Josh: Tourist Trap

He's here.

For the first time since we began this archive, the actual date is the same as the one on the time stamp at the top of this post. It is Wednesday, February 25th, 2009.

At 6:31 P.M. ("That's 18:31 in military time." Thank you, Yoshida) last night a Carnival cruise ship docked as scheduled in Kyoto harbor for a sightseeing tour. Then at midnight, another enormous cruise ship docked, surprising the harbor master as it was completely unscheduled. Finally, just before dawn this morning, a third cruise liner docked, with other boats having to make a mad scramble to accommodate it. The event was unheard of, unprecedented and upsetting to everyone on the dock but the brothers Yoshida, who were the only ones who knew exactly what was happening.

The call went out. Cars were dispatched for Mary, Yoshida and I, and at Hitoshirezu-jo, they began the final preparations for battle.

Precisely at dawn, the gangplanks on all three ships went down, and the massive cruise lines disgorged their contents as thousands of gray and blue-haired, overweight, Hawaiian shirt-wearing tourists grinning ear-to-ear streamed down into the streets of Kyoto, marching into the rising sun.

The brothers Yoshida had positioned spies down at the port to report the enemy's movements, and they said that whenever a native would approach a tourist and ask them if they needed assistance or wanted to make a purchase, the tourist would merely lift up their camera, flash a few shots of something at random and keep walking. This would satisfy the questioner that the elderly tourist was where they were supposed to be, and on the off-chance that it didn't, one or another of the tourist group-leaders would step over to the native, whisper a few kind words in their ear and invite them to join the processional.

After their little chat, the native seemed quite happy to do just that.

They walked slowly but surely to the castle. It will take them hours, but they don't seem to mind.

Mary and I packed quickly, and soon our car had arrived to take us away to Hitoshirezu-jo. Before we left I pulled her close and kissed her, taking one final, wistful look at our apartment. In the past couple of months it had become home. While the waiting for battle had been stressful at points, it had also been, without question, the most wonderful time of my entire life.

I peered around nostalgically while Mary fretted about whether it was clean enough to leave.

"Mary, in all probability the world's about to end. Is it that important that you didn't scrub the grout in the shower?"

She ignored me, going about her last minute-tidying and finally noticed a small box on the table by the front door. Mary picked it up, stared at it quizzically and ran a finger over the black felt on top. She opened it. She looked at me.

"It's a ring."

I nodded.

She came and put her arms around me, gently, her eyes filling with tears. We stood there holding each other close while the doorbell rang again and again and the smiling armies of the enemy advanced upon us, neither of us wanting to let go.

Finally we wiped our tears, gathered the last of our things, gave an awkward little bow to our apartment and headed down to the car.


We stopped to pick up Yoshida, and when he got to the car his shirt was mis-buttoned down the front, with one side sticking up higher than the other, there was a glob of peanut butter on his chin and his fly was open. In other words, he was only slightly more disheveled than normal.

"You okay, buddy?"

He nodded as he sat down across from us and began chewing his nails. "I know there are other instances of that year that I'm missing. 1831. It is like one of your Easter egg hunts: I feel as though I will be punished for not finding them all."

Mary smiled. "That's not how Easter egg hunts work."

Yoshida ignored her. "More time. It's all ending. I just wanted more time. Is that a new ring?"

She beamed, extending her hand to show him. "I know it doesn't have a diamond and it has an unusual design. And I know it's a bit larger than a normal engagement ring. Don't say anything about it being different." Mary began to scowl. "Don't say anything mean. In fact, don't say anything." Finally she added with a warning glare, "Just say 'congratulations'."

"Congratulations."

Mary smiled again. "Thank you."

I cleared my throat. "Yoshida, I'd like you to be my best man."

Both he and Mary turned to me with the same astonished expressions, saying simultaneously, "You would?"

I shrugged. "Everyone else I know is dead. Besides, I think you would give the most staggeringly awkward best man toast since the invention of human speech. I can't wait to hear it." After a moment he mumbled that he would be deeply honored, and we all settled in for the ride to the castle, with me writing this post on my Blackberry as we went.

With her head resting on my shoulder, Mary gazed down at her ring and asked innocently, "Where did you get the design?"

"Uh... well, it was Galadriel's ring from 'Lord of the Rings'. It was kind've a last minute thing..."

