The Pure land of Perfect Bliss
episode 1
Sunah. Park, my assistant. Lieutenant Kang, and his assistant,Kim. Five of us, about the same age—we somehow got along well.
You could say it was the end of youth. Still carrying that loose, open college air… trying to be a little more grown-up, a bit more polished. If you couldn’t manage a bit of grown-up finesse, you got written off as… uncool. We kept a polite distance. Respected each other’s space. Clean manners. Just enough restraint. Yeah… we were hooked on that new kind of social world.
We hung out a lot off-duty. Dinner after work. Drinks. Weekend karaoke, pubs… blowing off steam. Tennis, golf, swimming. Swimming was easy—year-round access to a military-contracted sports club. The nicer tennis courts and golf courses? Requisitioned by the occupation forces. Ours to use. Anytime.
Spring meant going out to see the cherry blossoms.Pizza, wine—our own slightly pretentious take on hanami (cherry-blossom viewing).
Summer—we’d head out to Ise, Wakayama, Shikoku. Water skiing. Diving. The usual “famous spots.”
Fall, we’d rent a big camper. Take turns driving. Hit scenic routes. Hiking, camping.
Winter—onsen (hot springs) hopping. Global warming and all… but Nagano, Niigata, even Hokkaido still had enough snow for skiing.
It felt like heaven. If you wanted something, you got it. Simple as that. With the right connections, even government weapons worth tens—hundreds—of billions of dollars… not that hard to play with. Come up with a decent excuse, and you could fly wherever you liked. Or dive to the bottom of the sea.
Honestly… better than old-world nobility. And we didn’t pay a thing for it. Japan did. Yeah, we were soldiers. But we lived out our youth all the same. While ordinary people… got stuck with restrictions.
Funny thing is—technically, we were the ones fenced in. Guarded zones. Controlled access. Though we were confined behind fences, we were free to do pretty much anything. Meanwhile, the Japanese, spread out across the whole country…sometimes it felt like they were the ones trapped behind the fence.
Weird. Kind of ironic. Japan shouldn’t be paying for U.S. forces stationed here. A Japan that can say No. A beautiful country.....We will defend this nation…Slogans like that. People bought into them. Let the Restoration government rise. And now? They’re paying for the occupation anyway. Because of the war that same government dragged them into.
Not like it’s new. A hundred years ago—same pattern. The “divine nation” government invaded China. “Continental interests are Japan’s lifeline,” they said. Refused to back down. Picked a fight with the U.S. Dragged everyone—foreigners, their own people—into famine and slaughter.
And, right on cue, when the war ran out of road, that same mouth spat out the slogan 一億玉砕. “Gyokusai.” “one hundred million shattered jewels.”
…Mass suicide? Sounds like some cheap cult.
“Fight for the nation’s prosperity, then die together.” It’s basically “I’d die for my health.” A joke. Except it wasn’t a joke. A real government said it.
And their slogan.
“Liberating Asia from Western domination.”
What could be more ironic than that—anywhere in the world?
Japan back then—declared an enemy of all humanity. Leaders condemned for brutality and aggression. Tried and condemned by foreigners, no less. Very few countries in history can claim that.
And yet…the prosperity everyone envied in postwar Japan. Didn’t come from that “divine” government. Came from the very occupation they used to call barbaric.
Honestly… it’s absurd.
This country’s fanatics—something’s off. Are they all just amnesiacs? Or do they never learn their lesson, despite all the pain? Or… cursed, maybe. Like Sisyphus.
Then again… maybe it’s not just Japan. Humans repeat pointless things. That might be all it is. crescent814 put it well:
“Just think about it… every day, you cook three meals. Dress up, then undress. Take a bath, sleep. Wake up, cook again, eat, sleep. You get the same illnesses, go to the hospital over and over. Your hair grows, so you keep going back to cut it. Just staying alive consumes an insane amount of resources. And on top of that, you suffer. You work steadily toward something. But if you’re going to die anyway, isn’t it all pointless? When someone dies, someone else is born. Same cycle again. Over and over. We repeat what we already know, struggle, suffer… without any real purpose. Doesn’t that seem like a huge waste?”
Maybe humans are being punished for their own sins. Life—naught but suffering. Little wonder the ancients should lament their lot so.
Once I got used to Osaka…riding the shuttle bus everywhere started to feel suffocating. You want to move on your own.That’s human nature.
Spring was coming. Real riding season. So yeah—I finally decided to get what I’d always wanted. A big bike. First—does a Harley without that big, thundering V-twin gas engine even have a reason to exist? A simple enough question. That aside.......
