I found Yukichi Arai eating fruit sherbet in the lobby of the Tokyo Station Hotel. It was hot, I agreed, whereupon he ordered another. After four days sitting in a booth at the Tokyo Book Fair at Tokyo Big Site, promoting his book (titled in "katakana" as "English Patience"), he felt the world deserving of treats. "I was most surprised to find our booth at the heart of the fair, surrounded by the biggest names in Japan."

Published in "Nihongo," "English Patience" is a very curious book. The largest part concerns the life and times of an Englishman who -- like Arai -- lives in Taiwan. "I call him Charles Anderson, but this isn't his real name." Anderson (as enigmatic and contradictory as the author himself) appears to be a one-off kind of character: He fought against Germany in World War II and the Japanese in Burma, supported partisans in Tito's Yugoslavia and helped hunt down -- and shoot -- pro-Red China communist guerrillas in Malaysia.

Whether this makes him a spy, a mercenary, a good guy or a bad guy is questionable. We were, I felt, entering a gray zone that made me feel both uncomfortable and yet intrigued. This is what happens after 14 years in Japan: black and white become diffused. The duality of the culture widens horizons but also reduces clear vision. Or is the other way around?

"I met Charles after he became trapped in Taiwan 28 years ago," Arai explained, combining rakish good looks with a strong command of English, French and Spanish, and a smattering of Chinese. "This was the time of Chiang Kai-shek, when freedom was restricted and foreigners had to meet in secret. A mix of journalists, businesspeople and academics in Taipei, we'd gather clandestinely, but always inviting along one government official as protection." And so the plot thickens.

Born in Tokyo in 1936, Arai was caught up early in the notion of resistance to systems and regimes. His family had all studied with entry to Tokyo University in their sights. "But I doubted this course. My father was furious, unable to understand why I chose deliberately to avoid a safe and easy future." While never joining the Communist Party, he was affiliated at one time with the Young Communist League and had to live underground to avoid U.S.-Japan postwar purges.

In 1956 he joined the languages department at Sophia University, and in '58 traveled in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia with a group concerned with postwar research. "We were supposed to represent Tokyo's top universities but were pretty low in numbers. In the second year, a Roman Catholic priest and a junior from Sophia took charge. Eventually the latter became dean of Sophia's foreign languages department, taking over when Sadako Ogata left to join the United Nations. Now he's a specialist on Angkor Wat, working with UNESCO."

Arai has for reasons of his own maintained a more moderate profile. He will only say he was dispatched by his machine tool employer as the vice manager of a branch in Taiwan in 1966. "My brief was to help develop the industrial base on the island. Economically it's been a great success, a model for democracy and industrialization. But when I see the changed environment, I do feel a sense of deep regret."

It was his friendship with Charles What's-his-name (who while never being an "English Patient" presumably displayed fathomless depths of English patience) that helped deepen such awareness. "A born soldier who helped defeat Rommel, he was a graduate of Leeds University, a zoologist who specialized in primates. My book describes his wartime exploits and his work for the World Primate Protection League."

Page 111, however, headed "Message of Warning from Taiwan to Japan," is where my own English patience began to be severely tested. Because while in large part Arai and I were in agreement, I sensed the historical revisionism of the World War II period that is creeping up on us, largely -- perversely -- unawares.

The deep concern that Arai feels regarding where Japan is heading at the beginning of the new century, is the reason he lives in Taiwan, rather than here. "I've given up all inheritance rights. When visiting I stay in the family house in Edogawa owned by my sister (a doctor in Tokyo) and my brother (a painter and cook who lives in Italy), but only because it's here and empty."

Ordinary Japanese today, he says, have no perception of danger either inside or outside the country. Having grown up in the rosy-hued accomplishments of postwar development, they have no sympathy for others in the world, and while being a developed nation in certain respects, totally lack an international mind. Tokyo cannot compare with any major city -- even Taipei -- for a global outlook. It is because of Japan's tendency toward ethnocentrism that people have no understanding of or real consideration for the foreign community.

"I've met Gov. Ishihara (in Taiwan) and yes, he was very frank and nice," Arai said. "But his unconscious racism is an open book. The mob easily welcomes that kind of style; it makes me very fearful for Japan's future."

Arai nodded vehemently when I noted that my local branch of Daiichi Kangyo Ginko had just replaced dual-system Japanese and English ATMs for new Japanese-only models, with the explanation that Japan is internationalized now, so an English facility no longer necessary. "Exactly: the facility was a passing fashion. There's no real concern for it as a service for foreigners."

There again Arai says that in some respects he agrees with Ishihara. The constitution should be changed so that the Japanese military can fully contribute to world peace. And regarding the Nanjing massacre, there is no doubt in his mind that a massacre did occur, but he believes the number of 300,000 dead "atrociously exaggerated" by the West. The city was not so big, he asserts; maybe only if you include all those living en route into the city who were killed. (Semantics, semantics. . . .) Similarly he believes that compared to officers of other nationalities, the Japanese military behaved relatively well.

Yet criticism of the contemporary situation continues unabated: Japanese have no philosophy and no ethics, allowing ultranationalists a one-sided free flow of opinion that finds fertile ground in vacant minds. July's G-8 summit in Okinawa? A means to an end: to "show up Japan." "There's no philosophical consideration for the world community. Ogata -- one of a handful of top-level Japanese in the global arena who are truly committed -- visited recently to tell Japan to get serious. Few Japanese diplomats have a genuine interest in international affairs."

Dragging Arai back to talk about himself was not easy. But he was enthusiastic about a "manga" he has created, explaining relations between Japan and Taiwan. "That was another thing I was doing at the book fair: making contact with possible publishers. Taiwan's a hot topic. Seventy percent of Taiwanese want independence, with young people very politically minded, unlike here. There's no legal solution; only power -- and we don't want to talk about that!"

There is also the book "Yen and Sword" he wrote between 1982 and 1989. But he never got around to signing a contract, and now it's too late. And if not too late, it certainly needs a postscript to bring it into the 21st century. "It was a response to (Ezra) Vogel's promulgation that the 21st century would be Japan's. I was against this then and believe time has seen me right. Sure, young people here accept computers, but they regard them as toys not tools. This where the West is way ahead."

Japan is selfish and inhuman, he insists. And the media are hopeless. Think of NHK with a table in the lobby for collecting money for refugees from Mount Uso in Hokkaido, and get the message; ignore the fact that 8 million are faced with starvation on the Horn of Africa. "Japanese media has no influence in the world. The Yomiuri sells 10 million papers daily and yet has no impact internationally -- not like The Washington Post or The Times. Why? Because they have no opinion."

Arai has a Japanese wife who spends as much time in the U.S. as Taiwan or Japan. This is because their married daughter -- a neural endocrinologist and former researcher at Harvard -- is now a Bostonian; she and her husband work in different departments of Massachusetts General Hospital.

Recently Arai, who has run his own company (Overseas Machinery and Enterprises Corp.) for the last decade, was in Hawaii, swimming with whales and dolphins. It seems he's quite a sporty kind of chap -- fond of martial arts (especially the more mystic kind), tennis and once also golf, but no longer. He still plays the odd game of softball ("inevitably I'm the oldest playing"). But mostly he swims.

Crawl? Backstroke? Butterfly?

"My own stroke. My own form of freestyle. I swim like a fish."

Just as I thought: a complex character with the very best intentions disarmingly double-wrapped in a very fishy tale.