All month long, I will be highlighting a RWISA author and one of his/her new works. RWISA is an international society of excellent writers, and I encourage you to get to know more about them. Today, I will be sharing "Burning Out in Tokyo" by Ron Yates. :-)
Burning Out in Tokyo
By Ronald E. Yates
Clayton Brandt
stood just behind the glass doors of the Ministry of International Trade and
Industry building waiting for a let-up in the storm that pummeled the hot Tokyo
pavement. Wisps of vapor rose into the air as the rain hit the warm ground.
He searched the eight-lane
boulevard in front of the MITI building for an empty taxi. He knew it could be a
long wait before an empty cab came down Sakurada-Dori. Thousands of bureaucrats
glutted Tokyo's Kasumigaseki district, and whenever it rained, it seemed like
all of them wanted a taxi.
"Son of a
bitch!" he said, his words echoing through the lobby. Two middle-aged
Japanese bureaucrats standing nearby looked over at the tall foreigner. They understood
that English phrase.
Clayton grinned. "Ame-ga
futte imasu," he said.
The two men looked
at one another and then back at Clayton as if to say: "Yes, we can see it is raining. But is that any excuse for such a
rude public outburst?"
Clayton sighed, opened
his umbrella, and stepped out into the downpour. He turned right and hurried through
the governmental heartland of Japan, maneuvering his 6-foot, 3-inch frame through
the crowded sidewalk glutted with black and gray umbrellas. Sometimes the edge
of an umbrella held by a much shorter Japanese man or woman slashed at his throat
or slapped against his face. Whenever it rained, and the umbrellas came out,
Clayton always felt Gulliveresque—like a giant trapped in a forest of
undulating toadstools.
He looked up at the
leaden April sky. The rain had drenched Tokyo for the past four days, covering
the ground with a pink and white patina of delicate sakura blossoms. A slow
rumble of thunder curled between the squat granite structures of Kasumigaseki.
Clayton looked at his watch. It was four-thirty and the evening traffic was already
crawling. He had hoped to get his story written and filed by six o'clock, but
the briefing about Japan’s angry reaction to Washington’s decision to bar the U.S.
government’s purchase of Japanese supercomputers had taken longer than usual.
The sky rumbled
again, and bolts of lightning streaked overhead. A taxi pulled up outside the
Ministry of Health and Welfare and was disgorging three Japanese bureaucrats in
dark blue suits. Clayton closed his umbrella and dashed for the cab splashing
through rivulets of water as he ran. The three men had barely climbed out
before Clayton bolted past them and into the rear seat. He gave the driver his destination,
closed his eyes, and rested his head on the seat back as the taxi inched its way
back into the gridlock.
Every so often, his
eyes opened just long enough to take in the somber Tokyo landscape. The perpetually
gray skies of Tokyo didn’t do his already sepulchral spirit any good. In fact, very
little seemed to buoy his disposition these days. He couldn't help it. He felt depressed
and probably a bit too sorry for himself. A few hours before the MITI briefing,
he had suffered through another of those telephone "chats" with Max,
the foreign editor of Global News Service in London about expenses and the need
to cut back on costs.
"O.K., O.K. Max,"
Clayton had sighed bleakly into the phone. "I get the picture."
The exchange ended
with Max suggesting that Clayton not be such a "cowboy." A "cowboy?"
Why? Just because he was from Oxford, Kansas and not Oxford, England? It wasn't
easy working for a bunch of Brits when you sounded more like Garth Brooks than
Sir Laurence Olivier. But he knew what Max meant.
Clayton was an
iconoclast in a profession that increasingly rewarded conformity rather than
individualism. Newspapers today all looked alike, loaded with the same
predictable stories about the same predictable events. It was rubber-stamp
journalism practiced by rubber-stamp editors who worked for rubber-stamp publishers
who worked for boards of directors who wanted twenty percent operating profit
margins above all else—quality journalism be damned.
