Kazuo Nakai should have understood that all was not well when Satsuki didn’t give him a single sign of acknowledgement the entire evening. No hello, no smile, not even a quick flutter of her lovely, tapered fingers. This, despite the fact that she had passed directly in front of him several times, once so close he could have reached out and brushed her cheek. She had a young man in tow and was working the floor, moving from person to person like a bumblebee determined to light upon every flower in the field. The narrow confines of the Takemoto Gallery were packed. Everyone in the Tokyo art scene had turned out for the sayonara party.
Old Takemoto—nobody knew his exact age—was closing his legendary gallery for good. Rumour had it that ever since the bubble burst in 1991, he’d been looking for a buyer. When, after years of trying, he still couldn’t get the price he wanted, he’d surprised them all by selling his prime location to a toy store chain. The message was clear: Art might be a tough sell in recessionary times, but cheap toys would always do fine. This existentially depressing truism was not something the current crowd wanted to dwell upon; they were there to party, so they drank the plentiful wine and beer, ate the excellent sushi and yakitori, and engaged in their usual banter: who was doing what, where, and, most importantly, for how much. The crackle of gossip was deafening, worse than being in the tropical bird house at Ueno Zoo.
Kazuo studied Satsuki from afar. Since he’d last seen her—it had been more than a year—she’d chopped off all her beautiful long hair and now sported a stern haircut so short that it exposed half her skull. While Kazuo was willing to concede that an attractive woman like Satsuki could carry off any look, if she had asked him beforehand, he would have begged her not to cut her long hair and, unreasonable as it was, he was hurt she had not consulted him.
“Is that Satsuki? What on earth has she done to herself!”
It was Ryuta. Kazuo knew his theatrical squeal anywhere. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, for god’s sake, you act like we’re strangers.” Ryuta tipped his wine glass to his lips. It was already empty. “That is Satsuki, isn’t it? Why is she trying so hard? At her age. She looks awful, don’t you think.”
Kazuo cast his eyes to the floor, embarrassed.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re still pining for her? You’re more of a fool than I thought. What has she done for you lately? I bet she hasn’t sold any of your pieces in a long time. Well, has she?”
He and Ryuta had been roommates in art college, sharing a cramped coldwater studio flat and bonding over their shared struggles. They’d been really close in those days, their friendship so secure that it even survived the time when Ryuta had tried to kiss him. Afterwards, they turned it into a longstanding joke. “Admit it, you regret missing your chance with me,” Ryuta would taunt him from time to time. “I know your type, can’t make up your mind. Don’t sit on the fence forever.”
Relationships are nothing but distractions, Satsuki used to say. She was older, more worldly. She was beautiful. They’d met when she was starting out and looking for young artists to represent. Kazuo wanted her approval more than anything in the world, and he channelled all his energy—emotional, spiritual, and, yes, sexual—into his creative output, surprising even himself with the fury of his determination to make it as an artist. When his career took off and Ryuta’s didn’t, it was too much to hope that their friendship could continue as it had.
“Everyone’s whining about the downturn. ‘Lost decade’ this, ‘lost decade’ that, but let me tell you, I’m busier than ever,” Ryuta brayed. “I’m off to Shanghai tomorrow to check on production. Bless the Chinese. They hold down costs and work like the devil. The commissions keep pouring in.”
Ryuta had reinvented himself with a specialty niche brand that he called “Artistic Landscape Enhancement.” His company mass-produced copies of famous sculptures—Rodin was always in high demand—which the ultra-rich ordered for their private gardens. If he was mocked behind his back for his “lawn ornaments,” Ryuta didn’t care. He was a wealthy man.
Across the room, they could hear Satsuki’s laughter.
“Who’s that with her?” Ryuta narrowed his eyes. “He’s half her age at least. Doesn’t look Japanese, does he. Thai, maybe?”
Kazuo had been wondering the same thing but didn’t want to give Ryuta any satisfaction. “Probably a student. She must be showing him around.”
“Don’t be such an idiot. If that’s her latest boy-toy, all I can say is: what a waste.” Ryuta sighed as he stared at Satsuki’s companion. “Oh, did I tell you that we keep bumping into each other in Shanghai? I asked what she’s up to, but she just gave me that wouldn’t-you-like-to-know fake smile of hers. As if I care.”
