[War] Japan: "A Marred Beginning"

[Michael Downey]

"A Marred Beginning"
Prime Minister Shirow Ahkahita
Japan
20 January 2013
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

---
If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never
get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find
outstanding people among those you don't particularly like.
- Soichiro Honda
---

<Tokyo>

The ringing of the phone pierced Shirow Ahkahita’s ears with the force
of a scalpel heated by a blowtorch being pushed through partly-melted
butter. His mouth still tasted of cigarettes, cheap sake, and stale
Budweiser. His head throbbed, and when Ahkahita opened his eyes he
audibly grunted as they stung from dryness. It was morning, that he
knew. Though the blinds had all been tightly pulled on all the windows
in his Tokyo condominium, small beams of soft amber poked out from
behind the black curtains. The air was heavy with the smell of
tobacco.

“Oh shut the fuck up,” Ahkahita muttered at the blasted phone as he
swung his legs down from the couch and assumed a sitting position. He
had managed to keep himself in a somewhat coherent state for most of
the post-election party, careful to mask his growing drunkenness as
the festivities in the ballroom of the Sakura hotel progressed late
into the night.  Traditionally, the Japanese considered drunks, like
retards and small children, to not be responsible for their actions.
Their criminal code had all the same legal implications of actions
taken while intoxicated that were found in the West, but other than
running someone over with your Camry, a blind eye would often be
turned to the antics of those who had imbibed too much. Ahkahita had
eventually gotten sick of the party and gotten Tohru, his driver and
bodyguard, to take him back to the condo.

The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Only a few people knew his unlisted
home number, so combined with the fact that whatever asshole was on
the other end wouldn’t take the hint and hang the fuck up, it was
probably important.

Sighing, Ahkahita stood, a loud ‘crack’ emanating from his lower back.
He scanned the coffee table in the living room and managed to locate
his ever-present pack of cigarettes. He preferred Marlboros, an
acquired taste from Princeton, but kept them in the packaging of the
local Mild Seven brand in order to appear more patriotic. Ho Chi Minh
had done something similar.

“This better be important,” Ahkahita said tersely into the phone as he
answered it, his words slightly garbled as he lit his cigarette at the
same time. He honestly didn’t know who was on the other end, but he
was hung-over and irritated and hadn’t had time to get through his
smoke.

“It’s me.”  The voice was the of Kiyomi Yagawa, his sister and chief
of staff. “It just happened an hour ago. The NPA is all over the
scene.  Kohira tried calling your cell but it was off and he didn’t
know your home number.”

“Kiyo slow down,” said Ahkahita. He glanced at the clock. It burned
’10:02’ in red lights. “What happened? Why do you sound so agitated?”

“Turn on your television.”

One thing that Ahkahita loved was television. His parents had
chastised him for watching too much of it as a child, saying it would
rot his brain and lead him nowhere in life. Showed what they knew,
the pricks. In the mostly sparse (and dirty) apartment, the large,
sixty-inch screen was by far the cleanest and most-used item. He
grabbed the remote and thumbed the power button. He had left it on NHK
for most of the election, so the news was the first thing that popped
up.

“-confirmed dead on the scene after being stabbed over an hour ago.
The death of Takashi Omaguchi  is being described at the most shocking
assassination of a politician since the deaths of Inejiro Asanuma or
Koki Ishii.”

Ahkahita’s Marlboro fell from his lips and landed on the floor.

“Omaguchi was assassinated?” gasped Shirow.

“The police aren’t releasing anything to the press other than he has
been shot and killed, but the Commissioner-General called me and they
have the suspect. He’s a Zainichi.”

Ahkahita reached down to pick up his cigarette, taking a long and
heavy drag. “They’re sure the guy is the gunman?”

“He apparently confessed to the arresting officers,” answered Kiyomi.
“The PM wants to meet with you, a security detail will swing by to
pick you up in about fifteen minutes.

Old son of a bitch probably wants to dump this whole mess into my lap
before I take his chair, Ahkahita thought bitterly to himself and then
immediately regretted it. He and Omaguchi had never seen eye-to-eye on
much, but the man had worked hard to help get Ahkahita elected and to
bring the DPJ into power.

“Fuck.” He took one last drag and got ready to leave.
----

<Kyoto, several days later>

And thus Shirow Ahkahita was inaugurated the 62nd Prime Minister of
Japan and the first one to enter office without a Chief Cabinet
Secretary. Omaguchi was not the first politician to be assassinated in
the postwar history of Japan, but he was certainly the first in a long
time.