He went over the notes he had hurriedly scribbled
during the MITI briefing, searching for the lead of his story. His pen
scratched heavy lines under the words "ill-conceived" and
"studying our response." Then he stuffed the notebook back into his bag.
“It's over,” Clayton thought to himself as he watched the snarl of cars
and trucks crawl along Uchibori-Dori through Kokyo-Gaien, the large plaza that
fronted the walled Imperial Palace. It was as if today he had been forced
finally to confront the inevitable mortality of his professional career; or at
least of his particular brand of journalism. He was writing the same boring
stories over and over again. Where was the challenge? The sense of
accomplishment?
Clayton exhaled and
gazed out the taxi window at the striated, ashen facades of drenched buildings.
They reminded him of the mascara-smudged faces of women weeping at a rainy graveside.
He closed his eyes
and nudged his mind away from the depressing Tokyo landscape. Soon it was obediently
shuffling through old images of another, more beguiling Asia. It was an Asia of
genial evenings spent beneath traveler palms; of graceful, colonial-era hotels
in Singapore and Malaysia with their chalky plaster facades and their broad
verandahs peppered with rattan settees and peacock chairs; of slowly turning
teakwood paddle fans that moved the heavy night air with just enough authority
to create a light breeze, but not enough to obliterate the sweet scent of
evening jasmine. THAT was the Asia he missed; the Orient of the past.
Yes, it was ending.
Clayton could feel it. It had been a good run . . . A good career. But now the
journey was ending, like a train that had roared through the night and was now
pulling into its last station. How many times had he almost gotten off only to
be lured back on by the promise of what lay ahead at the next stop? How many
times had he been disappointed by that decision? How many times had he been
rewarded? At first, the rewards outweighed the disappointments, but in recent
years, as he had grown older, the regrets seemed to have gained a definite
edge.
For one thing, the
passengers kept changing. And the conductors. And the engineers. But what did
he expect? Wasn't that the way the world worked? What was it that Tennyson had written:
"The old order changeth, yielding
place to new?"
Clayton shuddered. Was
he the old order? Should he be yielding? Was he burned out?
Maybe he was becoming
the old order, Clayton thought. But he wasn't burned out just yet. And if there
was any yielding to do, he wanted it on his own terms. The trouble was, the
gulf of time between his past glories and the imminence of the callow, computer
savvy handlers in the home office who controlled his destiny was becoming
almost unbridgeable.
Most of his career
predated cell phones and computers. For the computer literates at Global, his life's
work might as well be stored on some remote database. As it was, he existed
only in yellowing newspaper clips, aging telexes, and letters of commendation
that were kept in his personal file back in London. And nobody bothered to look
at that stuff anymore.
It made no
difference, Clayton thought. In the mutable, evanescent province that modern
journalism had become, it was ancient history. Hell, HE was ancient history. He
was like a piece of old journalistic parchment—readable, but, unlike a
computer, much less utilitarian.
What Clayton needed
was another journalistic rush . . . A story he could get hold of and play like
a newly discovered Mozart piano concerto. He needed something . . . Not to
satisfy the yuppies back at Global, but to give him a reason to get back on the
train and to leave the station again.
The taxi slewed to
a stop like a wooden bathhouse sandal skidding
along a wet tile floor. Clayton looked up. They were in front of the Kawabata
Building.
"Kawabata Biru,
desu," the driver announced.
Clayton fumbled in his
pocket, handed the driver a one thousand yen note, and waited for his change.
Then he bolted through the swirling Tokyo rain and put his shoulder against the
massive glass and steel doors of the Kawabata Building. Unlike most of Tokyo's
modern structures, the Kawabata Building didn't have sleek automatic glass
doors that hissed serpent-like and opened automatically at the approach of a
human being. It was a pre-war relic—an architectural throw-back with cracked
marble floors and a fading art deco interior that had somehow survived the
allied bombings.
