Tokyo Decadence Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  Contents

  Whenever I Sit at a Bar Drinking Like This

  I Am A Novelist

  It All Started Just About A Year and A Half Ago

  Each Time I Read Your Confession

  Topaz

  Lullaby

  Penlight

  The Last Picture Show

  The Wild Angels

  La Dolce Vita

  Swans

  Historia de un Amor

  Se Fué

  All of Me

  At the Airport

  Acknowledgments

  Contributors

  Copyright Information

  Tokyo Decadence

  15 Stories

  by

  Ryu Murakami

  Translated by

  Ralph McCarthy

  Kurodahan Press

  2016

  Contents

  From Run, Takahashi! (1986)

  Whenever I Sit at a Bar Drinking Like This

  I Am a Novelist

  It All Started Just About a Year and a Half Ago

  Each Time I Read Your Confession

  From Topaz (1988)

  Topaz

  Lullaby

  Penlight

  From Ryu’s Cinematheque (1995)

  The Last Picture Show

  The Wild Angels

  La Dolce Vita

  From Swans (1997)

  Swans

  Historia de un Amor

  Se Fué

  All of Me

  From At the Airport (2003)

  At the Airport

  Acknowledgments

  Contributors

  Copyright Information

  I Am A Novelist

  I am a novelist.

  I’m thirty-five years old, and I’ve been a novelist for seven years. Electronic Guerrilla, which I wrote when I was twenty-eight, sold more than six hundred thousand copies, and each of the novels I’ve published since—Optic Fiber Love, Sentimental Amorphous, Tokyo Computer Death Match, and Microwave Cosmopolitan—has climbed high up the bestseller lists. This in spite of the fact that nobody, including myself, understands exactly what they’re about. When I wrote my first novel I was still working in the PR department at Cray Research, an American computer company.

  Quitting my job to become a writer brought about three big changes in my life.

  I got famous.

  I got rich.

  And I got fat.

  “Hello? Am I speaking with Okutegawa-sensei?”

  The call comes to my office. It’s a man’s voice, but no one I know.

  “You are,” I say, and tap to the end of a sentence on my keyboard.

  “I know this is rather abrupt, but... may I ask if you’re familiar with the Kannai district in Yokohama?”

  “I’m sorry, but I make it a policy not to do interviews over the phone. I’ve been misquoted so often.”

  There’s a long pause. Apparently it isn’t someone from the media.

  “Are... are you familiar with Kannai?”

  “I’ve been there. What is this is about?”

  “I’m the manager of a club in Kannai called Julia.”

  “And?”

  “Do you know it?”

  “Know what?”

  “Our club?”

  “The only one I’ve been to in Kannai is The Door.”

  “The Door? Do you go there often?”

  “Just once. And it was quite a while ago.”

  “Were you there last week?”

  “No, no, it was when I was still in the corporate world—must be eight years ago, maybe more. A client took me there. Shockingly expensive place, as I recall.”

  He puts a hand over the mouthpiece, and there’s another pause. I can hear him speaking to someone else, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. Then he comes back on the line.

  “The truth is... It’s a very embarrassing situation, I’m afraid, but... for the past two months a gentleman who claims to be Okutegawa-sensei, the well-known author, has been a regular customer of ours.”

  I smirk. An impostor.

  “Well, he’s not me.”

  “The unfortunate thing is that... I don’t like to say this, but the gentleman is now one million six hundred and thirty-eight thousand yen in debt to us.”

  “Now just a minute. That has nothing to do with me.”

  “No, of course not. We’re fully aware that any blame lies entirely with ourselves.”

  “Oh. It’s a little hard to understand, though. I should think anyone posing as me would be rather easily exposed.”

  “Yes, but, well, this may sound presumptuous, but our clientele at Julia includes politicians, businessmen, artists—a lot of high-profile people. And it’s not unusual for large corporations to spend as much as two million yen a month in entertainment expenses at our club. To cast unwarranted suspicion on a customer could be—”

  “Did he look like me?”

  “He... well... forgive me, Sensei, but is it true that you’ve put on a bit of weight recently?”

  I weigh eighteen kilos more than I did when I started out as a writer.

  “The photo in your first book, Electone Guerrilla...”

  “Electronic Guerrilla.”

  “Yes, of course, I’m so sorry. My daughter takes lessons on a Yamaha Electone, and—”

  “You were saying? There was a photograph of me in that book, yes.”

  “And have you changed much since that picture was taken?”

  I’ve changed plenty. What do you expect? But it’s not as if you wouldn’t recognize me.

  “The Okutegawa-sensei who came to our club brought a number of his books, or rather your books, and signed them for us. I was given one myself, and the girls—”

  “I’ve never taken one of my books to a bar in my life. Of all the shameless—”

  “One of our girls is pregnant with his child.”

  I’m not surprised. For a creep who thinks nothing of going around handing out fake autographs, knocking up a bar girl or two would be all in a day’s work.

