The next morning, after a disguised Emmy left with Jenna and Angela (and of course Grant and Jeremy), Andy and I strolled out the front door of the hotel for our walk to the Imperial Palace. It was my first time really seeing the many Emmy clones hanging around, and I have to admit that it was more than just a tiny bit surreal.
There may well have been over a hundred of them, skin made pitch black with makeup of one kind or another, white wigs, bright green contact lenses, and usually an outfit resembling one Emmy had worn in concert or photo shoot.
I pointed out to Andy that none were wearing Emmy’s outfit from the Rolling Stones cover and he laughed.
“It’s a little too cold, and maybe too, um, arresty to go naked,” he said. “But I’m sure some of these girls have thought about it.”
We soon left the hotel and its swarm of Emmy fans behind, heading south. After I commented that so far Tokyo had looked like any other modern large city, Andy told me about how strange it was to visit after so many years.
“When we came to Tokyo when I was, I dunno, maybe six years old, it was the first real big city I’d ever seen. It seemed endless, and so many big buildings! I was just blown away, you know? I guess it kinda set my expectations for what a big city was like, but when we moved to Fallbrook, the only big cities I ever saw were San Diego and Los Angeles, and they’re nothing like this at all.”
“Maybe in the downtown areas, but those are pretty small in comparison,” I agreed. “New York- well, Manhattan, at least- is like this, but yeah. In general, American cities are really different.”
“The funny thing is, now I look around at a street like this, and it seems really generic. There’s nothing about this street that is any different than any other business district, like you said, in any other large city anywhere. Well, except the signs are mostly in Japanese,” Andy said.
“Like that one?” I asked, pointing to a sign that said ‘Jojo’s Burger’. Not burgers plural, but singular burger.
“Yeah, just like that,” Andy laughed.
After making a right hand turn we started to pass the old stoneworks indicating the palace grounds.
“We visited the palace when I was little,” Andy said. “I remember being super impressed. Jenna and I went to the Osaka Castle and that was even cooler than I’d remembered, so hopefully this place will be, too.”
I was surprised to find that the actual palace wasn’t open for visitors, but the grounds were beautiful and the palace was cool from the outside.
“Andy, how much do you know about Night Children?” I asked as we sat on a raised viewing area at the top of one of the old stone walls and watched ducks swimming in the really wide moat- more of a small lake, really.
“Um, Emmy’s people? Some, I guess. I mean, I know that they’ve been hiding for ever, and Emmy and her parents are trying to convince them to, well, stop hiding.”
“And do you know about the Night Children in America?” I asked.
“That you and Emmy are their queens? That’s about it, really,” Andy said.
“Honestly, that’s plenty,” I said.
“I gotta say, that was kinda out of the blue,” Andy said with that lopsided smile of his.
“Well, the thing is, yesterday afternoon a couple of Japanese Night Children dudes came to our hotel room, looking to talk to Emmy to see if she really was like them,” I told him.
“They just showed up? They knew what room to go to?” Andy asked.
“Yeah, they did. And I told them that I wanted to meet their ruling council. It seems like they’ve been cut off from the rest of Night Children societies for a very long time- they didn’t even know the name ‘Night Children’,” I said, making finger quotes. “It has me wondering if they really are the same, or if maybe they’re some sort of independently evolved group.”
“Wild,” Andy mused.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Culturally they might be closer than it seemed, though. Thinking about it afterward, I made some assumptions and they turned out to be valid.”
“Like what?” Andy asked, curious.
“Well, when I first saw them, I could immediately tell they were Night Children wearing makeup to blend in, right? So I invited them into the room- Emmy was out with Angela- and I told them to put their knives on the table by the door,” I said, remembering events.
“Their knives?” Andy asked.
“Well, yeah. Night Children usually carry knives with them. It’s as much a cultural thing as it is for self-defense. And you know, knives, not guns, because they’re silent, right?” I explained.
“Are you freaking kidding me? Like, armed with knives all the time?” Andy demanded.
“Yeah, pretty much. Like I said, it’s a deep-seated cultural thing,” I said with a shrug.
“And these guys had knives,” Andy guessed.
“Yeah, they did. They set them down on the little table by the door, but when we sat down to talk at the main table there in the suite I kept my knife right there in front of me in plain view, mostly to make a point.”
