Pax Pox Nipponica

By Darvin Babiuk

The Emperor is dying ... and needs his secret to die with him.

 

(PAX) POX NIPPONICA is an alternate history novel set in a 1980s' Japan. The world is a very different place than the one we know. At the same time it is dealing with the Great Depression, the U.S.A. has been decimated by a devastating coronavirus that leaves it a shell of itself. Nazi Germany, the U.S.S.R. and a much-reduced Anglo-America are embroiled in a decades-long war of attrition that began as World War II. All of Asia is left for the Japanese Empire to do with it what it wills.  It is ascendant, the dominant nation of the age, the single dominant economic, military and political power. The Empire is smugger in its role than a soy sauce salesman at a sushi festival.

 

The novel begins with a devastating earthquake that threatens to shake out some secrets the Empire would rather leave under mossy rocks or flooded rice paddies. While writing a story on shoddy construction practices linked to political corruption that magnified the earthquake destruction, journalist Shinzo Tokugawa rescues a group of Korean construction labourers from xenophobic Japanese villagers who think the earthquake and collapse of school buildings is their fault. In the course of publishing his story and protecting his source, Shinzo learns something that threatens the very legitimacy of the Japanese Emperor and the vast extended Empire he rules over. With the help of a couple of Japanese twin sisters, the husband of the American Ambassador to Japan, the Korean labourers he rescued, and the Japanese mafia, Shinzo battles the assembled forces of the Japanese socio-political elite. These include not only the presumptive Prime Minister-to-be Minoru Sasagawa, but also the country's version of the Gestapo,  or Kempetai ; the dogged Inspector Asano of the Special Higher Police, or Tokkō; and the combined naval, air and land forces of the world's pre-eminent military power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darvin Babiuk
• Release date: Apr 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386557142

Darvin Babiuk

"I have lived more places than Sinbad the Sailor."   Indeed, I have lived in every province in Canada -- other than the Maritime region -- and ten overseas countries.   International spy? Much more prosaic than that. Working as a trainer for Oil and Gas operations in the Middle East (including around Sinbad’s home port of Basra), North Africa and Asia, alternated with instructing at a variety of North American universities, has necessitated it. Along the way, I have picked up sensibilities from numerous cultures and have taken the opportunity to write about them. Along with being a columnist for newspapers in Japan and Ontario, I have written a variety of fiction and non-fiction in periodicals, journals and online sites. My written works are housed in the national archives of both Canada and Japan.

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For all the many worlds of Japan

MANY WORLDS THEORY

The many-worlds interpretation is a theory of physics first put forth by Young Hugh Everett in 1957. Young Hugh Everett agreed with much of what physicist Niels Bohr had suggested about the quantum world of physics which attempts to explain reality at the atomic and sub-atomic levels. Quantum theory states that a particle exists in multiple states—such as a photon simultaneously existing as both a wave and particle—not actually taking on existence in either form until it is observed and measured. In other words, objective reality does not exist, something Einstein resisted by stating that God does not play dice with the universe.

Young Hugh Everett disagreed with Bohr in one vital respect. In the many-worlds theory, measuring a quantum object does not force it into one single comprehensible state or another. Instead, a measurement taken of a quantum object causes actual splits in the universe. The universe is literally duplicated, splitting into different universes for each and every possible outcome from the measurement. Each possible outcome of an event is more than merely possible—it actually happens, somewhere, in one of the countless worlds of a multiverse.

In short, anything that can happen, must happen.

All the characters in this book—as well as all the events described in it—are entirely fictional. If, by chance, they should happen to coincide with reality, it is to be considered a coincidence. My account of the incidents contained in this book is not intended to be a reflection of actual events, and is to be considered only as a work of the imagination.

Copyright © 2017 Darvin Babiuk

PAX: - noun [paks, pahks]    Origin: 1325–75; ME < L:

1. period in history marked by the absence of major wars, usually imposed by a predominant nation.

