Archives for category: Japan

THE DELICATE BALANCE

May 7, 2015 //
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Flying Free Like A Hawk

Haresh Shah

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“You’re doing a good job if you manage to piss us off fifty percent of the time, and piss our partners off another fifty.” Our boss Bill Stokkan would often tell his managers, usually during one of his pontification sessions. More true of his international divisional heads who had not only to deal with the products but also with the cultural nuances of the people from several countries. In my case, it also worked to my advantage that I was not an American born American. Especially the people I worked with from the non-European and Asian countries felt that I understood them better just because I was born and grew up in India. That I brought a different sensitivity to our working together. Equally so with my American management, because by then I had spent as many years in the West. As difficult as it could be sometimes, I had developed a close rapport with the people on both ends and had earned their confidence and the respect.

Even more so for our Yastaka Sasaki, who handled Playboy account for our Tokyo rep Ray Falk. Not only was his job to interpret the language portion of our communications with the editors and executives at our Japanese partners Shueisha, but also of making sure that what one of us said or wanted didn’t upset the sensitive cultural differences. Sasaki, as everyone called him, spoke fluent English. Almost instantly, he had earned my respect and if not exactly having become close friends, us two had established a certain honesty and trust into each other that went beyond simply working together. Those five days we spent together crisscrossing Japan sealed our bond which never weakened till the very end.

The last I saw of Sasaki was at my home in Evanston, October of 1993. Officially, I had already departed Playboy, but had invited for one last hurrah the group that had come to Chicago to partake in that year’s International Publishing conference. Turned out to be so much fun that it had to be repeated at the tail end of the conference. No more cigars, bemoaned Jeremy Gordin, the editor-in-chief of about to be launched South African edition. I had cooked Indian food and had caterers supply the rest. Everyone was spread out across several rooms of my house. I remember Sasaki and I, along with the Japanese editor-in-chief, the suave Suzuhito Imai sitting around the glass topped breakfast table in the corner, Jan (Heemskerk) standing by the kitchen counter and looking on. As Jan remembers it, placed in the middle of the table is a bowl full of fire red and deep green ultra dynamite Thai chili peppers. Sasaki picks up the red one and is about to take a bite.

‘Be careful, it will kill you!’ I warn.

‘I don’t think so. I am used to eating hot food.’

‘Yeah, but this is not hot food. This is the killer Thai pepper.’

‘Don’t worry, I can handle it.’

Our hands on our chests and our breathing momentarily suspended, we watch him bite off a chunk bigger than even I ever would dare. As if pierced by a sharp arrow, suddenly his face turns red and then contorted shriveled up fig. Tears begin to roll down his eyes. He runs to the sink, but it’s too late. Like three sadists, Jan and Imai and I laugh our butts off. I told you so. I want to say, but I spare him that bit of insult to his injury.

Beyond that, we may have stayed in touch for a while, but nothing in particular that I remember. Six years later I am living in Prague and am now editor-in-chief of successful Serial magazine, which as the name suggests, is focused on the popular television series. Suddenly, not the prime time, but the Sunday morning cartoon series Pokémon is all the rage on the Czech television. We decide to do cover story on the show. But as with other shows, the information and the images available through the local television network is limited to the press material, which everyone else too has. But I want to do an in-depth, but entertaining and informative feature on the show. I am specifically interested in the character’s creator, the elusive, Satoshi Tajiri. There is not much known about him and there isn’t a single photo of him available to accompany the text. Sasaki somehow manages to send me an old black and white shot of the man. We have a local artist do a color illustration of him.

Sasaki is pleased and amused at us re-connecting: and I thought you had faded away in the sunset after Playboy! And here you are, well and alive and no less than are editor-in-chief of a successful magazine in beautiful Prague! I can’t help but sense a certain amount of pride he must have felt at my well being post-Playboy. I obviously feel flattered and pleased at the fact that how pleased he sounds at his Shah-san not having disappeared behind the clouds of the past.

Barely little over a year has passed when I receive a mail from Mary (Nastos) in Chicago. It brings the sad news of Sasaki’s passing on March 20th, 2002. A shock to say the least. I immediately write to his wife Miki and to Ray Falk. Even though I remembered having briefly met Miki once, her husbands’ death prompts long email correspondence between us two. In the correspondence, she describes in poignant details the last days and the last moments of his life and death. In-between the lines I could see how much love there must have been between the two. And yet, their relationship could not have been without ups and downs, in which unbeknown to me, they must have been divorced. The response that came from Ray Falk reporting on the funeral service for the man who had joined him right out of college and worked for him practically till the end, ends with: Mr. Sasaki’s wife who used to work in our office remarried her former husband before his death—-to ease his days—-a wonderful gesture.

As I re-read Miki’s e-mails sent to me soon following his death, there is more than just a wonderful gesture. There is genuine love and an enviable closeness.

In January of 2001, Sasaki is diagnosed with the cancer of esophagus. He is subjected to six weeks long chemo and radio therapies, which helps kill the bad cells along his esophagus. He goes on camping and fishing trips over the Golden Week in April-May holidays. Miki and him take another trip to the mountain lake in June. He suffers a relapse in July. The cancer has metastasized to his liver in multiple areas.

The real battle begins. He submits himself to a new drug in its first phase of the clinical trial. He continues to work and manages his day-to-day life. Going out to eat, going to the movies. And most importantly continues indulging in his passion of fly fishing. With some hopeful moments here and there, on February 28th, 2002, he is told he only has a month left to live. The decision is made to admit him to St. Luka’s International Hospital to receive palliative care to ease his pain instead of seeking a cure. He is moved to the hospice ward on March 7th. The last days of his life ticking off. And yet he fights tooth and nail. When not sedated, he is able to eat soft food, drink juices and water, suck on the ice cubes and go to the bathroom on his own. No needles or tubes sticking in or out of his body.

Flanking his bed are Miki and his childhood friend Ted Teshima, with whom he went to the elementary school in his hometown of Kobe. Only thirty minutes to go, he asks Ted to give him a back rub. Sensing that the end is very near, Ted calls Sasaki’s younger brother Yasuhiro in Kobe. And also calls a close colleague Mike Dauer, while Miki and Ted hold his hands on the either side of the bed and thank him for all he has given them and to wishing him the peaceful journey, his brother and Mike fill his ears with their soothing voices. Tears are rolling down Sasaki’s eyes as he slowly and peacefully retreats in the beyond. It’s Wednesday, March 20th, 2002, the time 19:15. His earthly journey has lasted for 45 years, 3 months and 1 day.

