RANDOM MUSINGS

Red Sky

Monkton, Vt, March 2020

“Damé!” It was so quiet at night that even crepe-soled shoes were audible. One shifty corridor guard took pleasure tip-toeing through his shift, looking for the smallest infractions, rapping on doors, and hissing. He was a stinker, a lurker, maybe some kind of pervert. He would walk down the hallway and his leer would appear for a second or two in the small observation window above the bed, then disappear. Ten seconds later it would be there again. Whenever I saw him pass my cell I waited with a smarmy smile in place for his return. I called him (not to his face) Gollum-san. He had a very limited English vocabulary.

Gollum was a low-ranker living in the barracks; as a consequence, he frequently drew night-shift. It was evident he seldom saw sunlight. He was thin and pale with dark rings surrounding deep-set, squinty eyes. He had a pendulous lower lip and bad posture. I imagined him jerking off a lot in the daytime over Manga comics. One evening in September he caught me standing in front of the window, staring at the sky. Every cell has a window, but officially, you are not supposed to look out of them.

It was after dinner on a typically hot, muggy, late summer evening, three years into my sentence. I had successfully avoided chobatsu, so far. I was writing when I noticed the grey cell walls were pink, like the start of an acid trip. I blinked my eyes two or three times, thinking I’d been staring too long at my notebook. The walls were still pink, the whole room seemed to be pink, so I turned around and looked out the window. The entire sky was a most peculiar hue, suffused with an even, salmon-red glow, no indication of where the sun was setting. I walked a metre and a half to the window. I have never seen a sky like it before or since. It was September 2001.

Gollum rapped on my door, crossed his bony index fingers in the sign of a cross, and hissed like a snake. “Sit! Damé! No look out!” Before taking my seat I pointed at the sky and said look. He said something unintelligible but disagreeable in tone. I anticipated a yellow slip in the morning. Then I heard him telling Jayanpati, then other prisoners, to look out their windows at the sky. It was that unusual!

The next morning at work, the Honcho called me to the fore to have a word. Shit, a yellow slip, but instead, he told me the World Trade Center towers in New York had been destroyed by a kamikaze attack. He wanted to know my reaction. I thought about it for several seconds and said, “Good shot!”

That day, instead of Japanese game-show inanity (that did nothing to brighten my day; to the contrary), the lunchroom TV had been changed to a news channel. Over and over, the video clip of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, the shit hitting the fan in New York. I was almost grateful to the Arabs, or whoever they were because from then until the time I was released, we had news at lunchtime instead of game shows.

A week later there was a news segment, video footage shot by an old woman in Brooklyn. On the day of the disaster, she was suspicious of some men standing on the roof of a white van parked outside her apartment. They were staring towards Manhattan as if waiting for something. When the first tower exploded in flames they cheered. Then they drove off. She noted the registration number and reported the incident to the police. The van was traced to a company address in Brooklyn. The office had recently been cleared out of all but furniture. Both address and car were traced to a company owned by Mossad. I still find the official account highly questionable.

The day after saying ‘Good shot’ I was marched to the administrative office and questioned by the prison chief. After I was seated in a folding chair across from him, sitting formally, back straight, hands flat on thighs, across from him he asked what I meant by ‘Good shot’. He seemed an educated man and spoke English with the hesitant fluency of one who has learned the language more through diligent study than frequent usage.

I delivered a brief synopsis of blowback theory; how American imperialism had been creating tensions and resentment around the globe for a century and a half. Eventual repercussions, such as 9/11, were inevitable. As for ‘Good shot’, I said the choice of target was well chosen and they hit it dead center.

“So you are not angry. You are not depressed?”

I said was sad for the people who died, but no, I wasn’t depressed or angry.

He asked if I did not love my country. I explained that I grew up loving the land, the mountains, the natural world, not the society. I loved the place on earth I came from but carried no flag. I was not proud we had poisoned the earth and the water and the air. I was not proud that we had destroyed the American Indians and their cultures. I did not believe any race was better than, or had the right, to destroy, another because of greed. I considered adding, I don’t think America would have dropped atomic bombs on a white-skinned race, but didn’t want to overdo it.

He sat there, nodding his head almost imperceptibly, waiting, encouraging me, to continue. I said Gods are at the centre of things. The World Trade Center was a monument to the God of Money. It was the symbolic centre, that’s why I said ‘Good shot.’ We traded the world for money and those buildings were a temple. I told him I did not mean Good shot in an entirely negative way; it was an opportunity for the United States, my country, to wake up and consider its actions, and how it is seen by the rest of the world.

He still said nothing, so I asked him, assuming he knew if he knew who Thomas Jefferson was. He said yes, Jefferson was one of the founding fathers of American Democracy. I said Jefferson-sensei said, ‘I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.’ He understood that we all must pay for our mistakes someday.

He considered me curiously for a moment and almost smiled. Our conversation was at an end and I was dismissed. I don’t know if he understood, or cared about, what I thought, but apparently, he was satisfied I wasn’t going to commit seppuku, murder some Pakistani, or resort to any other such nonsense due to 9/11, not on his watch.

I imagine him sitting, scratching his head after I left,

Wondering:
Fatherland. Dispassion.
How can that be?

Thinking:
Gaijin,
Peculiar race.

Wolfgang: For the Love of a Sporting Girl

Monkton, Vt, March 2020

“Until he can… cease to defend and assert himself… an impenetrable wall shuts him off from the living experience, of feeling himself a man among men.” Karl Jung

Vas ist loss? Alles klar. Wolfgang Blesel’s Weltanschauung – his World View – was defined by inherited, cultural conservatism, limited experience, and a lack of imagination. His rigidity and racial pride allowed little light to penetrate the dark-moon side of his Germanic soul. His defensive armour did not include a sense of irony, courage, or conviction, and as a consequence, he felt persecuted. He was 51 when I met him, a couple of years older than me, not a bad man, just arrogant and ignorant. Nothing in his life had prepared Wolfgang for the reality of prison among a race not his own. He was almost an innocent.

He came from a small town near Munich where his father owned a trucking company. Since high school, he had worked in the office and delivered goods all over Western Europe. He had a wife but no children, or none that he ever mentioned. Business was satisfactory until the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification. The resultant cheap labour from East Germany upset the existing economic structure and proved disastrous for many smaller businesses. Herr Papa sold out as his, began to decline.

Wolfgang had anticipated a comfortable pension when he retired at 60; instead, he received a modest severance packet and a gold watch with his name engraved on the back. The watch meant a lot to him – all he had to show, really, for 30 years of driving trucks.

Disappointed with the roll of the dice and at a loss what to do – but, feeling free for the first time in his life – Wolfgang decided not to seek reemployment immediately; he was going to enjoy himself. So, he and his wife went to Bali for two weeks. It was their first experience together outside of Europe. After Bali, they went to visit the Thai beach resorts of Phuket, Koh Samui, and Pattaya. These Sodom-by-the Seaside cities are characterized by fouled beaches, too many tourists, and legions of whores of every imaginable gender and representing several races and nationalities. Mostly Thai-Lao, there were many Russian and Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Africans, Burmese, Cambodian

Middle-aged men like Wolfgang are easily seduced by the siren song of Thailand. He was inspired. Confronted with a world of erotic possibility, he went back to Germany, divorced his wife, and bought a ticket back to Bangkok, where he experienced an intoxicating, alcohol and cheap Chinese Viagra-fueled rebirth in the demimonde, where a few Euros or dollars or Deutschmarks buys much beer, sexual gratification, and a veneer of sham respect. Peasants feeling like kings.

