In a room in the Prime Minister’s residence, which still showed the effects of the earthquake, three men sat around a table with somber expressions: the Prime Minister, his face worn and haggard; the secretary general of the Cabinet; and its director general. On the table lay a single sheet of paper upon which was written:
“It’s altogether ridiculous,” said the director general, rubbing his face vigorously with a thick hand. “If it were true, it would be terrible, of course. But it’s an absurd mistake, a fantasy of that eccentric scientist Tadokoro.”
The secretary general eyed the Prime Minister shrewdly. He was like a foster son to him, and, a graduate of the same high school, he had come a long way with him down the road of politics. From the first, the secretary general had been bedeviled in this affair by the dread that this man who held the chief responsibility in the nation might, by some mental lapse, have become entangled in a great hoax and be on the way to a misstep from which there could be no recovery. Up to this point it had been possible to keep things concealed, and if the affair had taken a suspicious turn, it could easily have been hushed up. But from now on . . . should things advance to the next stage, then in terms of budget, in terms of organization, the affair would begin to take on a scale that would attract public notice. And then should something go wrong, the question of political responsibility might well be raised. The least blunder might prove fatal, not only to the Prime Minister but also to the party.
“The investigations haven’t yet enabled us to come up with an unqualified answer,” said the Prime Minister, unfolding his arms and raising his head. “So let us go on with them. The budget, the personnel needs are going to increase considerably, of course. And what are we going to do then?”
The Prime Minister’s words by themselves indicated nothing more than a prudent continuation along roughly the same lines, but the secretary general caught his breath. Oh-oh—he’s finally made up his mind, he thought. He intends to move ahead, no matter what. He’ll even risk political suicide.
“I don’t think there’ll be too much of a problem,” answered the director general, his big body rocking as he nodded. “The secretariat meeting is tomorrow.”
“Good enough.” The Prime Minister stood up. He took a bottle and three glasses from a shelf. “I’m a little tired,” he said, pouring out some cognac for the others and himself. “Should we take this up again tomorrow?”
“Fine,” said the director general, nodding as he took up his glass. “It would be good to get a little rest. What I have to say can wait till tomorrow.”
The three men raised their glasses in silence. The director general, whose huge frame was like that of a professional wrestler, downed his at a gulp. He got to his feet, bowed to the Prime Minister, and turned toward the door. The secretary general was right behind him a moment later, and the Prime Minister, too, rose to follow. As they walked down the corridor, with the director general a few paces ahead, the secretary general turned and whispered to the Prime Minister: “A change in the Cabinet?”
Caught somewhat off guard, the Prime Minister studied the face of his keenly perceptive confidant.
“Once the turmoil dies down,” the Prime Minister whispered, his face rigid. “In some respects, the earthquake is a good opportunity, I think.”
After the two Cabinet members had left, the Prime Minister returned to the parlor and poured himself another cognac. After the earthquake he had sent his family to Shinshu, and now in the huge house there was no one besides himself but a middle-aged maid, a steward to attend to his personal needs, and his bodyguards. Since even from this group no one was ever much in evidence, the interior of the residence was as quiet as though he were there by himself.
Things have come to a strange pass, he thought. As he felt the effect of the brandy lessening his fatigue, the Prime Minister raised his forefinger and rubbed his right eye. Then he closed his eyes, and a sense of weariness suddenly bore down on him from behind. He felt as though he were being dragged down into the depths.
The physical obliteration of a nation great in size, in economic power, and in historical tradition . . . Had an event so incredible ever occurred before? Had any politician ever been faced with a problem of such vast proportions?
The Prime Minister gazed absently into space as he gently jiggled his brandy glass. Had he the strength to steer a way through this peril? Should he perhaps give way to someone else? He downed his cognac abruptly. For the present there was no one else, he decided. When the situation grew more critical, perhaps a man might come to the fore and distinguish himself, someone more capable than he to deal with this crisis. But since that time had not yet come nor that man appeared, he had no choice but to carry on, to make the painful, frightening series of decisions. How odd, he thought. He had never detected any impulse toward the heroic in himself, neither before nor now. Furthermore, like all his colleagues, he held as an implicit article of faith that the politician’s role was not to do but to let become. Political acts, after all, were but a portion of the great stream of fate.
Now, however, confronted with so perilous and complex a crisis, the Prime Minister found himself profoundly disturbed. He had always thought of courage as nothing more than a marginal necessity, but now it seemed an indispensable component of judgment.
To go somewhere for a day or two, even in the midst of his work, he thought, gazing at his brandy glass. To meditate in the Zen manner ... so as to quiet the spirit and see beyond the darkness ahead ... To consult with the old man . . .
✦ ✦ ✦
Winter descended upon a Tokyo still bearing the raw claw marks of disaster. At the year’s end, like another blow following upon that of the quake, a cold wave hit.
Onodera, the collar of his overcoat up, was walking from Tameike toward Toranomon as a powdery snow fluttered down from a frozen sky. He intended to stop at the Prime Minister’s Office and then go to the Maritime Safety Agency, but he ran into a milling crowd by the Diet Building, the first large-scale demonstration since the disaster. In one place a clash had already broken out between students and riot police. To avoid the crowd, he decided to cut in front of the patent office and take a detour by way of Kasumigaseki.
The universities had been relatively undamaged, and the greater number of them had reopened. They still were being used to some degree, however, to house refugees, and since many of the faculty had been killed or injured in the earthquake, many classes were canceled. A number of boarding-houses had been destroyed, and many students had returned to their homes after the quake. As a consequence, then, although the traditional paraphernalia was in evidence—helmets, masks, long poles—the students were few and their spirit was not robust. Nevertheless, workers and ordinary citizens were also involved, and since there were never lacking some willing to take on the police, two or three struggles had broken out. Though no one threw any Molotov cocktails, they hurled chunks of concrete and bricks from destroyed buildings. Finally the riot police charged and scattered the demonstrators.
More than the students, the dark, somber mood of the ordinary people who had silently joined in with them unsettled Onodera. “Give us houses!” “Throw open your buildings!” “Money enough for refugees to get through the winter!” The faces beneath these signs seemed dark and shrunken from the cold, and a strange anxiety seemed to hover over them.
Maybe, Onodera thought, these people sense something.
It was as though a kind of darkness floated above the heads of the demonstrators, colored by a desperate anxiety that the eye could not perceive. As though it spoke of a people once determined to do great things who had lost their will to act.
As the demonstrators lowered the placards with the violent slogans, their sullen faces conveyed an anxiety to Onodera, like a kind of ill omen. People, of course, never took at face value the daily headlines—”A Great Depression Coming?” “Black Market Price of Fresh Foods up 40%, Fear of Food Crisis Next Spring”—but now, more than ever, they were on their guard.
We’re a sensitive people, thought Onodera as he passed the lines of demonstrators moving the other way. And he himself felt what they did, his skin prickling. All at once a painful sensation struck his chest. Suppose, he thought, suppose these people, who, on the one hand, have no definite information but who, on the other, are becoming ever more perceptive in the way they feel. . . suppose they learned of this thing, this thing which now stands a better than fifty-percent chance of occurring . . . what would happen? Would a great panic break out?