V

The Sinking Country

1

In a room in the Prime Minister’s residence, which still showed the effects of the earthquake, three men sat around a table with somber expressions: the Prime Minister, his face worn and haggard; the secretary general of the Cabinet; and its director general. On the table lay a single sheet of paper upon which was written:

“It’s altogether ridiculous,” said the director general, rubbing his face vigorously with a thick hand. “If it were true, it would be terrible, of course. But it’s an absurd mistake, a fantasy of that eccentric scientist Tadokoro.”

The secretary general eyed the Prime Minister shrewdly. He was like a foster son to him, and, a graduate of the same high school, he had come a long way with him down the road of politics. From the first, the secretary general had been bedeviled in this affair by the dread that this man who held the chief responsibility in the nation might, by some mental lapse, have become entangled in a great hoax and be on the way to a misstep from which there could be no recovery. Up to this point it had been possible to keep things concealed, and if the affair had taken a suspicious turn, it could easily have been hushed up. But from now on . . . should things advance to the next stage, then in terms of budget, in terms of organization, the affair would begin to take on a scale that would attract public notice. And then should something go wrong, the question of political responsibility might well be raised. The least blunder might prove fatal, not only to the Prime Minister but also to the party.

“The investigations haven’t yet enabled us to come up with an unqualified answer,” said the Prime Minister, unfolding his arms and raising his head. “So let us go on with them. The budget, the personnel needs are going to increase considerably, of course. And what are we going to do then?”

The Prime Minister’s words by themselves indicated nothing more than a prudent continuation along roughly the same lines, but the secretary general caught his breath. Oh-oh—he’s finally made up his mind, he thought. He intends to move ahead, no matter what. He’ll even risk political suicide.

“I don’t think there’ll be too much of a problem,” answered the director general, his big body rocking as he nodded. “The secretariat meeting is tomorrow.”

“Good enough.” The Prime Minister stood up. He took a bottle and three glasses from a shelf. “I’m a little tired,” he said, pouring out some cognac for the others and himself. “Should we take this up again tomorrow?”

“Fine,” said the director general, nodding as he took up his glass. “It would be good to get a little rest. What I have to say can wait till tomorrow.”

The three men raised their glasses in silence. The director general, whose huge frame was like that of a professional wrestler, downed his at a gulp. He got to his feet, bowed to the Prime Minister, and turned toward the door. The secretary general was right behind him a moment later, and the Prime Minister, too, rose to follow. As they walked down the corridor, with the director general a few paces ahead, the secretary general turned and whispered to the Prime Minister: “A change in the Cabinet?”

Caught somewhat off guard, the Prime Minister studied the face of his keenly perceptive confidant.

“Once the turmoil dies down,” the Prime Minister whispered, his face rigid. “In some respects, the earthquake is a good opportunity, I think.”

After the two Cabinet members had left, the Prime Minister returned to the parlor and poured himself another cognac. After the earthquake he had sent his family to Shinshu, and now in the huge house there was no one besides himself but a middle-aged maid, a steward to attend to his personal needs, and his bodyguards. Since even from this group no one was ever much in evidence, the interior of the residence was as quiet as though he were there by himself.

Things have come to a strange pass, he thought. As he felt the effect of the brandy lessening his fatigue, the Prime Minister raised his forefinger and rubbed his right eye. Then he closed his eyes, and a sense of weariness suddenly bore down on him from behind. He felt as though he were being dragged down into the depths.

The physical obliteration of a nation great in size, in economic power, and in historical tradition . . . Had an event so incredible ever occurred before? Had any politician ever been faced with a problem of such vast proportions?

The Prime Minister gazed absently into space as he gently jiggled his brandy glass. Had he the strength to steer a way through this peril? Should he perhaps give way to someone else? He downed his cognac abruptly. For the present there was no one else, he decided. When the situation grew more critical, perhaps a man might come to the fore and distinguish himself, someone more capable than he to deal with this crisis. But since that time had not yet come nor that man appeared, he had no choice but to carry on, to make the painful, frightening series of decisions. How odd, he thought. He had never detected any impulse toward the heroic in himself, neither before nor now. Furthermore, like all his colleagues, he held as an implicit article of faith that the politician’s role was not to do but to let become. Political acts, after all, were but a portion of the great stream of fate.

Now, however, confronted with so perilous and complex a crisis, the Prime Minister found himself profoundly disturbed. He had always thought of courage as nothing more than a marginal necessity, but now it seemed an indispensable component of judgment.

To go somewhere for a day or two, even in the midst of his work, he thought, gazing at his brandy glass. To meditate in the Zen manner ... so as to quiet the spirit and see beyond the darkness ahead ... To consult with the old man . . .

2

Winter descended upon a Tokyo still bearing the raw claw marks of disaster. At the year’s end, like another blow following upon that of the quake, a cold wave hit.

Onodera, the collar of his overcoat up, was walking from Tameike toward Toranomon as a powdery snow fluttered down from a frozen sky. He intended to stop at the Prime Minister’s Office and then go to the Maritime Safety Agency, but he ran into a milling crowd by the Diet Building, the first large-scale demonstration since the disaster. In one place a clash had already broken out between students and riot police. To avoid the crowd, he decided to cut in front of the patent office and take a detour by way of Kasumigaseki.

The universities had been relatively undamaged, and the greater number of them had reopened. They still were being used to some degree, however, to house refugees, and since many of the faculty had been killed or injured in the earthquake, many classes were canceled. A number of boarding-houses had been destroyed, and many students had returned to their homes after the quake. As a consequence, then, although the traditional paraphernalia was in evidence—helmets, masks, long poles—the students were few and their spirit was not robust. Nevertheless, workers and ordinary citizens were also involved, and since there were never lacking some willing to take on the police, two or three struggles had broken out. Though no one threw any Molotov cocktails, they hurled chunks of concrete and bricks from destroyed buildings. Finally the riot police charged and scattered the demonstrators.

More than the students, the dark, somber mood of the ordinary people who had silently joined in with them unsettled Onodera. “Give us houses!” “Throw open your buildings!” “Money enough for refugees to get through the winter!” The faces beneath these signs seemed dark and shrunken from the cold, and a strange anxiety seemed to hover over them.

Maybe, Onodera thought, these people sense something.

It was as though a kind of darkness floated above the heads of the demonstrators, colored by a desperate anxiety that the eye could not perceive. As though it spoke of a people once determined to do great things who had lost their will to act.

As the demonstrators lowered the placards with the violent slogans, their sullen faces conveyed an anxiety to Onodera, like a kind of ill omen. People, of course, never took at face value the daily headlines—”A Great Depression Coming?” “Black Market Price of Fresh Foods up 40%, Fear of Food Crisis Next Spring”—but now, more than ever, they were on their guard.

We’re a sensitive people, thought Onodera as he passed the lines of demonstrators moving the other way. And he himself felt what they did, his skin prickling. All at once a painful sensation struck his chest. Suppose, he thought, suppose these people, who, on the one hand, have no definite information but who, on the other, are becoming ever more perceptive in the way they feel. . . suppose they learned of this thing, this thing which now stands a better than fifty-percent chance of occurring . . . what would happen? Would a great panic break out?

In a room at the Maritime Safety Agency, Onodera met Kataoka, who had arrived there just before him. The round, boyish, sunburned face of Kataoka had changed terribly in a very short time. He did not show his white teeth nor flash the bright smile that once had appeared so often. His eyes were without expression in a face that showed fatigue, its features somewhat blurred. He seemed to have aged ten years. Like all the members of the Plan D group, he was suffering from overwork, but more than that . . . the death of his entire family in Tamachi had crushed his high spirits, apparently forever.

“Did you run into the demonstration?” Kataoka asked in a listless voice.

Onodera nodded.

“It seems that lately the reporters are starting to get wind of things,” said Kataoka almost in a whisper as he gazed at the snow piled on the window ledge outside. “Today one of them came to the Defense Agency. He’s never talked to anybody of importance connected with Plan D, of course, but they say they had a hard time getting rid of him at the public-relations office.”

“That looks bad,” Onodera muttered. “What put him on to the Defense Agency, I wonder?”

“He probably saw Professor Yukinaga and Professor Tadokoro there. He knows who Professor Yukinaga is. And then with his suddenly leaving the university like that

“Kunieda told me something in confidence,” Onodera said. “Tonight the secretary general is having a quiet meeting with a group of major newspaper publishers. And then there seems to be in the offing a highly secret conference between the Prime Minister and the leaders of the opposition.”

“But how much is going to be held back?” asked Kataoka in a flat voice. “Weird rumors are cropping up everywhere. And with more people getting involved in Plan D every day, the greater the chance of leaks. By the way, how about that scholar from Kyoto they brought in? Fukuhara?”

“He’s at the old man’s place in Hakone.”

“And what’s he occupied with?”

“Well, I’m not sure, but—” Onodera smiled ruefully— “Kunieda was a bit perturbed. He told me that he did nothing but sleep all day.”

The door opened, and the assistant director of the Hydro-graphic Bureau came in.

“Hello . . . sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. He laid some papers on the table. “All the arrangements are made. At eighteen o’clock tomorrow, the Seiryu Maru will arrive at Yokosuka.”

“Thanks,” said Onodera, taking the papers. “Then, some time the day after, we can have our equipment and personnel on board.”

“And as it turned out,” the assistant director went on, “we were able to charter the sea lab and the submarine from a Japanese firm.”

“A Japanese firm!” said Onodera. “What firm is it?”

“Sea Floor Development. The sub is the Wadatsumi 2.”

Just as Onodera and Kataoka were leaving the Maritime Safety Agency, a man struck Onodera a hard blow on the chest. Stopped in his tracks, the startled Onodera saw a short, dark man blocking his way, eyes blazing with anger. The next instant a fist struck his left cheek with a flat thump. And then a third blow landed solidly on the right side of his nose.

“What do you think you’re doing!” shouted Kataoka, reaching for the man’s arm.

“It’s all right, Kataoka. Let him alone!” cried Onodera as still more punches struck home. “Take the papers and go ahead. It’s all right, I tell you!”

Since there were people all about, Onodera retreated to a place at the side of the building, taking punches all the while. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kataoka glancing back over his shoulder as he walked away. Punches struck his eye, the bridge of his nose, his chest, his throat until finally Onodera stumbled over something and went sprawling backward.

“Get up, damn you!”

The short man stood with his legs spread, his breath racing.

“Well, Yuki . . . it’s nice to see you again,” said the supine Onodera as blood gushed from his nose. “How have you been?”

He felt the chill of the frozen ground penetrating his back. He watched the dark snowflakes falling like motes of dust from the gray sky. The shock of Yuki’s blows seemed to be stirring a long-absent sense of vigor.

“You bastard!” said Yuki, breathing fiercely as he looked down on Onodera. “Quitting without a word to me . . . without a word! Running off to another company!”

As Onodera got to his feet unsteadily, Yuki pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his pants pocket and thrust it close to Onodera’s nose. Onodera, opening his swelling right eye, took the dirty handkerchief with a smile.

“You bastard! All you had to do was say one lousy word! I thought ... I thought first that you were missing in the earthquake. I was upset. I went to Kyoto a few times. And then when I heard that you deserted the company without any explanation, I tried to get in touch with you time after time. But you wouldn’t give me any answer at all, not a word. You clear out and you don’t think about your friend at all!”

“I’m sorry,” said Onodera, laying his hands firmly on the shoulders of Yuki, who was a head shorter than he. “It was inexcusable. I did get your notes, but at that time the situation was such that I couldn’t get in touch with anybody.”

“You’re going to dive in the Wadatsumi, right?” said Yuki, his eyes averted. “Somebody I know saw you hanging around here lately, and then he said that the Defense Agency put in a rush order for the Wadatsumi. And so I thought I’d come over for a look.” He hesitated for a moment. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going down in the Wadatsumi too. I made up my mind to quit like you did.”

“What?” said Onodera. “Have you submitted your resignation already?”