Germans are popular with the sporting girls, and vice versa. The girls like Euros, and Germans like smooth brown bottoms and boom-sing. Every mid-size town in Germany has several Thai wives. In the cities, Thai wives and prostitutes are part of the landscape (neighboring Switzerland as well), transvestites too. In upcountry Thailand, entire communities consist of houses owned by Thai women with German husbands. Many of these men spend ten months every year working in Europe, spend two-month holidays in the Kingdom with their wives, and sending them regular money for the other ten months.

Some of these women have more than one western puah, and sometimes a Thai husband as well, usually a parasitic appendage, called a maeng dah in Thai. These clever, ambitious girls – in the great spirit of emancipated capitalism – do their best to determine which husband should take his yearly holiday when, so as not to arouse suspicion between them, and jeopardize the steady income of her cash cows.

I had a Swiss friend, Eddie, who after eight years of marriage, having bought two houses and a Toyota for his light-o-love, discovered she had two other husbands, one pre-existing, and the other she married a year after marrying him! Through the generosity and innocence of her other two puahs, she owned two other houses, large parcels of farmland, and a pickup truck. Not bad for a girl who grew up in rural poverty. She was the pride of her parents and the envy of her friends.

Predictably, many older men experiencing a rebirth of virility in an Oriental whorehouse environment come undone. This was the case with Wolfgang. He was in an alien culture, but he felt he’d finally found his niche after a few months of carousing and visiting tourist attractions. Like many other expatriates and sexpatriates, he knew little of – or cared about – the language, history, or customs of the country, outside of what shallow knowledge he absorbed on barstools or in bed with bargirls.

Like many before him, after extensive Venusian night-time activity, living the Lotharion life of a Teuton Riley, Wolfgang fell in love with a young hooker on the touristic island of Koh Samui – a young upcountry lass who had picked up a working knowledge of Deutsch and Deutschlanders in the course of her vocation.

Life was grand. Then came a day he was compelled to face the disagreeable reality of having pissed and boom-singed away nearly all his money. The epiphany woke him up enough to realize his teelak, (girlfriend), would likely head for greener pastures if he didn’t get some more money. Soon.

It was a frightening moment. He wanted to stay in that tropical Paradise forever: on a barstool near a beach where his countrymen congregated; in bed with a fragrant, warm brown body; and enjoying occasional shopping excursions to Bangkok. Maybe a holiday within a holiday to the River Kwai and Chiang Mai and the Golden Triangle. It was all slipping away and he began to panic.

First, he called his father to borrow a couple of thousand Euros, saying he would return home soon and get a job. That money ran out after a month or two. Then he asked for more, to settle his hotel bill and buy a plane ticket home. Papa was unhappy but sent it. Wolfgang spent that too. The third time he called, his father sent him exactly enough for a ticket and basic travel expenses. That’s it, he said. Get your profligate German arsch back here! or something to that effect. Wolfgang didn’t buy the ticket.

There is a bar in Bangkok on Sukhumvit Soi 7 called the German Biergarten, a huge, canopied space open to the street. The sidewalk is a cornucopia of street food sold from carts and stalls. The Biergarten is open 24 hours a day, a top spot for whores, and Germans if you ever need one. There are always plenty of both.

Soi 7 borders Arab town, the Muslim tourist and expatriate district, the nucleus of which is the old Grace Hotel on Soi 3. Iranians are frequently found drinking and whoring in the Biergarten. While Wolfgang was in Bangkok trying to borrow money from his compatriots after the last ticket money ran out, he made the acquaintance of some Iranians who offered him an opportunity to make 7,000 dollars. All he had to do was fly a suitcase – in the false bottom of which would be concealed 5 kgs of hashish – to Japan.

They gave him five hundred dollars to bide him over until the flight, keeping his passport as security. (If you ever want to sell a passport, or need one, not in your name when in Southeast Asia, ask among the Persian community. They control the lion’s share of the stolen, doctored, travel document industry).

Wolfgang went back south to Koh Samui and his upcountry girl to await the summons, which came about a week later. When he left for Bangkok – for the flight to Japan and his appointment with destiny – he left his engraved company watch in the safekeeping of his girlfriend; to demonstrate his trust and devotion to the mademoiselle, and to reassure her of his intention to soon return, enriched.

His employers escorted him to Suvannapoum Airport with the suitcase. They gave him his passport, a thousand dollars in cash, and a telephone number to call upon arrival in Tokyo. Before checking in, they gave him a gift-wrapped package about the size of a deck of cards to put in his pocket to give to their friend on the other end; a watch, they said. Having checked in his luggage, suspicious, he opened the package in the men’s room and found inside a block of compressed white powder.

Conservative to the bone, Wolfgang was way out of his element. Had he been born in the 1920s, he might well have attended Bavarian bierstube rallies when Adolf was in town. He disapproved of any intoxicant other than alcohol. A junkie and a pothead were no different in Wolfgang’s world. He didn’t have much use for brown-skinned people either, (unless he could have sex them). Scared witless, he threw the package in a rubbish receptacle and fled the airport, abandoning the suitcase. Fuck all these people!

Wolfgang was not the brightest schnitzel on the Strassen, or the Soi. A week later, his Persian benefactors found him drinking beer in the Biergarten again. Predictably, they were extremely unhappy. Under threat, probably of death, he agreed to take another suitcase for them – and not fuck up this time, or else. (There had been several instances in Bangkok around that time, most involving Persian scammers, of large suitcases thrown in the river within which dismembered foreigners were found.)

They took his passport and kept a close eye on him until another case was assembled and another flight scheduled. This time they watched him check-in and go through immigration. They told him there would be eyes watching him the entire journey, and people waiting by the airport exits on both ends to make sure he didn’t try another runner.

Wolfgang was between the proverbial rock and a hard place. His options were: one, he could go through with the plan; two, he could go to airport security and say he was suspicious of some characters who had given him a suitcase, hoping the law would be understanding (unlikely, and if imprisoned in Thailand, the Iranians would probably assassinate him); and three, he could take the flight and abandon the suitcase on the luggage carousel at Chiba Airport.

And then what? Shiess! His name tag and fingerprints were on the bag! And the Watcher? Were they bluffing? He couldn’t leave the airport. Double Shiess! He needed to leave Japan on the first available seat anywhere he could afford; Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, anywhere that cost less than the $1,000 they’d given him as show money. Not Thailand, at least not right away. He would find a way to get his watch back later. He would come up with a plan on the plane.

Wolfgang, mousey short brown hair, small of frame and unremarkable in every aspect, could have been a good smuggler had he possessed sangfroid, imagination, and the ability to think quickly on his feet. But by the time he arrived at Chiba Airport after hours of corrosive paranoia on the plane, when he went through Immigration he probably looked like a haunted, hunted, cornered man. He probably reeked of fear.

