Tatami Time Machine Blues

Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 2)
Yesterday, August 11th, filming had taken place for a new movie, entitled Samurai Wars: Slayers of the Bakumatsu.

With a name like that it was pretty obvious how big a clunker this movie was, but it was actually based on something Ozu and I had come up with. Akashi had taken a liking to the tall tales Ozu and I were always spinning here, and before we knew it she had written up a screenplay and declared that she wanted to make it into a movie.

It was set in the time of the Bakumatsu, during the Keiō period in the 1860s. A strange incident in his 4½ tatami room sends Ginga Susumu, an ordinary 21st century college student, hurtling back in time, where he stumbles into a safehouse for patriots attempting to restore the Emperor to power. There he runs into Saigo Takamori, Sakamoto Ryōma, Takasugi Shinsaku, Iwakura Tomomi, Katsu Kaishū, Hijikata Toshizō, and other famed figures of the Bakumatsu.

But Ginga has a terrible secret: anyone who comes into contact with him becomes a useless, lazy slacker! One by one each of these luminaries falls under Ginga’s spell, losing his drive and ambition; it becomes impossible to tell champions and adversaries of the shogunate apart. Realizing that this will change history forever, Ginga scrambles to rectify his mistake, but too late: scream and plead as he might about the impending danger, these once-mighty men simply giggle him off. At the climax of the film, the former enemies come together and form a ring, high-stepping and chanting, “Party on, dudes! Party on, dudes!” These massive changes to the timeline cause the time-space continuum to implode, leading to the destruction of the universe as we know it.

Fin.

The first time I read through the manuscript I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Are you sure about this?”

“Extremely sure,” Akashi nodded confidently. “Extremely.”

Yesterday morning, a swarm of students had descended on Shimogamo Yūsuisō, members of the Misogi Movie Circle to which Akashi belonged. Bossing around these amateur filmmakers was the head honcho of the group, Jōgasaki.

“People live here?” he sniffed as he stepped inside. Not only did he take my room as his green room, sitting there like he owned the place, he also left the door wide open as he turned the air conditioner up full blast. I’d never seen my electrical meter spin so fast, like a barometer measuring my impotent rage. And to cap it all off, he began to riffle through the script and loudly point out how clunky it was.

“The plot was actually my idea,” I told him. I’d volunteered to help even though I wasn’t in the circle, partly because I felt responsible for having come up with these ideas.

“Huh, you don’t say.” Jōgasaki stared at me, as if to say, So what?

From that point on, Jōgasaki and I became foes.

Henceforth I would think only of dragging him down by whatever means necessary, the more devious the better—for the moment, I contented myself with quietly setting the air conditioner to warm before leaving my room.

The second floor corridor had always been choked with all sorts of garbage, and now with all the cast and crew milling around it was like being on a packed train car. Akashi zipped around like a honeybee, checking costumes and making sure everything was ready with single-minded focus. As I was looking on, transfixed by her dashing composure, I heard (with a little jolt of satisfaction) Jōgasaki scream from room 209, “Why is this on warm!?”

The door of room 210 opened, and Higuchi Seitarō poked his head out.

“Hallo there!” he called towards me. His long hair was tied up behind him, and his hands were buried in his forest-green kimono. It was only a costume for the shoot, but it wasn’t terribly different from his usual getup. Rubbing his long eggplant-shaped chin, which had been coated with metallic powder, he brightly exclaimed, “Dawn breaks over Japan!”

“They cast you as Sakamoto Ryōma?”

“Indeed. I could hardly turn down a disciple’s request.” He produced a model gun from the folds of his kimono. “Dawn breaks over Japan! Dawn breaks over Japan!”

A creepy figure approached from the other side of the hallway, its face painted sheer white; on closer inspection I realized it was Ozu dressed up as Iwakura Tomomi. He hid his mouth behind a gold-flecked fan, undulating in the most obscene ways and obnoxiously repeating, “Forsooth! Forsooth!” Higuchi pointed the gun at Ozu and fired back, “Dawn! Dawn!” Jōgasaki slouched out of room 209 dressed as Saigo Takamori, scowling, “Aye! Aye!”