POX: noun (pɒks) 

1. (archaic) a pox on someone: an expression of intense disgust or aversion for someone or something.

People all over the world refer to Japan as the Land of the Gods, and call us the descendants of the gods. Indeed, it is exactly as they say: our country, as a special mark of favour from the heavenly gods, was begotten by them, and there is thus so immense a difference between Japan and all the other countries of the world as to defy comparison . . .  Japanese differ completely from and are superior to the peoples of China, India, Russian, Holland, Siam, Cambodia, and all the other countries of the world.

—Atsutane Hirata, Shinkoku, 1811 [in a text designed for use in schools]

The center of this phenomenal world is the Mikado’s land. From this centre we must expand this Great Spirit throughout the world . . . The expansion of Great Japan throughout the world and the elevation of the entire world into the land of the Gods is the urgent business of the present, and, again, it is our eternal and unchanging object.

—Zoku Koshindo Taigi, [The Political Philosophy of Shintō], Volume II

In establishing relations with foreign countries, the object should always be kept in view of laying the foundation for securing hegemony over all nations. The national resources should be developed in military preparations vigorously carried out. When our power and national standing have come to be recognized we should take the lead...declare our protection over harmless but powerful nations...Our national prestige and position thus ensured, the nations of the world will come to look up to our Emperor as the Great Ruler of all the nations, and they will come to follow our policy and submit to our judgment...

—Masayoshi Hatta, shogun councillor, 1858

...extend the line of Imperial descendants and foster rightmindedness. Thereafter, the Capital may be extended so as to embrace all of the six cardinal points and the eight cords may be covered so as to form a roof. – Emperor Jimmu 660 CE

MOTOSU, GIFU PREFECTURE, JAPAN

For just over two minutes -—although it seemed far longer—from 4:48 to 4:50 a.m., Japanese Standard Time, Wednesday, September 24th, the giant catfish, Namazu, who lives in the mud under the island nation of Japan, satisfied an itch and twitched its tail directly under the small Japanese town of Motosu, Gifu Prefecture. As a result, not only Motosu, but the entire nation was thrown into a tailspin.

Fourteen miles above the catfish's lair, in a world only partly removed from Japanese mythology, large parts of Gifu and the surrounding prefectures were destroyed.  The difference in height on either side of the fault line alone was roughly six meters greater than it had been before. One of the five most-powerful earthquakes ever recorded, the trembler moved Honshu, centre of the Japanese East Asia Co-Prosperity Zone, 2.7 metres (8.8 feet) further east from where it had been and shifted the entire Earth on its axis by estimates of between four to ten inches. This deviation led to a number of small planetary changes, including the length of the day and the tilt of the Earth. The speed of the Earth's rotation increased, shortening the day by 1.8 microseconds due to the redistribution of Earth's mass. Changes to the lives of individuals living in the region were far too numerous to calculate.

The Bank of Japan put the cost of the giant catfish’s twitch at 23 trillion Japanese yen, making it the second most expensive natural disaster in world history. Among human disasters, perhaps only the Great American Influenza epidemic of 1937 impacted a nation more, killing over twenty percent of the North American population, overwhelming the country's medical capabilities, and affecting that nation's social and economic development even now, decades later.

Human beings measured the earthquake at 7.4 on the Japanese Meteorological Agency's Shindo scale, the first time in history a Japanese earthquake had ever been measured over 7.0 (the inferior Western Richter scale measured it as a magnitude 9.1). The catfish's twitch released a surface energy of 1.7 ± 0.5×10¹⁹ joules which, if harnessed, could power a city the size of Ōsaka for an entire year. Japan's National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention calculated a peak ground acceleration of 25.97 m/s².  Actual casualty figures were 29,870 dead, 46,107 injured, and 3,814 people missing across seven prefectures, as well as 3,414,219 buildings collapsed or damaged, although the government news agency would never report such devastation and cited much lower figures for all categories. None of the nation's newspapers questioned these except for a Korean daily, whose offices were promptly shuttered and torched by the Military Police in retaliation.