Not surprisingly, he was politely asked to step aside by the passport control officer. (The Japanese are an exacting, though exquisitely polite, race.) He was then escorted to a room and questioned by a pair of uniformed men as to the intent of his journey. A third officer collected his suitcase from the luggage carousel. They set it on a table before him and unpacked its contents, examining each item carefully and neatly setting them aside. When the suitcase was empty they hefted it to ascertain its approximate weight. After an exploratory perforation on the bottom of the case, they ripped it apart as he sat there watching the light fade from his future. As well as four and a half kilos of hashish, they discovered a half kilo of opium. Whatever light there once had been in Wolfgang’s life was eclipsed by a festering hatred.

He showed up at Sakai about six months after my enrollment. Exercise periods and lunch were the only opportunities we had to talk. He spoke imperfect but functional English. I did my best to be friendly, to make him laugh, but he took attempts at humour wrongly as if being taunted as the whole world consciously conspired and endeavored to contribute to his personal hell. I found him an interesting character, and liked him in a peculiar way, as I do peculiar people.

He bitterly lamented his fate and complained continually about everything. Never once did he admit responsibility for the actions and decisions that led him there; he blamed his father, the Iranis, his girlfriend, and the heartless Japanese. Having made a deal with the devil and refusing to honour it, he was intensely, irrationally resentful about the whole thing. Realistic about one thing, he figured his girlfriend would probably sell his watch; she wouldn’t wait seven years for him, for sure. It irked him intensely.

I was intensely angry when I went to prison. Angry at Rudy and his partner who managed to mess up a simple procedure, who lied to me and let me walk into an ambush, and refused any assistance to my wife and son in the aftermath, not even a word. I was angriest at myself for not following my instincts from the start. Hatred and rage and pain, revenge on top of the agenda, a craving. It was tearing me apart until I came to terms with it, so I understood where Wolfgang was coming from.

Rather than commiserate or entertain his whining and whinging, I tried, with little appreciable success, to encourage this German misanthrope to take a philosophical approach to the situation – by not fighting it, accepting it, and stop blaming everyone else. It’s less of a load to bear, I advised. Accept it and deal with it. It’s heavy enough as it is without having to shoulder the additional weight of hatred. Think of being here as something that had to happen in order to learn what you need to know. Prison requires some patience. He wasn’t buying any of it. He was determined to be miserable and succeeded admirably. For the love of a sporting girl.

During the three years of our acquaintance, Wolfgang insisted he was a victim. He writhed and squirmed and denied wrongdoing; he refused to concede the fact he left his innocence behind (along with his engraved gold watch), when he dealt with the devil in Bangkok. Wolfgang was guilty as hell, first and foremost, of being a fool.

‘How can they do this to me? I’m white!’ His Aryan uber attitude did not endear him to the Japanese authorities. He was lucky to get seven rather than the ten years requested by the prosecutor. He had already been in for more than a year when I met him, so would leave about 6 or seven months after me. Myself, I appreciated the civility of my captors and treated them with respect and good manners in return, bending like bamboo. My goose was cooked, rather badly, but I had assisted in its preparation and had to eat it.

Have you ever heard a sizeable herd of pigs at the trough? I recognized the clamour instantly, the moment I first heard fifty Japanese prisoners eating penitential lunch. The second hand on the wall clock reaches its zenith, the Honcho (chief factory guard), calls out, “begin”. Gobble, slurp, click and snort as they shovel food into their mouths with chopsticks from rice bowls as fast as they possibly can, not a word is spoken. It lasts about four or five minutes and tapers off quickly. Few prisoners use the allotted ten minutes to eat, in order to enjoy the remainder of the 25-minute mid-day break, by relaxing before the resumption of work. I’ve always preferred conversing while dining.

Lunchtime was an amusing and welcome diversion from sewing pockets, for me. Wolfgang was appalled by the barnyard noise and didn’t like the food. He was cautiously polite to the two murderers at our table. I appreciated their company and conversation greatly; we discussed books and philosophy and places around the world. They were among the warmest, most intelligent people there. My misanthropic Freund found little to smile at, or talk about, at lunch beyond his grievances. I took to calling him Baron von Grimview.

Attempts to joke and cheer him up were hit or miss. For my efforts, I learned a little German from him: arschloch and aus maul – butthole and shut up. He found little humour in suggestions he take up smoking hashish, rather than transporting it, and to avoid buying it from Persians, to be on the safe side.

One day he mentioned he smoked Pall Mall cigarettes at home. “That’s the right spirit!” I exclaimed. “Per Aspera ad Astra.” He looked at me warily, uncomprehending, wondering what was coming next. “It’s on the front of every pack of Pall Malls. Per Aspera ad Astra, man. ‘Through hardship to the stars’, that’s what it means. It means if you can think like that, you can never be a slave or something.” He said something uncomplimentary about my mental stability.

At lunch on occasion, as a prank, when he was lost in morose thought, I spilled a little tea – he sat across from me – and covertly tilted my side of the table up ever so gently until a nearly invisible rivulet of tea wormed across and dripped on his leg, summoning him back from whatever hell he was visiting. Once, when he was particularly sullen and unresponsive, he reported me to the Honcho, who, knowing Wolfgang, ignored him.

He chose the wrong country to get busted in; he hated rice. The rice was actually a mixture of barley and rice, peasant food, but more nutritious than plain white rice and quite palatable. When he first arrived in prison he was offered bread as an alternative, an unalterable decision. He chose bread but it didn’t meet his standards. Bröt? Acch, ist scheiss!

Because Wolfie refused to learn how to use chopsticks (Stupid Orientals!), he was issued a plastic picnic spoon. It was equally amusing and pathetic to watch him negotiate noodles from bowl to mouth, hating every slithering, hard-won bite. Udon noodles were a treat we rarely saw and it hurt me to see the food he left uneaten. Sharing, or eating food from any plate but one’s own was an immediate chobatsu offense.

From beginning to end I was constantly hungry and made a meditation of savoring each bite of food, leaving not a grain of rice in my bowl, making sure I finished just before the clock on the wall reached the ten-minute mark. (Every aspect of daily life was timed to the second.) After lunch, we washed chopsticks and put them back in our lockers while the lunch crew wiped and mopped and washed the plates and bowls.

There was certainly no sushi, no sashimi, no uni, unagi, or hamaguri. none of the truly amazing and delectable cuisine of Japan; it was fuel, but the quality was decent enough and varied – the Department of Corrections was proud of it and occasionally posted menus in the Yomuri Shinbun, the national newspaper. But there was never enough. Since 18, my normal weight has been 145-150 lbs. I weighed between 130 and 135 lbs. throughout my four-year tenure and career as a sewer of pockets and waistbands.

With characteristic, Japanese forethought and efficiency, the weight of an average Nippongo male is used to calibrate the number of calories required for a man to work an 8-hour day. Big prisoners, 180 cms in height or over, receive an additional caloric supplement. The Liverpool fool, Geoffrey – I saw him once, marching – had shed at least 80 superfluous pounds after two years in Sakai-ko. I found it almost uncanny how accurately individual portions of food were eyeballed out without any sort of favoritism.

Once a month we had Japanese curry noodles at lunch which I thoroughly savored. At longer intervals, we had tongkatsu, a schnitzel, which almost pleased Wolfgang. The rice-based diet included much sweetened and salted tiny dried fish and krill, occasional fish filets or boneless chicken, several varieties of seaweed, various varieties of beans prepared in different ways, not a lot of fresh greens. some pickled vegetables, small facsimiles of salad (bits of lettuce end up floating in the communal bath). The occasional dab of kimchi was the only hint of chili and garlic (neither are part of the traditional Japanese diet. Both are sources of vitamin C.

