CHAPTER FIVE"Kami wo araitai no desu ga. Ii desu ka?” Tam peered through the doorway and nodded hello to the girl in the blue Imperial Hotel uniform. The hair salon was almost empty. Perfect."Hai, so." The girl, startled at thegaijin’saccentless Japanese, bowed to the waist. "Dozo.""Manikyua mo onegai shimasu." What the heck, Tam thought, why not go all the way, get a manicure too."Hai. Dozo." Another bob as the girl ushered her forward.There was the plush, padded chair. Big, gray, and voluptuous. She sighed and settled back. Heaven. Perfect peace in the middle of hectic Tokyo. She knew that here for an hour or so she would be an honored guest, smothered with attention. One of the most incredible experiences in Japan.While three of the girls began shampooing her hair, they went back to chattering about the new husband a matchmaker had just arranged for the petite assistant in the back. The bride-to-be was blushing and there were plenty of giggles all around, hands over mouths. Tam realized, though, that the girls were being a little circumspect. Who was this strange brunettegaijin, speaking Japanese with no accent. Maybe she understood what they were saying.She did.The woman who would become Tam Richardson was born Tamara no-name inKobe,Japan, the somewhat embarrassing result of an evening's diversion for an anonymous GI. Her mother, equally anonymous, had prudently given her over for adoption rather than face the social awkwardness of raising a fatherless, halfgaijinchild.She was eventually adopted by Lieutenant Colonel Avery Richardson, U.S. Air Force, and his wife Mary, proud Iowastock, six years after she'd been stuck in the orphanage. That was during the latter days of the Occupation, but they'd stayed on inJapanthrough '54 while Lieutenant Colonel Richardson served as adviser for the rearming of what would be the Japanese Self Defense Forces. He'd also become a Japanophile by then, so he left her in a Japanese school rather than subjecting her to the "army brats" on the base. Finally they returned to the States, with a dark-eyed little daughter who'd spoken Japanese for almost a decade and being the achiever she was, read it virtually as well as a high-school graduate.The thing she remembered best from all those years, though, was one word.Gaijin. It wasn't exactly that the modern Japanese considergaijininferior. They no longer dismiss Westerners as "red-bearded Barbarians." No,gaijinwere merely unfortunate, luckless folk not part of the earth's elect tribe. You were either born a part of Japan, a fullnihon-jin, or you were forever outside of it,gaijin.But knowing it was one thing, and living it as a kid was something else. She wasn't one of them, and they made sure she got the message. Finally, however, she discovered the hidden secret of Japan. Most Japanese get very uncomfortable around agaijintoo fluent in their language or customs, since that outsider has penetrated their life without the constraint of relationships and obligations. Nogaijincan ever entirely belong to their seamless culture for one simple reason: no outsider could ever be held accountable to the powerful social and family interdependencies that allow a population half that of the U.S. to get along in a place functionally smaller than California. So to survive there if you're notnihon-jin, you just play that fact for all it's worth. Then, like everybody else, you've got a niche; yours merely happens to be outside the system. As an almost-nihon-jinyou're threatening; as agaijin, you're safe. She'd finally learned this the hard way, from all those unsmiling little girls in blue school uniforms who used to hiss "gaijin." But thanks to them, Tam Richardson learned to be a permanent outsider. And a survivor.Well, here she was again, ready for another bout. Round- eyed "Tama-chan" all grown up and still on the outside.Though she knew Tokyo well from times past, she was still trying to readjust. After checking into the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo's Hibiya section, she'd showered, changed, and headed out for some jogging—the best way she knew to see a lot of thecity quick. Her major puzzle: where to look for the new impulse behind Japan's big drive, their meteoric move toward the target ofdai ichi, "number one" in the world. Try to feel the vibes, she told herself, be a tourist and see the "New Japan" through fresh eyes. If it had been winter, she'd have gone straight over to Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park to watch the migratory Siberian waterfowl diving for fish among the clumps of floating ice. In spring she would have first monitored the radio to find out which park had the finest cherry blossoms, then gone somewhere else to avoid the sake-swilling crowds. And if it had been summer, she probably would have headed for the cool of the Imperial Palace East Gardens to catch the pink and red azaleas.Autumn, though, was a time for swallowing the city whole. She started with the Meiji Shrine, that garish tribute to Japan's Westernization, then moved on to the Imperial Palace, itself a place that, like Tokyo itself, had something for all seasons. She passed through the East Gardens watching provincial honey- mooners snapping pictures for the parents back home, then worked her way across toward the Sakuradamon Gate so she could follow the Palace moat as she made her circuit back to the hotel. Along the way she passed the Diet Building and the Supreme Court, then decided to look in on the Yasukuni Shrine, buried in its own exquisite grove of cherry trees and mixed foliage. The massive bronzetoriiarch leading into the shrine was always surrounded by stalls selling those marvelous little rice cakes, sweet and leaden, she remembered as a kid. She stopped and bought two.By then she was experiencing advanced jet lag, so she decided to head on back to her crisp-sheeted bed at the Imperial. Tokyo this time around was as impossible as always, maybe more so. Where do you start? The garish Ginza, the self-conscious trendiness of Roppongi, the skyscrapers of Shinjuku, solemn Marunouchi—all of it engulfing, awesomely materialistic. Each trip the city seemed to get bigger, louder, more everything. More cars, more neon, more . . . yes, more money. She could remember, almost, a time when this town was a burned-out ruin. Now . . .She needed some time to think, to work out a game plan. Sure, clues to the phenomenon of modern Japan were everywhere—drive, self-confidence, competence—but how did they fit together? Change was coming like an avalanche. Who could keep track?The best thing, she'd told herself, was to start with a clear head. Back off for a while. After all, the last year had been much toil and little play, with the latest book coming out, hassles at the university. She needed some unwinding. Maybe a little time spent thinking about nothing would be best of all.So for a day she lived off room service, immersed herself in the local papers, magazines, TV, and just relaxed. She let Allan's hints about some ominous new development slip way down the scale.One of the things she couldn't help noticing, though, was an odd stirring in the newspapers, something very much between the lines but all the more real for that very reason. In typical fashion, signals were going out that a major event was in store. The government, she knew, always used a kind of early-warning system for important shifts. Very Japanese. If the Bank of Japan was about to raise or lower interest rates, a move that would impact thousands of businesses and banks, for days in advance various unidentified "officials" would be quoted as speculating that maybe a change in rates might be possible. Of course they didn't actually say it was going to happen; they merely hinted it could be an idea to consider, it was plausible, conditions might well warrant . . . Anybody with any sense knew immediately this meant the decision was already made and citizens were being alerted to cover themselves posthaste.Consequently, if "government sources" start hinting an event is conceivably possible, you can usually assume it's as good as fact.But what was this about, she wondered, all these allusions to a new "interest" of the Emperor's? The standard elements were all there: leaks, guesswork, columns, unnamed "high sources." No doubt, something major was pending. And just to make sure nobody missed the importance of whatever it was, there was even speculation His Majesty might actually hold a press briefing.That last possibility, she decided, was clearly farfetched. Just not done. A picture session, maybe, but that was it.After a day of unwinding, she was ready to get out and start gathering some information. This time around, however, she wanted a different image. A shift from the staid-professor look to high-tech Japan. Start with a few clothes, something smashing/expensive/designer Japanese. And the hair. Right. A cut, a different style, a something.Thus around noon the third day she finally got into street clothes and headed down to the lobby, then teeming with lagged-out Aussies in funny tour hats. She took one look, ducked around them, then made for the lower arcade and the shops.And here she was. Already feeling recharged. Relaxed and …Just then a short, excited hotel porter ducked his head in, bowed, and announced he'd just heard that the Emperor was about to be on TV.His Majesty? The salon froze.At first Tam thought the porter must just be playing some kind of local prank. Arcade high jinks.Then she remembered the speculation in the papers. Could it be true? She glanced at her watch; it was a couple of minutes before twelve.The girls immediately dropped everything and clicked on the big Toshiba digital set suspended over the mirror. Service halted in midstream, just as in a soba noodle shop when the sumo wrestlers on the corner tube had finished glaring, thrown salt three times, and were ready to lunge. Then one of the hairdressers remembered Tam and—maybe still believing nogaijincould understand her language—reached down to snap on the small black-and-white Sony attached to the chair arm, tuned to CNN's Tokyo service. It was currently scrolling temperatures in the U.S.Now on the big Toshiba overhead, NHK (the government channel) was announcing they were about to switch to a remote broadcast, live, from the sacred Yasukuni Shrine.Uh, oh, she thought. Yasukuni! Has everybody here gone crazy?Back before 1945, Yasukuni had been a memorial to the "master race," official home of the new "State Shinto." Japan's militarists had revised traditional Shinto, a simple nature- reverence, to include violent nationalism, emperor worship, "the Yamato spirit," the "way of the samurai": every warlike aspect of national character. These days Yasukuni enshrined the names of Japan's two million heroic war dead, a roll call recently enlarged to include Tojo and others the U.S. later executed as criminals—which had turned the place into a political hot potato, resulting in an enormous flap when the prime minister tried to appear there in his official capacity. So, for the Emperor to show up suddenly, with heavy press coverage, was almost unthinkable. Besides, she'd just been by the place and hadn't noticed anything. This was very sudden.Then the remote came on. The front of the shrine was roped off, right across the bronzetoriigate, with only cameras and press allowed inside. On screen was a shot of an elaborate new dais where an official from the Imperial Household Agency, the government bureau that kept His Majesty under its care and schedules his appearances, was just finishing up a long-winded introduction. Then it was the prime minister's turn. After what seemed half an hour of absolutely content-less oratory (a Japanese politician's most respected skill) on the subject of the country's majestic Imperial past, the PM finally stepped aside to allow a tall, strikingly handsome Japanese man to approach the speaker's podium. Since the occasion had official significance, his walk was ceremonial, with his feet wide apart in the jerky samurai swagger necessitated in days of old by the two swords at the waist. Meanwhile, everybody around him was bowing low.His Imperial Majesty, wearing a formal male kimono, equivalent to morning dress at Ascot, looked truly august. He was also carrying a long silver box, filigreed.When he finally started to speak, the girls around Tam gasped in astonishment. She noticed immediately that he wasn't using modern Japanese. Instead, his language was