“Tomorrow. I made up my mind. Listen, without us two together, how are they going to get the most out of that sub? One of us has got to be manning that phone up on the ship.”

“Thank you,” said Onodera spontaneously. In that instant he, too, made up his mind. Himself, Yuki—they made a fine team. He could depend upon him.

“Well, great! It’s settled, then,” said Yuki with a sheepish look as he withdrew the hand that Onodera had grasped firmly a moment before. Then a broad, happy grin split his features. “The two of us are going to be together again.” Suddenly he seemed to recall something: “Say, do you know some girl named Reiko, I think? She’s been at the office looking for you.”

3

Onodera heard the news of the Hachijojima eruption submerged at a depth of 6,000 feet at a spot in the ocean about thirty miles northwest of Torishima. The message came by phone from the Yoshino at the surface, and because of noise he had difficulty understanding it. He was able to hear that the eruption had already claimed many victims among the island’s population of 12,000. And even as he received the message from the Yoshino 6,000 feet above, he felt a shock strike the Kermadic. The ascent that followed was a hazardous one, and when the derrick from the Yoshino had finally secured the Kermadic, Onodera saw that the surface of the sea was covered with pumice stone.

“Koshu blew, they say,” said one of the deck crew. “Some fishing boats got damaged a little. Imagine something like that erupting!”

“It looks as though we ought to get out of here as quick as we can,” said Onodera, wiping off his face with a towel. “Something’s stirring down there.”

“As soon as the recovery’s finished, we’re leaving,” said the crewman.

Onodera was in the communication room drinking a cup of coffee when, the Kermadic secured, the Yoshino got under way, this time on a different course. Sailing northeast, it cut through the waves at full steam, leaving the dangerous sea area behind it.

“What’s the Hachijo situation?” the technician who had been down with Onodera asked a radioman.

“They say that the Mount Nishi eruption killed two hundred people. And because they’re afraid of a still bigger eruption, Defense Force and private ships both are being sent there to take the people off.”

“The whole population?”

“Yes. It’ll amount to twelve thousand in all. The whole island. They can’t carry a thing with them. There are signs of eruptions on the other Izu Islands, too, and I understand that the people are being evacuated to Shizuoka.”

“A Sea Defense Force anti-submarine patrol plane has landed in our area,” said another operator. “It’s going to take off right away. Then it’s going to land beside us and pick up the data we’ve gathered, they say. They want us to guide them.”

The communication officer sent a message to the bridge, and the captain instructed the radar room. The plane was soon picked up on the radar screen, and the communication room directed it to the Yoshino’s position.

“Mr. Onodera,” said the operator in contact with the plane, “there’s someone named Kataoka on the patrol plane. He says that he wants you to go back with them.”

“Kataoka?” said Onodera, who was about to step out of the communication room.

Two or three crewmen ran past the door outside. Overhead the sound of motors was drawing closer. When Onodera stepped out upon the deck, the wind had grown stronger and the waves were covered with whitecaps. The four-motored flying boat began to make its descent extremely close to the ship.

Wearing a raincoat against the spray from the rough sea, Onodera got into a motor-driven rubber boat. It dipped so on the crossing that he had to cling to it to keep from being thrown out. He was covered with sweat by the time he climbed up into the plane. Once the documents had been transferred in a waterproof bag, the PS-1 began its takeoff run immediately. To Onodera it seemed as though it did no more than skip through two or three waves before the noise of the sea striking its hull was heard no more. Before he realized it, they were circling above the Yoshino.

On his way to the front of the plane along a rather narrow passageway packed with equipment, Onodera passed the radio room. There he saw Kataoka looking over the shoulder of a crewman. When he tapped him on the shoulder, Kataoka turned.

“Oh, hello,” he said, nothing more, and then he went back to peering at the instruments the crewman was manning.

“That’s what it is, all right,” the crewman muttered. “A big sub. In the four-thousand-ton class . . . probably bigger.”

“If it’s four thousand tons, it has to be a nuclear submarine,” said Kataoka, his voice dry and harsh. “It’s following the Yoshino, I suppose. At 850 yards . . . very close.”

“A submarine? Couldn’t it be the Uzushio?” Onodera asked. “It’s working with Plan D now, isn’t it?”

“The Uzushio? It’s by the Izu Peninsula now,” said Kataoka. “Besides, it’s too small. It’s no more than 1,850 tons.”

“I wonder what he’s up to,” said the crewman, twisting his head. “Is he spying on us?”

“He might be. It would be good to let the Yoshino know. Tell them it would be best to use only passive sonar and not tip their hand to the sub,” said Kataoka.

“It looks as though there are a lot of countries interested in what we’re doing,” Onodera muttered.

“Off to port—volcanic smoke!” cried a voice over the speaker.

They rushed to the observation window. Blown by a strong west wind, clusters of white cloud seemed to dot the dark blue surface of the sea below. Farther ahead, like the genie of the lamp in the Arabian Nights, dark brown volcanic smoke poured up from a small spot in the sea and then swelled into a spreading cloud which climbed steadily higher into the sky until it had soared into a great column towering over even the cumulus clouds. The patrol plane was at 15,000 feet, and even here the air seemed to tremble slightly at each explosion that echoed from below. When Onodera peered intently downward, he could see red flame flickering in the midst of the smoke. Ash and pumice stone rained down, lashing the sea on the east side of the volcano, as though a curtain of gauze were hung there. And in the midst of the swelling column of swirling brown smoke darted flashes of lightning. Small tidal waves slowly spread outward in concentric circles.

“Is that Smith Reef?” asked Onodera.

“No. Aogashima,” answered Kataoka. “Today’s the second big eruption. And with that, almost the whole island went.”

“Were there people on it?”

“About 270, I guess. Almost all of them died, they say. Some of them might have escaped in fishing boats, but it’s not certain.”

“What? They just let everybody die like that?”

“There were almost no ships in the area. According to the report of a passenger plane, the first eruption came just ten minutes after the island sent a message by wireless saying that there were signs of volcanic activity,” Kataoka explained, not a trace of emotion in his voice. “Unlike Jogashima, Aogashima is very much out of the way.”

How often was this to recur in time to come? Onodera wondered, feeling a chill gathering in his stomach. But on a scale thousands of times, millions of times as great as that of Aogashima.

“The entire Fuji volcanic belt is spouting fire,” said Kataoka, frowning and indicating the sea below with his chin. “There’ve been chain eruptions there before now, but never to this degree. Oh-oh! Look—over there’s the smoke from Hachijo.”

The plane continued to climb, tipping its huge wings. Beyond the tip of the right one, more volcanic smoke was rising. And to the north of Jogashima there was still more.

“And over there?” asked Onodera, feeling his voice catch in his throat.

“Miyakejima. About two hours ago a series of eruptions began, running from Akabakyo to Oyama. The birds knew it. This year they didn’t come back, apparently.”

“I see,” said Onodera softly, his tone as flat as Kataoka’s now.

The PS-1 had reached an altitude of 25,000 feet and was still climbing. As they went farther north, the clouds began to thin out and the sea to glow with the clear beauty that it showed in winter in this latitude. The Izu Islands, stretching from north to south, lay scattered upon a dark blue ocean, filling Onodera’s field of vision from the observation window from one end to another. From each of the five islands a plume of black smoke rose high up into the clear sky. Caught by the west wind, the murky columns trailed off to the east. It was as though a line of great battleships was steaming grandly toward the north.

But the smoke was not from gallant warships. The column of islands had been shattered by a terrible destructive force thrusting its way upward from beneath the sea. Thrashing about in its death throes, it was on the verge of going under.

Onodera instinctively shut his eyes. And when he opened them again, clouds had covered the ill-omened scene, and in front of him was Mount Fuji rising like a white phantom against the dark blue of the sky.

“Niigata—in the Tomiyama region—an earthquake,” the speaker announced. “Medium intensity, its magnitude 7.0. Its epicenter forty miles north of Niigata. Depth thirty miles. A survey ship reported unusual elevation of the Yamato Rise.”

“Now it’s the Japan Sea coast, eh?” muttered Kataoka, glancing up at the speaker. “We’re getting hit from both sides.”

In the parlor of a villa belonging to a certain high government official, located in a suburb of Canberra called Red Hill, the Prime Minister of Australia had been sitting plunged in silence for nearly five minutes. His hairy hands, fingers linked, were thrust beneath his chin. The February heat was oppressive. And since the two other men present, the owner of the villa and a small, dark man, were also silent, the hum of a large air conditioner filled the room.

The Prime Minister began to tap his fingertips together, as though working to control something surging up within him. Then, like a huge tree being uprooted—he was more than six feet tall—he rose energetically from the low armchair in which he had been sitting. He linked his arms behind him and, keeping his eyes on the floor, walked slowly across the room. Then, hooking his thumbs behind the lapels of his coat, he turned toward his small-statured guest.

“Your story, Mr. Nozaki, is something to make the mind boggle. And the problem involved is a frightful one.”

The Japanese was short and thin, and his hair was nearly white. The fine wrinkles in his face and at the corners of his eyes gave him a tranquil look. His eyes were extraordinarily bright. He had obtained a secret interview with the Prime Minister by going through the man who was their host. There were less than a handful of people in the entire Commonwealth who knew that the Prime Minister would never refuse a request from this particular official. The Prime Minister had no idea how Nozaki knew of this nor why this old man had been so anxious to see him.

“As I imagine you’re well aware, the population of Australia has grown by nearly a million in the past ten years. It is now more than twelve million,” said the Prime Minister, beginning to move across the carpet again.

“I realize that,” said the old man, nodding, his bright eyes revealing nothing. “During the same period Japan experienced a population increase of some eight million. The total now stands at 110 million.”

“Roughly ten times ours,” said the Prime Minister, frowning.

“And in terms of population density, the rate is two hundred times that of your country.”

“But you realize, of course, that more than seventy percent of that is barren desert.”

The Prime Minister gathered his thoughts as he looked at the window. There was one topic that he now had no way of avoiding. A reddish moon had begun to rise in a dark blue sky, in which some trace of sunset lingered.

“Japan,” the Prime Minister muttered as though to himself. “I have worked to make this continent a land open to the world, a land of promise. My father and my grandfather, however, were men who championed a ‘White Australia,’ ” said the Prime Minister almost in a whisper as he took a cigar from his pocket and sniffed it. “At the beginning of this century, there was a gold rush in the North. Chinese laborers came pouring into the country. I don’t think that my father and grandfather were outright racists by any means. Just consider the circumstances. Australia was a continent with nothing but kangaroos and aborigines, a continent to which criminals were banished. The whites shipped here raised sheep and cattle in the well-nigh unlimited open spaces, and bit by bit they developed areas in which a man could live decently. Now, these unruly and unsettled Chinese laborers were not the sort to fit into this kind of world. And this uneasy situation was aggravated still further by the Oriental-exclusion movement, which was then at its height throughout the world. Thus came about the immigration restrictions and a certain measure of tragedy.”

The Prime Minister smiled wryly. He felt somewhat vexed toward this old man, Nozaki, who, almost without saying anything at all, had steered the conversation in this direction.

“So, then,” said the Prime Minister, finally putting a match to his cigar, “what is the extent of what you wish?”

“The first stage, a million people,” said the old man calmly. “For the future, should it be possible, we would like you to be kind enough to accept some five million.”

The Prime Minister was silent for a long time. He inhaled to draw the match flame into the tip of his cigar. Five million people? That would be forty-five percent of the population of Australia. Australia would become more than one-third Oriental!

“A million—that’s about nine percent of our population,” said the Prime Minister, blowing out a huge cloud of smoke. “And that would be in ... a two-year period?”

“Perhaps it might have to be quicker.” For the first time a trace of something that might have been anxiety appeared on the old man’s face. “If possible, we would like to begin bringing in the first contingent before the year is out—a hundred thousand, say. The idea would be a settlement in an undeveloped section of the interior.”

“That could present some problems,” said the official, breaking silence. “Without some adroit maneuvering, there’d be no getting Parliament to approve something like a settlement. Our country, you see, is very much attached to setting its own pace.”

