Read Ebook: The Samurai Strategy by Hoover Thomas

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Ebook has 2938 lines and 120869 words, and 59 pages

Asano? Oh, shit. She took a deep breath. "Was his name Kenji Asano?"

"Ken. Right, that's his first name. Maybe you know him. I think he used to be a flunky with some government bureau

over there. But now he's just been put in charge of the Fifth Generation work. It's more than a little curious."

She puzzled a minute. From what she knew about the Fifth Generation, and about Kenji Asano, he had a lot more important things to do than run the lab. The "government bureau" he worked for was none other than MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. In fact, at last count he was Deputy Minister for Research and Planning, a top- ranked executive slot. Could this mean that Japan's ambitious artificial intelligence effort was being moved in on by MITI, their industrial war room?

"Allan, I'll tell you the truth. You may not have heard, but I'm in a fight now at the university. I expect to win, but I've got a lot on my mind. Notes for the book. I can't just suddenly--"

"Tam, I need your help. Look, maybe they've had some new breakthrough that none of us ever imagined." He paused. "Just between us, I lifted a strange MITI memo I found lying around an office when Asana took me on an escorted tour up to the labs at Tsukuba Science City."

She looked at him. "Was it classified?"

"How would I know? There was something about it. My sixth sense told me it was a document nobody was supposed to see. When I get back to Stanford, I plan to have a postdoc over in Physics make me a quick translation."

It was very unlike Allan to walk off with confidential memos uninvited. Which could only mean he must suspect something he wasn't telling.

"You'd better give me the whole story."

"Not now. Not yet. It's only guesswork, Tam." He glanced away. "Nothing to bore you with at the moment. But if you can find out anything, we'll write it up as a report I can circulate around the Hill. This could be important, believe me. Already Cray has started having to buy critical chips for its supercomputers from Japan. And while the Department of Defense is pouring billions into research on semiconductors that will withstand nuclear radiation, Japan is forging ahead on speed and miniaturization--what really counts. I think they could be about to have us by the balls, pardon my French. If they've somehow incorporated AI--"

"Allan, it doesn't add up. I once met Asano. In fact it was a couple of years ago at that Kyoto University symposium on

Third World industrialization. He spent a lot of time trying to pick my brain about our specialized silicon-chip manufacturing here. But he wasn't the slightest bit interested in artificial intelligence."

"Well, prepare yourself for a surprise. He's plenty interested now. And knowledgeable. But still, it's not like the Japanese to do something like this, install some government guy to run an R&D program."

"That's certainly true." She strolled over, looked down upon the park, and began to want a brandy of her own as she chewed over the implications. Was MITI setting up some new high-tech industrial assault? If the Fifth Generation had been taken over by Kenji and his planners . . . "Allan, let me think about this for a couple of days."

"Don't think too long. I'm convinced somebody over there is suddenly in a very big hurry. I need to find out the real story. Am I just starting to go nuts in my old age? . . . Well, make that my prime." He grasped her hand for emphasis. "And you really should make it a point to see this Asano fellow. If you already know him from somewhere, I'd say that's even better."

She started to respond, then stopped. She knew Kenji Asano all right. From a little episode at that conference, when he had invited the panel members of a session he chaired to a late-night tour of the endless tiny bars in Kyoto's Gion district. She remembered all the steaming sake and being ignored by flustered bar girls who were pretending that another woman wasn't around. They had no idea what to do about a member of their own sex there in their sanctuary of male flattery. Ken apparently had staged it mainly to watch their reaction, and hers.

A lot of sake later, after the other panel members had piled into a cab for their hotel, she decided to show Kenji Asano a few things about women he wouldn't learn from giggling bar girls. She'd always heard that Japanese men were pretty humdrum in bed, quick and self-centered, at least in the opinion of a woman she knew who'd done exhaustive field research on the topic. After her own experience with Ken, though, she wasn't so sure. Still, it had been a passing thing. The next morning she awoke in her own room in the Kyoto International and half tried to tell herself it hadn't really happened--just a dream, a chimera of the sultry Kyoto night, brought on by all those quaint little side streets and red paper lanterns.

The truth was she still thought about him from time to time. He was a talented lover, she certainly recalled that part well enough, and he was a charmer. In fact, she could use a little of that charm right this minute.

Maybe she should go.