an archaic, highly ornate dialect: the court speech of long ago.After his brief, almost unintelligible prologue, one of the Household officials opened the box for him and took out a long, scrolled document. The cameras did a quick close-up, showing a page of antique, flowered paper inscribed with brush and sumi ink.It turned out to be a letter in modern Japanese from the president of a financial organization called Dai Nippon, International. As the Emperor read it to the cameras, it began with a recounting of the loss of the Imperial sword in the Inland Sea during the 1185 battle of Dan-no-ura. That sword, it declared, signified Japan's physical link to a Divine past. . . .What? History 101 on TV?Then came the bomb.Abruptly CNN cut into their normal late-night programming for a live satellite report. Their reporter, grasping a mike and standing in front of the milling mob around the podium, was reading from a press handout that provided an English summary of the letter. Since the CNN signal was being flashed to the U.S. and then back to Japan on the "bird," effectively circling the globe, it was a few milliseconds behind the NHK broadcast. She turned up the sound.. . . noon here in Tokyo, and at this shrine sacred to all Japanese, His Majesty, the Emperor of Japan (Cut to shot of the Emperor speaking. Reporter voice-over.) has startled the nation by announcing that marine archeologists working for an investment organization called Dai Nippon, International have just succeeded in recovering a famous symbol of early Imperial rule. A three-year secret project in the Inland Sea, funded by DNI, culminated five days ago when scientists brought up a watertight gold case containing what is believed to be the original Imperial sword. (Cut back to reporter.) Although no photos of the sword have as yet been released, we are told it is in virtually mint condition. (Glances down to read from press release.) According to the ancient Japanese chronicles, this sword was given to Japan's first emperor by the Sun Goddess Amaterasu-Omikami, sometime around the year 600 B.C., as a symbol of his divinity. Historians say it was later lost at sea in the 1185 Battle of Dan-no-ura. That bloody naval episode, the subject of much Japanese lore and tradition, marked the end of direct Imperial authority here and the rise of the first shoguns, military governors who would rule in his name. . . .She rolled down the sound. Who needed some English press summary? She was watching the whole incredible event live as it unfolded. And her first thought was: Good God, that's like finding Excalibur, or maybe the Ark of the Covenant. Myth turned into reality. She glanced around the salon, and already the electricity in the air was crackling. But what happened next turned out to be the real news, the hidden agenda.After His Majesty finished reading the letter, he passed itto an underling and switched back to his ancient dialect. Now, though, his speech was being "translated" across the bottom of the screen into modern Japanese.He declared that since the Imperial Household, through the loyal services of Dai Nippon, International, had had restored to it that which it always possessed, namely the sword, he was pleased to honor the firm by allowing it to construct a new museum to house the sacred symbol at a site just outside Ise, home of the official shrine of the Sun Goddess. On his authority, ground-breaking for the museum would begin immediately. However, until such time as it was constructed and consecrated, the Imperial Household would make the sacred relic available under heavy guard for viewing by the Japanese people in a temporary showplace located at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. . . .By now shops had begun closing and the corridor outside was in tumult. An excited young clerk from the flower stall next door burst through the door and, bowing to everybody, lavished bouquets on all the girls. From the streets above came a cacophony of sirens.But it still wasn't over. The most crucial part of all, totally missed by the Western news force, was yet to come. After His Majesty was bowed away from the microphone, another official stepped forward to elaborate on the Emperor's remarks (probably because His Majesty would not deign to mention anything so crass as money). As reward for restoring the sword to His Majesty, he said, Dai Nippon would be allowed to serve as trustee of an official, honorary investment instrument, to be known as the Eight-Hundred-Year Fund. Acting for His Majesty, DNI would direct those monies into endeavors "commensurate with the nobility and ancient lineage of the Japanese people, as symbolized by the sword." Then a telephone number flashed across the bottom of the screen. The current subscription would be closed after eight hundred billion yen were pledged. The president of Dai Nippon had asked His Majesty for the honor of contributing the first billion yen personally. Finally, in a quick aside, he added that interest paid by the fund would of course be tax-free, as was normally the case for savings accounts in Japan.After a few closing formalities, interspersed with a photo session of the Emperor and the president of Dai Nippon, the historic occasion ended with a reverential shot of His Majesty being escorted to his limo.Who was that silver-haired executive, Tarn wondered. The man was audacious, and a genius. He'd just turned the Imperial Household into an accomplice in some kind of nationwide collection, using the Emperor for his own ends much the way shoguns of old had done.But she sensed he'd touched a nerve that went very deep. A fund in honor of the Emperor (that's already how everybody around her in the shop was describing it), something in which to take pride, not just a numbered savings account at the post office. Suddenly the girls and their Japanese customers were all talking money. Here was something they could do to show their regard for His Majesty.A line was already forming at the phone. The way she heard sums being pledged, she calculated Dai Nippon would garner five million yen, more than thirty thousand dollars, right there among the shampoos and curlers. The typical Japanese, she recalled, banked over a quarter of his or her disposable income. Little wonder most of them had at least a year's salary in savings. At this rate Dai Nippon's "Imperial Fund" would be over the top by nightfall.That evening NHK newscasts claimed it had been fully subscribed in the first fifty-six minutes. After all, eight hundred billion yen was only about six billion dollars, scarcely more than loose change to a people saving tens of millions every day. It was, in fact, merely the beginning. The next day more "Eight-Hundred-Year" funds were opened, by popular demand. Soon the pension funds started to feel the heat, and a lot of institutions began calling up. Yen flowed in a great river. All those homeless Japanese billions knocking around the world had at last found a guiding ideal. Some rumors even claimed the Emperor himself was actually going to manage the money.Tam couldn't wait to get outside and see firsthand what was going on. This was something Allan could never in his wildest dreams have predicted. As soon as she could get her hair dry she headed out; the girls didn't even bother to charge.Tokyo, twelve million strong, was in the streets. Even in normal times the city could be overwhelming, but now . . . It was in pandemonium, an advanced state of shock. As she struggled through the crowds a lot of men were waving sake flasks, already gleefully smashed. The sidewalks had become one vastmatsuri, festival.Something else, too. She found herself feeling a little uncomfortable. There were glares, and then as she passed a withered old man running a noodle stand, she heard him mutter "Gaijin." What did it mean?What it "meant," she reflected with alarm, was obvious. The world had just become a brand-new ball game. Japan's long-silent Emperor had once more spoken to his people, just as he had at the end of the War. Back then he had broken two thousand years of silence to inform his battered, starving subjects "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." This time around he had confirmed Japan's long Imperial heritage. The "meaning" was clear as day.This wasn't a new direction. This was just getting back on track. Even though the Emperor had been humiliated and secularized after the Great War against the threateninggaijin, his people still thought of themselves as a single, pure family. For a time they merely had no focus for that identity. Now they had it again.Well, she thought, why not? National pride. Not so long ago we Americans had the Soviets telling us we were second best, so we blew a few billion in tax money to plant a man on the moon and straighten them out. The space Super Bowl. Why should Japan be any different? For years now they've heard half the world claim they're just a bunch of hard-driving merchants with a bank-account soul, when they knew in their hearts it wasn't true. Now here's the proof, straight from the Sun Goddess. Time to get crazy awhile.In the middle of all the bedlam and horns and sirens in the street, she yearned for somebody to talk with, somebody levelheaded enough to put this frightening turnaround into some kind of perspective. That's when she thought of Ken.Of course! He was Westernized; he took the longer view. Why hadn't she thought of him right away?So off she went for a quick surprise visit with Kenji Asano at the Institute for New Generation Computer Technology, research headquarters for the Fifth Generation Systems Project. He and his staff would probably be in a holiday mood, just like everybody else. Maybe he'd loosen his tie and give her a little off-the-record rundown of what this was all about.She knew the Institute operated out of the twenty-first floor of a downtown Tokyo skyscraper. She'd been there before. She still had the address, and the subways were clicking along right on time, though the fare machines were off now in celebration. Half an hour later she was there. She pushed her way through the milling lobby and grabbed an elevator.As she rode, watching the lights tick off the floors, she found herself wondering again what Ken was really up to. And what had happened to Dr. Yoshida? However, it was hard to think about something as boring as MITI and American defense vulnerability when people were whooping it up and passing around paper cups of sake right there on the elevator.Well, don't jump to conclusions. This paranoia of Allan's is probably just some grotesque misreading. Dr. Yoshida got promoted, and Ken's merely filling in for a while till the Institute can recruit a new director from some university. The work here's too important for politics. Intelligent computers are Japan's lifeline—the "steam engine" of the next century.How would Ken react to her just showing up? After all, Kyoto was two years ago. He'd claimed to be a widower, but was that merely conference fast talk?Best thing is just to play it straight, she told herself. Strictly business. Let the rest fall out in time.As she stepped off the elevator, she was relieved to see that the offices were still open. Well, she thought, my first finding is that Ken Asano runs this place with an iron hand, just the way Yoshida did. Total dedication. Through floor-to-ceiling glass doors she could see the receptionist at the desk, now excitedly chatting on the phone. Tam waved, and the smiling woman immediately buzzed her through. Just like that. No different from the last time.Doesn't look to be any MITI conspiracy here, she thought. What exactly had made Allan so worried?She bowed and handed over her meishi, her business card."Asano-san, onegai shimasu."CHAPTER SIX"Matt, why don't you just send your action over to the 'bean pit’ for chrissake?" The phone line from Chicago crackled. "That's where the crapshooters are.""Jerry, I wouldn't know a soybean if I ate one.""Hell, half of those loonies over there buying and selling 'bean contracts wouldn't know one either. Come to think of it, I don't know anybody over on the Merc who's ever even seen a pork belly. Do they really exist?" He was yelling to make himself heard over the din of the floor of the Board of Trade. Futures on commodities were being bought and sold all around him. Just then he paused, followed by a louder yell. "Right, I'll buy five, at the market. Yeah. I'm talkin' one and thirteen bid. What? You've got to be kidding. No