“Wait a moment—perhaps we can carry it out,” said the Prime Minister, abruptly taking the cigar from his mouth as though something had occurred to him. “There’s the North-South railroad.”

“Ah, yes,” said the official. “There are still no firm plans for the section from Tea Tree to Newcastle Waters, are there? It would be a matter of opening that up to international bidding, and then having Japan take it with far and away the most favorable bid.”

“There remains the possibility that whatever we do will be too late,” said the old man. “What would you say to this, gentlemen? Japan will provide credit backing at the most favorable terms possible, and Australia will see to the rapid implementation of the plan. We shall, of course, bring our own equipment.

We shall put our technical skill in railroad construction at your service without reserve. We only ask that you obtain without delay—say, within the next six months—the approval of your Parliament.”

“But if we go at it too hastily, if you give us conditions that are too favorable, might not that stir some suspicion in this country?” said the official.

“Perhaps we can provide a reason. Because of the recent series of earthquakes, the Japanese government is carrying on a full-scale inspection of the Super Express network, and, consequently, work on the new Super Express line has been virtually halted. And so, in order to put to profitable use what had been set aside for that project, we offer it to Australia. And we shall, of course, pursue like negotiations with Africa, South America, and so forth.”

It’s something worth doing, thought the Prime Minister. There was no doubt that the enterprise would be a profitable one. There would come a vast influx of energetic, earnest, and well-educated workers with varied technical skills, of equipment of the most advanced kind, and of capital goods. And then it would happen that the country to which payment was to be made would be wiped from the face of the earth. . . . But the Prime Minister’s mind was far from at ease. What sort of shadow would be cast upon the future of his country?

“Still and all, a hundred thousand people at one stroke might be too much of a strain,” said the Prime Minister, shaking his head. “And then a settlement of a million... Well, what I mean, there are pertinent laws in the context of all humanity. What of the United Nations? Of course, I suppose you have already become active in that regard.”

“We have had three confidential meetings with the Secretary General. We have begun to approach the various nations who are permanent members of the Council. However, the truth is that the United Nations simply does not wield power enough to cope with a matter of this sort. Right at the moment, we are conducting secret negotiations of our own with the American President, with South America, and with several countries in Africa. Beyond a doubt, our aspirations are self-centered, of course. What I must do—rather, what my country must do is to come to you, to come to all the nations of the world, to go down on our knees and make an earnest plea that you come to our aid. On the brink of disaster, the people of my country are pleading through me that, somehow, their lives may be spared.”

The old man’s tone had become fervent. It seemed as though at any instant his emotions might burst through the barrier he had set. Perhaps he might cry out, shed tears, actually fall to his knees, grasp the Prime Minister’s legs, and beg in heart-rending fashion.

In fact, however, he sat on his chair, his knees neatly aligned, his hands resting upon them. There was even something like a smile upon his tranquil face. But those eyes of his were shining with a more earnest brightness than before, a fire kindled by the tragic intensity of his plea.

What incredible self-discipline, thought the Prime Minister. How few men there are today with control of this kind! The quality that characterized the whole peculiar race—at least, those of it whom the Prime Minister had had personal relations with—was this incredibly strong self-discipline which held all emotion in check behind the famous “inscrutable smile.” And might not this be a drawback in international society, this unwillingness to cry out with an earnest plea? This eschewing of emotion?

“I understand, Mr. Nozaki,” said the Prime Minister, laying his huge, hairy hand on the thin shoulder of the old man. “We will do everything within our power. I promise it. I will speak to the leaders of the other nations of the British Commonwealth also. As far as the Commonwealth nations go, I will undertake the responsibility of obtaining assistance for you. And, of course, as the largest of these and the closest to your nation, Australia, acting on its own, will not stint in our efforts to be of help.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” said the old man, bowing his head. Tears seemed to glisten in his eyes. “I shall be staying at our embassy for a time. I shall ever take comfort in the thought of Your Excellency’s magnanimity and the love of humanity that you manifest to the world.”

“Have you opened negotiations with the Soviet Union?” asked the minister. “Their country is vast and it includes a large portion of Asia.”

“I believe that talks have already begun,” said the old man, nodding, all trace of emotion now gone from his face. “To speak frankly, many things about that country are beyond our comprehension. However, in terms of its history, its record with regard to racial minorities gives grounds for hope.”

“Except for the problem of the Jews, that is,” said the minister quietly. “I suppose that you can’t expect much from Mainland China, with its eight hundred million people. . . . Still, when one considers the historical ties that exist between the peoples of both countries and what the future may hold . . .”

“I have brought a gift for Your Excellency,” said Nozaki, standing up. “Rather than from our Prime Minister, please think of it as coming from our country.”

The old man went to a table in the corner of the room and brought back a wooden box over a foot and a half high. He quietly took off the cover.

“Why, this . . .” The Prime Minister, who had a fair knowledge of ancient Oriental art, was at loss for words. He took his glasses from his pocket. “This is extraordinary. It’s about the thirteenth century, is it not?”

“This is correct, Your Excellency. The beginning of the Kamakura Era. As an image of Buddha, it ranks as a National Treasure. We can’t specify its exact date,” said the old man in a low voice. “It was purchased from a country temple. There are many objects of this sort scattered through every district of Japan. We give it to you, and we would like you to think of it as a remembrance.”

4

“They say there’s been a warning to the Fuji area,” said Kunieda, his face pale. “The steam rising from the Ozawa landslide has become more intense, it seems. And, just below the Hoei crater, steam has started to rise. The meteorological station on the crest has been evacuated except for a small emergency group.”

“I wonder if we’ll be able to see an eruption from here,” said the old man, smiling with anticipation. “If Komagadake or some other mountain in Hakone erupted, we’d get a good view, I should think.”

“There are three cars at your service, sir. The Prime Minister’s strict orders. Please go back to Tokyo as quickly as possible. If, by chance, something should occur . . .”

“Don’t worry. Death and I are on easy terms,” said the old man. “I’m resigned. If I have two or three days left, that will be fine. Besides, that matter of ours should be concluded this evening.”

“The work has been making progress?” Kunieda asked, his tone edged with irritation. “I had the impression, I’m afraid, that they spent most of the day relaxing and strolling about.”

“Yes, and while doing that, they’ve been thinking,” said the old man, giving Kunieda a penetrating glance. “Their whole concern, you see, has been given to this matter. For three days now they’ve gone without sleep. I’m worried about their health.”

They were referring to the group gathered around Fukuhara, the scholar who had come to this mountain villa from Kyoto and remained here ever since. In accordance with Fukuhara’s request, two more men, both rather unusual, had come to the villa. One had a smooth, pale face, which made his age hard to determine, and though he wore an ordinary kimono, his manner was that of a Buddhist monk. The other was rather elderly. He had white hair. And then, in order to keep records, deliver material, and establish liaison, three more men had been sent from Plan D headquarters to join them.

The frantically busy Prime Minister had spent a whole night talking with the three of them. Kunieda had been engaged in conversation in the neighboring room, and sometimes, when a maid slid open the door to bring refreshments, he had casually glanced in. Each time the group—Watari among them—had been casually talking of garden shrubbery, tea-ceremony utensils, and the like as they sipped their tea, not a thing on their minds, it seemed, but pleasant conversation. One of the trio, for example, had been relating an amusing anecdote about his experiences abroad while the old man and the Prime Minister laughed uproariously.

A young woman in a rust-colored Yuki pongee kimono appeared at the end of the corridor and came to where the old man was sitting in his wheelchair, gazing out at the garden through the glass doors. She knelt down beside him and whispered something in his ear. The old man nodded slightly. She got to her feet and began to push the wheelchair toward the hall.

“Please come along,” said Watari to Kunieda, turning his head.

Making a right-angle turn from the corridor, they proceeded down a passageway leading to a detached wing concealed by a growth of shrubbery. At the end of this, beyond a foyer four and a half tatami mats in size, there was a room ten mats large. Beside it was another room which seemed to be of about eight mats. The sliding door between the two was open a few inches.

Around the edges of the room were piles of books and documents. Periodicals and the like lay scattered about the floor. Some were in European languages, and there were also Chinese books in their distinctive cases. Yearbooks and dictionaries were conspicuous as well as every kind of map—everything strewn about. A middle-aged man, apparently the recording secretary, sat in a corner, his face worn with fatigue. Two men were sitting at one corner of a table. One, a small man wearing a dark blue Oshima kimono, was gazing at the scenery outside, his arms folded. The other, the man who looked like a monk, was wearing a grayish-blue cotton kimono. Sitting with his fingers linked together over his stomach and one leg folded beneath him, he had his eyes closed. On the table before them were three large manila envelopes, each one designated by Chinese characters written in a bold hand.

The man who had been looking out the window unfolded his arms and, with a slight bow, spoke in a low voice: “As for the fundamental principles, they are here for the most part. ...”

“You gentlemen have completed it?” the old man asked, bowing slightly in return. Assisted by the young woman, he got out of the wheelchair and sat down on the tatami. “What of the Imperial Household—to Switzerland, I imagine?”

“As to that, sir,” said the small man, “one of the Imperial Family to America, one to China, and, if possible, one to Africa. ...”

As he spoke, the small man looked for the first time in Kunieda’s direction. Kunieda swallowed hard at the sight of the pain so evident in the man’s features. In no more than a week Professor Fukuhara’s face had undergone an incredible transformation. Only a short time before, his boyish face had had the glow of youth about it, but now his cheeks were hollow, his eyes were sunken, and his skin grayish, his cheeks covered with a scraggly growth of beard. His face seemed to belong to a man in the last stages of cancer. His eyes alone shone with spirit, but their odd glitter was like that struck from the embers of a dying fire.

“Probably about half will die,” said Fukuhara in a low voice, his tone detached. “And for those who survive, there will be much suffering.”

“You’ve made three divisions?” asked the old man, glancing at the envelopes on the table. “In what way?”

“It’s not according to geographical areas, sir, but rather as to types,” said Fukuhara, clearing his throat. “The first is that portion of the Japanese who might begin a new nation somewhere. The second is for those who would be scattered among various nations as naturalized citizens. The third is for those who could go to no other country.”

“The example of the Jewish people is not especially relevant,” said the man who seemed to be a monk, his eyes still closed. “The Jews have the experience of a two-thousand-year period of exile. Whereas this island people of ours have had the happy experience of living secure in their own country for a like period. Therefore it would be no easy matter to take on the other role. Would we gain some wisdom from our Diaspora over the course of the years? And throughout such a period, would the Japanese people remain the Japanese people? In that third envelope is enclosed still another envelope. It contains an opinion that is somewhat of a departure,” said the monk. “The truth is that not one of the three of us is averse to this opinion. Since, however, the conclusion it presents is not in line with the purpose of the task set for us, we offer it as nothing more than a variant opinion.”

“In effect, it proposes that the best thing would be to do nothing whatsoever,” said Fukuhara, hiccoughing slightly. “The best thing would be not to lift a finger.”

Not lift a finger? Kunieda cried out within himself, feeling his flesh tingle with icy shock. It would be the best thing to let 110 million Japanese die? Was that it? What sort of men were these scholars anyway?

“I see,” said old Watari. He bent his trunk slightly, his hands on his lap, as he looked down at the envelopes upon the table. “So that opinion, too, has come forth, has it?”

“That it should has its source, perhaps, in the Japanese people’s differing decisively from other peoples.” His eyes now half opened, the priest whispered as though talking to no one but himself.

“When you three gentlemen formulated this opinion, could it be that your years affected your thinking?” The old man’s eyes peered keenly as he put the question to them.

“True, sir,” murmured Fukuhara, once more looking out at the garden.

“Hanae . . . come here,” said the old man, gesturing to the young woman, who was sitting in a corner of the room. “Take a good look at this girl, gentlemen. She’s twenty-three. She hasn’t known any man yet. She’s a fresh young girl with her life in front of her. Girls such as she . . . and children, too . . . were they in your thoughts?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Fukuhara.