For Ahkahita it was a strange period. He had known Omaguchi quite well
but had never particularly liked the man. Twenty years Ahkahita’s
senior, the PM always felt that Omaguchi had some sort of disdain for
him, treating Ahkahita as nothing more than a popular face to plaster
on the billboards for the election. Ahkahita had twice chewed the
former DPJ Secretary-General out for going behind his back and would
have fired the old bastard on both occasions if it was not for the
fact that Ahkahita *needed* Omaguchi, both in the election and within
the DPJ.

Of course the PM had appeared suitably upset by Omaguchi’s death in
public, speaking of how much a tragedy it was and that the Diet had
lost one of its most senior and respected members. Which was true.
Ahkahita had respected Omaguchi for his insight, cunning and guile.

With the funeral over and a proper period of public mourning observed,
the Prime Minister now had to turn to the task of picking a new
assemblyman to serve as both Secretary-General and Chief Cabinet
Secretary. This was no simple task. While Ahkahita was, for the most
part, free to pick and dismiss other Cabinet ministers at his purview,
the role of Secretary-General (and thus Chief Cabinet Secretary)
required a majority vote of the DPJ leadership. Ahkahita thus had to
pick who to back with great care, lest he alienate too much of his own
party and get booted like so many prime ministers before him.

All these thoughts swirled through the PM’s head as his motorcade
approached the looming machiya, a traditional Japanese wooden
townhouse. This particular manor was the residence of Hideki Niwa,
LDP-turned-DPJ assemblyman and the designated Minister of Finance for
when Ahkahita’s cabinet took power in the next few days.

“This is stupid,” the PM stated bluntly to Kiyomi.

“It was your idea,” she noted.

“And you should have stopped me, because it was a stupid idea,”
retorted Ahkahita. “The old fool will never agree to this. I made him
Finance Minister because he proved to be good with numbers.”

‘Good’ was not the word. Niwa was one of the hundred richest men in
Japan, a billionaire that had made his fortune in banking and
real-estate. Niwa had gained particular notoriety for publically
predicting the oncoming burst of the Japanese assets bubble in the
early 1990s and insulating his own holdings while everyone else
suffered.

 He was also an insufferable old bastard that romanticized about
Japan’s prewar past and emphasized with nationalists. His defection,
along with twenty other LDP assemblymen, still boggled Ahkahita. But
the defection had been the killing blow to the past LDP administration
and signalled the ascent for the DPJ, so who was Ahkahita to question
luck?

Niwa had, of course, agreed to meet with Ahkahita but had requested a
private audience given the nature of their discussion. As the
limousine pulled up to the front entrance of the machiya, a member of
Ahkahita’s security detail opened the door for the occupants to get
out. A trio of greeters, one geisha and two maiko apprentices, were
waiting for Ahkahita and Kiyomi at the large wooden doorway. Ahkahita
found Niwa’s use geisha foolish and trite and it made him regret
coming here even more. The three geisha’s bowed deeply to the pair and
guided them into the machiya.

Kiyomi waited in a reception parlour while the senior geisha showed
Ahkahita down a long wood and paper hallway to where Niwa was waiting.
She pulled open a shoji screen door and bowed her head and indicated
for Ahkahita to proceed, pulling the door closed behind him.

The room was smaller than Ahkahita had expected, and rather plain.
Wood floor with wood paper walls. The most dominant features of the
room was a daisho set at the far end, a kanji tapestry with some haiku
the PM didn’t bother reading, and a picture of Emperor Meji. In the
middle of the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor and picking
sushi off a small wood enfloor table, was Niwa.

“You said it was important?” asked Niwa simply as he plucked a bit of
food of his plat with chopsticks. The man was never one to mince
words. That had been a quality that had impressed Ahkahita, though had
always dogged the man in elections.

“Why do you waist money maintaining these archaic settings?” said the
PM as he began to circle the room, studying the sparse contents,
including Niwa himself. The man wore a black kimono over his regular
clothes.

“This is our country, our traditions,” replied Niwa. “Why revoke who we are?”

Ahkahita would bet money that the suit under Niwa’s kimono, like his
own, was probably of French or Italian cut and not Japanese. The PM
also noted the presence of a bottle of diet Pepsi on the small floor
table. Everyone was a hypocrite at heart.

“Really? If our ancestors hadn’t imported so much technology, culture
and knowhow from the Dutch, Germans and Americans, the Shogun and his
samurai would still rule everything.”

