Tokyo Cancelled

Rana Dasgupta

• Publisher: Black Cat
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780802170095
• eBook ISBN: 9780802199706
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Thirteen strangers stranded in an Asian airport spin tales that "outdo Arabian Nights for inventiveness" in this debut novel ( The Guardian).
 
Thirteen passengers are stranded at an airport. Tokyo, their destination, is covered in snow and all flights are cancelled. To pass the night they huddle by the baggage carousels and tell each other stories. So begins Tokyo Cancelled, a unique literary adventure that combines a modern landscape with a timeless, fairy-tale ethos. In his delightful debut, Dasgupta brings to life a cast of extraordinary individuals—some lost, some confused, some happy—in a world that remains ineffable, inexplicable, and wonderful.
 
A Ukrainian merchant is led by a wingless bird back to a lost lover; Robert De Niro's son masters the transubstantiation of matter and turns it against his enemies; a man who manipulates other people's memories has to confront his own past; a Japanese entrepreneur risks everything in his obsession with a doll; a mute Turkish girl has a strange encounter with a German man who is mapping the world.
 
Told by people on a journey, these stories "tackle themes of transit, dislocation and uprootedness" in a "sprawling, experimental project achieves an exotic luster" ( Publishers Weekly).

THE DOLL

The Eighth Story

SECTION 1

1.1 As a boy in Osaka, Yukio always wavered. Sometimes he wanted to be a computer genius. A minute later he was going to be a great artist. On other days he imagined himself as a baseball hero or an astronaut. He could never make up his mind.

1.2 Yukio studied biochemistry and got a job with Novartis in Tokyo. He worked harder than anyone else and was quickly promoted. He changed business cards almost as he did his shirts, with each one more impressive than the last.

1.3 When Novartis Tokyo hired McKinsey to review its sales and marketing strategy, Yukio was asked to manage the day-to-day relationship with the consultant. That was how trusted he had become.

He did not expect that the consultant would look like Minako. When he walked into the first meeting he was a little thrown off. She sat in the Novartis boardroom wearing a blue Burberry suit with pearls, the picture of poise. Looking the CEO straight in the eye. She was beautiful.

1.4 Minako's father was unhappy about their marriage, and made no secret about it.

It had taken some time for Yukio to extract from her that her father was none other than Yoshiharu Yonekawa, Japan's leading property developer. The discovery was intimidating. This man had built most of Tokyo's tallest buildings. He had turned areas like Minato-ku, which a couple of generations ago were just countryside, into booming hubs of the city. He owned shopping malls and office towers and upscale apartment blocks and cultural centres.

While Yukio's own family was very ordinary.

But Minako was as intent on their marriage as he was. ‘You can depend on Yukio,’ she told her father. ‘Someday he will be something. Look at what he has already achieved. And despite his background, he knows how to behave in society. Even you have said as much.’

Mr Yonekawa finally agreed, but only with great reluctance. He told Yukio: ‘I wanted someone more impressive for my daughter. Given her family background, she is not the kind of woman you would call run-of-the-mill. I think she needs a significant man by her side.’ Yukio was standing in the middle of Mr Yonekawa's big study, feeling as dignified as a schoolboy caught masturbating in class. ‘But fathers must sometimes expect surprises. And disappointments. My daughter has made her decision, and I will not stand in her way anymore. I have made my feelings felt. I hope you will remain aware of your responsibilities towards my family.’

He left the room and Yukio bowed low towards the empty doorway.

1.5 Mr Yonekawa was not a man to take his decisions half-heartedly. From that time on he accorded to Yukio the full honours of a prospective son-in-law and made time to have after-dinner conversations with him about history and business. He organized a glamorous wedding, and though Yukio's family had nothing in common with the rich and powerful guests, Mr Yonekawa treated them with respect and even affection. He bought a beautiful house for the newly-weds in Jiyugaoka.

Yukio was intensely happy. All the more so because he saw his beloved Minako glowing with nuptial bliss.