way." Pause. I could almost see the blue-jacketed floor traders frantically hand-signaling each other. Then he yelled again. "Christ, Frank, I'm already long forty at sixteen. I'm getting murdered here. You guys are killing me. . . . All right, all right, I'll pay fourteen for ten. Yeah . . . Shit. Hang on, Matt. I gotta write this down on a ticket. . . . Jesus, I should be selling Hondas like my brother-in-law down in Quincy. Sits on his butt all day, screws his bookkeeper at lunch, and the man's making a bundle." Pause. "Hell, Matt, what'd I just say?""If I heard right, you just bought ten thirty-year Treasury contracts at one oh one and fourteen thirty-seconds. You just agreed to loan the U.S. government a million dollars, Jerry. Very patriotic. Except you're probably going to turn around and unload the contracts in the next five minutes to somebody else.""Oh, yeah. Right. I should be so lucky. Christ, where's my pencil? This place is driving me nuts. I think my mind's going. I've gotta shorten up some here before the close. Hang on."He yelled at a runner to take his buy slip, then came back to the phone. "Matt, you're really shaking this place up, you know. Guys are starting to back away. And the people upstairs are beginning to wonder. You've gotta think about going off- exchange with some of this. Hit the market-maker banks. We can't keep up with you here. I could try to get the Exchange to waive their position limits, but don't hold your breath.""No problem, Jerry. My client's got plenty of other accounts. We'll roll the next thousand contracts through a different one.""Christ, whoever you're working for must have coconuts the size of King Kong. You realize you guys're naked here? You're getting short billions.""I just handle the orders, Jerry.""Your numbers scare the piss out of me just looking at them." He sighed. "Listen, Matt, take care. Get back to you tomorrow at the opening. Right now I've gotta find some greenhorn to take a few of these puppies off my hands or I'm gonna get blown out. Jesus, how'd I let myself get this long at sixteen? Forty fucking contracts. And I was sure . . . Hey, gotta run. Think I see some idiot over there signaling a seventeen bid. Kid must be from Mars.""Good luck.""Right. Maybe I'll try prayer." He was gone.I'd known Jerry Brighton since we crossed professional swords once in the late sixties, and I'd never seen the man actually sit down. He gave up law early, and these days he elbowed the mob in the Treasury bond futures pit with the grim determination of a horse addict shoving his way to the two-dollar window. If the bonds were sluggish, he'd roam the floor looking for action. Football, you name it. He'd make up bets. Rumor has it, one slow day he even set up a wager pool taking odds on which floor trader would be the next to go broke, "tap out" in Exchange parlance. I'd guess Jerry's own number was pretty low. A reliable source once told me Jerry'd averaged a million a year for the past five, even while taking a hit year before last for over two million when a certain famous "inside trader" sandbagged him with a phony merger rumor. Maybe it was worth the ulcers. Thing is, I know for a fact he'd have done it for nothing. A born market maker, right down to his rubber-soled Reeboks.So when Jerry Brighton started complaining that MatsuoNoda's action was growing too rich for his blood, I knew we were in the big time. It took a lot to impress a pro like him.The thing was getting scary, but it was still perfectly legal. Let me summarize roughly what had happened over the three weeks since I had decided to play along with Matsuo Noda. First were the physical arrangements. To accommodate my new calling, I'd enlarged my operating space—the back room of the brownstone's parlor floor, looking out over the garden— into a makeshift brokerage office complete with a multi-lined telephone and quote services from S-tron and Telerate. I'd also installed a direct tie-line to the T-bill pit of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, ditto the Note and Bond action at the Chicago Board of Trade. And because of all the computer hardware, I had to move Emma's desk out into the parlor. Consequently she could no longer listen in on my calls, which she did not take kindly. However, I was no longer forced to listen in on hers. I figure that sort of made us even.In addition, I'd set up accounts at every futures brokerage house in the land, both coasts, to spread out the orders. We were moving a lot of contracts, and the big-time outfits like Salomon Brothers were scrambling to make a market for us. Once again, therefore, nagging questions began to arise. Anybody who'd thought about it for more than a minute would have realized you can't make a play like Noda's without being noticed. There's no bigger rumor mill than the financial arena. The very idea of shorting the bond market to the tune of billions and remaining obscure and anonymous for any length of time was absurd. After all, there're two sides to every bet. But since I was supposed to be fronting his move specifically to throw sand in everybody's eyes, all this attention presented something of a quandary. Although we were trying to keep the lid on, buying small batches of Treasuries even as we were shorting them, the price was softening and margin calls were starting to loom on the horizon. None of this made any sense. Noda wasn't hedging or even speculating in the normal sense; he was playing a giant game of cat and mouse with the markets. This told me once again he wasn't showing all the cards in his hand. He had something major, and unexpected, in the pipeline.Which brought forth the next insight: Matsuo Noda didn't hire me merely because he wanted some innocent-seeming outsider to do his bidding in the futures market; any number of players in this town could have handled that action as well or better. No, he'd sucked me into his operation for some entirely different purpose, at the moment known only to him.But what? More to the point, why?Welcome to Friday, and my rather disturbed life. Want to know what really disturbed me the most? Seeing my new employer on CNN's Prime News, standing there right next to the Emperor of Japan. Seemed as though I wasn't the only one now under Noda's spell. All of a sudden my mild-mannered client had become a world-class Japanese mover and shaker. And that made me very nervous.Needing a little perspective, I decided to invite down Dr. William J. Henderson, respected thinker and booze hound. As it happened, he had a little time to kill that Friday before his "late date" with some advertising exec who was flying in from an assignment on the coast. Since three weeks had gone by since our talk up at Martell's, it seemed like a good occasion to get together and compare notes.True to his word, he had formally resigned from the President's Council of Economic Advisers, though he'd reluctantly agreed to serve as a forecasting consultant for Wharton Econometrics. He'd also caused some unsettling rumors in the world markets by putting on some very heavy "straddles" in December gold futures and oil. He called it insurance, predicting he'd be covered no matter what happened. Looked at another way, though, Bill Henderson was quietly shifting out of paper money and into commodities. And whenHendersonstarted hedging, you knew the weather forecast was unsettled to stormy.It turned out he'd also uncovered a few stray elements of what might well be a much bigger game. Nothing solid at that point, but enough to stir him up."Know who runs that outfit you've taken on as a client?" He leaned back in one of the leather chairs in the upstairs parlor, new pair of Gucci's glistening, and sampled his third drink. "Guy by the name of Matsuo Noda.""Henderson, who do you think I was talking to up at Sotheby's the other night?""You check your wallet afterward? We're talking heavy guns, my friend." He snubbed out what must have been his tenth Dunhill in the last hour. "You didn't tell me he was the honcho behind all this.""You didn't ask. Know anything about him?""Not till last week. I started to do a little checking and first thing I know I'm stumbling across his name everywhere I look." He studied the glass in his hand. "Tell you something about this Noda. The man drops a quarter, you let him pick it up himself. He'll nail you where the sun don't shine. Definitely a bad news mother.""You mean that business with the sword?""Nah, what in hell do I know about swords? That's your toy box. I'm talking about the real world, friend. Turns out Matsuo Noda was the prime mover in one of the biggest takeover plays of the century.""What takeover? They don't screw around with corporate takeovers in Japan.""They don't take each other over. They take other businesses over. Washington may think that war back in the forties is over, but somebody neglected to pass the word to MITI. Seems they've got the idea it was just the opening skirmish—the only folks who surrendered were the army and navy." Henderson grew ominously serious for a change. "Question is, where's this thing headed? Is the idea of turning our industrial base into a packaging operation for imports some kind of conspiracy, or is it just nature takin' its course?"Conspiracy? That wasn't a word Henderson threw around lightly. In fact, he tended to scoff at conspiracy theories, claiming they were a substitute for hardheaded analysis. I agreed. So what was he driving at? I pressed him.He paused to light a cigarette. "I bring up this unsavory possibility because I'm beginning to detect a little operation code-named 'eat an industry.'""Henderson, that's my game. I pitch in to help the little fish fend off the big ones.""No offense, friend, but you probably couldn't even get into the ball park where Noda and his boys are playing. We're talking the very big leagues here.""Now hold on a second. Noda's not interested in companies. He's just shooting a little craps. From what I've seen so far, the guy seems to be completely on the up-and-up. In fact, looked at from the long view, you might even say he's putting money into this country, never mind it's just the Wall Street casino.""Sure he is. It's like he first kicks the shit out of you, then hands you a Coke so's you'll feel refreshed.""What in hell are you talking about?""Well, let's back up a notch. Since I don't want to bad-mouth your new client, why don't you let me give you what I'll call a purely hypothetical case." He sipped at his Scotch. "Let's suppose you were a Japanese guy, like Matsuo Noda for instance, and you wanted to take over some strategic American industry and ship it to Japan. How'd you go about it?""Well . . .""Have a drink, counselor." He plunged forward. "And let me tell you a little fairy tale. About how Matsuo Noda ate the American semiconductor industry.""Noda?""It was MITI actually. But Noda was running the Ministry when they did it, and he was the guy who set up the play.""Noda ran MITI?" This was news to me."Yep. Vice minister. Then he went on to greener pastures, being the Japan Development Bank, and left the details to another MITI honcho by the name of Kenji Asano. According to my sources, though, it was Noda who handled the tricky part, the money, after he went over to the bank. Got it together, laundered it, and dispensed it.""Laundered it?""Can't think of a better word. MITI carefully made sure the kickoff funding from the Japan Development Bank got passed through a shell organization called the Japan Electronic Computer Company, hoping nobody would trace it back to the government.""I think you're starting to see things, but I'd like to hear this little fantasy.""Okay, off we go to the land of make-believe. Once upon a time not too long ago and not too far away, a few guys at Intel or Bell Labs or some damn place got the mind-boggling idea you could shrink down a computer's memory and put it onto a little sliver of silicon no bigger'n a horsefly's ass. Various outfits tinkered around with the concept and eventually it got commercialized. Lo and behold, Silicon Valley was born, where they start turning 'em out by the bucketful. By '78 we're talking a five-billion-dollar industry. Kids barely old enough to drink legal got so rich they just gave up counting the money.""The American dream, Herr Doktor.""That it was. Now, they were making a memory chip called a 16K RAM, that's sixteen thousand bits of Random Access Memory storage. Orders are pouring in, and they can't buy the BMW's fast enough out in