“In any case, that opinion represents a departure,” said the monk, his eyes closed again. “Moreover, had we not gone so far, we would have been remiss.”

“Our fundamental thought throughout has been that the Japanese people are to make no demands, are to claim nothing as their right from other nations,” said Fukuhara, his voice low and hoarse. “For there is simply no way that we can do so. Human society is not ready to recognize the right of the people of any nation to live upon land that lies outside their borders. We must acknowledge as a fundamental truth that this situation will persist for a very long time to come. Thus, the Japanese people, dispossessed of their homeland, will have to ask the nations of the world for corners in which to live. But if we ask this as our right, we’ll not get it, so making demands is out of the question.”

“Even if our race lives on, then, our descendants, it seems, will have bitter times ahead of them,” whispered Watari as he nodded slowly. “From now on, whether it’s a matter of going on being Japanese or ceasing to be Japanese, whatever the case —we have to leave Japan out of our consideration. The problems to come will be those dictated by outside elements. Once this Japan of ours is gone forever, once it is taken from the Japanese, then our identity is simply that of human beings, it would seem, but in truth the problem cannot be reduced to terms so simple. For we have our karma—in our culture, our language, our history. And that karma will be resolved when this nation called Japan and its culture and its history—when all alike are swept away with the land itself. But the people of Japan will still be a young people, a people uniquely gifted. And this other karma, a living karma, is one that will go on.”

“Begging your pardon ...” A dry voice came from the corner of the room. The secretary, silent till now, was speaking. “If you would be kind enough, sir, it would be desirable, I believe, to allow these gentlemen some rest. For, having been without sleep or rest, as you see ...”

“Kunieda, the envelopes,” said the old man, signaling the young woman with a wink. “Thank you, gentlemen, for giving so much of yourselves. Please take a good rest.”

The three men remained as they were while Kunieda and the girl helped the old man to his feet and into the wheelchair.

“Are you going to leave for Tokyo soon, sir?” Kunieda asked as he pushed the wheelchair. “If possible, these gentlemen might go with you, perhaps. There are cars enough. For, as you know, it seems to be gradually growing more dangerous here.”

“Hanae,” said the old man, turning his head and speaking in a surprisingly strong voice, “call the doctor right away. See that the three of them in there get examinations.”

The old man decided to use one of the three cars for an immediate return to Tokyo with the plans, Kunieda going with him. The preparations made, Kunieda pushed the wheelchair out to the car as snowflakes were beginning to flutter down from a chill sky. Just as he was about to push the chair up the ramp of the specially equipped Mercedes-Benz 600, an echoing roar like that of a cannon seemed to make the gray sky tremble. When Kunieda turned, he saw a cloud of white smoke rising from the slope of Fuji at a point near the crest.

“The Hoei crater has finally erupted, it seems,” said the old man tranquilly. “But if it’s no more than that, it will be all right for the present, I would think.”

At that moment there was the sound of frantically hurrying footsteps, and the girl named Hanae came running up to them, a distraught expression on her face.

“Master ...” said the girl, stopping beside the wheelchair. “Professor Fukuhara . . . he . . .”

“What is it?”

Turning abruptly back toward the house, Kunieda saw the monk walking slowly toward them, a Buddhist rosary at his wrist and his palms pressed together.

“All right,” said the old man to Kunieda, indicating he was to push the wheelchair into the car. “Hanae—inform the Professor’s family immediately. Mr. Tatsuno, I beg you to take care of everything.”

The monk bowed slowly, his hands still pressed together. Yet another boom echoed from the direction of Mount Fuji. Ashes fell with a light rustling sound, blending with the snow which was beginning to cover the top of the Mercedes.

5

Onodera had not been in Kansai for a long time. In comparison to the quake-scarred condition of Tokyo, everything here seemed to be far closer to normal. Nevertheless, when Onodera’s plane was circling Osaka before landing, there was something about the scene below that struck him as odd. What it was he learned later in a conversation with his brother, after they had accompanied their mother’s body to the crematory in the Nada section of Kobe.

“I’ve been thinking about changing jobs,” said his brother as they were driving back. “Here in the Kansai, you see, all kinds of projects have been suspended or else put off. And in my work, too, there’s not much at all going on.”

“Why is that? The effect of the Tokyo quake?”

“Don’t you know the reason? Why, the land in the Kansai is sinking at an alarming rate.” His brother’s face was grim. “Sinking land is not something new in the Kansai, of course, but now it’s at the stage where it’s no joke—in economic terms, you see. The fact of the matter is that in some places it’s sinking at an average rate of nearly an inch a day.”

“Really?” murmured Onodera, at a loss. Though he worked at Plan D headquarters, he had been so taken up with the exploration of the Japan Trench that he hadn’t seen any reports about the general state of things.

“Really. This started about a year ago, and it’s gradually gotten worse. And it’s not just in one or two places. The tide levels throughout Western Japan have gotten higher. They’re building emergency sea walls, but if the sinking should keep increasing as it has been, in six more months it will pass four inches a day and there’ll be no keeping up with it. That would be three feet every nine days! They say they’ll find some way to deal with it before it gets that bad. But at what point are they going to be able to stop it, I wonder?”

Onodera clenched his fists.

“Take us to the airport.” Onodera’s brother spoke to the driver. “The company has a helicopter. Let me give you a look at the sort of thing that’s happening.”

“But, dear ...” Onodera’s sister-in-law turned around in her seat beside the driver. “You’re in mourning, remember.”

“That’s all right. The public ceremony’s not till tomorrow morning. You go home and get things in order. We’ll come right after.”

When he gazed down at the Osaka waterfront from the air, Onodera was able to see clearly where the sea had made its inroads. Aside from the places where the dikes had been especially high beforehand or else made higher by emergency measures, the Osaka waterfront section and the strip of filled-in land that fronted Kobe were already half awash. The work on the landfill in Kobe Harbor, meant to extend Kansai International Airport, seemed to have been abandoned. The tide swept over the mud flats, and streams of yellow-brown water flowed far out into the Inland Sea.

“You see? The job isn’t an impossible one, but it’s going to take a lot of money. And because the Kanto area is still recovering, we can’t expect much to be available for a while. Take my company—the stoppage of work on the new airport has left us high and dry.”

“You talked about changing jobs. What would you do?” asked Onodera, looking down morosely at the scene below.

“Well, there’s no need to worry about taking care of Mother any more, and so what I’ve been thinking about is work in Canada.” His brother’s voice had a trace of sadness in it. “There’s a development under way in the oil fields of Manitoba. I’ve been intending to take the family and go, but my wife is not enthusiastic.”

“Wonderful!” Onodera blurted out, impulsively covering his brother’s hand with his own. “That’s a fine idea. When do you intend to go?”

“They’d like me to start as soon as possible. But there are all sorts of things to be attended to first, and that will probably take a month or two. I think that probably next week I’ll take a trip there.”

“The sooner the better.” Onodera squeezed his brother’s hand hard. “Don’t worry about arrangements and things like that. No matter what your wife says, take the whole family and go.”

“You make it sound so simple. I’m changing jobs at forty, remember.” His brother laughed, a puzzled expression coming over his face. “Why are you so eager to see me go?”

“Well. . . Japan is . . .” Onodera stopped abruptly. He had to keep quiet, even though this was his own brother. He looked down again, but then he averted his eyes from the scene below.

There were many memories. When he was a mere toddler, he had fallen into a ditch, and his brother had pulled him out. Then there had been a shrine festival in the country, and on the way home he had fallen asleep on his brother’s back. That was the time when the thong of his brother’s clog had broken and he had had to walk home barefoot. His brother had caught beetles for him, had taken him fishing and swimming. He had taught him to play games and to build model planes and done all sorts of other things for him. His brother had been already in college when he was in elementary school, and Onodera had gazed with awe on the Western books and the difficult novels that his brother had been reading. ... It was memories such as these that were now coming back to him one after another.

Just a word. A mere word would do it—so wouldn’t it be all right? Get away, Brother . . . Japan is finished. The words stuck like a searing lump in his throat. As he gazed out through the windshield of the helicopter, Onodera coughed repeatedly. Suppose he were now to whisper something . . .

His shocked brother would immediately start preparing to leave, heedless of his wife’s complaints. And she, most likely, would demand an explanation. His patience at an end, his brother would probably say something to her, a secret between husband and wife. Or when he was about to leave Japan, over a farewell drink, when the talk would naturally take a confidential turn, he might let slip a word to a good friend or someone with whom he worked. Thus the “secret” would become some-thing that was traveling from mouth to mouth and would soon spread beyond all limits. Well, what would be wrong with that? thought Onodera, clenching his fists. This would cause people to flee spontaneously, and thus more might be saved. And yet, thought Onodera, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists so hard that his nails were beginning to draw blood, because I am part of Plan D headquarters, I must keep the secrets that come under the jurisdiction of that headquarters. I have to think that that’s the manly thing to do, but at the same time I can’t avoid the thought that it’s a matter of fleeing to organizational logic in the face of an agonizing human problem. Have I become a faithful bureaucrat? he wondered suddenly. But Onodera rejected that thought at once. The true bureaucrat, secure in his virtue, would never agonize in this way. But when he reflected that among the thousand or so men connected with Plan D there must be other distraught men like him who struggled with their emotions as they debated within themselves whether or not to let the secret out, he felt his mouth going dry. Nakata was obviously right when he said that the time was coming when the secret could no longer be kept. Already, probably, any number of them, rather than bearing the emotional burden, had told their families and were making ready to flee.

Avoiding the routes used by the airlines, the helicopter approached the airport from the northeast, steadily decreasing its altitude. Still avoiding his brother’s eyes, Onodera kept looking down. He saw the red, blue, gray roofs of close-packed houses. He saw a procession of grade-school children, wearing yellow caps, their figures wrapped in heavy winter clothes. A group of women, mothers apparently, accompanied them, guiding them across intersections. Since it was a clear, bright afternoon, quilts and washing shone white from open windows. A group of housewives in aprons, kerchiefs wound around their heads, seemed to be doing their shopping. And then, as the helicopter dropped still lower, a young mother pointed up at it, saying something to the infant she was carrying. . . . Such were the scenes that flashed by below him, a panorama flattened by the rush of the helicopter. As he watched, a gathering heaviness clogged his chest. I guess I’ve never really understood the weight of things like family and life, he thought. Now the meaning of those words for his brother, with his wife and two children, began to take form in his imagination with a painful intensity. His spirited wife, beginning to grow plump and gritting her teeth as she did her beauty calisthenics . . . the son in his first year of junior high . . . the daughter in the fourth grade, whom his brother, fond of children anyway, so doted upon that she could do no wrong in his eyes. The girl had finished second in a prefecture-wide talent contest, his brother had told him, and he had bought her a grand piano in place of the upright they had had, though his practical wife had opposed it.... Such was the joyful weight of family, of home that pressed heavily upon his brother’s shoulders.

And so it was that families like this, more than twenty million of them, led their family lives upon these islands threatened with oblivion.

This kind of flesh-and-blood human life with its specific gravity—these 20 million households—this was what had to be saved. The great effort of moving to a strange land where an uncertain future waited—could such a thing be carried out?

“Well, what are you thinking about? Let’s get out,” said his brother, tapping him on the shoulder as he unfastened his safety belt. “It’s still early, but should we get something to eat? Do you like blowfish?”

After dinner, Onodera and his brother went to a bar. His brother wanted him to stay at his home overnight, but Onodera said that he must return to Tokyo. His hotel was at the airport, and he had a reservation for the earliest flight the next day.

“Please forgive me for being unable to be at Mother’s funeral tomorrow,” he said to his brother. “I feel terrible about it. I imagine the relatives will have something to say. . . .”

“Don’t let it bother you. Leave things to me,” said his brother, putting down money for the bill and getting up. “Well then, I don’t suppose you’ll be coming back this way for a while?”