She poured another dash of cognac for Allan, and they wandered back into the living room, just in time to see the Simpsons out. Everybody else followed except for Dave, now perched by the windows and glaring out into the dark. She decided to ignore him as she walked over, opened one a crack, and looked down. In the park below, commerce was tapering off and the Jamaican Rastas had begun toting up receipts for the night. No sounds, except the faint strains of reggae from a boom box.

Funny, but every once in a while she'd stop everything and watch the kids in the playground down there. What to do? The damned shadows were growing longer by the minute. Maybe Dave wasn't so bad. Trouble was, he needed mothering too.

Think about it tomorrow, Scarlet. She sighed, poured herself a cognac, and headed for the bedroom to get Allan's coat.

After she'd put him on the elevator, she came back and checked out Dave, now slouched in the big chair by the lamp, his eyes closed. He looked positively enticing, and she sounded his name quietly. Nothing. Then she realized he was sound asleep. Snoring.

The bastard. This was it. She grabbed his coat, pushed him out the door, poured herself another cognac, and plopped down in the living room to think.

All right, Allan. You've got a deal. Could be you're on to something. I seem to remember there's a conference in Kyoto starting week after next on supercomputers. Kenji Asano will probably show. Good time to catch him off guard and try to find out what's suddenly so hush-hush.

Yes, by God, I'll do it.

She didn't bother with any of Allan Stern's funding. This trip would be strictly off-the-record. She wrapped up some loose ends, called a few people she knew in Tokyo, lined up half a dozen interviews that might be helpful on the new book, packed her toothbrush and tape recorder, and boarded a Northwest flight for Narita.

She had no idea then, of course, but she was Alice, dropping down the rabbit hole. A fortnight later she was dining with the Emperor of Japan.

To stick to materials research, if you think a moment you realize it's a discipline that actually must have begun in the latter days of the Stone Age. "High technology" in those times meant figuring new ways to use fire and clay to create something nature had neglected to provide. Not integrated circuits, but a decent water pot.

And the Japanese have been making terrific pots for a thousand years. As it happens, some historians claim the very first Japanese pottery was made in the province of Tamba, near Kyoto. Why mention this? Because, then as now, technology and politics had a way of getting mixed together in Japan, and Tamba was a perfect example. Tamba's artisans made great use of a special oven known as a climbing-chambered kiln. Whereas ceramics kilns elsewhere in the country were narrow and high, Tamba's climbing-hill chambers were wide and low, thereby allowing the fire to touch the clay directly. The result was a rugged, flame-seared stoneware that pleased the manly eye--powerful earthy grays, burnt reds, greenish-browns, all with a hard metallic luster. Thus Tamba was a locale much frequented by the warrior shoguns.

Which may be why Tamba province has another claim to history as well. It is the location of the one-time warrior castle- fortress of Sasayama, once a regional command post of the Tokugawa strongmen in Tokyo. You won't find overly much about Sasayama in the usual guidebooks, since it has the kind of history that's more interesting to Japanese than to tourists. The place has no gaudy vermilion temples, no bronze Buddhas ten stories high. Fact is, very little remains of the fortress itself these days except for a wide moat, green with lotuses, and a few stone walls lined with cherry trees that blossom an exquisite white for a few breathtaking moments each spring.

Perhaps it will not seem surprising, therefore, that this ancient samurai residence, in the shogun stronghold closest to ancient Kyoto, was now home base for a powerful warrior of modern Japan. Matsuo Noda.

Samurai had once battled in Sasayama's streets; many's the time its castle had been stormed by raging armies; much blood had been shed and much honor lost. But the event that occurred in Sasayama precisely two weeks after Tamara Richardson's dinner in New York was a historical moment more important than any in its thousand years prior.

It began shortly after dawn, a cool September gray just ripening to pink over the mountains. The early sounds of morning--birdsong, the faint bell of the tofu seller, the steam whistle of the autumn sweet- potato vendor--were only beginning to intrude on the quiet. Noda was where he always was at this moment: on the veranda overlooking his personal garden, a classic Zen-style landscape whose central pond was circled by natural-appearing rocks, trees, bushes, paths. It was, of course, about as "natural" as those sculptured hedges at Versailles. In order to create the illusion of perspective and depth, the stones along the foreshore of the pond were bold, rugged, massively detailed, while those on the opposite side were dark, small, smooth--a little trick to make them seem farther away than they were.

