Showa nostalgia

You are the daughter of a wealthy, loving man. At sixteen, your teacher slept with you and your friend and another friend, then, when you got pregnant, he was fired and your two friends resented you terribly. Although you presumably knew the word “abortion” or were capable of some euphemistic misdirection, you chose to say that you “killed the baby.” You didn’t need to explain that you lost all faith in men and love. You went to the beach, then, and danced in discotheques, and, because you didn’t wear a uniform, dated older men. You wore tight dresses. This was at the end of what is called the Bubble Era, which, I remembered, means different things for different people (so, some people still live in it, and for others, it never happened). You were singing jazz standards in a hotel lobby in Marunouchi when Aum gassed Kasumigaseki. The morning of September Eleventh, you were in an apartment on Division Street that you shared with your boyfriend. He went to a vigil that night, then, the next day or a few days later, left you to go through withdrawals alone, while he jumped in his friend’s van and rode to Connecticut. You took a job at Deloitte. You invested your money carefully, with a family friend. You met an accountant and had an affair that never quite ended. You went to Kenya, your sister’s wedding in Lisbon, and your father’s funeral in Osaka. You came back to Tokyo. When you were sick of everything, you came back to Tokyo. You married a newsman (European, perhaps, or, more likely, one of those well-educated, cosmopolitan Americans who are only nominally American, and whose mothers were French or Belgian). You bought a room in Azabujuban. When he left you, you fell to pieces. You stopped going outside. You spent your days talking to artificial intelligence and watching short videos on Instagram, in a bubble, in Azabujuban, too scared to take the elevator, too scared to take the train. Your skin began sloughing off in patches. I didn’t meet you until you emerged, again.

Lying in the dark in a love hotel in Uguisudani: “You don’t really like me. It’s just Showa nostalgia.”

“Maybe” (but insincerely, since it never occurred to me). (“Actually, I think it’s something else. I don’t even want to say it. All women are little girls to me. When you smile like that—”)