As far as I’m concerned, there has never been anyone cooler than Viktor Tsoi. Relatively unknown in the western world, Tsoi was the biggest rock star to come out of the Soviet Union, was of Korean descent, and tragically died at the age of 28. Even during his lifetime he stood out among his contemporaries and decades later nobody has been able to match his unique sound and image.
I had always wanted to write something about him, but a biography was beyond my scope and simply didn’t interest me. I’ve always been more interested in how people who have reached legendary status affect others. That was the genesis of my short story/novella Tsoi Lives.
I may post one of the other stories on my Substack in the future.
Because I am copying the text directly from the formatted manuscript, Substack makes it look funny here. Sorry about that. Due to its length, I will be posting in two parts.
Before reading the story, here are some of my favorite Tsoi songs:
“It’s like his voice is underwater. But not quite like that. It’s like it’s emerging from underwater, or from a separate ethereal plane of existence altogether.”
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That was the first time I had ever heard about Viktor Tsoi. It was also the first time I met Hirata.
Hirata moved to Tokyo from some unremarkable village in Iwate Prefecture when he was eighteen. As far as any of us knew, he had no friends, no family, and had arrived in the capital with a cheap guitar that was missing its top and bottom E strings.
I blinked. I was nearly out the door when the dreaded voice came.
“Takahiro!” “Yes?”
“Were you thinking of leaving with that catastrophe on your desk?”
I turned and blinked.
“How many times have I told you not to blink so much?”
Some of my coworkers had been given permission to leave, while others had managed to sneak out. Most of them were still present. I hurried back to my cubicle, pushed my chair—neatly this time—under my desk, and walked once more toward the exit, where I stopped to bow before my boss.
He did not give the all clear.
A glance back at my desk revealed the culprit—a stray pencil left in the center of the blotter rather than replaced in the adjacent holder.
~~~
A week and two days ago marked one year since I began working for the company, and four years since I had come to Tokyo. Before that, home was a place called Shiogama, in Miyagi. My father, a fisherman, was somewhere between disappointed and
appalled when I told him I would not be spending my life on a
boat, but planned instead to head to the capital.
“Tokyo smells,” my mother had said, doing her best to dissuade me. “There’s no nature. The people are not kind. Always in a hurry. And where will you get zunda? You won’t find any in that place.”
I worked in Shinjuku. Shinjuku was noise. The sound of life. The constant clicking and clanking of pachinko parlors, arcades, and restaurants. Music playing from a hundred or more different establishments. And people. So many people. People in a hurry. People looking for fun. People like me, in awe of the skyscrapers and bright neon lights of pink and purple.
After finally escaping work that evening, I left the neon lights behind for something darker, more raw. I arrived in Kabukicho around ten o’clock. The Golden Gai, its lantern-lit alleyways glinting with the moisture of recent rain, was famous for its compact bars—typically sitting a maximum of eight people, with some holding as few as four.
The cold January weather had done little to discourage flocks of tourists, almost always louder than groups of even the most exuberant locals, who gawked at the famed minibars—nearly two hundred in all. I passed one where the owner was trying to explain to a white couple that no females were allowed inside.
On this night, by my estimation, tourists outnumbered Japanese five to one.
I had no preference for any particular establishment. I required only drink and noise. All beer tasted the same to me. If it was cold and not too cheap, I found a way to enjoy it. The noise was to drown out the endless stream of thoughts in my head. I was no fan of rock music, but the rowdiest— and therefore most appealing—option was a dingy karaoke bar
where a white guy was singing some classic rock ballad from the seventies. I vaguely recognized the tune but didn’t know the name or the artist. In front of the tiny corner stage stood the performer’s most ardent admirers, a pair of fiftysomething Japanese men decked out in studded leather.
The place was packed body to body, but I managed to grab a beer and slide into an empty table along the back wall, by the old jukebox, which still played on occasion, and where the right song played at the right time on the right night could inspire an impromptu bar-wide singalong.
I scanned the room, noting, as I often did, what others were drinking. Americans, for example, seemed usually to prefer beer to most other options. At the table next to me sat another lone Japanese minding his own business. Whiskey, dry. Beyond him, gathered around a larger table, was a foursome of white guys, shouting their conversation, and thus drowning out the music. I failed to understand why foreigners were always so loud, oblivious to those around them.
Then again, noise was what I came in for.