There was little fruit. We got a piece of orange, a thin slice of watermelon, or a banana once every couple of weeks. Occasionally a small carton of milk coffee or fruit juice at breakfast. Due to an insufficiency of vitamin C, extended prison time insured tooth decay, gum disease, and eventual deterioration of the jawbone. Most of the long-term population and frequent repeat offenders exhibited rotten teeth and bad gums, symptomatic of scurvy, their mouths broadcasting a carrion reek. (The air of a seven-man Japanese cell – sleeping head to foot – is foul with halitosis, feet, and flatulence. I spent my first five months in one before there was a single-cell vacancy.) Wolfgang spent a year in one, which may have contributed to his negative attitude towards the Sons of the Rising Sun.

The only regular drinking water was once a year on sports day. Drinking tap water was verboten. Only unsweetened black tea was issued in factory and cell. Over time, teeth turn brown from the tannins. My teeth began to loosen and my gums bleed, within three months of my arrival in Sakai. Nightmare, shrieking, abscessed roots were to follow.

Repeated requests for vitamin C to prison authorities and the US Embassy came to naught. I then submitted written requests for salt; brushing with it is effective in mitigating gum disease. These were also denied. Kazumori-san, my Honcho went out of his way (and put himself at some risk) by bringing me a packet of salt from his home. He let me brush with it in the mornings before work. For some reason I never fathomed, morning tooth brushing was only allowed in the factory with the exception of Saturdays, Sundays, and National Holidays when we remained cell-bound.

The salt worked; within a week my gums stopped bleeding. Then, one morning at the sinks, Blesel grabbed the salt. I indicated (we couldn’t speak out loud) not to take it, to make a request first; for one thing, it was not mine to give, and secondly, I didn’t want to jeopardize losing the fragile privilege that had taken me a year to gain. In plain view of Kazumori-san, he just took it. The only reason he wasn’t punished was because the corrections officer would have compromised himself for unsanctioned kindness, and possibly lost his job. That was the end of the salt; the fate of my teeth was sealed.

Hatred is a sly, hungry beast pretending to be a friend. It says, “You’re right! You’re right!” and in return needs to be fed. The more it eats, the heavier and uglier it gets, the more load there is to bear, the more one is imprisoned in mind and emotion. It feeds from within and has a hollowing effect, not unlike heroin in that way.

Freeing oneself of that burden requires recognition and conscious engagement; it must be fought and starved until it lets go before irreparable damage is done. Sustaining oneself with the bloody meat of hatred and a desire for revenge might seem the easiest, most natural course to follow, like water seeking its own level – an animal instinct, and indeed it is – but, as sentient, supposedly intelligent beings, we have a choice. I chose humour, irony, and acceptance rather than hatred as sword and shield.

Wolfgang reaped a small, malicious pleasure seeing my salt privilege rescinded as if he’d achieved some small victory. He resented my five-year sentence, believing his seven was unjust because he was not an inveterate dope smoker or a smuggler by inclination, vocation, or avocation. The explanation that his lengthier sentence was certainly due to possession of two illegal drugs on top of illegal importation did nothing to ameliorate his resentment.

He was just a decent, beer-drinking Bavarian who ran afoul of fate and couldn’t understand why it had to happen to him.

I’d lost a lot. I was back to square one, but I left without ill-feeling towards the Japanese. In fact, I rather admired them in some ways. The great majority of correctional officers carried out their jobs without abusing their authority and the overwhelming majority of prisoners did theirs without complaint or disruption.

After almost four years Wolfgang still felt a victim and disliked the Japanese. He embraced and fed his hatred. At the time of my release, he was nearly as miserable a man as he’d been on the day he arrived.

It was tempting to be angry with Wolfie, but there was no point. It would have amounted to a waste of good energy. We were not all that different, I suppose. We were both there for the same crime, more or less. He fixated on his watch, and I on my son; all I had to show for 52 years on the planet. I could understand his pain. I could empathize, having made more than a few grievous mistakes myself, but I refused to feel sorry for him. Pity would have amounted to loathing watered down. Like the Dylan song:

‘In the days of long confession
We must not mock a soul
‘Cause, when there’s too much of nothing,
Nobody has control.’

But I can’t say I wouldn’t have disliked him greatly had he landed me in chobatsu with a 15% reduction of eligible parole, for trying to cheer him up.

I had four years to divest myself of anger, and increase my capacity for compassion. I learned something about freedom (‘another word for nothing left to lose’); it has little to do with time or space. It was a long battle to suppress blood-spattered fantasies of revenge upon people who left me hanging on a limb over a sea of shit. I can’t exactly say I forgave them – I just hoped never to see them again. I didn’t want the temptation. Like heroin, I didn’t want to get into the habit. I figured out the release date was less important than who I would be when I walked out through the gate.

The pursuance of elusive, illusory happiness can make a man (or woman), pretty damn stupid. Having temporarily found whatever we thought worth pursuing, we enjoy that state of grace without questioning. We feel. We are. Lessons learned from pleasurable experience are limited; fun doesn’t usually inspire introspection and is generally inconsistent with philosophical or theosophical contemplation. Then we become dissatisfied with what we’ve got and do some more pursuing.

A good crash on the other hand (one in which you don’t perish), makes one think, a lot. We question ourselves and the Gods we’ve made, which perhaps amounts to the same thing. Why? Why me? We petition desperately or humbly for answers and salvation. It drives some people crazy. But in any good crash, or worst-case scenario, there is generally an opportunity to learn something. Perhaps the better question to ask should be, Why not? And see the question, as the answer.

I feel fortunate I lost faith in the Sons of Abraham early. I didn’t have to waste too much time pondering imponderables like traditional American hymns such as “I Bathe in the Fountain of Blood” (a real toe-tapper). Right from Genesis, right from jump-street, Christianity lost me: on the fourth or fifth day, when God said go forth and multiply, have dominion over the earth, over beast and fowl, and the flowers and the trees and the birds and the bees, and whatnot. He didn’t say one thing about respecting the earth or taking care of it; just take it. I was an inveterate animist from childhood and found sanctity and sanctuary in The Spirits of Forest and Mountain, Water and Sky.

There wasn’t any forest or mountain or water around Sakai-ko (the Yamamoto River flowed nearby but I never saw it), only sky, glimpses of it, marching to and fro, blessed exercise periods, and the faint light of two or three stars behind the bars, the rest of the night sky absorbed by ambient metropolitan light. It was enough.

Nevertheless, I sent out prayers at least twice a day for the well-being of my son and that I might survive to see him. I invoked the Spirits, Deities (the entire pantheon to be on the safe side), and Heroes of the oppressed, like a little kid saying God Blesses before bedtime: Dear Buddha, Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesh, Lakshmi, Aphrodite, Ahriman, Amon Ra, Wakan Tanka, Penny Twichell, Kung Fu, Lao Tzu, Mohammed, Mary Magdalene, Mandela, Hayzus, Old Moses, Odysseus, Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Lenny Bruce, Davy Crockett, Papillion and the Emperor of Nippon (to name a few), on the off-chance one of those celestial ears might hear or give a shit.

