1997-99
He woke to the sound of a prerecorded voice booming from the nationalists' minitruck rolling through their neighborhood, making the windows rattle. Shirtless on the tatami, his bare back pressed to the ribbed weave, he heard the voice as part of his dream and then part of the day, and then back into the dream again; a soundtrack threaded through two worlds.
In his dream he climbed a spiraling mountain peak, phallic and cartoonish, and he was alone and driven and perspiring. Awake he was hungover and tired and the sun shone metallic through the windows. It was 4 in the afternoon and the voice was singing in vowel-heavy Japanese about the pride of Japan, and about saving it, of course. That much he could decipher.
Kumiko was in the next room, cooking something. She banged a pan hard against the grill.