“So to speak,” Andy said with a smirk.
“So to speak,” I agreed.
“So let me wrap my head around this. First, I gotta ask, you carry a knife with you?” Andy asked.
I looked around and saw that there was nobody on the raised area, or in fact anywhere in sight, so I reached up under the cuff of my jeans and pulled Stabby Jr from my boot and handed it to Andy, who held it as if was a venomous snake.
“Holy shit, Lee! Holy fucking shit!” he said and quickly handed it back to me. I slid it back in my boot, again making sure nobody had seen.
“So, like, if somebody came at you, you’d, like, stab them or something?” Andy asked, stunned.
I shrugged and nodded my head. “Well, sure.”
“But what if the other guy has a knife, too?”
“Then I just have to stab him before he stabs me,” I said, leaning back.
“You sound so, I dunno, nonchalant about it,” Andy said.
“I wouldn’t say I’m nonchalant. Really, it’s not like I enjoy stabbing people or anything. It’s just… Well, I guess it just sometimes has to happen, you know?” I mused.
“No, I don’t know,” Andy said. “It’s not like I go around stabbing people.”
I sighed. “I never really expected to, either, but these things just happen.”
“You’re yanking my chain, right? Lee, tell me that you don’t actually go around knifing people.”
“I don’t go around knifing people,” I confirmed. “Well, not very often, anyway, but sometimes circumstances call for it.”
“This is like some sort of Liam Neeson action movie where the family-man dad suddenly turns out to be an ex-government assassin and he has to get revenge or something,” Andy said, shaking his head. “You really got me this time, Lee. You had me going for a while there.”
“Alright,” I said. “Just for the sake of argument, let’s lay some things out. Andy, you’re my oldest friend. We were almost like brother and sister when we were little. Your teammates all seem to think we’re cousins, and I guess we might as well be, right? You were this close to being the father of my kids, you know that, right?” I said, holding my index finger and thumb about half an inch apart.
“Yeah, I get all that,” he said. “So what does that have to do-”
“I’m going to tell you some shit. This is some serious shit, and the only reason I’m going to tell you is that I literally trust you with my life,” I said, looking him in the eyes.
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“Lee…”
“I do stab people, Andy. Like I said, it’s not something I look for opportunities to do, but I think my body count is eight or nine people now. So yeah, as it turns out, I’m much better at stabbing people than any of those eight or nine others were. And those two guys I invited into my hotel room yesterday? I was pretty sure that if it came down to that, I’d be the one doing the stabbing, and not getting stabbed.”
“You’re serious,” Andy said, looking at me.
“Andy, you see this scar?” I asked, pointing at my cheek. “That was from my first knife fight. The guy that did that? I killed him with his own dagger. First guy I ever killed.”
“I thought those stories were all bullshit,” Andy said, wondering.
“Nope. And there was the time Grace got kidnapped in Vancouver, that was a couple more guys I killed. And then the guys in Chicago…”
“Um, Lee, why are you telling me this? Even if it’s true…” Andy asked.
“Well, like I was saying, these guys had knives, just like I expected any Night Children to carry, but they were decent-sized. Not little pocket knives, but full-on daggers. So clearly they were ready to rumble if shit went sideways, right?”
“O.K…” Andy said.
“Which tells me that these guys are also used to running silent, if you get what I mean,” I said. “So, culturally similar to what I’m used to.”
“Setting aside the difficulty I’m having coming to grips with my oldest friend being a serial killer,” Andy said, looking pensive. “Let’s assume you’re right, and their culture values silence. What did the daggers look like?”
“Well, I never saw the blades since they kept them sheathed, but they basically looked like a chunk of bamboo about a foot long. They didn’t have any sort of crosspiece and the handles were plain bamboo, like the sheaths. In fact, they might have been made from the same piece of bamboo as the sheaths.”
“So you just saw, like, a piece of bamboo a foot long, with a seam dividing the sheath from the handle, right?” Andy asked, getting a bit excited. “The bamboo- was it straight, or gently curved?”
“Completely straight,” I told him. “Why?”
“Dude. Dude! They’re fucking ninjas! Seriously! Ninjas!” Andy said, getting excited. “Like, no bullshit, these guys are where the whole thing about ninjas- well, Shinobi, to be a bit more accurate, must have come from!” Andy said.