Filming was taking place inside the landlady’s house behind the apartment building. The landlady looked on, her eyes wide, as a steady stream of students trooped in.

“Well now, you folks really mean business!”

The camera crew set up in the tatami room facing the garden. The laundry hanging out to dry on the apartment balconies was a pretty shabby backdrop, but as long as the crew took care not to get them in the shot it was a respectable facsimile of a safehouse for patriotic samurai trying to restore the Emperor.

The real worry was the statue in the garden. It was a stone sculpture of a musclebound demon sitting down cross-legged, like something out of a Lovecraft tale. It was apparently a depiction of a kappa, the lord of the swamp that had once existed here. “If you don’t give it its proper due, you’ll be cursed!” insisted the landlady, and so we had no choice but to leave it there.

“Doesn’t it look kind of like Jōgasaki?” Akashi commented, staring at it. Its muscled, hulking appearance did bear more than a passing resemblance.

Ginga Susumu, our dimwitted time-traveling college student, was played by Aijima, an upperclassman in Misogi. He was a thin man who wore spectacles and an affected air of trendiness, and every time he spoke to Akashi he was fake and smarmy and completely insufferable.

Just like Jōgasaki, Aijima insistently pointed out how clunky the script was, nitpicking even the most trivial aspects of the main character. “Psychologically speaking I cannot accept it, I refuse to do it!” he grumbled.

Unable to stand it any longer I shot back, “Complaining about it isn’t going to help anything, you know.”

“Now of course I don’t mean to be rude, but who are you again?”

Behind his glasses Aijiima’s eyes were narrowed and cold.

“I’m just a passing stagehand.”

“I do not recall asking for your opinion.”

“I came up with the plot!”

“Hmph, you don’t say.” Aijima stared at me, as if to say, So what?

Jōgasaki, Aijima, they were too pushy and self-absorbed to understand, or even attempt to understand, what Akashi was trying to do.

As I stewed, though, a thought struck me.

—Was I really so different from them?

I had only volunteered to help out of the conceited notion that I could improve this clunker with my own ideas. But had Akashi even once asked me to do that?

Akashi wanted to make a clunker. Didn’t that mean, then, that it was my duty to protect that lovable clunkiness from these fools who were waiting in the wings to plaster their “improvements” over everything? Only through this struggle could I thaw my frozen relationship with Akashi and break out of this lifeless, boring existence as a pebble at the roadside. Hence, I quietly resolved to start moving towards that goal.

Standing on the veranda, Akashi announced, “Okay, everyone. Let’s get started.”

In the end, my quiet resolve didn’t turn out to be a smidgen of use.

Ever since the Lumière brothers invented the cinematograph, no film production has ever concluded without running into some sort of trouble. There are more troubles on a film set than there are grains of sand on the beach.

The cast was a veritable rogues’ gallery, and refused to listen to any kind of direction. Jōgasaki, dissatisfied with his role as Saigo Takamori, attempted to rewrite his lines in every scene; Aijima demanded retake after retake, insisting that his frame of mind wasn’t quite right; Ozu in his white paint kept writhing around so repulsively it was hardly fit to be caught on camera; and Higuchi refused to say any line other than “Dawn breaks over Japan!”

The cast of the Shinsengumi got so wrapped up in their roles that they made the whole set tense, and eventually came to blows over their lunch bentos. The sound and lighting directors started quarreling on account of some romantic entanglement; the landlady’s beloved dog, Kecak, ran wild all over the set; and some members, fed up with all the havoc, simply left behind farewell notes and disappeared. During a fight scene, Ozu toppled over the kappa statue and got an earful from the landlady.

Nevertheless, Akashi persisted. She made countless alterations to the script, swapped out characters, and changed up the shooting schedule, telling whatever lies she had to to make the actors happy. Rehearsals turned into real takes, real takes into rehearsals, and she would promise to do reshoots later but never did them.

I couldn’t tell whether this shoot was headed towards disaster or triumph. In fact, no one did—except for Akashi.

Just past three in the afternoon, after finishing a shot of the cast gathered in the garden prancing and chanting, “Party on, dudes!” like a flock of zombies, Akashi declared the shoot finished. No one believed it. Silence reigned. Beside the stupefied cast members, Kecak solemnly pushed out a turd.

