Star

4

It’s become a tradition for me to pin up the life-size poster from my current project right inside the front door. Every night, when I get home, I’m the first one there to greet me.

As we neared the end of filming, the posters kept coming. That night, I found the life-size color poster of me waiting in the mail. The format was always the same: I stood alone against a white background. Theaters everywhere would paste these onto sheets of plywood, cut around my body with a jigsaw, and stand me up outside the entrance. On windy days, there was nothing worse than passing a movie theater on the edge of town and seeing myself knocked facedown on the pavement.

On this particular poster, I wore the standard suit, but with a crimson polo shirt under the jacket. The neck of the shirt was open, and a solid gold pendant of a skull was glinting from my chest. This composition was yet another masterpiece from our set photographer. He’d really made it come alive by shooting from a low angle, to make me taller. The PR Office had been picky about the face I made and asked for subtle adjustments until finally giving this one their approval. My cheeks were rosy, my smile sober.

Coming home exhausted late at night to find this cheery character waiting gave me a boost of energy, because I knew that when we took that photograph I was equally exhausted◦— my carefree grin a total lie.

The next morning, the house was blanketed in fog. I was standing out front, annoyed that my taxi was running late, when a group of schoolgirls emerged from the fog and started pinching at my thighs. I heard myself shriek, and in that instant the white trim on the backflaps of their sailor suits vanished into the mist.

That day we were supposed to shoot the final scene at Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park, but the foul weather made us stay on set for two more days, until it cleared and we could finally head out on location. Here, Neriko, in a last-ditch effort to convince me to leave the yakuza, drags me to a bench by the edge of the pond and confesses her deepest secret, which I never saw coming: her brother was the reason I wound up in jail. He was my role model, my idol◦— and the one who talked. The guys who killed him had their own agenda, but unbeknownst to them, they’d settled my score.

I shake my head at the stupidity of this world of crime. Taken by Neriko’s emotional sincerity, I help her into a rowboat and paddle us out into the pond. She offers me a piece of gum, which I refuse; she insists, and finally I accept it and proceed to chew the gum with a huge grin on my face. “the end” floats up from the surface of the water and begins to grow, but in the foreground, back at the water’s edge, you see the figure of a plainclothes cop cupping the photo of me that the precinct circulated when they billed me as a pimp. As he sizes up our little boat, the black back of his jacket swells like a thundercloud to fill the screen as “the end” peaks in size, and the movie ends. I thought this philosophical comment on the fleeting nature of contentment wasn’t such a bad way to wind things up. It was a message that appealed to the lucky and the unlucky alike.

At lunchtime on the day we shot the pond scene, a film columnist from a classy women’s magazine met us at a sushi bar in Ueno to hold an interview. Squeezing through the throngs of fans peeking through the windows, she joined us at the counter, taking her seat with an obvious air of education. When she was finished with her questions, she peered at me through her glasses, sighed, and said, “I feel bad for you. I really do.”

Plenty of stars would fall for this sort of line◦— they’re tired of being simply adored or envied and are quick to take a sign of sympathy as proof of being understood. Not me. All she would get from me was a naive young celebrity, complacent with his fame. When she stood up to go, Kayo, who’d been eating sushi beside me, started coughing in the most believable way, and sent two or three beads of rice flying at the woman’s back.

The studio kept things moving and was already abuzz with preparations for the next production. As soon as things are wrapping up, you dive right in again.

The next movie was a romantic tragedy set in high society. Once we were finished shooting at the pond that evening, the producer, thinking I could learn a thing or two about the upper crust, took me along to a fancy party. The gathering was hosted by a former prince at his former palace, now a hotel, where once a month he held gatherings for the families of the former nobility and those of solid pedigree.

When we arrived, the producer carted me around making introductions and schmoozing with everyone we met. I’d never had so many people fail to recognize me◦— somehow no one knew my name, and the elegant young ladies claimed they’d never seen my films. The second we were introduced, they resumed their conversations.

On the ride home, the producer was suddenly a champion for the common man.

“Oh how the mighty have fallen! On a normal night at home those assholes are probably roasting herring on sticks around a fire pit. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Movies are about the make-believe. Forget about imitating anyone or anything. Just give us a pure, gallant young gentleman, okay?”

As I sat through his pep talk, my mind drifted back to a moment at the party when the producer had introduced me to one of the beautiful young women without mentioning my profession. She’d tilted her neck ever so slightly as she looked me over. This was a breach of manners, no matter how you saw it. If she really didn’t know my name, custom would have kept her from betraying it with such a gesture. Tilting her neck like that, so elegantly you could almost miss it. She knew what she was doing. Her features were chilly and refined; she had the trim nose and flat brow of an antique doll, and her little red lips looked like a spot of red ink left by a dropper.

“Maybe she’s just being coquettish,” I thought. “The neck thing is just a tease.”

But I wasn’t going to fall for it. I bet she thought pretending that she’d never heard of me was certain to entice me. Most stars would take the bait. Not me. If she didn’t recognize my face or know my name, I didn’t exist, at least not to her◦— but a girl has to be pretty damn arrogant to try and seduce you by denying your existence, and I’m not some dreamer who would chase a girl like that, since I meant nothing to her. Maybe Kayo really was the only one for me.

