Tokyo's Mystery Deepens

By Michael Pronko

“A rare glimpse of the structure and nature of Tokyo's underlying psyche.” Midwest Book Review

Award-winning novelist Michael Pronko examines Tokyo as a place, a culture, and a series of intense experiences. Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens digs into the enigmatic sides of Tokyo with humor, delicacy, and enchantment. A transplanted American from the Midwest, Pronko’s observations and experiences open up the many, miniscule doors into Tokyo life.

More than just a setting for novels and films, Tokyo is a lively, interactive space that constantly pops up questions: How do you sweat politely in Tokyo’s sweltering summers? How do you glance sideways on crowded trains? How do homeowners transform a sliver of space into an impeccable garden? The answers are not what one might expect.

From the smooth flow of crowds to the rhythms of housewives pounding their futons, in this third memoir, Tokyo comes alive with its mysteries intact and deeper than ever.

More at: www.michaelpronko.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Pronko
• Release date: Dec 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781942410058

Michael Pronko

Michael Pronko is an award-winning, Tokyo-based writer of murder, memoir and music. His writings on Tokyo life and his taut character-driven mysteries have won critics’ awards and five-star reviews. Kirkus Reviews called his second novel, The Moving Blade, “An elegant balance of Japanese customs with American-style hard-boiled procedural” and selected it for their Best Books of 2018.Michael also runs the website, Jazz in Japan, about the vibrant jazz scene in Tokyo and Yokohama. He has written regular columns about Japanese culture, art, jazz, society and politics for Newsweek Japan, The Japan Times, Artscape Japan, Jazznin, and ST Shukan. He has also appeared on NHK and Nippon Television.A philosophy major, Michael traveled for years, ducking in and out of graduate schools, before finishing his PhD on Charles Dickens and film, and settling in Tokyo as a professor of American Literature at Meiji Gakuin University. He teaches contemporary American novels, film adaptations, music and art.

Book preview

Praise for Pronko’s Writings on Tokyo Life

Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo

Gold Award: Readers’ Favorite Non-Fiction Cultural

Gold Award: Travel Writing Global E-Book Awards

Gold Award: Non-Fiction Authors Association

Gold Honoree: Benjamin Franklin Digital Awards

Silver Medal: Independent Publisher Book Awards

Indie Groundbreaking Book: Independent Publisher Book Review

Finalist: National Indie Excellence Awards

Finalist: International Book Awards

Finalist: Foreword’s Book of the Year Awards

Finalist: Independent Author Network

Pronko is an insightful author capable of seeing a deeper beauty in everything he writes. SPR Review

…vividly captures the depth and beauty of Tokyo, bringing to life the city and the lifestyle. Reader’s Favorite

This book sparkles and succeeds as a love letter of sorts to Tokyo. The author’s writing is a joy to read, with wonderful phrasing and vivid descriptions. OnlineBookClub.org

This is a memoir to be savored like a fine red wine, crafted with supreme care by a man who clearly has fallen in love with his adopted city. Publishers Daily Reviews

Each of his essays brought me closer and closer to an appreciation of the complex and complicated place Tokyo is. Reader’s Favorite

Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life

Gold Award: First Place Reader’s Favorite Awards 2015

Gold Award: eLit Awards 2015

Silver Award: eLit Awards 2015

Gold Award: Non-Fiction Authors Association 2015

…a rare gem of exploration that holds the ability to sweep readers into a series of vignettes that penetrate the heart of Tokyo’s fast-paced world. Midwest Book Review

The author’s love for the city is evident…he has explored the place and soaked up every small detail about life in Tokyo. Readers’ Favorite

Beauty and Chaos is a spectacular read. The collection is masterful and unique. SPR Review

These pieces feel flowing and natural, perhaps because many arose simply from walking around, people-watching. The Bookbag

An elegantly written, precisely observed portrait of a Japanese city and its culture. Kirkus Reviews

Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens: Essays on Tokyo

Gold Award: eLit Awards 2015

Silver Award: eLit Award 2015

…a rare glimpse of the structure and nature of Tokyo’s underlying psyche. Midwest Book Review

An insider’s view of what life is really like in this pulsing, densely populated Asian metropolis. Luxury Reading Blog

Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens plunges into the minuscule details of what it is like to be a Tokyoite. OnlineBookClub.org

Praise for The Last Train

An unrelenting portrayal of a strong female character driven to dark deeds in a foreign land—and the heart-pounding search to find her. Publishers Daily Reviews