“I expect it’ll turn into a fine movie!” Higuchi’s words echoed hollowly around the garden and died away.

After a moment Ozu turned to Akashi and asked, “That’s it?”

“That’s it. Thanks for all your hard work.”

“Don’t you think it feels, I dunno, a bit short?”

“Not at all. I was able to get all the shots I need,” she answered matter-of-factly. “All that’s left is to edit it together.”

Was it true?

Was the movie really done?

“Akashi,” I began to say, before stopping myself.

She was standing off by herself in the garden, looking up into the bright sunlight.

I had never seen her looking as content as she did in that moment.

◯

“Are you alright?”

Akashi’s voice snapped me out of my heat-induced stupor.

The events of the previous day went through my brain like images on a revolving paper lantern, overwhelming me in all their Technicolor glory. And there had still been more to come.

After filming wrapped, I went to Oasis, a public bathhouse, with Higuchi and Ozu, but shortly after our return to the apartment the Cola Catastrophe snuffed out the life of my beloved air conditioner. Thus I capped off the longest day so far in my rotten college career by passing the whole night in a gloomy wake for the AC.

“That was one long day.”

“I really appreciate it. It wouldn’t have gone so smoothly without you.”

“Is it always like that?”

“I’ve never worked on a production as big as that, but it always goes topsy-turvy. I like it like that though. Gives it a funny sort of charm.”

“I was sure the movie was a goner.”

“Why’s that?” Akashi frowned. “As long as you get your shots, you can fix it up in editing afterwards.”

“No one can touch Akashi when it comes to getting movies out the door,” Ozu boasted. “Even if they all end up being clunkers.”

“Don’t call them clunkers!”

“But they are clunkers!”

“ I don’t mind. Clunkers are fine by me.”

See? Ozu silently gloated.

Every year at the school cultural festival in November, the Misogi Movie Circle books a classroom where they hold the Misogi Film Festival. The problem was that bastard Jōgasaki. It was almost a given that he wouldn’t find Samurai Wars to his liking, and worst case he might even refuse to let it be screened at all. He had the final say over the festival lineup, and he had a very strict no-clunker policy.

“All you gotta do is talk to Hanuki,” said Ozu. “Even Jōgasaki’s not gonna turn her down.”

Hanuki was a dental hygienist at the nearby Kubozuka Dental Clinic.

She sometimes came to visit Higuchi, so I’d gotten to chat with her a few times. She was a real beauty who cheerfully greeted me with a chirpy “Morning!” or “Night night!” whenever I ran into her around the apartment house. She’d showed up yesterday right around when filming was wrapping up, too. From what I understood, Higuchi, Jōgasaki, and Hanuki were all old pals.

“Maybe you’re right,” Akashi said, after a moment of thought. “But I don’t think I’ll need to. I’ve already shot several films, and I’m planning to shoot some more. If I show them all to Jōgasaki, he’s bound to let at least one of them through. He can’t reject them all.”

“Going with the shotgun approach, huh?” I pondered.

“If you think of anything else please let me know.”

At any rate I was happy that Akashi seemed content.

I thought back again to yesterday, to that look of contentment on her face as she stared up into the bright sunlight. It was astounding that some stupid story Ozu and I cooked up had actually come in use for something. But at the same time that thought was tinged with sadness.

Here in front of me was someone who had managed to make something (no matter how clunky it was) out of the idle nonsense that Ozu and I were always spinning. In comparison, what had I accomplished over the last two and a half years? After my painful expulsion from the Keifuku Railroad Research Circle, I had awakened to the vanity of the world and locked myself away in this 4½ tatami room, with Ozu, that half-demon, my sole visitor. The petals of our idle banter lay scattered on the tatami, withering and unfruitful. What was the point? As long as I failed to mold myself into a proper member of society, I would never have the right to be by Akashi’s side. How cruel, then, that at long last having obtaining that storied treasure, the air conditioner—

I looked up with despair at the AC unit on the wall.

“Gah, my air conditioner!”

“Aren’t you over that thing yet?”

