18. Radio Exercises

The patient evaluation concluded, the doctor initials my chart and hands it without a word to the orderly. He then retreats silently back to his office where I imagine he must spend the rest of the day counting the hours till he can go home.

The orderly then leads me back to my cell. Not that he need do so; I could just as easily find my own way by following the trail of dandruff.

As the cell door is closed behind me, the sprightly plinking of a piano comes through the loud speaker. A woman’s voice, full of verve, booms from the PA system: “Good morning everyone! Radio exercises! Let’s start with back stretches . . . Now, leg and arm exercises . . . For those of you standing, let’s really spread your legs . . . one, two, three, four.”

I don’t know if this is mandatory or not, so, to be on the safe side, I spread raise my arms.

“One, two, three, four.”

I can’t catch the next bit. Something about . . .

“Wind your arms around . . . Now do it in the opposite direction . . . Chest exercises . . . Diagonally and nice and wide . . . one, two, three, four.”

“What?”

“Do it slowly if you’re seated,” the woman instructs.

“Do what slowly?”

“Now bend all the way forward . . .”

Something pops in my back.

“Let the tension go . . .”

Yeah, right.

“Twisting exercises . . . one, two, three, four.”

Try as I might to follow along with the instructions, it’s hopeless. After a minute, I thrown in the towel and plop down on the rolled-up futon.

Judging by the grunts and slapping coming from my neighbors, it sounds as if all of them—gangsters, murderers, rapists, thieves, and hustlers, alike—are doing deep knee bends and jumping jacks.

9. Courtyard

In the rear of the cell, separated by a low wall, is an anachronism for a toilet: a rectangular porcelain trough set in a block of concrete. I’ve come across some pretty odd Japanese-style crappers, but this one, which must be as old as the jail itself, takes the cake. On the other side of the toilet is a large barred window that overlooks the courtyard between cell blocks B and C.

The courtyard is overrun with waist-high weeds. A small flock of sparrows, hidden among the grasses, chatter noisily, not a care in the world. The swallows dart in and out of the weeds. Finding breakfast, they return to a mud nest they’ve built in the breeze-block wall of Cell Block B.

It’s tempting to wish I were a bird, but I suspect that I would end up locked up in a cage all the same.

8. Geometry

After frisking me one more time, Bubbles orders me back into the cell, then slams the door shut. The whole exercise has taken less than five minutes, but leaves my head reeling for half an hour.

This can’t be happening.

I lie down on the tatami, clutching my head and begging for deliverance. A guard, passing by in the corridor taps his nightstick against the bars, and barks, “No sleeping!”

“Who’s sleeping?”

“No sleeping,” he says and walks off.

Grudgingly, I push myself off the floor and sit with my back against one wall, eyes focused on the opposite wall.

The cell is nothing like the tidy, antiseptic cells in photos released to the media by Japan’s Ministry of Justice to show how humanely prisoners are treated. The walls are a dingy white. A gray three-foot high border running along the base is mottled with the greasy silhouettes of the previous guests of the state, who have idled away weeks and months, perhaps years, with their filthy, sweaty backs against them.

Two seedy tatami mats, measuring four and a half feet by six total, form the main area of the cell. And, if it weren’t already cramped enough, in addition to the futon folded up in the corner near the toilet, there is a cheap, low-lying desk of sorts, butted up against the wall near the door.

On the desk, a tin kettle and a plastic cup, each one as stained as a smoker’s smile, have been waiting for me since I was brought in last night. In the plastic yellow basket tucked under the desk, are the underwear and pajamas that were issued to me, as well as the few items of my own clothing I was allowed to take, minus belts, long strings, or shoelaces.

A poster-sized calendar featuring the months of July to December and a photo of a bee hovering above a flower is taped to the wall above the desk.

Reaching up, I touch today’s date: Wednesday, the 12th of July, 2006. I feel as frozen in time as the bee in this poster, like a bug trapped in amber.

Anxiety comes crashing back like a tsunami against me.

How the fuck could this possibly be happening?

Jail never figured into the calculus of my life. Never. And yet, here I am, confined now by its stark geometry.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.

2. Furigana

The squawk box crackles and pops, coughing out a garbled order.

I reach for the Regulations and Morals, a thin white manual hanging from a plastic hook on the wall, and, flipping through it, find the daily schedule:

 

7:20 Wake

Put bedding away, clean room, wash up.

Prepare for inspection.

 

A simple illustration on the following page shows how the bedding should be arranged. The futon must be folded into thirds and shoved up against the wall. The blanket and sheets folded neatly and placed on top. Failure to comply, the Regulations and Morals tell me, will result in disciplinary action.

As if being cooped up in this dismal little cell isn’t punishment enough.

In all my years of studying and translating Japanese, I’ve never come across the language so curt, so cold . . . so unambiguous. Your average Japanese will go to great pains, hemming and hawing, before he gives you a definite answer, but within the walls of the Kōchisho words are not minced. Do it, the manual says. Do it or fucking else!

 

7:30 Inspection

Sit, facing front window.

Give number when requested.

 

All the Chinese characters have furigana—phonetic notations above the characters showing you how to read them. Out in the real world, furigana is only employed for the most difficult of Chinese characters, such as an uncommon family name, or an obscure word. Here in judicial Limbo, though, literacy is not taken for granted. Even the most basic Chinese characters have these phonetic nightcaps on their heads.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.