CHAPTER 7: IN PRAISE OF SHADOWS
IWATA WANDERS AIMLESSLY THROUGH THE Californian dusk. People huddle in blankets on the beach beneath emerging stars. Slim palm trees rustle in the breeze. Orange and black waves lap at the glassy shore, blinking bubbles left behind in the shingle. In the distance, Santa Monica Pier twinkles on the water, its big wheel slowly revolving. Iwata hears music now, sad but defiant.
The lights of the city are so pretty.
He leaves the beach behind and follows the melody.
I’m happy with you.
On the corner, a little shop has its door propped open, music spilling out for the pleasure of all passing by.
Please let me hear. Those words of love from you.
Iwata walks in and sees her.
“Hello,” she says.
“Hello,” he replies.
The woman smiles.
I walk and I walk, swaying, like a small boat in your arms.
“I know this song,” he says.
“It’s beautiful. Do you know what she’s saying?”
Iwata nods.
“So what’s she saying?”
“Sad things.”
They regard each other for a moment.
“I’m Cleo,” she says.
Her skin is a mellow tan, her woven friendship bracelets frayed.
I hear your footsteps coming. Give me one more tender kiss.
Soon they will be bare in her broken bed, surrounded by damp and freshly cut flowers and music. She will correct his English and make eggs most mornings. She will always sleep on her side. In the predawn, Iwata will run his hands down her ribs, a breeze over sand dunes.
How did I find you?
In the warm half-dream, he will only be able to answer that by whispering, “a miracle.”
Days will pass into years—car journeys, struggles, entire weekends in bed. Cleo will play records and burn toast. She will quietly encourage her old car in the mornings and shout at the news in the evenings. She is the only one allowed to break her own rules. Cleo becomes the only authority in Iwata’s life. Walks along the ocean, throwing sticks for an imaginary dog.
Hubris. Hubris. Hubris.
Cleo, ablaze in the setting sun, looks over her shoulder and smiles.
“It’s so pretty here.”
A different sun, a different country, and in brilliant white above her—the lighthouse. Casting never-ending shadow.
* * *
Iwata pulled over on the hard shoulder and swung open the car door. He jumped the expressway barrier, ran to the nearest tree and vomited. He blinked out tears, gasping.
“Fucking bitch. Fucking bitch. Fucking bitch.”
Then he kicked and punched the tree and didn’t stop until he felt nothing in his bleeding hands. Stillborn cherry blossoms landed on his shoulders for a moment, then fluttered down to the dirt.
* * *
“Kyoto University is one of Asia’s oldest and most prestigious.” The elderly security guard led Iwata through the beautiful gates, hands behind his back, smiling proudly as though he had laid these bricks himself. “Eight Nobel Prize laureates, two Fields medalists, and one Gauss Prize. And some twenty-two thousand students in any given academic year.” He pointed to the information post. “There we are. You’ll be looking for the Department of Psychology.”
Iwata thanked him and crossed the campus green. It was a sunny afternoon and groups of students were sitting out on the grass. The old camphor tree, which was the university’s emblem, stood in the shadow of the redbrick clock tower of the Centennial Hall. The terrace café was packed with students enjoying iced tea and gossip in the sun.
Iwata skirted the skipping rope team’s practice and made his way to the eight-story building behind the old hall. He was about to enter when something caught his attention. A repeated dull thwacking and grunting could be heard nearby. Iwata followed the sound and glanced around the corner. On a shaded strip of grass behind the faculty building, two men were sparring. The younger man, muscular and squat, held up boxing pads. The other man was in his forties, powerful and tall. He rained down a flurry of blows with precision and economy. The younger man was struggling to keep the pads up, as though holding up a newspaper to a water cannon.
Iwata concentrated on the shots and saw that the older man was left-handed. The session was soon over.
The younger man laughed, his face red.
“Professor Igarashi,” he panted. “That jab cross is brutal.”
The professor looped a paternal arm around his shoulders.
“It’s not what it used to be.”
“I better not be late on your assignments!”
Igarashi laughed.
“Come on, I owe you a beer.”
Before he could be noticed, Iwata left his spot. Entering the building, he took the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the door marked:
FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY / SEMIOTICS
A woman answered.
“Come in.”
Iwata opened the door to a cramped room with four desks and dying pot plants. A woman roughly Iwata’s age looked up from her papers. Her hair was mid-length with a long fringe. Her face was heart-shaped with a strong jaw. She wore silver and turquoise stud earrings and a loose, green cardigan.
“Can I help you?” It was a warm, steady voice.
“I’m looking for Professor Schultz.”
“He should be back any minute. May I ask who you are?”