“I’m never, ever going to forgive you!”

“You may never forgive me, but our friendship will never die,” said Ozu. “You and I are tied together by the black thread of fate!”

I shuddered, imagining the two of us trussed up together like a ham and sinking into the murky depths of the ocean.

Akashi smiled. “You two are such good friends.”

◯

I couldn’t have cared less about Ozu, but I couldn’t bear to see Akashi sitting there in my sweltering room.

“Why don’t we hang out in the corridor?” I suggested. “It’s not as hot out there.”

But the corridor wasn’t exactly a pleasant change of scenery. The room across the hall served as the apartment’s storage room, and all sorts of junk overflowed out into the hallway from its door: supplies for the cleaning lady who came once a week, home furnishings abandoned by previous residents, the landlady’s personal belongings… It was all so jumbled together that there was little hope of ever cleaning it up, and the landlady seemed perfectly content to pretend it didn’t exist. The first time I laid eyes on this scene I thought that someone had been trying to set up a barricade in the second floor corridor.

Akashi sat down on a sofa whose yellow stuffing was pouring out, while Ozu knocked on the door of 210.

“Good morning, Master. Or should I say, good afternoon.”

After a short pause I heard the slurred voice of Higuchi Seitarō from within.

“Clear thy mind…”

“Clear thy mind?”

“And even this room…”

“And even this room?”

“Shall be as the valleys of Kamikōchi!”

His voice resounded briefly in the air, and then room 210 fell silent again.

Looking to get some fresh air, I went out to the balcony. Weaving my way through the slightly stained laundry, I leaned on the balcony, looking down at the outdoor shower stalls and drying poles. A concrete wall divided the property from the landlady’s spacious garden, where the trees soaked in the afternoon summer sun. The lawn was lush and green, and I could see Kecak flopped down on the veranda.

“Hey! Kecak!” I called, just for fun. Kecak perked his head up, too lazy to get all the way up. But he didn’t seem to have any idea where he was being called from, and after a moment of frozen confusion, he sniffed the air as if to say, Must be imagining things, and let his head flop back onto the floor.

The lovable mutt saw it as his life’s work to dig holes wherever he could. When he wasn’t digging holes, he was either taking an afternoon siesta on the veranda, or spinning around and around in circles chasing his own tail. Whenever I saw the carefree pooch, I was reminded of Schopenhauer’s claim: “The animal is the present incarnate.” The bleak days I spent in my room slowly eroded away the very concept of time such that I had begun to feel that my existence was closer to that of a dog than a human, so I could never stop myself from calling out, “Hey! Kecak!”

That lovable pup!

During yesterday’s shoot, excited by the hordes of students that had flooded into the landlady’s house, Kecak had dug holes, spun in circles, dropped deuces with more than his usual zeal. He dashed around so uncontrollably that we were forced to acknowledge him as an extra. “There were dogs during the Bakumatsu, too,” reasoned Akashi.

“Kecak!” I called out one more time, but this time he didn’t so much as twitch.

I went back inside to see Akashi sitting on the couch, glaring at the laptop that was propped on her legs. Ozu was sitting on the ground with his feet soaking in the leftover water in a wooden basin, a look of euphoria on his face.

“Get your feet out of my bucket!”

“Not to worry,” Ozu said, keeping his eyes closed. “My feet are as clean as the bottom of a newborn babe.”

I scowled and said nothing, so Akashi showed me the footage from yesterday’s shoot on her laptop. Ozu wriggled repulsively in his white paint, while Jōgasaki’s sullen face clearly expressed how unhappy he was with the role he’d been given. For all Aijima’s grandstanding about getting in the right frame of mind his acting was wooden, and the performances of the rest of the cast were hammier than a breakfast buffet.

“This is awful. Just, awful.”

Meanwhile Ozu cackled and refused to admit that his own performance was anything but sublime.

But it was Higuchi Seitarō who stole the show. Despite the fact that the only words that came out of his mouth were “Dawn breaks over Japan!” his delivery of that line changed subtly with each scene, drawing a strange thread of consistency through the course of the movie.