She pulled away, giving me a deadly look. "'Lord of the Rings'? And this writing on the inside, what does it say?"

Now I was squirming. "Yeah... probably something about Sauron. I'm not really sure. It's in Elvish."

Mary stared at me, shaking her head, her mouth open. Her face began to get red and I glanced up to see Yoshida was pointing his phone at us again ("Why?" I asked him later. "She was either going to have sex with you or murder you. Either way, I wanted a copy.") She started to say something, then took a deep breath, looked back down at the ring and finally laughed.

She gave me a sloppy kiss, talking and giggling all at the same time. "It's ridiculous and wildly inappropriate and one-of-a-kind and I have never in my life loved anything more."

Yoshida: 39

It has been one week since the previous post.

I believe I have surmised just what the whales are singing when they attack. As we recall from this post, there is a break at every thirteenth interval:

"/************/************/************/************/"

The number thirteen has the typical connotations of luck or unluckiness, but there is also this:

1831: 1+8+3+1 = 13

So simple. I can only assume the time spent with Howland and Stroud has dulled my intellect.

Now I cannot help but think: has the number 13 been associated with unluckiness because of the Magician and the year 1831 A.D.?

Tenno Heika Komei: The Unbalancing Of The Universe And The Invasion Of Most-Sacred Nippon

From the very instant of my birth in the city of Kyoto on the twenty second day of the seventh month of the Western year eighteen thirty-one A.D., I knew that the world was very, very wrong. While I still felt safe, warm and maintained by the aura of Nippon (or Japan), it was as if I was still in the womb, in a fashion- with a small pocket of comfort and, for lack of a better term, rightness- but just outside of this zone, just beyond a thin membrane was a tide of toxicity just waiting to crash down upon us and poison our very souls.

You may doubt that I could sense the wrongness of the universe in my first instant in the world, but I knew. Nippon told me.

From the day the divine sun goddess Amaterasu had blessed Nippon by making her great-grandson Jimmu the first Emperor, the land was good, the samurai did battle and honor reigned supreme. The land of the rising sun was complete and perfect under heaven. Then came the gaijin.

The word "gaijin" is often misinterpreted as meaning, "foreigner" or "barbarian". It is thought in most circles to be an insult, which it is, though some who have embraced the West foolishly believe it to be complementary. Gaijin means: "outside person", and never has there been a more perfect definition.

The invasion came on the twenty-first day of the seventh month of the Western year eighteen thirty-one A.D. Before this day there was only Nippon. Look back through history before this date and see how few real interactions there were with the rest of the world. How many tsunamis and earthquakes and natural disasters occurred that prevented the gaijin from having a significant impact on Nippon.

This is because before the year eighteen thirty-one A.D., there was no outside world.

There was only Nippon and her people and her divine Emperor, Shogun at his side. Then something changed, and the rest of the world suddenly, magically appeared.

The West (the term is used for familiarity's sake. For our purposes it is defined as, "that which is not Nippon") suddenly was vomited forth upon us, and we have been mystified, horrified and repulsed ever since.

A day after the invasion, Nippon gave birth to me to champion her in response. Nippon lavished blessings upon me, granting me long life, vitality and resources, and to my eternal shame it has not been nearly enough.

I attempted to warn my subjects time and again against the menace of the gaijin, but always the weakest of them have been seduced by the promise of an easier life that their clever contraptions could provide.

"But Emperor," My worthless Generals would whine. "Their guns would make our warriors so much better. It would allow them to defeat our enemies at range so much easier than with bows." Easier. Has any warrior ever been made better by walking an easy road? Nippon is Nippon because of its hardships. Our Samurai were supreme because while their choices were often the most simple, their paths they walked were hard.

At every turn we were seduced by the West, given promises and assurances that with every new adoption and integration into our lives that life would be easier. As easy as drowning. As easy as surrender.

In the Western year eighteen sixty-three A.D. I issued the Joi Chokumei, or the "Order To Expel Barbarians", but by that point even my Shogun had been enthralled by the outlanders, and while he paid lip service to the decree, by and large he chose not to enforce it. It was at this point that I meditated upon my failure as Emperor and came to the conclusion that I would be more effective operating from a position of secrecy.