***
Three weeks later, Satsuki surprised Kazuo by inviting him to meet her at her favourite café on the top floor of the Akasaka Hills Complex.
“I haven’t seen you in ages! How long has it been? Six months?” She didn’t stand up to greet him.
Kazuo decided not to mention the Takemoto Gallery. He would give her an update. That’s what she would want to know. Business first.
“I’m close to finishing. I think she’ll be my best ever.”
Kazuo made life-size sculptures of female figures using natural Japanese lacquer. He sculpted a model in clay, cast the mould, and layered the mold with bamboo strips. Once the form was shaped to his satisfaction, he began the process of slowly coating it with multiple layers of lacquer. It was important to allow adequate drying time between layers and it was imperative not to get the toxic liquid on his skin. He’d had a terrible accident several years ago. The final stage was the most fun but the most demanding and time-consuming. Mixing ground glass and metal into his paints for shimmer and texture, he created the skin, hair, and clothing of his women. Everything was in the details, in the obsessive fine-brushed workmanship. Each woman was unique.
It usually took him a year to complete just one sculpture.
When he was a child, his mother had worried he spent too much time by himself. He’d always preferred playing with his Astro Boy and Ultraman toys, building his own private imagined world. She wanted him to do things with other boys, to run around outdoors, to kick soccer balls, to slug baseballs, to get into little boy mischief. But he didn’t like getting dirty or hurt, and there was always the potential of fights.
Later, when he began creating his sculptures, he gave them costumes and hairstyles that reminded him of the space cartoons he’d loved to watch on television—silver cowboy boots with flashing lights in the heels or wide-shouldered crimson vests with crisscrossing straps that held rows of glass bullets. One especially influential critic had been impressed and dubbed his figures “Brave New World women.” Someone else hailed his work as “a bold reconfiguration of the feminine.” Thanks to Satsuki, his work began selling overseas. True, not all the critics had been enthusiastic. “Art for sick little boys” had been a particularly nasty review.
“Your work isn’t generating the kind of buzz it used to, let’s face it.” Satsuki’s voice startled him from his reverie.
“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch what you said.”
“What I’m saying is for your own good, okay. This isn’t easy for me either, you know.”
He was aware of the small whistling sound that came out of his nostrils each time he exhaled. Was it both nostrils or only one? He tried holding his breath.
“The economy,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s because of the recession, isn’t it.” He repeated what everyone was saying on the news, in the papers, in stores, on the street. The unending, unfixable recession was to blame for everything.
“This has nothing to do with the recession. I’m talking about you. There’s no more buzz.”
Kazuo wished he could come up with something off-hand, casual, clever. With him not being naturally witty, though, it was hopeless.
Satsuki continued. “Otaku is passé. The Japanese boom is over. That’s what everyone’s saying in New York. The Zelda Gallery is dropping you. I pleaded with them but there’s only so much I can do. They only kept you on as long as they did as a favour to me.”
“But why? They used to love my pieces.”
“Your work is too quiet.”
“I thought you said the Americans love Zen.”
“Well, not anymore. Not for art. They get enough serenity with their yoga. Zen is out. Trauma is in.”
“Sorry?”
“Suffering—that’s what people want to see. Have you seen the New China Rising exhibit? Chinese art is hot. One way or another, everyone in China has been traumatized. It’s fantastic!”
Satsuki abruptly stood up. “I have to go. I have a flight to catch tomorrow.”
“I just don’t—”
Her voice softened ever so slightly. “Come on, you had a good run. Tastes change. Most art has a shelf life. That’s just the way it is.”
He craned his neck to look up at her. “My latest piece. She’s almost finished. After you get back, I’ll show you.”
Maybe it was the angle of the fading light, but her eyes had a weird plastic coldness. “Okay. But this time I want to see blood!”
“Blood?”
“That’s right. Ask yourself—where’s the blood!”
***
It was not the first time Satsuki had been tough with him. She had created a unique role for herself as a go-between who negotiated the American and European markets for her Japanese-speaking clients, and he knew that she prided herself on keeping her artists on edge, deliberately instilling anxiety. Fear, like hunger, she believed, made for excellent art. But she’d never spoken to him like this before. Suffering! Trauma! What the hell did she know about suffering? She’d been raised in privilege, attending expensive private schools in the United States when she was little and then expensive international schools in Japan when her businessman father brought the family back home. When Satsuki had decided to study art in New York, her idea of slumming it was to live in a one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea that her father bought for her in a building with a twenty-four-hour doorman.