The funeral follows. He is cremated and he came back home in a small box in my arms, writes Miki. Months later in August, Miki along with her uncle and Yastaka’s friend Mike travel to  lake Nikko, where Yastaka and Miki used to go fishing. They scatter some of his ashes around one of his favorite spots in the river. At other time, Miki and Mike spend hours fishing at a smaller lake nearby, and sprinkle more of his ashes. They don’t catch any fish. They begin to raw back to the shore. There is a hawk hovering up above their heads. Just as they are about to reach the shore, they watch the bird dive down to the surface of the water very close to them and snatch up a big fish in its claw and fly away. Stunned, Mike and Miki decide the hawk is a better fisherman.

On a different stretch the next day when Miki is fishing alone, she notices another hawk lingering up above and then suddenly diving into the river in front of her, passing just above her head, the bird catches a brook trout and off flies up, up and away. It must have been Yastaka. Thinks Miki. The thought of him turning into a hawk and flying freely in the skies of Nikko from the mountain to mountain and to the lake to the river is really soothing and nice to me.

Fittingly, Ray Falk wrote to his friends in his brief report about Sasaki’s funeral. The picture of Sasaki at the funeral featured a big fish—-Lake fish were his favorite. There was a fishing rod near the coffin and a guitar at the other end.

Shah-san, I remember my husband talked about you sometimes. Very recently (like early February). The episode that I remember well that he told me was the trip that you and my husband went to Kanazawa city in northern Japan many years ago. You two had no interest what-so-ever to the touristic spots like the very famous historic Japanese garden which most tourists usually visit when they go to Kanazawa, but you two headed straight to the local market where they sell all the fish and vegies and interesting stuff. Shah-san loves market hopping anywhere he goes, that’s what he said, if I remember correctly, reminisces Miki.

In response to my mail to Ray Falk, he writes back:

Dear Haresh,

Thanks for your interest in Y. Sasaki!

If you had not left PLAYBOY, this might not have happened. He was a great Haresh Shah fan and would have listened to your advice on life and living.

That’s a heavy cross to bear, but flattering nevertheless.

© Haresh Shah 2015

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Other Profiles

FACE TO FACE WITH JAN CREMER

SEX EDUCATION À LA JAPONAISE

DEVIL IN THE PARADISE

DESIGNING IN HIS DREAMS

THE DUTCH TREAT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

On Friday, May 22, 2015

TO HELL AND BACK

When I was fired for the second and the last time from Playboy, included in my severance package was a stint with one of the most expensive outplacement firms. Not knowing exactly what the hell they did for you, I plunged into it head first, to the extent that I must have been the only executive to have a unique distinction of being fired by an outplacement firm. And the rage that erupted. Thinking of it still gives me shivers 🙂

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Categories Friendship, Japan, Memoire, Playboy, Profile, Yastaka Sasaki

LOVE AND DEATH

April 9, 2015 //
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Reflections On Japan’s Preoccupation With Death

Haresh Shah

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Ray Falk and Kayo Hayashi are scratching their heads to come up with something to do with Shah-san that evening. But I put their dilemma to rest. It’s my second night being back in Tokyo and we all have had an exhausting day – especially me, being grilled by the Japanese editors about them not getting the rights to Norman Mailer’s Gary Gilmore piece. Kayo drops me off at the hotel around half past five. I spend some time browsing the Imperial Hotel’s little bookstore  and buy a copy of the 1968 Nobel Prize winner in literature, Yasunari Kawabata’s novel, Beauty and Sadness. My intention is to read a bit of it after I have had a light dinner in one of the hotel’s restaurants or just take it easy and order a sandwich and a beer from the room service. I don’t get around to doing either. Soon as I enter the room, I stretch out and close my eyes to relax for a while. The next thing I know, it’s past one in the morning.

I force myself out of the bed, undress and crawl under the covers. It’s now three in the morning, but I just can’t fall asleep. Resigned, I get out of the bed, fix myself a cup of coffee and call Chicago and brief my boss Lee Hall on the meetings of the day. It’s two in the afternoon in Chicago, no wonder I can’t just lie down and fall asleep. I pick up Beauty and Sadness.

Oki Toshio – the protagonist of the book is on his way to Kyoto traveling on Kyoto Express. Upon his arrival, he grabs a cab at the station and checks in at Miyako Hotel. The story flows like a gentle creek. Not too complicated a love triangle among the middle aged Oki Toshio – the novelist of some renown, his long time mistress Ueno Otoko, a painter and Otoko’s young protégée, Sakami Keiko. Already a tricky tangle. Made further complicated by the involvement of Oki’s son, Taichiro. How do you untangle the four gnarly branches so intricately entwined and manage one or more of them not to crack?

Inspired probably by the book, I decide to take a side trip to Kyoto that weekend. I board the Kyoto bound Tōkaidō Shinkansen, and upon arriving take a cab from the station to the hotel, which quite by coincidence turns out to be Miyako – booked by Ray Falk’s office. As the bullet train slithers south west of Tokyo at more than 200 km/h, I take in the blur of the scenery outside the windows while still absorbed in Beauty and Sadness.

I arrive in Kyoto around afternoon. I only have the rest of the day and that night to make the best of that ancient – once the dreamy capital of the country. First I take the guided tour that gives me a bird’s eye view of the city. There are modern areas and buildings that are no different than one would see anywhere else in the world, but what sticks out above and below them are what you would imagine Samurai and Imperial Japan to be. Multi roofed and multi colored pagoda like buildings dotting the lower skyline of the entire city. The vermilion Torris gates to the Shinto shrines and the Buddhist temples, delicately groomed Japanese gardens, narrow and the crowded streets and yet narrower stone tiled labyrinth like alleys lined with clusters of small boutiques, bars and restaurants.

My destination that night is the famous Geisha district of Gion and the surrounding Higashi-oji street and Shirakawa river. I walk the alleys, rubbing shoulders with the locals and the tourists under the multiple-low grey roofed buildings and let myself be amazed at the huge and colorful lanterns hanging outside a variety of establishments, bearing their names. Doused in  predominantly yellow and red, the warm hues illuminate the streets that lead and guide your way through the neighborhood, making you feel as if you were moon walking on clouds.

And then suddenly you see the beautifully and artfully painted white faces of the illusive and alluring Geishas, tiptoeing their petite steps on the stone squares of the street. Then you see a pair and before you realize, clusters of them scurrying this way and that, going about their chores,  chatting, crossing the small wooden bridges over the creeks, twirling their red oriental umbrellas, their faces peeking out of the automobile windows. Looking more like a movie set, you suddenly become aware that those Geishas are for real. That they live and breathe there in Gion. That they are bred and brought up in a house not too far from where I am walking. That they work in the restaurants, tea houses. They sing and dance and entertain like the famed Tawaifs above the store fronts and in the bazars of Lucknow. And like their sisters on the Indian continent, many of them are mistresses to some of the richest and the most powerful men in Japan.

