Kizu glanced at Ikuo's face. His tone of voice indeed contained a hint of a grudge.
So what about the young lady? Seeing her after fifteen years-"I was surprised she was just as I remembered her," Ikuo said, his voice now calm. "It was like looking at your painting; her eyes were still like faded India ink, her mouth still open as if that were the correct way to breathe."
"Ha! She does seem to like to keep her mouth open, doesn't she. And her eyes!" Kizu said, as if ever the artist, continuing the sketch. "When they look at you they turn even darker."
"I also had a feeling of déjà vu, as if I knew exactly how she would turn out when she grew up."
Kizu understood exactly what he meant. Déjà vu neatly summed up his own feelings when he met Ikuo again and discovered he was the young boy from so long ago.
"She's definitely unique, isn't she?" Kizu said. "I knew that the first time we talked on the phone. Her job-her lifestyle choice, I guess you'd say-is pretty extraordinary, too."
"Do you think she believes in the new teachings of that old leader who did a Somersault?" Ikuo asked. "For the sake of her dance, even though he hasn't restarted his religious movement yet?"
"Are you going to accept her challenge and go meet this Patron?"
"I haven't really thought about it," Ikuo said. "First of all, I really don't know much about this Somersault."
"Shall I give a little lecture, then, based on what I know from The New York Times? The media over here treated the leaders' recantation entirely as a scandal, and I think that's what you remember. The Times correspondent, though, was really fascinated by the story. The religious group had been founded by two middle-aged men. One of them formulated their basic doc- trine based on his mystical experiences. Over time he refined this. The sec- ond man's job was verbal expression of the mystical experiences the first man had. He was also the one who took care of the day-to-day running of the church.
"The Times correspondent reported on their church for a year. He got to know the two leaders well; he's the one, in fact, who dubbed them Patron and Guide. I imagine he used these names because calling them Savior and Prophet would have provoked some serious negative reactions from his American readers. After the Somersault the two of them adopted these names themselves; they weren't fond of their earlier names, anyway.
"Anyhow, just around the time the correspondent was wrapping up his reporting, the Somersault incident occurred. What happened was that the two leaders negotiated with the authorities to inform on some potentially danger- ous activities of a radical faction within their church.
"It was on a much smaller scale than Aum Shinrikyo, but the research facility they owned in Izu became the focal point of the radical faction's ac- tivities, the cornerstone of which was their plan to occupy a nuclear power plant. One of the people at the research center had a PhD in physics. They wanted to turn a nuclear plant into an atomic bomb to force the leaders' teach- ings on all Japanese, or at least to preach the need for universal repentance now that the end of the world was drawing near. Or maybe by blowing up two or three nuclear plants they felt they could make everyone experience how very near the end of the world was. Their entire plan for repentance was based on this. Radical political groups all have the same basic idea, don't they- pushing the country into crisis? But here the target was nuclear power plants.
From the beginning this was an apocalyptic teaching.
"The church's leaders found they couldn't suppress the radical faction that had sprung up among them, so they went to the police. Sensing this might happen, the radical faction dispersed throughout the country. No one knew when or where they might attack a nuclear plant. At this point the leaders asked to hold a press conference. They indicated ahead of time what they planned to do and asked for full-scale coverage. I'm sure the authorities helped out in this as well.
"The first leader-Patron, as he's called now-sat in front of the cam- eras on live TV and told the church's radical faction members scattered throughout the country to abandon their plans to occupy a nuclear plant.
We are neither saviors nor prophets, he said. Everything we've preached till now has been one big joke. We abandon the church. Everything we've said and done was a silly prank. Now that we've confessed, we want you to stop believing.
"Especially you members of the radical faction, he went on. I want you to understand that our church is a sand castle built as a lark. We enjoyed play- ing the savior of the world and the prophet at the end time, using all those high-sounding phrases and acting solemn and grave. Thanks to all of you we had a wonderful time, especially getting incorporated as a religious founda- tion two years ago and receiving tons of money for our playacting. But this is as far as we'll take it. It's all a big farce, get it? Look at me, here on TV. How could you possibly believe I'm the savior of mankind? How can this scornful- looking partner of mine sitting here really be the prophet of the end of the world?
'Through this TV performance, the nation learned all about their Som- ersault, to use the term coined by the Times correspondent. The word became a Popular expression in Japan for a time.
To tell the truth, I don't know the scale of this event in Japan. I know that the news shows on commercial networks followed up on the story, treat- lng it as slapstick comedy, though I heard that NHK didn't report on it at all.
•dn t you see this when you were a child? What interested me while I was ln the United States was the correspondent's follow-up article on the after- math of the incident. 'The Japanese have a psychological aversion to recanta- tions,' he wrote, 'so with this announcement that everything they preached was just a joke, this false savior and false prophet came under severe attack.'
The correspondent also reported the outrage of ordinary Japanese citizens, who heaped abuse on the two men, and he included letters from people un- connected with the church who complained about its immorality.
"The correspondent found this one-sided attack rather strange.
'Through the Somersault of this false savior and false prophet,' he wrote, 'it is possible that several cities were spared a nuclear holocaust. The authorities insisted it was impossible for a nuclear power plant to be invaded and said a bunch of young amateurs would never be able to convert it into a stationary nuclear weapon. But how true was this? The people of Japan didn't give any credit to the church's two leaders who'd risked everything to defuse the cri- sis, concentrating instead on a moral critique of their recantation. This criti- cism became even more intense once it was known at the trial of the radical faction that, because of the deal they'd made with the authorities, the two lead- ers were going to avoid prosecution.' The correspondent ended by saying that the Japanese were certainly a strange race.
"Ikuo, I'm sure you saw these reports on TV and elsewhere about pub- lic opinion in Japan at the time, right? You wanted to be there to see the end of the world, after all. What did you think about it?"
"As I said before, I had nothing but scorn for them," Ikuo replied, "especially when those afternoon women's talk shows kept playing the so- called savior of mankind's recantation speech ad nauseam. Even though I was only a kid, it made me laugh. Deep down inside, though, I think I was disappointed."
3
Having talked for so long, Kizu drove in silence for a while. From Ikuo's continued silence, Kizu could sense something he couldn't quite lay a finger on, something he hadn't been conscious of recently. His liaison with Ikuo had given him back his self-confidence, though he sometimes felt their relation- ship was different from that of gay couples he used to see in his university community. Maybe it was the same with those couples, but Ikuo didn't seem to accept the kind of closeness you'd expect to arise from physical intimacy and made it clear he wanted to maintain a certain distance from Kizu.