23



Counting Sheep

*

The Thing in the Center of the Circle



A few days after Ushikawa's first visit, I asked Cinnamon to bring me a newspaper
whenever he came to the Residence. It was time for me to begin getting in touch with the
reality of the outside world. Try as you might to avoid it, when it was time, they came for
you.
Cinnamon nodded, and every day after that he would arrive with three newspapers.
I would look through the papers in the morning after breakfast. I had not bothered
with newspapers for such a long time that they now struck me as strange-cold and empty.
The stimulating smell of the ink gave me a headache, and the intensely black little gangs
of type seemed to stab at my eyes. The layout and the headlines' type style and the tone
of the writing seemed unreal to me. I often had to put the paper down, close my eyes, and
release a sigh. It couldn't have been like this in the old days. Reading a newspaper must
have been a far more ordinary experience for me than this. What had changed so much
about them? Or rather, what had changed so much about me?
After I had been reading the papers for a while, I was able to achieve a clear
understanding of one fact concerning Noboru Wataya: namely, that he was constructing
an ever more solid position for himself in society. At the same time that he was
conducting an ambitious program of political activity as one of the up -and -coming new
members of the House of Representatives, he was constantly making public
pronouncements as a magazine columnist and a regular commentator on TV. I would see
his name everywhere. For some reason I could not fathom, people were actually listening
to his opinions - and with ever increasing enthusiasm. He was brand-new on the political
stage, but he was already being celebrated as one of the young politicians from whom
great things could be expected. He was named the country's most popular politician in a
poll conducted by a women's magazine. He was hailed as an activist intellectual, a new
type of intelligent politician that had not been seen before.
When I had read as much as I could stand about current events and Noboru Wataya's
prominent place in them, I turned to my growing collection of books on Manchukuo.
Cinnamon had been bringing me everything he could find on the subject. Even here,
though, I could not escape the shadow of Noboru Wataya. That day it emerged from the
pages of a book on logistical problems. Published in 1978, the library copy had been
borrowed only once before, when the book was new, and returned almost immediately.

Perhaps only acquaintances of Lieutenant Mamiya were in terested in logistical problems
in Manchukuo.
As early as 1920, according to the author, Japan's imperial army was looking into the
possibility of amassing a huge inventory of winter sur vival gear in anticipation of all-out
war with the Soviets. Equipping the army to fight in bitter cold was viewed as an urgent
matter because they lacked the experience of having fought a real battle anyplace with
such extreme winter cold as Siberia. If a border dispute led suddenly to a declaration of
war against the Soviet Union (which was by no means out of the question in those days),
the army was simply unprepared to persevere in a winter campaign. For this reason, a
research team was established within the General Staff Office to prepare to fight a
hypothetical war with the Soviet Union, the logistics section being charged with in-
vestigating the procurement of special winter clothing. In order to grasp what real cold
was like, they went to the far northern island of Sakhalin, long a point of dispute with
Czarist Russia and then the Soviet Union, and used an actual fighting unit to test
insulated boots and coats and underwear. They ran thoroughgoing tests on equipment
currently in use by the Soviet Army and on the kind of clothing that Napoleon's army had
used in its Russian campaign, reaching the conclusion that it would be impossible for the
Japanese Army to survive a winter in Siberia with its present equipment. They estimated
that some two- thirds of the foot soldiers on the front lines would be put out of
commission by frostbite. The army's current survival gear had been manufactured with
the somewhat gentler northern China winters in mind, and it was lacking in terms of
absolute numbers as well. The research team calculated the number of sheep necessary to
manufacture sufficient effective winter clothing to outfit ten divisions (the joke making
the rounds of the team then being that they were too busy counting sheep to sleep), and
they submitted this in their report, along with estimates of the scale of mechanical equip-
ment that would be needed to process the wool.
The number of sheep on the Japanese home islands was clearly insufficient for
fighting an extended war in the northern territories against the Soviet Army in the event
of economic sanctions or an actual blockade against Japan, and thus it was imperative
that Japan secure both a stable supply of wool (and of rabbit and other pelts) in the
Manchuria - Mongolia region and the mechanical equipment for processing it, said the
report. The man dispatched to make on- the- spot observations in Manchukuo in 1932,
immediately after the founding of the puppet regime there, was a young technocrat newly
graduated from the Military Staff College with a major in logistics; his name was
Yoshitaka Wataya.
Yoshitaka Wataya! This could only have been Noboru's uncle. There just weren't
that many Watayas in the world, and the name Yoshitaka was the clincher.
His mission was to calculate the time that would be needed before such stable
supplies of wool could be secured in Manchukuo. Yoshitaka Wataya seized upon this
problem of cold - weather clothing as a model case for modern logistics and carried out an
exhaustive numerical analysis.
When he was in Mukden, Yoshitaka Wataya sought an introduction to- and spent the
entire night drinking and talking with- Lieutenant General Kanji Ishiwara.
Kanji Ishiwara. Another name I knew well. Noboru Wataya's uncle had been in touch
with Kanji Ishiwara, the ringleader the year before of the staged Chinese attack on
Japanese troops known as the "Manchurian Incident," the event that had enabled Japan to

