The Nicholas Linnear Novels (106 page)

Change was coming, and the sight of the Tokugawa mausoleum breaking through the stairway of trees between which he had been walking brought home to Nangi just how much he wanted to be part of that change. Because the alternative was too horrendous to contemplate: to be swallowed whole in the inevitable war crimes tribunal of the occupation forces.

Nangi paused, looked quickly around him. He appeared to be alone. He turned and stepped off the path, moving quietly into the protection of the trees. In a tiny clearing he knelt down and, removing his army uniform from the small bag he was carrying that contained all his possessions, he rolled it into a rough ball and lit a match to it. It took some time until it was all gone. At last he stood creakily and ground the ashes into gray dust.

That done, he returned to the path to search out Seiichi Sato and bring him home.

Seiichi was not at all like his fallen brother. For one thing, he lacked the wild sense of humor that made Gōtarō so easy to be with. For another, he was not a Christian. Seiichi was a swiftly maturing boy with a serious outlook on life.

On the other hand, Nangi found him to be supremely quick witted and a man—it was impossible to think of him as a boy—open to new and unusual ways of thinking. Primarily because of this quality—fully as unusual as wild, gusting humor—the two formed a solid core of confidence and trust in and for one another.

As for Seiichi, he took the news of his older brother’s death well. Nangi had first caught sight of him as a black silhouette within the gloom of the mausoleum doorway. He had introduced himself and they had spoken for a long time.

Then, in the intuitive way some younger people have, Seiichi’s eyes shifted and he said, “You have come to tell me Gōtarō-san has been killed.”

“He died a
samurai
’s death,” Nangi said.

Seiichi looked at him peculiarly. “That might not have made him as happy as it makes me.”

“He was Japanese, after all,” Nangi said. “His…faith in another God did not enter into it at all.” He turned as if changing the subject. “He saved my life, you know.”

Ultimately what bound them was their mutual desire not to die at war’s end. Neither were soldiers of the Emperor; they certainly did not think of themselves as
kamikaze,
falling like cherry petals on the third day of their brief bloom. Yet, for all that, they were patriots. And it was this very love of country which spurred them on. Nangi was farsighted enough to want to see Japan rise from the rubble this stupid and ineptly fought war had reduced it to; Seiichi was young enough to still believe in the idealism of the world. Together, Nangi thought, they just might be unbeatable.

To this end, he began Seiichi’s education in
kanryōdō,
the modern Japanese’s
bushido
, the way of the bureaucrat, while Seiichi was finishing his last year at Kyoto University. Nangi thought that he would need a particularly salient example to hook Seiichi into this new way of thinking. He asked Seiichi if he knew the best route to political power in Japan.

Seiichi shrugged his shoulders. “The National Diet, of course,” he said with the absolute surety of youth. “Isn’t that where all politicians gain their experience?”

Nangi shook his head. “Listen to me, Seiichi-san: not one of Tōjō’s cabinet ministers ever served in the parliament. All were former bureaucrats. Any time you feel your interest flagging, I urge you to remember that.”

“But I have no desire to become a civil servant,” Seiichi complained. “And I can’t understand your desire to become one.”

“Have you ever heard the phrase
tennō no kanri
? No? It is the definition of the Japanese bureaucrat, an official of the Emperor. Imperial appointment gives to them the status of
kan,
a word of Chinese origin that meant, in those faraway days, the home of a mandarin who presided over a city.
Kan
is power, Seiichi, believe me. And no matter what the American occupation forces do to us, in the end,
kan
will rule Japan and make it great once again.”

Of course history proved the veracity of Nangi’s words. Though General Mac Arthur’s SCAP, the occupation authorities, changed the bureaucracy drastically from 1945 onward for seven years, they did not and indeed could not eliminate it. In fact, they unwittingly strengthened one area: the economic ministries.

SCAP did away with the military completely. This they were compelled to do, but not understanding the fundamental nature of Japanese government, they failed to see the ramifications of their action. For the military had been the chief rival of the economic ministries.

