"You'd better give me the whole story."
"Not now. Not yet. It's only guesswork, Tam." He glanced away. "Nothing to bore you with at the moment. But if you can find out anything, we'll write it up as a report I can circulate around the Hill. This could be important, believe me. Already Cray has started having to buy critical chips for its supercomputers from Japan. And while the Department of Defense is pouring billions into research on semiconductors that will withstand nuclear radiation, Japan is forging ahead on speed and miniaturization--what really counts. I think they could be about to have us by the balls, pardon my French. If they've somehow incorporated AI--"
"Allan, it doesn't add up. I once met Asano. In fact it was a couple of years ago at that Kyoto University symposium on
Third World industrialization. He spent a lot of time trying to pick my brain about our specialized silicon-chip manufacturing here. But he wasn't the slightest bit interested in artificial intelligence."
"Well, prepare yourself for a surprise. He's plenty interested now. And knowledgeable. But still, it's not like the Japanese to do something like this, install some government guy to run an R&D program."
"That's certainly true." She strolled over, looked down upon the park, and began to want a brandy of her own as she chewed over the implications. Was MITI setting up some new high-tech industrial assault? If the Fifth Generation had been taken over by Kenji and his planners . . . "Allan, let me think about this for a couple of days."
"Don't think too long. I'm convinced somebody over there is suddenly in a very big hurry. I need to find out the real story. Am I just starting to go nuts in my old age? . . . Well, make that my prime." He grasped her hand for emphasis. "And you really should make it a point to see this Asano fellow. If you already know him from somewhere, I'd say that's even better."
She started to respond, then stopped. She knew Kenji Asano all right. From a little episode at that conference, when he had invited the panel members of a session he chaired to a late-night tour of the endless tiny bars in Kyoto's Gion district. She remembered all the steaming sake and being ignored by flustered bar girls who were pretending that another woman wasn't around. They had no idea what to do about a member of their own sex there in their sanctuary of male flattery. Ken apparently had staged it mainly to watch their reaction, and hers.
Part of the scene was that Ken Asano was actually something of a hunk, as Westernized as they come and attractive in that way seemingly reserved for men of great wealth or great power. He may have had both, but she was sure only about the second. Whenever he handed out that _meishi_ card with the MITI logo, even millionaire industrialists and bankers automatically bowed to the floor.
A lot of sake later, after the other panel members had piled into a cab for their hotel, she decided to show Kenji Asano a few things about women he wouldn't learn from giggling bar girls. She'd always heard that Japanese men were pretty humdrum in bed, quick and self-centered, at least in the opinion of a woman she knew who'd done exhaustive field research on the topic. After her own experience with Ken, though, she wasn't so sure. Still, it had been a passing thing. The next morning she awoke in her own room in the Kyoto International and half tried to tell herself it hadn't really happened--just a dream, a chimera of the sultry Kyoto night, brought on by all those quaint little side streets and red paper lanterns.
The truth was she still thought about him from time to time. He was a talented lover, she certainly recalled that part well enough, and he was a charmer. In fact, she could use a little of that charm right this minute.
What she didn't admire was the organization he worked for: the infamous MITI. Behind a smokescreen of "fair trade" rhetoric, MITI's intentions clearly were to extinguish systematically Japan's world competition, industry by industry. And so far they were batting a thousand. They'd never once failed to knock off a designated "target." What was next? Had MITI finally concluded that, down the road, intelligent computers could be the drive behind some massive shift in world power?
Maybe she should go.
She poured another dash of cognac for Allan, and they wandered back into the living room, just in time to see the Simpsons out. Everybody else followed except for Dave, now perched by the windows and glaring out into the dark. She decided to ignore him as she walked over, opened one a crack, and looked down. In the park below, commerce was tapering off and the Jamaican Rastas had begun toting up receipts for the night. No sounds, except the faint strains of reggae from a boom box.