Overwhelmed, I take a break and as recommended, walk into the restaurant Ashiya. Like in France, it’s Lyon and not Paris, in Japan, Kyoto cuisine shines over that of Tokyo’s. And the must of the must is to have a Kobe beef at Ashiya in Kyoto. So I do. The place is totally mobbed. But they find a place for me at the bar. It’s crowded and it’s loud and it sizzles with the delicious fragrance of the meat searing on the hot metal plates. Even though I am shocked at the price tag of US$ 30.- for a tinny tiny peace of a Filet Mignon – back in 1979 when the hefty T-bone steak in the US cost about $6.-, I would not let pass perhaps once in a life chance of tasting a Kobe steak at Ashiya in Kyoto. So tender it slithers down my throat like a fresh chilled oyster. I love it.

Back to strolling the alleys, I can’t help but think of Beauty and Sadness. And of  Otoko and Keiko. As if they were real people and not the characters in Kawbata’s novel. I expect them any moment to emerge out of one of those hundreds of Geishas going about their business through those narrow pedestrian streets. I find something about their real existence mysterious. And then it occurs to me, even if Otoko and Keiko did exist and the novel was based on the real Geishas, what were the chances that they would still be around? And if they are, Otoko certainly would be very very old, but Keiko could still be in circulation. They could even be dead!

The thought nudges me into a nostalgic state of mind. Up until then, the little that I know of this mysterious land, I can’t help but see lingering behind the reticence of the Japanese character a certain shade of melancholy. Not just a mask, but something deeper, something inherent in their being.

As much life and the noise and the hubbub that swirl around me, there is something about the narrowness of the streets, smallness of the shops on the either side and their grey-brown tiled roofs all seem to give me an eerie feeling – the melancholic slippery sweetness of the dark wildflower honey. Other than the slight sliver of the sky up above, the solid stone tiles on the ground and the shops so close across from each other give me a feeling of a cocoon closing in – wrapped inside is a sleeping dead body and the soul, still inhabiting the earth, luxuriating in the ultimate slumber. What a morbid image? Why am I thinking of death?

Perhaps the answer lay in the ending of Beauty and Sadness, which I finish reading the next day on my train ride back to Tokyo. How does Kawabata deal with his four characters all curled up in one single web of loving? Simple! What if one of them were to have an accident and die?

The more I read and get to know of Japan, the more I get a feeling that the Japanese are preoccupied with death – like most Indians are, especially when it comes to the matters of the heart. I fail to see any glory in death. As inevitable as it is, it should be as natural as the birth. I can’t see inducing an end to life. Of the two Japanese authors I have read so far, both committed suicide. In November of 1970, Yukio Mishima committed the ritual Seppuku of carving out his own abdomen with a sharp knife and letting his disemboweled entrails hang out like blood soaked slithery snakes.

The public suicide of Mishima was all announced and choreographed. At the time I was working for Time and Life magazines. I still remember how us in Chicago production waited for the layouts, the photos and the text to arrive from the editorial offices in New York. I don’t remember exactly how we felt about awaiting for him to be done with and for us to put the magazines to bed and then go home. I don’t remember us having discussions about it either. Strange! Now that I think of it, it feels spooky, but then it must have felt a normal occurrence. Those were the days when Vietnam was well and alive and was covered extensively and in all its gory details in the Life magazine, week after week. The photos and the reports of the continuous death stream was hardly shocking anymore.

Mishima lost the Nobel Prize to his fellow writer and the close friend, Yasunari Kawabata, who too committed suicide by  gassing himself to death in April 1972. Unlike Mishima, tried to give a rousing speech amidst the boos of the crowd before proceeding to slice his stomach, Kawabata didn’t even leave a small suicide note, leaving his loved ones and the fans wondering forever. There are many theories about his taking his own life, among them, him being haunted by hundreds of nightmares following the death of Yukio Mishima.

The protagonist of Mishima’s Sailor Who Fell From The Grace With The Sea is murdered by a bunch of teenagers. I would go onto read Kawabata’s Snow Country, and realize that in both of his novels the “intruding” characters die of accidents, thus clearing the path of the survivors.

While I found Mishima difficult to read, I find Kawabata’s style and the narratives soothing, simple and nostalgically romantic. Both of the books have made a deep impact on me and yet even decades later, I can’t help but wish that instead of resorting to killing his characters, he could have given his stories delicate twists and left them alone. But the the endings do tell you something about the way the Japanese feel about life – or more precisely about death.

Committing Seppuku is the ultimate glory and so is the Kamikaze pilots taking off on suicide missions in their single engine, non-landing, one-man Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi planes and going down with the blazing bright and glorious flames.  And Madama Butterfly choosing the path of con onor muore (to die with honor), blindfolds her child, goes behind the screen and plunges the knife into her heart. Applause, applause!

Fast forward to the one of my most favorite Japanese authors of today. At the time of Mishima and Kawabata’s deaths, Kyoto born Haruki Murakami was only in his very early twenties and had yet to publish his first book, which came out in 1979. But it wasn’t up until 1987 did he burst onto the international literary scene with his mega seller, Norwegian Wood, named after the Beatles song of the era. A bitter sweet love story of the young college students set in Tokyo – the generation grooving and grown up to the essence of the music that defined the Sixties, it’s the suicide of one of the lovers that moves the story forward pulling at the heart strings not only that of the Japanese but that of the readers across the globe.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

More Japanese Stories

SEX EDUCATION À LA JAPONAISE

BOYS’ NIGHT OUT WITH PLAYMATES

A NIGHT OUT IN TOKYO

THE NAIL THAT STUCK OUT…

JINGLE BELLS IN TOKYO

TABLE OF CONTENTS

On Friday, April 24, 2015

THE TUNNEL OF LOVE

Over the years of globe trotting for Playboy, I have stayed in some of the most luxurious hotels of the world. Nothing to frown at the comfort and opulence they afford, but there are times when you just want a simple place of your own. Especially in the cities I would need to frequent a lot and for longer stays. So I rent a wonderful bachelor’s pad in Mexico City. Equally as luxurious or even more so than the rooms at Camino Real, not to mention how unique.

Playboy Stories Goes Biweekly

Having already told 92 of them, I guess I just want to stretch them out as long as I can. Also, to be honest, up until now, the stories just poured out on their own, I couldn’t write them fast enough. There are still stories I want to tell, equally as good or perhaps even better, but these are the ones that require a bit more pondering and more time to write. Like Love and Death, many of them would contain more retrospections and the deeper observations. A bit slower pace will also give me time to work on some other stuff which I hope to share with you in the future. HS  

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Categories Culture, Japan, Memoire, Playboy, Travel

JINGLE BELLS IN TOKYO

December 11, 2014 //
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A Fleeting Glimpse At The Land Of The Rising Sun

Haresh Shah

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I have landed in Tokyo during the day on the Christmas Eve of 1977. I am enroute to Bombay with a non-business related stopover in Japan. Even so, Playboy has arranged for me  to be met at the airport by one of our Tokyo rep’s people. This is my very first trip to the land of the Rising Sun, and I am excited to be here, even for a short stay of 48 hours.