With Ginga Susumu having tragically destroyed the fabric of reality with his timeline meddling, dawn over Japan was really a moot point, which made Higuchi’s plaintive repetitions of the line all the more heartbreaking. It was doubtful that that had been Higuchi’s plan, but I could certainly imagine it being Akashi’s, the idea of which was both impressive and a little scary.

As I brooded over this idea, the kappa statue flashed onto the screen.

“Oh, there’s the kappa.”

“Why is it so muscular, anyways?”

“Well, aren’t kappa supposed to be fans of sumo? Perhaps it’s done some training.”

“At the bottom of a swamp?”

“Yes, why not? Sort of like bodybuilding.”

“I’ve gotta say, the way it looks like Jōgasaki makes me crack up.”

As we continued to watch, Iwakura Tomomi (meaning Ozu) dashed through the garden and ran bang-on into the statue, whereupon he was piled on by a disorderly mob of Shinsengumi. While they shouted and scuffled, the kappa statue ponderously toppled over, causing the landlady to fly into a fury and shooting to be temporarily halted.

“Oh look, you can see the drying racks here too.”

“You’re right, I’ll edit them out.” A second later she squinted at the screen and muttered, “Huh?”

I didn’t think much of it, assuming that Kecak had darted into the frame or something. I was more interested in the man who was walking towards us from the other end of the hallway. He halted about halfway towards us, and timidly asked, “Erm, excuse me. You live at Shimogamo Yūsuisō, right?”

His lame bowl cut made him look like a mushroom; he wore a lame short-sleeved shirt that was tucked into his lame pants. Even the bag slung diagonally across his body was lame. He was like a missionary sent from the Kingdom of Lameness to spread the Gospel of Lame. He was so hopelessly unfashionable that I felt an immediate kinship. Here was someone with promise.

“Did you just move in?” I asked.

“Well no…”

“Then you’re looking for somebody?”

“No, not that either.”

Mr. Lame stared at me awkwardly, his cheeks flaming, but said nothing. Akashi looked up from her laptop quizzically.

The awkward silence was broken by the Voice of God.

“Higuchi, Higuchi Seitarō of room 210!” The landlady’s stern voice rang throughout the hallway. “I know you’re in there. Come here at once to pay your rent!”

Mr. Lame’s eyes were opened wide as he looked up at the speaker. “What was that!?”

“Just one of the landlady’s announcements.”

“Announcements? Oh, so that was one of the legendary…”

His eyes lit up, but I had no idea what there was to be so impressed with.

At that moment, the Voice of God finally received a reply. The door of room 210 opened at last, and from the darkness emerged a sluggish form. It was the being many referred to in hushed tones as the Fallen Tengu, or the Guardian of the Tatami—he who had lived in these apartments longer than anyone else—the man, the myth, the legend: Higuchi Seitarō. His disheveled hair pointed towards the ceiling like a broom thrust at the heavens; the threadbare yukata in which he wrapped himself was wrinkled through and through. Beads of sweat dripped from the end of his long chin.

“Well met, sir. But indeed, it is a hot day today.”

Mr. Lame’s jaw just about dropped to the floor. “Master Higuchi!” he blurted out. “You’re here too! But how?”

Higuchi glanced at Mr. Lame, his eyelids still heavy with sleep. He didn’t seem to find anything out of the ordinary about this fellow.

“Borne by wind and tide, by wind and tide.”

“Wind and tide?”

“Just so,” Higuchi nodded. “Now, who might you be?”

Mr. Lame made no reply. His mouth flapped open and shut foolishly like a goldfish, and he looked back and forth at all of us. Finally he mumbled in a tiny voice, “I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” before turning and booking it down the corridor. The patter of his footsteps receded into the distance and descended the staircase.

“Did you know him?” Akashi asked Higuchi.

“No, I don’t recall ever seeing the fellow before in my life.”

“But he did know your name.”

“Perhaps somewhere in this wide world our paths have crossed before. The stream of life is always flowing, and no man ever steps in the same river twice…and indeed, I have met many people in my journey through life,” mused Higuchi, scratching his stubbly chin.

◯

Higuchi Seitarō made me uncomfortable. I was always cautious to maintain a distance whenever possible from this super senior who lived in my apartment house, for my animal instincts were always whispering to me, This man is dangerous!

