"Go on.

" She heard somebody in the living room put on one of her
old Beatles albums—still the middle-ager's idea of hip.
"Well, as always, I scheduled a stop at the Fifth Generation lab to
get up to speed on how their effort's doing. But all of a sudden it seems
I'm too darned famous to be bothered with the shirtsleeve stuff. I tried
to get in there for three days running. It was always the honorable Stern-
san this and the celebrated Stern-san that and you must meet the head
of every damned ministry and we have to set up this formal dinner and
blah, blah, blah."
"Allan, you're the Grand Old Man these days." She laughed. "Get
used to it."
"Wash out your mouth, Tamara Richardson. I'm not grand and I'm
most decidedly not old." He sniffed. "No, it's as if they were very politely
cutting me out. Okay, they didn't exactly say the project was off-limits
now or anything, but there never seemed to be a convenient time to
drop by the lab."
"Who knows? Maybe they just didn't want some American partisan
poking about the place anymore."
"Could be. But why? I'm scarcely a spy for DOD, or the CIA. They
know I only do pure science. Okay, maybe I'm old- fashioned, but Dr.
Yoshida at least has always claimed to respect me for that. I used to
spend hours with him going over his work there and vice versa. We
swapped ideas all the time.
Now all of a sudden there's this smokescreen." He paused, sipped at his
brandy, and then leaned back. "Which brings me to that favor I need."
"What?'
"Well, I was wondering if maybe you could try and get into the
Fifth Generation lab yourself, check around a bit. See if you can find out
what's cooking."
"Go to Tokyo?"
"I realize it's a lot to ask, but who else can I turn to? Tam, you're the
only person I know who could pull this off. You know the technology,
and they respect you. Also, you understand the language. Maybe you
can cut through all the politeness and the translated PR. If you'd like a
little per diem, I'll see if I can't shake loose the money from somewhere."
"Allan, really, don't you think you're maybe going overboard just a
little. What if Dr. Yoshida was just tied up? The last time I visited the
lab, he showed me everything, completely open."
"Ho, ho." He set down his brandy, and his eyes hardened. "I still
haven't told you the clincher. There's some new guy in charge now."
 "That's hard to believe. Yoshida practically invented the Fifth
Generation Project. He's the director—"
"That's just it. Kaput. All of a sudden he's not around anymore.
They said he's now 'technical adviser.' But you know what that really
means. Removed. Sayonara. Promoted upstairs or downstairs or some
damn thing. That in itself is mystifying. He's one of the most competent
. . . oh, hell, the man is a genius. Why would they do that?"
"Very strange."
"Exactly. But now he's out. Couldn't even see me. 'On vacation.'
The new director is some bureaucrat by the name of Asano. I spent a
little time with the man, and I can testify he's a smoothie. Lots of pious
generalities about 'technical cooperation.' But I got the distinct feeling he
didn't want to talk details with me. Actually, I wondered if maybe he
wasn't even a bit afraid to say anything."
Asano? Oh, shit. She took a deep breath. "Was his name Kenji
Asano?"
"Ken. Right, that's his first name. Maybe you know him. I think he
used to be a flunky with some government bureau
over there. But now he's just been put in charge of the Fifth Generation
work. It's more than a little curious."
She puzzled a minute. From what she knew about the Fifth
Generation, and about Kenji Asano, he had a lot more important things
to do than run the lab. The "government bureau" he worked for was
none other than MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
In fact, at last count he was Deputy Minister for Research and Planning,
a top-ranked executive slot. Could this mean that Japan's ambitious
artificial intelligence effort was being moved in on by MITI, their
industrial war room?
"Allan, I'll tell you the truth. You may not have heard, but I'm in a
fight now at the university. I expect to win, but I've got a lot on my
mind. Notes for the book. I can't just suddenly—"
"Tam, I need your help. Look, maybe they've had some new
breakthrough that none of us ever imagined." He paused. "Just between
us, I lifted a strange MITI memo I found lying around an office when
Asana took me on an escorted tour up to the labs at Tsukuba Science
City."
She looked at him. "Was it classified?"