The building's
deteriorating facade, which was the color of dead autumn leaves, seemed to
glower at the world—like the rumpled brow of an angry old man. But the tumble-down
building had an undeniable individuality in a country that too often prized
sameness, and that was the reason Clayton liked it and had refused an offer to
move into one of the new glass and steel "smart buildings" that
soared over Tokyo's Otemachi district.
He paused to talk
for a moment with the old woman who operated the small grocery and newsstand tucked
away in the corner of the lobby. From his many conversations with her, Clayton had
learned that the old woman had operated her little concession since 1938 and
knew the building's history better than anybody.
She smiled as
Clayton's towering frame bent toward her in one of those peculiar half bows
that Japanese make when they are in a hurry. Japanese could do it with a
certain grace; but not Clayton. When this big foreigner bowed, he always looked
like he was on the verge of crashing to the ground like a gingko tree struck by
lightning. Nevertheless, she liked this gaijin. Ordinarily, she merely tolerated
foreigners, but this one had a solitary charm. He was big, but not threatening;
assertive, but not arrogant.
"So, Oba-san, Genki
datta?" Clayton asked, combining the Japanese honorific for “grandmother” with
the less formal interrogative for "how are you?"
"Genki-yo,"
the old woman replied. Clayton picked up a package of Pocky chocolates and placed a one hundred yen coin in the old
woman's hand.
"Sayonara,” Clayton
said as he turned and scuttled toward the bank of elevators.
"Sonna ni
hatarakanai ho ga ii desu!" the old woman called after him.
Clayton smiled and
nodded over his shoulder. The old woman was right. He was working too hard, and
where was it getting him? Back on a train to oblivion?
“Oh, get over it,” Clayton thought as the elevator door closed. “You’ve got a story to write. Feel sorry for
yourself AFTER you make your friggin’ deadline! Besides, what else do you know
how to do, you old hack! Burning out is not an option.”
The End
Burning Out in Tokyo
By Ronald E. Yates
Clayton Brandt
stood just behind the glass doors of the Ministry of International Trade and
Industry building waiting for a let-up in the storm that pummeled the hot Tokyo
pavement. Wisps of vapor rose into the air as the rain hit the warm ground.
He searched the eight-lane
boulevard in front of the MITI building for an empty taxi. He knew it could be a
long wait before an empty cab came down Sakurada-Dori. Thousands of bureaucrats
glutted Tokyo's Kasumigaseki district, and whenever it rained, it seemed like
all of them wanted a taxi.
"Son of a
bitch!" he said, his words echoing through the lobby. Two middle-aged
Japanese bureaucrats standing nearby looked over at the tall foreigner. They understood
that English phrase.
Clayton grinned. "Ame-ga
futte imasu," he said.
The two men looked
at one another and then back at Clayton as if to say: "Yes, we can see it is raining. But is that any excuse for such a
rude public outburst?"
Clayton sighed, opened
his umbrella, and stepped out into the downpour. He turned right and hurried through
the governmental heartland of Japan, maneuvering his 6-foot, 3-inch frame through
the crowded sidewalk glutted with black and gray umbrellas. Sometimes the edge
of an umbrella held by a much shorter Japanese man or woman slashed at his throat
or slapped against his face. Whenever it rained, and the umbrellas came out,
Clayton always felt Gulliveresque—like a giant trapped in a forest of
undulating toadstools.
He looked up at the
leaden April sky. The rain had drenched Tokyo for the past four days, covering
the ground with a pink and white patina of delicate sakura blossoms. A slow
rumble of thunder curled between the squat granite structures of Kasumigaseki.
Clayton looked at his watch. It was four-thirty and the evening traffic was already
crawling. He had hoped to get his story written and filed by six o'clock, but
the briefing about Japan’s angry reaction to Washington’s decision to bar the U.S.
government’s purchase of Japanese supercomputers had taken longer than usual.
