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could have closed early and come looking for me. Ah well, here’s a cab so I’ll ask her when I see her what the problem is. There, there, the driver sees me and is stopping. I know I will sleep during the long ride to her room. As I step from the curb his door springs open, all wide and toothless like an old man’s mouth.
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    JIMMY YAMAMOTO AND I HAD BEEN SUCCESSFUL IN LOS Angeles but were far better musicians than the others and had decided to try something different, something unique. We arrived in Japan on the edge of the decade, 1941. Our Japanese agent called himself Ike and had his whole family out to meet us. Ike
was a young and jubilant man, a boy, like ourselves. Jimmy’d found him through an advertisement, and it turned out we were his sole clients. Ike had put an ad in the American Musicians’ News only because he’d run across the application form wrapped around some peppermint candies that he’d purchased at an international bazaar. Through his desire not to be typical, Ike had apparently fallen in love with American music, a fact that was severely inhibiting his interest in family affairs. But once Ike got us he was active. He told us that there was a band for us to join, men for us to meet. “I’ve got jobs,” he said. “An agent’s worth is only in the contacts he can make.”
    From the very beginning, from that first day, Ike encouraged Jimmy in the courtship of his sister. His was a close family; it seemed constantly together. Yet I thought I could sense that Ike was a little at odds with them, was looking for ways to challenge the awful expectancy of tradition. His family all talked a fast kind of “real” Japanese, which was difficult for us to follow, but Ike’s sister was beautiful, and Jimmy jumped at the chance to walk with her, his trumpet in a bag at his side. Ike’s sister’s name was Kazuko, and right away I could tell that I liked her better than Jimmy did. Ike had found us lodging near his house, and whenever Jimmy and Kazuko went for walks I did my best to go along with them. It was I who acted the part of the unwanted brother. We had only just begun to play music and there was nothing else to do.
    One day, just a week after our arrival, Ike went across Tokyo in search of bookings and Jimmy and Kazuko and I went for a quiet stroll in the garden of a Buddhist temple near her house. The clouds were high and the path was empty, but before we had gone too far a calico kitten came to us, a man with a missing finger running after it. “Here, kitty,” said Kazuko, for the man with the missing finger had a sack full of cats, all clamoring to get out.
    The man stopped when he saw us, but soon he came up
and, pointing his stub, made us imagine the missing finger and look where it led us. “That’s my cat,” he said. “Hand it over.”
    Kazuko quickly put the kitten inside her cool summer gown. “Let’s go,” she said, linking Jimmy’s little finger with her own.
    By this time I had come up close enough to hear and was smiling at the sight of a casual encounter with a fellow Buddhist there on the perfect path. “Good afternoon,” I said, nodding over their shoulders at the man. “We’ve just arrived from America.”
    â€œI want that cat,” the guy said quietly, his Japanese leaving me a little behind.
    We all stood silently for a few seconds, then Jimmy took Kazuko’s arm and turned her back the way we’d come. Jimmy had a certain air about him that made the man stand still. Jimmy’s moustache, meager though it was, was rare in Japan for a man his age. I still hadn’t sensed very well the strangeness of the situation and stayed facing the fellow until Jimmy and Kazuko had walked away.
    â€œYou think I can’t get through you, you little shit,” the guy said, walking right up to me.
    â€œWhat?”
    I could understand what the man was