I could never imagine why any God would be more concerned with the individual sensitivities of humankind than with truly victimized lifeforms. Anyway, there was no faith involved and I prefaced my prayers with an apology for my lack of it so as not to sound dishonest or hypocritical (covering my compromised ass).

While prayers for well-being might amount to no more than a sparrow fart, they can’t hurt either, unless you invest too heavily in them. I came to understand that prayers are hope, and hope is only the flip side of fear; two sides of the same coin. Hoping something will happen one way is another way of fearing it won’t. I didn’t invest much in it and left prison grateful I’d gained something of value, but still ignorant of lessons to follow.

The mind is fertile soil. It’s a good idea to be aware of the seeds that have been sown and sprouted, to be aware of invasive species, and do some weeding before the garden gets overgrown. Like the doughty dandelion (but without cheerful blossoms), fear and hate are hard to kill. They affect the heart and brain and bone and infect those around us. They cure nothing, yet hand in hand are embraced as an ultimate unifying force. “People are no damn good,’ my Uncle Horace liked to remind me in his laconic fashion.

Suffering triggers an adrenal urge and casts its seeds afar. Anger and fear grow and mature, bearing the curdling fruit of self-destruction. The urge to share it rather than bear it becomes irrepressible. Perhaps it requires a train wreck to grasp that freedom has a lot to do with acceptance, the abandonment of fear and hope and that the real reward of patience is simply patience. I got the point, in theory – if not in perfect practice.

Matthew Proujanski, a good friend back before I left North America in 1970, when I was still in college, gave me a Japanese poem. I’ve carried it in my head ever since and pulled it out in prison to examine it under a jeweler’s loupe:

Worm: My way is best
Crane: My way is best
Stone: Stone

It’s easy to find a God or twist scripture to justify every action and decision ever made by man, some undoubtedly nobler than others. There are Gods to reward or destroy, to plague or to heal, to avenge or forgive, Gods who giveth and taketh away. If that wasn’t bad enough, we have their earthly arbiters. The excuses we make for the gods we made, oh my!

When seeking truths, it might be a good idea to keep the Gods out of it entirely, especially a monotheistic deity; He doesn’t have much sense of humour, unless maybe the Trials of Job was His idea of a joke. The Devil now, he’s got a helluva sense of humour. Have you ever considered Christianity might be one of his best pranks to date?

Surrounded by wall and wire, ruled by laws, not of our liking or making, it’s easy bemoaning fate and casting about for someone, or something, to blame. That kind of thinking doesn’t take you very far. Life is a series of enclosures. But within confines are doors to freedom, if one is willing to look for them. In the end, the only way out is within.

To understand it is one thing, to live it, another. It’s not easy, but maybe there’s not much that’s worth much that is. Looking at life from the bottom up, from the bitey end, without distraction or luxury, with nowhere to run or hide, some basic truths may be more readily grasped. Sometimes surrender is the sensible, courageous path to follow. Sometimes you gotta say, “OK, I screwed up.”

Eventually, a day arrives when a prisoner is exempted from the bi-weekly, regulation, 7-mm haircut. Unless he messes up, he can be reasonably certain he will be released in about a month, give or take a week or two. (They want you to look more like a normal citizen when you leave.)

The day eventually arrived when they only trimmed only nape of my neck and around the ears. A few weeks later, when my thinning hair was almost two cms long, I said to Wolfgang, who was criticizing the intelligence and compassion of his captors, “My dear Baron von Grimview. Wise Chinaman say me: ‘You no insult crocodile before you get across river.’ Miss me, a lot!” To my surprise he said, “Alles gut, mein freund, danke.”

A week after that I was told to remain in my cell while everyone else queued up to march to work. Hi ho. Hi ho. Ohaiyo means Good morning in Japanese. It was a good morning. I smiled and waved at Wolfgang as he marched past my cell. He acknowledged me with a nod and a smile.

Karma: like the speed of light, like gravity, like centrifugal force, it’s the law; a matter of physics as much as anything else. There’s no point in beating yourself up about it. If you fall in a hole, climb out. If you fall in the same hole again, climb out again. The next time, walk around it or try another path. Don’t worry about the path. It takes care of itself. Just be aware of where you put your feet.

“Part of the glory and terror of our life is that somehow, at some time, we all get what’s coming to us.” Robertson Davies, The Deptford Trilogy

Per Aspera ad Astra. Through hardship to the stars.

Freedom of spirit makes him a ruler of life, not a slave

You are the road. In the crack where illusion meets reality, that’s where you are, out on the road, and the road is you. RJ Walker, Bridges of Madison County

My German lexicon consisted of maybe 30 unrelated words and a couple of phrases. I would practice on Wolfgang at lunch, hoping for a smile, say things like, “Achtung! Vas ist loss Herr Grupenfuhrer Blesel, mein freund. Der hund is loss! Mein fledermaus ist kaput! Du bist ein ganzer kerl. (Attention! What’s happening Lieutenant Blesel, my friend? The dog is loose! My bat is out of commission! You are a strong man.” Typically, his response would be something like Arschloch or Aus mowel (Asshole, or Shut your mouth) – new words to augment my Spartan vocabulary).

I read Karl Jung’s, “Modern Man in Search of a Soul” and several books of philosophy while in prison and tried introducing words and concepts like Zeitgeist and Gotterdammerung into conversations with Wolfgang but he wasn’t a conceptual kind of thinker.

Bango! Namai !: Starting the Morning Right

Monkton, Vt, Mar 2020

There are two adjacent changing rooms at the entrance to each factory. Upon arrival in the morning, you strip in the first, and hang up your cell uniform (to be inspected closely while working), then queue up naked in the next room. Stand at attention. One at a time, step forward. Upon hearing Bango! Namai, shout out in Japanese, your prison number and your name (Leunado in my case – the Japanese pronunciation of Learned) to be checked against a list.

Open your mouth wide, extend your arms above your head, palms out, fingers splayed, then show the backs of your hands, palms again. Kick the right leg up to chest level so the sole is visible, then the left leg. Turn around, bend at the waist with legs spread wide, straighten, turn around, show your hands front- back-front once more. Stand at attention, bow, turn, then change into work uniform (the same as worn in the cell) before entering the factory, to brush your teeth. The security procedure is repeated at 4:30 pm, before returning to the cells.

Brighter lights would make work less tiring on the eyes. Flaccid ceiling fans are impotent against thick summer air, hardly worth turning on. Windows are open in summer to catch whatever errant zephyr might wander by and in winter are mostly open for oxygen. Cold feet four months of the year. There are about 50 small tables, like school desks with sewing machines, hemming machines, button and buttonhole machines. There is a long cutting table to one side. Other tables are piled with piles of snow-white, unsewed jacket parts: panels and sleeves, waistbands, pockets, collars, and cuffs. White noise buzz and whir.

For three years I sewed pockets, not sewing them on the actual jacket (that was someone else’s job), just sewing pockets. There was a quota; production was recorded every day. It was a good time to do breathing exercises and silently recite mantras. Sewing meditation.

At the end of the workday the Bango Namai routine was reversed and we marched back in cell kit, to sit at a desk, read or watch TV (which I requested to be disconnected), and wait for supper. You cannot sit, or lie, on a bed until bedtime.

I was Here Now, but If I sat in front of a sewing machine today, I wouldn’t know where to start. I can’t remember my number, just Bango! Namai!