The merchants were replacing the samurai as the dominant force in Japan, therefore I would attempt to improvise and influence the world economically as the power behind the throne. I steadily and covertly began hiding assets and informing my most trusted clans, the Yoshidas and the Tanakas that I would soon fake my own death, which I did in the Western year eighteen sixty-seven A.D., obfuscating the details of my demise with such vigor that to this day historians still argue whether I died of smallpox or poison.

After I assumed the identity of Lord Yamamoto, I remained in hiding, created the Bengosha Company (Defender, in English) and set about preserving Nippon from the invaders at all costs. Despite my abhorrence of the outside world, I realized early on that I required more information about the West. We needed to know our enemy, but in every instance I was rebuffed.

We Japanese have always been terrified of the sea. We take to the water only as a last resort, and even then cling to shore as a child to its mother's leg. I would send out one spy ship after another to all the corners of the newly-deformed world, but always my loyal Samurai would fail to ever reach their intended destinations. It was only years later that I discovered the reason why: the kujira. The whales.

They surrounded my ships and sang their song, and my men would simply be gone. Over and over the kujira turned my spy navy into a ghost fleet. Finally I resorted to employing a gaijin spy so as to attempt to fool the kujira, but they even attacked his vessel in the Western year eighteen seventy-two A.D., banishing him forever from the Earth and leaving his ship the Mary Celeste adrift, a mystery to all in the world but myself.

Attempting to take the battle to them, I turned my resources toward their destruction, building a line of ships and encouraging whaling at every turn to attempt to at the very least thin their numbers, but again the gaijin exerted pressure, condemning us on "moral" grounds until the feeblest of us whined and begged and brought the defense of our shores to a halt.

It was then that I began to suspect that the invasion of Nippon was not some random occurrence or a mere quirk of a perverted and savage universe, but was instead being instigated by an insidious, ruthless intelligence.

Over the next half-century, I attempted to defend Nippon from the gaijin, but at every juncture I failed. Always the promise of an easier life beguiled my people and made them weak; the lure of greed and luxury overcoming the harsh realities of duty and honor. During this time I fought a war of attrition and slowly lost.

Finally I decided that the Samurai were never meant to fight a war of attrition, much less win one. The Samurai excelled in wars of blood and steel and winner-take-all, so from behind the scenes I created and nurtured an imperialist movement, a hearkening back to the days of yore where honor ruled Nippon. I guided the hand of my adopted great-grandson, Admiral Yamamoto as he planned his attack on the West and I cheered as their boats sank to the bottom of the Hawaiian reefs.

It was war, and amid the blood and the carnage and the sacrifice and the glory, my people had rediscovered who they were. While the odds were steep and victory over the gaijin was far from assured, we had reclaimed our souls.

Then came the fire.

If it had been but one of our cities, we would have surrendered- if they had given us the time- but they had constructed two bombs, so that is what they used. With one of our beloved cities murdered, we would have, to our shame, given up, but we would still have eyed our enemy with the sullen glare of one who would rise once more from the ashes. But two? Two broke us. Nagasaki did more than end the war, it ended who we were. It shattered our national soul, and from then we have been a terminal patient steadily bleeding out.

The West did what it almost always does after it destroys a people: it helped. MacArthur came and rebuilt our cities; they provided us with new facilities and new technology and new ideas and they replaced our bow with a healthy handshake. They made our lives so very much easier.

They killed us with kindness.

It was only after the war, after the lines of communication opened with the gaijin that I received enough information to put a name to my enemy, to the one who had somehow caused the invasion of my world and sought to conquer us absolutely: the Magician.

We fought our unwinnable war as best we could in the intervening years, and then in the Western year nineteen hundred and ninety A.D., my vassal Shigekazu Yoshida informed me of his new plan to create a deadly virus that would, at best, defeat our enemy, and at worst allow us to end the conquest, destroy our enemy and allow Nippon an honorable death. His plan was to work to formulate this virus and release it simultaneously on every continent, annihilating all human life outside of Japan. The island nature of our Empire would make it a simple matter to shut down our borders and forbid any travel even before we had released the virus, keeping the populace safe from harm, though should Yoshida's new "Calicivirus" somehow find its way onto our shores, at least we would die on our terms, not the Magician's.