Funny, but every once in a while she'd stop everything and watch the kids in the playground down there. What to do? The damned shadows were growing longer by the minute. Maybe Dave wasn't so bad. Trouble was, he needed mothering too.
Think about it tomorrow, Scarlet. She sighed, poured herself a cognac, and headed for the bedroom to get Allan's coat.
After she'd put him on the elevator, she came back and checked out Dave, now slouched in the big chair by the lamp, his eyes closed. He looked positively enticing, and she sounded his name quietly. Nothing. Then she realized he was sound asleep. Snoring.
The bastard. This was it. She grabbed his coat, pushed him out the door, poured herself another cognac, and plopped down in the living room to think.
All right, Allan. You've got a deal. Could be you're on to something. I seem to remember there's a conference in Kyoto starting week after next on supercomputers. Kenji Asano will probably show. Good time to catch him off guard and try to find out what's suddenly so hush-hush.
Yes, by God, I'll do it.
She didn't bother with any of Allan Stern's funding. This trip would be strictly off-the-record. She wrapped up some loose ends, called a few people she knew in Tokyo, lined up half a dozen interviews that might be helpful on the new book, packed her toothbrush and tape recorder, and boarded a Northwest flight for Narita.
She had no idea then, of course, but she was Alice, dropping down the rabbit hole. A fortnight later she was dining with the Emperor of Japan.
CHAPTER FOUR
Allan Stem's alarm about Japan's semiconductor challenge reflected only part of the picture. There was also plenty going on with Japanese research in addition to information processing. Superconductivity was getting a big push, as was biotechnology, optoelectronics, advanced materials. Although we in the West think of Japan as a newcomer in the high-tech sweepstakes, it actually has a long tradition of innovation. A typical for-instance: in the area of advanced materials those of us hooked on swords know the Japanese were already creating "new materials" hundreds of years ago that still haven't been bettered. Back then it was flawless steel for _katana _blades; today it's, say, gallium arsenide crystals for laser-driven semiconductors. How, one might inquire, did all this expertise come about?
To stick to materials research, if you think a moment you realize it's a discipline that actually must have begun in the latter days of the Stone Age. "High technology" in those times meant figuring new ways to use fire and clay to create something nature had neglected to provide. Not integrated circuits, but a decent water pot.
And the Japanese have been making terrific pots for a thousand years. As it happens, some historians claim the very first Japanese pottery was made in the province of Tamba, near Kyoto. Why mention this? Because, then as now, technology and politics had a way of getting mixed together in Japan, and Tamba was a perfect example. Tamba's artisans made great use of a special oven known as a climbing-chambered kiln. Whereas ceramics kilns elsewhere in the country were narrow and high, Tamba's climbing-hill chambers were wide and low, thereby allowing the fire to touch the clay directly. The result was a rugged, flame-seared stoneware that pleased the manly eye--powerful earthy grays, burnt reds, greenish-browns, all with a hard metallic luster. Thus Tamba was a locale much frequented by the warrior shoguns.
Which may be why Tamba province has another claim to history as well. It is the location of the one-time warrior castle- fortress of Sasayama, once a regional command post of the Tokugawa strongmen in Tokyo. You won't find overly much about Sasayama in the usual guidebooks, since it has the kind of history that's more interesting to Japanese than to tourists. The place has no gaudy vermilion temples, no bronze Buddhas ten stories high. Fact is, very little remains of the fortress itself these days except for a wide moat, green with lotuses, and a few stone walls lined with cherry trees that blossom an exquisite white for a few breathtaking moments each spring.
Although the castle is now burned down, a few homes of the samurai retainers of its various warlords remain. If you stand on the rocky edge of the moat at its southwest corner and look down through the cherry trees, you'll see an old-style house built some two hundred years ago by the twelfth _daimyo_ of Sasayama for his most loyal retainer. Its walls of white plaster are interspersed with beams of dark wood, its thatch roof supported by the traditional ridgepole. Think of it as the home of the samurai most trusted, the guardian of the gates, the warrior nearest the fount of power.