"Our suffering boiled down to the same sort of frustrations that Guide had. 'Just as you take Patron's incomprehensible mutterings and convert them into intelligible language,' we told him, 'why don't you set up a springboard and make him take a huge leap off it? Once he jumps, we'll all leap off behind him!' That's as far as we took it that particular time, but this led to the cre- ation of the Izu Research Institute. You were part of this, too, weren't you, Dr. Koga-you who ran and ran but could never score!
"As for me, I had a pretty responsible position in the company I was working in. Putting aside the question of whether I could score a touchdown, from the get-go I wasn't the type to run full speed and break through the other team's defense. Also, once the Izu Research Institute was launched and grew by leaps and bounds as an elite group, I became more involved with keeping the whole church organization up and running. Once I even went to speak to Guide to complain about how high the institute's budget was. That was when we started to think about letting Kansai headquarters make independent financial decisions. I'm a conservative person, and quite persistent.
"In the end the radical faction was completely betrayed by Patron and Guide's Somersault. It wasn't just the radical faction that suffered because of this, of course. The Quiet Women would be a typical example. As I indicated in my talk with Guide, we had a plan to keep going and decided to let the church survive centered on the Kansai headquarters."
"I can see you're a person of vision, but at that stage did you think your plan would be the basis for building a new church someday?" Dr. Koga said.
"At the very least, we always thought Patron would return."
"And what we did was kill Guide for nothing," Dr. Koga said.
"But you're not just some ordinary member of the radical faction, Mr. Soda said soothingly, but Dr. Koga remained with head bowed.
Kizu intervened bravely. "There's something I don't quite understand, he said. "Something Ikuo doesn't understand either. I know he's talked with Patron about it a few times… There's always something missing from every- thing you've just been saying: namely, the actual strategies and tactics of the radical faction that were called off on account of the Somersault. There've got to be things that haven't been publicly discussed yet. If these tactics really existed, what were they? That's what I'd like to hear."
Mr. Soda hesitated. Once he began, though, he didn't hold anything back.
"What they had in mind was the same sort of terrorist assassinations the right wing carried out before the war, plus a postwar phenomenon: de- liberately causing an accident at a nuclear power plant. And if they were to survive that, they planned to create a millennial reign of repentance.
"After Chernobyl the Japanese government and the power companies announced that such a large-scale accident in a power plant could never hap- pen in Japan. NHK and the major newspapers all agreed. A national consen- sus grew up, in other words, that a nuclear power plant accident could never be a likely scenario in Japan. The Japanese people had too much belief in the information and technology the system controls. I'm sure someone like your- self. Professor Kizu, who's lived abroad, would tell us it's the same in other countries as well.
"Anyway, it was left to the experts on nuclear issues at the Izu Institute to figure out how to shake Japan and the Japanese people's fixed ideas about nuclear power by figuring out which nuclear plant they should target and what scale of accident they should cause. The radical faction's plans weren't just some pie-in-the-sky idea but went as far as suggesting a complete destruc- tion of all the nuclear power plants concentrated on the Japan Sea coast-in order to set off the end of the world.
"The assassinations were a much simpler affair. Members of the radi- cal faction planned to assassinate top leaders in the government, the bureau- cracy, and the financial world. The assassins would all officially resign from the church so they could take individual responsibility for their acts. They did, though, curry favor with a citizens' relief organization by making con- tributions so they'd help out in court. They came up with a long detailed list of targets. The list of bureaucrats was compiled by a fellow who graduated from the law department at Tokyo University. The list was confiscated later, but the authorities and police never made it public. They were afraid of the effect it might have if the media ever got hold of it.
"A hundred assassins murdering a hundred leaders in a short space of time. Accidents at two or three nuclear power plants. Once this was done the church members would all take to the streets to announce the coming end of the world and set off an all-out insurrection. Imagine how dangerous it would be, and how much courage it would take, at a time like that to be out on a street corner seeking repentance. Insurrection wouldn't just be some vague term anymore. Then, with no leadership in place and the government para- lyzed, they would establish their millennial reign of repentance. Actually, one or two years would be enough, because it wouldn't survive Armageddon. In the final analysis it would be a reign of repentance that focused on the end time: in other words, on dying and ascending to heaven.
"Since the Kansai headquarters followers were to be mobilized in this all-out insurrection too, I didn't know what to do. This morning I looked at the triptych hanging in the chapel, and I know it's based on the book of Jonah, but looking at the background of Nineveh up in flames I remembered the fear that gripped me back then.
"The whole church felt cornered by this crisis, because if you followed the church's doctrine you couldn't very well oppose this plan. That was the situation. In my opinion Patron's Somersault was the appropriate response.
The reason the followers at the Kansai headquarters didn't feel their faith shaken was because we made sure all our members understood that the dras- tic reaction of the Somersault was necessary to put an end to the radical faction's violence. Patron and Guide, who made this painful decision and thereby saved the followers from being entangled in the radical faction, would take responsibility through the Somersault but would, after a time, rebuild the church. This is what we all believed."
5
Just as a chilly damp wind blew in through the window on the valley side, raindrops began to pound on the slate roof. In the far corner of the wooden floor, the former junior high principal stepped down to the dirt floor and shut all the windows he could reach and, turning a handle, shut the win- dows higher up as well. From deep inside the fuigo the roar of the wind from the forest flowed back in. As the former junior high principal approached the dirt floor, he came over to the piece of wood along the entrance, one step lower than the sunken hearth, and waited for the four people seated around the hearth to turn their attention to him.
When they did, he pointed toward the little kamidana shrine farthest back in the dirt-floor kitchen above the stove with its old-style tiles. A moment later he called their attention to a kind of box like a sea chest in the shadows of the shrine.
"This is where Meisuke-san is enshrined," he told them. "A second kamidana, as we say here. You'll be seeing this in the Spirit Festival proces- sion, but there are two kami-gods-one in a light place, the other in a dark place, and Meisuke-san represents the second kind. He was the leader of the first of two insurrections around the time of the Meiji Restoration, died an untimely death, and was enshrined here.
"I think it's significant that a person like that can become a kami, so I don't feel like criticizing the extreme tactics your church was unable to put into practice. Truthfully, when you get to my age the idea of a millennial kingdom that focuses on repentance is quite an attractive notion. However, there is one practical fact I'd like you to be aware of. Not far from here is the Agawa nuclear power plant. I have nothing to say about some new blood brotherhood pledged to carry out terrorist assassinations, but if the remnants of the radical faction dust off their plans and try to blow up the Agawa nuclear plant, I don't care what it takes, I will stop them. It's only twenty-five miles from the power plant to Maki Town. As the crow flies-but radiation won't neatly follow all the winding mountain roads in order to get here!