→Tokyo

Tokyoites don’t like to admit their city is infinite. To mention it is to draw an uncomfortable silence, even appear rude. How discomfiting it is, to live in a city that can never be finally known! Nonetheless, the truth remains; I attest to it. I’ve lived here for years. (Haven’t I always lived here?) If there were an edge, I’d have found it by now.

I thought I went to the country once—really I was just lost in Shinjuku Park.

Naturally, unverified reports persist of actual borders to Tokyo. As far as I can tell, these are rumors perpetrated by people who like to pretend they don’t live here. The only theory which I give any possible credence is found in old Tibetan manuscripts which portray the Six Realms of Existence--a prototype of the Circle Line—contained within the ravenous maw of a red-faced pop-eyed demon.

Six Realms: gods and jealous gods, humans and animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings. The location of each shifts constantly, subject to fads and gentrification, but there are a few constants. The gods can be counted upon to eat French food in Ginza. (The jealous gods are there as well, but they are only window shopping, eating miniscule cakes.) The humans roam about with driven looks, certain that today will be their ticket to fortune or disaster. The hungry ghosts are pitiable as ever—they can never get enough pachinko.

The demon hypothesis makes sense to me. What else could it be that keeps us spinning round, as if enchanted, on the Circle Line? This also explains something about the air—a companionable stink full of threats and promises. It’s the air that we breathe in Tokyo. It’s demon’s breath.

Then again, there are limits to the theory. I suspect that if we could contact him, that universal demon, blushing now, he would plead helplessness, that even he—who claims to be in charge—is really in thrall, captured and suspended here, within an even greater Tokyo.