I had been chastised by my boss before, but today hit differently. The consequence for the wayward pencil? A thirty- minute lecture on poor work attitudes. He stopped short of naming names, but those within earshot knew who carried the brunt of the insults.
The bartender, ever vigilant in spotting misery, brought
me another drink.
At the bar sat a bored-looking Japanese around my age—twenty-two—with a guitar strapped and hanging low on his back, its headstock nearly scraping the floor. His hair was a tangled mess, his clothing tired and out of fashion. His guitar looked as neglected as he did.
While my attention caught constantly on the movements and conversations of surrounding patrons, this kid, face blank, stared only forward.
When the last karaoke contender stepped down from the stage, the quad of white guys stood and walked out, leaving only a few stragglers in the place—locals and foreigners alike.
The jukebox kicked in, playing some poorly produced song from the eighties. Primitive guitar, drum machine. The vocalist, singing in neither English nor Japanese, caught my ear. The faces around me faded until all that was left was the youth with the guitar and the voice coming out of the jukebox.
The kid’s head turned toward the old machine. What he was taking from that voice, I couldn’t say. It looked almost religious. To me it was alien—too strange to be pleasurable. And because I couldn’t understand the lyrics, the song’s meaning was lost on me.
The kid’s body grew rigid, as if suddenly possessed. He
leaned over the bar and asked the bartender the title of the song.
The bartender tilted his head in confusion.
As the thin tones of guitar faded and the drum machine slowed, the kid slid off his barstool, made his way to the jukebox, and hunched over the thing.
He then straightened and turned, making a beeline for me. “Pen! Pen!” he said, eyes nearly crazed.
“Eh?”
“Pen,” he said. “I need a pen!”
I reached inside my briefcase and withdrew one of several medium-tip black ballpoints and held it out—too slow for the kid’s liking, apparently.
He ripped it from my grasp and scribbled the title down
on a damp napkin he’d swiped from a neighboring table. He then exhaled, his shoulders relaxing, and returned the pen.
“You must really like that song,” I said. “Didn’t you hear it?”
“I heard it.”
“It was so raw. So visceral. Like nothing I’ve ever heard
before.”
“So you could understand the words?”
“Not a one. I don’t know what the guy was singing about. But his voice. It’s like his voice is underwater. But not quite like that. It’s like it’s emerging from underwater, or from a separate ethereal plane of existence altogether.”
“Interesting way of describing it.”
“If only I could read what this said.” He stared down at the napkin.
“Is that Russian, maybe?” I asked.
He tilted his head and brought a closed fist to his chin. He knew about as much as I did. After that, he seemed to focus on whatever was unfolding inside his head.
I would have attempted more conversation, but I was tired and decided to call it a night. I figured that was the last I’d see of the guy. I didn’t even get his name.
~~~
Home, in my mind, was a place for sleeping and eating only. I never invited guests, and once awake, I didn’t want to be there.
At 4.5 tatami mats, my room was a tad cramped.
My life consisted of a standard routine. Up by five, and then some gentle morning stretches and crunches. I considered briefly
the idea of a morning jog, but then I would get no sleep at all.
Breakfast was a light affair: black coffee, toast, orange juice.
Anything more than that resulted in severe stomach distress.
By seven, I was on the subway—an eleven-minute walk from my apartment. Wearing a three-piece suit, even in the cool morning air, I was usually drenched with perspiration by the time I arrived at the station. Add to that the combined body heat of several dozen people crammed into the train cars like so many sardines, and my profuse sweating became unbearable. There were plenty of guys who showed up at the office fresh, cool as cucumbers. Unfortunately, I could not be counted among them.
By eight sharp, I was at my desk. No catching my breath. No cooldown period. No time to ease into the day and mindset. We were required to be present for morning announcements, and the workday concluded exactly twelve hours later.
But this is not to say we were allowed to leave at that hour. Life was happening outside…
The boss had several favorites in the office. If he wasn’t shooting the shit with one of them, he was shooting the shit on the phone until a quarter to nine. No one was allowed to leave until he emerged from his office for the day.
Only then was it Nomikai time.
After hours, big deals were celebrated—once a twice- weekly thing that quickly became a three-times-a-week thing. Always at one of two local places. Luckily, the boss was a lightweight, and we were set free by eleven.
Still, those were hours I would never get back.