Sakai

Monkton, Vt. March 2020

“Governments cannot really reform people; all they can do is create an atmosphere in which certain things are more likely to happen than not.”

“Problems are our most precious possessions. They are the raw materials of salvation.” Laurens Van der Post, Walk with a White Bushman.

Osaka’s prison is situated within a residential district of the sprawling port suburb of Sakai, fourteen km from central Osaka. Coiled razor wire crowns tall, electrified walls over which nothing can be seen. The walls surround an area the size of about three city blocks. Many of the buildings are factories. All prisoners are required to work. The prison resembles an industrial park in some respects.

From June through September the temperatures hover between 36 and 42 C (90 to about 103 F) and the humidity is usually 80 percent plus. By the end of a workday, coarse cotton uniforms have absorbed all the sweat they are capable of. Hung up to dry in front of fans at night, by morning a shirt unwashed 3 days can literally stand up. Concentric arcs of pore-born salt, like tidelines, on their backs. In the wintertime one shivers. There is no heat in factory or cell. Thin socks, open-toed sandals year-round. It snows sometimes in Sakai despite the climate-influencing proximity of the unseen Yamamoto River and the Sea of Japan. I never knew what chilblains were before.

Each factory has between 30 to 100 prisoners. They sort parts, assemble electronics, gadgets and household items, furniture, and other things. They sew, package merchandise, and engage in other labor requiring limited skill. All maintenance work is done by prisoners. These factories are contracted by big corporations, (like Honda) and smaller enterprises, thereby defraying the cost of running a penal institution and relieving taxpayers of the burden.

Prisoners are paid a minimal salary, increased incrementally over time, and paid only upon release. My first month in the factory I made 365 Yen, about three dollars. The total wages of sin at the end of my first year amounted to 5,101 Yen. Once a month, necessities like soap, toothpaste and towels, notebooks, pencils, aerograms, socks, (slightly better than those issued), lacquered chopsticks, subscriptions to Manga comics, news magazines, and censored Japanese soft-porn publications can be ordered from the prison supply store and subtracted from salary. No money – nothing except books and letters – is allowed in from the outside. No food, no clothing, no medication, nothing.

Four-story factory buildings look much like cell blocks. There is a sports field and a gymnasium, administrative offices, and many one and two-story buildings serving various functions: bathhouse, laundry, kitchens, facsimiles of medical and dental clinics, an infirmary, warehouses, a generating station, buildings for maintenance and repair.

Considering there are approximately 4,000 criminals within the prison confines, it is quiet, almost peaceful. The factories produce little noise; the perimeter walls effectively block out most aural evidence of an outside world. Prisoners are not allowed to speak unless at tea break, lunch, or twice-weekly exercise periods, always under close surveillance, and not loudly. Cellblocks are vacated during the day. Anyone not working is in the infirmary, in chobatsu, or being out-processed.

The sound of marching becomes background. You march, everywhere you march, even as an individual being escorted. Marching involves lifting knees to waist-level, arms perfectly straight, fingers rigid, thumb tucked in. With each step swing your arm to the height of the shoulder of the man in front of you, chanting: Ichi Ni! Ichi Ni! One-Two. One-Two. It’s a strange gait, as natural as the goose-step, almost comical.

There is nothing idyllic about Sakai-ko. It is numbing. You are there to pay for a crime, follow orders, and work, no questions asked – that’s it. This is a different world. English, or French, or Arabic, or Chinese, don’t work here. The world as you knew it no longer exists. You can throw preconceived notions of ‘Rights’, right out the barred window. You can count your rights on one hand or less. You have the right to be punished if you choose to break the rules. No privileges, only privileges to be lost. In Sakai, there are no phone calls, no internet, no cigarettes, no snack bar, no extra food. You are a small, expendable, replaceable part in a tight machine.

Only immediate family are allowed visits. I didn’t have any in the neighborhood. No other contacts are permitted, except far between sightings of a US Embassy official. At entry-level (red badge) you are allowed to write one letter a month. When you get a blue badge, after about a year (if one’s conduct merits), you can write two, and upon graduating to grade three, a yellow badge, four.

Once I was summoned to the administrative offices during work, not long after achieving my blue badge. I feared I’d done something wrong. I had no idea what, perhaps some unwritten rule. I was led into a small room and there sat a grey-haired, English, Catholic Priest.

News gets around fast! was my initial thought. I had just received a letter from Thailand the day before, saying that June, the mother of my son, had died. I thought he’d come to console me, or something. It turned out he knew nothing about that. He was on one of his semi-annual trips, trolling for converts. I explained, respectfully, that I was a dyed-in-the-wool Animist, seasoned with Buddhist teachings, and while I appreciated his concern for my soul and kind offer of Salvation, I was quite comfortable with my fundamental philosophy, thank you.

I fondly recalled my father one Sunday morning after a big snowstorm: there was a knock on the front door. I opened it and saw two people who had waded through a foot and a half of snow, an elder woman and a teen. They asked if my parents were home. My father was still in bed. I told him it looked like those Jehovah people again. He strode naked to the door with his double-barrel twelve-gauge, opened it, and said, “I’m sorry, we don’t have room here for a Watchtower,” and closed the door. They never came back.

At night you could be in space, in a vacuum. Sleep is difficult in the void. The all-night, overhead light is bright enough to read by if you have good eyes, and are willing to risk chobatsu. It’s forbidden to cover your face in bed, even at the risk of frostbitten ears in the winter. (Happened twice to me.) It’s quiet, except for farts reverberating down the cement corridor, followed by suppressed chuckles for a good one. Occasionally, even the night-shift corridor guard laughed.

It’s quiet, usually. The Japanese have remarkable motorcycle gangs. They ride through residential neighborhoods at night, as slowly as they can without falling over, slipping the clutch, revving their engines to maximum RPM. Vroom vroom, vroom vroom, vroom vroom vrooooooong! Tortured, big-bore, two-cycle screaming, five or ten of them at a time. Before the police arrive, they move to another neighborhood nearby and do the same, always between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. A bizarre Japanese ritual. Sometimes at night, a baby’s wail carries over the wall, on the wind, from somewhere in that other world. It pierces to the core, thinking of a son. Sleep is impossible after that.

The prison is clean, scrupulously clean. There are no cockroaches, or bedbugs, or lice. And tidy. Landscaping efforts, aspiring in a Zen direction, punctuate the greater compound here and there; winding crushed stone paths, rocks too big for felons to lift, a few sapling cherry trees, rhododendron, azalea and other shrubs, some flower beds, a wisteria arbor near the infirmary. Gardenias! Asphalt walkways are bordered by close-cropped grass. The courtyards within cellblock squares, never seen by visitors’ eyes, minimally Zen-scaped and covered with scrofulous grass. With the exception of grounds crew and guards, setting foot off asphalt walkways is absolutely forbidden, another chobatsu offense. It isn’t a park, it’s a prison, and it looks like and feels like one, a very tidy one.

Being far removed from nature was challenging. All my life, the outdoors had been my central resource and reserve, the closest thing I had to religion. When my battery was low I could always recharge. On a questionnaire, before being assigned to a factory, I put down my vocational preference as grounds maintenance. I was qualified by experience and hoped to gain something useful from it. I was disappointed to be informed that gaijin, foreigners, are not allowed to work outside. The only attempted prison break in the last ten years was by foreigners, Iranians. They didn’t get far. Still, I applied for the job every year without success.