“No,” answered Onodera vaguely, oppressed by the thought of taking up again tomorrow that strange work that seemed to have no limits, “I don’t think so. But I’ll keep you up to date.”

His brother stopped at the door of the bar. He took a long, thin package from his breast pocket and handed it to Onodera: “Well, now is when I should give you this,” he said. “It’s a remembrance of Mother.”

Onodera took it and, instead of putting it in his pocket, stood holding it. Something welled up within him, but the words that came out had to do with something quite different from his thoughts.

“Brother, go to Canada. That’s the best thing,” he said once again, his voice ringing with fervor. “Believe me, it’s the best thing.”

“What an odd fellow you are!” said his brother, grinning broadly. He turned on his heel, and as he was starting to walk away, he said over his shoulder: “Instead of minding other people’s business, how about your own? Isn’t it about time you had a family? Single at thirty—you’re going to get shopworn, you know.”

They parted in front of the tavern, his brother taking Shinchihon Street toward Midosuji and he walking in the other direction, toward Sakurabashi. In the distance, the latest headlines were moving in flashing lights along the side of some building or other, the characters reading: “Fuji Hoei Crater Erupts.”

The freezing chill of the tag end of February gripped the streets, and some snow was falling, but the flourishing night life of Shinchihon Street was as vigorous at eight o’clock that evening as he remembered it from two or three years before. With March, the month all debts had to be paid, approaching, the street was jammed with the cars of banquet-goers and expense-account spenders. And there was one party on foot, the men drunkenly singing war songs. The young hostesses, bare shoulders showing for all their winter wrappings, gave cries of distress from time to time at the naughty antics of one of the drunks. One man staggered along by himself, bundled up in an expensive overcoat. A waitress, her sleeves showing that she was wearing more than one kimono, broke into a trot as though to warm herself. At one corner a young girl was selling flowers, her hair wrapped in a scarf. Street singers stood with accordions and guitars slung from their necks. Sushi and octopus stalls were set up along the street, and it was to one of these that the hostesses were leading their drunken patrons. Steam from the noodles cooking within poured out through the door curtains of a Chinese restaurant. As Onodera plodded on, he suddenly recalled, for some reason or other, that the Omizutori would soon be enacted at Nigatsu Temple in Nara. A shudder ran through him that had nothing to do with the cold. Were these annual ceremonies to end?

He felt his awareness dimming even as his fears and passion grew stronger. All the sake he had drunk earlier had had no effect at the time, but now he found himself overwhelmed. What had he done? Standing in the midst of that crowd before —had he cried out loudly? He suddenly feared that he might have done so. Crying out to passers-by, robbed of all control by his drunkenness . . . Worst of all, grabbing a man from the crowd, shaking him by the shoulders and bellowing: “Hurry up, get away!” Was this what he had done?

Caught between the shock of drunken release and the fear that, by force of that shock, he might have done something foolish, Onodera felt desolate. He hung his head as he walked. He felt himself bump into somebody. He dodged to one side and this time collided headlong with somebody else. When he tried to disengage himself, something that looked like a purse slipped from the hand of the other person, its clasp coming loose, and its contents spilling over the street.

“Ah . . .” said Onodera, shaking his heavy head, his features swollen. “Excuse me . . . please.”

When he bent over and tried to pick up the compact, handkerchief, lipstick, and the rest, he tottered forward, almost falling on his face, catching himself then, but this time nearly falling on his back. Finally, as he squatted on the street, he suddenly heard a voice call from above.

“Mr. Onodera . . .”

“Huh?”

Onodera made out a pair of shiny black women’s shoes somewhere below his hanging head. Higher up, he saw as he slowly raised his eyes, was a pair of black velvet slacks. And at that moment a hand gently touched his shoulder as he squatted there.

“How I’ve been looking for you!” said the owner of the hand in a voice suddenly filled with emotion. “I want to talk to you.”

Feeling as though his skull were on the verge of splitting, Onodera finally lifted his head and, with great effort, opened his swollen eyelids.

A woman’s strong-featured face was smiling at him. Her skin was dark and her hair was bound in a headband. It was Reiko Abe.

6

“The lateral pressure from the Japan Sea coast is getting awfully strong,” muttered Nakata, peering at the three-dimensional light image of the Japan Archipelago suspended within the block screen and surrounded by a vast variety of colored dots and lines. “It’s more than we bargained for.”

“And on the sea floor the elevation of the Yamato Rise, together with the intensity of its earth heat waves, has increased three times in the past week,” said a young man from the Weather Service in a low voice. “There’ll be eruptions, perhaps.”

“There’s quite a lot of energy stored up in the Noto Peninsula,” said Mashita, a university professor from the Earthquake Research Bureau, as he scanned the block screen with a polarized-light scope. “The portion to the north of the Hakui-Manao line is moving eastward. There might soon be an earthquake.”

“More so than that, how about this energy that’s gathered along the Itoigawa-Shizuoka structural line?” said a man from the National Geological Institute, his voice somewhat hoarse as he pointed to the block screen. “According to our calculations, even though the limit of earth-crust flexibility has already been passed, the build-up of energy is continuing, going well beyond the theoretical limit.”

“What do you think, Mr. Nakata?” asked Mashita. “It seems to me that, whatever else, we have to conclude that some phenomenon previously unknown to us is at work beneath the Japan Archipelago. In effect it’s as though a portion of the downward current of the mantle is passing beneath the Archipelago and is beginning to jut out on the Japan Sea side.”

“Yes, so it seems. Tonight we’ll run a thoroughgoing simulation and see what we can come up with.”

Five men, including Yukinaga, were constantly at work in the Display Room. The Defense Agency computer, which handled the complex calculations, was not available to them during the day, and so yet another sleepless night was in prospect.

The evening was spent in preparation. In the room were seven cathode-ray-tube devices connected to the computer. Yukinaga, besides working one of the CRTs, had the task of running the videotape recorder cameras which photographed the block screen from different views. Finally, some time after two in the morning, Nakata stood in front of the huge plastic block and gave the signal to begin.

No more than two minutes had passed, however, before he gave a startled cry: “Stop! Come here and take a look at this.”

Yukinaga, after manipulating the buttons on the control board to stop the action, came running up to the screen, joined by the others. They all peered into the plastic block. Yukinaga caught his breath. The three-dimensional pattern of the Japan Archipelago, drawn in pale glowing phosphorescent lines, had broken in two at its center and tipped to one side. The sheet of light that indicated energy distribution, varying from orange to red, surrounded the tipped mass of the Archipelago, pulsating in sinister fashion, now weakly, now strongly.

“Has Japan already sunk?” asked Yukinaga, his voice shaking.

“Completely sunk,” muttered Nakata grimly. “Furthermore, before it sinks, it will break in two.”

“Isn’t that a bit fast?” said Mashita, looking at his watch, his face white. “Couldn’t there have been some error in the time scale?”

“No chance of that,” said the young man from the Weather Service, glancing back at his CRT. “The scale was the usual: 3.6 × 10⁴ . . . 36,000 seconds. One second being equivalent to about one hundred hours.”

“Give me a reading on the time up to this point.”

“120.32 seconds,” said the young man. “Therefore, 11,232 hours.”

“11,200 hours,” Yukinaga muttered. “Why, that’s . . .”

“A year and three months, I believe,” said Nakata, rapping the display block with his fingers. “Let’s take a closer look at it, from the very beginning. This time let’s drop the time scale to a quarter of what it was. 0.9 × 10⁴—one second equals twenty-five hours.”

Everyone hurried back to his post. The phosphorescent image in the block faded from sight, and they were back at the beginning.

The needle on the illuminated clock began to revolve, the ping of each second sending a chill through the silent room. Then came the tapping of CRT keys and the noise of electronic printers. Finally, much more deliberately than before, the three-dimensional image began to move. As though in slow motion, unfolding leisurely as scattered red lights, orange lights, yellow lights flashed on and off like will-o’-the-wisps. In the midst of these bright points a pulsating sheet of multicolored light took form. Waving as it came, it fastened itself to the long, arc-shaped light image and began to contract upon it. Its ill-omened beauty was like that of a huge, luminescent devilfish attacking the pale, glowing form of the Japan Archipelago.

The first movements of the light image were almost undiscernible. As the intervals between flashes decreased., the points of lights began to form lines. The yellows and oranges began to decrease, and the reds gradually increased, growing ever more intense.

“Stop!” cried Nakata once more.

“How much time up to here?”

“302 seconds, exactly.”

“Yukinaga, from here on, besides the VTR, take photos of each quadrant. . . every two seconds. And let’s halve the time scale.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to drop it to a quarter?” somebody asked.

“If you lower it any more, I don’t think the detail would be clear enough. All right, start it.”

Yukinaga threw the switches, and the second hand of the illuminated clock began to turn again. The tension in the room grew still more acute. The lights blinked slowly, and the waving of the light curtain took on a torpid, dreamlike quality. Only the busy whir of the six camera shutters intruded. The gleam of the red lights grew still stronger, the points growing together. They were like strings of red jewels laid against the coast of the Japan Sea and along both sides of the Izu and the Ogasawara Islands. Along the Pacific coast, following the line of the Japan Trench, a two-layered mass of glowing light took form, the upper green, the lower a vivid scarlet, steadily growing brighter.

“What’s that?” asked the geologist in a whisper. “I didn’t notice it before.”

“The green indicates the deficiency of the mass, an integral calculus with the gravitational irregularity,” said Yukinaga.

“Keep watching,” Nakata said in a low voice.

“Look! Beneath the Archipelago there.”

Two hundred kilometers beneath the surface, the layer of red light under the green seemed to be passing beneath the Archipelago in the form of flowing pink stripes. When these reached the Japan Sea coastline, their brightness grew more intense and they formed specks of light.

“What about those stripes?” asked Mashita in a whisper. “What can they mean? Could energy move that quickly at such a depth—all the way past the Japan Sea coastline?”

“I don’t know for certain how it could,” said Nakata, shaking his head. “But that’s the pattern as indicated by the computer data.”

“It’s begun,” said the Weather Service man, a taut edge to his voice. “The Archipelago is breaking apart.”

In the Central Region of the Japan Archipelago, beginning at a point east of Toyama Bay, a brilliant line of red light ran north and south. At the same time, innumberable thin red lines appeared all over the luminescent form of the Archipelago, distorting it. The waving green light mass on the Pacific side spread out to the east and, at the same time, began to sink, while the lateral movement of the stripes below grew frenzied. The pink light mass on the Japan Sea side grew still more immense and began to pulsate like a living thing. The eastern portion of the luminescent image of the Archipelago shifted slowly eastward, and the western portion southward, the whole mass now beginning to tip slightly. As the echoing ping of the seconds and the agitated buzz of the camera shutters continued, the pale image of the Japan Archipelago, still slightly tilted, slid down within the plastic block, a motion like the heaving of a sigh, and finally came to rest.

The pink on the Japan Sea side, the green on the Pacific side both faded. The points of red light forming the red lines began to decrease rapidly, and those that persisted changed from red to orange and then to yellow, flickering as their colors grew dimmer. .

“What’s the time?”

“Sixty-two seconds from the second start.”

“Putting that into days, it amounts to about thirty-two.”

“A change of this order taking place within one month?” Mashita gave an irritated sigh.

“How about the movement of the Archipelago?” asked Yukinaga.

“The lateral movement—twenty-seven miles at most. The vertical movement is minus one and a half miles. The eastern portion moves east-southeast on a line that forms an acute angle of almost thirteen degrees with the geodesic line, while the western section slides south at an angle of six degrees. As for Kyushu, the entire island revolves to the left, sliding its south side around to face east.”

“The vertical movement is minus one and a half miles,” muttered the geologist from the institute. “In that case, the mountain regions will remain.”

“Even if they do, it will do precious little good,” said Nakata. “Don’t forget the landslides and the eruptions. Nor is this the end of things. The sinking will go on.”

“That’s right,” said the young man from the Weather Service, studying the CRT figures. “Even after the radical movement is over, both the sinking and the lateral movement will continue at an average rate of several inches a day.”