Iwata held up his ID. She raised her eyebrows.
“Whenever we get police here they’re usually looking for me, not David.”
“Oh?”
The woman pointed to the plaque at the end of her desk.
DR. EMI HAYASHI—CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY
“Maybe next time,” Iwata said.
“Please take a seat.”
As she gestured, Iwata noticed her Mickey Mouse watch. She caught his glance but he looked out of the window. The lawn where Igarashi had been sparring was now empty.
“Would you like a coffee while you wait, Inspector?”
“No thank you.”
“You’re sure? I happen to have a rather fancy espresso machine in the staff room.”
“I’m fine.”
“David should be back any moment.”
Iwata recognized his friend’s characteristic chaos of papers and books around the desk. A Pittsburgh Steelers flag was blue-tacked to his monitor. By the phone, there was a framed photograph of a slight woman with red hair. She was holding a small child in her arms.
The door swung open and David Schultz huffed into the room, struggling with a stack of papers. His red-and-white gingham shirt was dark with sweat and his jeans were two sizes too tight.
“Holy shit. Kosuke?”
The two men embraced.
“You got fat,” Iwata replied in English.
“Fuck you, man. Japanese diet.”
Dr. Hayashi collected her papers and stood.
“No, Emi. Stay. I’ll be back later,” Schultz said.
She smiled a neat smile then went back to her work. Schultz fished out his wallet from his desk drawer and led Iwata back to the terraced café by the clock tower. He greeted several students warmly in near faultless Japanese, then chose a secluded table away from the chatter. He ordered them two coffees and they quickly fell into discussion regarding Schultz’s career, recent divorce, and long-distance parenthood.
At the first lull in the conversation, Schultz looked up to the dusky sky and his face turned grave. A silence of birdsong and youthful laughter.
“Iwata, I know I haven’t seen you since, uh, what happened. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m so sorry. I know there’s nothing else to say.”
Schultz clapped a thick hand on his friend’s shoulder. Iwata looked away and saw golden pillars of sunlight through the branches of the camphor tree. A girl was reading a book beneath it, leisurely moving her bare feet in the breeze.
“We don’t have to talk about it, Dave.”
Schultz nodded vigorously.
“No, no. Of course. It’s just good to see you, Kos.”
Iwata opened his bag and laid a plastic folder on the table. He waited for the waitress to set down the coffees before opening it. Schultz looked aghast.
“Tell me you’re not working again.”
“I need to ask you a favor.”
“How did I know you hadn’t come all this way just to see an old friend?”
“Because you’re a very smart man.”
Schultz’s smile dimmed.
“Seriously, though, are you sure you’re ready for this? Maybe you should take a while to—”
Iwata held up the photograph and the black sun silenced Schultz. He saw the fascination swallow him whole.
“You bastard.”
Iwata grinned. The photograph framed the jagged smears of the black sun on the ceiling in a harsh flash, darkness at the contours.
“What was it drawn in?”
“Charcoal. The killer forced the victim to paint it with his finger before ripping out his heart. Killed the wife and two kids as well. I’ve got more photos I’d like to show you.”
Schultz sighed and looked up at the now bloodshot sky.
“What do you want to know?”
“One. Is it a symbol or a sign? Two. What does it mean?”
Schultz rolled his eyes.
“Kos, I’m a semiotician, not Hercule fucking Poirot.”
“I went out on a limb coming all the way out here on limited time. I need to go back with something, Dave.”
“That was on you.”
Schultz looked at the photo for a moment then shook his head in defeat.
“All right.”
“You’re a good man, David.”
“I’d call you a cruel bastard but that’s implicit in your race.”
* * *
High up in the green and red hills, Iwata and David Schultz sat on a bench. Far below, Kyoto shimmered like it gave off warmth.
The lights of the city are so pretty.
“Nice spot,” Iwata said.
“I come here when I need to clear my head.”
“Does it work for you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Beats Pittsburgh?”
Schultz laughed.
“Hey, you ever read any Jun’ichirō Tanizaki?”
Iwata nodded.
“Emi lent me one of his books and there’s this line I can’t get out of my head. ‘Beauty lies not in objects, but in the interaction between the shadow and light created by them.’”
“In Praise of Shadows,” Iwata said.
“Just keeps going round and round in my head, I don’t know why.”
“I know what you mean.”
Schultz gave a wan smile and stuck out his hand.
“Go on, then. Show me the fucking photographs.”
Iwata opened his bag and passed over the plastic wallet. Schultz slowly shuffled through the images, his face revealing only the slightest of twitches. He was seeing the black sun fully now, from various angles, and its position in relation to the brutalized body of Tsunemasa Kaneshiro.