An absorbing investigation and memorable backdrop put this series launch on the right track. Kirkus Reviews

For anyone who loves crime and cop novels, or Japanophiles in general, this is a terrific thriller. Fans of Barry Eisler’s early novels will find the same satisfactions here. Blue Ink Review

The Last Train is nothing short of electrifying, a masterpiece that combines action with humor and suspense. Readers’ Favorite

I would definitely recommend it to crime and murder mystery fans, especially those with an interest in Japanese culture. Online Book Club

Set in Tokyo, this exotic crime thriller is a lightning-fast chase to the finish line that’ll leave hearts pounding and pages turning. Best Thrillers

"Written from knowledge rather than research, he knows a lot more than he has any need to tell us…brings the city gloriously to life." The Bookbag

…a well written and enticing look into the culture of Tokyo. The story behind Michiko Suzuki is compelling and engaging, you can’t help flipping the pages to see what she is going to do next and find out why her victims were chosen. Literary Titan

"While mystery readers will relish the progress of a detective torn between two cultures, it's the reader of Japanese literature who will truly appreciate the depth of background and references that make The Last Train a standout story." Midwest Book Review

…a heartfelt, thoughtful ode to a strange and beautiful city, in the way that so many classic detective novels are. Lyrically written, with plenty of suspense, this a novel that aims to please, and can’t really help but do so. IndieReader

A well-paced and absorbing mystery, with quick action and a look at urban life, theirs is an utterly page-turning adventure. Foreword Reviews

Gripping and suspenseful, this fast-paced thriller unfolds on the streets of Tokyo, where a clever and cold-blooded killer exacts revenge. Booklife Prize

"The Last Train by Michael Pronko is a five-star detective read. It is unique, intriguing, and will hook the reader from beginning to end. I highly recommend it to all mystery lovers!" Reader Views

Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens

By Michael Pronko

Raked Gravel Press 2014

Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens

By Michael Pronko

First Smashwords Edition, 2014

Copyright © 2014 Michael Pronko

First English Edition, Raked Gravel Press

First Japanese Edition, Media Factory publishers, 2009

All rights reserved worldwide. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author.

eBook formatting by FormattingExperts.com

Cover Design © 2014 Marco Mancini, www.magnetjazz.net

ISBN 978-1-942410-05-8

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: Essentials of Tokyo-ism

Apology Speed

Looking Away

Walking Shoji

Tokyo Lights

Tokyo Brain Navigator

Testimony in Red

Wiping Away the City

Window Poetry

All Together Now

Detailed, Orderly and Unread

City of Small Gestures

A Little to the Side

Part Two: More and More Mysterious

Motion Sickness

What Do You Think?

Truckloads of Noise

Imagine a City

Uniformly Confident

Rush Hour Traitors

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Twins’ Mystery

Where There’s Smoke

Tokyo in a Bottle

Tested to the Limits

Strange Exits

Forgotten Spaces

Double Tokyo

Part Three: Seasons in the Labyrinth

So Close Yet So Far

The Torture of Spring Breezes

Seasons of Sickness

The Grey, Green Season

Beer-ing the Heat

Sweating It

Fall Changes

Autumn Hanami

Illuminated City

Ambient Places

Part Four: Deep Inside the City

Bugs on the Train

Sports Center, Story Center

Compact Life

Down in the Basement and Right at Home

Closest and Warmest

People Unstrung

A Different Pace

Tokyo Lunch World

Flower-opolis

The Soil of Tokyo

City of Souvenirs

Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo

After Words

Afterword

Thanks

Glossary

Dedication

Also by Michael Pronko

About the author

Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice.

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

And then, if your ideas get larger and you want to expand—why, a dig and a scrape, and there you are! If you feel your house is a bit too big, you stop up a hole or two, and there you are again! No builders, no tradesmen, no remarks passed on you by fellows looking over your wall, and, above all, no weather.

Badger to Mole in The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

To make anything interesting, you simply have to look at it long enough.

Gustave Flaubert

Be careful how you interpret the world: It is like that.

Erich Heller

Introduction

I had to go get my visa renewed a couple summers back and as I was sitting there waiting for my number to be called, I thought back to what one of my colleagues asked me over drinks a week before. He asked me whether I felt comfortable living here. The question caught me off guard so I stammered, Well, um, I suppose I do feel comfortable over a drink, but I am not sure about the rest of the time.

