Chapter One: With a “Wow,” Only Ashes Remained

Dusk, Minato Ward, Tokyo, in front of the Tokyo Broadcasting TEB headquarters.

A middle-aged security guard lifted his head, gazing at the distant sky—in the gaps between the tall buildings, the sky glowed red, the overlapping clouds faintly darkened, tinged with purple, quite magnificent and spectacular.

But with the clouds this dark red, it’ll probably rain tonight, right?

Still, for a security guard, rain is a good thing—fewer people, fewer problems on rainy days. He glanced a few times and let it go, strolling back to the security booth at the main gate, picking up his cup and taking a sip of hot tea, feeling a slight sense of comfort—though just a humble security guard, he was still quite satisfied with his job.

At times like these, having a stable and official job is a blessing that many people can only dream of.

About three years ago, at the start of ’92, Japan’s bubble economy—the term he’d learned from the newspaper—suddenly burst. Land and houses lost their value, many companies inexplicably went bankrupt, even several banks closed down, and overnight, there were lines to jump off rooftops, while the parks were packed with dazed homeless people.

Now, though the number of homeless had started to decrease, the economy was still sluggish, layoffs had become routine, and it was the so-called era of great depression—finding a proper job was extremely difficult.

The good times were over.

Before the bubble burst, there were job openings everywhere, and companies fought over job seekers. He’d even heard that some top university graduates, after just submitting their resumes, were lured by big companies to stay at hot spring resorts, wined and dined, coaxed and cajoled into signing lifetime employment contracts, for fear they’d be poached by other firms...

As for the regular employees at the big trading companies and banks, it was said to be even better. Even as an ordinary worker, you could live a life of luxury—night after night at hostess clubs, all-you-can-drink champagne, steak until you were stuffed, and you couldn’t even get away with not doing it:

Did you spend your entertainment budget this month? Did you build good relationships with clients?

Didn’t spend it all? Useless! Don’t you have any ambition?

What? You only treated clients to sake and Japanese food and didn’t spend much? Are you keeping up with the times? Are you insulting the clients or the company?!

Go back and do it again, and show the spirit of a world-class company from the world’s number one economic power!

Damn it, these new hires really have no drive at all—how are we supposed to buy America like this?

...

It was practically a running joke in the newspapers. Though a bit exaggerated, back then, if you drank too much at night and needed a taxi, you had to wave a ten-thousand-yen bill between your fingers on the roadside, or the drivers wouldn’t even bother with you—there were plenty of people offering high fares, and normal prices just didn’t cut it anymore.

It was a crazy, dreamlike era, and now, three years later, jobs were hard to find, and it felt like everything that happened before was fake—Japan was suddenly teetering on the edge of ruin.

It really was like fireworks—suddenly bursting into dazzling brilliance, and then, with a “wow,” only ashes remained...

Could Japan’s potential really have been exhausted in that nationwide frenzy?

No, no, this is only temporary. The newspapers said this situation would last at most until early next year, but it’s already the end of the year and things don’t seem to be getting any better—what’s going on?

The security guard thought back on the past, feeling a bit sentimental and a bit confused—he was over forty, had lived through Japan’s golden age of economic growth and the happy era of personal wealth expansion. Though he’d never been to college and didn’t understand why the economy suddenly collapsed, that didn’t stop him from feeling regret for what was lost and uncertainty about the future.

Of course, the bubble’s collapse hadn’t really affected the TV station, so he was still in a relatively comfortable position, which gave him the leisure to sigh a little—perhaps out of a sense of shared fate, a kind of empathy for others’ misfortune. Many of his old friends were doing badly these days; quite a few couldn’t hold on and had left Tokyo to return to the countryside.

He sat in the security booth at the gate, lost in thought, his eyes instinctively watching the badges of people and vehicles coming and going. Suddenly, he spotted someone approaching the gate without a badge and immediately snapped to attention—in this never-ending depression, he couldn’t afford to lose his job. His family needed to eat, his kids needed to go to school—he absolutely couldn’t make a mistake.