“And when is this going to happen?” asked Yukinaga hoarsely.

“According to our model, at the 302nd second,” said the meteorologist, his voice quavering. “In terms of days, 312.54.”

“Less than a year,” said the geologist, with an anguished sigh. “Ten months . . . about . . .”

The group stood about the plastic block as though numbed. A mere ten months was all that was left.

The blood seemed to be draining from Yukinaga,, He felt as though he were about to vomit. The floor seemed to be dissolving beneath his feet. In a mere ten months it would begin. What could possibly be done within so short a period?

Nakata, his eyes raised to the bulletin board, folded his arms and stood rigid as a statue. But then, abruptly making his decision, he picked up the phone.

“Are you calling the secretary general?” asked Yukinaga.

“No, the Prime Minister,” said Nakata brusquely as he pressed the call button.

“When will you disclose to us your evacuation program?” asked the leader of one of the independent parties. “You must have it fairly well in hand by now. At the time of the public announcement in two weeks, you’ll have to give out some sort of outline at least. Otherwise there’d be an uproar, wouldn’t there?”

“Since the obvious course would have been to set up a nonpartisan committee to deal with this crisis,” said the leader of the major opposition party with a frown, “forgive me if I seem ungracious at hearing the news. The government of the administration party, while keeping this from us, has for some time now been secretly pouring it into the ears of the business world. And what’s happened already is that our industrial assets are beginning the flight abroad without anyone knowing about it. The government has the obligation to administer equal justice to all, and what kind of behavior is this partiality shown finance and industry but the grossest sort of inequity? I think that it is but another instance showing the perverse character of the administration party. And with regard to plans for evacuation, what I want to know is this: is the saving of the life of every citizen of Japan the thing that is given priority above all else, or isn’t it? Mr. Prime Minister, before a non-partisan group looks into the matter, I would like to hear from you with regard to this point.”

“Let this be understood: our overriding intent is to save the lives of the entire Japanese people, making no exceptions whatsoever,” answered the Prime Minister. “To accomplish this we are making use of every means at our disposal. However, what about after the disaster? How are 110 million people going to live from then on? The government is obliged to face up to this problem also.”

“Well and good,” said another party head. “But, judging from the conduct of your party, it seems to me that you gentlemen, while giving lip service to the worth of human life, have in fact been most concerned with planning for the continuance of the financial and industrial life of this nation and, more than that even, for the continuance of the nation itself and its structure. Rather than the people, rather than individual men and women, it’s the nation and its structure that are more precious to you—the kind of bureaucratic thinking that goes back to prewar days, and it looks as though it’s never going to be rooted out. The kind of spirit that in the past has thought nothing of sacrificing fifty thousand or a hundred thousand lives for the sake of the prestige of the nation and the structure behind that prestige doesn’t fade so easily. But, at any rate, here’s what I wish to know: leaving the future to take care of itself, throwing aside prestige and formalities and hypocritical bureaucratic posturing about equal justice and everything of that ilk, is it your intention or is it not, Mr. Prime Minister, to throw yourself headlong into the task of saving the Japanese people, and to hell with structures?”

“Ogata . . .”

All at once the leader of the third largest of the opposition parties spoke up in his heavy, deep voice, which was like the lowing of a bull. It was a voice of crushing force, forged in the fierce debates and speeches of a long political career.

“You said a short time ago that politics was a backstage affair. But this way of thinking that all political matters can be settled backstage is where your party, with its bureaucratic way of running the government, has most gone astray since the war. And I think that this is the reason why most Japanese think of politics as a crafty, sinister business. Certain backstage activity is necessary in politics. But, at the same time, it is absolutely essential to go onstage, too. Especially in this crisis that brings us to the brink of national disaster. I feel that all is lost unless there emerges a ‘nation-saving hero’—a man of stalwart determination, a man who will give light to a fearful people, who will point the way, who will stiffen our resolve, a man with the strength to act forcefully, the strength to snatch the nation from the jaws of ruin. . . . Now, Ogata ... is there anybody in your party, not excluding yourself, fit to perform this vital onstage role? Do you think that you have strength and popular favor enough to turn yourself into the furious devil himself, Ashura, to take hold of the people and slash your way through the danger? Calling on a friendship that goes far back to when we were in school together, I beg your leave to speak frankly. Your political conduct has been a model of bureaucratic prudence, but—pardon me for saying so—I can’t see you as having anything like the resolution necessary to see the country through this crisis.”

“It’s a role, in other words, that you yourself will have to take, then?” said the Prime Minister, a somewhat stiff half-smile forming on his face. “Mr. Atsumi, as yet I have no idea whether or not you will be nominated to head the coalition Cabinet. As for myself, I don’t necessarily think that I have the ability that’s needed to see this crisis through. However, until such time as your ‘nation-saving hero’ makes his appearance, I have no choice but to put every ounce of strength into the task of somehow fulfilling the duties now entrusted to me. And then, too ... in present-day Japan the memories of the War are still vivid, and I have the feeling that there are very many Japanese who have had their fill of ‘nation-saving heroes.’ They feel in their bones, you see, that heroes and the cult of heroes have had a disastrous effect upon Japan and the lives of the Japanese people.”

“Well, at any rate,” said the head of the major opposition party, breaking in, “we would like you to give to our representatives just as quickly as you can a thorough explanation of Plan D and of the evacuation program insofar as it’s drawn up to date. We can’t very well wait two weeks until the Diet session.”

“Of course. We have the preparations all in order,” said the secretary general of the Cabinet. “Once you’ve had a conference of your chief secretaries and pick your representatives, we’ll be ready at any time to do as you direct.”

“You’ll have your conference in two days, I believe?” said the Prime Minister. “Two weeks is the time we’re aiming for, but the situation is such that the news might leak out at any time, from some source or other. Our foreign ties present a special risk. In that case, we’d have to make an immediate public declaration. So, gentlemen, I’ll be depending upon your good will. ...”

“It looks as though European financial circles have gotten on to something,” said the head of the International Monetary Bureau of the Treasury. “This morning large-scale selling of Japanese bonds began. We’re supporting them by buying through figurehead groups, but if this flood of selling keeps up, it’s going to take a toll of our purchasing assets.”

“I think we’d be best advised to let things ride for a bit,” said the president of a certain private exchange bank. “If things go down some and small investors get out, I think that would be to the good.”

“What’s the present withdrawal rate?” asked the Minister of the Treasury.

“Very soon it will be fifty percent.”

“Maybe it would be good to hold it temporarily at about fifty-five percent,” muttered the Minister. “After that we’ll just have to let it drop as far as it will go.”

“I wondered if anyone has discovered that we’re using our assets to buy,” said the president of the Bank of Japan in a low voice.

“It’s hard to say,” said the Bureau head. “The idea is to move deliberately and not stimulate the market, but the rate of increase is steadily climbing.”

“In view of the way that European and American financial interests are manipulating their speculations, this cashing in of bonds seems to indicate that we’re foolishly letting ourselves be taken advantage of,” muttered the president of the exchange bank. “We shouldn’t throw good money after bad. I think that now is the time to let them take a bit of punishment.”

“Fine—in any other circumstances but the present,” said the president of the Bank of Japan. “But even if hard-eyed financiers call us foolish, we must consider this: it’s a matter of the Japanese people losing their very homeland and thus being dependent upon the good will of the rest of the world. We cannot trick either individual investors or even large financial groups and pin the loss on them. We cannot afford enemies. Nor are we going to be reduced to the level of beggars. Rather, holding tight to what is our own, what we must do is see this thing through in such a way, hard though it be, that no other nation suffers loss from the sinking of Japan. If we do this, bitter pill though it be at the time, we will reap untold benefits in the not too distant future. Our ancestors in the Meiji Era started out empty-handed and conducted themselves in such a way as to win the respect of the world.”

“But the question is, I’m afraid, to what extent such purity can stand as currency in world society,” said the head of the International Monetary Bureau.

“It will stand, all right,” said the president of the Bank of Japan forcefully. He had a magnificent head of white hair. “And more than that, going beyond politics as such, nothing like an international industrial society can ever come into being without such a conviction. In the long run, I believe this has to be so.”

“Come to me. . . .” Reiko’s whisper sounded in his ear. When he heard it, he remembered that night at Hayama, which already seemed like part of the far-distant past. Now, in place of the bracelet transistor radio whose music had irritated him as they lay together, there was piped-in music that filled this narrow airport-hotel room. For Onodera, Reiko’s amber skin seemed to have kept the scent of sand, of sand still warm from the torrid rays of the sun. In the very nadir of drunkenness, desire flamed up, and he grabbed hold of her desperately, roughly caressed her breasts, fixed his mouth upon hers, and did not let her go until, finally, he had wrung passionate, drawn-out cries from her.

“I want to get married,” said Reiko, her panting body, awash in sweat, held fast within his arms. “I looked for you all over . . . afterward. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why?” he whispered, his cheek pressed against her breast, white in contrast to the rest of her torso, still tan from last summer’s sun. “Why me? You have all sorts of fine boy friends. Me, whom you met only once ...”

“And the night we met I made love with you on the beach, didn’t I?” Reiko smiled. “I was drunk, yes, but still... I wonder why. Why this man who had just appeared . . . why did I suddenly feel I wanted you? The group that was there that night —I knew most of them for a long time, but I never let any of them make love to me.”

“Well . . . you were drunk,” said Onodera, smiling.

Reiko pinched his back lightly with her nails. “I was awfully embarrassed afterward, you see. I thought maybe you’d think I was a sort of nymphomaniac, somebody who slept with anybody at all. But then I realized something. Because I did make love with you, I knew that you couldn’t be the kind of man who would think that of me.”

But why? Onodera asked her, holding to the question. Why had she picked him?

“I don’t know, but . . . That night . . . How was it now?”

She had felt as though she wanted to look at the sea, Reiko whispered. She loved scuba diving, and she had tied a women’s record in it. When she sank down, head over heels, all alone, into the gloomy depths spreading out above, below, on every side of her, she loved the isolation she felt at that moment, the chill water gripping her.

“I feel lonely then, I feel so isolated I want to break into tears, but I feel happiness, too. I’m like a fragment of a falling star plunging through empty space, but I’m totally happy. The cold water embraces me. And though I’m all alone, the blue-black water, the wavering seaweed, the fish swimming like clouds of silver ... I feel as though I’m one with all of these. And that’s when this forlorn, isolated happiness that makes me want to cry takes hold of me. . . . But wait! Now I see. I felt just this way, you see ... the first time you held me in your arms. Why, I don’t know, but the feeling was just the same. Even though I didn’t know then that you piloted a deep-sea submarine, I sensed the sea inside of you. That’s it! It was as though the vast, limitless sea, which had ever held me in its embrace, had seen the tears behind my mask and had taken the form of a young man and taken me in its arms.”

Reiko then took his head in both her hands and, lifting it, looked deeply into his eyes. Her expression was like that of a little girl.

“Will you marry me?”

Instead of answering, Onodera gripped her naked body with crushing force, sucked her lips into his mouth, and once more thrust himself forcefully into her still-wet body. It was as though, holding his breath, he were plunging deep down into the warm waters of a tropic sea. Kicking out, reaching out, twisting his body, pushing his breath to the limit, plunging deeper, still deeper. Then in the inky blackness of the ocean floor, with his lungs about to explode, he took hold of the stars that glittered gold, scarlet, blue in the depths. And then those stars burst into brilliant fragments that spread over the sky, scattering to every corner of it. Not uttering a sound, eyes fast shut, panting fiercely atop Reiko’s hot, sweaty belly held fast beneath him, Onodera at last came up from the depths and felt the buoyant ease of floating upon the waves. Head down, still breathing heavily, he experienced the rest that Reiko’s body had led him to.

He remembered then that it had been over a year since he had last been with a woman. And the woman had been Reiko. Since then, a year and a half. . . day after day, he had sat sealed within that steel ball, operating instruments, moving rapidly from one site to another, fighting wind and waves, carrying on the endless labor together with men whose eyes fatigue and anxiety had fixed in a glittering stare.