The sky rumbled
again, and bolts of lightning streaked overhead. A taxi pulled up outside the
Ministry of Health and Welfare and was disgorging three Japanese bureaucrats in
dark blue suits. Clayton closed his umbrella and dashed for the cab splashing
through rivulets of water as he ran. The three men had barely climbed out
before Clayton bolted past them and into the rear seat. He gave the driver his destination,
closed his eyes, and rested his head on the seat back as the taxi inched its way
back into the gridlock.
Every so often, his
eyes opened just long enough to take in the somber Tokyo landscape. The perpetually
gray skies of Tokyo didn’t do his already sepulchral spirit any good. In fact, very
little seemed to buoy his disposition these days. He couldn't help it. He felt depressed
and probably a bit too sorry for himself. A few hours before the MITI briefing,
he had suffered through another of those telephone "chats" with Max,
the foreign editor of Global News Service in London about expenses and the need
to cut back on costs.
"O.K., O.K. Max,"
Clayton had sighed bleakly into the phone. "I get the picture."
The exchange ended
with Max suggesting that Clayton not be such a "cowboy." A "cowboy?"
Why? Just because he was from Oxford, Kansas and not Oxford, England? It wasn't
easy working for a bunch of Brits when you sounded more like Garth Brooks than
Sir Laurence Olivier. But he knew what Max meant.
Clayton was an
iconoclast in a profession that increasingly rewarded conformity rather than
individualism. Newspapers today all looked alike, loaded with the same
predictable stories about the same predictable events. It was rubber-stamp
journalism practiced by rubber-stamp editors who worked for rubber-stamp publishers
who worked for boards of directors who wanted twenty percent operating profit
margins above all else—quality journalism be damned.
He went over the notes he had hurriedly scribbled
during the MITI briefing, searching for the lead of his story. His pen
scratched heavy lines under the words "ill-conceived" and
"studying our response." Then he stuffed the notebook back into his bag.
“It's over,” Clayton thought to himself as he watched the snarl of cars
and trucks crawl along Uchibori-Dori through Kokyo-Gaien, the large plaza that
fronted the walled Imperial Palace. It was as if today he had been forced
finally to confront the inevitable mortality of his professional career; or at
least of his particular brand of journalism. He was writing the same boring
stories over and over again. Where was the challenge? The sense of
accomplishment?
Clayton exhaled and
gazed out the taxi window at the striated, ashen facades of drenched buildings.
They reminded him of the mascara-smudged faces of women weeping at a rainy graveside.
He closed his eyes
and nudged his mind away from the depressing Tokyo landscape. Soon it was obediently
shuffling through old images of another, more beguiling Asia. It was an Asia of
genial evenings spent beneath traveler palms; of graceful, colonial-era hotels
in Singapore and Malaysia with their chalky plaster facades and their broad
verandahs peppered with rattan settees and peacock chairs; of slowly turning
teakwood paddle fans that moved the heavy night air with just enough authority
to create a light breeze, but not enough to obliterate the sweet scent of
evening jasmine. THAT was the Asia he missed; the Orient of the past.
Yes, it was ending.
Clayton could feel it. It had been a good run . . . A good career. But now the
journey was ending, like a train that had roared through the night and was now
pulling into its last station. How many times had he almost gotten off only to
be lured back on by the promise of what lay ahead at the next stop? How many
times had he been disappointed by that decision? How many times had he been
rewarded? At first, the rewards outweighed the disappointments, but in recent
years, as he had grown older, the regrets seemed to have gained a definite
edge.
For one thing, the
passengers kept changing. And the conductors. And the engineers. But what did
he expect? Wasn't that the way the world worked? What was it that Tennyson had written:
"The old order changeth, yielding
place to new?"
Clayton shuddered. Was
he the old order? Should he be yielding? Was he burned out?
Maybe he was becoming
the old order, Clayton thought. But he wasn't burned out just yet. And if there
was any yielding to do, he wanted it on his own terms. The trouble was, the
gulf of time between his past glories and the imminence of the callow, computer
savvy handlers in the home office who controlled his destiny was becoming
almost unbridgeable.