"How would I know? There was something about it. My sixth sense
told me it was a document nobody was supposed to see. When I get
back to Stanford, I plan to have a postdoc over in Physics make me a
quick translation."
It was very unlike Allan to walk off with confidential memos
uninvited. Which could only mean he must suspect something he wasn't
telling.
"You'd better give me the whole story."
"Not now. Not yet. It's only guesswork, Tam." He glanced away.
"Nothing to bore you with at the moment. But if you can find out
anything, we'll write it up as a report I can circulate around the Hill.
This could be important, believe me. Already Cray has started having to
buy critical chips for its supercomputers from Japan. And while the
Department of Defense is pouring billions into research on
semiconductors that will withstand nuclear radiation, Japan is forging
ahead on speed and miniaturization—what really counts. I think they
could be about to have us by the balls, pardon my French. If they've
somehow incorporated AI—"
"Allan, it doesn't add up. I once met Asano. In fact it was a couple
of years ago at that Kyoto University symposium on
Third World industrialization. He spent a lot of time trying to pick my
brain about our specialized silicon-chip manufacturing here. But he
wasn't the slightest bit interested in artificial intelligence."
"Well, prepare yourself for a surprise. He's plenty interested now.
And knowledgeable. But still, it's not like the Japanese to do something
like this, install some government guy to run an R&D program."
"That's certainly true." She strolled over, looked down upon the
park, and began to want a brandy of her own as she chewed over the
implications. Was MITI setting up some new high-tech industrial
assault? If the Fifth Generation had been taken over by Kenji and his
planners . . . "Allan, let me think about this for a couple of days."
"Don't think too long. I'm convinced somebody over there is
suddenly in a very big hurry. I need to find out the real story. Am I just
starting to go nuts in my old age? . . . Well, make that my prime." He
grasped her hand for emphasis. "And you really should make it a point
to see this Asano fellow. If you already know him from somewhere, I'd
say that's even better."
She started to respond, then stopped. She knew Kenji Asano all
right. From a little episode at that conference, when he had invited the
panel members of a session he chaired to a late-night tour of the endless
tiny bars in Kyoto's Gion district. She remembered all the steaming sake
and being ignored by flustered bar girls who were pretending that
another woman wasn't around. They had no idea what to do about a
member of their own sex there in their sanctuary of male flattery. Ken
apparently had staged it mainly to watch their reaction, and hers.
Part of the scene was that Ken Asano was actually something of a
hunk, as Westernized as they come and attractive in that way seemingly
reserved for men of great wealth or great power. He may have had both,
but she was sure only about the second. Whenever he handed out that
meishi card with the MITI logo, even millionaire industrialists and bank-
ers automatically bowed to the floor.
A lot of sake later, after the other panel members had piled into a
cab for their hotel, she decided to show Kenji Asano a few things about
women he wouldn't learn from giggling bar girls. She'd always heard
that Japanese men were pretty humdrum in bed, quick and self-
centered, at least in the opinion of a woman she knew who'd done
exhaustive field research on the topic. After her own experience with
Ken, though, she wasn't so sure. Still, it had been a passing thing. The
next morning she awoke in her own room in the Kyoto International
and half tried to tell herself it hadn't really happened—just a dream, a
chimera of the sultry Kyoto night, brought on by all those quaint little
side streets and red paper lanterns.
The truth was she still thought about him from time to time. He
was a talented lover, she certainly recalled that part well enough, and he
was a charmer. In fact, she could use a little of that charm right this
minute.
What she didn't admire was the organization he worked for: the
infamous MITI. Behind a smokescreen of "fair trade" rhetoric, MITI's
intentions clearly were to extinguish systematically Japan's world
competition, industry by industry. And so far they were batting a
thousand. They'd never once failed to knock off a designated "target."
What was next? Had MITI finally concluded that, down the road,
intelligent computers could be the drive behind some massive shift in
world power?
Maybe she should go.
She poured another dash of cognac for Allan, and they wandered
back into the living room, just in time to see the Simpsons out.
