Still, when he came to think of it, dying wasn’t all that easy. That French philosopher who died of an autoimmune disease had advocated the idea of suicide as a death as pleasant as making love to your sweetheart in some hotel room. But he had actually latched onto the idea after his visit to Japan. Here in Japan, suicide had traditionally been a matter of form, without necessarily any need for a motive or a reason or a crime to justify it. It was the same for the mourners who saw you off to the other world – they mourned you according to custom, without feeling they had to get to the bottom of just why you killed yourself. Sure, there were people who enjoyed tossing round ideas about death and suicide, but then they weren’t the ones who did it. They stayed alive, which meant they got to say whatever they liked about it. They could bewail its absurdity or investigate its true nature all they liked. But the dead are mute. The living can choose to take that silence as ironic or see it as some kind of joke if they want. Nevertheless, the person who dies gets to choose his own death. That’s essentially what suicide’s been about in Japan all along. You may be forced to commit suicide by society or other people, but the act itself is completely meaningless. What’s without any meaning can sometimes make people laugh. And since the dead can’t laugh, the living have to make up for it by getting the joke he intended and laughing for him. How ironic it would be for the poor guy if they didn’t get it!
There’s a story about the comic storyteller who liked to make his audience groan by being intentionally unfunny. Apparently, as he lay in the hospital bed about to breathe his last, he stretched out his hand toward the family members gathered round him. But when his wife and children went to seize it, he waved them feebly away.
“No, no,” he said, “I’m after money.”
There he is, about to die at any moment, surrounded by people weeping at this parting from their beloved husband and father, and he goes and makes a tired old gag like that. This was the man who liked to scandalize his audiences as a matter of principle. That was his art, his very essence, so even on his deathbed he was still at it. People found this moving. Even at the very doors of heaven or bound for hell, they said, it looks like he couldn’t resist one more stab at getting a laugh.
This way of dying is revered in Japan, you might say. It sticks in people’s memory. The one dying and the ones seeing him off are both essentially following the old traditions.
In the airport restroom, Yoshio Kita threw away the Boston bag he’d been carrying, and emerged empty-handed. The bag held a change of clothes, a couple of magazines, and a packet of Dazaifu rice cakes. There was no need to carry any of this stuff around any more now.
Swaying along in the carriage of the monorail into the city, he pondered where to start, but his mind was a complete blank, and nothing came to him. Finally, as he arrived at the last stop in Hamamatsucho, he came up with a few ideas – he’d withdraw money from the bank, he’d indulge in luxury and debauchery, and he’d do something for the world and humanity. He had 1,116,715 yen in his bank account. It was quite a hefty amount to take out all at once, and he may well want to make some purchases on the credit card, so he settled for withdrawing 300,000 yen, which he divided up and stuffed into his pockets.
OK, he thought to himself as he stepped out into the main street, let’s use my remaining time on earth meaningfully and efficiently. He set about trying to hail a cab, but not a single one that passed him had a “vacant” light posted. Not a good start. But as he was standing there, eyes peeled for cabs, he was startled to catch a sudden glimpse of a figure out of the corner of his eye. Just two yards back down the road, a middle-aged man, of medium height and medium weight, in a grey three-button suit, was standing with an innocent air, trying to sneak in ahead of him to nab the first vacant cab. He looked like he’d only just managed to haul his heavy-looking aluminium briefcase as far as the street and was anxious to get to his next destination by the shortest possible route as soon as he’d caught his breath. In short, he looked like the sort of guy a policeman would immediately be inclined to ask a few questions. Kita simply wanted to be somewhere else – anywhere else, he’d decide where once the wheels were rolling – and had no reason to compete with this fellow, but on the other hand he didn’t want his adventures to get off on the wrong foot. And so, keeping a careful check on the man’s back, he moved five yards down ahead of him, and stood there squirming about with his hand raised like an elementary school student with the right answer, trying to draw attention to himself, as if to say to the world “I got here first.” The man, however, ignored him completely. He just moved himself two yards down beyond Kita. There he slipped a cigarette into his mouth and set about searching for his lighter, slapping his pockets up and down both sides of his suit, then glanced at his watch, and even clucked his tongue in mild impatience. A taxi drew in, its indicator flashing. The middle-aged man turned to Kita. “Got a light?” he said. Kita pretended not to hear him. Determined to be heard, the man went on, “It’s difficult to catch a cab right now, so why don’t you join me and we can ride together?” No longer able to ignore him, Kita asked, “Where are you going?”
Guys off to the cycle races might share a cab, but Kita didn’t think this was the sort of town where two men completely unknown to each other could nonchalantly just hop in together like that. As for himself, of course, he was quite prepared. If the guy turned out to be a murderer, he’d simply resign himself to the fact that his fate had caught up with him. But wasn’t the other man at all concerned whether he himself might be a killer?
The taxi was sitting idling beside them with the door open. The other man climbed in, hugging his case, and beckoned Kita to get in after him. He hadn’t even asked where Kita was going, probably to forestall any refusal. So this was his justification for sneaking in ahead for a cab – he’d simply planned to share it, eh? Kita settled down beside him without a word, annoyed that he was tacitly allowing the man to get away with his tactic. The man gave a destination to the driver, then turned to Kita. “What about you?” he asked. “That’ll do fine,” Kita said casually. His old teacher would have told him not to let things sweep him passively along like this, to assert himself. Too bad, though. The other guy was too pushy to resist.
The taxi set off for downtown Shibuya. Shibuya’s actually not a bad idea, he thought, immediately setting about justifying having let himself be swept along by events. A good place to relax what goes on above the neck, and liven things up below the waist. After all, I’m going to die in a week’s time, so why not go easy on the resentment and hatred side of life? He found himself feeling more magnanimous and openhearted than he had in years.
The cab radio was tuned to the news broadcast. The announcer’s even, detached style of reading had a way of making any murder, air raid, terrorist bomb attack, robbery, or collapse of the share market sound like a matter of no personal concern. After all, things were all going all right as far as you yourself were concerned, so you could get a mild kick out of tales of terrorist attack, or feel happy that you weren’t among the victims of a murderer, without ever registering despair or hope or indulging in self-reflection as you listened. Sure, there were moments when you felt envy, but five minutes later it was gone.