Most of his career
predated cell phones and computers. For the computer literates at Global, his life's
work might as well be stored on some remote database. As it was, he existed
only in yellowing newspaper clips, aging telexes, and letters of commendation
that were kept in his personal file back in London. And nobody bothered to look
at that stuff anymore.
It made no
difference, Clayton thought. In the mutable, evanescent province that modern
journalism had become, it was ancient history. Hell, HE was ancient history. He
was like a piece of old journalistic parchment—readable, but, unlike a
computer, much less utilitarian.
What Clayton needed
was another journalistic rush . . . A story he could get hold of and play like
a newly discovered Mozart piano concerto. He needed something . . . Not to
satisfy the yuppies back at Global, but to give him a reason to get back on the
train and to leave the station again.
The taxi slewed to
a stop like a wooden bathhouse sandal skidding
along a wet tile floor. Clayton looked up. They were in front of the Kawabata
Building.
"Kawabata Biru,
desu," the driver announced.
Clayton fumbled in his
pocket, handed the driver a one thousand yen note, and waited for his change.
Then he bolted through the swirling Tokyo rain and put his shoulder against the
massive glass and steel doors of the Kawabata Building. Unlike most of Tokyo's
modern structures, the Kawabata Building didn't have sleek automatic glass
doors that hissed serpent-like and opened automatically at the approach of a
human being. It was a pre-war relic—an architectural throw-back with cracked
marble floors and a fading art deco interior that had somehow survived the
allied bombings.
The building's
deteriorating facade, which was the color of dead autumn leaves, seemed to
glower at the world—like the rumpled brow of an angry old man. But the tumble-down
building had an undeniable individuality in a country that too often prized
sameness, and that was the reason Clayton liked it and had refused an offer to
move into one of the new glass and steel "smart buildings" that
soared over Tokyo's Otemachi district.
He paused to talk
for a moment with the old woman who operated the small grocery and newsstand tucked
away in the corner of the lobby. From his many conversations with her, Clayton had
learned that the old woman had operated her little concession since 1938 and
knew the building's history better than anybody.
She smiled as
Clayton's towering frame bent toward her in one of those peculiar half bows
that Japanese make when they are in a hurry. Japanese could do it with a
certain grace; but not Clayton. When this big foreigner bowed, he always looked
like he was on the verge of crashing to the ground like a gingko tree struck by
lightning. Nevertheless, she liked this gaijin. Ordinarily, she merely tolerated
foreigners, but this one had a solitary charm. He was big, but not threatening;
assertive, but not arrogant.
"So, Oba-san, Genki
datta?" Clayton asked, combining the Japanese honorific for “grandmother” with
the less formal interrogative for "how are you?"
"Genki-yo,"
the old woman replied. Clayton picked up a package of Pocky chocolates and placed a one hundred yen coin in the old
woman's hand.
"Sayonara,” Clayton
said as he turned and scuttled toward the bank of elevators.
"Sonna ni
hatarakanai ho ga ii desu!" the old woman called after him.
Clayton smiled and
nodded over his shoulder. The old woman was right. He was working too hard, and
where was it getting him? Back on a train to oblivion?
“Oh, get over it,” Clayton thought as the elevator door closed. “You’ve got a story to write. Feel sorry for
yourself AFTER you make your friggin’ deadline! Besides, what else do you know
how to do, you old hack! Burning out is not an option.”
The End
Thank you for supporting this member along the WATCH "RWISA" WRITE Showcase Tour today! We ask that if you have enjoyed this member's writing, please visit his/her Author Page on the RWISA site, where you can find more of his/her writing, along with contact and social media links, if you've been turned into a fan.
We ask that you also check out his/her books in the RWISA or RRBC catalogs. Thanks, again for your support and we hope that you will follow each member along this amazing tour of talent! Don't forget to click the link below to learn more about this author:
An interesting story, Ron. I enjoyed it. Thanks for hosting, Yvette! <3 xo
ReplyDeleteGlad you stopped by, Vashti! 😊
Delete