Angry White Pyjamas: A Scrawny Oxford Poet Takes Lessons from the Tokyo Riot Police
Adrift in Tokyo, translating obscene rap lyrics for giggling Japanese high school girls,, "thirtynothing" Robert Twigger comes to a revelation about himself: He has never been fit nor brave. Guided by his roommates, Fat Frank and Chris, he sets out to cleanse his body and mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow, the author is drawn into the world of Japanese martial arts, joining the Tokyo Riot Police on their yearlong, brutally demanding course of budo training, where any ascetic...
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Adrift in Tokyo, "thirtynothing" Robert Twigger came to a revelation about himself: He had never been fit or brave. Guided by his roommates, he set out to cleanse his body and mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow, the author is sucked into the world of Japanese martial arts and joins the Tokyo Riot Police on their year-long, brutally demanding course of budo training, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against blood-stained "white pyjamas" and fractured collarbones. In this entertaining book, Twigger blends the ancient with the modern—the ultratraditionalism, ritual, and violence of the "dojo" (training academy) with the shopping malls, nightclubs, and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the 1990s—to provide a brilliant, bizarre glimpse of contemporary Japan.
How Does a Man Prove Himself in the Age of Nintendo?\ \ 'In general ours is a civilization in which the very word "poetry" evokes a hostile snigger.'\ George Orwell\ 'It is better to have some unhappiness when one is still young, for if a person does not experience some bitterness he will not settle down.'\ From the seventeenth-century Samurai manual Hagakure\ \ I was walking to work when I noticed a shiny ball bearing in the gutter. It was a pachinko ball, used in a kind of Japanese slot machine as a prize. At the end of a pachinko session you cash in the steel balls, which can number thousands for a jackpot, for prizes of either household goods or money. Usually the balls stay in the pachinko parlours, so I was surprised to see another, and a little way off another, and then another. Following this treasure trail, I picked them up, dusted them off, smiling to myself in the warm sunshine. The sun glinted off the steel and I chinked them together like a small boy picking up pebbles on a beach.\ The trail led up to the main road, which I needed to cross to reach the train station. I was bending down to pick up yet another ball when I heard the screech of tires skidding and saw timber spill on to the road from the back of a small truck. A red Mazda sports car faced the truck as other cars went into the opposite lane to avoid the incident. I wasn't sure what had happened but I stopped to watch, clinking the pachinko balls together in my hand.\ The truck driver was a young man with a 'punch perm'hairstyle, the style preferred by Japanese men with thuggish tendencies, taking its inspiration from the hairdos of the yakuza, organized crime, mainly involved in gambling rackets, He picked up a piece of fallen timber from the back of his truck and swooped on the driver of the sports car. In guttural, macho Japanese he yelled: 'What're you doing? Who do you think you are?', interspersed with repeated threats of, 'I'm gonna kill you!'\ The car driver, I could see, was very frightened. He was also a young man and wore a suit. The truck driver banged his 2X4 piece of wood down on the car windscreen, making as if to smash the glass. 'Me driver shielded his face in automatic anticipation. This show of fear made things worse. The enraged truck driver banged the glass a few more times and the Mazda driver repeatedly apologized: 'Sumimasen. Gomen nasai. Gomen. Gomen nasai.' Then the truck driver reached in and grabbed the man in the Mazda by his tie. This is it, I thought, violence time. I ought to intervene - but how? There seemed no pause, no thoughtful gap, allowing me to interject a worthy comment, a restraining arm. I was frozen, immobile, fearful.\ Bunching the tie into his fist and hauling on this makeshift rein, the truck man corralled the Mazda man, forcing him to drive to the side of the road. Then the truck man hit the Mazda on the hub caps and the driver, who was still apologizing, got out. He bowed to the truck driver, a 90 degree bow, a total apology. The truck driver ranted some more, bellowing, 'Bukurossu' ('I'm gonna kill you'), and beat the bumper and hub caps to emphasize his dissatisfaction.\ Then it happened. Something so strange and out of place in modern Tokyo I could never have predicted it. As cars winged past on the highway, the truck driver pushed the Mazda man down on to his knees on the grass verge, The besuited salaryman looked pathetic kneeling on the grass in front of the enraged truck driver and his big piece of wood. I thought perhaps he might cry. Instead, the professional executed a full emperor bow, arms outstretched, prostrating himself face-first into the dusty grass. His corporate head rose and fell several times as he spoke in the politest Japanese I had ever heard, literally begging forgiveness from the truck driver.\ The apology worked. The truck driver reloaded his truck and the salaryman drove hurriedly off to work. Somehow the childlike innocence of finding the pachinko balls had been lost. I tossed them back into the gutter. Could I have intervened if things had taken a nasty turn? Perhaps I could have lobbed a pachinko ball if things had got really heavy. But I was never much good at throwing. I coolly noted my reactions: fear, curiosity, and a sense of being excluded, on the outside. I had seen certain precise rides of violence at work in a place where I hardly expected to see violence at all.\ Violence was not my thing. That's why living in Tokyo suited me - it was probably the safest capital city in the world. But, increasingly, I asked myself what I would do if I got mugged, attacked, picked on, targeted by blade-wielding mutants in a dark, dank alley; the dark, dank alley that reeks of piss and old burger wrappers, the urban softie's nightmare last stand - alone, defenceless, crouched in a foetal ball protecting his privates with a soggy newspaper. Frankly it made me uneasy. I became convinced that the uneasiness, which would not go away, was connected to my general lack of fitness. Decrepitude was creeping up on me and I was only thirty. Some kind of innate healthiness had kept me going throughout my twenties, but the minute I turned thirty I went into a major decline. I began to suspect I had ME or some other mysterious and debilitating illness. This decline was admittedly not helped by smoking, drinking lots of coffee and living off boil-in-the-bag curry rice. My room-mates suffered with me. Chris developed acne on his back. Fat Frank, an Iranian, was beset by permanent and terrible wind…\ \ \ Angry White Pyjamas. Copyright © by Robert Twigger. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
How Does a Man Prove Himself in the Age of Nintendo?9Beginner's Mind23Cannibal Talk37Foaming at the Mouth57Police Academy77Zen and the Art of Being Really, Really, Angry93Challenge114Good Cop, Bad Cop134The Hottest Summer Since 1963144Punch-Up at a Funeral170The Bad Guys Have Hairstyles188How to Commit the Perfect Murder226Survival246Natural Nazis260The Mount Fuji Test274Breaking the Mirror283An Honourable Exit292Unlikely Bodyguard304Glossary309