The main earthquake was followed by hundreds of aftershocks with magnitudes over 6.0. Soil liquefaction was reported as far away as Shizuoka and a volcano was triggered in the Japanese Alps near Takayama. Over fourteen million homes were left without electricity and another two million without water. 743 bridges, tunnels and highway overpasses collapsed, including the famed Chuo Expressway. Three hundred hospitals were left unusable. Again, these figures were vastly under-reported in the Japanese national media in order to maintain the aura of strength and prosperity the Emperor had maintained throughout his reign. Other damages were harder to conceal. The Colossal Temple of the Great Buddha in Gifu City caught fire and burned to the ground. Japan Rail shinkansen bullet train service was suspended indefinitely until all tracks could be inspected for damage. All rides at Tōkyō Samurai Land were suspended and the theme park closed indefinitely. Phone lines were down in 27 out of 47 mainland prefectures, although none of the overseas holdings in Korea, Manchuria, China and the Philippines were affected.  Yomiuri News reported only minor damage to the Emperor Hirohito Biodiesel Complex, promising that a steady supply of electricity to the wider Japanese Empire would be restored once power lines were re-strung.

The Imperial Navy's Sixth through Twelfth fleets were ordered to monitor for signs of impending tsunami. The other fleets were busy monitoring the fragile ceasefire between German and British forces in the North Atlantic. As a precautionary measure, the Japanese Imperial army was put on alert in all colonies, even in those as far away as Burma, Siberia and Papua New Guinea.

The Military Police Corps (Kempeitai ) announced a curfew and an exclusion zone around the affected areas. No one outside of them, The Special Higher Police (Tokkō), or rescue services was allowed inside the affected areas. That included media, which were forbidden to even fly over the affected area, under threat of being shot down.

JAPANESE IMPERIAL NEWS AGENCY

The entire nation of Japan is in shock today over the extent and scale of damage caused by the greatest earthquake recorded in modern human history. Despite the demands and sacrifices this traumatic event has imposed on we Japanese both collectively and individually, it is important to remember that even the greatest nation the world has ever known is subject to the demands of our kami . The ways of our Shintō gods are wise; only a nation as great as ours would be challenged by a disaster of such magnitude, for no other nation in the history of mankind except Japan would be strong enough to absorb such a devastating blow or expected to sacrifice so much for the benefit of all mankind. Is it not only fitting, then, that the greatest earthquake the world has ever experienced blessed the greatest nation ever known?

In keeping with the hallowed bond between the Japanese people and our consecrated kami, who favour we Japanese above all other nations and humankind, our omnipotent Shintō deities followed the way of the gods, performed their sacred duties, showering their favour on our revered Emperor’s realm in the early morning hours of September 24th. Upon their urgings, the Great Namazu promptly twitched its tail, along the ancient principles of fūsui, shifting the tectonic plates of the Japanese archipelago beneath the sacrosanct lands of Yamato into their divinely foreordained placement. Thanks to them, our kami, all parts of the human realm are now in their properly divined order, heralding a near future where the great people of Japan, personified by our glorious Emperor, ensure that the Shintō gods’ will is carried out by all mankind.

(Editor’s Note: our foreign, less-civilized subjects may know fūsui as feng shui, which is the inferior mainland Chinese way of referring to using the unfathomable, godly forces that bind universe, earth and humanity together in the principle of qi).

As our Shintō kami were well aware before presenting us with this trial, the superiority of Japanese engineering was more than strong enough to withstand the tremendous forces which would destroy any other nation faced with such destruction. Any comparable city in the world would have been rubble.  Readers doubting this need only look to the recent nuclear exchange between Soviet and Nazi forces in Eastern Europe, which left large parts of Kazakhstan uninhabitable, while our own cities and infrastructure remain not only inhabitable but fully functioning. Readers doubting this should remind themselves that the devastation released in that conflagration was equivalent to only one quarter of one tenth of one percent of the energy released in this new greatest of all world earthquakes. Ninety-three nations have rushed to offer food and humanitarian aid to our great nation. Personally taking charge of the re-building process while the Emperor recovers from his recent illness, Crown Prince Akihito acknowledged the sentiment behind the offers, but in the end graciously declined any aid, noting that all offers have been found inferior to native Japanese resources. The majority of public structures in the quake area were constructed under the aegis of the Sasagawa zaibatsu, who also remain in charge of recovery and reconstruction efforts.