I worshipped the natural world to the extent it existed within and above the walls. Upon waking, every evening, and several times a day, I checked the clouds to see their weight and where the wind was going, what odours they carried. (Could that be the sea? Could that be mountains?) I listened in which direction the ravens flew. I followed the phase of the moon.

Few birds, other than sparrows, ventured within the walls; even the crows and the pigeons stayed away – nothing to eat, too clean, I suppose. There wasn’t enough ground cover and trees to attract many birds or bugs. There were ants outside, of course, but not many. An occasional ladybug or grasshopper. There were few mosquitoes in the summer. Rarely did they enter the cell but when they did I never killed them. I greeted them, “Konichiwa,” and asked them politely to please feed on my legs and not buzz around my face. I blessed any bug that happened my way and said good morning and goodnight to the ravens, flying to and from their roost outside the city.

Despite the vigilance of the grounds crew and the raptor eye of correction officers, the valiant, indomitable dandelion defied all attempts to exterminate it (with extreme prejudice, I might add) from between the brutalist-modern cell block squares. Those brave, bright, yellow flowers cheered me immensely when I looked out the window, appealed to my raggedy-ass, anti-authoritarian soul.

There was only one proper-sized tree within the prison walls, a camphor tree at the far end of the athletic field. Like live oak, the deciduous camphor tree retains some green leaves year-round. Calculating risk, I used to sneak a leaf off a hanging branch when circumambulating the playing field, and covertly, hungrily inhale its rich astringent smell, bringing to mind the fragrance of trees and forests from places afar in space and time, time that seems not to pass, but does unnoticed. Days merge and flow more freely when you stop counting.

During my third year, the lower limbs were amputated and the tree was fenced off. Evidently, some fool had tried to climb it. Apart from exercise, the only time we were under the sky was marching between cell and factory, to the shower, or infirmary, etc. Ichi Ni! Ichi Ni!

Prisons are best avoided, but in my limited international penal studies, (Australia and Japan and a couple of jails here and there), the Japanese system seems more reasonable than most. ‘Debts to society’ are paid with productivity; working keeps idle hands and mischievous minds out of trouble; the taxpayer does not shoulder the full brunt of the cost of incarceration as the factories largely pay their way. 60/24/7 surveillance, and not being allowed to speak without permission are excellent deterrents to violent behaviour.

When no one has special privileges there are few jealousies. Not sharing food under any circumstance eliminates an opportunity for bullying. Bullying was rare and dealt with severely. My friend, Charlie Chan, spent 3 years in a 7-man Japanese cell and could attest to that. No tobacco increases everyone’s life span. No soft drinks and little sugar is good. No hard drugs, is excellent. No beer or hashish were small tragedies to be dealt with. No women, or other fine distractions, is a contemplative advantage.

Japanese prison is a Democracy – sort of. You do your time, do your job, you behave, you leave. Everyone same-same. The system is not designed to make you meaner, craftier, a hero for human rights, or a forecastle lawyer, or learn more about crime. To write about, or even discuss crime, other than the circumstances of one’s arrest, is punishable. The concept of a correctional institution, in Japan, as it is elsewhere, is, in theory, to provide an opportunity for people to divorce their minds from crime and other anti-social habits – at least for a while. Sewing pockets wasn’t too bad. It allowed the mind to roam free and wide.

No phones, phone calls computers or internet is probably a good idea. It increases the sense of insularity. Setting aside ‘pursuit of happiness’ for a while allows an opportunity to focus on what in life may be more relevant. Foreigners were treated no differently than the Japanese. I saw no sign of privileges that could be bought. In short, Sakai little resembled the un-redemptive, Darwinian brutality indigenous to the American ‘Correctional System’.

The police in Japan are pretty damn sure you’re guilty before they arrest you. Once arrested, conviction and sentencing are entirely within the province of the prosecutor and a tribunal of judges; there is no jury by a panel of one’s so-called ‘peers’. There is little a defense lawyer can do if you’re guilty except plead mitigating circumstances. The conviction rate in Nippon is 98%, give or take a couple of 10ths of a point.

I met only two inmates who claimed to be innocent of the crime for which they were convicted. One was the captain of a Chinese merchant ship: he was arrested after one of his crew was implicated in a bust involving five kilos of heroin while the ship was in port. The crewman was given 15 years. As captain, he was legally responsible for ship and crew, and although the arbiters of his fate did not believe in his complicity, by law he was guilty and sentenced to eight years. Evidently, the law does not apply to cruise ship captains. The Viking Princess was little inconvenienced by my misfortune.

The other was Wolfgang Blesel, who, during the three years I knew him, never accepted responsibility for his actions and decisions, though, by his own admission, he was guilty.

For three years Kazumori-san was my Honcho (chief factory manager and guard). He oversaw the Honda factory where I spent my days. He was replaced by Hanamoto-san, my fourth year. Both were decent men. Kazumori spoke some English and had been a high school teacher at one time. He was 30ish, straight, and slender. He had an air of intelligence, was even-tempered, friendly, and fair. I could imagine him leaving his teaching position after being compromised by a female student. He did not seem born to be a prison guard, but he handled it well. I liked him.

Hanamoto, was more hardcore. He had a military background. He spoke no English (or would not let on that he did). Perhaps he felt at a disadvantage because of it and acted a bit more brusquely toward foreigners, especially those like myself who spoke little Japanese. He was not a man you wanted to annoy.

I nearly had a run-in with him. Ten minutes are allotted for eating during the midday break. I was still sitting, last to finish as usual with almost two minutes left on the clock when he pointed his finger aggressively at my plate and said my time was up. I looked at him defiantly, jabbed my chopsticks at the clock on the wall, and resumed eating. He walked away. By the book I was correct (excepting my disrespectful response), and I thought I was in for it. Gross insubordination. Chobatsu. But nothing came of it, not even a warning.

Perhaps it was an indication he liked me better than I thought. I did my work, was cheerful and polite, found humour where I could, and got along well with the other inmates. I tried. And, I put in some effort on the athletic field. He liked sports and took much pride in his factory teams winning first prizes.

His softball, volleyball, and football (soccer) teams almost always came out on top. He drilled his teams hard in the twice-weekly allotted exercise periods, even in the rain; he intended his jacket factory crew to be winners. Although I was not particularly gifted in any of those sports and am not of a competitive nature, I tried hard, and that counted for something. Playing football, sometimes I coughed blood after a hard run, I sprained fingers playing volleyball, broke a tooth on a bouncing infield hit, and kept on playing. He liked that.

Once a year, in early October when the temperature has simmered down, there is Sports Day, a series of track events, and prizes such as towels, handsome chopsticks, etc. That was the one day of the year we were allowed to sit outside for four hours and have a bento-box lunch. Cheering was allowed, but no talking. Our factory won all but 2 first prizes and most of the seconds.

In November of my fourth year, one morning while marching to work, he put his hand on my shoulder. He smiled with his eyes and said in English, ‘Last day soon.’ After cleaning out my locker, before I was marched from the factory to collect my bedding to take it to the check-out cells for processing. He came to visit, as did Kazumori-san, to wish me Good luck. Domo arigato, Kazumori-san, Yamaguchi-san.