It was then that I made a decision that haunts me to this day: I said no. Despite all that had been done to us, despite all that was at stake, I saw the human cost and deemed it too brutal and horrible a plan to carry out. Was I wrong? Should I have had the fortitude and will to annihilate all human life in the world? That is for history to decide, for whatever history is worth.

I do know that before the year of my birth, history means nothing. The Magician can shift the dates of events at will, changing important "facts" on a whim. And why? Because they never happened. For all intents and purposes, before the Western year eighteen thirty-one, there was only Nippon, the rest of what we now call "the world" simply did not exist.

Shigekazu Yoshida and his friend and assistant Tanaka disobeyed me. Yoshida, seeking first to understand the dispersal and infection pattern of the virus, turned to the Australian government to fund the Wardang Island project, a scientific endeavor they imagined would control their exploding rabbit population. Then, once he had collected his data Yoshida moved on to America, where he exploited the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta for their archives of viruses, attempting to tailor his "Human Calicivirus" until it was perfected.

It was at this point where Yoshida simply ran out of money, as I had long-since refused to aid him, and it was here were one of the Magician's own servants, King Leopold I of Belgium discovered his work and betrayed his own master to assist him. Hoping that if he were to funnel the funds to Yoshida through his own descendant his treason would remain undiscovered by his master, Leopold provided millions and the virus was completed.

Of course, at the very instant of victory, the Magician bore down on Yoshida and murdered him, the virus later destroyed by my now-fellow archivists.

Now, at last, the Magician is coming. I can feel it in my very soul. He rides the waves accompanied by his vile minions, escorted by his fleet of kujira. He is coming here: to my childhood home, to my castle where no gaijin has ever set foot, and here will take place the final battle to preserve Nippon. He will attempt to gain entry to our most sacred shrine deep in the heart of the castle and perform his magic, his trick, ending our world.

We will stop him. We will destroy him once and for all.

So swears Tenno Heika Komei, one hundred and twenty-first Emperor of Nippon.

Yoshida: 38

And another. How have we missed these all the way along?

On January first, 1831, William Lloyd Garrison began publishing an anti-slavery newspaper. It's name? The Liberator.


All things point back to that year. How many other references to it have gone unnoticed? It is now all I can think about.

Yoshida: 37

Another 1831 reference (it is remarkable how, once you focus on a number you begin to see it everywhere):

Leopold I was crowned the first king of the Belgians on July 21st, 1831.

Josh: Recriminations

I have never felt this before. I have been angry, but not like this. This is rage. This is fury. This is a towering desire to destroy, and while I intend to turn this emotion on my enemy eventually, for now I cannot help but feel it for myself.

How could I have been so utterly clueless? He was right in front of me the entire time, laughing at me, playing out his trick.

Every time I look back, I see more signs and clues. Mostly, I remember our friendly arguments about Georg Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer; how we would sit by the window and banter good-naturedly about Hegel's falling into drastic disfavor in modern thought. I am a student of philosophy, but never once did I remember this famous quote made by Sir Karl Popper concerning Hegel:

"It was child's play for Hegel's powerful dialectical methods to draw real physical rabbits out of purely metaphysical silk hats."

Oh, and of course, Hegel died when? 1831.

I come again to Taras' post, which at this point has been scrutinized more closely than the Zapruder film. With his final words he makes a comment which I took to mean that the Magician is everywhere and all-powerful, but in fact I think he was trying to give us a clue:

"The young man had helpfully left the code key active, and while it was impossible to read what had been previously written, anything could be typed in and transmitted. It didn't matter, the magician read everything and he didn't need codes or magic to do it."

He meant it literally. He was telling us that the Magician was just looking over my mother's shoulder and reading everything, no magic necessary.

Mary begs me not to judge us too harshly, but I can't stop thinking about it. We see what we want to see, I suppose.

I'll give myself one more hour of looking back and beating the hell out of myself. From then on, it's the Magician's turn.

Cynthia: Praenuntius

Doctor, the date of the first performance of the "rabbit out of a hat" trick is of import. The reproductions that Leopold gave as an anniversary present last year were all originally painted in the year eighteen thirty-one A.D.

If I had to speculate, I would say that it was Leopold's way of attempting to subtly divulge a clue as to the Magician's identity without giving himself away.

Since Leopold's passing, I have devoted hours to considering what meaning there might be behind the paintings' subject matter, but all this time it was in fact the date of their creation that was significant.