“Shinobi?”
“Ninja is a bullshit modern word. Shinobi is what they historically called the unseen spies and assassins of the middle periods,” Andy explained. “The straight blades were really what, well, were the proof. You see, the swords of the samurai were curved, right? Better for slashing. But the shinobi, they used straight swords so they could also use the scabbards as blowguns.”
“And you think straight daggers…” I said.
“It’s all part of the package. Samurai were like nobility, right? Their status allowed them to carry the two swords- the long katana and shorter wakizashi. Carrying both was a sign that you were in that social class, right?” Andy said, growing animated. “So, carrying weapons wasn’t allowed among the lower classes. That’s why the, um, peasants developed weapons like the nunchucks or kama. Things that weren’t obviously weapons. Well, the shinobi, or invisible ones, carried weapons that didn’t look like weapons as the ruling class would have understood them. When you think of a katana, a classical Japanese sword, it’s long and slightly curved, right? Decorated with silk-wrapped hilts and that kind of thing. So these guys, their daggers were straight- not like the tantos that you would expect Japanese, well, mainstream Japanese anyway, to carry. And completely undecorated, right?”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“What can I say? I’m a nerd for this shit,” Andy said with a laugh. “But seriously, it makes sense. Night Children hide and do their best to blend in, right? Well, so did the shinobi. The shinobi- the real ninjas, they didn’t wear orange jumpsuits and headbands with funny runes on them. They passed as peasants, ordinary people, shit like that. They got up close to their victims by being innocuous. They weren’t invisible in the sense that you couldn’t see ‘em, but in the sense that you didn’t see ‘em. That was their key,” Andy said.
“What else do you know about them?” I asked, surprised at his depth of knowledge.
“Well, they were active from maybe eight hundred A.D. to about sixteen hundred A.D. or so. They apparently mostly lived in an area in central Japan in the mountains,” Andy said.
“What happened in sixteen hundred?” I asked, curious.
“Politics,” Andy said. “From what I understand, their services weren’t needed, and in fact were deemed a liability, so the ruling castes did what they could to eliminate them. They just sort of faded away.”
“If you’re right, they might have faded away, but they still exist.,” I said.
“Well, my view of the world just took a solid blow to the head,” Andy said, leaning back on his hands, mirroring my posture. “First I find out my oldest friend is a mass murderer, and then that ninjas really exist.”
“I thought you said ‘ninja’ was a made-up term,” I objected, letting the mass murderer thing slide. Because, I mean, what could I say, really?
“I might have overstated that,” Andy admitted. “‘Ninja’ actually is a mispronunciation of the kanji characters for shinobi, and somehow it got traction when Western types started talking about them. So yeah, it’s a bullshit modern word, but it’s not like it was just made up or something. And nowadays, everybody has an idea of what a ninja is- or was- but nobody knows the real historical shinobi.”
“Makes sense. So you’re saying these shinobi were more or less invisible by virtue of hiding in plain sight. That checks out with Night Children behavior. They developed their own styles of weapons for the same reason,” I asked, just to make sure I had it right.
“Yes and yes.”
“Alright. I’m just going to go with the assumption you’re correct, because it all fits. So if I do get to meet with their ruling council, what can I expect?” I asked.
“Beats me,” Andy said. “Here’s the thing. Writers in the middle periods were really only concerned with the ruling class, right? They didn’t write about peasants, merchants, fishermen… They just couldn’t be bothered, and since they were writing for the upper classes, none of whom cared about those people, well… What winds up is that there’s very little written history about the lives of common village folk- which the shinobi definitely were. Add to that that the shinobi were also famously secretive and from a part of Japan that was never really under anybody’s control, there was just nothing. What little was written about them was their interactions with the ruling class, who both used their services and hated and feared ‘em at the same time, so the P.R. wasn’t very favorable.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I admitted.
“So, by the late eighteen hundreds they were considered to be long gone, and maybe never actually existed at all. That’s when Japanese writers started telling stories about ‘em, making up all kinds of crap like them knowing tricks to walk on water or move through solid walls and crazy stuff like that. They became mythologized to a point far from reality.”
“Ah, O.K.,” I said, nodding I understood. “And that’s where we get the dudes wearing black outfits with throwing stars and climbing ropes.”
“Right. Throwing stars weren’t even a thing when the real shinobi were active,” Andy confirmed.