Arriving and negotiating through Haneda International Airport feels like a free fall into a total disaster area. Even considering that the Japanese like and thrive on things small, neat and functional, their international airport is ridiculously small, overcrowded and chaotic. And yet they somehow manage to maintain order within what would seem daunting to anyone else. As I claim my baggage from the carousel and look around, I see a huge easel, wrapped across it is a wide band of paper sign saying: Mr. Shah – next to which it is repeated in katakana using the Japanese characters for my name. When I present myself by the sign, a uniformed hostess walks up to me with Welcome to Japan and pins to my lapel a name tag and informs me that someone is waiting for me outside at the MEETING PLACE.  Keiko Shirokawa is there to pick me up and take me to the hotel Dai Ichi in the famous Ginza district – that bustles with restaurants, bars, night clubs, department stores and boutiques.

I am on my own, so they have booked me in a modest place. As small as the room is, it lacks for nothing that a weary traveler may need or want. In-room amenities include a happi coat, a short kimono like garment to relax in – very attractive in bright blue and black. I am almost tempted to honestly steal it. Also provided are a pair of vinyl slippers and a green tea center with a small electric water heater and tea bags. The bedside drawer contains Teachings of Buddha, in English as well as in its Japanese versions. Just like in a five star hotels in Europe, the toilet paper is folded at the end in a triangle every time the room is cleaned. It is not only equipped with the bedside telephone, but there is also a toilet-side phone in the bathroom! A glass for drinking water is placed over a matching glass coaster. There is also a mini-pack containing of the Japanese one sided toothpicks. I have never seen them before. In that the flat ended top looks like a crown atop the thin lines grooved around its diameter. This is so that you can snap off the top and rest your toothpick on it for later use.   And the bedside lamp has twin fixtures. One lights up to allow the reading and another one with a mini bulb provides very faint shadow illumination. And everything in the room is computerized. The billing of course, but what is now common place, I encounter it for the first time – being able to punch in the time for the wake up call through the key pad on the telephone. When it rings in the morning, you hear a gentle opening of a flower like jingle – the kind which can come from a slight touch of a single sitar string. And the vending machines in the lobby are stocked not only with soft drinks, but also with beer and whiskey, and little chilled bottles of sake. As well as conveniences such as shaving and tooth brushing kits, hair grooming products and the ice cubes. What else could one have wanted even in a luxurious and expensive hotel?

The thing that impresses me the most about the Japanese is how inquisitive they are. I am amazed at the questions they ask me during our short introductory meeting I had with some of the editors. Pounded into them must have been, there is no such thing as a stupid question. This seems to answer, why they are so detailed oriented and how they go about not stealing, but learning by heart the secrets of the most complicated of the machinery.

Unlike any other city around the world I have been to, nothing comes even close to the list of things I have made about what I see and experience in Tokyo within those two Christmas days.

What is most astonishing to me is, even though only less than 1% of Japan’s population of 112,000,000 people are Christians, nowhere else have I noticed a city so commercialized with Christmas as is Tokyo. The department stores such as Sogo, Mitsukoshi and Matsuya decorated in things Christmas would put to shame even the Christmas decorations of Marshall Fields/Macy’s of Chicago’s State Street. It’s winter time in Japan also. No snow on the streets, but the air is crisp and cold and there is enough cotton glittering with tinsel is spread out into the store windows to make up for the lack of the real thing. Wafting in the air in continuous loops are Jingle bell, jingle bell, Santa Clause is coming to town and I am dreaming of a white Christmas and other holiday tunes permeate the Tokyo streets, give you a feeling of having landed in the Christmas themed Fujiland. There are more blinking neon signs arched at the street fronts wishing you MERRY CHRISTMAS in this land of Buddha than I have seen anywhere else in the world. The stores are open through all Christmas holidays and crowds emerging from them are bulging with bags and bags of Christmas, nay, Winter gifts.

Over a period of time I would learn that the Japanese love to give gifts. It’s a tradition you have to respect and accept. So much so that even Playboy with its strict corporate policy of its employees not allowed to accept any gifts had to bend the rule in order not to commit the embarrassing social faux pas and risking the congenial relationship with our Japanese partners by letting me bring those gifts home – even allowing me to keep them. And the gifts wouldn’t be perfunctory. I still have their top of the line Canon Sure Shot – came in handy just in time, because I was getting tired of lugging around my heavy camera bag stuffed with Pentax Spotmatic, a set of lenses and filters and other accessories – now made obsolete by the digital cameras. And a set of beautiful Seiko watches, his and hers – the ones both Carolyn and I still wear.

Though I can’t help but wonder, who can afford anything at those prices? Okay, the ones given to me were from the corporate PR budget. But what about the personal gifts that I witness people carrying out of the stores? One of the things that totally flabbergasts me during this first visit to Japan is, how expensive everything is!! The first night Keiko takes me out for dinner at a small unpretentious neighborhood Chinese restaurant costs US$ 30.-. That is just the food. At the time, something you could do back in California for $10.-.  As expensive as the food is, in the most cases you get to see it “live” even before you enter the restaurants. The standard dishes are on display in the glass showcases fronting each place, little hand made signs indicating the names of the dishes both in Japanese and English and the price of the respective dish. I still haven’t been able to figure out whether the food on display looking so appetizing is so beautifully frozen or is made of very natural looking plastic. Even basics like a cup of coffee, a glass of beer, a single tomato in the department store, sight seeing tour, day-to-day clothing, all cost three or four times as much as they do back in the United States. You would think the small luxuries that are made in Japan, like cameras, transistors, Walkman, calculators and such should at least be cheaper, Nope! They are cheaper to buy across the Pacific. Curiously enough, other than the electronics and some things obviously Japanese, such as Kimono and Kabuki masks, the stores are filled with the products foreign – mainly European high fashion and American. American jeans and the movies, the magazines, the McGregor spices and DelMonte tomato ketchup in the grocery store.

When I first arrive in Tokyo, I feel more squeezed and boxed-in like nowhere else. There are ocean waves of people, wherever you set your sight. As I walk the streets, one thing you can’t escape is how loud the people are. And how crowded and noisy are the streets. And the cacophony of the deafening noise made mainly by millions of wind pipes blowing at their highest decibel level seems unreal. There must be something psychological about them being out and a part of the crowd. Because in the meeting rooms and during the social encounters, they are meek as lambs facing hoards of lions. And their multiple bowing at every stage of the life including the petite females with their doll like slit eyes bowing and un-bowing, whispering domo arigato gozaimasu every time you get on or off an elevator. Not only to the attendants, but there is absolutely no tradition of tips even in restaurants and bars.  There are other  things I marvel at: The reverence with which business cards are exchanged. Held delicately by the fingers of both hands and offered with a gesture that of a religious tribute – the way Indian worshipers do when making an offering of flowers in a temple. The cards themselves are simple, a little larger than the standard size, stark white, devoid of the fancy corporate logo, printed on each side in black and white type face with the name, the designation and the contact details of the bearer. In English on one side and katakana on the other. And you are expected to receive them equally as reverently, look at it, bow your head slightly and then tuck into your pocket as delicately.