There are lots of good reasons to stay out of prison, yet most inmates were repeat offenders. Some Japanese were back inside within as long as it takes to get arrested, go to court, and be resentenced, a couple of months at most. I met one toothless old soul who was serving his 17th stretch. It was easier inside, he said; life on the street was hard, cold, hungry, cardboard shelters under bridges. To aboriginals and low-end-of-the-totem-pole people all over the world, prison can be a bed and a feed, and most of their friends are there. Job security.

It’s nearly impossible to find a respectable, well-paying job in Japan with a prison record. Most Japanese, upon release, have no recourse to gainful employment other than that found in a low-paying factory or seeking riper opportunities in the underworld. Having made a contract with the Yakuza, there is seldom a path open back to legitimacy.

With the exception of hippies, tattooed Japanese are normally Yakuza. In public, collared shirts, long sleeve shirts, and trousers conceal shoulder to wrist and to ankle tattoos. In Japanese society, the only places tattoos are displayed are in public bathhouses or in private. Tattoos ensure exclusion from country clubs.

Bath time in prison was a living gallery of work in progress. Some were only outlines, others partially shaded. Few prisoners had completed their aspired-to, stem-to-stern bodywork. Nevertheless, many were of remarkable artistry. Upon release, depending on financial resources (some of the uncompleted canvases had already invested more than 10,000 dollars), dragons, Goddesses of Mercy, and celestial samurai edge closer to completion.

It was impossible not to notice several bathers had strange knobs on their knobs. I asked Charlie about it. He said Japanese men liked to have pearls implanted under the skin of their dicks to make them more desirable. Yo.

Another definitive Yakuza signature is a notable reduction of digits, whole and partial. One old reprobate had only a thumb and two fingers on his right hand, and on the left, a thumb, a pinky, half an index finger, and an absence of middle and ring fingers. Getting caught and going to prison is often considered an offense in itself in the gang world. Unable to find legitimate employment upon release, prisoners seek out old employers and sacrifice a finger, or part of one, to atone for mistakes they made, as a condition of being reemployed in a demoted capacity.

The great majority of incarcerated foreigners were serving terms for working or selling without a work permit. There was a fine sampling of earth’s rich tapestry of racial diversity represented: China, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, many African countries (mostly Nigerians), Iran, Turkey, several South, and Central American countries (a lot of Brazilians), the USA, Canada, most western European countries – to name a few. There were, all told, 44 countries represented within the general prison population. Europeans were fairly evenly divided between English, French, German and Italian. There were 10-15 Americans at any given time, kept apart, in different factories.

Many Japanese drug offenders were busted for Shabu, a combustible form of amphetamine called Yah Bah in Thailand, which translates literally as Medicine Crazy. A good name because it turns people truly psychotic, like crack. There were all kinds of smugglers: drug, jewel, prostitute, fake Gucci bags and Rolex watches, and genuine French perfume. Others were imprisoned for making, selling, or using forged documents. There were blue-collar thieves and white-collar fraudsters, disrupters of the peace and the usual cast of petty criminals of one stripe or another, all swimming in the same thin Miso soup.

Few gun-related crimes occur in Japan because there are so few guns. In 2018 there were less than 10 gun-related deaths. In the United States the same year there were 32,500. This indicator is reflective of the overall proportionate violence of the two countries. There were, however, a number of murderers in Sakai, three of whom became my friends.

Sakai is a prison, a degree from which, does little to advance one’s career in most circles, but by choosing to look at it the way one would enter the monkhood, and taking advantage of that opportunity, it can provide an education of value.

‘A retreat signifies a withdrawal for a while from the cares of our life in order to examine our conscience… and to better understand why we are here in this world.” James Joyce, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

Shobatsu

From the pen of the Learned one, a series on a Japanese jail.

I should explain shobatsu before I begin. Shobatsu is where you don’t want to go. Japanese prison is exacting to an extreme, everything timed to the second, and you are under 24-hour close surveillance. You are expected to obey a command without question. Any transgression or non-compliance with the rules – written or unwritten – even a hesitation or disrespectful look is duly noted and dealt with. Anything you do or say – or don’t do or say – can and will be held against you. Little is forgiven. In any altercation amongst the population, verbal or otherwise, provokee or provoked, both parties are considered guilty and the result is shobatsu. Two yellow warning slips for minor infractions in three months results in shobatsu. Staring into space or out the window for more than 3 seconds while working will get you there. Sloppy marching, talking, poorly made beds, reading in bed, sharing food; any of these offenses can land you in shobatsu. I’m proud to say I am unable to give you a firsthand description.

I made a great effort to avoid it. Overcoming a bone-deep, contrarian, rebellious nature was a challenge; resisting chronic impulses to get away with things, cutting corners, doing as I pleased, offering opinions, and arguing when I disagreed.

Imagine a Joseph Stalin Vipassana Meditation Centre. A small cell, sweltering in the summer, frigid in the winter. No fan, no heat. Kneeling in formal Japanese manner: sitting on your heels, back ramrod straight, hands-on upper thighs, fingers flat and pointed straight, elbows by your sides. Maintain that position for 8 hours a day while staring at a wall. At midday, there is a short break for half-ration lunch. No reading material, no TV, no radio, no scratching your ass. You are watched. At 4:30 you are allowed to sit, have half-ration supper and sit some more until it’s time to lay down. And look forward to another zippity-do-dah-day.

It can be days, or weeks, depending on the infraction and the prison arbiter’s decision. For any non-compliance, bad posture, nodding off or looking distractedly in some direction other than the wall, additional time can be awarded; time to further contemplate one’s transgressions and adjust one’s unredeemed attitude.

Straitjackets in shobatsu were outlawed not long before I arrived due to public outcry; several deaths occurred over the years, especially in older prisoners with respiratory problems. I heard of a special prison for incorrigibly violent and suicidal inmates, somewhere in the mountains, and another for felons diagnosed with AIDS or HIV; the final journey for most of them.

Shobatsu, for any misdeed or infraction, incurs an immediate 15% reduction of eligible parole time, a loss of grade, and wage setback. For every day in shobatsu an additional working day is added to your sentence. The same applies for the infirmary. You want to avoid both. Having completed the allotted meditation, the malefactor is assigned to a different factory and cell block, effectively disrupting any friendships, alliances, or enmities previously formed. For me, that 15% loss of eligible parole was the kicker. No sir, I didn’t need that.

Since knee-high, I’d been told the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It was common sense. It sounds right, looks good on paper, I could accept it in theory, but I found straight lines boring. And, it was obvious; the fastest, easiest way between two points is often a circuitous one, taking into account objective, contour of land, individuals involved, and other obstacles of one sort or another.

Straight lines sound authoritarian, too much like the law. I took shortcuts or the long way as it suited me. Sometimes I did things the hard way, just for the hell of it. I did as I pleased and straight was hard to follow. After forty-eight years skating on thin ice and tempting fate, high risk for little gain, I finally landed in a place where I conceded to common-sense.

I figured (was coerced to see might be the better description) that the shortest route between gate in and freedom, was, indeed, in this case, the straightest approach. I did my best to follow that line, like a tightrope, maybe for the first time in my life. Nothing inspired me to prolong my education in Sakai for a day – not even for a minute – longer than necessary. Shobatsu was the determining incentive not to screw up.