  “She’s here with me now, in fact. She’s convinced the man was genuine, and nothing I say will persuade her otherwise. We’re at a coffee shop near your building. Would it be too much to ask you to join us for a few minutes?”

  As soon as the woman sees me she moans, “It’s not him,” and lays her head on the table and sobs. She’s—what can I say?—she’s perfect. She’s wearing a white dress and white lace stockings with electric-blue shoes. Her ankles are trim, her skin is smooth and suntanned, she has an oval face and big eyes, and... well, she’s just perfect.

  The manager is a man of about sixty. He’s trying to console her.

  “You’ve been taken for a ride, that’s all there is to it,” he tells her. “You’ll just have to face the truth.”

  I hold out a handkerchief. She looks at me with liquid eyes, stretches out an arm as beautiful as a coral reef in the South Seas, and takes it. Her name is Mutsumi.

  I’ve invited Mutsumi to the fanciest restaurant I know. She’s wearing an emerald-green suit and a shell necklace. In the soft light of the candles she looks to me exactly like the Italian actress I used to moon over when I was in high school. I mention this to one of the waiters I know, and when he tells me there’s no resemblance whatsoever, I realize I’m a goner. Whenever I fall in love with a woman, she begins to look like that Italian actress.

  For an hors d’oeuvre we have marinated k
okanee salmon.

  “Maybe you’d rather not talk about this, but did he—did the impostor look like me?”

  Mutsumi peers at me. She bites her lip, as if remembering something painful, and peers at me. Finally she says, “Up close like this, you don’t look anything like him.”

  I find this a bit distressing. I’m jealous. Jealous of my own impersonator.

  She begins working on a bowl of curried sea turtle soup.

  “Well, there’s one thing he and I have in common,” I tell her, fully aware that what I’m about to say is going to sound hopelessly glib. “Our taste in women.”

  She lifts her head sharply and tells me to stop teasing her. It’s discouraging to think I’ve annoyed her by trying to say something suave. But, then again, this is a woman who fell for a man who hands out phony autographs in bars. Surely there’s hope.

  After all, I’m the real thing.

  “I’m not teasing you. I really do like you.”

  We’re drinking a Fleurie. Mutsumi puts it away pretty well.

  “He never said that sort of thing to me.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “‘I like you,’ ‘I love you,’ that sort of thing.”

  “But you were lovers, weren’t you?”

  “A lot of times he’d come to the club and call different girls to his table.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “He probably did it with three or four of them too.”

  “Did it? You mean... ?”

  “Fucked them. A fuck is just a fuck.”

  The people at the next table look at us. Mutsumi doesn’t so much as bat an eyelash.

  “He didn’t do it with me until right before he disappeared.”

  “Really? That’s nice.”

  “Nice?”

  “I mean, not to do it. It would be hard not to, I should think.”

  “He just didn’t want to.”

  “But in the end you did it, right?”

  “Look, what’s this thing you’ve got with ‘did it’ or ‘didn’t do it’? I don’t like that,” she says and forks a piece of charbroiled duck into her mouth.

  “Did you read any of my books?”

  “All of them.”

  “All?”

  “Well, I was a fan.”

  “You were a fan of mine?” I can’t suppress a goofy smile. “Listen, Mutsumi-chan, there’s something else I don’t understand about your relationship with this man...”

  “Call me Mu-chan. That’s the name I go by at the club.”

  “Mu-chan.”

  “Anyway, I liked him, that’s all.”

  “What sort of person was he?”

  She bursts out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You! Don’t you think it’s strange that the real person should be so curious about the fake one?”

  “I’m only asking because I want to know what sort of men you like.”

  “Look, I thought he was you, right?”

  “That’s true. So any sort of man is all right if he’s an author?”

  “I told you I was a fan.”

  “Well, then... Wait a minute... The fact is, the indisputable fact is, I’m the one who wrote those books.”

  Mutsumi laughs again. “I know.”

  “So, isn’t it possible that you could fall in love with me?”

  She stops laughing. She bows her head, extracts a slim American cigarette from an ivory case, and lights it. Then she looks up and tells me it’s a question of feelings.

  “I should have fallen in love with you,” she says. “But that’s not what happened.”

  “What are you going to do about the baby?”

  “I’m going to get rid of it. Next week.”

  It makes me sad to hear that. It’s almost as if it were all my fault.

  I’ve come to call on Mutsumi at her condominium, bearing a bouquet of flowers and a signed copy of my latest book, The Ultra-LSI Club Epistles. She’s in pajamas and a dressing gown and isn’t wearing any makeup, but she looks lovely just the same.

  She serves me a cup of coffee.

  “Is it all right for you to be up and about like this?”

  Maybe it’s just my imagination, but her cheeks look a little hollow.

  “I’ll be fine. Thank you for calling me every day. It helped me not get too depressed. Getting that many calls from you, though, I almost started to feel like it was your baby.”