After filming the last scene, our days were spent taking care of little bits and pieces and dubbing in the dialog. All the serious dramatic work was done. We shot all seven of the remaining phone call scenes in just one day. I grew weary of holding the receiver, and tired of the clever ways that Takahama captured every phone call from a different angle. Out of pride, he refused to rely on the old standby of cutting to a close-up of the telephone as it begins to ring.

In the afternoon, I stepped out into the sun and went for a walk on the studio grounds. There was nothing to see. It may as well have been the compound of a factory. On the other side, at the building where the producer had his office, I spotted the studio’s sapphire flag flapping from a pole at the peak of the roof. It must have been there all along, but this was the first time that I’d noticed it.

The flag spasmed in the breeze. Just as it would fall limp, it whipped against the sky, snapping between shadow and light, as if any moment it would tear free and fly away. I don’t know why, but watching it infused me with a sadness that ran down to the deepest limits of my soul and made me think of suicide. There are so many ways to die.

By the guardhouse at the main gate, I was surrounded by another crowd of fans begging for autographs, but was so absurdly tired I could barely write my own name. Shameless fans waved their autograph books over the outstretched books of other fans, the pages piling from my chest to my chin. The hand that held its book most desperately above the others was half-consumed by a violet birthmark. Tracing the arm to its body, I discovered an oafish woman with a tiny, sour face, proudly thrusting this violet hand at me, her birthmark nearly pressed against my cheek.

I was once more overtaken by a deep fatigue; my thoughts returned to death. If I was going to die, now would be as good a time as any. Rather than a death cushioned by pleasure, I would die embracing a despicable filth. Cheek in the gutter, curled up against the corpse of a stray cat.

That night, I finally confessed to Kayo my unreasonable urge to die.

“In that case, stick your head in there and get it over with.” She gestured toward the green electric fan we’d just bought to fight the heat. Its blades were metal.

“I’m not kidding,” I said, staring into the handsome blur.

I was drawn to the cool whir coming from its bluish vortex. It commanded the airflow of our little room, making it feel like time was moving in the way that I know best, the artificial flow when the camera is rolling. Only there could I breathe easy, talk of death without fear, and die without suffering.

From her usual position, sitting with her legs out to the side, wearing nothing but a slip, Kayo flashed her silver teeth and gazed at me reclining on the sofa.

“Of course you’re going to die. I wouldn’t be the least surprised. You call it unreasonable, but you don’t need a reason.”

“Right. I don’t need a reason,” I agreed, striking a grave tone. I was stretched out on the sofa like a cadaver, my fingers interwoven at my chest.

“You’re twenty-four, at the top of your game. A heartthrob. A movie star, more famous by the day. No poor relatives to take care of, in perfect health. Everything is set for you to die. If you died today, maybe everybody would forget you. Not like you’re James Dean or anything, but maybe they’d love you even more, and pile so many flowers on your grave that there’d be no more room to leave them. But what difference does it make?”

“You’re right. It makes none.”

In the midnight air, churned by the fan, jazz streamed out of the radio like an excited swarm of golden flies. I was absurdly tired.

So tired I didn’t know if I wanted to sleep or if I wanted to die.

“Listen, Rikio. It’s only human that you want to die. And when you do, instead of eulogizing you, I’ll write a thousand-page memoir to set the story straight. Then your ‘assistant’ Kayo will finally take off her mask.”

“Sounds fun. I’ll just sit back in my grave and watch their jaws drop.”

“But Ri-ki-oh…”

Kayo sat up and crossed her bare legs. The sight of her plump thighs would have jolted anyone who’d only seen her during the day. “At least my thighs are still young,” she said to herself, pinching at her skin.

“Ri-ki-oh…”

She uncrossed her legs and crawled across the floor to the sofa, where I lay in just my underwear. Leaning close, she traced a finger up my thigh. “Hah. Our thighs are the only part of us that matches.”

“Get off me! I want to die!”

“Of course you do◦— who wouldn’t, with a life like this? So go ahead and die. But listen, Rikio. It has to be an accident. Something that catches you totally off-guard. If you’re thinking about dying in some fantastic blaze of your own making, forget about it. Has the ‘gaze of reality’ you’re so fixated on finally started getting to you? Do you want to be human now like everybody else? Stop being so predictable. The real world can’t wait for you to die. And maybe for me, too… . That’s its plan. It wants to cleanse the planet by eradicating everything that contradicts its vision.

“Consider why you’re still alive. This power you get out of ‘being seen’ is just a way of playing by reality’s rules and doing what they ask of you. In exchange, they let us have our secret life together, our passionate artifice, and especially the faith behind the artifice, because they know that a convincing sense of reality can only be born from an unholy faith.

“For a star, being seen is everything. But the powers that be are well aware that being seen is no more than a symptom of the gaze. They know that the reality everyone thinks they see and feel draws from the spring of artifice that you and I are guarding. To keep the public pacified, the spring must always be shielded from the world by masks. And these masks are worn by stars.

“But the real world is always waiting for its stars to die. If you never cycle out the masks, you run the risk of poisoning the well. The demand for new masks is insatiable.

“If you want to stay new in the eyes of the world, do what I say. Run this mystic vein, scorn the real world, curse it with all your heart, but trust the artifice. To put it in more human terms, don’t ever lift a finger. From the moment I first saw you, I knew that you could take it. I knew that you…”

That’s basically what I remember hearing Kayo say, but at some point I drifted off to sleep.