Silicon Valley.""I know all about that.""Well, there's more. Seems Noda and Asano and their honchos at MITI had been watching this and thinking over the situation. They decided, probably rightly, that whoever's got the inside track on these computer chips has the future by the balls. Twenty years from now there's nothing gonna be made, except maybe wheelbarrows, that don't use these gadgets. So round about '75 they concluded they ought to be the ones in the driver's seat. MITI 'targeted' integrated circuits.""Well, why not? We're the ones told them they were supposed to be capitalists.""In truth. But just like in fairyland, our princess had a problem. See, these chips weren't as simple to copy as an internal combustion engine, or even a transistor. They're a heck of a lot more complicated. And to make things worse, back when America was inventin' these silicon marvels, nobody in Japan would've known one if it'd bit him on the butt. So it's a tall order." He crumpled an empty cigarette pack and reached in his coat for another. "Now, imagine you're these guys in MITI. You want to take over an industry you don't know the first thing about. How're you gonna start?""I'd probably begin by licensing the patents.""Nice try, but you don't want this job to be too straightforward. Then everybody'll suspect what's happening, and besides, it wouldn't be as much fun. So if you're this guy Noda, you decide to set up a sort of Manhattan Project, likeAmericahad to make the first A-bomb. You go over to see Nippon Telephone and Telegraph, their AT&T, and you say, 'Boys, we just decided you're gonna pitch in with all you got. After that, you commandeer some labs at Toshiba and NEC. Then you get yourself a batch of these little American gizmos and start trying to figure out how the hell they work."Hendersonpoured himself another drink, then turned back. "Now, since you need to catch up fast, you do a little 'reverse engineering,' which means you steal the other guy's R&D. You take a bunch apart and decide you'll go with the 16K RAM chip made by Mostek—a big outfit here that's since gone belly up, by the way, thanks to our friends at MITI. And by 1978 you've made yourself a Mostek clone. Bingo, you've got the technology.""I think I'm beginning to get the drift.""Whoa, buddy. You're just starting to get rolling." He forged on. "By this time everybody's wanting these chips, so all of a suddenSilicon Valleycan't keep up. Now you and your boys at MITI are ready to move. You've got the know-how, so all you need to do is start turning them out by the truckload. Of course that takes millions and millions in plant investment, so you do what Asano did, bring your old pal Noda back into the picture. Since he's now running the Japan Development Bank, he obligingly lines up a whole shit-load of cheap money for these outfits gearing up to chopAmerica's nuts off. All in all, he gets together what amounts to a subsidy of low interest bucks to the tune of about two billion dollars. All carefully laundered. Ready, set, go."Silicon Valleyglances up from countin' its receipts and all of a sudden, from out of nowhere, here come your Japanese chips. Reeeal cheap, since you've got all these cheapo 'loans' to capitalize your plants. Inside a year you've got nearly half the market."Now, you figure somebody's surely going to blow the whistle, so you can't believe your luck whenSilicon Valleythinks you're some kind of joke. Come on in, they say, and sell as many of those crappy 16K models you can, since we've got ourselves a hot 64K version cooking, and that's where we're gonna make our real killing. When you hear this, you do a quick retool. And while the Valley is seeing how sexy and expensive a design they can come up with, your thrifty gang back home just sticks together a bigger version of that 16K chip you stole from Mostek in the first place—and you're out front with a 64K. Now it's time for hardball, so you floodAmericawith these things. You drop the price of your 64K RAM chips from thirty dollars down to half a buck when they still cost over a dollar to make. Before you know it, you've got seventy percent of the American market.""You're selling at a loss. Dumping.""Exactly. 'Cause at this stage you don't care beans about profit. What you're going for is the big fish, market share."Hendersonlit yet another Dunhill. "And sure enough, when it comes to the next generation, the 256K memory chip, you've got ninety percent of the action. In very short order most of your American competition folds. You ate them. Matter of fact, Intel, which started it all, dropped out of RAM chips altogether—which is kind of like Xerox throwing in the towel on copiers. This is less than a decade after MITI's start-up, in an industry born in theUSA. Hi ho, silicon, away.""But it cost a bundle.""Short term, sure, but now the future's wide open. You live happily ever after, my friend, just like in fairyland, because big, badAmerica's dead and gone in the high volume end of semiconductors.""But MITI can't use dumping as a regular strategy. After all, it is illegal.""Well, now, ain't that a fact." He exhaled a lungful of smoke and coughed. "So's selling your ass. But just take yourself a cruise downEleventh Avenueand you'll meet up with a lot of entrepreneurial ladies who understand the reality of market forces. You've gotta get caught, tried, convicted. If it ever does get that far, the most that's gonna happen is a fine. A lot of folks claim MITI's dumped TVs, cars, steel, textiles, you name it. So when they decided to move on memory chips, Asano was given a free hand to do it the quickest way he knew how. And your buddy Noda ain't exactly a pussycat either, the way he laundered the Japanese taxpayer's money into them low-interest,mananaloans."As he returned to his Scotch, I sat there trying to think. WhatHendersonhad just described was a fundamental insight into how high-tech industries operate."Henderson, do you realize what you're saying? That's a beautiful way to knock out a country's high-tech research capability. Take away the volume end of an operation and there goes your cash. Pretty soon you can't afford to finance any more R&D. Which means that sooner or later you're selling yesterday's news. You can kiss good-bye to your technological edge, right across the board.""Correct.America's semiconductor boys were figuring to use the profits from memory chips to pay for research in logic chips, where you put a whole computer's wiring on a chip. But now the money's gone. What it really means is, end of ball game in information processing. Maybe it won't happen tomorrow, but there's no doubt it's just a matter of time. You dominate semiconductors, sooner or later you're just naturally gonna control computer technology and all that goes with it. I even met a guy a while back who claimed that whoever's ahead in computers is eventually going to have the say-so about who has advanced weapons technology."Could be, I thought. But that last extrapolation was a stretch. "Bill, I think you're talking a pretty long line of dominoes. For one thing, we've still got plenty of computer research here. TheU.S.has a big lead in logic chips.""True, true. Who the hell can crystal-ball this one? All I know is, Intel was claiming exactly the same thing about memory chips a few years back, just before Asano and Noda and their pals chewed them up and spit them out. All I'm saying is, you'd better watch your backside." He examined his drink and reached for the ice bucket.About that time Ben came lumbering up the stairs to observe our maudlin ruminations. I watched as he settled himself near my feet with a grunt, then plopped his chin down on his paws."Well, your fairy tale about MITI may or may not be true. But that's water over the dam. Besides, who are we to be pointing a finger? TheU.S.has done its share of tinkering with foreign governments, making the world safe for American shareholders.""Hey, I make a profession of separating pious pronouncements from reality. I never take an official story at face value.""Okay, so Noda says he's just playing the market. But if he's actually planning something else, then what is it?""Don't have the foggiest. Wish I did." He glanced at his watch. "But I do know duty's about to call. I'd better get uptown if I expect to have any female companionship for the apocalypse.""Take it easy. Nobody flies on schedule anymore." I settled back into my chair and glanced up at the large Japanese screen I had mounted on the wall opposite. It was Momoyama, around 1600, the time when the most recent crowd of shoguns took overJapan. Against a gilded background was a fierce eagle, perched menacingly on a pine branch. The thing was so powerful I just kept the rest of the room bare; nothing else I owned could stand up to it. "You know,Henderson, the trouble with your pattern is that it doesn't quite fit this time. Shorting Treasury futures is not exactly going after an industry. So what's the new angle?""Damned good question." He stared at his glass, probablywondering if one more for the road would impair his performance later on. I guess he concluded yes because he didn't budge. "Speaking of angles, what do you make of that sword business last week? Caused one hell of a flap inJapan, so I hear.""Major event. That sword should tell us a lot about early Japanese metal technology. I've been trying to find out more about it, but nobody's talking. No pictures, anything." I reached over and gave Ben a pat. "Curious though. I think I remember Noda's mentioning that sword the night I met him. Eight hundred years ago, the emperor gets caught at sea and loses the imperial symbol. But he didn't breathe a word about having a project underway to locate it.""Well, you're myJapanexpert. What's it all about?""Never assume you understand the Japanese mind." I pointed up at the wall. "Take a good look at the eagle on that screen. You'd think it's just a picture, but actually it's an important subliminal message. Thedaimyowho commissioned this piece had that eagle put on it to let everybody know he was cock of the walk. Means you cross him and you're dead. Symbols are important inJapan. Noda and this woman Mori talked a lot about shoguns and emperors. Maybe they hope the sword will somehow bring back the good old days.""Well, he's got enough money to do it.""Looks that way.""Hope we're not about to get kamikazes with a checkbook. Thoughts like that could make a man real nervous."Hendersonrose and strolled to the fireplace. He examined his reflection in the large mirror over the fireplace, then set down his glass on the mantelpiece and turned back. "You know, Walton, I think I'm starting to lose my touch. I don't believe anything I hear and only half of what I see." He sighed. "Been one hell of a day.""Pretty standard Friday, far as I could tell."'"Well, a damned strange thing happened this afternoon.""Some woman turn you down? Maybe you ought to start working out,Henderson, trim that little spare tire creeping in around the waistline.""Still no complaints in that department, friend. No, this actually goes back a ways, to a few months ago down inWashington, when I bumped into a long-haired professor coming out of a committee session. Guy I mentioned a minute ago.""The linkup between computers and weapons?""Him. We got to BS'ing in the men's room, and it turned out he was some computer hotshot from Stanford. He'd been testifying, I think, and he was still wound up. Probably I got to hear all the stuff he'd prepared and nobody'd asked.""What was the pitch?""Defense semiconductor dependency. Claimed that if we keep on the way we're going, relying more and more on foreigners for advanced chip technology, we may as well kiss the farm good-bye. I had a little time to kill, so I invited him to have a drink. He good as chewed my ear off. Finally had to fake a dinner date to get loose. Man had a bug six feet up his ass about theU.S.buying half the latest chips for our hot-dog military hardware fromJapan. Next war we fight, says he, we'll be buying high-tech weapons systems from theFar East. Problem with that is, anybody else could buy them too. And we'd get replacement parts whenever MITI feels like getting around to it. Today I happened to remember him, so I decided to give him a call, ask him if he still saw things the same wav."
"Kami wo araitai no desu ga. Ii desu ka?” Tam peered through the doorway and nodded hello to the girl in the blue Imperial Hotel uniform. The hair salon was almost empty. Perfect.