My options after that were to grab a meal from a
convenience store near home, or carry on drinking by myself.
If I chose home, I tried to catch up on baseball. My permanent state of being was exhaustion, however, so often even the highlights were too taxing for my brain.
It had been nearly four months since I’d seen any of my school chums—most in similar boats as me, save for the lucky one or two who had found themselves a partner.
One week after my prior visit, I headed back to the karaoke bar, where again I spotted the unkempt kid with the ramshackle guitar. The song—the one he had been so enamored with—was playing on the jukebox. This time, the kid was standing on the little stage, playing and singing along.
The other patrons, most of them tourists tonight, were indifferent, but the kid’s passion for the music was palpable. I couldn’t be sure if he knew the words he was singing, but nonetheless, it was clear he meant every one of them.
He had caught the attention of a Japanese girl who wore a matching skirt and jacket in a shade of emerald green caught intermittently by the minimal lighting above. She looked out of place among the foreigners.
Nothing, it seemed, could break her gaze from the kid. She smiled as he delivered the indecipherable lyrics,
and her head bobbed in awkward, poorly timed rhythm. Her
hair, dark brown with a natural auburn tint, was bobbed neatly at her chin—a somewhat weak chin that would have looked wrong on any other but suited the girl, whose skin was slightly pale. Nothing could divert her attention from the singer, which meant I could stare at her without fear of getting caught.
When the performance came to an end, she was the only person in the room to put her hands together, but her enthusiasm more than made up for that.
The kid threaded his way to the bar, handed the guitar to the bartender, and took a seat two stools down from the girl.
I stepped up behind him. “You’ve really taken to that song, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
The girl leaned over the empty stool between them. “That was awesome.”
“Thank you.”
“What language was that?” she asked.
“Russian,” the kid replied.
“And the singer’s name?” I said. “Remember? I gave you
the pen to write it down.”
“Viktor Tsoi. The band is called Kino. It means ‘cinema’
in Russian.”
A brief silence followed the exchange, during which the
girl looked eager to say something but remained close-lipped. “Shall we introduce ourselves? What is your name?” I
glanced at the boy with the shaggy hair, when really, I was more
focused on the girl.
“Hirata,” he replied.
“I’m Takahiro.” I gave a slight bow. “Yoroshiku.” “Yoroshiku.” The kid bowed in return.
“I’m Mitsuko,” the girl said. “Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!” She offered a slightly more enthusiastic bow.
“Do you understand the lyrics?” I asked. “Yes.”
“You taught yourself Russian?” “Yes.”
“Amazing!” Mitsuko said.
I signaled the bartender. “Maybe we should get some drinks?”
We ordered a round of highballs and watched as one of the tourists sang karaoke—a string of Lady Gaga songs, starting with the obligatory “Bad Romance.”
Hirata, to my surprise, came alive after a couple of drinks. “You see,” he said, “in the Soviet Union, they didn’t have ready access to rock music. Literature, film, music—it was all heavily censored. If someone wanted to get their hands on a rock album, they had to pay for it to be smuggled by way of the black market. That’s what makes Tsoi so special. Look at a band like The White Stripes. They had decades of influence to pull from. As did AC/DC before them and Led Zeppelin before them. Tsoi and Kino, they didn’t have that. He and his band were essentially inventing rock and roll from scratch based on what they imagined it should sound like.”
“You really like their stuff, don’t you?” I asked.
Hirata nodded.
Mitsuko drained the last of her second highball. “It’s
late. I should probably go home.”
“What?” I said. “You can’t go. We’re still celebrating Viktor Tsoi. I know another bar we can go to, not far from here.”
She eyed me for a moment, then smiled. “Okay. One
more drink.”
Truth was, I hadn’t been this attracted to a woman in a long time. I didn’t want to see Mitsuko go, but I also had no game plan, other than playing up Hirata’s fascination with Viktor Tsoi. For the moment, I couldn’t imagine what we’d possibly have to talk about, but I was confident, sort of, that I’d come up with something on the way to the next venue.
Hirata remained quiet while we traversed the crowded, narrow Kabukicho alleyways. After multiple incidents bumping shoulders with foreigners, I grew irritated. The first two times I could forgive, but by the third, it felt personal.
The bar where we ended up—a typical izakaya where the only seating was a counter that wrapped around the kitchen— I’d never been to. This became obvious when the clientele turned to stare at us newcomers—nay, intruders—who had dared walk inside.