“Our culture has benefited by learning from others,” acknowledged
Niwa. That elicited an audible snort from Ahkahita. Much of Niwa’s
assets were in California and Hong Kong, so such an attitude from a
man known from his nationalism was a cynical as it was predictable.
“The speech you gave at Omaguchi’s funeral was quite poignant.”

“He died before his time, and his loss will hurt the DPJ, to say
nothing of his family.” The PM knew that Niwa had disliked the
extremely liberal Omaguchi. “When will discussions about who will be
the new Chief Cabinet Secretary begin?”

“I was thinking of asking you to do it.”

Ahkahita had to give Niwa credit, the man didn’t miss a beat. No shock
or surprise registered on the man’s face at Ahkahita’s statement.

“Me?”

“You’re the de facto leader of the LDP defectors, your greatly
respected by the moderates and centrists in the DPJ, and your popular
with the business community and our financial backers.”

“Won’t the party leadership be upset about a former LDP assemblyman
being made Chief Cabinet Secretary?” questioned Niwa.

“Some will, yes. But I gained my ascent with the backing of the
centrists. Between the two of us we’ll have more than enough support
to have your successfully placed in the position,” answered the PM.
“And besides, the LDP despises you as a traitor, so pissing them off
will assure you the party nod.”

For a moment there was silence as Niwa considered Ahkahita’s proposal. Then:

“And what makes you believe that I will accept such a nomination?”

“Why wouldn’t you? Chief Cabinet Secretary effectively makes you the
second most powerful man in the government.”

“To be your puppet?”

“I never said that,” scolded Ahkahita. “If I wanted someone who would
just warm a seat and do whatever I said, there are other men who I
could have approached. And get placed with far less effort. I mean you
already agreed to be Finance Minister.”

“I agreed to be your Finance Minister because we hold essentially the
same views on the economic future of this country. We disagree on
quite a bit more. China, North Korea, the Northern Territories, the
Zainichi, Article 9, the JSDF,” said Niwa. Ahkahita simply shrugged.

“You already know my thoughts on those matters. I am still going to go
through with the agenda I set out during the election, so even if you
remain as Finance Minister you’ll still be aiding and abetting, even
if you keep your focus on the national finances. But this way you
might actually influence my decisions. Even change my mind.”

Not bloody likely.

“Then I agree,” said Niwa without pause. “

Ahkahita nodded and paced over to the daisho set opposite Niwa. It was
fortunate that his back was turned to the older man, Ahkahita rolled
his eyes practically to heaven.

“A family heirloom,” said Niwa between bites, knowing what it was that
Ahkahita was looking at.

“Authentic?” asked the PM. He drew the katana from its scabbard and
examined the blade. He experienced no romanticism over such gruesome
instruments of cutting, the bizarre fetish held by so many Japanese
and American teenage males over something crafted to bloodily end
another person’s life.

“Yes, a family heirloom. Crafted for one of my ancestors during the
Muromachi period for loyal service to his daimyo.”

“Let me guess, you keep it here as yet another reminder of our
traditions and history?” said Ahkahita.

“Not really,” answered Niwa. “I actually keep it here as a reminder of
what can happen when we allow our ‘archaic’ past, as you put it,
overwhelm our sense of logic. My grandfather, while serving in the
Imperial occupation forces, used that sword to kill fifteen people in
Korea for partisan activity. Or being the spouse or children of
suspected partisans. After the surrender, my grandfather committed
seppuku. My father, who was fourteen at the time, acted as my
grandfather’s kaishakunin. He used that sword for the decapitation.”

“Oh,” was Ahkahita’s simple reply. He held his arm out to one side and
unceremoniously dropped the sword to the ground with a light thud.
---

“Well?” asked Kiyomi once they had returned to the limo.

“He’ll do it,” said Ahkahita. “It will be a bit if a fight to get the
party leadership to agree, but he’ll be useful.”

“Don’t underestimate Niwa,” cautioned Kiyomi. “He’s been at this
longer than either of us. He would have been Prime Minister if he
wasn’t such a maverick.”

“And he never Kiyomi once they had returned to the limo.

“He’ll do it,” said Ahkahita. “It will be a bit if a fight to get the
party leadership to agree, but he’ll be useful.”

“Don’t underestimate Niwa,” cautioned Kiyomi. “He’s been at this
longer than either of us. He would have been Prime Minister if he
wasn’t such a maverick.”

“And he never will be,” said Ahkahita coldly. “The best way to keep a
man in his place is to give him power. He’s our maverick now.”
---

Actions:
1) Introduce Shirow Ahkahita, the next Prime Minister of Japan
2) Nominate Hideki Niwa as the next Chief Cabinet Secretary