"Hai, so." The girl, startled at thegaijin’saccentless Japanese, bowed to the waist. "Dozo."
"Manikyua mo onegai shimasu." What the heck, Tam thought, why not go all the way, get a manicure too.
"Hai. Dozo." Another bob as the girl ushered her forward.
There was the plush, padded chair. Big, gray, and voluptuous. She sighed and settled back. Heaven. Perfect peace in the middle of hectic Tokyo. She knew that here for an hour or so she would be an honored guest, smothered with attention. One of the most incredible experiences in Japan.
While three of the girls began shampooing her hair, they went back to chattering about the new husband a matchmaker had just arranged for the petite assistant in the back. The bride-to-be was blushing and there were plenty of giggles all around, hands over mouths. Tam realized, though, that the girls were being a little circumspect. Who was this strange brunettegaijin, speaking Japanese with no accent. Maybe she understood what they were saying.
She did.
The woman who would become Tam Richardson was born Tamara no-name inKobe,Japan, the somewhat embarrassing result of an evening's diversion for an anonymous GI. Her mother, equally anonymous, had prudently given her over for adoption rather than face the social awkwardness of raising a fatherless, halfgaijinchild.
She was eventually adopted by Lieutenant Colonel Avery Richardson, U.S. Air Force, and his wife Mary, proud Iowa
stock, six years after she'd been stuck in the orphanage. That was during the latter days of the Occupation, but they'd stayed on inJapanthrough '54 while Lieutenant Colonel Richardson served as adviser for the rearming of what would be the Japanese Self Defense Forces. He'd also become a Japanophile by then, so he left her in a Japanese school rather than subjecting her to the "army brats" on the base. Finally they returned to the States, with a dark-eyed little daughter who'd spoken Japanese for almost a decade and being the achiever she was, read it virtually as well as a high-school graduate.
The thing she remembered best from all those years, though, was one word.Gaijin. It wasn't exactly that the modern Japanese considergaijininferior. They no longer dismiss Westerners as "red-bearded Barbarians." No,gaijinwere merely unfortunate, luckless folk not part of the earth's elect tribe. You were either born a part of Japan, a fullnihon-jin, or you were forever outside of it,gaijin.
But knowing it was one thing, and living it as a kid was something else. She wasn't one of them, and they made sure she got the message. Finally, however, she discovered the hidden secret of Japan. Most Japanese get very uncomfortable around agaijintoo fluent in their language or customs, since that outsider has penetrated their life without the constraint of relationships and obligations. Nogaijincan ever entirely belong to their seamless culture for one simple reason: no outsider could ever be held accountable to the powerful social and family interdependencies that allow a population half that of the U.S. to get along in a place functionally smaller than California. So to survive there if you're notnihon-jin, you just play that fact for all it's worth. Then, like everybody else, you've got a niche; yours merely happens to be outside the system. As an almost-nihon-jinyou're threatening; as agaijin, you're safe. She'd finally learned this the hard way, from all those unsmiling little girls in blue school uniforms who used to hiss "gaijin." But thanks to them, Tam Richardson learned to be a permanent outsider. And a survivor.
Well, here she was again, ready for another bout. Round- eyed "Tama-chan" all grown up and still on the outside.
Though she knew Tokyo well from times past, she was still trying to readjust. After checking into the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo's Hibiya section, she'd showered, changed, and headed out for some jogging—the best way she knew to see a lot of the
city quick. Her major puzzle: where to look for the new impulse behind Japan's big drive, their meteoric move toward the target ofdai ichi, "number one" in the world. Try to feel the vibes, she told herself, be a tourist and see the "New Japan" through fresh eyes. If it had been winter, she'd have gone straight over to Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park to watch the migratory Siberian waterfowl diving for fish among the clumps of floating ice. In spring she would have first monitored the radio to find out which park had the finest cherry blossoms, then gone somewhere else to avoid the sake-swilling crowds. And if it had been summer, she probably would have headed for the cool of the Imperial Palace East Gardens to catch the pink and red azaleas.
Autumn, though, was a time for swallowing the city whole. She started with the Meiji Shrine, that garish tribute to Japan's Westernization, then moved on to the Imperial Palace, itself a place that, like Tokyo itself, had something for all seasons. She passed through the East Gardens watching provincial honey- mooners snapping pictures for the parents back home, then worked her way across toward the Sakuradamon Gate so she could follow the Palace moat as she made her circuit back to the hotel. Along the way she passed the Diet Building and the Supreme Court, then decided to look in on the Yasukuni Shrine, buried in its own exquisite grove of cherry trees and mixed foliage. The massive bronzetoriiarch leading into the shrine was always surrounded by stalls selling those marvelous little rice cakes, sweet and leaden, she remembered as a kid. She stopped and bought two.
By then she was experiencing advanced jet lag, so she decided to head on back to her crisp-sheeted bed at the Imperial. Tokyo this time around was as impossible as always, maybe more so. Where do you start? The garish Ginza, the self-conscious trendiness of Roppongi, the skyscrapers of Shinjuku, solemn Marunouchi—all of it engulfing, awesomely materialistic. Each trip the city seemed to get bigger, louder, more everything. More cars, more neon, more . . . yes, more money. She could remember, almost, a time when this town was a burned-out ruin. Now . . .
She needed some time to think, to work out a game plan. Sure, clues to the phenomenon of modern Japan were everywhere—drive, self-confidence, competence—but how did they fit together? Change was coming like an avalanche. Who could keep track?
The best thing, she'd told herself, was to start with a clear head. Back off for a while. After all, the last year had been much toil and little play, with the latest book coming out, hassles at the university. She needed some unwinding. Maybe a little time spent thinking about nothing would be best of all.
So for a day she lived off room service, immersed herself in the local papers, magazines, TV, and just relaxed. She let Allan's hints about some ominous new development slip way down the scale.
One of the things she couldn't help noticing, though, was an odd stirring in the newspapers, something very much between the lines but all the more real for that very reason. In typical fashion, signals were going out that a major event was in store. The government, she knew, always used a kind of early-warning system for important shifts. Very Japanese. If the Bank of Japan was about to raise or lower interest rates, a move that would impact thousands of businesses and banks, for days in advance various unidentified "officials" would be quoted as speculating that maybe a change in rates might be possible. Of course they didn't actually say it was going to happen; they merely hinted it could be an idea to consider, it was plausible, conditions might well warrant . . . Anybody with any sense knew immediately this meant the decision was already made and citizens were being alerted to cover themselves posthaste.
Consequently, if "government sources" start hinting an event is conceivably possible, you can usually assume it's as good as fact.
But what was this about, she wondered, all these allusions to a new "interest" of the Emperor's? The standard elements were all there: leaks, guesswork, columns, unnamed "high sources." No doubt, something major was pending. And just to make sure nobody missed the importance of whatever it was, there was even speculation His Majesty might actually hold a press briefing.
That last possibility, she decided, was clearly farfetched. Just not done. A picture session, maybe, but that was it.
After a day of unwinding, she was ready to get out and start gathering some information. This time around, however, she wanted a different image. A shift from the staid-professor look to high-tech Japan. Start with a few clothes, something smashing/expensive/designer Japanese. And the hair. Right. A cut, a different style, a something.
Thus around noon the third day she finally got into street clothes and headed down to the lobby, then teeming with lagged-out Aussies in funny tour hats. She took one look, ducked around them, then made for the lower arcade and the shops.
And here she was. Already feeling recharged. Relaxed and …
Just then a short, excited hotel porter ducked his head in, bowed, and announced he'd just heard that the Emperor was about to be on TV.
His Majesty? The salon froze.
At first Tam thought the porter must just be playing some kind of local prank. Arcade high jinks.
Then she remembered the speculation in the papers. Could it be true? She glanced at her watch; it was a couple of minutes before twelve.
The girls immediately dropped everything and clicked on the big Toshiba digital set suspended over the mirror. Service halted in midstream, just as in a soba noodle shop when the sumo wrestlers on the corner tube had finished glaring, thrown salt three times, and were ready to lunge. Then one of the hairdressers remembered Tam and—maybe still believing nogaijincould understand her language—reached down to snap on the small black-and-white Sony attached to the chair arm, tuned to CNN's Tokyo service. It was currently scrolling temperatures in the U.S.
Now on the big Toshiba overhead, NHK (the government channel) was announcing they were about to switch to a remote broadcast, live, from the sacred Yasukuni Shrine.
Uh, oh, she thought. Yasukuni! Has everybody here gone crazy?
Back before 1945, Yasukuni had been a memorial to the "master race," official home of the new "State Shinto." Japan's militarists had revised traditional Shinto, a simple nature- reverence, to include violent nationalism, emperor worship, "the Yamato spirit," the "way of the samurai": every warlike aspect of national character. These days Yasukuni enshrined the names of Japan's two million heroic war dead, a roll call recently enlarged to include Tojo and others the U.S. later executed as criminals—which had turned the place into a political hot potato, resulting in an enormous flap when the prime minister tried to appear there in his official capacity. So, for the Emperor to show up suddenly, with heavy press coverage, was almost unthinkable. Besides, she'd just been by the place and hadn't noticed anything. This was very sudden.
Then the remote came on. The front of the shrine was roped off, right across the bronzetoriigate, with only cameras and press allowed inside. On screen was a shot of an elaborate new dais where an official from the Imperial Household Agency, the government bureau that kept His Majesty under its care and schedules his appearances, was just finishing up a long-winded introduction. Then it was the prime minister's turn. After what seemed half an hour of absolutely content-less oratory (a Japanese politician's most respected skill) on the subject of the country's majestic Imperial past, the PM finally stepped aside to allow a tall, strikingly handsome Japanese man to approach the speaker's podium. Since the occasion had official significance, his walk was ceremonial, with his feet wide apart in the jerky samurai swagger necessitated in days of old by the two swords at the waist. Meanwhile, everybody around him was bowing low.
His Imperial Majesty, wearing a formal male kimono, equivalent to morning dress at Ascot, looked truly august. He was also carrying a long silver box, filigreed.
When he finally started to speak, the girls around Tam gasped in astonishment. She noticed immediately that he wasn't using modern Japanese. Instead, his language was an archaic, highly ornate dialect: the court speech of long ago.
