“Another convenience store robbery, eh? There’s been a lot of that lately. Never out of a job in that line of work – and pretty easy work in Japan at that, with all those drink machines packed full of money standing around on the streets.”
The man was holding forth with the aim of getting Kita and the driver to chime in.
“Those vending machines are real moneyboxes, aren’t they?” said the driver, with a trace of a northern accent. He seemed to relish talk. At times when he had no passenger, he’d probably amuse himself by talking back to the radio announcer as if they were on air together.
“Japan’s a dangerous place these days, that’s for sure. There are plenty who’ll understand you when you talk, mind you, but nowadays we’ve got a lot of foreign types who can’t follow a word you say. Get mixed up with those guys and bang, you’re done for. We cab drivers who got to work with our backs to folks are always feeling danger right behind us.”
“So what would you do if I turned out to be a robber?” murmured the man, tapping a finger against his aluminium case.
“Stop the bad jokes, won’t you?” responded the driver.
“Well there you are saying you’re always sensing danger behind you, aren’t you?”
“Ah well,” said the driver with a laugh. “Your life’s in my hands, after all.”
“OK, you got me there. But when you think about it, the guy that robbed that store will be listening to the news somewhere right now, won’t he? What’s he going to feel when he sees his own image caught on security cameras, if he’s watching the TV news?”
The man now turned to Kita. “I’ll bet you go to convenience stores quite a lot,” he said meaningfully.
Oh, Kita realized at last, so there’s been news of a store robbery has there?
“I sometimes go to them to buy dinner. And students go to read magazines, labourers go to buy drinks, gangsters go to buy ice or cat food, office girls go to buy a quick stew or some cookies.”
“OK. I wasn’t really asking what you went for. Me, I go to use their bathrooms from time to time. Sorry, I should have introduced myself.”
The man abruptly held out a name card. “Heita Yashiro, Executive Director, Thanatos Movie Productions,” Kita read. Checking the man’s face again, he had the impression it was shining with eager curiosity.
“I don’t have a name card.”
“Free men like you don’t need name cards or luggage I guess. It’s good to have your hands free for everything that comes along. Your own self is the biggest piece of baggage you own. Still, you can’t get on with the job if you leave yourself behind, can you? What’s your name, by the way?”
Kita had had no intention of indulging in mutual introductions. On the other hand, he wasn’t prepared to be the butt of this busybody’s suspicions, so he said, “Yoshio Kita.” The man then wanted to know what characters he wrote his name with, so Kita found himself having to write his name in the man’s notebook. The man stared hard at what he’d written and seemed about to speak, so Kita cut in quickly.
“Is that a camera you’ve got in that case?”
Yashiro nodded as though he’d been waiting for the question. “I’ll get anything on film,” he said.
“You’re talking adult videos and stuff like that?”
“Porn, news, documentaries, personal stories… like I say, anything. I shoot whatever there is to shoot.”
“And what do you do with it?”
“I sell it. There are video cameras all over the world now. The world’s full of peepholes wherever you care to look. And there are people who can’t wait to be peeped on, what’s more.”
“So I guess that means you’re pretty busy.”
“My problem is I spend my life being busy and never making much money at it. The competition’s fierce. But everyone wants to believe these days that whatever’s on camera’s got to be the truth. That’s what keeps me doing it.”
“You’re a man of conviction in your work, then.”
Kita couldn’t bring himself to simply let the man know he had no interest in what he did for a living. He kept up the flow of casual responses while he waited for the man to realize there was no point in talking.
“Conviction’s an important thing, you know. There’s a big difference between someone with conviction and someone without it. Your customer is moved by your conviction, see. Even a criminal, he’ll find supporters just so long as he’s got good strong convictions.”
“Do you have anything to do with crime yourself?”
“Good God no. Do I look like that sort of guy?”
Kita shrank at the sudden roughness in Yashiro’s voice, and said softly, keeping a wary eye on him as he spoke, “Well, no, but you can’t always judge by appearances, can you?”
After a moment’s pause, Yashiro let out a rather forced chuckle.
“True enough, true enough. It’s the guy who wears a nice-guy mask who’ll turn around and commit the most cold-blooded crime. That’s the kind of perfectly average face you get the feeling you’ve seen somewhere before. It’s the same with evil these days, you don’t even notice it any more. It happens absolutely naturally. But the good, well that’s often artificial. If you shoot real evil on camera, you can’t really tell what it is you’re seeing. But good comes across real pretty. It’s made itself up to look great, see. Same as a naked woman. But real good’s a thing you don’t even notice. That’s why you won’t catch it on camera. That’s what I want to shoot.”
Kita could see what Yashiro was saying. He nodded with a sigh. “I’m a serious guy too, though I don’t put on any solemn airs,” he said. It wasn’t just a joke or some kind of excuse; in his own way he meant it. But he wondered if it would make sense to his sermonizing companion.
Heading up Dôgenzaka, just after the traffic lights Yashiro announced he’d stop there. He asked Kita whether he was going on, so Kita said this was fine with him too. He sat back and waited for Yashiro to pay and get out. When he proffered a couple of notes as his share of the fare, Yashiro waved them away, then glanced at his watch.
“Well then, what do you say to a cold beer?” Yashiro pointed towards a drinking place that had just opened its doors.
Kita hesitated. There was no reason why he should keep this man company, but on the other hand he couldn’t think how to excuse himself.
“Sorry, but would you mind carrying the camera for me?” Yashiro continued. “My neck’s kinda sore.” And so Kita found himself acting as porter, and following Yashiro in. The place was completely empty. They sat at the counter, and as the cook was busy writing up the day’s menu on the blackboard before them, Yashiro set about ordering. He asked for one dish after another – flounder sashimi, deep-fried tofu, salted squid, boiled potato and mincemeat, and finally beer.
Well, thought Kita, it wouldn’t matter if he put off carrying out his plan until he’d had two or three beers and evening had come. His impulses would be able to flow unchecked with alcohol and darkness on his side, after all. But was Heita Yashiro the right companion to give him the boost he needed? A company director is generally the kind of guy who’s brimming with self-confidence, who can dupe you all too easily. They put all the failures down to the other guy, and the successes down to their own foresight. Kita had worked for three directors in his life, and it was due to his own foresight that he’d managed to leave the company before it folded. He couldn’t claim to have been lucky exactly, but he did manage to get through it all without giving in to despair. He’d managed this by telling himself this was what happened to everyone else too. Gangsters, office girls, students, housewives, directors, labourers, foreigners – they all felt the same hopelessness, he told himself. It soothed him. Sure there must be labourers who wondered where the joy was in having to slave away on the roads under a broiling midsummer sun, but after ten bottles of beer they’d have forgotten all about their problems. A student who failed to get a job at the end of his studies would feel pretty depressed about the future, but he could always comfort a friend who was even worse off than him. Kita believed his own limited experience had taught him how to come to terms with despair. He also had a fair understanding of how to deal with the despair of others. You listened to their woes with warmth and concern. The death of a relative, the death of a child, a friend’s betrayal, a broken heart, illness – if you’d had a similar experience yourself, you could exchange stories at least. A kind of bartering on the troubles market. Then in the end you could both laugh together, united by your sorrows. That laughter was the special prerogative of people in that situation, the reward for having managed to produce some sort of comfort and friendship from the dregs of despair.