  If only I had been the father!

  “Did you think it over? What we talked about on the phone?”

  “You were just trying to make me feel better, right? All that silly talk about marrying me.”

  “I’m perfectly serious.”

  Since my divorce I’ve accumulated three girlfriends. The only problem is that since meeting Mutsumi I’ve completely lost any urge to sleep with them.

  Mutsumi’s room is a studio apartment. She has an easel and oil paints. She wants to be an artist. Apparently she thought that hostessing would provide a lot of time to paint but found out otherwise.

  “Look at me,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Notice anything different?”

  “This is only the third time I’ve met you.”

  “I’ve lost eight hundred grams.”

  She was glancing through The Ultra-LSI Club Epistles, but she closes it now and gives me a sympathetic look. I’ve been cutting down on the booze, going to a swimming club, and winding saran wrap around my belly every night before bed.

  “You’re trying to lose weight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to look like the photo in my first book again.”

  I’m sitting on the edge of her bed. She walks up to me and takes my hand.

  “Why didn’t you show up at the club instead of him?”

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about that myself. It’s kind of complicated, but... How shall I put it? I think we were destined to fall in love, but there was a glitch.”

  “A glitch?”

  “We were blipped apart.”

  “But why are you so set on me?”

  “Mu-chan, all that’s standing between us is a phantom, an apparition.”

  “Ah. Him, pretending to be you?”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if it were someone who didn’t have anything to do with me. If you’d just been deceived by someone I’d never heard of.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Of course you do, you’re a fan of my books! The common theme in all my work is that analogue time is dependent on the stimulus of digital time, that it can never be the other way around.”

  “Want to run that by me again?”

  “It’s like the way a toothache can affect someone’s personality, for example.”

  “Are you saying our relationship is like that?”

  “Let me ask you this: what did you call the guy?”

  “Well, at first I called him Sensei, but I didn’t like the way that sounded and changed it to Okutegawa-san. He told me to call him Jun, but he was a writer I respected and it just sounded too familiar, so I stuck to Okutegawa-san. It’s a mouthful, but...”

  “You never call me by my name at all, and I’m the real Okutegawa Jun.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m at a disadvantage here. Was it good with him?”

  “What?”

  “Sex.”

  “What kind of thing is that to ask?”

  “It’s important. It’s what broke up my marriage.”

  “It wasn’t good with your wife?”

  “That’s beside the point. Did you and the impostor usually come together?”

  “You mean have orgasms together?”

&n
bsp; Mutsumi is embarrassed. She turns pink down to her earlobes, but there’s a little smile at the corners of her mouth. The memory of orgasm is irrepressible. You can’t conceal it.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “At your age, penis size doesn’t matter, right? The important thing is love.”

  “Listen to you.”

  “If you love your partner, it leads to orgasm.”

  “Oh great, a lecture. Just what a girl wants to hear after she’s had an abortion.”

  “I’m sorry. But, look, you were in love with a man who was impersonating me. Do you know what that means? It means that, for you, I’m the phony.”

  Mutsumi asks me to leave. Tears spill from her eyes, run down her cheeks, and drip onto the blue veins on the back of her hand. In addition to being at a low both physically and emotionally because of the abortion, she has to deal with this. First she becomes a fan of the novels of Okutegawa Jun, then she falls for the “Okutegawa Jun” who drops unexpectedly into her world. The name was just a suit of clothes at first, but the clothes came off, and names don’t matter on the path to orgasm.

  “Was my impostor a dirty-minded sort?”

  “He made me do a lot of things,” she admits. She’s still crying. She’s been doubly abandoned: by the name Okutegawa Jun and by the anonymous man stripped naked.

  And where does that leave me? From Mutsumi’s point of view, maybe I’m nothing but a pale imitation.

  I’ve come to Cray Research to see an old friend of mine. He’s one of the top four or five computer technicians in Japan. He listens to my proposal, shakes his head, and says, “Forget it.”

  “Please? Just try it. It’s too much for the human brain. What’s wrong with asking artificial intelligence for a little help?”

  I had Mutsumi answer a fifty-item questionnaire. Then I asked her to answer the same fifty questions for the impostor, to the best of her ability. Finally, I answered the questions myself, which left me with three sets of corresponding data. Height and weight, parents’ occupations, favorite dish, favorite movie, favorite type of music, favorite baseball team, fashion preferences, cigarettes, body odor, general physical condition, number of cavities in teeth, favorite liquor—if whiskey, whether bourbon, Scotch, Canadian, or Irish—favorite cocktail, the first thing you order in a sushi bar, sports played, favorite position for intercourse, erotic zones, the first page you turn to in the newspaper, opinion of Marxism, and so on. I know it’s silly, not much more than a dolled-up version of computer dating, but I’m clutching at straws. I’m so obsessed with the Mutsumi problem I haven’t been able to get any work done.