After his brief, almost unintelligible prologue, one of the Household officials opened the box for him and took out a long, scrolled document. The cameras did a quick close-up, showing a page of antique, flowered paper inscribed with brush and sumi ink.
It turned out to be a letter in modern Japanese from the president of a financial organization called Dai Nippon, International. As the Emperor read it to the cameras, it began with a recounting of the loss of the Imperial sword in the Inland Sea during the 1185 battle of Dan-no-ura. That sword, it declared, signified Japan's physical link to a Divine past. . . .
What? History 101 on TV?
Then came the bomb.
Abruptly CNN cut into their normal late-night programming for a live satellite report. Their reporter, grasping a mike and standing in front of the milling mob around the podium, was reading from a press handout that provided an English summary of the letter. Since the CNN signal was being flashed to the U.S. and then back to Japan on the "bird," effectively circling the globe, it was a few milliseconds behind the NHK broadcast. She turned up the sound.
. . . noon here in Tokyo, and at this shrine sacred to all Japanese, His Majesty, the Emperor of Japan (Cut to shot of the Emperor speaking. Reporter voice-over.) has startled the nation by announcing that marine archeologists working for an investment organization called Dai Nippon, International have just succeeded in recovering a famous symbol of early Imperial rule. A three-year secret project in the Inland Sea, funded by DNI, culminated five days ago when scientists brought up a watertight gold case containing what is believed to be the original Imperial sword. (Cut back to reporter.) Although no photos of the sword have as yet been released, we are told it is in virtually mint condition. (Glances down to read from press release.) According to the ancient Japanese chronicles, this sword was given to Japan's first emperor by the Sun Goddess Amaterasu-Omikami, sometime around the year 600 B.C., as a symbol of his divinity. Historians say it was later lost at sea in the 1185 Battle of Dan-no-ura. That bloody naval episode, the subject of much Japanese lore and tradition, marked the end of direct Imperial authority here and the rise of the first shoguns, military governors who would rule in his name. . . .
She rolled down the sound. Who needed some English press summary? She was watching the whole incredible event live as it unfolded. And her first thought was: Good God, that's like finding Excalibur, or maybe the Ark of the Covenant. Myth turned into reality. She glanced around the salon, and already the electricity in the air was crackling. But what happened next turned out to be the real news, the hidden agenda.
After His Majesty finished reading the letter, he passed it
to an underling and switched back to his ancient dialect. Now, though, his speech was being "translated" across the bottom of the screen into modern Japanese.
He declared that since the Imperial Household, through the loyal services of Dai Nippon, International, had had restored to it that which it always possessed, namely the sword, he was pleased to honor the firm by allowing it to construct a new museum to house the sacred symbol at a site just outside Ise, home of the official shrine of the Sun Goddess. On his authority, ground-breaking for the museum would begin immediately. However, until such time as it was constructed and consecrated, the Imperial Household would make the sacred relic available under heavy guard for viewing by the Japanese people in a temporary showplace located at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. . . .
By now shops had begun closing and the corridor outside was in tumult. An excited young clerk from the flower stall next door burst through the door and, bowing to everybody, lavished bouquets on all the girls. From the streets above came a cacophony of sirens.
But it still wasn't over. The most crucial part of all, totally missed by the Western news force, was yet to come. After His Majesty was bowed away from the microphone, another official stepped forward to elaborate on the Emperor's remarks (probably because His Majesty would not deign to mention anything so crass as money). As reward for restoring the sword to His Majesty, he said, Dai Nippon would be allowed to serve as trustee of an official, honorary investment instrument, to be known as the Eight-Hundred-Year Fund. Acting for His Majesty, DNI would direct those monies into endeavors "commensurate with the nobility and ancient lineage of the Japanese people, as symbolized by the sword." Then a telephone number flashed across the bottom of the screen. The current subscription would be closed after eight hundred billion yen were pledged. The president of Dai Nippon had asked His Majesty for the honor of contributing the first billion yen personally. Finally, in a quick aside, he added that interest paid by the fund would of course be tax-free, as was normally the case for savings accounts in Japan.
After a few closing formalities, interspersed with a photo session of the Emperor and the president of Dai Nippon, the historic occasion ended with a reverential shot of His Majesty being escorted to his limo.
Who was that silver-haired executive, Tarn wondered. The man was audacious, and a genius. He'd just turned the Imperial Household into an accomplice in some kind of nationwide collection, using the Emperor for his own ends much the way shoguns of old had done.
But she sensed he'd touched a nerve that went very deep. A fund in honor of the Emperor (that's already how everybody around her in the shop was describing it), something in which to take pride, not just a numbered savings account at the post office. Suddenly the girls and their Japanese customers were all talking money. Here was something they could do to show their regard for His Majesty.
A line was already forming at the phone. The way she heard sums being pledged, she calculated Dai Nippon would garner five million yen, more than thirty thousand dollars, right there among the shampoos and curlers. The typical Japanese, she recalled, banked over a quarter of his or her disposable income. Little wonder most of them had at least a year's salary in savings. At this rate Dai Nippon's "Imperial Fund" would be over the top by nightfall.
That evening NHK newscasts claimed it had been fully subscribed in the first fifty-six minutes. After all, eight hundred billion yen was only about six billion dollars, scarcely more than loose change to a people saving tens of millions every day. It was, in fact, merely the beginning. The next day more "Eight-Hundred-Year" funds were opened, by popular demand. Soon the pension funds started to feel the heat, and a lot of institutions began calling up. Yen flowed in a great river. All those homeless Japanese billions knocking around the world had at last found a guiding ideal. Some rumors even claimed the Emperor himself was actually going to manage the money.
Tam couldn't wait to get outside and see firsthand what was going on. This was something Allan could never in his wildest dreams have predicted. As soon as she could get her hair dry she headed out; the girls didn't even bother to charge.
Tokyo, twelve million strong, was in the streets. Even in normal times the city could be overwhelming, but now . . . It was in pandemonium, an advanced state of shock. As she struggled through the crowds a lot of men were waving sake flasks, already gleefully smashed. The sidewalks had become one vastmatsuri, festival.
Something else, too. She found herself feeling a little uncomfortable. There were glares, and then as she passed a withered old man running a noodle stand, she heard him mutter "Gaijin." What did it mean?
What it "meant," she reflected with alarm, was obvious. The world had just become a brand-new ball game. Japan's long-silent Emperor had once more spoken to his people, just as he had at the end of the War. Back then he had broken two thousand years of silence to inform his battered, starving subjects "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." This time around he had confirmed Japan's long Imperial heritage. The "meaning" was clear as day.
This wasn't a new direction. This was just getting back on track. Even though the Emperor had been humiliated and secularized after the Great War against the threateninggaijin, his people still thought of themselves as a single, pure family. For a time they merely had no focus for that identity. Now they had it again.
Well, she thought, why not? National pride. Not so long ago we Americans had the Soviets telling us we were second best, so we blew a few billion in tax money to plant a man on the moon and straighten them out. The space Super Bowl. Why should Japan be any different? For years now they've heard half the world claim they're just a bunch of hard-driving merchants with a bank-account soul, when they knew in their hearts it wasn't true. Now here's the proof, straight from the Sun Goddess. Time to get crazy awhile.
In the middle of all the bedlam and horns and sirens in the street, she yearned for somebody to talk with, somebody levelheaded enough to put this frightening turnaround into some kind of perspective. That's when she thought of Ken.
Of course! He was Westernized; he took the longer view. Why hadn't she thought of him right away?
So off she went for a quick surprise visit with Kenji Asano at the Institute for New Generation Computer Technology, research headquarters for the Fifth Generation Systems Project. He and his staff would probably be in a holiday mood, just like everybody else. Maybe he'd loosen his tie and give her a little off-the-record rundown of what this was all about.
She knew the Institute operated out of the twenty-first floor of a downtown Tokyo skyscraper. She'd been there before. She still had the address, and the subways were clicking along right on time, though the fare machines were off now in celebration. Half an hour later she was there. She pushed her way through the milling lobby and grabbed an elevator.
As she rode, watching the lights tick off the floors, she found herself wondering again what Ken was really up to. And what had happened to Dr. Yoshida? However, it was hard to think about something as boring as MITI and American defense vulnerability when people were whooping it up and passing around paper cups of sake right there on the elevator.
Well, don't jump to conclusions. This paranoia of Allan's is probably just some grotesque misreading. Dr. Yoshida got promoted, and Ken's merely filling in for a while till the Institute can recruit a new director from some university. The work here's too important for politics. Intelligent computers are Japan's lifeline—the "steam engine" of the next century.
How would Ken react to her just showing up? After all, Kyoto was two years ago. He'd claimed to be a widower, but was that merely conference fast talk?
Best thing is just to play it straight, she told herself. Strictly business. Let the rest fall out in time.
As she stepped off the elevator, she was relieved to see that the offices were still open. Well, she thought, my first finding is that Ken Asano runs this place with an iron hand, just the way Yoshida did. Total dedication. Through floor-to-ceiling glass doors she could see the receptionist at the desk, now excitedly chatting on the phone. Tam waved, and the smiling woman immediately buzzed her through. Just like that. No different from the last time.
Doesn't look to be any MITI conspiracy here, she thought. What exactly had made Allan so worried?
She bowed and handed over her meishi, her business card.
"Asano-san, onegai shimasu."
"Matt, why don't you just send your action over to the 'bean pit’ for chrissake?" The phone line from Chicago crackled. "That's where the crapshooters are."
"Jerry, I wouldn't know a soybean if I ate one."
"Hell, half of those loonies over there buying and selling 'bean contracts wouldn't know one either. Come to think of it, I don't know anybody over on the Merc who's ever even seen a pork belly. Do they really exist?" He was yelling to make himself heard over the din of the floor of the Board of Trade. Futures on commodities were being bought and sold all around him. Just then he paused, followed by a louder yell. "Right, I'll buy five, at the market. Yeah. I'm talkin' one and thirteen bid. What? You've got to be kidding. No way." Pause. I could almost see the blue-jacketed floor traders frantically hand-signaling each other. Then he yelled again. "Christ, Frank, I'm already long forty at sixteen. I'm getting murdered here. You guys are killing me. . . . All right, all right, I'll pay fourteen for ten. Yeah . . . Shit. Hang on, Matt. I gotta write this down on a ticket. . . . Jesus, I should be selling Hondas like my brother-in-law down in Quincy. Sits on his butt all day, screws his bookkeeper at lunch, and the man's making a bundle." Pause. "Hell, Matt, what'd I just say?"