The passenger doors of the cabs swing open automatically as they slow down to pick you up. And then close at a touch of a button soon as you get in. Drivers all wear thin white gloves the kind English butlers do. That there is no such thing as an exact address in Japan. The first time I had gotten into a cab with Keiko, it took her almost a minute to communicate the directions to the driver indicating the exact location by listing the landmarks such as crossroads, the most prominent building around there, the neighborhood, just like we do in Bombay. Just like Bombay, Tokyo was never planned to be an easy city, hence the house numbers and streets have almost no or a very little meaning to them. And they drive on the left side of the streets. Something so obvious in Britain and its past colonies such as Australia and India. But Japan?

Also the thing you can’t ignore is the fact that many of the people walk the streets with their mouths and noses covered in white masks. Something Jains in India do in order not to inadvertently inhale the living insects. I am not sure whether the Japanese wear them because of the pollution of Tokyo or it could have something to do with the Buddhism. Majority of Japanese all dress in conservative western clothes. Unlike India and other traditional countries where you could see both, it would be a rare sight in Japan to see the men dressed in anything other than the western suits and casual shirt and pants and women mostly in two piece suites or the skirts and a blouses.

Outwardly they’re totally westernized and yet, not withstanding some of the obvious social etiquette and the public behavior, you can’t help but wonder whether behind the  appearances, they have somehow managed to mask their real identity, leaving us guessing what their internal world really is like.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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THE NAIL THAT STUCK OUT…

Next Friday, December 19, 2014

THE ARABIAN NIGHT

As announced last week

Of the multitude of PR events sponsored by Playboy across the globe, Playboy Germany’s 20th anniversary BIG BANG party sticks out the most in my memory. And then there was a low key event just a year before.

 

 

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Categories Christmas, Culture, Japan, Memoire, Travel

THE NAIL THAT STUCK OUT…

November 20, 2014 //
1

Haresh Shah

Daring To Be Different

geishabrau
When our Japanese partners were reported what Shah-san was up to all through the week, flabbergasted, the executives and the editorial team are in awe of the fact that an executive of Playboy Enterprises was in their country expressly for meeting with them and yet they would not see him for an entire week. They were equally astonished when heard from Ray Falk’s office that Mr. Shah, nay Shah-san, accompanied by Sasaki-san, was crisscrossing  their country and visiting places in an attempt to glean first hand some understanding of the land  and its culture, its people in general and the young existing and potential readers of the Japanese edition of Playboy in particular.

Even though they didn’t know what to make of this Shah-san, they were positively impressed and intrigued, not to mention amazed. And then approved of my itinerary as was set up by Ray’s office. The places I would visit and the people I would be exposed to should give me a fair idea of some of what they had hoped to communicate to me when Lee (Hall)  had originally conveyed to them what my mission would be working with the new team.  That my role would go beyond giving them pep-talk,, turn around and then catch a plane back home. That I would roll up my sleeves and work hand-in-hand with them, not only in making and re-defining the magazine itself, but also talk about and make possible ancillary publishing activities as an extension to the regular issues.

I have returned to Tokyo that Friday night from our six day long exploratory trip through the country. On Saturday morning, I am met by Yuko Kato of Shueisha. American educated, Yuko is not a part of the creative editorial staff. She is more of an “it” girl who is assigned to expose me to the bustling with colors and the neon lights in the high decibel city of Tokyo. Yuko is in her mid-to late twenties, moon faced – sort of an attractive girl who is brimming with energy and enthusiasm to add and to finish up what Yastaka Sasaki had started out. It’s a rainy and a crowded day. Not that Tokyo is ever without crowd, but it’s Saturday and the people are out in troves, further cramming the space with their colliding umbrellas. Yuko and I huddled under a large umbrella loaned by the hotel, we negotiate the streets and alleys of the city. Duck in and out of the various places that I would visualize years later when I began to read works by Haruki Murakami. Neighborhoods clustered with cafes and jazz clubs and the cozy little bars and down home compact and crowded mom and pop eating places. The dark and narrow alleys, dingy little public establishments, the smallness of everything that would eventually define Tokyo and Japan for me.

After having stuck to the typical Japanese eating places through the week, Yuko takes me to the Italian Toscana and French Ile de France.  At night we end up at the Tokyo branch of the discotheque  Maharaja. We spend most of the Sunday roaming about the all alluring neon signs bedecked Ginza. That night I have a date with uncle Jaman’s publishing associate Frank Watanabe accompanied by Mrs. Watanabe and his son Nori. They take me to Zakuro, an exclusive and expensive Shabu-Shabu restaurant. Sort of like Swiss fondue, cooking your own food in the boiling water in a larger pot, instead of in smaller fondue pot sizzling with oil. We are seated on the floor and are served by traditional Geishas. They prepare the spread for us, making sure that the water is properly heated and spiced and then bowing, reverently walking backwards, leave us to prepare and enjoy our meal. Popping in now and then to make sure our Sake cups are filled and if we’re in need of anything else.

Submerged in all things Japanese for an entire week, now I feel ready to face the Shueisha crowd and hopefully be able to ask and answer and defend a group of them sitting across the long conference table, with me alone on the other side, albeit Sasaki or Kayo Hayashi interpreting by my side.

Even though I have already forgotten about the hot water I had found myself in five years earlier over Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song,  however faint the memory, it still plays out in the front of my eyes.

As I face about ten of them, sitting across the table from me, the showdown about to erupt, conjures up the image of a hundred Kauravas to my lone Arjuna with Krishna as my chariot driver on the battle field of Mahabharata. Me having to fend off my hundred step-brothers, the bows tensed and the arrows ready and pointed at me like in a modern firing squad, over something I had presumed settled between them and the rights manager Jean Freehill in my office. The Japanese language rights to the excerpt  of the Mailer book. That was 1979 and to the best of my memory the beginning of splitting of the rights to the text that was bought by Playboy. Up until then, the rights to the text would normally be available to all of our editions around the world. But not in the case of The Executioner’s Song. The foreign rights were sold separately. Playboy wasn’t even given an option to bid on them.

I no longer remember exactly, but to add an insult to the injury, the Japanese rights were sold to Shueisha’s arch rivals, Kodansha. I knew our rights department had fought and negotiated hard for our international editions, but to no avail. I remember some clever literary agent summing it up for me. There is no such thing as exclusive rights any more, that the rights now could be infinitesimally divisible. Whew!!