Everybody else followed except for Dave, now perched by the windows
and glaring out into the dark. She decided to ignore him as she walked
over, opened one a crack, and looked down. In the park below,
commerce was tapering off and the Jamaican Rastas had begun toting up
receipts for the night. No sounds, except the faint strains of reggae from
a boom box.
Funny, but every once in a while she'd stop everything and watch
the kids in the playground down there. What to do? The damned
shadows were growing longer by the minute. Maybe Dave wasn't so bad.
Trouble was, he needed mothering too.
Think about it tomorrow, Scarlet. She sighed, poured herself a
cognac, and headed for the bedroom to get Allan's coat.
After she'd put him on the elevator, she came back and checked out
Dave, now slouched in the big chair by the lamp, his eyes closed. He
looked positively enticing, and she sounded his name quietly. Nothing.
Then she realized he was sound asleep. Snoring.
The bastard. This was it. She grabbed his coat, pushed him out the
door, poured herself another cognac, and plopped down in the living
room to think.
All right, Allan. You've got a deal. Could be you're on to something.
I seem to remember there's a conference in Kyoto starting week after
next on supercomputers. Kenji Asano will probably show. Good time to
catch him off guard and try to find out what's suddenly so hush-hush.
Yes, by God, I'll do it.
She didn't bother with any of Allan Stern's funding. This trip would
be strictly off-the-record. She wrapped up some loose ends, called a few
people she knew in Tokyo, lined up half a dozen interviews that might
be helpful on the new book, packed her toothbrush and tape recorder,
and boarded a Northwest flight for Narita.
She had no idea then, of course, but she was Alice, dropping down
the rabbit hole. A fortnight later she was dining with the Emperor of
Japan.

CHAPTER FOUR
 Allan Stem's alarm about Japan's semiconductor challenge reflected
only part of the picture. There was also plenty going on with Japanese
research in addition to information processing. Superconductivity was
getting a big push, as was biotechnology, optoelectronics, advanced
materials. Although we in the West think of Japan as a newcomer in the
high-tech sweepstakes, it actually has a long tradition of innovation. A
typical for-instance: in the area of advanced materials those of us hooked
on swords know the Japanese were already creating "new materials"
hundreds of years ago that still haven't been bettered. Back then it was
flawless steel for katana blades; today it's, say, gallium arsenide crystals
for laser-driven semiconductors. How, one might inquire, did all this
expertise come about?
To stick to materials research, if you think a moment you realize it's
a discipline that actually must have begun in the latter days of the Stone
Age. "High technology" in those times meant figuring new ways to use
fire and clay to create something nature had neglected to provide. Not
integrated circuits, but a decent water pot.
And the Japanese have been making terrific pots for a thousand
years. As it happens, some historians claim the very first Japanese
pottery was made in the province of Tamba, near Kyoto. Why mention
this? Because, then as now, technology and politics had a way of getting
mixed together in Japan, and Tamba was a perfect example. Tamba's
artisans made great use of a special oven known as a climbing-
chambered kiln. Whereas ceramics kilns elsewhere in the country were
narrow and high, Tamba's climbing-hill chambers were wide and low,
thereby allowing the fire to touch the clay directly. The result was a
rugged, flame-seared stoneware that pleased the manly eye—powerful
earthy grays, burnt reds, greenish-browns, all with a hard metallic
luster. Thus Tamba was a locale much frequented by the warrior
shoguns.
Which may be why Tamba province has another claim to history as
well. It is the location of the one-time warrior castle- fortress of
Sasayama, once a regional command post of the Tokugawa strongmen in
Tokyo. You won't find overly much about Sasayama in the usual
guidebooks, since it has the kind of history that's more interesting to
Japanese than to tourists. The place has no gaudy vermilion temples, no
bronze Buddhas ten stories high. Fact is, very little remains of the
fortress itself these days except for a wide moat, green with lotuses, and
a few stone walls lined with cherry trees that blossom an exquisite white
for a few breathtaking moments each spring.
Although the castle is now burned down, a few homes of the
samurai retainers of its various warlords remain. If you stand on the
rocky edge of the moat at its southwest corner and look down through
the cherry trees, you'll see an old-style house built some two hundred
years ago by the twelfth daimyo of Sasayama for his most loyal retainer.