He recalled his own early days. Ryuta was the one who taught him how to survive. They did their “grocery shopping” after midnight in the garbage bins at the back of the local supermarket. Unlike Satsuki’s parents, Kazuo’s were not wealthy and, in any case, they were not inclined to help out with a career they disapproved of.
***
He’d lied, of course. His latest project lay on his worktable, bald and naked, nowhere close to being finished. The only parts he had managed to paint so far were two black pupils that stared fixedly at the ceiling. Doing the hair alone would take months. He painted each strand separately with a tiny single-hair brush in order to impart as life-like an appearance as possible. Satsuki had never gotten it. Those were the days when people couldn’t get enough of his work, and his slowness had been a sore point. What was wrong with using a bigger brush, she had demanded. The end result would be the same, and the more sculptures he produced, the more she could sell. She didn’t understand that the real artistic value of his pieces came precisely from his obsessive work methods. If he took a shortcut, if he made the creative process any easier for himself, the magic would be lost. But maybe it was already lost.
***
The Tokyo Modern Art Museum opened at ten, and Kazuo decided he would go early. Nobody he knew got up before noon, so it was unlikely he would run into any acquaintances. He didn’t know why he felt so self-conscious but he did and, as an extra safeguard, he even donned his Yankees baseball cap—a souvenir Satsuki had given him years ago—pulling the bill down low until it touched the top of his tinted glasses. When he arrived at the museum, however, he realized how absurd these precautions were. The only visitors so early in the day were a few foreign tourists and a caravan of elderly Japanese in wheelchairs on an outing from an old-age home.
He took the escalator to the third floor. As soon as he entered the special exhibits area, he was greeted by a giant poster-style painting of a young female Red Guard standing in front of the Great Wall. The girl struck a classic pose: legs apart, thin chest thrust forward, right arm raised high in the air. In her outstretched hand she brandished a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book. Her bright pink lips were twisted into the shape of a scream. Patches of the painting were embedded with holograms, and as Kazuo moved closer, details shifted before his eyes. The Little Red Book turned into a shiny Mastercard and the stone ramparts of the Great Wall into stacks of money.
He shook his head. Was this reductive pop art the sort of thing that Satsuki liked now? The rest of the exhibit hall was filled with paintings that struck him as similarly simplistic and crude. There were portraits of long-faced farmers and fat capitalists, and a series of paintings of dogs dressed up as people and of people dressed up as dogs sitting inside cages. The more he saw, the more irritated he felt. Just the sight of all that dog fur made him itchy.
Finally he came upon the video art installations situated at the end of the exhibit. The wall text identified the artist as Liu Mang Mang and went on at length to praise his “fearless exploration of the body as a site for revolutionary art.”
In the first video, a man sat cross-legged in the middle of a muddy field. He was naked except for a skimpy loincloth and he sat motionless, eyes closed, as if in deep meditation. Presumably, this was the artist himself, Kazuo thought. What a show-off! His body wasn’t even that attractive. He had scrawny arms and a spare tire around his middle. His upper chest looked slightly concave. And his head was simply enormous! It looked far too large to be supported by such narrow shoulders. But it was the man’s curious hairdo that caught Kazuo’s attention, a black close-cropped cut that shimmered mysteriously. The camera moved closer, and the shimmering movement intensified. Kazuo gasped. What had looked like hair were actually thousands of ants swarming on the man’s bald head. Honey, Kazuo muttered in disgust. How else could he keep those damn ants in place.
A drop of sweat formed on the tip of the man’s nose and, after thirty excruciating seconds, fell off. Aside from the swarming ants, that was the most dramatic moment in the entire video performance. What bullshit, Kazuo thought. He left as soon as the video loop was complete and went into the next room.
The second piece was, if anything, even more static. This time, Liu Mang Mang, dressed in a skintight white leotard, was lying on his back in a bathtub filled halfway with greenish-grey water. His eyes were shut and his hands were folded in the middle of his chest, as if he were dead. In his fingers, he clutched a fat bouquet of ten-yuan bills and wilted daisies. Mao’s face on the bills peeked out seductively among the drooping flower heads. From somewhere off-camera, it sounded like someone was banging a metal pot with a hammer.