Soon the pattern followed when Playboy bought a bunch of short stories by Gabriel García Márquez, our internal table of contents started showing up with NO FOREIGN RIGHTS stamps in the bold type face. In my naiveté, I show up at García Márquez’ agent Carmen Balcell’s office in Barcelona.  I offer her $10,000.00 for foreign rights. She all but laughs me out of her office. But considering that after all I was a señor de Playboy, gives me as a gift, the original first edition of the master’s El Amor en los Tiempos de Cólera. The book I still cherish and from which read a paragraph now and then and be in awe of how fluid his original words in Spanish are.

Even though this phenomena of  NO FOREIGN RIGHTS  by now is more of a norm than an exception, I am still prepared to face the “squad” with whatever grill worthy issues they may have to confront me with.

But wonder of all wonders, this time around, not only they don’t have any bones to pick with Chicago, there are absolutely no group meetings planned. My whole week of already being in Japan and not wanting to see them so that I would have a better feeling of things Japanese, have thrown them off balance. Instead they have decided to meet with me individually or in pairs to discuss with me section-by-section of how they envision the future editorial direction of the magazine and are eager for my input. And even more astonishing is: other than a perfunctory quick visit to the editorial department, they have arranged to meet with me informally at cafes and bars. In restaurants and talk over lunches. Absolutely un-Japanese thing to do.

I guess I have earned my stripes over the five years since my last visit to Tokyo by collaborating closely with them and having facilitated several mutually profitable special projects. My week long trip through their country expressly designed to get know them better has added to the PR rhetoric from Lee and Ray. It has become clear to Shueisha, that Shah-san is not there to lecture them. That honest to God, as communicated to them, I am indeed there to roll up my sleeves and become a part of their team  in Tokyo and their solid ally when back in Chicago. They are appreciative and welcoming in the way I would have never imagined the Japanese would ever do.

I am overwhelmed by the biggest honor bestowed upon me one evening by the top Shueisha executive Mr. Tadashi Wakkana by hosting a dinner for me at the garden restaurant Happoen. Invited are about twenty of the company’s top executives and the editorial staff of Playboy.

It’s a traditional Japanese affair in which we are all seated on the floor in a large circle and are being entertained by a group of Geishas. What I remember fondly of that evening and with a smirk on my face is: as we settle down, an aging and experienced Geisha kneels down in front of me. She is holding a platter full of little ceramic Sake cups surrounding the tokkuri (carafe), ready to be filled . The polite most and the traditional thing for me to do would have  been to motion her to fill the cup and then wait for all the glasses being served and for Mr. Wakkana to propose a toast.

As much as I love Japanese food, raw fish as in sushi and sashimi and all, I just haven’t acquired taste for the two of their most traditional beverages. Green tea and Sake. And what I really feel like having is and normally drink with the Japanese food is one of their great beers – fresh and chilled.  Either Kirin or Sapporo. But at the time, I am in my newly acquired taste for the crisp and cold Asahi Dry phase. I almost accept the cup of Sake, and then thinking to myself, that would mean an evening full of drowning the potent liquor that I didn’t care for in the first place, why not be honest and have a beer instead? After all, I am the guest of honor! I also know that by then I have accumulated fair amount of capital in the goodwill, perhaps I can risk just a little bit of it and dare order a glass of the thirst quenching beer instead.

So I ask the Geisha, whether they had any beer? For a moment, just for a split second, there is a palpable hush in the room. I have knowingly committed a faux pas. But then, without missing a beat, from the opposite side of the circle, Mr. Wakkana commands: ‘I’ll have a beer too!’ And guess what? Everybody in the room orders biru. Very Japanese thing to do. Deru kui wa utareru. Literally: Nail that sticks out, gets hammered  down!

It turns into a lovely evening. Along with the exquisite food, first the beer and than the Sake also flows. Rest of my stay goes well. The discussions, the agreements, the concrete plans and the time table for their execution of editorial changes and the promotion to follow.

But there still had to be a group meeting. Not the kind I remember from my earlier visit, cooped up in a windowless corporate meeting  room, sitting around with a group of editors at a long conference table with me alone on the opposite side with Kayo or Sasaki sitting next to me to interpret.

This time around, they have another surprise waiting for me. On Thursday afternoon, Sasaki and I board yet another bullet train and head for the resort town Hakone, known for its hot springs and picturesque Mount Fuji, about sixty miles (96 km) south of Tokyo. After having checked into yet another Ryokan, Sasaki escorts me to the inn’s spa featuring its own private hot tub. Sitting around are all the editors I have worked with through the week, naked as jaybirds and sipping on their Kirin beers, the bottles resting by them over the rim. The splashing in the tub and drowning of beer and an elaborate dinner that follows makes for a wonderful farewell. Mission accomplished, I am touched at finally being admitted to their inner circle.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, November 28, 2014

UNDERNEATH HER CLOTHES

You might think that the glamour photographers who shoot the nudes would be devoid of any such male fantasies. After all, what would remain to fantasize about when you see the most beautiful women in their most seductive attributes through your lens and watch them prancing around the studio in the nude, day in and day out?

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Categories Corporate Matters, Culture, Food & Wine, Japan, Social Customs, Travel

A NIGHT OUT IN TOKYO

May 1, 2014 //
2

A Postcard From London Carrot

Haresh Shah

ginza

Keiko (Shirokawa) of Ray Falk’s office takes me out for what I thought to be the most expensive Chinese dinner. Apparently, what is French cuisine is to us in the West, in Japan, Chinese cuisine is considered a notch above any other kind – exquisite and exclusive.

After dinner, we stop at a cozy little whiskey bar. It reminds me of the Booze & Bits in Chicago, located right in the heart of the hubbub of Rush Street, invisibly tucked away behind an inverted L-shaped narrow passage north of Oak Street. Must have been a storage room turned into a nice little watering hole for the people in the know. A bunch of us at Time Inc. used to hang out there frequently and collectively we all had incredible crush on Sherry – the blonde bombshell of the bartender. No one could ever touch her, but she did well with her smiles, excellent service and bit of a coquetry thrown in.

Back to Tokyo. The bar we are in is a private club and every member has his or her own bottle lined up on the shelves. They are all filled only with whisky containing every known and some unknown brands. Majority of them are the different grades of the two top Japanese labels: Suntory and Nikka. Bottles are all outfitted in variety of clothing, most of them custom made, but you can also buy them ready made in the department stores. Some of the ones in my line of vision are adorned variously with a white furry puppy and black cuddly teddy bear. Short Chinese silk jacket, the like of what Suzie Wong wore and the long Japanese kimono and even a frilly floor length white bridal dress. Keiko’s bottle is dressed a bit differently. It’s wrapped in a maroon colored suede cowboy jacket, with frills and all. Cute! I look at Keiko sideways and could easily imagine her wearing a grown up version of just such a jacket, over a checkered blue shirt, wrapped around which a blue paisley bandana, tight leather pants, cowboy boots and the cowboy hat, riding a wild horse, tightly held reign in on hand and flaying lasso in the other.