I modeled my bike on the classic film Easy Rider and decided to build a stripped-down American-style bike. Stars and Stripes on the battery tank, metallic silver for the mechanics. That was pure bliss—picking the parts, going back and forth, this, no, that. I liked the look of a single seat, but Sunah cut in and made me swap it out for a tandem. No arguing.
I chose a motor that favored range but still had plenty of output—F1-level acceleration. On a clumsy American-style frame, it was overkill.
Without softening the throttle in software, you’d need more lives—and more licenses—than anyone has. The motor whined like a jet, building speed in thick, surging waves. It was addictive. Enough to make me want a race-replica, too. Not that I could afford it. I’d just started the job, wasn’t making much, and the Harley had wiped out my savings. On top of that, I still had the loan for Kkotchebi Tsuyoshi’s treatment hanging over me.
That bike became my best partner through my entire posting in Japan. Glamorous. Stylish. Just… cool. Some mornings I rode in wearing my uniform. Days off, leather jacket, blasting solo down the Hanshin Bayshore Line.
When it got warm, I’d take Sunah out. We’d go touring—her as navigator, phone in hand. Wakayama, Ise, Awaji Island, up through Hokuriku—from the Pacific side across to the Sea of Japan…Or across the bridges from Honshu, the main island, over the Seto Inland Sea, into Shikoku. The Sanuki udon (a Shikoku specialty, thick wheat noodles) we had together—ridiculously good.
Somewhere along the way, I realized I’d slipped into her script—
“making youthful memories,”
“a fateful, heart-racing encounter.”
Not like I chose it. More like I drifted into it.
I mean… she was beautiful. Compared to crescent814, her skin was fresh, firm. No slack, no damage. Mentally untouched, physically healthy. As a marriage prospect, she checked every box. Who knew if I’d ever meet someone better? Keeping that option warm didn’t hurt.
Still…Compared to crescent814, she was a kid. Boring, in a way. harmless but dull. Always self-centered, hyper-aware of herself. Never breaking out of her shell. Overly sensitive, all defense. And yet a dreamy idealist. Still playing the well-bred young lady. Next to crescent814—open, blunt, never hesitant— Sunah felt off. Out of sync. A bit of a drag.
Then again, it’s not just her. She’s average for women her age. Nothing unusual. crescent814 was probably the same when she was single. At that stage, women push their value as high as they can—cut out anything that lowers it. So they get self-conscious. Defensive. Sensitive.
An average, marriageable-age woman, you could say. Maybe it’s unfair to compare that an experienced, mature woman— one who’s been through marriage and childbirth, settled, grounded—A baby, really—still full of dreams.
And with her…sometimes it felt like I was being pulled into a pit. The bottom of it—called marriage. So no.No casually taking her hand. No “just to see” touching her lips. Not even a thought. She was a coworker. A friend. If something went wrong—if it turned into a mess—there’d be no containing the fallout.
This spring, Sunah finally got her long-awaited transfer to the Public Health and Welfare Bureau, assigned to the Child Welfare Division, and she was eager to get started. But the occupying army drafted administrative plans according to its own convenience, right there on paper. Whether these plans caused hardship for ordinary people didn’t matter. The lives of the populace were disregarded; starvation and collapse in the streets were nothing unusual. With even scarce resources, a more mobile and efficient deployment could have saved far more people… Sunah and the other young, conscientious bureaucrats couldn’t hide their doubts. So they decided to pool their knowledge across departments: those in the information division who knew the realities of Japan, those on the front lines who felt social needs firsthand, and those aware of the upper echelons’ perceptions and policies. Together, they set up a voluntary workshop to exchange ideas.
That, of course, wasn’t necessarily welcome by the military high command. For them, fewer tasks meant less hassle, and they wanted to avoid troublesome failures that could become questions of responsibility. So their instinct was to do only what was safe and routine, then wrap things up quickly. Inevitably, Sunah and the others grew frustrated on the ground and increasingly irritated with the higher-ups.
While I was busy tinkering with my bike, she often talked to me.
“Hey, Johan, listen. The bureau chief—”
“Hey, Johan, did you know? Right now, elderly people with no family and people with disabilities… do you know how they’re living? The Japanese government just leaves them alone. Well, not that they could even if they wanted to—budget and authority issues, you know… But still, feeding them is considered less efficient than letting them die. It’s cheaper that way.”
Sunah genuinely felt for the Japanese people and wanted to vent to me, to get advice.
But, unfortunately, I had no real interest in Japanese governance. I just wanted to get my connection to the military over with, and I never shared Sunah’s sense of urgency. My focus was entirely on shaping my post-reserve career. Not that I had no concern for welfare or humanitarian issues—it was just that my days were packed with daily work, planning for the future, and everything else that occupied my mind.
Her appeals passed from my right ear to my left and ended there.