This great blessing from the Yamato deities can only be seen as an omen of future greatness to come to our united nation, bringing the inferior peoples of the world under benevolent Japanese tutelage.

SHINZO TOKUGAWA STOOD just inside the Exclusion Zone, his mouth open in shock. Like every Japanese, he'd witnessed dozens of earthquakes in his life, but never one like this. Everywhere he looked, there was carnage. The scale of the destruction was unbelievable, the stench indescribable, the blackness impenetrable. For someone born in the city and who had rarely been out of the glare of neon lights even at night, the depth and weight of the darkness was unsettling. The lit end of his cigarette seemed like a pachinko parlour klieg search light beacon in comparison.

Editor-in-chief of his own small-press newsmagazine, Shinzo did not need to check in at the office for instructions on how to handle the enforced news blackout. He was, in effect, the office, running the magazine almost singlehandedly, with only a small but dedicated core of freelancers and volunteers to get the publication out. It hadn’t always been that way; for a long time, his sister Megumi had been the real conscience of the magazine, conscience and workhorse all rolled into one. Now, she was in a hospital in the mountains just a short car ride away from here, probably never to be released. He’d been visiting her when the earthquake struck, leaving him conveniently behind the earthquake’s exclusion zone, while all the other media and journalists were being prevented from coming in. 

Despite its size, the magazine was influential, having broken a number of stories the mainstream Japanese press wouldn't go near. If it hadn't been for his family name, the publication would have been shuttered long ago and Shinzo imprisoned or exiled. As it was, Shinzo often had to rely on foreign media outlets to get stories published that the Japanese censors wouldn't allow in national print.

Usually, Shinzo would have pinched out his finished cigarette in the foil pouch in his pocket designed for that purpose, but today he forgot himself and dropped the butt on the ground beside the rapidly-growing pile around him. Shock can do strange things to a person's mind. Normally an environmentally conscious person, Shinzo wasn't thinking straight after a disaster of this magnitude.

Obviously, neither was the Tokkō, the Special Higher Police, because so far no one had come to chase Shinzo away from the barricades. There was a line of Tokkō squad cars, lights flashing, just sitting on the dividing line between order and chaos. Inspector Yoshinori Asano, whom Shinzo had clashed with before while covering contentious stories, was in a similar state. When he arrived, Inspector Asano had also just stood there, slack jaw gaping in shock, holding a thermos of barley tea and the brightly patterned furoshiki full of rice balls his wife had dutifully made for what was sure to be a long day. Asano was the type of policeman whose only evidence of creativity was his choice of truncheon. Before long, he would reach into the back seat of the squad car for the kendō stick he kept there and begin whacking bystanders and survivors alike into compliance with clipped barked orders that came naturally to a man who'd risen to the rank of Chief Inspector. But for now, he was as awestruck as Shinzo, and the two of them shared one of the few moments of symmetry they ever would, being polar opposites on the spectrum of Japanese political thought.

The Shintō rain god Kuraokami took that moment to whip out its dick and piss all over the back of Shinzo’s head. It was like the sluice gates opening the channels to the rice paddies had been dumped on him.  "Kusō! he muttered under his breath. Shit!" The good thing was that Asano was being pissed on by dragons, too, and had ducked back into the patrol car to get out of the deluge, sludge sluicing down the windshield so thick that the wipers could barely keep up with it.

