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jackets analyze us with scanshades, intimidate us with black lip gloss. A word from the leader—a fat, dangerous youth who has solved a terminal greasy hair problem by knotting it into a queue—and they hustle us into dark and stinking ratrun between overlapping levels of housing pods. His blackseat girl plays with my red hair, twines it around her black leather fingers, sucks it between her wet black lips. Mas, an uncharacteristic tone of panic creeping into his voice, bows constantly, spastically, repeating that we are only pilgrims following in the footsteps of the Daishi, two innocent pilgrims. Fat Boy would rather stare at the impudent red-haired gaijin. His hand strokes to my neck; I flinch away. A silent flash lights up the inside of my skull, a numb dumbness; my language tap has been ripped out of its socket. He tosses it end for end, catches it in his gloved hand. Mas’s pleadings now verge on breaking down completely, and the words have been literally taken out of my mouth. Fat Boy is irritated. With people like these, irritated is dead. I have seen it, I know. And I know that I must act, though the henro in me screams at the thought of releasing the demons… I shout to Mas in English: Close your eyes. Now. Do as I say! and reach to peel the glove off my right hand. A steel whisper: the girl whips a short tachi from a sheathe on her thigh, presses the tip to my Adam’s apple. I raised my hands, gloved. Head cocked gaminely to one side, she is smiling. Fat Boy is smiling. His friends are smiling.
    If irritated is dead, smiling is gutted. Smiling is head on a jacket-back pennant-stay. A shout. Fat Boy’s deputy has found something in Mas’s bags. The commander clicks his fingers show me. It is one of Masahiko’s Danjuro 19: Kabukiman! henro slips! Fat Boy holds it up before Mas’s face, raps questions. Even without my tap, their context is clear from Fat Boy’s intonation and Mas’s terrified, nodded answers. Then with the same terrifying speed with which it was drawn, the sword is resheathed. Fat Boy bows, returns me my tap, bows to Mas, and offers him the henro slip deferentially, with both hands.
    “Kabukiman? You make Kabukiman?” He turns to his gang and shouts theatrically. “He! Invented! Danjuro 19!” His platoon murmur and bow, genuinely awed. “The Setting Sons Chapter owes you a big apology, both of you,” says Fat Boy. The transformation is so swift and staggering I still cannot believe it. “We’ve treated men on spiritual business dishonorably. Tosa Securities is expanding into Tokushima Holdings territory; they’re trying to win policyholders over by looking strong against the brothers. Tokushima Holdings is fighting back and the street is in the middle. The Black Dragon Chapter was wiped out last month; you can’t trust anyone anymore. They’ve got agents everywhere. Can you forgive us? At least let us escort you to the next temple; we’d be proud to do that for the creator of Kabukiman.”
    We can hardly refuse. Pennants fluttering and tugging, wing mirrors glinting, the akiras mount up and form vanguard and rearguard around us. The sound of the Yamahas reverberates from the housing stacks and the recession-struck, shuttered-up businesses. On the faces of the people that we pass I see who are the back-street heroes, the Young Soul Rebels, the Robin Hoods to the big Police Corporations’ Sheriffs of Nottingham and Guy of Gisbornes. Fat Boy, riding close beside, tells me that, to them, Kabukiman is the spirit of true Japan, epitome of honor, justice, respect, individuality, faithfulness, action, experience, and violence; the measure of a real man. “He knows how to live,” Fat Boy says. His girlfriend reaches out to touch my hair, run it over her black glossy fingers.
    “Hey, mister with the fabulous hair, Danjuro 19 was always the friend of the true akiras,” she says.
    At Temple Eighteen we make our ablutions and devotions and have our albums inscribed while the akiras