“You’re tired, aren’t you?” Reiko suddenly asked. Her beautiful lips abruptly parted, and her warm tongue licked up a single tear, which had wet his cheek without his having noticed it. As he took her in his arms again, this time gently, cherishing her, he repeated over and over to himself: I must rest. I must rest with this woman. What I thought was mere fatigue was my grief in the face of the fantastic disaster of Japan sinking . . . my fear, my heartbreak.

No more than a few days after the government’s decision to make a public announcement within two weeks, a disquieting rumor began to spread through the country. A terrible earthquake and volcanic eruptions far more destructive than the last were going to hit Japan. This time Tokyo would be leveled, and Chiba and the Sagami Bay coast would sink to the bottom of the sea. There was nothing to do but to flee abroad for a time. Though the newspapers had not printed one word of it, the rumor spread rapidly. People whispered about it with anxious faces in offices, in homes, on the street. Every airline was swamped with requests for tickets abroad for whole families. The planes of every international airline that flew into Japan left loaded to full capacity every day, and even though more planes were put into service, reservations piled up three months in advance. Steamship lines, too, began to sell out their passenger reservations.

The government was hit from all sides with questions prompted by the rumors. The faces of newspapermen gradually altered, their eyes became bloodshot, and the press room of every ministry began to echo with angry voices talking over the phone. Though there were still some days left till the opening of the special session, members of the Diet, were holding crowded meetings every day and harassing ministry officials with questions, demanding to know what was going on. Among the public, especially in Tokyo, the flood of wild rumors grew more intense. White-collar workers left the work on their desks untouched, but they came together in little groups in corners of their offices as though they needed contact with one another. What is going to happen, I wonder? Just what are we going to do? Is the government going to do anything for us or not?

Taxi drivers began to greet their customers by saying: “Is it true, do you think—about Tokyo going to sink?” Bookstores sold out everything having to do with earthquakes and geology. Everyone had become convinced that something was impending.

7

On March 11 an American geodesic group made an announcement that sent an electric shock through the world: a massive shift in the crust of the earth was taking place on the continental shelf of East Asia, with the Japan Archipelago at its center. This came three days before the government’s intended announcement.

The American statement came at two in the afternoon, Eastern Standard Time. It took the form of an urgent exchange between Dr. Eugene Cox, chairman of the geodesic group, and the director of a satellite research group. The expressions used in the conversation were extremely reserved, but the burden of it was that the information gathered in the previous months by satellites and survey ships pointed toward an immense change, an alteration of the crust of the earth on a scale altogether unprecedented. And it would come, at the latest, within a year. When one of the reporters asked if the area described did not in fact take in the whole of Japan, Dr. Cox’s response was unequivocal: the Japan Archipelago would be at the focal point of the change.

Pressed for detailed information, the chairman avoided a direct answer, but said: “Well, it’s the kind of thing that makes you think of the Atlantis legend.” This was enough to galvanize the reporters. Three hours after the American announcement, the AFP in Paris, citing an “unimpeachable source,” sent out the sensational headline: “Day of Japan’s Destruction Approaching.”

An hour and a quarter before the Diet session was to open, almost all its members had already taken their places. At precisely one o’clock the presiding officer declared the session open, and the Prime Minister immediately stepped up to the podium, a grave expression on his face. Strobe lights flashed, and the television cameras zoomed in on him. He picked up his speech, coughed faintly, and, in a somewhat subdued voice, began to read it.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Diet, as the one holding the foremost responsibility in this nation, it is my duty to inform you that Japan is now confronting an unprecedented peril, something that could well be termed national disaster.”

Just as the Prime Minister was beginning his talk, Onodera, wearing a topcoat and carrying a suitcase, appeared in the door of the D-l room at Plan D headquarters. Though it was time for the afternoon’s work to be under way, most of the men were crowded into the conference room to listen to the Prime Minister on television. The office next to the Display Room stood nearly empty. In a corner of it Yukinaga and Nakata, listening to the speech on a portable radio, were smoking with weary expressions on their faces.

Seeing Onodera, Yukinaga raised his hand. “You’re going today?”

“Yes. A three-thirty flight out of Narita.” Onodera smiled faintly, but his expression was melancholy, and he seemed ill at ease. His work was finished. He had faithfully discharged his duties, and yet . . .

“It’s good you are. After this speech, tickets and foreign currency alike will be hard to come by.”

“He’s begun to tell them.” Onodera indicated the radio with a nod.

“As some of you may have heard on the news broadcast from abroad this morning,” came the Prime Minister’s voice, “in the near future a vast change in the crust of the earth will occur, with the Japan Archipelago at its center. Japanese scientists and research organizations set up by the government have informed me of the certainty that this will deal an annihilating blow to our homeland. ...”

“I suppose that this is the first time the Prime Minister of Japan has ever been on radio and TV all over the world,” said Nakata quietly. He laughed faintly.

“... The various aspects of this change and the time of its occurrence became evident only recently. According to the forecast of our research groups, this change will occur within one year. And it will not only cause immense destruction in every part of the country through earthquakes, but the fact is that Japan in practically its entirety will sink into the ocean. ...”

A phone rang. Nakata picked it up and hung up after a brief exchange.

“Mount Fuji is showing more and more acute signs of erupting. Smoke is pouring up from two or three spots in the Hoei crater. In Hakone there have been smoke and minor explosions in Kamiyama and Owaku Valley.”

“Mount Fuji?” Onodera muttered. An ill-omened shadow seemed to pass over him.

“Evacuation began in that area yesterday. The earth’s been rising at the rate of nearly an inch a day in Tonozawa and two a day to the north of Mount Ashitaka.”

“Well, goodbye, gentlemen,” said Onodera. “I hope we meet again somewhere in the world.”

At that moment the glasses and ink bottles on the desks in the room began to rattle. A pencil rolled off and fell to the floor, and there was a light crack as the lead inside snapped.

“It’s started,” whispered Nakata, turning to the window behind him.

“It looks like it.” Yukinaga got up and stood beside him.

The window did not have a direct view of Mount Fuji, but a huge gray mushroom-shaped cloud was rapidly rising and spreading over the clear, pale blue March sky. Shock waves rattled the glass.

“This is going to be big,” said Nakata.

“Should we go up to the roof to see?”

The phone rang again. Yukinaga took it this time. His voice grew loud. The connection was apparently a bad one. Then, as though suddenly realizing who the party was, his expression changed and he held the phone out to Onodera.

“It’s for you. . . . It’s a woman.”

Onodera lunged for the phone.

“Hello, hello ...” Loud static crackled in his ear. Someone was shouting at the other end. “Hello, hello ...” The distant voice was Reiko’s.

“Where are you?” Onodera shouted into the phone, covering one ear with his hand.

“I’m at a place ... off the Manazuru Road. . . . Traffic is blocked.”

“The Manazuru Road?” Onodera’s voice grew louder in his excitement. “What are you doing there? We’ve got to be at Narita by three-thirty.”

“Yesterday ... it came up suddenly ... to Izu ...” The static, together with shouting in the background, grew so loud that he could make out little of what Reiko was saying. “. . . by train, but . . . early this morning ... I started to drive, but ...”

“Hello, hello . . .” Sweat began to roll down Onodera’s body. “I can’t hear you!”

“I got as far as here . . . eruption, stones . . . the road was blocked. ...”

There was a booming noise in the background, and then the sound of hard objects striking, like heavy hail on a roof. He heard the drawn-out screams of women and the cries of children. He heard the crackling sound of wood shredding and of breaking glass.

“Hot ashes are falling. Everything is white outside. Hot stones are flying through the air....” Suddenly he heard Reiko clearly. “Toshio—we were going to go together. You go ahead to Switzerland. Go ahead! I’ll meet you, whatever happens.”

“Reiko, no . . .” said Onodera, shouting into the phone as he gripped it tightly with his sweaty hand. “Don’t talk like a fool.”

A thunderous roar sounded in his ear. There were screams, the sound of the earth groaning, of something falling. Reiko’s voice had risen to a desperate pitch, but he was able to catch only a single word.

“. . . Geneva . . .”

There was a terrible crash, and the connection was cut. Nothing sounded in his ear but a faint hum.

Onodera stood stunned. The blood seemed to be draining out of his body. Covered with sweat, he turned to the window, and as he stared out, his eyes wide and frantic, he felt tears wetting his face.

“What’s the matter?” asked Nakata. “Onodera, where are you going?”

Onodera’s tall figure, however, had already disappeared through the door.

“... Such being the circumstances, then, I would call upon the entire nation to remain calm.^,, The Prime Minister’s voice was still coming from the radio. Now he was addressing the people of Japan directly. “I ask your cooperation in the maintenance of order. Whatever course events take, this administration, this legislative body will give itself wholly to the task of saving the life of every Japanese in the face of the coming destruction. ...”

Some minutes after the eruption began, the first sound wave struck, having covered some fifty miles. It was like a thunderclap, shaking the whole sky. Once more the room vibrated with shock. Yukinaga, still in the doorway, instinctively glanced out the window. A pall of smoke already lay over the western horizon.

The great eruption of Mount Fuji, occurring on March 12 at 1:21 P.M. just as the Prime Minister was addressing the nation, began with an explosion on its southeast side, about 1,000 yards from the peak, followed by the bursting open of some twenty craters of varying size, one after another, on the slope below, spewing forth gas, ashes, and fiery projectiles. And at almost the same time several peaks to the southeast erupted. Fiery ashes and rocks bombarded the area, blocking the Tokyo-Nagoya Expressway and cutting both the regular Tokkaido Line and the Super Express.

The first eruption went on for about two hours. And then, after a brief lull, at about 3:45 P.M. there was a tremendous explosion near the peak which carried off the entire crest of the mountain. At the same time a vast crater opened on the northern slope and a flood of lava came pouring out, for the first time in 900 years, rolling down the slope and turning the forests below into a sea of fire. The lava swallowed up a village and a cluster of resort hotels and poured into the Sai and Motosu lakes at the foot of Fuji. This cataclysm, though in fact no more than a prelude, raged for some six hours, and then there was a slackening off which lasted for about four hours. During the entire period a heavy, muddy rain fell, mixed with volcanic ash. Finally, at 1:25 A.M. on March 14 an earthquake struck the area to the southwest, and three minutes later a massive eruption blew the top of Mount Fuji into the air and split the entire mountain on a northwest-southeast line, transforming it at one stroke. Energy stored up for more than 20,000 years, trapped in a volcano that was expected never to erupt again, tore Fuji asunder, and the rain of rocks and ashes, the flood of lava, the shock waves killed more than 20,000 people. Fuji shrank in height by some 2,000 feet, and the entire district sank more than three feet. The lovely, cone-shaped mountain that had been celebrated from the era of the Manyoshu poems as the symbol of Japan was turned into a scarred crater, a hellish caldron several miles in diameter—one, moreover, that was split in such a way that it appeared to be two mountains. The volcanic ash that fell from the sky reached a depth of six feet in the vicinity of Odawara, three feet in Kofu, and in Tokyo itself four to eight inches in some places. A light coat of it covered even the runways of Narita Airport, nearly thirty miles away.

On March 22 a message came from the Plan D field group in central Japan to the Policy Committee informing them that Eastern and Western Japan, divided by the fossa magna, were beginning to slip away from each other at a considerable rate. At present the rate was several millimeters a day, and it was gradually increasing. By mid-April, the report said, the rate would most likely be several inches a day.