Schultz put the photographs in the plastic wallet and gingerly passed them back.
“How do you get used to seeing that sort of thing?”
“I just let my eyes sweep over it.”
“Kos, all this…” He gestured to the slaughter in the photographs. “Are you really sure you’re ready to handle it? I mean what happened to you is—”
Iwata held up a hand.
“Dave, please. Just, please.”
Schultz nodded.
“Okay.” He exhaled. “Okay.”
“Thank you.”
“You asked me if it’s a symbol or a sign. My guess is it’s a symbol.” Schultz pointed at the hazard sign in front of them before the drop to the rocks below.
“Now a sign means something—stop, go, walk, et cetera. The sign thinks for you. It commands you. A symbol, on the other hand, represents an idea, a process, or a physical entity. But the important word here is represents. The symbol represents something else, something beyond what you are looking at—whereas the sign means only this. The Christian cross doesn’t just mean a dead guy on a crucifix, it represents sacrifice, faith, hope, whatever—an entire religion. Where the sign thinks for you, the symbol asks you to do the thinking—abstract versus the literal, I guess.”
“So you don’t think the black sun is a direct command or a warning?”
“This is all guesswork but no, I would say that the killings themselves mean something. Whatever this person’s objective was, I think it’s possible that the death of the family was not the goal in and of itself. The symbol could mean that the murders are not the end product. They could mean something else.”
“You’re saying the murders are … somehow subordinate to the sun?”
“Kos, I think the murders belong to it. Maybe the killer does, too. You never know, man. Reality to survive, fantasy to live.”
There was no trace of the dusk now, only a cold night and a thin nail of moon high above it.
“You also asked me what it is. That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Schultz puffed the air out of his cheeks. “Fuck, it’s like asking a mathematician what the significance of the zero is. I mean, where do you want me to start?”
“Wherever makes sense.”
“Okay. You’re looking for a murderer, I guess. One possibly obsessed with this dark symbol. So look, maybe it could be read as an absence of light that is driving him—the black sun as the end of all life, eternal darkness, Satan, blah blah blah. The black sun has a rich tradition in the occult, not to mention esoteric Nazism.”
“Esoteric Nazism?”
“We should have gone somewhere that serves beer. Look, I don’t know how much detail you want here, but basically you’re talking about a semireligious and mystical interpretation of Nazism starting around the 1950s. The black sun was seen as a kind of a mystical source of energy capable of regenerating the Aryan race. There’s a long-standing literature connecting the Aryan race with this black sun, or mystical sun. Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophy talks of a ‘central sun.’ Thule or Hyperborea, for the ancient Greeks, was a place where the ‘people beyond the North Wind’ lived. Other interpretations see it as the ancient seat of the original Aryan race. Oh, and Himmler was a big fan of the Oera Linda, which is sometimes referred to as the ‘Nordic Bible,’ and frequently referenced when discussing esotericism and ‘Atlantis’ literature. Anyway, Himmler was alleged to have commissioned an old ‘Aryan symbol’ for Wewelsburg Castle. You can guess what he chose. This is all academic, though.”
Schultz did up the last button on his coat, looking out at the horizon without blinking.
“You mentioned this family was ethnic Korean, Zainichi, so you must have considered some sort of racial hatred or purity complex at play here? I mean I couldn’t tell you explicitly what the connection with the black sun is, but it’s certainly worth thinking about it if you make a Nazi link. That said, your killer could just as easily turn out to be some kind of satanic nut job or fundamentalist.”
Schultz scratched his stubble before continuing.
“Now Kos, we’ve just been speaking last century here. You should know that the black sun symbol crops up in pretty much every ancient culture there is, all over the world, essentially from day one. The Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Aztecs … It was a sacred symbol connected to creation stories, apocalyptic legends, and the like. But you’d need historians to go down that route. Anyway, that’s about all I can tell you. But I can do some reading for next time.”
“David Schultz, you’re luminous.”
Back in the car, they wound down the shadowy hills, mostly in silence, half-listening to a radio report on Japan’s booming elderly care industry and dwindling birthrate. Iwata drove at a languid speed, his thoughts caught up in dark symbols. At the campus gates, Schultz opened the passenger door and the interior light came on.
“I’ll call you if I think of anything else, all right? Next time just come without dead bodies.”
They embraced briefly. Schultz got out, turned, and ducked his head into view.
“Max Weber once said, ‘Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.’ My gut feeling? Whoever it is you’re looking for is suspended in that black sun. It’s not a calling card. I think it’s his whole web. He lives and breathes it.”
Schultz patted the roof of the car and tossed the door shut with a metallic clunk.