Well, she thought, it still sounds okay. Theme shrines are perfectly within tradition. After all, the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo commemorated the nineteenth-century emperor who began Japan's modernization. However, the thing to remember was that new shrines can have a philosophical subtext. The Meiji told the Japanese that their country had accepted Westernization. So, given that the creation of a new shrine can embody a message to everybody, she found herself wondering what word was being sent out this time.
The Emperor would go on to spell this out, lest any of his subjects were too dense to get the picture. Unlike the Yasukuni Shrine, he would say, this new memorial at Tsukuba would not commemorate Japan's warrior past; rather it would celebrate a modern Japan whose world eminence would be fashioned not with arms but through economic struggle. In so doing, it would symbolize the regeneration of Japan's ancient spirit, Yamato damashi, of which the bushido of the samurai was merely one manifestation, only a stage. Grander things were on the way. Japan's rightful place in the new world order was only now coming into its own. The new Tsukuba damashi would harness modern technology to Japan's ancient traditions, would put the new at the service of the old.
What he was really telling his people, she realized, in oblique language only they would comprehend, was that Japan was now prepared to wage open confrontation through commerce—their trading state pitted against the world's military states, whose economic base and martial ascendancy they would now proceed to challenge through technological superiority and cutthroat trade.
"Ken, does this mean what I think it means?" She passed back the yellow page.
"If you think it means Noda's got him now, then the answer is yes. He's co-opted the Imperial house." He took the sheet and returned it to his briefcase. "I'd bet you anything Noda himself wrote that speech. He's begun, Tamara. His total takeover, of America and Japan."
She sat a moment in silence, a strange sensation in her stomach. Did she believe it? She wasn't sure.
"Ken, there's something you should know. A colleague came with me on this trip. An American lawyer. Knowing him, he's probably still down in the bar. I'd like him to read this. Why don't we go down and I'll introduce you."
"Who is he? Can he be trusted?"
"As a matter of fact, he's an old friend. From a long time past. But we've been through a lot together lately."
He leaned back and sipped his beer. "Am I to assume this traveling companion is more than a casual friend?"