8

The Japan Archipelago would sink within a year. The government’s announcement shocked the world, but the reaction in Japan itself was strangely calm, though it might be more accurate to say that the news had plunged the Japanese into an enervated, ominous silence. There were those who ran outside screaming, but such cases were extremely rare. As they listened to the Prime Minister’s address, a hard, blank expression came over people’s faces. When the broadcast had ended, the only show of emotion was, for the most part, a faint sigh. It may have been that the news was so fantastic that, for the moment, everyone was at a loss how to respond to it. At factories and offices, most workers kept on staring at the television screen as though hypnotized as they listened to the commentary and explanation that followed. There were a good number, however, who stole quietly away, and one minute after the Prime Minister had finished speaking, telephones began to ring all over Japan: Did you watch television? . . . Did you hear the speech? . . . Japan sinking—what do you think of that? . . . What are you going to do? . . . Hello, it’s me. Did you hear the news? . . . Yeah, I’m coming home. I’ll be right home anyway. . . . Call the children home from school. . . .

The strange thing was that there were no discussions in factories and offices. There everybody avoided each other, while some ran to the telephone and others sat thinking, looking off into space uneasily, drumming their fingers upon the tops of desks or tables.

People walked rapidly, spurred by the fear of being hit by the hard chunks of ash falling from the sky. Taxis raced by at reckless speed as though unwilling to stop to pick anyone up. Their drivers were transformed, as they listened to their radios, from men at work to fearful individuals with one thought on their minds: to get home to their families as quickly as possible.

Home! It was as though the people of this great city were crying out with a single voice as they hurried along through the rain of gray-brown ash. To get home—and then what? What could be done? Though this was the thought that loomed up dimly in the heart of everyone, no one confronted it. For now, what had to be done was to get back to one’s family. After that there would be time to think about what to do.

The Japan Archipelago continued to shake convulsively. There were earthquakes registering a strength of four in every part of the country, from Hokkaido to Kyushu. Mount Aso, in the south, and Tokachi Peak, in the north, erupted at almost the same time. The tunnel connecting northern Honshu and Hokkaido had already been made unusable by flooding the previous month, and now, at the beginning of April, the rail and traffic tunnels linking Kyushu and Honshu were destroyed in the wake of a magnitude-seven earthquake which rocked Western Japan. It left the bridge over the Shimonoseki Straits so twisted that it was closed to any but light vehicles. More eruptions followed on Kyushu, and its Pacific shoreline began to sink at the appalling speed of nine feet a day. There were further eruptions in western Honshu.

In the face of all this, the people remained calm, docilely waiting to hear what the government had to say, but since the promulgation of the general plan of evacuation, there had been nothing in the way of detailed instructions. And so the days passed, and those who lived near the international airports would gather to watch the hasty departure of the big jets carrying priority personnel. Though their faces seemed without expression, their eyes, bit by bit, began to manifest growing anxiety and mistrust. Who were these people, they wondered, who were filling the planes now that the government was running everything? The rich? The families of officials? Ward-office hangers-on? How about us? Are we going to be left till last and then abandoned when things get too dangerous? They did not put their discontent into words as yet, but it grew more intense each time they saw a departing jet climbing into the sky.

They still had faith in Japan, however, still had faith in their government. Moreover, they made every effort to strengthen this faith. The government would do something. The government would not abandon them. For politicians and officials were, after all, Japanese just like themselves—a historically rooted sense of identity that everyone shared. The Emperor had had but to speak, and the war had ended. And in the present crisis the nation was waiting in submission for whatever the government had to say, giving it the benefit of every doubt. This was the fundamental spirit of the Japanese, however critical, enraged, or vituperative they could be toward their nation on occasion.

This spirit, however, was being put to the test. The possibility of panic could not be ruled out. People were tending to let their eyes rove anxiously as though looking for a way out. At first whenever two such glances would meet, there would be a quick averting of eyes. But, gradually, people began to seek each other’s eyes, as though to share their sense of being trapped. And as everyone looked on with grim, pale faces, small quakes came and went unrelentingly, and volcanic ash kept falling.

9

“A reply has come from China,” said Kunieda to Nakata at the headquarters of the Evacuation Committee. “They want it kept confidential, but they’ll take two million people right away and seven million eventually. And perhaps they might be willing to take still more after negotiations.,,

“Why, that’s incredible,” said Nakata. “No matter how big China is, its per-capita income is too low for that. What about the food supply?”

“Well, what they want are farmers . . . and skilled workers, too.”

The United Nations had formed a committee to direct the Japanese relief operation, and gradually it began to take measures, including the formation of a plan for the distribution of refugees in which all the navies of the world would cooperate.

The topic taken up at the first closed session of the committee was the troublesome one of the manner of distributing the refugees. Wilson, the Canadian delegate, proposed considering a distribution based upon each nation’s proportion of the world population. A delegate from one of the small nations protested that something like that was far too mechanical. He insisted that a host of other factors be considered, such as the country’s economy, political situation, and long-range outlook.

“There would certainly be the ideal,” replied Chairman Sabayo, “but it’s obvious that there is no time for all that. Japan has been negotiating privately for some time, and there is still no place allotted for three quarters of her population. What we are concerned about now, gentlemen, is immediate succor— temporary refuge, not permanent homes. Once the refugees are safe, then there will be time enough for detailed negotiations.”

“It’s all very well to talk about temporary shelter,” said Dhabi, the Jordanian delegate, “but it could last for a long time and affect a country a great deal. Dirty refugee camps, outbreaks of disease, fights, clashes with the authorities—all sorts of trouble could arise.”

At that point Admiral Brubaker of the United States Navy, a special delegate, raised his hand. “If I might be allowed to put in something here . . . After the War I was involved with the repatriation of Japanese in China. And I was much impressed with how well behaved they were in those circumstances. There wasn’t the least difficulty.”

“But of course,” said Denisigyn, the Russian delegate, breaking in. “Groups of Japanese are very submissive and easy to handle—as long as they’re not armed.”

“And all those I knew who served in the Occupation,” said the admiral, going on as though he had not been interrupted, “confirmed my impression.”

“But we all know from the Second World War that the Japanese are not always so peaceful,” said Malik of Indonesia. “What is going to become of the Japanese armed forces after the evacuation?”

“One suggestion is that they serve in a special UN force. Right now they’re charged with keeping order during the evacuation,” answered Katsarides, the evacuation director.

“In any case, gentlemen,” said Chairman Sobayo, “we have no cause to fear Japan now. Our task, rather, is the saving of her people. I beg you to realize the gravity of the situation and lay aside bitter memories. The tragedy that is about to overwhelm Japan is unprecedented in history. And what is on trial now is not Japan but our own humanity.” The idealism expressed was but to be expected from Sobayo, a Tanzanian who from his early youth had been active in the cause of African unity. “Please don’t think of this, gentlemen, as happening to one country in the Far East, but as something that’s happening to all of us, as something that exerts the strongest possible moral force upon us.”

A message was handed to the director, who ran his eyes over it quickly and passed it to Sobayo.

“I have an announcement,” said the chairman. “The People’s Republic of Mongolia informs us that they will take 500,000 Japanese refugees immediately and more later.”

There was restrained applause.

Denisigyn smiled faintly. “They certainly won’t lose anything by that, with all that land and so little population, gaining skilled Japanese.”

10

While the United Nations special committee was carrying on these intense discussions marked by a show of idealism, behind the scenes political activity was also at a peak. In Washington, Moscow, London, Paris, Peking, hot lines were constantly ringing, and the circuits were filled with voices talking in all sorts of languages, simultaneously translated. Diplomats of the second rank, who could travel without attracting too much notice, were forever on their way to conferences in every part of the world. The subject of all these negotiations did not escape the notice of journalists: how would the disappearance of Japan affect the Far East and, indeed, the world? Of prime importance was the long-range effect upon the military balance. Historically, Japan’s role had been one of vast influence in the Far East, both politically and economically. Once that presence was gone, what would happen? This is what the diplomats were so anxiously trying to ascertain as they hurried to develop new options and sought to grasp what was going on in the minds of their opposite numbers.

The Japanese government, the Defense Agency, and Plan D headquarters were besieged with inquiries. In Plan D headquarters, in turmoil because of its crushing work load, research papers disappeared and key personnel were constantly being asked to meet secretly with important foreigners. Foreign newsmen loitered about headquarters, and two staff members disappeared together with important papers.

“It’s a matter of life and death for us, but these foreigners don’t give a damn about that,” Yukinaga cried out in frustration and fatigue when Kataoka brought him the news that these two men had turned up abroad. “How could those two have done such a thing? Their work was vital to us.”

“Well, it won’t do any good to get angry about it,” said Nakata. “And, anyway, there’s nothing of much importance that we haven’t already told the International Geophysicists. What these people are interested in is the effect upon the surrounding area, and that’s something we haven’t had time to go into much. If these two want to investigate that for them, let them do it, and good riddance.”

In the meantime, as the earthquakes and eruptions continued, as the Pacific coastline sank, and as the lateral movement of the Archipelago became more apparent, the activity of Japanese society slowly began to wind down. People received their food ration every day, and as anxiety mounted to an explosive pitch, they waited for their local government offices to inform them of the location of their assembly points and their order of evacuation.

And all the while a muted power struggle was going on in the international political sphere. The American President announced that elements of the Atlantic Fleet as well as the entire Pacific Fleet would aid in the evacuation of Japan, but there was some indication that, besides humanitarian motives, the Americans were anxious to counter recent Russian moves in the Far East, activity brought about by the imminent demise of Japan. With Japan gone, there would be no strong non-Communist nation in Southeast Asia to back up South Korea. And with Japan, of course, would go the American naval bases at Sasebo and Yokosuka. Also a strain was put upon Japan relations with South Korea by the arrival of refugees, who were fleeing across the straits in whatever craft they could find. South Korea, already concerned about the damage that she would incur in the catastrophe to come, treated these refugees harshly and threatened to sink every boat intercepted. Reverberations from “The Japanese Problem” traveled around the world, reaching as far as South Africa.

In the United Nations, the special committee headed by Chairman Sobayo was in session eight hours a day.

“It looks like it’s going to be troublesome,” said Secretary Kitowa, of the Zambian delegation, as he and Sobayo sat in a corner of the delegates’ lounge. He glanced around the room as he spoke, a frown on his black face. “There’s been an unconfirmed report that South Africa has sent a number of units into Nambia.”

“Do you think they might have found out about the plan?” asked Sobayo, leaning forward as he pursed his thick lips.

“They could not have done that. We have not even broached it to the Nambian commissioners yet. But they probably see it as a possibility.”

Nambia, formerly a German possession called Southwest Africa, had been under the jurisdiction of South Africa until 1966, when the United Nations put an end to the South African mandate and put it directly under the United Nations. The plan that Sobayo and Kitowa were secretly refining was to have the General Assembly pass a directive providing for the settlement of a large number of Japanese refugees in Nambia, providing them with a security force. There were a number of advantages to such a plan. Nambia would benefit immensely from the introduction of the skilled Japanese, and then, too, the introduction of such Asians into Africa might help to lessen the prejudice felt in East Africa toward the native Asians there, the Indians.

“Well, if South Africa has started that sort of thing,” said Sobayo, standing up, “we had better bring our proposal to the attention of the commissioners immediately. At any rate, I shall be talking with the Secretary General. ...”

Just then there was a sudden flurry of activity in the lounge. Everyone was getting up and heading for the entrance, talking excitedly.

“What’s going on?” Sobayo asked a passing clerk.

“They say there’s a special TV program, sir,” said the clerk, turning around. “Ed Hawkins of CBS is broadcasting from Japan by satellite. It’s about the sinking of Japan. It’s actually started, in Shikoku or some place like that.” The clerk hurried out.

“Shall we take a look?” asked Kitowa, starting to follow the crowd.

“Wait,” said Sobayo, laying a huge hand on the other’s shoulder. “Look there.”

With a nod of his head, the chairman indicated a corner of the room where a small gray-haired Oriental was standing quietly, paying no notice to the stream of people hurrying by him, his eyes fixed upon the red sunset that silhouetted the skyline of New York. He had taken off his glasses, and Sobayo and Kitowa could see, even from where they stood, that the hand with which he held them was trembling. The old man’s deep-lined face was lit by the sunset glow, and he was lightly dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. It was Shintaro Nozaki, the Japanese member of the special committee.