turn Manchuria into Manchukuo-and that later would prove to have been the first act in
fif teen years of war.
Ishiwara had toured the continent and become convinced not only that all-out war
with the Soviet Union was inevitable but that the key to winning that war lay in
strengthening Japan's logistical position by rapidly industrializing the newly formed
empire of Manchukuo and establishing a self- sufficient economy. He presented his case
to Yoshitaka Wataya with eloquence and passion. He argued, too, the importance of
bringing farmers from Japan to systematize Manchukuo's farming and cattle industries
and to raise the level of their efficiency.
Ishiwara was of the opinion that Japan should not turn Manchukuo into another
undisguised Japanese colony, such as Korea or Taiwan, and should instead make
Manchukuo a new model Asian nation. In his recognition that Manchukuo would
ultimately serve as a logistical base for war against the Soviet Union-and even against the
United States and England -Ishiwara was, however, admirably realistic. He believed that
Japan was now the only Asian nation with the capability of fighting the coming war
against the West (or, as he called it, the "Final War") and that the other countries had the
duty to cooperate with Japan for their own liberation from the West. No other officer in
the Imperial Army at that time had Ishiwara's combination of a profound interest in
logistics and great erudition. Most other Japanese officers dismissed logistics as an
"effeminate" discipline, believing instead that the proper "Way" for "his majesty's
warriors" was to fight with bold self- abandonment no matter how ill- equipped one might
be; that true martial glory lay in conquering a mighty foe when outnumbered and poorly
armed. Strike the enemy and advance "too swiftly for supplies to keep up": that was the
path of honor.
To Yoshitaka Wataya, the compleat technocrat, this was utter nonsense. Starting a
long- term war without logistical backing was tantamount to suicide, in his view. The
Soviets had vastly expanded and modernized their military capability through Stalin 's
five-year plan of in tensive economic development. The five bloody years of the First
World War had destroyed the old world's values, and mechanized war had revolutionized
European thinking with regard to strategy and logistics. Having been stationed for two
years in Berlin, Yoshitaka Wataya knew the truth of this with every bone in his body, but
the mentality of the greater part of Japan's military men had not outgrown the
intoxication of their victory in the Russo-Japanese War, nearly thirty years before.
Yoshitaka Wataya went home to Japan a devoted admirer of Ishiwara's arguments,
his worldview, and the charismatic personality of the man himself, and their close
relationship lasted many years. He often went to visit Ishiwara, even after the
distinguished officer had been brought back from Manchuria to take command of the
isolated fortress in Maizuru. Yoshitaka Wataya's precise and meticulous report on sheep
farming and wool processing in Manchukuo was submitted to headquarters shortly after
he returned to Japan, and it received high praise. With Japan's painful defeat in the 1939
battle of Nomonhan, however, and the strengthening of U.S. and British economic
sanctions, the military began to shift its attention southward, and the activities of the
rese arch team waging hypothetical war against the Soviet Union were allowed to peter
out. Of course, one factor behind the decision to finish off the battle of Nomonhan
quickly in early autumn and not allow it to develop into a full-scale war was the research
team's conclusive report that "we are unable to wage a winter campaign against the

Soviet Army given our current state of preparedness." As soon as the autumn winds
began to blow, Imperial Headquarters, in a move unusual for the normally face- obsessed
Japanese Army, washed its hands of the fighting and, through diplomatic negotiations,
ceded the barren Hulunbuir Steppe to Outer Mongolian and Soviet troops.
In a footnote, the author pointed out that Yoshitaka Wataya had been purged from
holding public office by MacArthur's Occupation after the war and for a time had lived
in seclusion in his native Niigata, but he had been persuaded by the Conservative Party to
run for office after the purge was lifted and served two terms in the Upper House before
changing to the Lower House. A calligraphic scroll of Kanji Ishiwara's hung on the wall
of his office.
I had no idea what kind of Diet member Noboru Wataya's uncle had been or what he
had accomplished as a politician. He did serve as a cab inet minister once, and he seems to
have been highly influential with the people of his district, but he never became a leader
in national politics. Now his political constituency had been inherited by his nephew,
Noboru Wataya.



I put the book away and, folding my arms behind my head, stared out the window in
the vague direction of the front gate. Soon the gate would open inward and the Mercedes-
Benz would appear, with Cinnamon at the wheel. He would be bringing another "client."
These "clients" and I were joined by the mark on my cheek. Cinnamon's grandfather
(Nutmeg's father) and I were also joined by the mark on my cheek. Cinnamon's grand -
father and Lieutenant Mamiya were joined by the city of Hsin-ching. Lieutenant Mamiya
and the clairvoyant Mr. Honda were joined by their special duties on the Manchurian-
Mongolian border, and Kumiko and I had been introduced to Mr. Honda by Noboru
Wataya's family. Lieutenant Mamiya and I were joined by our experiences in our
respective wells-his in Mongolia, mine on the property where I was sitting now. Also on
this property had once lived an army officer who had commanded troops in China. All of
these were linked as in a circle, at the center of which stood prewar Manchuria,
continental East Asia, and the short war o f 1939 in Nomonhan. But why Kumiko and I
should have been drawn into this historical chain of cause and effect I could not
comprehend. All of these events had occurred long before Kumiko and I were born.
I sat at Cinnamon's desk and placed my hands on the keyboard. The feel of my
fingers on the keys was still fresh from my conversation with Kumiko. That computer
conversation had been monitored by Noboru Wataya, I was sure. He was trying to learn
something from it. He cer tainly hadn't arranged for us to make contact that way out of
the goodness of his heart. He and his men were almost certainly trying to use the access
they had gained to Cinnamon's computer through the communications link in order to
learn the secrets of this place. But I was not worried about that. The depths of this
computer were the very depths of Cinnamon himself. And they had no way of knowing
how incalculably deep that was.