Read Online Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami - Free Book Online

corner of page one, under the heading ‘The Midori Society,’ you will find a list of names, and below and continuing on to the next page please notice the photographs of each member of the group.” He then brought his report to a close with an inexplicable, “Have a pleasant evening, and we’ll look forward to seeing you again soon.”
    “I wonder which of these Midoris killed Sugioka,” Yano mused out loud while chewing a piece of dried squid. “Not that it matters, right?” he added, and for some reason burst into muffled laughter. He was like a Vietcong guerrilla hiding in the dark, bowing his head and trying to stifle his mirth as he remembers a recent surprise attack and the unique look of shamefaced terror on an enemy’s face in the split second before death. Yano continued to gurgle for some time.
    “There can be no mercy or forgiveness for people like this,” Nobue declaimed, adding, “What is it about this revenge stuff, though? It makes you feel all gooey inside!” He clamped his hands over his mouth and laughed idiotically once again.
    Sugiyama, his eyes forming the narrowest of slits behind his glasses, gave tongue to everyone’s feelings, punctuating his words with flying spit.
    “In short, we can do whatever we want to them. If it was up to me, I’d take these Oba-sans and strip ’em all naked and, you know, do the sort of thing you always hear about—force a wooden pestle up their ass and piss on ’em and then rape ’em and kill ’em and shit. I think that’s what we should do. After all, they’re guilty of murder. Murder, my friends! We can’t let ’em get away with that .”
    None of them thought to wonder how that was any different from what Sugioka had done.
    “I think we should try to think of a lot of different ways to do it,” Sugiyama went on. “Gather tips from like the Nazis and the Japanese Imperial Army and Bosnia and stuff. I mean, it’s totally justified. An eye for an eye and all that—it’s the only thing that is justified in this world. I mean, they talk about reasonable self-defense, but nobody ever talks about a reasonable sneak attack!”
    Yano sat with his head bowed, snickering to himself. But he sounded strangely confident—as if he already had an answer to his own question—when he looked up and asked:
    “What’ll we use for a weapon?”

Meet Me in Yurakucho
     
    I
     
    “Buki?” said Nobue, repeating the operative word of Yano’s question in the original Japanese. He shivered with excitement. “Oh, what an awesome point you raise, Yano-rin! Buki …buki…How that word goes straight to the corazón ! It’s like hearing Frank Nagai’s deep voice played at full volume over a JBL Paragon system! Buuukiii…Buki, as I recall, is ‘weapon’ in English, but ‘weapon’ doesn’t have the right ring to it, right?” He laughed and began humming a sentimental melody.
    “‘Weapon’ sounds like ‘tampon’ or ‘simpleton’ or somethin’,” Ishihara said, and started humming along. The others joined in too, and soon they were all on their feet, belting out the words to “Meet Me in Yurakucho.” Kato, reflecting that it was he who had triggered all this excitement with his report, took the Emporio Armani scarf from his neck and wrapped it around his head like a turban. Sugiyama put his glasses on upside down, and even the normally withdrawn Yano, thrilled that his mention of buki had resulted in such an inspired choral outpouring, clamped a large beer bottle between his legs and wiggled his ass. “Meet Me in Yurakucho” was not meant to be sung in this manner but rather in a sad, echoey whisper in a fifties-style cabaret, while beads of light from a mirror ball swirl slowly around the walls; but any pop song in this particular country, when sung by several citizens at once, tended to turn into a mindless celebration devoid of any genuine sense of melancholy.
    After the final chorus, Nobue shouted:
    “To arms!”
    The others responded with a