the head does not fit on the body."
"But that's imposs. . ."
"The body," continued Kawamura, "is Japanese."
* * * *
Molecular biologists are learning more every year about the genetic code found in each human cell. The code, or DNA, which is in a part of the human cell called the mitochondrion, is particularly fascinating because it is inherited only from the mother. It is postulated that humans, as we know and love ourselves today (as opposed to the earlier Neanderthal, Homo erectus, and Homo habilis models), originated in Africa more than seventy thousand years ago, gradually migrated outward to the Middle East, then Europe, and finally the Far East, Australia, and America.
The theory, and it is still a theory, maintains that modern Homo sapiens developed in parallel with the older and certainly very worthy creatures, and that the development of modern man can be traced through the DNA connection to a single human, "Eve," who was found to have lived in Africa some two hundred thousand years ago.
Tens of thousands of years of adapting to the demands of the environment have created secondary physical characteristics distinguishing races as statistical groups, but due to numerous variations, the distinctions on an individual basis are not always so readily apparent. Under the skin, all humans are brothers. And Japanese skin is about as "yellow" as Caucasian skin is really "white."
J.B. Culhane's reflections on the matter were substantially less profound, however. It had never occurred to him that physical indicators beneath the head might have to be employed to sort out the thorny issues implicit in this particular racial situation. One heard rumors, of course, but an element of science must be involved.
J.B. stopped his new friend as they were about to enter their cars in the club parking lot. The sky in the east was beginning to glow with the new light of day.
"Can I ask you something, Tim?"
"Certainly J.B."
"First of all, you're certain that, er, Pete's head doesn't fit on that body?"
"We're certain, J.B. The neck wounds on both parts were made by different instruments. In addition, the head doesn't fit on the body. It's, ah, technical, J.B."
"I understand, Tim. But my real question, I mean, you don't have to answer it, but. . ."
"But what?"
"Well, if you don't mind telling me."
"I can't know until you ask," said Tim getting into his car. "What?"
"Well," said J.B., clearing his throat, "what exactly, or should I say, what approximately, er, how do you know the body is actually Japanese?"
"It's easy," said Tim, signaling his driver to start. "His wallet was in his pocket."
* * * *
The Tokyo American Club was founded in 1928 by a group of American and Japanese businessmen interested in establishing for themselves a facility for family dining and social intercourse. Americans were by no means the first foreign contingent of merchants and traders in Japan, but by the 1920s they were the largest. Oil companies, business-machine manufacturers, and banks were increasingly involved in successful ventures in the country, and the new American executives often arrived in Tokyo with wives and children.
The club was originally located in the old Imperial Hotel, an architectural wonder (it did not collapse during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923) designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. An indication of the modest circumstances surrounding the club's early operation is the fact that the twenty-three original members were each obliged to donate two chairs along with their incorporation fees. Dining and social intercourse was necessarily limited to the first forty-six people signing up for the scheduled festivities.
A major attraction at the club during the early years—major because Americans could not live without it and Japanese could not obtain it elsewhere—was the presence of meat on the menu. Shipped frozen from the States, steaks and chops were crucial to the club's success. The first recorded club employee, biculturally named Walter Watanabe, had as his duties "sweeping the floor, locking and unlocking doors, guarding the liquor, fixing the lights, and cooking the food carefully."
By the late 1930s, the club had established its own premises in an old office building near the hotel and had grown to several hundred members. Diplomats and newspapermen from over a dozen countries joined the Japanese and American businessmen in dining and social intercourse. Walter Watanabe became only one of thirteen employees on the payroll, and his responsibilities had shrunk to "keeping the billiard room neat at all times." The chef was listed as being Monsieur Adachi, and his job description omitted the adjective "carefully." He was merely charged with the responsibility of "cooking the food."
Later, suspicions that the club harbored spies, malcontents, revolutionaries, anti-militarists, seditionists, oppressors, fifth columnists, appeasers, constitutional democrats, and folks without a sense of humor about world affairs had gradually diminished the pleasure of the dining and social intercourse. (It seems that both Walter Watanabe and Monsieur Adachi had been drafted—their names disappeared from the roster.) Discretion being the better part of valor, the organization ceased operation during the 1941-45 misunderstanding.
In 1946, three Japanese attorneys—prewar members—popped up and presented the U.S. Occupation authorities with documents relating to the original club charter. The last prewar club president, older and definitely wiser, was prevailed upon to become the first postwar president. By 1947 the organization was off and running again. But the scope of operations rapidly surpassed anything that the collective imagination of the founders with the forty-six chairs might have conjured.
Today the club occupies several acres of its own land in a Beverly Hills-Park Avenue-Nob Hill equivalent of central Tokyo. The membership of thirty-five hundred hails from forty-four countries and totals, counting spouses and dependents, about eleven thousand individuals.
The organization runs thirty-eight adult-education classes and arranges tours all over Asia. There are youth activity programs, including baseball, soccer, basketball, swimming, and scouting. Hundreds of formal and informal business meetings occur at the club each week—about half the two thousand meals served each day in the six dining facilities are in the expense-account category. A successful candidate for the presidency of the United States initially announced his availability in the club—and a prime minister of Japan successfully announced his resignation in the club. And as confirmation of the role played by the organization at the core of the members' lives, the videotape library averages over a quarter-million checkouts each year.
Yet despite its humble beginnings, its checkered early history, a cook named Walter, its accidental position next to the Russian Embassy, the potpourri of membership, and the rogues galley of organizational geniuses, dedicated public servants, buffoons and madmen at the helm, the club had never dealt with a situation such as that currently at hand. No one, at least as far as records indicate, had ever whacked off the general manager's head and deposited it, along with an unidentified Japanese body, in the club swimming pool. (But then again, the pool wasn't built until 1974, and Walter's whereabouts remain unknown.)
* * * *
Angie Peterson