The hard-faced, middle-aged owner looked up from
behind the bar. “Irasshaimase.”
Among those seated—all regulars, no doubt—was an elderly man excitedly showing off the prizes he had won from a pachinko machine. I often wondered what kind of old man I’d be. Would I smile? Would I be frail and crass?
We squeezed in between another older gentleman and a salary man nursing a beer. The enticing smell of ramen wafted out from the kitchen, and most of the establishment’s patrons were happily slurping up noodles from bowls already set before them.
We split a single bottle of beer between us and cheered once more for Viktor Tsoi.
“What does he look like?” Mitsuko asked. “Is he handsome? Can you show us?”
Hirata shook his head. “I don’t have a phone.” “Oh,” she said, looking sheepish.
“I can take a look.” I pulled my smartphone from my
jacket pocket. “How’s it spelled?”
To my surprise, the face that came up on my mobile screen didn’t resemble what I figured a Russian ought to look
like. In fact, I would say he looked a bit like—
“Hirata-kun!” Mitsuko exclaimed. “He looks just like Hirata-kun!”
The resemblance, while not quite uncanny, was there. Similar bone structure and eyes. The hair was off, but if Hirata felt inclined, he could probably grow it out to match Tsoi’s.
“He doesn’t look all that Russian, does he?” I asked. “Tsoi’s father was Korean,” Hirata said. “A Korean born
in Soviet Kazakhstan. Imagine that? Russia’s most famous rock
star was an Asian!”
“Is he really their most famous?” Mitsuko asked.
“Without question,” Hirata returned. I tilted my head. “And how’s that?”
“The music, first and foremost. No one sounded like him. Second, despite Soviet censors, he went on to become a national phenomenon. There was no stopping it. He and his band went from underground, playing small gigs and recording DIY in their apartment, to becoming a stadium sensation. They even wrote songs during perestroika, demanding change. That might seem quaint and not all that radical to us, but for a Russian band during Soviet times to openly sing about change, that’s pretty extreme.”
“Is he still making music?” Mitsuko asked.
Hirata downed the last of the beer. “He died in a car crash when he was twenty-eight.”
The three of us went quiet for a time until Hirata spoke again.
“In Moscow,” he said, “there’s a wall dedicated to him,
where fans leave cigarettes and beer.”
“Another beer, please!” I called to the owner. “And a
curry ramen!”
The noodles were instant, but it didn’t matter. The smell of warm curry nearly sobered me. I filled my companions’ glasses and proposed one more toast to the Russian Korean Viktor Tsoi.
“I’m sorry, but who is Viktor Tsoi?” asked a round-faced man, perhaps one or two years older than myself, sitting a few stools down.
As Hirata explained, I decided to step outside for a cigarette and asked Mitsuko if she’d care to join me.
She smiled and declined.
Damn.
Others were smoking inside, but I could only listen to the origins of the Korean Soviet legend so many times. I pulled out a pack of Seven Stars, lit one up, and embraced the night. I liked this place—dark and quiet.
A stray tabby padded up to me, and I scratched the top of its head. Perhaps it, too, was a regular at this place. An eruption of laughter from inside the bar broke the silence, scaring the cat off into the night.
I put out my cigarette and walked back inside.
Everyone in the place was in good spirits, and Hirata, it appeared, was the center of their attention. The round-faced man had moved closer, and Hirata was teaching him some Russian words, laughing at the man’s attempts to pronounce them.
“Vashe pivo.” The owner set a beer in front of Round-face.
Hirata’s eyes lit up. “Takeshi-san, you know Russian?” “I know those two words,” Takeshi said. “I was in Russia
back in the nineties.”
“Do you know of Tsoi?” Hirata asked.
“Can’t say I do. But I see you’re very passionate about
him. Do you have a guitar?”
Hirata’s face went dark, and he shook his head. “But I saw you with a guitar,” I said.
“It was stolen.”
“Saigo,” Takeshi said, “watch the bar.”
“Hai.”
Takeshi disappeared into a room at the back and returned, brandishing an acoustic guitar. It looked a bit worse for wear, but all the strings were accounted for, at least. He held it out to Hirata, who hesitated at first to take it. Takeshi’s subtle nod was an indicator that he must. Hirata held it as if grasping a sacred artifact. I had seen people handle babies with a less delicate touch.