Five some years later, Japanese Playboy editors host a dinner for us – myself and the staff of four from Ray Falk’s office – the Americans. After dinner, Ray and his crew excuse themselves leaving me alone with the BOYS. They are to take me out on the town. Kayo (Hayashi) winks at me and wishes me luck. The editors I am left with barely speak any English, except a word here and there.

We all pile into Mr. Nanao’s Nissan.

‘Do you like Turkish bath Mr. Shah?’ Sugimoto asks. I don’t know what he is leading at, but as tired and jetlagged as I am by now, I wouldn’t have mind also to have left with Ray and company and crash. Alternatively, a nice serious oriental massage wouldn’t be bad either.

We’re driving through Ginza, which is a mob scene, the kind I have never seen in any other big and crowded city. The streets are swarming with people like hoards of ants climbing on top of each other over a lump of sugar crystal. And they are loud. Many drunk out of their minds and absolutely out of control. A group laughing and screaming has one of their men lifted up above in the air and they are swinging him up and down like a hammock in the storm, while a group of women standing on the sidelines are laughing and applauding.

And then suddenly, Mr., Nanao hits the breaks. For a small moment everyone and everything comes to standstill. As if to observe a moment of silence in honor of someone or something. We’re at the crossroads at the multiple streets merging on a large square. In an instant the square is completely emptied out. Not a car in sight, nor a human being. And then I see tidal waves of pedestrians rushing forward upon it from the eight different directions – crossing the streets in swarms, crossing each other in a hurried but at a uniform pace. And then it’s all over. Mr. Nanao puts his car back in gear and we’re on our way. Just like in that first scene of My Fair Lady, which begins with a peaceful dawn – not a thing or a creature in sight, empty streets and the store fronts, deserted stalls – the damp looking streets lying lifelessly in slumber. And then the morning kicks in. There is a flurry of motion. Every empty space is occupied. The frenzy of the day begins. I’m told that what I just saw is called sukuramburu kosaten – the scramble crossing. And the chaos resumes.

Now I see a man slung over the shoulders of two women, barely able to walk. The women are practically carrying him. And here is the winner! A young man has unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis and begins to pee right in the middle of Ginza, the district wide awake and full of bars, clubs, the late night shops and all. He is quite oblivious of the people skirting around him. No one noticing him as if it were the most natural thing to do, like a stray cow letting a long string of a stream out on a street of Bombay.

We cut through all of that and arrive at what looks like an office building. We take a smallish elevator up to the seventh floor and enter what looks like a cocktail lounge, which it is. But there is a difference. A different kind of a private club, it’s a hostess bar. The place is filled with business men, most dressed in their dark suits and ties. And there are a stable of young hostesses, who sit next to and entertain men, pouring drinks, dancing with them and converse as if the customers were their long lost friends.

The atmosphere is relaxed, even though the hostesses hop from table to table or run to the new arrivals to greet them and to bid bowing goodbyes to the ones departing. But their attention to details and to each individual is incredible. They don’t push, but make sure that everyone’s glass is full, like any attentive host would. It’s not like damen unterhaltung’s places in Germany or the rip off joints of Rush Street in Chicago. The girls are employed by the place and receive a fix monthly salary. The price of drinks include the company of the ladies on the premises.

The girls don’t try to dry hustle you or make you buy them expensive drinks. Their clients are big corporations, who maintain an account with the establishment. Every girl seems to know every customer who comes in. They refer to them as their “friends”, and it shows in their congenial hospitable behavior.

The place is called London Carrot, its ambience is definitely English, with the colors and the lighting somber and sophisticated. I am their regular friends’ guest and being bestowed extra attention. The first two hostesses that snuggle up to me on the couch, try to converse with me in less than rudimentary English, depart after a short spell, replaced by the third one, who stays with me through rest of the evening.

Nana is her name and her English is better than the others, which is not saying much, but she seems to have infinite amount of patience and the curiosity and genuine interest in what I have to say. As difficult as it must have been, she is still interested in hearing about my impressions of her country and the people. To make sure she understands what I say and that I understand what she does, she repeats every single word I say, like my five year old daughter Anjuli does at home. She is barely twenty one, a bit on the plump side with the rounded baby fat on her frame. She asks me to dance with her, and we dance a couple of slow songs while the editors gently pull at my coat sleeves.

‘Time to go to another place, Mr. Shah”

Nana politely releases me and bids me goodbye, extracting a promise from me to return to London Carrot the next time I am in town. And she asks me for my address, telling me that she would write me a Christmas card.

All the girls are lined up at the exit, and bowing, bid us goodbye, domo arigato and sayonaras are exchanged and we are out back on Tokyo street.

Most everyone excuses themselves, leaving me alone with Sugimoto and Oniki. They hail a cab. We are in Ginza, which is the south east part of the city, the cab is to take us diagonally across the city to the north-western Shinjuku. The cab drops us off in a quiet residential neighborhood. Not much going on. I see a couple of rundown buildings that are being renovated and their construction work is blocking the way to where they want to take me. We walk around the construction and enter a very narrow, dark and dingy entrance, which reminds me of the crumbling old tenement buildings of Bombay. The cage like tiny elevator takes us to the third floor and delivers us in a strip of a dark hallway.

Another hostess bar. But this one is dark and dank. Even a bit sleazy. Hostesses are not as pretty  or as nicely dressed. They are still restrained and polite in the Japanese way. They serve  you and keep company with you. But then when their turn comes, they rush to the stage. In addition to being a hostess bar, it’s also a small cabaret. The girls preform comedy skits on the little squeezed-into-the-corner stage. They are more sparsely dressed than their sisters at the London Carrot and from the frequent and what I perceived to be lecherous laughs from the crowd, tell dirty jokes. It all goes over my head of course, except the lewd physical motions that accompany their speech. From what I can tell, they are pantomiming various acrobatic contortions of the sexual positions. The one I still remember is three of them huddled together in a chorus moving their hands made in the fists that come out of their crotches and move upward in vertical  rainbow, suggestive and jerking their fists as if masturbating a giant cock. And then they would look at each other and burst out in lewd laughs. The place is crowded with flesh pressing against flesh. By then I can hardly keep my eyes open, let along pretend to enjoy the show. By the time the editors drop me off at my hotel, it’s past three in the morning. I hit the sack. Feeling I’ve had enough education in the rituals of the night life in Tokyo.

Switching back to the gentler of the two clubs, towards the end of the year, I receive a Christmas card in the mail bearing a postage mark of Tokyo and on the top left of the envelope is the red rubber stamp of London Carrot.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, May 9, 2014

FOR THE LOVE OF MARY JANE

When I arrived in America in 1968, pot smoking was already around, especially amongst the young and the “hip”. Something I never got into, other than having tried it here and there as I would a menthol cigarette – without inhaling. Honestly:). While it was still a hush-hush backroom and the campus phenomena in the east, when I arrived in Southern California some years later, it was offered openly and abundantly at most of the parties. Fresh, dynamite and homegrown!