But now the war crimes tribunal set its sights further afield and began calling in certain influential members of the
zaibatsu,
the great family-run industrial combines whose might had propelled Japan into the war in the first place.

With the transformation of the
zaibatsu
and the inevitable weakening of their influence as the tribunal’s dedicated officers sifted through the rosters seeking out more war criminals in hiding, a power vacuum was created, into which the economic ministries again stepped.

Shortly after the Ministry of Commerce and Industry was purged of forty-two members—among the lowest percentage found within the government—Tanzan Nangi achieved a position in
kōsan kyoku,
the Minerals Bureau. This was in June of 1946 and Shinzo Okuda, the current vice-minister, was glad to have him. Nangi had gone to the right schools and, just as importantly, came to the ministry without taint as far as the war was concerned. He had never achieved a high enough rank or the kind of notoriety for him to have come under the scrutiny of the SCAP tribunal. He had also worked at the Industrial Facilities Corporation, a bureaucratic management foundation or
eidan
, shortly before the war broke out and he was called into service.

It did not take him long to catch on. Because MacArthur had been advised to choose an indirect occupation—that is, working through the existing Japanese government instead of doing away with it entirely—the shrewd ministers of the bureaucracy found a way to protect themselves:
menjū fukuhai.
Okuda explained this to Nangi soon after he had been on the job long enough to have impressed his superiors with his skills and to have gained their trust.

“What we continue to do each day,” the vice-minister said, standing in the center of his small office, “is to follow the American orders so long as they are looking, then
reversing them in the belly
when they can no longer see what we do.”

And, as Okuda told Nangi, the bureaucracy had already passed its first crisis point. “One day Minister Hoshijima called me into his office. You could see just how agitated he was. He was pacing back and forth, back and forth. ‘Okuda-san,’ he said to me, ‘MacArthur is threatening to go to the people and have them ratify this new foreign document—what the Americans call a constitution.’ He turned to look at me. ‘Do you know what that would mean? We cannot allow the public direct participation in government if we are to keep our absolute power. A plebiscite would be the beginning of the end for us. We must all gather our power now and push for an immediate acceptance of the MacArthur constitution.’”

Okuda was smiling now. “And it was done, Nangi-san, in just this way.”

In the months ahead, it became plain to Nangi that the fate of Japanese bureaucracy had been set forever. For one thing, the country’s desperate need for economic recovery made it imperative that the legion of bureaucrats be expanded. For another, the political leaders who filtered through SCAP’s erratic and, to the Japanese anyway, illogical system were totally incompetent. The occupation forces had returned to power many politicians who had not worked in over twenty years. Time and again, Nangi would confront cabinet ministers who were forced to bring with them their vice-ministers, whom they turned to for answers to almost every question put to them.

Too, it became manifestly clear to him just how little power resided in the Diet. It was at Nangi’s own ministry where policy was hammered out and only then presented to the legislature for ratification.

In his new position Nangi was put in charge of carrying out many of MCI’s policies that his vice-minister was far too busy to oversee himself. One of these was mining manufacturing.

Morozumi Mining was only one of many fledgling companies in need of total restructuring that came under his purview. Almost all the senior executives had been purged and subsequently tried as class A war criminals since Morozumi had been revamped during the mid forties, becoming one of the leading producers of tri-nitrotoluene for the war effort. Its then standing director had been awarded several medals in 1944 from Tōjō himself for the company’s high levels of production.

But Morozumi was too well run to destroy entirely, and after the SCAP tribunal stripped the tree of all its boughs, it asked MCI to restaff the
konzern.
This Nangi was delighted to do since he was able to install Seiichi as production chief, a job which, in better times, might have been suspect for a young man just turned eighteen. But Seiichi was exceptionally bright and well schooled. Further, instinct had taught him how to act with men his elder, and thus his appointment passed without a ripple of protest from the vice-minister’s office.

