One day, I telephoned the Human Rights Commission. A man answered in a brusque, dispassionate tone.
“We can’t help you here. Our job is to protect non-smokers.”
“Yes, but smokers are in the minority now.”
“That’s been so for a long time. We’re here to protect the interests of the majority.”
“Yes? Do you always side with the majority, then?”
“But of course. The very idea.”
So I had no option but to protect myself. Smoking wasn’t actually illegal yet. Instead, the lynchings became more violent (presumably out of frustration). I surrounded my house with barbed wire – electrified at night – and armed myself with a modified handgun and a samurai sword.
One day around this time, I received a call from a painter, Kusakabe, who lived not far away. Originally a pipe smoker, he’d switched to ordinary cigarettes when he could no longer obtain his favourite “Half and Half”. Of course, he was one of the remaining twenty or so “smoking artists” who were always being targeted by the newspapers.
“That things should have come to this!” Kusakabe bemoaned. “I’ve heard that we will soon be attacked. The press and TV companies are inciting the NAF to torch our homes, so they can show pictures of our houses burning on the news.”
“The infidels,” I said. “If they come here first, can I escape to your place?”
“We’re in the same boat, aren’t we? If I’m hit first, I’ll drive over to yours. Then we’ll go up to Tokyo together. I know a safe house there. We have comrades there, too. If we’re all to suffer the same fate, better to die glorious deaths together!”
“Agreed. Let us die magnificent deaths. Let them write in future school textbooks, ‘They died with cigarettes in their mouths’.”
We did laugh.
But it was no laughing matter. One evening just two months later, Kusakabe drove to my house covered in burns.
“They got me,” he said as he parked his car in my garage, which was converted from a utility room in the main house. “They’ll be here next. Let’s get away.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, closing the garage door. “I’ll gather up as many cigarettes as I can.”
“Good idea. I’ve brought a few with me, too.”
We were loading packs of cigarettes into the boot of the car when we heard a sudden commotion around the house. My porch window was smashed.
“They’re here!” I said to Kusakabe, trembling with anticipation. “Shall we let them have it before we go?”
“Shall we? All right, let’s. I’ve been itching to do this!”
We went into the dining room, which looked out onto the garden. A man was tangled in the electrified barbed wire on the back wall, his body making popping, cracking noises. I heated up a saucepan of oil I’d prepared earlier. Then I handed Kusakabe the modified handgun, and picked up my samurai sword.
We heard a noise in the toilet. I burst in. A man had broken the window and was trying to climb through. He must have jumped across from the neighbour’s roof. I sliced his arms off at the elbow.
“…”
He disappeared from the window without a sound.
About a dozen others burst into the garden. They’d probably cut through the barbed wire. One by one, they started to prise open my shutters and windows. After a short discussion with Kusakabe, I went upstairs with the saucepan and poured boiling oil onto the garden from the veranda. The wretches started howling in agony. That was the signal for Kusakabe to start firing at random with the handgun. Terrified shrieks and screams.
They obviously hadn’t expected us to be so prepared. The gang withdrew, carrying their wounded with them. But they’d started a fire near my front door, and the house was starting to fill with smoke.
“A parting gift for us smoke-lovers,” Kusakabe quipped as he coughed. “But I draw the line at being burnt alive. Let’s get out of here!”
“The garage door is very weak,” I said as we got into the car. I sensed that there were people waiting for us in the driveway. “Just drive through it.”
Kusakabe’s car was a Mercedes Benz – built like a tank. I didn’t have a car of my own any more. My son had taken it over recently, and he’d driven it off to his grandmother’s.
The Merc started up, smashed through the garage door and roared onto the driveway. Then we turned into the street at the same speed. We seemed to have bulldozed through about a dozen photographers and reporters, clustered around my house like piles of garbage – but did we care?
“Well. That was fun!” laughed Kusakabe as he drove away.
I still don’t know how we avoided all the road blocks on the way to Tokyo. The burning of our houses would certainly have been reported on television, and both the NAF and the police must have been on the lookout for us. But we drove on through the night, and arrived in the capital as day broke.
Kusakabe’s safe house was in the basement of a luxury apartment block in Roppongi. There, we met about twenty comrades who’d also escaped after their country residences had been burnt down. This was originally a private club, partly financed by Kusakabe, and the owner was one of us, too. We vowed an oath of allegiance and resistance, honoured the god of tobacco and prayed for victory. The god of tobacco, of course, has no physical form. We merely raised the red circle of Lucky Strike, and worshipped this while puffing away.
I won’t go into too much detail about our struggle over the next week or so, as it would be too tedious. Suffice to say that we made a fairly good fist of it. Our enemy was not only the NAF, along with the police and armed forces (which had merely become its tools). For now they were joined by the well-meaning conscience of the whole world, backed by the World Health Organization and the Red Cross. In contrast, the best support we could expect was from unscrupulous rogues who were continuing to sell cigarettes illegally. It would have hurt our pride as smokers to depend on them.
Eventually, the god of tobacco could no longer bear to see our plight, and sent assistants to help us in our hour of need. But they were only the dove of “Peace,” the bat of “Golden Bat,” the camel of “Camel,” and the penguin of “Cool” – none of which were of much use to us. The last that came to assist us was a young superhero with gleaming white teeth, sent by “Smoker Toothpaste”. At first, we thought he might serve some purpose. But soon we realized there was nothing behind his façade either.
“We lived through the horrors of war, survived postwar austerity, and for what?” asked Kusakabe. “The richer the world becomes, the more laws and regulations are imposed on us and the more discrimination grows. And now, we are not free at all. Why is that?”
All of our comrades had fallen, and only two of us remained. We’d been pursued to the top of the national parliament building, where we sat puffing cigarettes for all we were worth.
“Is that what people prefer?”
“I suppose it must be,” I replied. “In the end, we’d have to start a war to stop this kind of thing.”
At that moment, a tear gas canister, fired from a helicopter, hit Kusakabe full on the head. He plummeted down without a sound. The masses swarming below, merry with alcohol as if at a festival, sent up a great cheer and started to chant.
“Only one left! Only one left! Only one left!”
But I’m still here, a full two hours later, still resisting doggedly at the top of the parliament building. I’m quite proud of myself, actually. If I’m going to die anyway, I might as well use up all the energy I have left.
Suddenly, everything went quiet down below, and the helicopters disappeared. Someone was talking over a loudspeaker. I strained my ears to catch what he was saying.