It's a game heavy with nuance. For example, the stone footpath on the left side of the pond may look as if it goes on forever, but that's just part of the art: the stones get smaller toward the back, curving in and out among the azalea bushes till they make one last twist and disappear among the red pines and maples at the rear. Which trees, incidentally, have themselves been slightly dwarfed, again enhancing the illusion of distance, just as the back is deliberately shaggy and dark, like the beginnings of a forest that goes on for miles.

Noda's Zen garden, which deludes rational judgment by manipulating all the signposts we use to gauge distance and space, appeared to be limitless. The secret was that nothing actually ends: everything simply fades out and gets lost. It was a closed space that seemed for all the world as if it went on and on if you could only somehow see the rest of it. Yet peek only a few yards away, and you've got the mundane streets of sleepy Sasayama.

This special dawn, as a few frogs along the edge of the

Although he would stroke only a few kanji characters, scarcely enough for a telex or a memo, the moment required discipline acquired through decades of practice. His Zen-style calligraphy allowed for no hesitation, no retouching. It must be dashed off with a spontaneity that was, in itself, part of the art. As with the swordsman, there could be no time for conscious thought, merely the powerful stroke guided by intuition. No decision that confronted him throughout a business day would demand half so much mental control, inner resolve.

Just then, at the far end of the pond, the first sun flickered through the wisteria. Suddenly, without his consciously knowing the exact moment had arrived, as a Zen archer's arrow must release itself of its own will, his hand struck. The dark tip of

the brush pirouetted down the paper, starting at the left and laying down a mere five lines, twenty-two syllables.

moteri cho

omitsuwa wo

ware wa mochitari

It was done.

He sighed, leaned back, and reached for the cup of green tea that rested beside him on the polished boards. The verse was in an archaic style, a few syllables longer than a haiku, modeled on an eight- hundred-year-old work by a court poet of the Heian era. The strokes were perfectly nuanced, the flow of the brush precise, the intuitive strength as natural as a waterfall.

This was always the moment when he liked to take measure of the three photos standing in a row across the back of his teak desk. The first was his deceased wife Mariko--long-suffering, deferential, resignedly selfless. A model Japanese woman. He still thought of her with fondness, but as was expected of a Japanese helpmate, she always ran a distant second in his affections. His work came first.

The next picture was very different. This woman's face was white, her hair a lacquered wig, her lips a tiny red pout. Her name, Koriko, had been assigned years ago in the Gion district of Kyoto, and she was holding a three-stringed lute, a samisen, and intoning some classical melody from centuries past. These days she purchased thousand-dollar kimonos the way most office girls bought jeans, but she worked for the money. She was a geisha, a real one, an artist whose calling required years of training and commanded the awe of even the most modern Japanese. Like a prizefighter or a matador, she'd spent long painful hours perfecting style, technique, art. She had been Noda's one-time prot?g?e, beneficiary of his patronage. Now, though, she had other "patrons." He still missed her, but the memory was fading.

Matsuo Noda himself had, in fact, once headed MITI, probably Japan's most powerful ministry. He came from ancient samurai stock--fittingly perhaps, since the bureaucrats of modern Japan are mostly of that class. The samurai caste, men who served a liege lord and were forbidden to engage in trade, were actually Japan's first public servants. In between civil wars they became sword-carrying bureaucrats. Many a modern bureau chief has ancestors who wore two swords and sliced up a peasant or a merchant now and then with impunity, which may help explain why the average citizen still views government officials with such nervous awe.

A Todai honors man himself, Noda was a natural for MITI, which runs what is in many ways a covert operation. The head offices are in a nondescript, soot-covered building of tinted glass and limestone near Tokyo's Hibaya Park, guarded by armed, helmeted members of Japan's National Police. Inside it's mostly open floors and lines of gray steel desks; no plush carpets and mahogany suites. MITI has twelve bureaus, each devoted to a major industrial sector. If its officials decide Japan's strategic interests would be served by a certain manufacturing group's cutting production, lowering prices, altering product lines, these "recommendations" are passed along. And it happens.

Noda began his career there by circulating through the different sections, "going around the track" as it's called, after which he proceeded to run the General Affairs office of various bureaus, by which time everybody had him picked for a mover, on the "elite course." Eventually he was promoted to section chief in the International Trade Bureau, next on to bureau chief, and finally at age forty-seven he made the top. Vice minister.

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