Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

you know. We just don’t admit that we’ve changed it. What’s the use in talking to you about these things anyway?” Matsuda’s shoulders shook as he laughed. “Skipjack tuna, huh . . .” Matsuda said, shifting the conversation. Negoro responded with a wry chuckle of his own.

Matsuda had said that human rights were interrelated with many things, but to Negoro, it seemed that over the last dozen years or so, the subject in and around this counter had not been the nature of these interrelationships but the very essence of concepts such as human rights themselves. Just like the bottles of beer, the glasses, the warm hand towels, or even the bits of fluff outside the eatery—talk of the constitution, democracy, and human rights had been consumed here every night as surely as the beer had flowed, but without any reflection or skepticism, without any of these things improving or disappearing.

According to several of Negoro’s sources, at some point there had been a flow of money to Matsuda from the Korean peninsula, but no matter how Negoro hinted around—whether it was a function of the professor’s enormous and animating ego or of the typical naïveté of intellectuals—somehow Matsuda remained oblivious to the fact that someone might have dirt on him, or that he might be involved in shadowy business.

The menu had described the tuna as “freshly caught” but perhaps it was still too early in the season, for it did not have much fat on it. Negoro poured a little more beer into Matsuda’s glass, worrying that the fish was not even good enough for Matsuda, who was indifferent to gastronomy.

“By the way, Negoro. How’s your health these days?”

“Well, being this busy, I don’t even have time to be grateful for being alive.”

“You want to switch places with an old man who has too much time on his hands?”

“Aren’t you writing the article about the speech?”

“You are an irritating man.”

“Come on, don’t say that. Here, should I add some ginger?”

As the piping hot tempura arrived, Negoro seasoned the dipping sauce with grated daikon and ginger, and since Matsuda wouldn’t pick up his chopsticks unless the food was right in front of him, Negoro pushed a plate into his hands.

“Say, professor. Have you ever heard anything from BLL about their involvement with Hinode Beer?” Negoro said, directing the conversation.

“I saw the news this morning. That has to do with discrimination?”

“No, I don’t want you to misunderstand me. This is an entirely different case from the kidnapping, but I was wondering if you would dig into this for me.”

On the paper wrapper from his chopsticks, Negoro wrote with his ballpoint pen, 1946–7, Labor Dispute, Hinode Kyoto Factory, and slid it over to Matsuda, who looked at it.

“Ah, this takes me back . . .” he mumbled. “That was the era when they gave us powdered skim milk, sprinkled DDT on our heads, and led us to believe that we had been freed from all sorts of oppression. So, what do you want to know about this Kyoto factory?”

“If you could look up the names of every employee who was dismissed before or after the General Strike on February 1, 1947—whether it was for a labor dispute or any other reason.”

“Does this have to do with the segregated buraku communities?”

“I think so.”

“Then I’m sure there will be some materials in Kyoto. Incidentally, an acquaintance of mine in Kyoto, he loves sumo and—”

“Would you like me to get tickets for the May tournament?”

“Two tickets would be great. Doesn’t seem right to ask for help for free, does it?” Matsuda said, pocketing the chopsticks wrapper.

For some time after that, Negoro listened to Matsuda unfurl his customary excoriation of major corporations, including Hinode, then he picked up the tab and left the eatery alone shortly after eight in the evening.

At the end of a meeting with a source he was always inundated with businesslike concerns—Was there anything amiss about the exchange? Had he gained any information? Was the lead credible? Could there be any leaks?—but now Negoro was stuck with the same vague irritation he had felt earlier, when he had stuffed the publisher’s press release in his pocket. He was born of a generation raised under the rainbow of democracy, but now that he was reaching his mid-forties, the realization that had persisted over the years—that he had been deceived all along—had grown more urgent.

Before hailing a taxi, he stopped by a drugstore to buy an energy drink. The customer in front of him, who was about his age, had recommended this particular brand and after paying for it, Negoro paused to read the advice on the label: Bad stomach, overworked liver, poor circulation, shoulder aches, back pain, chronic fatigue, lack of energy. He cracked open the bottle on the spot, thinking that if only the list had included “sleep deprivation” and “loss of faith in humanity” it would have been perfect.

At half past eight, Negoro got out of a taxi beneath the elevated train tracks of the JR Shimbashi Station. He began making the rounds of his old haunts one by one, starting in the alley behind the New Shimbashi Building. Back when times were flush, Negoro hadn’t gained access to Ginza, which used to teem with high-rolling stock traders, big-time investors, and financiers; he’d barely managed to make a few connections in the Korean clubs around Akasaka. He had regaled his sources—salesmen from local brokerage houses, self-styled financial analysts, investor groups, non-bank salesman, and loan sharks—at non-descript bars in areas like Tsukiji and Shimbashi, but his pay was still not enough; he had to borrow money from a credit union to cover the drinking expenses. That hard-won network of information, however, had collapsed along with the market, and since barely anyone was left, the city might well have been empty to Negoro.

He walked around for about an hour, his feet growing heavier, and after wandering through four bars, sipping a whisky at each establishment, he passed a man in the doorway of