My editor keeps saying this book shows how well I’ve adapted to Tokyo, but I’m not sure that’s true. Maybe I have accepted some level of confusion and disorientation, and work around it, just to keep going. I have more Tokyo habits, and find myself reacting at times not like an American, but like a Tokyoite. There are more and more places I love to hang out in Tokyo. So, maybe that’s adaptation of a sort. So, I guess in a way, these essays are somehow like drinks. I feel comfortable when I am writing about Tokyo, but I am not sure I always feel comfortable living here.

This second collection of essays about life in Tokyo was an even greater pleasure to write than the others, more difficult and more interesting, too. Tokyo is a place full of hidden meanings and provocative experiences. I feel compelled to think about Tokyo more and more with each passing year. Like Alice in Wonderland, I find Tokyo to be curiouser and curiouser. I start from a need to satisfy my own inner curiosity, but try to expand my understanding of Tokyo more broadly and deeply, too.

Tokyo’s meanings appear only in scattered observations, odd experiences, and disparate fragments of life. Tokyo is a city that resists generalization, in a very willful and quirky way. Tokyo is a capricious city, so that you can interpret it in many different ways. Like a traditional Japanese garden, wherever you look it seems to be a different place altogether. Moments of alienation are followed by moments of exhilaration; aggravations turn to amusements; confusions tumble into insights. You just have to step to a different point of view and look again.

Tokyo delivers experiences in odd portions of wonderful and exasperating: the excitement of a great concert but with overpriced tickets; the fun of a night out with friends but in a smoky, over crowded room; the smell of fish cooking as I ride my bike home with pant legs soaked from the rain. I guess maybe I’m adapting if I know everything in Tokyo comes in such pairs. But no matter how Tokyo arrives in front of you, looking at it for a long, long time reveals its interesting side.

Tokyo is a city that is, in many ways, easy to ignore. Its size is overwhelming, of course, but its daily experience is unimposing. There are no overt demands to participate or appreciate its beauty, like in most other large world cities, even though Tokyo can be a triathlon of a city. But, taking time to muse over the finer points of Tokyo life is always abundantly rewarding. Essays perform the task of finding the extraordinary in the ordinary and the unusual in the usual. So much of Tokyo seems practical, efficient and shiny-clean, but beneath that surface are hidden meanings and complex values.

My unconscious mind gets tickled all the time in Tokyo. I see things that are interesting, or they strike me as funny later on, or I just jot them down for no reason at all. I try to write down as much as I can, but most days in Tokyo, I see hundreds of potential essay topics. For this collection, I have written up the most interesting ones. In reading them, I hope the reader will find Tokyo as amazing as I do.

Part One

Essentials of Tokyo-ism

Apology Speed

After clumsily stepping on the toes of a man getting off a crowded Chuo Line train at Yotsuya recently, I pulled up my foot instantly and said, "Sumimasen! followed by a quick bow. The man look startled, perhaps because I was a foreigner, or perhaps because I shouted because my iPod was in my ears. In any case, he nodded in forgiveness. Though I didn’t time myself, I felt surely that it was one of my fastest public apologies ever! I felt a bit odd, as I didn’t decide to apologize. I just did it. Man, I’m becoming Japanese," I said to myself.

As I hurried away from the site of my latest impoliteness, I realized I had been bettering my apology speed little by little during the years living here. And though my Japanese may not be as fluent as I want, since I still stumble along much of the time, I do feel confident that at the very least, my apology speed is at a very high level. Perhaps the best sign of adapting to Tokyo life is apology speed. I’ll never be a native speaker, but I am already a native apologizer.

On that day, and others, too, I had a sense of pride in doing something so correctly Japanese. Most foreigners living here probably feel the same whenever they do something in the correctly prescribed form. A few small ‘tricks’ of the city, then, like standing to the side when train doors open or not using up too much space or politely standing in line, are evidence of the degree of being Tokyo-fied. The older women at the grocery store are always impressed when I shove my bag out of the way to give them room to pack their groceries. I guess they are calculating how long I have lived in Tokyo, and they are probably right!

The most common questions on the adapting to Japan exam are usually about chopsticks, natto and seiza. Unlike apologizing quickly in public, though, all of these skills can be acquired through practice and conscious learning. Other things are learned through embarrassment. When I first came to Japan, I used to always forget to take off the bathroom slippers, walking foolishly back to the living room before the startled glances of people clued me in. Now, I switch from slipper to slipper with ease. And just for the record: chopsticks, ‘no problem’; natto, yuck; seiza, 5 minutes to numb legs.

I think apology speed shows the greatest adaptation to the public flow of Tokyo life. In other countries, of course, people also apologize, but in different ways and