The third room was pitch black. Just as he was about to leave, a pinprick of red light appeared in the middle of the screen and began gradually expanding. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Kazuo realized there were benches to sit on, so he took a seat at the back, waiting to see what would happen. The room was empty.
Once the red light had swelled to the size of a tennis ball, it began blinking. Slowly, steadily. On, off, on, off—the rhythm was hypnotic. How long this went on, Kazuo couldn’t say. It could have been five minutes or fifteen; it could have been an hour. He wondered if he had dozed off, though he hadn’t felt sleepy.
He rubbed his eyes and became aware that he wasn’t alone.
A woman was seated on the bench directly in front of the screen, her back so straight it was as if she had a steel pole running down her spine. Her hair was short, and she wore a jacket with a high collar, like a Mao uniform. Something about her seemed very familiar, though he was unable to put his finger on exactly what.
Just then, the red light stopped blinking and, from the bottom of the floor-to-ceiling screen, a huge bald head began to rise until it filled the entire space. Liu Mang Mang’s face stared out impassively like an Asian Wizard of Oz. The red light began blinking again, faster and more urgently, and when the artist opened his mouth, the light appeared to sit in the middle of his dark fleshy tongue. Kazuo could almost feel the burning heat in his own mouth. He grew dizzy, physically ill, but unable to turn his eyes away from the pulsing red light. Just when he thought he might throw up, the screen went blank, as if someone had pulled the plug on the power source. When the light in the room came on, the woman had vanished.
***
In his studio, Kazuo found it impossible to concentrate. Whenever he mixed a new batch of paint, he immediately felt dissatisfied and dumped the colour down the sink. He regretted having painted his sculpture’s eyes—they seemed to follow him around the room, full of hurt and accusation: Hurry up and give me some hair! Give me some clothes! There were moments when she seemed so demanding, he was filled with revulsion. It occurred to him that he might not finish this piece. What was the point? Had there ever been any point?
Finally he draped a sheet over his sculpture, but that looked even worse, as if someone had unexpectedly expired on top of his worktable. “Sorry,” he whispered, as he tiptoed away, though he wasn’t sure for whom his apology was meant.
***
He went back to the museum. For research purposes, he told himself. How else could he know what Satsuki found so interesting in all this cheap gimmickry. Rushing through the other galleries impatiently, he headed to the video installation with the pulsing red light. Again the room was pitch black at first; again the red light appeared and began blinking on and off. The woman was seated in exactly the same place she had been before, at the front with her stiff back to him. In her silence and stillness, she exuded utter indifference. When Liu Mang Mang’s massive face rose onto the screen and the red light burned bright like a fire in his open mouth, this time Kazuo knew what to expect and managed to suppress his disgust. The video ended, the room abruptly went black. When the lights came on, just like the last time, the woman was gone.
Who was she? Why was she here? Was she a follower of the artist? No, Kazuo refused to believe that. Her presence, so remote and mysterious, had to be for him. He considered whether he should say something to her. Nihao!—wasn’t that the greeting they used? Deep down, though, he knew that to speak would break the spell.
Day after day, he returned to the museum.
***
He spotted Satsuki in the fashionable Omotesando district with the young Asian man who had been with her at the Takemoto Gallery.
He walked right up to them. “How was your trip to Shanghai?”
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to call you.” Satsuki spoke in a bright, brittle voice. “This is Wang-san, by the way.” She patted the dark, sinewy arm by her side.
The young man didn’t smile. The only acknowledgement he made was a slight twist in the corner of his mouth, like a petulant teenager.
“Pleased to meet you,” Kazuo said, although he kept his gaze on Satsuki.
“He doesn’t understand a word of Japanese, I’m afraid.” She turned to Wang-san and said in English, “Do you?”
Wang-san didn’t respond except to lower his head slightly so his long straight hair swung forward and brushed his jawline. He had a decidedly androgynous look. Ryuta might have considered him beautiful, but Kazuo thought he looked as cold as an ice carving.
“An artist?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes. A protégé of Liu Mang Mang. I’m confident he’s going to produce some amazing digital art.”
“Is that so.”
“He’s got a natural talent for programming—took to it instantly—so Liu Mang Mang got him to work on his latest video installations. Have you been to the exhibit I told you about?”