"If I heard right, you just bought ten thirty-year Treasury contracts at one oh one and fourteen thirty-seconds. You just agreed to loan the U.S. government a million dollars, Jerry. Very patriotic. Except you're probably going to turn around and unload the contracts in the next five minutes to somebody else."
"Oh, yeah. Right. I should be so lucky. Christ, where's my pencil? This place is driving me nuts. I think my mind's going. I've gotta shorten up some here before the close. Hang on."
He yelled at a runner to take his buy slip, then came back to the phone. "Matt, you're really shaking this place up, you know. Guys are starting to back away. And the people upstairs are beginning to wonder. You've gotta think about going off- exchange with some of this. Hit the market-maker banks. We can't keep up with you here. I could try to get the Exchange to waive their position limits, but don't hold your breath."
"No problem, Jerry. My client's got plenty of other accounts. We'll roll the next thousand contracts through a different one."
"Christ, whoever you're working for must have coconuts the size of King Kong. You realize you guys're naked here? You're getting short billions."
"I just handle the orders, Jerry."
"Your numbers scare the piss out of me just looking at them." He sighed. "Listen, Matt, take care. Get back to you tomorrow at the opening. Right now I've gotta find some greenhorn to take a few of these puppies off my hands or I'm gonna get blown out. Jesus, how'd I let myself get this long at sixteen? Forty fucking contracts. And I was sure . . . Hey, gotta run. Think I see some idiot over there signaling a seventeen bid. Kid must be from Mars."
"Good luck."
"Right. Maybe I'll try prayer." He was gone.
I'd known Jerry Brighton since we crossed professional swords once in the late sixties, and I'd never seen the man actually sit down. He gave up law early, and these days he elbowed the mob in the Treasury bond futures pit with the grim determination of a horse addict shoving his way to the two-dollar window. If the bonds were sluggish, he'd roam the floor looking for action. Football, you name it. He'd make up bets. Rumor has it, one slow day he even set up a wager pool taking odds on which floor trader would be the next to go broke, "tap out" in Exchange parlance. I'd guess Jerry's own number was pretty low. A reliable source once told me Jerry'd averaged a million a year for the past five, even while taking a hit year before last for over two million when a certain famous "inside trader" sandbagged him with a phony merger rumor. Maybe it was worth the ulcers. Thing is, I know for a fact he'd have done it for nothing. A born market maker, right down to his rubber-soled Reeboks.
So when Jerry Brighton started complaining that Matsuo
Noda's action was growing too rich for his blood, I knew we were in the big time. It took a lot to impress a pro like him.
The thing was getting scary, but it was still perfectly legal. Let me summarize roughly what had happened over the three weeks since I had decided to play along with Matsuo Noda. First were the physical arrangements. To accommodate my new calling, I'd enlarged my operating space—the back room of the brownstone's parlor floor, looking out over the garden— into a makeshift brokerage office complete with a multi-lined telephone and quote services from S-tron and Telerate. I'd also installed a direct tie-line to the T-bill pit of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, ditto the Note and Bond action at the Chicago Board of Trade. And because of all the computer hardware, I had to move Emma's desk out into the parlor. Consequently she could no longer listen in on my calls, which she did not take kindly. However, I was no longer forced to listen in on hers. I figure that sort of made us even.
In addition, I'd set up accounts at every futures brokerage house in the land, both coasts, to spread out the orders. We were moving a lot of contracts, and the big-time outfits like Salomon Brothers were scrambling to make a market for us. Once again, therefore, nagging questions began to arise. Anybody who'd thought about it for more than a minute would have realized you can't make a play like Noda's without being noticed. There's no bigger rumor mill than the financial arena. The very idea of shorting the bond market to the tune of billions and remaining obscure and anonymous for any length of time was absurd. After all, there're two sides to every bet. But since I was supposed to be fronting his move specifically to throw sand in everybody's eyes, all this attention presented something of a quandary. Although we were trying to keep the lid on, buying small batches of Treasuries even as we were shorting them, the price was softening and margin calls were starting to loom on the horizon. None of this made any sense. Noda wasn't hedging or even speculating in the normal sense; he was playing a giant game of cat and mouse with the markets. This told me once again he wasn't showing all the cards in his hand. He had something major, and unexpected, in the pipeline.
Which brought forth the next insight: Matsuo Noda didn't hire me merely because he wanted some innocent-seeming outsider to do his bidding in the futures market; any number of players in this town could have handled that action as well or better. No, he'd sucked me into his operation for some entirely different purpose, at the moment known only to him.
But what? More to the point, why?
Welcome to Friday, and my rather disturbed life. Want to know what really disturbed me the most? Seeing my new employer on CNN's Prime News, standing there right next to the Emperor of Japan. Seemed as though I wasn't the only one now under Noda's spell. All of a sudden my mild-mannered client had become a world-class Japanese mover and shaker. And that made me very nervous.
Needing a little perspective, I decided to invite down Dr. William J. Henderson, respected thinker and booze hound. As it happened, he had a little time to kill that Friday before his "late date" with some advertising exec who was flying in from an assignment on the coast. Since three weeks had gone by since our talk up at Martell's, it seemed like a good occasion to get together and compare notes.
True to his word, he had formally resigned from the President's Council of Economic Advisers, though he'd reluctantly agreed to serve as a forecasting consultant for Wharton Econometrics. He'd also caused some unsettling rumors in the world markets by putting on some very heavy "straddles" in December gold futures and oil. He called it insurance, predicting he'd be covered no matter what happened. Looked at another way, though, Bill Henderson was quietly shifting out of paper money and into commodities. And whenHendersonstarted hedging, you knew the weather forecast was unsettled to stormy.
It turned out he'd also uncovered a few stray elements of what might well be a much bigger game. Nothing solid at that point, but enough to stir him up.
"Know who runs that outfit you've taken on as a client?" He leaned back in one of the leather chairs in the upstairs parlor, new pair of Gucci's glistening, and sampled his third drink. "Guy by the name of Matsuo Noda."
"Henderson, who do you think I was talking to up at Sotheby's the other night?"
"You check your wallet afterward? We're talking heavy guns, my friend." He snubbed out what must have been his tenth Dunhill in the last hour. "You didn't tell me he was the honcho behind all this."
"You didn't ask. Know anything about him?"
"Not till last week. I started to do a little checking and first thing I know I'm stumbling across his name everywhere I look." He studied the glass in his hand. "Tell you something about this Noda. The man drops a quarter, you let him pick it up himself. He'll nail you where the sun don't shine. Definitely a bad news mother."
"You mean that business with the sword?"
"Nah, what in hell do I know about swords? That's your toy box. I'm talking about the real world, friend. Turns out Matsuo Noda was the prime mover in one of the biggest takeover plays of the century."
"What takeover? They don't screw around with corporate takeovers in Japan."
"They don't take each other over. They take other businesses over. Washington may think that war back in the forties is over, but somebody neglected to pass the word to MITI. Seems they've got the idea it was just the opening skirmish—the only folks who surrendered were the army and navy." Henderson grew ominously serious for a change. "Question is, where's this thing headed? Is the idea of turning our industrial base into a packaging operation for imports some kind of conspiracy, or is it just nature takin' its course?"
Conspiracy? That wasn't a word Henderson threw around lightly. In fact, he tended to scoff at conspiracy theories, claiming they were a substitute for hardheaded analysis. I agreed. So what was he driving at? I pressed him.
He paused to light a cigarette. "I bring up this unsavory possibility because I'm beginning to detect a little operation code-named 'eat an industry.'"
"Henderson, that's my game. I pitch in to help the little fish fend off the big ones."
"No offense, friend, but you probably couldn't even get into the ball park where Noda and his boys are playing. We're talking the very big leagues here."
"Now hold on a second. Noda's not interested in companies. He's just shooting a little craps. From what I've seen so far, the guy seems to be completely on the up-and-up. In fact, looked at from the long view, you might even say he's putting money into this country, never mind it's just the Wall Street casino."
"Sure he is. It's like he first kicks the shit out of you, then hands you a Coke so's you'll feel refreshed."
"What in hell are you talking about?"
"Well, let's back up a notch. Since I don't want to bad-mouth your new client, why don't you let me give you what I'll call a purely hypothetical case." He sipped at his Scotch. "Let's suppose you were a Japanese guy, like Matsuo Noda for instance, and you wanted to take over some strategic American industry and ship it to Japan. How'd you go about it?"
"Well . . ."
"Have a drink, counselor." He plunged forward. "And let me tell you a little fairy tale. About how Matsuo Noda ate the American semiconductor industry."
"Noda?"
"It was MITI actually. But Noda was running the Ministry when they did it, and he was the guy who set up the play."
"Noda ran MITI?" This was news to me.
"Yep. Vice minister. Then he went on to greener pastures, being the Japan Development Bank, and left the details to another MITI honcho by the name of Kenji Asano. According to my sources, though, it was Noda who handled the tricky part, the money, after he went over to the bank. Got it together, laundered it, and dispensed it."
"Laundered it?"
"Can't think of a better word. MITI carefully made sure the kickoff funding from the Japan Development Bank got passed through a shell organization called the Japan Electronic Computer Company, hoping nobody would trace it back to the government."
"I think you're starting to see things, but I'd like to hear this little fantasy."
"Okay, off we go to the land of make-believe. Once upon a time not too long ago and not too far away, a few guys at Intel or Bell Labs or some damn place got the mind-boggling idea you could shrink down a computer's memory and put it onto a little sliver of silicon no bigger'n a horsefly's ass. Various outfits tinkered around with the concept and eventually it got commercialized. Lo and behold, Silicon Valley was born, where they start turning 'em out by the bucketful. By '78 we're talking a five-billion-dollar industry. Kids barely old enough to drink legal got so rich they just gave up counting the money."
"The American dream, Herr Doktor."
"That it was. Now, they were making a memory chip called a 16K RAM, that's sixteen thousand bits of Random Access Memory storage. Orders are pouring in, and they can't buy the BMW's fast enough out in Silicon Valley."
"I know all about that."