Recognizing his opportunity, Shinzo dipped his head into his collar and slipped past the cordon into the earthquake zone. The flashing police lights receding behind him as quickly as the normally-ordered Japanese state had before the awesome destructive power of the earthquake, Shinzo ducked around the wreckage of a pile of cars so that he was out of sight of the Tokkō and started down the cracked asphalt road.

Vehicles were strewn like toys, willy-nilly across the pavement, resting on their sides and roofs, abandoned, the survivors unable to drive any further and escaping on foot. Shinzo had recovered his wits enough to put his next cigarette out properly before he started a blaze, even in the rain. Cedar and bamboo limbs had fallen everywhere, the smell of spilled gasoline and burnt rubber crowding everything else out. Picking his way through the rubble, he stopped to hawk the phlegm out of his throat and wrap his handkerchief around his face to try and stop some of the fumes and smoke from being breathed in.

As he went along, most of the structures he came across were in ruins, Japanese houses being made of mud inside wooden frames. Black rain dripped down the school walls, soot from the fires mixing in with the water and staining the paint as it rolled from ceiling to floor. A few of the larger, official buildings, like schools, that had been built according to strict earthquake codes, had survived, but not as many as he had expected. Building contractors were notorious for cutting corners, the government inspectors conveniently looking the other way in return for large political donations. Picking his way through the rubble, Shinzo dropped to a knee in disgust and vomited. Remnants of cloth from school uniforms were the only way to recognize the charred and mutilated bones mixed in the rubble as human. Finally, recovering, he forced himself back to some of the worst damage and snapped photos for the magazine, making sure to document everything in a notebook he kept in a pocket in his cargo pants. Later, when he got back to the office, he'd research which firms had skimped on building materials and pocketed the difference. People were used to such corruption, but seeing photos of a school with children crushed inside might wake them up.

The school itself was a mess, the soccer goals on the grounds strewn against the building, weeping tile ripped up, and the swimming pool cracked and drained. On the second floor, which used to be the third, the glass on the windows was shattered, except for one incongruous pane which still held a handmade banner praising the virtues of a ninth-grade class. It wasn't long before he came across his first corpses, fully recognizable as dead bodies, a young girl in her sailor outfit school uniform still being held protectively in the arms of her homeroom teacher. The two had been crushed by falling beams and then impaled on shards of glass while the teacher had attempted to shelter the girl.  Choking back tears, Shinzo solemnly recorded the location and time, copying the name from the girl’s school uniform stating her name and class number, then picking through the rubble to find the name of the homeroom teacher written on the fallen chalkboard. It wouldn't be first set of corpses he'd find that day. His notebook would get a workout recording them all. Shinzo doubted the authorities would be able to recover anything from the closed-circuit cameras that were ubiquitous throughout Japan. Only once you were outside of any population centre or roadway could you escape their stare. But these .... these were shattered, and there was little chance of recovering any recordings they might once have made.

Further down the road, next to a grove of persimmon trees, a small concentration of shops had been shaken, the stock from a stationery supply outlet literally mixed in with goods from the convenience store next door. Nothing looked out of the ordinary here, if you could call such destruction ordinary. Even the ubiquitous vending machines somehow hadn't been smashed. Shinzo slid a few hundred yen coins into one of them for a pack of Lucky Seven cigarettes but with no electricity, nothing happened. Calmly, Shinzo found a rock and broke the glass, pocketing a few packages to get him through what would be a tough day. All of them would have to get used to life going on in a different way now. Thinking it might be a while before he ate again, he picked a few persimmons from the trees, peeling them with the Swiss army knife he kept in his pocket. Sweat ran down his skin like snakes.

He was standing there, sucking on a cigarette, persimmon juice dripping down his chin, when a group of labourers came staggering down the road. From the way they were dressed—bandanas around head, trousers puffed up like balloons above the knee, shoes that were rubber-soled and split-toed—it was obvious they were construction workers. Their leader warily made his way up to Shinzo and tried a cautious greeting.