Its walls of white plaster are interspersed with beams of dark wood, its
thatch roof supported by the traditional ridgepole. Think of it as the
home of the samurai most trusted, the guardian of the gates, the warrior
nearest the fount of power.
Perhaps it will not seem surprising, therefore, that this ancient
samurai residence, in the shogun stronghold closest to ancient Kyoto,
was now home base for a powerful warrior of modern Japan. Matsuo
Noda.
Samurai had once battled in Sasayama's streets; many's the time its
castle had been stormed by raging armies; much blood had been shed
and much honor lost. But the event that occurred in Sasayama precisely
two weeks after Tamara Richardson's dinner in New York was a
historical moment more important than any in its thousand years prior.
It began shortly after dawn, a cool September gray just ripening to
pink over the mountains. The early sounds of morning—birdsong, the
faint bell of the tofu seller, the steam whistle of the autumn sweet-potato
vendor—were only beginning to intrude on the quiet. Noda was where
he always was at this moment: on the veranda overlooking his personal
garden, a classic Zen-style landscape whose central pond was circled by
natural-appearing rocks, trees, bushes, paths. It was, of course, about as
"natural" as those sculptured hedges at Versailles. In order to create the
illusion of perspective and depth, the stones along the foreshore of the
pond were bold, rugged, massively detailed, while those on the opposite
side were dark, small, smooth—a little trick to make them seem farther
away than they were.
It's a game heavy with nuance. For example, the stone footpath on
the left side of the pond may look as if it goes on forever, but that's just
part of the art: the stones get smaller toward the back, curving in and
out among the azalea bushes till they make one last twist and disappear
among the red pines and maples at the rear. Which trees, incidentally,
have themselves been slightly dwarfed, again enhancing the illusion of
distance, just as the back is deliberately shaggy and dark, like the
beginnings of a forest that goes on for miles.
Noda's Zen garden, which deludes rational judgment by
manipulating all the signposts we use to gauge distance and space,
appeared to be limitless. The secret was that nothing actually ends:
everything simply fades out and gets lost. It was a closed space that
seemed for all the world as if it went on and on if you could only
somehow see the rest of it. Yet peek only a few yards away, and you've
got the mundane streets of sleepy Sasayama.
This special dawn, as a few frogs along the edge of the
pond croaked into the brisk air, he knelt on the viewing veranda in a
fine cotton morning robe, a yukata emblazoned with his family crest (an
archaic Chinese ideogram meaning "courage") and began to center his
mind. He'd left his Kyoto headquarters early Friday evening, skipping
the usual after-hours-drinking obligation of Japanese executives and
grabbing the eight-thirty San-in Express to Sonobe, where his limo
waited to bring him the rest of the way home. Now he was up before
daybreak and readying his usual morning ritual. As he sat there, gazing
across the placid water dotted with lotuses at the foreshore and framed
with willows at the far horizon, his silver hair contrasted with the
marine blue of the robe to create a presence easily as striking as the
garden itself.
For a time he merely knelt, silently contemplating the view and
listening to the metrical drip of water from a bamboo spout situated just
at the edge of the steps. Finally he turned and picked up his sumi stick,
a block of dried ink made from soot, and carefully began to rub it
against the concave face of an ancient inkstone, till its cupped water
darkened to just the proper shade. When the fresh ink was ready, he
wet a brush in a separate water vessel, dried it by stroking it against a
scrap of old paper, dipped it into the dark liquid, and looked down.
This was the moment that demanded perfect composure, absolute
control. Before him was a single sheet of rice paper, purest white, and
now his hand held the brush poised. He was waiting for that instant
when his senses clicked into alignment, when the feel of the brush
merged with his mind, much the way a samurai's katana blade must
become an extension of his own reflexes.
Although he would stroke only a few kanji characters, scarcely
enough for a telex or a memo, the moment required discipline acquired
through decades of practice. His Zen-style calligraphy allowed for no
hesitation, no retouching. It must be dashed off with a spontaneity that