiece Death Sentences.

Bon voyage!

1

Someone was coming out of the apartment building-the woman.

Sakamoto took the unlit cigarette from his mouth, tossed it on the ground, and stubbed it out with the tip of his shoe.

That was the signal.

With an air of perfect nonchalance, the three detectives entered the building just as she was leaving.

With a brief glance to make sure it was she, Sakamoto began casually walking after her.

Another man, a young detective called Harada, passed Sakamoto, tailing the woman at about fifteen paces.

Harada's role was to distract her.

It didn't much matter if she noticed him or not, he was going to stick to her. Once she caught on to him, he'd make himself scarce.

Basically, Harada's presence served only to draw attention away from the real tail, Sakamoto.

Harada was the decoy.

He'd dressed to call attention to himself.

Leather jacket, leather pants, leather boots. He'd added a splash of color to a greased spike of hair.

He looked really punk.

And it looked pretty good on him.

He swaggered along, hamming it up.

Sakamoto chuckled inwardly.

If Harada overdid it, though, he was going to scare her off.

The woman came to the main street.

As she waited for the light to change, she cast a glance at Harada.

She didn't seem particularly worried, though.

The light turned green.

She crossed the street, paused as if to take her bearings, and turned right.

There was a bus stop just ahead.

If she caught a taxi, Harada's part was over. An unmarked car was waiting ready to pick up Sakamoto and continue the chase.

But, for whatever reason, it looked like she'd opted for the bus.

Checking her watch, she got in line for the bus.

There were three people ahead of her and Harada right behind her.

Sakamoto walked past them to take a closer look at the woman.

Not a doubt.

It was Miura Sachiko.

Heavy makeup masked her features. But even the thick eyeliner couldn't hide the hollow look in her eyes.

Sakamoto bought a pack of Seven Stars at the kiosk right by the bus stop.

Opening the pack, he circled back and got in line behind Harada.

"Uh, 'scuse

Mumbling something senseless, he deliberately swung around, knocking her in the back with his elbow.

She ignored him.

Without even turning, she stepped forward a bit and stood there rigidly.

Concealed behind Harada, Sakamoto watched her.

The bus finally came. It was bound for Shibuya.

The sun was still high. It was just past four.

The six passengers filed onto the bus.

The bus was pretty empty. Quite a few seats were left.

Miura Sachiko placed herself in the middle of the bus near the door.

Just across and down from her, in the seat reserved for seniors, Harada plopped himself down, stretching his legs into the aisle.

The other passengers gave him the hairy eyeball.

Sakamoto used the opportunity to move unobtrusively to the rear of the bus.

The bus began moving.

He turned to look out the rear window: a dirty white Corolla was tailing the bus.

The guy in the driver's seat was his partner.

He'd take over if the woman caught on to Sakamoto.

For the moment there didn't seem much to worry about, though.

The woman gazed out the window as if her mind were somewhere else. Clearly, by the looks of her, she was "afflicted." She looked well past the middle stages. If so, she'd be spending about 30 percent of her waking hours in a state of utter delirium, soul adrift. Her sense of reality would be tenuous at best.

You couldn't take chances, though.

In some cases the afflicted gained exceedingly acute perceptual abilities.

Sakamoto, cautious, calmed his mind in case she could sense his concern.

Only about five more stops till the terminus at Shibuya station. As they approached the station, the traffic became congested.

Just then-

Miura Sachiko suddenly stood up. She pressed the buzzer.

From the reserved seats, Harada rolled an eye in her direction.

The bus was approaching the last stop before the terminus.

The bus slowed, pulled in the far lane, and stopped. The door opened.

Harada followed the woman.

Sakamoto also got off, concealing himself behind Harada.

"Hey there."

Harada sauntered out in front of her.

"How about a cup of coffee or something, you and me?"

She did not reply.

She pushed past him and crossed into the intersection.

"Snobby bitch."

Harada gave her an angry look.

Then, with a shrug of indifference, he walked rapidly off, moving with the crowd.

Miura Sachiko paused for a moment on the other side of the intersection. She watched Harada go into the station directly ahead.

Seconds later-

With what looked like a sigh of relief, she relaxed her shoulders.

And then she started walking again.

Sakamoto tailed her.

Since people had not yet begun to leave work, the streets weren't so jammed.

Most of the passersby were students and housewives.

With the crowds rather dense but not congested, tailing was an easy matter.

Miura Sachiko turned left at Shibuya Station, heading toward Miyamasuzaka. She was walking fairly fast now.

She wore a long coat with a purse slung over her shoulder.

Her clothes were nothing remarkable. But she was attractive and shapely enough that you might have pegged her as early twenties.

Actually-

Sakamoto figured her real age to be forty-two. She looked about twenty years younger.

This was one of the characteristic "symptoms" of the afflicted. It was said to be an effect of their state of delirium in which the soul drifted free of the body. But little progress had been made on a detailed account of causes and effects. You weren't supposed to look for explanations. That just slowed things down. The idea was to eradicate it, not figure it out.

In the middle stages, some afflicted would grow physically younger in the blink of an eye, while others would advance horrendously in age.

In any event, the effects varied a great deal from individual to individual. Everything hinged on individual characteristics. But all of the afflicted eventually met with the same end. Researchers referred to the last stage as "salvation."

But whatever you called it, in the end it amounted to a person turning into a complete vegetable. Death was quick to follow.

As if drawn there magnetically, Miura Sachiko entered a coffee shop located halfway up the rise of Miyamasuzaka.

The coffee shop was small with a narrow entrance.

It looked like this was the meeting place.

"All right, see you there at five," she had said on the phone. Sakamoto's team had gathered this much from their wiretap.

About ten minutes left until five.

Sakamoto checked his pace and turned back.

He saw the blinker of the white Corolla as it pulled over. The driver gave him a thumbs-up, and Sakamoto drew a deep breath.

So far things were going smoothly.

The hard part came next. How things turned out depended entirely on Sakamoto's actions.

Sakamoto continued to stroll casually.

Through the coffee shop window he spotted Miura Sachiko out of the corner of his eye.

She was sitting alone.

The waitress had just brought her a glass of water and a hot towel, and she looked up at her to order something.

The shop was pretty much empty.

Except a couple of young slackers glued to a video game, there were no other customers. Neither looked like the guy Sachiko was waiting for.

Sakamoto continued past the shop.

He found a pay phone in front of the building just next door.

He was going to need some information after all.

Sakamoto picked up the receiver coated with car exhaust and dropped a couple of coins in the slot. He started dialing.

The number would connect him with Sachiko's apartment.

After two rings somebody answered.

"Well?" Sakamoto asked.

2

"Not a thing. Clean as a whistle."

It was one of the guys who'd slipped into her apartment as she was leaving.

"Nothing?"

"She must have known we were on to her. Cleaned it inside out, not so much as a speck of dust."

"Hmmm."

"But we did find something kind of interesting in the trash."

"What's that?"

"You know those print kits? The ones you can make postcards and stuff with?"

"Yeah."

"Well, we found one tossed in with the nonrecyclables."

"Think it's hers?"

"We're looking into it now. But we're pretty sure it is. The landlord saw her taking out quite a pile of trash two nights ago. Apparently, most of it was paper, but the print kit turned up where she'd dumped her trash. She probably thought they'd take it away with the rest, but they can be awfully picky, you know."