“No,” he lied.
“Liu Mang Mang basically rescued Wang-san from the streets. He was just a kid, working in a beauty parlour massaging rich women’s feet. They let them work like that until they’re ten or eleven, while their fingers are strong but still soft as a child’s. After that their hands get too coarse. That’s when they turn them over to prostitution rings.”
Satsuki looked as if she were about to reach over and pick up one of Wang-san’s hands to give a demonstration, but she did nothing. Hanging limply by his side, his hands looked prematurely old to Kazuo. Thin bony fingers as inanimate as dry cigarette papers.
“My piece is finished,” he said defiantly. “Anytime you want to come by, let me know.”
“Sure, let’s stay in touch.”
***
The next day Kazuo went to his regular hairstylist and told her to shave off all his hair. She giggled—you’re such a jokester!—and then proceeded to give him his usual two-centimetre trim, ending with a short neck and scalp massage. She had surprising strength for someone with such delicate hands.
Afterwards he went home and gathered an old electric shaver, a pair of scissors, his straight razor, and a large can of shaving cream. The operation took longer than he’d anticipated but he was pleased with the results. As he’d feared, the electric shaver did not do a good job, forcing him to resort to the straight razor which, because it was very sharp and because of the difficulty of reaching the back of his head, nicked his scalp in numerous spots. A few of the cuts were quite deep and it had taken a long time to stop the bleeding. He didn’t mind. The wounds, he sensed, added character. Admiring himself in the mirror, he concluded that he definitely had a better shaped skull than Liu Mang Mang.
Without the extraneous nuisance of hair, his head felt lighter, as if a heavy burden of worry had been lifted. His soul was cleaner, too, more exposed to the air and able to breathe freely. Quickly he changed into a clean T-shirt and jeans and raced out the door.
By the time he reached the art museum, it was near closing. He ran across the broad gleaming lobby to the wicket. “One!” he gasped, “for the China exhibit.” He was conscious of a sharp pain in his chest.
“I’m sorry. The last admission was at 4:30.” The woman at the wicket was a different clerk from the one he saw every morning. She pointed at the clock behind her and gave him a tense smile. “Would you care to come back tomorrow?”
Tomorrow! What was she talking about?
He shook his head and opened his mouth. Please, just five minutes, he intended to say, but oddly no sound came out. His jaw wobbled unsteadily and a thin thread of spit drooled from the side of his mouth onto the counter.
“Sir?”
At that moment, a chime began ringing, a faint ping-ping-ping followed by the recording of a soft female voice announcing that the museum would close in fifteen minutes and urging patrons to begin moving towards the nearest exit doors. Without hesitation, Kazuo turned and ran in the direction of the escalator. As he raced up the moving steps, he had the odd sensation that he was flying. Behind him he heard shouting. First a female voice—“Sir, you can’t do that!”—followed by a louder male voice—“Halt!” When he reached the third floor, the entrance to the China exhibit was wide open, the clerk who manned the entrance having already left his post for the day. He sprinted past the Red Guard waving her Mastercard and the dogs in their Mao suits. His running shoes bounced lightly on the springy wood floorboards. When he reached the video installations, he went directly to the third and last doorway.
The room was silent and extremely hot, like entering a cave at the center of the earth, he imagined. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he impatiently sought the shape of the woman, his throat tight until at last he was able to make her out. She sat in her usual spot on the bench in front of the screen, her back to him as always. Today she was wearing a form-fitting high-collared vest that seemed to glow subtly each time the red light pulsed. Her neck was craned slightly forward in the same posture of erect attentiveness she always maintained. On the video screen in front of her, the red dot pulsed on and off, on and off, steady as a heartbeat.
Outside he heard shouting and the pounding of shoes. Kazuo knew he had to act quickly. He went to the bench and sat down beside the woman. She remained as immobile as ever, staring straight ahead at the red light. He felt a band of sweat forming on his brow.
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” he whispered into the woman’s stiff unyielding ear. Then he placed his palm on top of her small hand and gave it a squeeze. It felt hard and cold, but he held on tight, convinced that her hand was the only thing that could anchor him to earth and keep him from spinning off into the galaxy. The red dot swelled larger with each pulse until it filled the entire screen. Everything in front of his eyes turned red. A brilliant revolutionary red, shiny and slick as blood.