“It only collects dust here,” Takeshi said. “It’s yours on
one condition: you promise to play it every single day.” Hirata rapidly nodded his head.
~~~
The following week, my parents visited. Mom had brought so many zunda-related snacks my room could barely fit them.
“How can you live like this?” Mom said upon seeing the
4.5 tatami mat space. “This is a catastrophe.”
“It’s a place to sleep,” I said.
“A place to sleep,” she repeated. “Certainly not a place to live. I’ve seen rats who live better than this. Are you eating?”
I nodded.
“No, you’re not. Look at him,” she turned to my father.
My father looked at me.
“Let me make you something.”
She opened a cabinet to reveal the last remaining cup of instant noodles.
“If we came ten minutes later, you’d be dead. We need
to go shopping.”
Getting out of my place was a relief for me and my mom alike. Discovering my quiet suburb did not; in fact, smell made her relatively more at ease with her son being in Tokyo. However, the products available at the grocery store did not impress her, nor did the prices meet her approval, but she found sufficient ingredients to make nikujaga. It was the best meal I’d tasted in years.
The day after, I fell ill with food poisoning. During my delirium and sleepless nights, I lamented not asking Mitsuko for her number. I had waking dreams of her writing down a series of digits, but they dissolved each time I tried to make sense of them. Hirata didn’t even have a phone.
Once I felt human again, I returned to the karaoke bar—a shot in the dark. They weren’t there. I waited around forty-five minutes or so before concluding they were unlikely to show, and so up and down Kabukicho I went, looking for any signs. After several passes, I realized I was drawing the attention of promoters handing out flyers for maid cafés and brothels and hostess clubs and soaplands. I waved them off. Uproarious laughter shook the night as two hostesses on the wrong side of thirty walked out of one of the shadier establishments. On their heels were several middle-aged tourists, German by the looks of it. One of the more eager and pudgy Germans kept trying to steal a kiss from one of the hostesses. She laughed at each attempt. Each rejection only seemed to make him more eager to keep trying. His friends encouraged him to give it another go. Going into the establishment were two much younger- looking women, which immediately caught the attention of the Germans. The older hostesses lit up some cigarettes.
Exhausted and not fully recovered from my illness, I decided to head home. I checked my phone; it was half-past midnight. The last train for the night had departed. My only option was to find a 24-hour Internet Cafe and stay there until morning. It was naïve to think I could find Mitsuko again by walking up and down the streets of Kabukicho. The German had a better chance of finding love from a hostess. I was ready to admit defeat.
It was then that I heard two familiar voices drifting out
from an unremarkable corner. Tsoi’s and Hirata’s.
Or, rather, Tsoi from Hirata.
Inside the dingy, poorly lit bar stood Hirata, on a makeshift stage, belting his heart out. His hair was styled as Tsoi’s was back in the day, and he was strumming Takeshi’s dusty old guitar as if to kill it. He would later tell me the song— the one we first heard at the karaoke bar—was called, “Close the Door Behind Me, I’m Leaving.”
I walked inside and slipped onto an empty barstool, immediately catching the warm, familiar smile of Mitsuko, who sat two seats down, closer to the stage. She looked out of place amid the grime and the gritty clientele, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She was even lovelier than the first time I saw her, wearing a simple, red fitted shirt, a skirt, and a black fabric necklace, on which hung a pearly oval-shaped stone. Her hair looked recently trimmed.
Between the two of us, I realized, sat Round-face, who turned to me and introduced himself as Yoshiro. It appeared the two were together, as well as accompanied by two others I didn’t recognize.
When Hirata’s performance concluded, Mitsuko and
Yoshiro stood and applauded.
Mitsuko turned to me and smiled. “You came!” I nodded in response.
“This is Manami-chan,” she said, indicating the cute girl
to her right. “Next to her is Shin-kun.”
Manami had an intelligent face. I figured her for a model student—a class rep, I’d be willing to bet. Shin, by contrast, wore a wide-eyed expression that suggested he hadn’t been out in a while, maybe in his entire life. Whereas Hirata was contemplative in his quietness, Shin gave off serial killer vibes. He was so insular in fact, that I often wondered if I ought to remind him to blink, let alone breathe.
Hirata, joining us at the bar, did not acknowledge my
presence.