 

 

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Categories Japan, Memoire, Playboy, Travel

BOYS’ NIGHT OUT WITH PLAYMATES

July 25, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

The Rituals Of Wine And Women And All That Jazz

boysnightoutcolor2

Imagine this: If you have ever been to Tokyo and cruised Ginza after hours – the people, the traffic, the shuffle crossing at multiple cross roads where the traffic comes stand-still at every street corner and hoards of shoppers and revelers crossing streets this way and that in each every direction, and the crowds of salarymen making ruckus, drunk out of their minds, some carried by the group up above their heads like a soccer player having just scored the winning goal, and the roaring loud cacophony of it all. It’s a different world, nothing you have experienced anywhere else on the planet. Otherwise straight-laced and well behaved like poor little lambs, after-hours the Japanese let themselves loose. No one you would recognize the next morning when you walk into the office for your long drawn out meetings.

Imagine then, that twelve of them having won Playboy Japan’s reader contest are transposed to the Lincoln Park Playboy Club in  Chicago, sitting around the tables pulled together side-by-side with the bustling Bunnies making fuss over them, serving drinks with their smooth seductive Bunny Dips, big sparkling smiles on their faces, being as sweet as they can be. They   know that these young men have won Playboy Japan Reader’s contest and that their role is also to play gracious hostesses to our guests from the faraway land. The young men are all around twenty five – self-conscious and shy and in awe of the VIP treatment they are afforded. Far from being their drunken and rambunctious selves in Ginza, they are extremely well behaved, amazed and feeling like kids in the candy store.

And they still have ahead of them the highlight and the finale of their trip, a night out with two Chicago based Playmates.  They have already seen photo spreads of sultry Suzi Schott (August 1984), and Carole Ficatier is scheduled to appear in the center pages of the year-end holiday issue of December 1985. Also accompanying them are me and some of my charming female staff. We are dining at Tony Ramo’s Restaurant and Jazz Club, or was it Andy’s Jazz Club? Don’t hold me to his one, because my memory about the exact venue is a bit fuzzy.

Earlier in the week, they have spent some days in Los Angeles and have been treated to the Dodgers’ game, with hot dogs, beers and all and are given a grand tour of Playboy Mansion West. Following my trip earlier in the year to Tokyo, we have embarked upon an ambitious push to regain some of our lost readers and acquire some new ones.

Connecting Jazz with Playboy  and its Playmates is a well thought out itinerary to showcase the Americana and the World of Playboy. Jazz has always been a part of Playboy in that Hefner (Hugh) himself has been a serious aficionado since his youth. So much so that in addition to  having featured many a jazz musicians on his earlier television show, Playboy’s Penthouse and in-house performances at Chicago Playboy Mansion, the magazine sponsored its first Playboy  Jazz Festival in 1959 to celebrate its 5th anniversary. Come Playboy’s 25th birthday in 1979, it  has become an annual cultural phenom, now permanently housed at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, something that invariably gets Hefner out of his self-contained Mansion and out in the front row of the open air concert hall. In a recent interview to coincide with the Festival’s 35th anniversary, he said to Jeff Weiss of Bizarre Ride blog: “I would hope my championing of jazz will be remembered in a connective way with what’s unique about Playboy and my own legacy. As a musical form, jazz represents the same liberation and freedom that America represents in its most ideal form.”

And if not exactly co-incidental, Japan has been one of the most passionate Jazz countries outside of the United States. One of mine and the world’s most favorite Japanese scribes – Haruki Murakami, often links Jazz with his characters and at one time even owned and ran a Jazz bar of his own in Tokyo.

●●●

At Tony Ramo’s, or Andy’s,  the tables are set up in a way that each one of us could face the Jazz band to play that night. My staff and the two Playmates interspersed between the readers. Tonight’s dinner is planned to be more informal than the one at Playboy Club. Keeping up with the general theme of the Americana as portrayed in the magazine’s lifestyle features,  we want the contest winners also to have a real taste of the newly emerging California wines – in 1985, still something of a joke for the wine snobs of the world.

We have assigned Suzi and Carole to order wines for the group. Suzi, the younger of the two at twenty four, has grown up in Chicago’s western suburb of Addison, Illinois and is more likely to have ordered,  as she puts it herself:  “I will go into a restaurant and order a root beer or Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda” than vintage wines. She is not of the wine know-how and is coached by me and the sommelier about the wine list and the rituals of ordering and approving a bottle of wine.

Carole, a bit older at twenty seven, born in Auxerre, France, scant twelve miles (20 km) from the wine region of Chablis, has been a professional model and for her work has traveled and worked in not only Paris, New York, Zürich, Hamburg and Milan, but also in Tokyo. This adds something to the mix in that both Carole and I are able to sprinkle the conversation with Ohayo Godaimazu, Arigato and Domo Arigato Godaimazu, to get a bit of amusement and a chuckle or two out of them.  And Carole knows her food and wines and is as familiar with the California wines as she is of the French.

As the bowed waiter holds the slanted bottle of the California Chardonnay for Suzi to approve,  she fakes earnestness in  scanning and reading the label. Her eyes moving sideways and up and down the label to make sure that it reads the same as what she remembers to have ordered.

‘Yes. That’s it’. She nods.

The waiter stepping back, swiftly but stylishly drives in the cork screw and out comes the cork with a pop. He carefully and delicately places it in front of her, while balancing the bottle in his other hand. She picks it up as previously instructed, lifts it up to her nose ever so slowly, sniffs it with her eyes dreamily closed, as if she is savoring the fragrance and can really tell the difference. Puts down the cork and signals  for the waiter to pour. With a thimble full, she delicately picks up the glass from its stem, holds it up against the light, twirls slightly the liquid, turns the stem in her fingers, tilts the rim of the glass to take in the bouquet and touches the glass to her lips. The taste of wine swirling in her mouth, she gulps it down and gently puts back the glass on the table, and deftly raises her head.

‘Its delicious!’ Like a connoisseur. We all applaud.

Now it’s Carole’s turn. Still partial to the French wines, she picks a particularly good California Cabernet Sauvignon. The same routine. Waiter standing there holding the slanted bottle. She looks at the label and nods. And the waiter goes through the motions of opening the bottle, pulling out the cork with a pop and placing it in front of her. She looks down at the cork, and then up at the waiter – trying to hold back the laughter wanting to burst out on her face, she lets a slight smile of amazement escape her lips.

‘Just pour Honey. We don’t do this back home!’

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, August 2nd 2013

STRANGERS ON THE PLANE

We have all joked, wondered and wished about what it would feel like to join the Mile High Club. As much air traveling as I have done throughout my life and through my Playboy years,  something’s got to have happened during one or more of my trips. No? Well! 🙂

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Categories Japan, Playmates