With the money they had received from the T’ang Dynasty cups Obā-chama had given them—even in the worst of times mere are those enterprising few on the lookout for treasures—the two men had managed to rent a fair-sized apartment in Tokyo. Sato knew that his friend hated to give up such treasures; Nangi had fallen in love with the antique cups at the moment Obā-chama had first shown them to him. But they had had no choice.

As soon as they had a little money, Nangi had sent Seiichi to fetch Obā-chama. Her daughter had died shortly after Nangi had brought Sato home. And though she loved her little house in quiet Kyoto, age was making a solitary life more and more difficult for her.

One evening early in 1949 Nangi returned to the apartment somewhat early. As always, Obā-chama opened the door. She hurried to make tea, ignoring his protestations. With the tiny cups she brought out three freshly made rice cakes, a special treat in those times.

Nangi watched her distractedly as she went through the delicate tea ceremony, and when the pale green froth was at just the right thickness she withdrew the whisk and offered him the cup. When she had made her own and had taken her first sip, she judged the silence to have proceeded long enough without her intervention.

“If you have pain in your legs I will get your pills.” Age had made her more outspoken. In any case she saw no shame in soothing away hurts inflicted by the war. She was grateful that he, at least, had been spared as her Gōtarō-chan, her daughter, and her son-in-law had not.

“My legs are no better or worse, Obā-chama.”

Outside, the sounds of traffic ebbed and flowed as the convoys of military transports supervised by the Occupation Forces ran true to schedule.

“Then what is troubling you, my son?”

Nangi looked up at her. “It’s the ministry. I work very hard, and I know my ideas are forward thinking and innovative. And yet there seems no hope of advancement. Obi-san, who is younger than I am by more than a year and is nowhere near as quick and knowledgeable, has already been promoted to bureau chief. His
sotomawari
, his going around the track, as these series of postings are called, has already begun on the elite course.”

Nangi closed his eyes in an attempt to hold back the tears pearling there. “It is unfair, Obā-chama. I work longer hours than most. I come up with the solutions to problems. The vice-minister uses me when he’s stuck for an answer but he never invites me out to drink after work, he never confides in me. I am an outcast in my own bureau.”

“This Obi-san,” the old woman said, sitting like a Buddha, “he graduated from Todai as did your vice-minister, is that correct?”

Nangi nodded his head.

“And you, my son, what university did you graduate from?”

“Keiō, Obā-chama.”

“Ah.” Obā-chama nodded as if he had provided her with the key to the Rosetta Stone. “That explains it then. You are not of their faction. Do you so soon forget the history, of which my grandson is never loathe to tell me you are a
sensei
? Always the
samurai
-bureaucrat’s position depended on Imperial appointment, not on performance.” She took another sip of her tea. “Why should it be any different today? Do you think any
iteki
—barbarian—interference can change us that much?”

She snorted in derision. “But you, my son, must learn to work within the system.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” Nangi said with an edge to his voice. “But I cannot swim against a tide. Keiō is not a well-known university. I know of only one other man in the ministry from there. He’s a junior and not a classmate, so he’s no use at all.”

“Oh, stop sniveling, Nangi,” Obā-chama snapped. “You sound like a baby. I’ll not have such a demeaning display in this house, is that clear?”

Nangi wiped at his eyes. “Yes, Obā-chama. I apologize. For a moment my frustration seemed too much to bear.”

Obā-chama snorted again and Nangi winced, now the object of her derision. “What do you know of the capacity to bear pain, disappointment, and suffering? You are only twenty-nine. When you get to be my age you might have some inkling although, Buddha protect you, I hope not.”

She squared her shoulders. “Now. We do what must be done. And that does not include crying over the inequity of a system which all young men must abide by. Obviously
gakubatsu
,** the first and, at least as far as the ministers are concerned, the strongest of the factions that will help you in your life, is of no use to you here. But there are others. We may rule out
zaibatsu
as well, since that bond is based on money and you have very little at this moment.

“That leaves
keibatsu
and
kyōdobatsu.
Of the first, as far as you have told me you are not related by blood or marriage to any minister or vice-minister and the chances of you marrying into such a family at any time in the near future seems nil. Am I correct?”