"Well, there's more. Seems Noda and Asano and their honchos at MITI had been watching this and thinking over the situation. They decided, probably rightly, that whoever's got the inside track on these computer chips has the future by the balls. Twenty years from now there's nothing gonna be made, except maybe wheelbarrows, that don't use these gadgets. So round about '75 they concluded they ought to be the ones in the driver's seat. MITI 'targeted' integrated circuits."
"Well, why not? We're the ones told them they were supposed to be capitalists."
"In truth. But just like in fairyland, our princess had a problem. See, these chips weren't as simple to copy as an internal combustion engine, or even a transistor. They're a heck of a lot more complicated. And to make things worse, back when America was inventin' these silicon marvels, nobody in Japan would've known one if it'd bit him on the butt. So it's a tall order." He crumpled an empty cigarette pack and reached in his coat for another. "Now, imagine you're these guys in MITI. You want to take over an industry you don't know the first thing about. How're you gonna start?"
"I'd probably begin by licensing the patents."
"Nice try, but you don't want this job to be too straightforward. Then everybody'll suspect what's happening, and besides, it wouldn't be as much fun. So if you're this guy Noda, you decide to set up a sort of Manhattan Project, likeAmericahad to make the first A-bomb. You go over to see Nippon Telephone and Telegraph, their AT&T, and you say, 'Boys, we just decided you're gonna pitch in with all you got. After that, you commandeer some labs at Toshiba and NEC. Then you get yourself a batch of these little American gizmos and start trying to figure out how the hell they work."
Hendersonpoured himself another drink, then turned back. "Now, since you need to catch up fast, you do a little 'reverse engineering,' which means you steal the other guy's R&D. You take a bunch apart and decide you'll go with the 16K RAM chip made by Mostek—a big outfit here that's since gone belly up, by the way, thanks to our friends at MITI. And by 1978 you've made yourself a Mostek clone. Bingo, you've got the technology."
"I think I'm beginning to get the drift."
"Whoa, buddy. You're just starting to get rolling." He forged on. "By this time everybody's wanting these chips, so all of a suddenSilicon Valleycan't keep up. Now you and your boys at MITI are ready to move. You've got the know-how, so all you need to do is start turning them out by the truckload. Of course that takes millions and millions in plant investment, so you do what Asano did, bring your old pal Noda back into the picture. Since he's now running the Japan Development Bank, he obligingly lines up a whole shit-load of cheap money for these outfits gearing up to chopAmerica's nuts off. All in all, he gets together what amounts to a subsidy of low interest bucks to the tune of about two billion dollars. All carefully laundered. Ready, set, go.
"Silicon Valleyglances up from countin' its receipts and all of a sudden, from out of nowhere, here come your Japanese chips. Reeeal cheap, since you've got all these cheapo 'loans' to capitalize your plants. Inside a year you've got nearly half the market.
"Now, you figure somebody's surely going to blow the whistle, so you can't believe your luck whenSilicon Valleythinks you're some kind of joke. Come on in, they say, and sell as many of those crappy 16K models you can, since we've got ourselves a hot 64K version cooking, and that's where we're gonna make our real killing. When you hear this, you do a quick retool. And while the Valley is seeing how sexy and expensive a design they can come up with, your thrifty gang back home just sticks together a bigger version of that 16K chip you stole from Mostek in the first place—and you're out front with a 64K. Now it's time for hardball, so you floodAmericawith these things. You drop the price of your 64K RAM chips from thirty dollars down to half a buck when they still cost over a dollar to make. Before you know it, you've got seventy percent of the American market."
"You're selling at a loss. Dumping."
"Exactly. 'Cause at this stage you don't care beans about profit. What you're going for is the big fish, market share."Hendersonlit yet another Dunhill. "And sure enough, when it comes to the next generation, the 256K memory chip, you've got ninety percent of the action. In very short order most of your American competition folds. You ate them. Matter of fact, Intel, which started it all, dropped out of RAM chips altogether—which is kind of like Xerox throwing in the towel on copiers. This is less than a decade after MITI's start-up, in an industry born in theUSA. Hi ho, silicon, away."
"But it cost a bundle."
"Short term, sure, but now the future's wide open. You live happily ever after, my friend, just like in fairyland, because big, badAmerica's dead and gone in the high volume end of semiconductors."
"But MITI can't use dumping as a regular strategy. After all, it is illegal."
"Well, now, ain't that a fact." He exhaled a lungful of smoke and coughed. "So's selling your ass. But just take yourself a cruise downEleventh Avenueand you'll meet up with a lot of entrepreneurial ladies who understand the reality of market forces. You've gotta get caught, tried, convicted. If it ever does get that far, the most that's gonna happen is a fine. A lot of folks claim MITI's dumped TVs, cars, steel, textiles, you name it. So when they decided to move on memory chips, Asano was given a free hand to do it the quickest way he knew how. And your buddy Noda ain't exactly a pussycat either, the way he laundered the Japanese taxpayer's money into them low-interest,mananaloans."
As he returned to his Scotch, I sat there trying to think. WhatHendersonhad just described was a fundamental insight into how high-tech industries operate.
"Henderson, do you realize what you're saying? That's a beautiful way to knock out a country's high-tech research capability. Take away the volume end of an operation and there goes your cash. Pretty soon you can't afford to finance any more R&D. Which means that sooner or later you're selling yesterday's news. You can kiss good-bye to your technological edge, right across the board."
"Correct.America's semiconductor boys were figuring to use the profits from memory chips to pay for research in logic chips, where you put a whole computer's wiring on a chip. But now the money's gone. What it really means is, end of ball game in information processing. Maybe it won't happen tomorrow, but there's no doubt it's just a matter of time. You dominate semiconductors, sooner or later you're just naturally gonna control computer technology and all that goes with it. I even met a guy a while back who claimed that whoever's ahead in computers is eventually going to have the say-so about who has advanced weapons technology."
Could be, I thought. But that last extrapolation was a stretch. "Bill, I think you're talking a pretty long line of dominoes. For one thing, we've still got plenty of computer research here. TheU.S.has a big lead in logic chips."
"True, true. Who the hell can crystal-ball this one? All I know is, Intel was claiming exactly the same thing about memory chips a few years back, just before Asano and Noda and their pals chewed them up and spit them out. All I'm saying is, you'd better watch your backside." He examined his drink and reached for the ice bucket.
About that time Ben came lumbering up the stairs to observe our maudlin ruminations. I watched as he settled himself near my feet with a grunt, then plopped his chin down on his paws.
"Well, your fairy tale about MITI may or may not be true. But that's water over the dam. Besides, who are we to be pointing a finger? TheU.S.has done its share of tinkering with foreign governments, making the world safe for American shareholders."
"Hey, I make a profession of separating pious pronouncements from reality. I never take an official story at face value."
"Okay, so Noda says he's just playing the market. But if he's actually planning something else, then what is it?"
"Don't have the foggiest. Wish I did." He glanced at his watch. "But I do know duty's about to call. I'd better get uptown if I expect to have any female companionship for the apocalypse."
"Take it easy. Nobody flies on schedule anymore." I settled back into my chair and glanced up at the large Japanese screen I had mounted on the wall opposite. It was Momoyama, around 1600, the time when the most recent crowd of shoguns took overJapan. Against a gilded background was a fierce eagle, perched menacingly on a pine branch. The thing was so powerful I just kept the rest of the room bare; nothing else I owned could stand up to it. "You know,Henderson, the trouble with your pattern is that it doesn't quite fit this time. Shorting Treasury futures is not exactly going after an industry. So what's the new angle?"
"Damned good question." He stared at his glass, probably
wondering if one more for the road would impair his performance later on. I guess he concluded yes because he didn't budge. "Speaking of angles, what do you make of that sword business last week? Caused one hell of a flap inJapan, so I hear."
"Major event. That sword should tell us a lot about early Japanese metal technology. I've been trying to find out more about it, but nobody's talking. No pictures, anything." I reached over and gave Ben a pat. "Curious though. I think I remember Noda's mentioning that sword the night I met him. Eight hundred years ago, the emperor gets caught at sea and loses the imperial symbol. But he didn't breathe a word about having a project underway to locate it."
"Well, you're myJapanexpert. What's it all about?"
"Never assume you understand the Japanese mind." I pointed up at the wall. "Take a good look at the eagle on that screen. You'd think it's just a picture, but actually it's an important subliminal message. Thedaimyowho commissioned this piece had that eagle put on it to let everybody know he was cock of the walk. Means you cross him and you're dead. Symbols are important inJapan. Noda and this woman Mori talked a lot about shoguns and emperors. Maybe they hope the sword will somehow bring back the good old days."
"Well, he's got enough money to do it."
"Looks that way."
"Hope we're not about to get kamikazes with a checkbook. Thoughts like that could make a man real nervous."Hendersonrose and strolled to the fireplace. He examined his reflection in the large mirror over the fireplace, then set down his glass on the mantelpiece and turned back. "You know, Walton, I think I'm starting to lose my touch. I don't believe anything I hear and only half of what I see." He sighed. "Been one hell of a day."
"Pretty standard Friday, far as I could tell."'
"Well, a damned strange thing happened this afternoon."
"Some woman turn you down? Maybe you ought to start working out,Henderson, trim that little spare tire creeping in around the waistline."
"Still no complaints in that department, friend. No, this actually goes back a ways, to a few months ago down inWashington, when I bumped into a long-haired professor coming out of a committee session. Guy I mentioned a minute ago."
"The linkup between computers and weapons?"
"Him. We got to BS'ing in the men's room, and it turned out he was some computer hotshot from Stanford. He'd been testifying, I think, and he was still wound up. Probably I got to hear all the stuff he'd prepared and nobody'd asked."
"What was the pitch?"
"Defense semiconductor dependency. Claimed that if we keep on the way we're going, relying more and more on foreigners for advanced chip technology, we may as well kiss the farm good-bye. I had a little time to kill, so I invited him to have a drink. He good as chewed my ear off. Finally had to fake a dinner date to get loose. Man had a bug six feet up his ass about theU.S.buying half the latest chips for our hot-dog military hardware fromJapan. Next war we fight, says he, we'll be buying high-tech weapons systems from theFar East. Problem with that is, anybody else could buy them too. And we'd get replacement parts whenever MITI feels like getting around to it. Today I happened to remember him, so I decided to give him a call, ask him if he still saw things the same wav."