With the stage now empty, music played over the sound
system.
“This place is expensive.” Yoshiro eyed the highball in front of him as if the drink itself were to blame. Adding to his disappointment, the pack of Echoes, which he drew from his shirt pocket, turned out to be empty.
“Everywhere is expensive,” Manami said.
Yoshiro cocked an eyebrow. “You didn’t even order
anything.”
“Because it’s expensive.”
“I thought you offered to pay for my drink?” “Me?” Manami pointed at herself.
“We can go to my place,” Hirata said, holding up a set of keys.
“Your place?” I said.
Not ten minutes later, we were back at Takeshi’s, where
Hirata used the keys to let himself in through the back and
into a sparse room with a thin mattress on the floor and a small
wooden desk.
“Takeshi-san can’t afford to pay me, but in exchange for helping him run the place, I get to stay here—food and beer included.” Hirata slipped back through the door into the restaurant and returned, carrying three bottles of beer in each hand.
“This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened,” Yoshiro said, lowering himself onto the mat.
Hirata handed me a beer. “Can I see your phone?” “Sure.”
Soon, the music of Viktor Tsoi filled the little room. “Spring,” was the name of the song, according to Hirata. I couldn’t say I loved Tsoi’s music, but the tune was soothing and easy enough to listen to. For the moment, I was happy. No work, no boss, no bills, no pain. Everyone, in fact, seemed happy, despite the cramped, hot space.
Mitsuko dropped down beside Yoshiro. “Isn’t this
wonderful?”
I nodded.
“I can’t remember the last time I drank this much, though,” she said with a giggle.
“What do you do, Mitsuko-chan?” I asked. “What’s your blood type?” she asked. “Me?”
She nodded.
“I’m blood type A. What about you?”
“I imagine Hirata-kun is blood type O. Don’t you think so?” “What do you do, Mitsuko-chan?” I asked once more. “I’m an administrative assistant.”
“Like answering phones, taking messages, data entry,
stuff like that?”
“Yeah, stuff like that.”
I had tried before to imagine what kind of job she held, and I could see her working at such a position—organized and capable. Yes, it made sense. What made less sense was her penchant for frequenting the bars of Kabukicho and hanging out with weirdos like Hirata.
“What did you study at uni?” I asked. “European art history.”
“Is that right?” I knew of Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci. But if one were to question me on styles, names of periods, and who came before who, I could not confidently offer any answers.
“Have you ever been to Europe?” I asked.
She shook her head and took a sip from her beer.
She could talk about anything, and I’d happily listen. What’s your go-to brand for ink? What’s the biggest dog you’ve ever seen? Tell me your thoughts on pavement, Mitsuko. She noticed I was looking at her slightly longer than I should have been.
Mitsuko. I was in love with her.
I only wish I could offer her something of myself the way Hirata had offered Tsoi to us.
I blinked. The door opened and in breezed a stranger— well-dressed, perhaps a year or two older than myself, eyes glued to his phone. His smile was practiced and his haircut expensive. Clearly he spent ample time in front of the mirror, perfecting his look.
Mitsuko’s eyes lit up at the sight of him, and soon she was on her feet, practically throwing herself into the guy’s arms.
She turned to the rest of us. “Everyone, this is my
boyfriend Ken.”
Ken pointed to my hat. “You a Rakuten Eagles fan?” I nodded.
“I know Masahiro Tanaka,” he said. “We just had lunch last week, in fact.”
“Oh, stop talking about that,” Mitsuko said.
“What?” Ken shot back. “Guy’s an Eagles fan. Probably
gets a kick out of this stuff.” I nodded.
“See?” Ken gave Mitsuko a squeeze. “The second time we got lunch, some of the girls from Momoiro Clover Z showed up. That was fun. Tanaka’s a big fan of their music.”
“Working at an ad agency has its perks, I guess,” Mitsuko said.
“Where do you work?” Ken asked me. “I—”
“Bananaman!” Ken exclaimed, his attention abruptly
turning to Yoshiro.
Yoshiro’s brow shot up. “Eh?”
“Bananaman!” Ken was referring, I assumed, to the
popular comedic duo. “You look just like that one guy.” “Shitara-san?”
“No, man. Not the handsome one.”
“You mean Himura-san?” “Yes!” Ken said. “The fat one!”
Manami laughed. “Yoshiro-kun even has the same hair as him!”
