Fuminori Nakamura - Evil and the Mask

“Koichi Shintani, eh?”

The corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

“You’ve done well. Nice to meet you, Fumihiro.”

Suddenly I felt like I was suffocating. He didn’t take his eyes off me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“That won’t work. Tricks like that, they never work with me.”

Even though I’d half expected this, the strength in my legs deserted me. Confronted with his bland gaze I had no idea what to do.

“Have a seat. Something to drink?”

“I’m fine.”

“Relax. You must be thirsty.”

Slowly he stood and took a beer from the fridge. When he moved, his blurred shadow danced on the wall behind him.

“Everyone who meets me seems to get nervous. It’s not me they’re afraid of. It’s the hell inside me. Especially now. It’s really depressing.”

I sat on the couch and looked directly at him. He wasn’t drunk, but he reminded me of Father when he was intoxicated. His skin was dark, as though the dullness was oozing out from inside, and I couldn’t read the emotion in his clouded eyes. I sank deep into the sofa, feeling uncomfortable. It was like the couch was alive, holding me in place with its strange, soft springiness.

In the quiet of the room I was aware of a faint ringing in my ears. He continued to sip his whiskey without speaking. I opened my beer. He reacted slightly to the sound of the cap coming off, turned his dead eyes on me as though he was surprised. But he still just kept drinking in silence. I lit a cigarette, unpleasantly aware of the sofa subsiding beneath me. Finally he opened his mouth again.

“I’m in the war business.”

His voice was extremely low.

“You’re going to work for me.”

“Why?”

“No special reason.”

He sighed. His muddy eyes were pointed in my direction, but he seemed to be looking right through me.

“Do you know the story of Nayirah?”

“Not really.”

He set his glass on the table. His speech was very slow.

“In 1990, when Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait, the USA called a simple young woman from Kuwait to testify at the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.”

His face betrayed no emotion, only his thick lips moving.

“She spoke of how cruelly the Iraqi soldiers were acting in Kuwait. She spoke of how they had ripped new-born babies from their incubators in the hospital and left them to die. America — no, the whole world — shook with rage. A UN force led by the US started aerial bombing to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. The Gulf War.”

Slumped on the sofa, he droned on in his low voice.

“But afterwards it came to light that it had all been a lie. Nayirah was really the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the US, and her whole story had been scripted by a PR firm. It turned into a huge scandal, reported all over the news, though it was only discovered after the war was over.”

He sighed again as though he was bored, and slowly reached for the whiskey bottle.

“There are two main ways of making money.”

I couldn’t tell where the conversation was heading.

“One is to develop an attractive product or service and to exchange it for the money in people’s wallets. The other is to squeeze money from the government, money they’ve taken by force in the form of taxes. That way is usually more profitable. Now I’m going to give you a brief lecture about how wars are started.”

Somehow I couldn’t get the giant painting of the lake behind him out of my head. His monologue looked like it was never going to end.

“Imagine a small country in Africa, with copper and diamond mines. The big powers want the mining rights, but the king refuses, so the big powers scrape together the forces opposed to the king and secretly encourage them to form a rebel army. Then they start a propaganda campaign in their own countries, about how the king is oppressing his people, how he’s resisting freedom and democracy. They might send soldiers in to assist the rebels, or they might send in private companies to do it instead. Lots of modern wars have been privatized. Companies that supply weapons, companies that provide tents and food for the soldiers, companies that provide the rebels with military training and strategic guidance. These private companies are usually set up by ex-officers, so naturally they have ties to politicians and defense officials. They get their financing both from the rebels and from taxes in rich countries in the name of international cooperation.

“Of course the rebels in a small African country don’t have any funds, so how do they come up with that kind of money? How can they get their hands on such high-powered weaponry? They do it by borrowing money from the multinational mining corporations, in return for promising them the digging rights after they overthrow the monarch. With those funds they buy more weapons from private western companies and depose the king. War is big business. Any war has business interests involved in it somewhere — if you look deep enough, you’ll always find someone making a profit.

“Even after the fighting’s over there are plenty of business opportunities. Multinational construction firms get the contract to repair buildings and other stuff that’s been destroyed in the war. Naturally that’s also paid for out of rich countries’ taxes, under the guise of friendship. It’s a conspiracy by the politicians, the bureaucrats and the corporations to grab their own country’s taxes and the small country’s resources.

“I’ll tell you another thing. After the war, western nonprofits go into the country to help the exhausted populace, right? But it’s hard to offer aid in places that are still unstable, and they have no choice but to use guards from private companies to take care of security. Even if their motives are pure, they still generate concessions. No matter which way they turn, they can’t avoid them. Wars are fought in order to create concessions. Throughout human history, killing people in conflict has always stimulated the economy. And for generations the Kuki family has been intimately involved in the war business.”

The whole time he had spoken in a soft monotone, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. The level of whiskey in the bottle gradually grew lower.

“So what’s your point?” I asked.

His expression didn’t alter. “I’m talking about the Kuki family. About us.”

“Nothing to do with me.”

The room felt too quiet. The sound as he swallowed seemed really loud.

“I told you that’s not going to work. You’re Fumihiro. I know it, because we’re Kukis. And you’re desperate to hear my story.”

“I’m not interested.”

“Just listen. How many times do I have to tell you? It’s not going to work.”

His blood-shot eyes were staring straight at me.

“The Kuki family began as merchants. They started a money-changing business around the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1867. In the turmoil of that period, we curried favor with the new government and made big profits.”

He took a long, slow breath.

“But we really started to prosper around the First World War. By then we already held the rights to most of the mines, and we were mass-producing warships and guns and selling them all over the world. We raked in huge profits and set up a wide range of companies, which became the emerging Kuki Group. At the time the whole of Japan was booming with special procurements for the war. But while the economy was thriving through sales of instruments for killing people and transport ships to carry those instruments, the Japanese people still believed that their nation was founded on peace and harmony. And then World War Two started. Our father, Shozo Kuki, served in that war.”