Noa wondered if his younger brother spoke this way to employees. The fact that he was going to work for a pachinko business, no different than Mozasu, a kid who had flunked out of school essentially, was stunning to Noa.
“You can start today. Find Ikeda-san in the office next to mine. He has gray hair. Do whatever he tells you. He’s my head accountant. I’ll try you out for a month. If you do okay, I’ll pay you a good enough salary. You have no overhead. You can save quite a bit.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Where are your people from?”
“Kansai,” Noa replied.
“Yeah, you said. Where in Kansai?”
“Kyoto,” Noa replied.
“What do your parents do?”
“They’re dead,” Noa replied, hoping to end the questions.
“Yeah, you said. So what did they do?”
“My father worked in a udon shop.”
“Yeah?” Takano looked puzzled. “So a noodle man sends his son to Waseda? Really?”
Noa said nothing, wishing he was a better liar.
“You’re not a foreigner, right? You swear.”
Noa tried to look surprised by such a question. “No, sir. I am Japanese.”
“Good, good,” Takano replied. “Get out of my office and see Ikeda-san.”
The dormitory of the pachinko parlor slept sixty employees. On his first night, Noa slept in one of the smallest rooms, sharing it with an older worker who snored like a broken motor. Within a week, he established a routine. When he woke up, Noa washed his face quickly, having bathed the night before in the public bath, and he went down to the cafeteria where the cook served rice, mackerel, and tea. He worked methodically and won over Ikeda-san, who had never met such a smart bookkeeper. When the trial month passed, Noa was kept on. Years later, Noa learned that the Japanese owner had liked Noa from the start. After the first month, the owner told Takano to give Noa a raise and a better room at the year’s end, but not before, because the others might fuss over any favoritism. The owner suspected that Nobuo Ban was a Korean, but he said nothing, because as long as no one else knew, it didn’t matter.
2
Osaka, April 1965
In three years, Yumi had lost two pregnancies, and she found herself pregnant again. Against the advice of her husband, Mozasu, she’d worked through the previous pregnancies. In her quiet and deliberate way, Yumi’s boss, Totoyama-san, insisted that she work from home for this pregnancy. Yumi refused.
“Yumi-chan, there isn’t much work this season, and you need to rest,” Totoyama-san would say, and only occasionally, Yumi went home before it got too dark.
It was a late spring afternoon. Yumi had just completed an order of bow ties for hotel uniforms when she felt sharp pains along her lower abdomen. This time, Totoyama-san refused to hear a word of protest from Yumi. She sent for Mozasu, who picked up his wife, and he took her to a famous Japanese baby doctor in downtown Osaka, whom Totoyama-san had learned of, rather than to Yumi’s regular doctor in Ikaino.
“It’s elementary, Boku-san. You have very high blood pressure. Women like you often fight pregnancy,” the doctor said calmly.
He walked away from the examination table and returned to his desk. His office had been painted recently, and the faint smell of paint lingered. Except for a medical chart of a woman’s reproductive organs, everything in the office was white or stainless steel.
Yumi said nothing and thought about what he said. Could it be true? she wondered. Could she have somehow aborted her prior pregnancies by fighting them?
“I am less worried about the previous miscarriages. It is a sad thing, of course, but miscarriages reveal the wisdom of nature. It’s for the best that you don’t give birth when it isn’t good for your health. A miscarriage indicates that the woman can conceive, so it is not necessarily a fertility matter. But, as for this pregnancy, I do not see much danger to the child; there is danger only to the mother; so for the remainder of the pregnancy, you must remain in bed.”
“But I have to work,” Yumi said, looking terrified.
The doctor shook his head.
“Yumi-chan,” Mozasu said, “you have to listen to the doctor.”
“I can work less. Go home early, the way Totoyama-san wants me to.”
“Boku-san, it’s possible for the mother to die of preeclampsia. As your physician, I cannot allow you to work. My patients must listen to me, or else we cannot work together.”