We sat there for a bit, thinking about all this. Finally I asked, “So, where were these villages?”
“The region in between Nagoya and Osaka,” Andy answered, taking a moment to think about it. “It’s not really mountainous in the sense of high mountains like Fuji, but it’s rugged terrain and was about equally distant between two seats of feudal power, which probably aided their independence. Like I said, that area never really fell under anybody’s control up until closer to the modern era.”
“I have to say, this all makes perfect sense,” I told him. “So, they told me they have a ruling council. If I had to guess, based on what Night Children do in Europe and the Near East, they probably live in small villages off the beaten path and they’ll make it unwelcoming to outsiders.”
“Which fits the shinobi pattern, too,” Andy agreed.
“Andy, if they do want to talk… No, forget it,” I said shaking my head.
“What?”
“I was gonna ask if you would come along as translator, but it could be really dangerous,” I told him.
“You think?” Andy asked, sarcastically. “It seems to me that going to a freaking ninja village to talk to the ninjas, who don’t like the idea of outsiders knowing their business and who have a centuries-old tradition of killing people, yeah… might be just a little risky,” Andy said with a laugh.
“Yeah, a bit,” I agreed. “I need to figure out how to minimize risks and maximize positive outcome.”
“What is the positive outcome? I mean, so you meet with these elders or whatever. What are you looking to get out of this?” Andy asked.
“On the minimal end, that these guys learn there are others of their kind outside Japan, and maybe they can benefit from being part of a larger community,” I said, thinking about it. “If all that happens is I give them my phone number and tell them to give me a call if they feel a need to talk, well, that’s something. Not much, but it opens the door, right?”
“I guess so…” Andy said, doubtful.
“The next step up from that is that they open up to more dialog immediately. If they can accept that they’re but one nation among a community of Night Children nations, and begin diplomatic relations with us, and presumably Emmy’s parents, then it strengthens our standing among the other Night Children nations, too,” I said.
“I’m still not seeing much of a benefit for you potentially risking your life,”
“No, either of those would be positive steps, but baby steps. What I’d really like is for these, um, shinobi, to open up their culture and history to us in exchange for us doing the same for them. We could provide them assistance, economically and politically, and they could give us a piece of the cultural puzzle we didn’t even know was missing, and if we can talk them into coming out of the shadows it would be huge for the whole concept around the world. Also, the gene pool is small enough- and it has to be even smaller for these guys, so maybe new blood all around can help,” I explained.
“That’s all pretty, um, nebulous,” Andy said. “You need to go to the meeting with specific goals.”
“For sure,” I agreed. “If there even is going to be a meeting.”
Andy and I got lunch at a little place just off the main street on the way back to the hotel. Looking at the little hole in the wall, I was a little bit dubious. “You know I’m not a fan of seafood, right?”
“Oh, man, did you come to the wrong country then,” Andy joked. “But the sign says yakitori. That’s grilled chicken, and usually they won’t have any kind of seafood.”
I followed him in and and we sat down at the small bar separating the few tables from the kitchen area, which was mostly taken up by a guy with no hair on his arms grilling little skewers of stuff on a hibachi. Almost all the rest of the seats in the place were taken by guys in business suits.
“Salarymen,” Andy said. “Low to mid-level office workers.”
The waitress was beyond surprised when Andy spoke to her in Japanese, and I saw exactly what Jenna had meant about the blank look people gave at first upon hearing him talk. Once she did recognize that he was, in fact, speaking her language, she got really excited by the fact this big Westerner could actually converse like a civilized person.
Eventually Andy got our order in, which started off with saké for the two of us.
“House rule- you have to buy drinks to eat here,” Andy said with a shrug. “It’s actually really common. Generally speaking, their attitude towards liquid lunches is a bit behind ours. Ever watch Mad Men? It’s like that. It’s expected.”
“Crazy,” I said, shaking my head. I sipped my saké while waiting for our grilled items. I had no idea what Andy had ordered, so when the cook dished up four bamboo skewers with chunks of chicken and some kind of potato and laid the plate in front of us, I was pleasantly surprised and a bit dismayed.
Seeing my expression, Andy laughed. “This is just round one,” he said. “You have a lot more coming.”
“That’s what she said,” I replied, grabbing a skewer off the little plate.