Higuchi was fanning himself with a bankbook.

Every month when we went to pay our rent, the landlady would give us a stamp in our bankbooks. It was a very antiquated system. For many years Higuchi’s bankbook had recorded his funds coming and going, and it was so tattered that it looked like an artifact from the Edo period that had been discovered in the back of some dusty storeroom.

“I go now to pay my rent. But alas, I have no money.” Higuchi stated this as plainly as if he was reciting a scientific fact. “I have no money. But I go now, to pay my rent.”

We were all bemused. “By the way,” he said, abruptly changing the topic, “Who was it that made off with my Vidal Sassoon?”

“Vidal Sassoon?” We looked at each other.

“You mean your shampoo?” Akashi clarified.

“Aye,” Higuchi nodded. “If you wish to come clean, now is the time. Confess! and wash away your sin.”

Higuchi’s VS Pro Series Moisture Lock shampoo had apparently mysteriously vanished from his toiletry set. Setting aside his unusual hair obsession for the moment, he seemed to have already settled on one of us being the culprit.

“Who the heck would want to steal your shampoo?”

“Ah, but it is a most wondrous shampoo indeed.” He pointed to the bird’s nest on his head, as if inviting us to behold its fine luster. At any rate it was clear that he had the utmost confidence in Mr. Sassoon’s products.

“There’s only one person it could be.” I immediately pointed the finger at Ozu, who promptly dodged the accusation.

“I would never betray the Master!”

“You all went to the bathhouse yesterday, didn’t you?” Akashi pointed out. “Did you have the shampoo when you came back?”

“Hm,” Higuchi said, staring into space. “Now that you mention it, I believe I did not.”

“Then perhaps you forgot it at the bathhouse? You should call Oasis to ask. They probably have it at the counter.”

With that, Akashi’s ironclad reasoning put an end to Higuchi’s wild fingerpointing.

“Then go I now, to pay my rent,” Higuchi announced, departing slowly down the hall.

Without missing a beat Ozu dashed after him and fell into step beside him. “Allow me to accompany you, Master.”

“Do I have your blade?”

“‘pon my honor. See, could you ask for another disciple as loyal as me?”

By all appearances Ozu intended to pony up Higuchi’s rent.

The landlady’s residence was to the rear of the apartment, so to get there you had to go out the front door and circle all the way around on the stone pathway. And whenever you showed up with rent in hand, the landlady would roll out the red carpet with tea and biscuits, so it took some time before you finally got the stamp in your book.

In other words Higuchi and Ozu wouldn’t be back for a while.

I leaned on the wall and watched over Akashi sitting on the sofa.

A breeze came in from the balcony, tinkling the wind chime hanging in the doorway. In comparison to the infernal heat of my room, that breeze transported me to the cool valleys of Kamikōchi.

“It really feels like summer vacation now, doesn’t it?” Akashi leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Kind of in a nostalgic sort of way.”

Now that she mentioned it, it did feel that way. It reminded me of my elementary school days, relaxing the afternoon away at the pool after a full day of swimming. I’d lick my ice cream, squinting at the languid sunlight, letting that agreeable fatigue carry me off to sleep. A bittersweet melancholy would well up within me, an emotion that made me feel empty yet at the same time fulfilled. All of summer vacation lay before me, like a blank canvas, and even as a mere grade schooler I would think to myself Is this what it means to be happy?

Immersing myself in those memories, these deserted apartments began to resemble those long ago summer days by the pool.

An afternoon of summer vacation, alone with Akashi.

Needless to say I couldn’t help but wish that time would stand still in this moment.

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Akashi hunched over her laptop, her eyebrows furrowed, completely oblivious to the prayers that were silently going through my head. Most likely her own mind was occupied with editing.

As I looked on, unable to take my eyes away from her determined face, I suddenly thought of the exchange Ozu and Akashi had had earlier about the Gozan no Okuribi. My heart trembled, as if at the sight of stormclouds looming over the horizon.

On August 16th Akashi was going out to see the Okuribi.

Who was the unknown lout she was going with?

This was a question I couldn’t afford to ignore.