SECTION 2

2.1 Unconsciously, perhaps, Yukio had always imagined a certain ceiling to his possibilities.

He had poured all his energy and ambition into the prospect of steady promotion and increasing responsibility within a large international company. So far he had already climbed the corporate rungs nimbly, sometimes two at a time. Until he met Minako, that qualified him in his own mind as a successful man.

As he settled into married life, however, he realized that such success was rather paltry. What was a salary, after all? It was a ‘compensation’ from the company for his hard work. His was now not insubstantial, but not to the extent that if for some reason it were suspended for a couple of months Yukio would not find himself in severe financial trouble. Ultimately, Yukio did not own anything that generated wealth. Whereas everyone Minako knew owned things. Companies, factories, land, buildings … Even Minako, a partner at McKinsey, owned part of the company. As she and her friends sat around the dining room table in the Jiyugaoka house he could never himself have afforded, and talked of buying properties or businesses as if they were paperback books or pairs of socks, Yukio began to curse himself for his pitifully small imagination.

Thankfully, however, he was still young and had had the good sense to realize the error of his ways.

2.2 Yukio began to conceive of a Business Plan. He did not tell Minako about it at first, but made sure that he had thought it through carefully and researched all the possible angles. The more he thought about it, the more excited he became. He spent his days at Novartis looking up figures and projections on the Internet, rousing himself with difficulty when people came to ask for this report or that opinion. His position in the company gave him access to valuable market intelligence that he pored over in great detail. He stayed in the office till ten and eleven in the evening, building spreadsheets of future revenues and calculating his requirements for capital and human resources.

As his boss left for the evening he would look through the glass of Yukio's office and see him sitting in the darkness, his face a ghostly blue in the glow of his Toshiba. ‘We were right to promote that one,’ he would think.

2.3 Yukio proposed a dinner with Minako in a quiet restaurant in Ginza, one he knew she liked. Minako had been working even longer hours than Yukio, with no concessions to weekends, and it had been several weeks since they had had anything but the most mundane conversation. She told him about the project she was working on for Sony: a long-term strategy to fight cheap copies of audio and video recordings, which were already destroying Sony's music business and could in future do the same for its movies. She recounted everything with such insight, she made everything sound so exciting, and she had such a sense of humour. Yukio was a lucky husband.

Yukio began to describe his plan. He was apprehensive, because by now he was very committed to it, and he wanted Minako to be convinced. After all, she was not only his wife but also a McKinsey consultant.

Minako asked searching questions to which he did not always have convincing answers. She listened patiently and then interjected with ‘Where did you find such figures?’ or ‘If it's so good, why isn't everyone doing it?’ She asked him to justify every assumption and presented scenarios in which his plan would probably fail completely.

Yukio thought he had done all his research, and his remaining dissatisfactions were merely hazy shadows that floated below the surface. But like some quick-witted stork, Minako struck unerringly at each of them and brought up a dripping, struggling, glistening fish that he could not reason, speculate, or wish away.

He finished his explanation, crestfallen. Minako smiled.

‘It's my job to ask these kind of questions. Don't worry. I think it's a wonderful plan. I'm proud of you. I knew you would do something worthwhile.’

He was relieved. And triumphant.

‘I need to look for capital. I'll need about ¥1.2 billion to fund this for the next three years. After that it should start making some money.’

‘Let's ask my father.’

Yukio was thankful that she had brought up this suggestion.

‘But he won't give you any breaks because you're his son-in-law. He'll treat it as an investment like any other. You'll have to put together a watertight business plan. I'll help you. It will be fun.’

‘Of course,’ said Yukio, more excited than he wanted to show. ‘I wouldn't expect preferential treatment.’

2.4 They had dinner at Mr and Mrs Yonekawa's house in Aoyama. Minako's two sisters were there, and, as ever, Mr Yonekawa had many stories to tell. When the meal was finished he led them jovially into the front room, his cheeks flushed with wine.

‘So, Yukio. I believe you have something for me.’

‘Yes, I do. You see I think I have come up with a business opportunity –’

‘Please wait one moment. Let's make ourselves comfortable first. What will you have to drink? Whisky and water?’