Yoshiro, his face red with humiliation, stormed out of
the little room.
Ken gestured to my phone on the desk. “What’s with
this music?”
“It’s Tsoi,” Mitsuko said.
“What the hell is Tsoi?”
“It’s what we listen to here,” Mitsuko said.
Ken wrinkled his nose. “I’d rather listen to something I can understand. What’s wrong with AKB48?”
“Pop idol bullshit,” Hirata offered quietly.
Manami clasped her hands in front of her. “I love AKB48!”
“It’s their videos that are interesting,” Ken said.
“There is a video where the girls are in a bath together.” Shin’s first comment of the night and it’s unclear whether it was meant to be one of approval or disgust.
“‘Ponytail and Scrunchie!’” Manami exclaimed. “I love
that song!”
“It’s settled, then,” Ken said. “Let’s put on music we can
all enjoy.”
Turned out, Ken could talk about himself even more than Hirata could talk about Tsoi. Even baseball, usually one of my favorite topics, became insufferable coming out of Ken’s mouth. Still, it felt good to be at Hirata’s, and it felt good to be in love. Even Mitsuko having a boyfriend didn’t diminish my feelings for her. I wanted only to be near her.
Oddly or not, when I went home that night, I felt uncomfortable masturbating to thoughts of her. Try as I might to picture Mitsuko naked, I imagined instead the two of us walking side by side in a park somewhere, possibly another country. Reaching for her hand was both exciting and terrifying.
It was as if Hirata’s place was a separate plane of reality,
existing only for us. Beyond Kabukicho. Beyond Tokyo. Where the beer tasted better and where Tsoi’s music soared higher than it ever did in those dank dive bars.
Even the days following, at work, couldn’t bring down
my spirits.
“Your attitude is poor and your performance sloppy,” the boss would tell me. “You’re going to have to fix that.”
“Hai!”
No matter what shit the guy threw my way, I remained happy. Happy because Hirata’s place was always there, waiting. On weekdays, the place was fairly quiet, though occasionally Yoshiro or Shin might pop in. On weekends, however, we all gathered. Sometimes even a new face or two would come and then go. Having a place to ourselves was sacred, and Hirata, to his credit, never seemed to mind if any of us showed up unannounced.
Once I stopped in to find Hirata and Shin watching a movie on Shin’s laptop. It was no surprise the movie starred Viktor Tsoi.
“What’s this one, then?” I asked.
Hirata, eyes fixed to the screen, remained silent.
“The Needle,” Shin said.
“Any good?”
Shin tilted his head in reply.
I took a seat on the mat beside them. The premise seemed pretty straightforward: Tsoi exacts justice on some thugs supplying drugs to his ex-girlfriend, and he kicks some ass in multiple, not-too-shabby fight scenes. The end of the film, though, left the biggest impression: Tsoi, out walking the streets on a snowy night, is approached by a man who asks
for a light. When Tsoi turns to oblige, the stranger thrusts a knife into Tsoi’s gut and then walks off. As the scene comes to a close, “Gruppa Krovi,” the band’s most famous song, plays. Tsoi, bleeding from the wound, lights himself a cigarette and walks off into the night, his image eventually obscured by falling snow. It’s uncertain whether he will live or die.
“That’s how I want to die,” Hirata said.
~~~
On another evening, when we were all there, Hirata picked up his guitar and started strumming and singing. This happened so often that we barely paid attention. Often performing for the restaurant’s patrons, he had become something of a staple at Takeshi’s. The song he played to us on this particular night, while melancholy, possessed a tinge of optimism. More impressive than his guitar playing, however, was Hirata’s voice. The guy could sing—and in a foreign language, no less. While the drinking and conversations went on, the others joking and laughing away, I just listened.
When the song ended, I asked, “What’s that one about?” “Being far, far away,” Hirata said. “A place where one has
no worries, no problems.”
“Do you believe such a place exists?”
“Tsoi sang about it.” He brought a cigarette to his mouth.
“Hirata-kun!” Manami said. “Don’t move!” We all froze while she snapped a photo. “You look so cool in that pose,” she said. “Like Tsoi?” Hirata asked.
Manami grinned. “Just like Tsoi.”
“Stay in that pose all the time and you’ll always be Tsoi
in our eyes,” Mitsuko said.
