Flashback

“It can be, yes. Depending upon whether the Advisor and head of the keiretsu clan succeeds or fails here. Whether he gains honor or loses it. For you see, this is another thing that has returned in recent decades—the ancient and long-forgotten but deeply embedded centrality of honor and courage and sacrifice. The bushido, the way of the warrior that demands honor unto death, reigns once again in the thoughts and actions of many Nipponese.”

“Including whaddyoucallit, seppuku—ritual suicide—if you fail.”

“Oh, yes.”

“But what’s the point?” said Nick.

“The point, Bottom-san?”

“I’m talking about your Japan being a victim of the same demographics that killed Greece and Italy and Holland and Russia and those other countries we were talking about—declining birthrate. Greeks have all but disappeared. Half the European countries have seen their native populations mostly replaced by Muslim immigrants…”

“Yes, Bottom-san, but Nippon does not allow such immigration, Muslim or Korean or any other sort.”

“Yeah, but that’s not my point, Sato-san. Your birthrate is still declining. Your population was what—around a hundred and twenty-seven million or something when I was about twenty. Now, just twenty-some years later, it’s… what?… ninety million or something?”

“Closer to eighty-seven million, yes,” said Sato.

“And declining rapidly,” said Nick. “Almost forty percent of your population is sixty-five or older. That’s old, man. No more little Nipponese running around on the tatami mats to fill your jobs, man your factories, and enlist in your armies. What will it profit Nakamura—or any of the other keiretsu billionaire big shots—to become Shogun in a country where no one’s left but a few old farts?”

“Exactly,” said Sato. Ezacry. Nick was beginning to understand the fat sonofabitch without straining to. “This is why we must conquer China, Bottom-san.”

“Conquer China?” repeated Nick, his jaw sagging as far as it could in the helmet with its tight chin-strap. “I thought our guys were being paid to fight there for you as part of your contribution to the UN effort to help stop the Chinese civil wars.”

Sato said nothing.

“Your plan is to conquer China?” Nick repeated stupidly. “Eighty-seven million of you elderly Japs trying to conquer a country with a population of… what?… one-point-six billion people?”

“Exactly,” Sato said again and it didn’t sound quite so funny to Nick this time. “But China is a country of one-point-six billion people that has imploded far worse than your United States, Bottom-san. Economic disaster. Cultural chaos. Inflation. Stagnation. Riots. Revolt of the military. Total breakdown of their outmoded Communist political system. Warlords. Civil war.”

“So Japan is just trying to conquer a chunk of it.”

“Hai, Bottom-san. Merely a chunk. Perhaps a third of it—but the most productive third. Including Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. India—another UN ‘peacekeeper’ there—can have much of the rest. Negotiations with India are ongoing.”

Nick thought, India with its one-point-eight billion people or whatever it is now. Holy shit, Japan and India and Indonesia and the Islamic Caliphate are carving up the world while we freebase flashback and blow ourselves up.

Restraining the urge to weep again, or laugh, or bark at the moon just visible on the monitors rising above the smoke-hazy eastern horizon, Nick said, “And little Keigo Nakamura was going to be the heir apparent of this possible Shogun who may be ruling over a new empire of three-quarters of a billion people.”

“Probable Shogun,” said Sato. “And yes. Although a shogun is not exactly a king and although power does not always descend through the oldest—or only—son, if Hiroshi Nakamura becomes the first Shogun in one hundred and sixty-four years, Keigo Nakamura would have been the daimyo most eligible for ascension to the Shogunate upon his father’s death… if the other daimyos, keiretsu warlords, would have agreed.”

“All that going on,” murmured Nick, but the bead-microphone was clearly transmitting his murmurs, “and the stupid little twerp was over here in the States shooting a video documentary about flashback.”

“Yes,” said Sato.

“And you let someone kill him,” said Nick.

“Yes,” said Sato.

“Well, if that screwup didn’t earn you an order to commit seppuku from Old Man Nakamura, I can’t imagine what would,” said Nick.

“Yes,” said Sato.

“Boxcar One, this is Boxcar Two,” came ninja Willy’s voice over the truck-to-truck comm net. Willy was driving the second vehicle. “Do you see that boy on a horse, Sato-san? Over.”