He poured drinks and sat down.

‘Now – please tell me what is on your mind.’

Over the past few years, Yukio had become increasingly interested in traditional chemistry. He realized there was still a vast reservoir of untapped folk knowledge – of plants, of mixtures, of processes – that could be used in the marketplace. This fact was becoming increasingly compelling because, in his analysis, the pharmaceutical industry was finding it more and more difficult to generate its own new knowledge in a way that remained profitable. If it were possible to build a truly systematic database of all the centuries of experimentation by traditional doctors and chemists all over the world – would it not allow a company to leapfrog many stages of uncertainty in their search for new products?

‘Most people in the pharmaceutical industry would find this ridiculous. They would say that there is nothing of value to be found in such places, or, if there is, that it could never be patented and therefore is not worth investigating. But we'll use what we find as a starting point to develop completely new things, with modern applications that we can get patents for. I believe this approach will enable us to slice three or four years off the usual R&D process and come up with products that the giants could never think of.’

They talked long into the night. Yukio presented his plans for a network of researchers working simultaneously in a number of countries that had rich traditions of folk science. He explained the efficiency of his concept with reference to charts and graphs. And he showed why his approach was novel and that the threat from other companies was insignificant.

Yukio and Minako – who had done a lot of work to refine his arguments for the presentation – looked expectantly at Mr Yonekawa. He was thoughtful.

‘Minako has surely told you that it took a lot of effort on her part to convince me that you would make a worthy husband. Now I can see that her faith was well placed. This is very good, Yukio. What you have here is a business.’

SECTION 3

3.1 Yukio left Novartis as soon as he decently could and set up an office at home. He worked furiously to implement his plan. He would have six different meetings in a day – recruiting new people, registering company names, planning his finances. He flew to Australia, India, Ecuador, and Brazil to look for scientists with the kind of intellectual flexibility and physical vitality necessary for this work; he would add more researchers in other regions later. He brought his ten recruits to Tokyo and held a month-long series of meetings in which they shared their existing level of knowledge, defined exactly what they would look for, and outlined sets of corporate principles and working norms. As they departed and began their field research, Yukio set about finding laboratories in Japan who could carry out R&D for him when he eventually unearthed something of interest.

The project was demanding, and it very quickly absorbed Yukio utterly. Unless he was in a meeting, he did not spend a waking minute away from his computer. At any one moment he would simultaneously be reading three different articles from online journals, answering emails, refining his plans and projections, making lists of companies he could sell his eventual products too, writing new sets of instructions for his virtual team … Minako would put her head round the door when she got in from work.

‘How's it going?’ she would smile wearily.

‘Fine.’

And he would wait for her to withdraw so he could get back to it.

He would go to bed at three or four in the morning, making mental lists of things he had not done. A few hours later he would wake with a gasp of anxiety at time speeding by without him. Sometimes he did not take off his pyjamas for several days on end.

Bodily processes became an intense irritation to him. He took up smoking because it made him forget hunger. When he could not ignore his stomach anymore he called a local Chinese restaurant and had meals delivered. Used plates and half-drunk cups accumulated around his computer like mountains of trash around a city. He would curse when he had to leave his screen to urinate.

Once in a while, Mr Yonekawa would give him a call. He would always make the same joke. ‘Just checking on my investment,’ he would laugh. Yukio found it very childish.

3.2 Months passed.

3.3 One Satur...

Table of contents

• LOGO
• HALF TITLE
• TITLE
• COPYRIGHT
• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ARRIVALS
• THE TAILOR
• THE MEMORY EDITOR
• THE BILLIONAIRE'S SLEEP
• THE HOUSE OF THE FRANKFURT MAPMAKER
• THE STORE ON MADISON AVENUE
• THE FLYOVER
• THE SPEED BUMP
• THE DOLL
• THE RENDEZVOUS IN ISTANBUL
• THE CHANGELING
• THE BARGAIN IN THE DUNGEON
• THE LUCKY EAR CLEANER
• THE RECYCLER OF DREAMS
• DEPARTURES