It only took Yoshiro half a beer to get drunk, but he rarely stopped there. He was quite entertaining when he drank, and I imagined no one knew this about him, including Yoshiro himself, before he had met us. After three beers, his face grew red, he’d start to sweat, and Yoshiro the salaryman would cease to be until morning, having been replaced by Yoshiro the drunken legend. I liked to think our group gave him a safe haven, free of judgment, to be and act as he liked. Most recently, he had been trying to do something new with his hair—to no avail, I’m afraid.
He scooted close to me, spilling beer from his glass onto his shirt. “You know, when I first met Shin, I thought he was a serial killer.”
I chuckled. “You don’t say?”
“And now that I’ve gotten to know him,” he continued,
“I see I was one hundred percent correct.” “How can you be so sure?”
“Ito-san stopped coming to Takeshi-san’s,” Yoshiro said, spitting with the words. “She’d been coming here every day after work for eleven years, no fail. But after Shin started showing up, she suddenly vanished. Haven’t seen her since.”
“You might be onto something there,” I said with a nod.
Yoshiro pulled out a pack of Echoes and lit one without
offering one to me. “I wanted to ask you something, Takahiro.” “I’m listening.”
“Are you listening?” “Yes.”
“It’s about a girl.”
My eyes reflexively found Mitsuko, whose eyes were fixed on Ken, who was talking and talking and talking some more.
“She has a boyfriend,” I said. “As you can see.” Yoshiro’s face fell. “She does?”
“He’s here all the time.”
“He is?”
I gestured discreetly toward Ken.
“No, man,” Yoshiro said, too loudly, then leaned in closer. “I’m talking about Manami-chan.”
In truth, I had completely forgotten about Manami. “Manami-chan? I thought you didn’t like her.” “What? Wait. Did she tell you something?”
“No, no.” I shook my head. “I just never really thought about her, I guess.”
“Good,” he said. “I don’t want you thinking about her because I do, in fact, like her. A lot.”
“So what are you waiting for?” I asked. “Make a move.” “Make a move. Right.” He sniffed and took a drink from
his glass. “Like I have any idea what to say to her. Everything
that comes into my head sounds stupid. And now she knows I look like Himura-san.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Have you noticed she barely drinks?” Yoshiro said. “At first I thought if I drank more it would be easier to talk to her. But that plan’s been a total bust. She never laughs at any of my jokes.”
“Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?”
He stared at me. “You really are an idiot, aren’t you?”
Ken was getting handsy with Mitsuko, whose laughter
carried across the room.
I left Yoshiro’s side and approached Hirata, who looked particularly gloomy this evening. “What’s bothering you?” I asked.
“I’m in Japan.”
“Yeah,” I said, not following. “Me too. Yoshiro as well.”
“I need to be in Russia.” “Russia?”
“Yeah, Russia,” he said. “Here, there is no real appreciation for Tsoi’s music—or any music, for that matter. In order to feel it, to really feel it, I need to go to Russia.”
“Have you got any money?”
“Not at the moment. But most nights, I can get by on two hours’ sleep. Takeshi-san can’t pay me for working here, but if I can get a couple of part-time jobs on the side and work five months straight, I could afford the trip.”
“A genius idea!” Yoshiro nodded to Hirata and addressed
the group. “Did you hear that, all? We’re going to Russia!”
A round of cheers overtook the little room in the back of Takeshi’s restaurant. While Yoshiro likely proposed the idea in jest, the others seemed to take it to heart. For the moment at least, our little group was jubilant.
A song of Tsoi’s we all recognized began to play—simple drums, upbeat tempo, catchy chord progression. I didn’t much care for Tsoi’s slow-to-midtempo stuff, which were somber affairs at best, in my opinion. But this tune I liked. Drew me in. And was quite addictive. Not to mention, easier to dance to.
We all chimed in at the chorus. “Videli noch! Gulyali vsyu noch do utraaaaaaaaaaaa!”
Hirata translated: “We saw the night, we walked the night, until morning.”
“Saw” meaning experienced or a part of and “walked” meaning hung out or being out and about. Mostly the lyrics were about having a good time.
The thumping music must have given Takeshi’s elderly regulars a collective headache, but we didn’t care as we jumped and swayed to the music, moving in spastic, carefree motions that had Yoshiro spilling beer on everyone.
We listened on repeat until night turned into morning.
a little known genre known as schlock rock