"Konnichiwa," he said, using a wristband to wipe some of the sweat, grime and rainwater from his face. It was evident, immediately, from his accent, that he wasn't Japanese, likely one of the cheap foreign labourers brought over from the colonies or the descendant of slave labourer brought over decades ago when the wars were still hot, not running cold like they were nowadays.

You take us police, he pleaded. We guilty. You take us police.

Why? asked Shinzo, bewildered. What could these simple men have done that could have been any worse than taking a few cans of soda or packets of wasabi-coated peas from the broken vending machines without paying for them?

They chase, the man said. With rain sticks. Say we make ground move.

Now Shinzo understood. In the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, enraged Japanese mobs had hunted down and lynched groups of Koreans, mass murder fueled by unjustified rumours that they were taking advantage of the disaster to commit arson and poison wells. The Japanese Imperial Army had colonialized Korea in 1910 and the local populace had been resisting and calling for independence in Korea, something their imperial masters frowned on. Unable to strike at the restless catfish slumbering miles under the Japanese archipelago, the people struck at the weakest target, the Koreans working amongst them. Thousands had been killed by angry mobs before the remainder were taken into protective custody, which just made it easier to find them and carry out further killing. Now, many decades later, it seemed history was repeating itself, as Marx said, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

Rain sticks? Shinzo asked.

Covers maybe, conceded the Korean. Man made. To hide under rain.

Umbrellas, Shinzo corrected. "Kasa. They chased you with umbrellas," he said, feeling ridiculous even as he said it. Maybe it was Harpo Marx, not Karl, he should be remembering. Whoever it was, he was right. This was a farce. Highly-muscled men with deadly construction tools were running from frail office workers with umbrellas and asking a persimmon-stained man in a track suit to save them.

Three of us not here, the Korean said. "Um-brillos get them. How we tell their bujo they killed by um-brillos?"

Shinzo doubted much harm had come to the Korean labourers. Any of his countrymen with a streak of sadism or cruelty usually ended up in one of three places: the army, the police or the yakuza and it sounded like the umbrella-wielders were only simple office workers. More likely, the Koreans had just been given a good tongue-lashing and perhaps a few whacks with the umbrellas. Wounds like that would heal.

Take us police, the Korean labourer pleaded again. He seemed to be their leader simply by virtue of his limited Japanese ability.

Knowing Inspector Asano as he did, Shinzo doubted that the police was the best choice for these men, whose only crime was honest work. This way, he said, leading them away from the way he had come, away from Asano and the Tokkō. Come. Nothing good very came from spending too much time with the Special Higher Police.

He led them out along the Tarumi rail line near the town of Neo where some old friends from past journalistic battles in Korea were hiding out in the mountains from the Imperial authorities with a group of hippies. Not only would the group welcome his Koreans, but they were self-sufficient, one of the few surviving anti-authority groups surviving in post-war Imperial Japan. Moreover, they were used to living off the grid, without electricity and living off what they grew. A twinge of regret passed through him as he thought of the twin girls who led them, Rezoko and Pachinko; his sister Megumi would have loved to have joined her old friends. Sadly, she would probably never be able to. Ever.

What was most amazing to Shinzo as they picked their way through the devastation was the sheer scale of the disaster. The earthquake had been felt broadly all through the Chūbu region of Japan, but media reports would be unanimous in stating how limited the damage was, how sturdily the Japanese-designed and built infrastructure was. Criticism of the empire, implicit or implied, was simply not allowed, no matter how justified it might be. Once again, he was embarrassed at how complicit his profession was in the subjugation of the population to the myth of nihonjinron, or Japanese uniqueness and superiority.

"Taihen, ne," one of the Koreans following in Shinzo's wake said, staring at the twisted rails and the remnant of a station platform. The electronic ticker – present on almost all government buildings in Japan – that ran headline news of propaganda the Imperial government wished to propagate, was silent.  The closed circuit cameras that covered all areas of the train station were inoperable. If the rail line had been linguini before the earthquake, now it was fusilli, the station concrete and fixtures thrown on top like meatballs and parmesan cheese. With the Japanese