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    The Cyber Dust Stories: Lost Internet Short Stories and Essays Centering on Japan
    The Cyber Dust Stories: Lost Internet Short Stories and Essays Centering on Japan
    The Cyber Dust Stories: Lost Internet Short Stories and Essays Centering on Japan
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    The Cyber Dust Stories: Lost Internet Short Stories and Essays Centering on Japan

    By Alex Shishin

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    About this ebook

    This is collection of Japan-oriented essays and fiction that once were published on the Internet between 1998 and 2004 and vanished with the demise of online journals and webpages. The essays are “In the Shadow of His Ancestors” [Review of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. By Herbert P. Bix.], “Is There Depleted Uranium in Japan’s Future?” [with Jens Wilkinson], “Slapstick on the Precipice: The Ascent of Koizumi Junichiro” and “September 11, 2001: When the World Changed for the Worst...” The short stories are: “Burned,” “Bulldozer” and “Betrayals.” "Bulldozer" won a Million Writers award from "storySouth" as one of the top short stories of 2004. Save for minor corrections, all the essays appear as published. The short stories received minor revisions. All the essays were originally published in "New Observer" (Tokyo).

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlex Shishin
    Release dateDec 11, 2010
    ISBN9781452388007
    The Cyber Dust Stories: Lost Internet Short Stories and Essays Centering on Japan
    Author

    Alex Shishin

    Alex Shishin has published fiction, non-fiction and photography in Japan, North America, and Europe in print and online. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Shishin is a permanent resident of Japan. Shishin is the author “Nippon 2357:A Utopian Ecological Tale,” and five other ebooks published exclusively by Smashwords and available for free. He is co-author with Stephan F. Politzer of “Four Parallel Lives of Eight Notable Individuals,” also published by Smashwords. Shishin's short story "Mr. Eggplant Goes Home," first published in “Prairie Schooner” received an O. Henry Award Honorable Mention and was anthologized in “Student Body: Stories About Students and Professors” (University of Wisconsin Press). His short story "Shades," originally published in “Sunday Afternoon” (Kobe) was anthologized in The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press) and reprinted by invitation in “The East” (Tokyo).  Shishin’s book “Rossiya: Voices from the Brezhnev Era” (a Russian-American memoir of a train odyssey through the Soviet Union and Poland) was published by iUniverse. It is available as a print-on-demand book and an ebook. Shishin has also published a collection of photographs entitled “Ordinary Strangeness” with Viovio in conjunction with his joint exhibition at the Twenty-first Century Museum of Art, Kanazawa, Japan. It is available from the publisher online. Alex Shishin holds degrees in English from the University of California, Berkeley (BA, Phi Beta Kappa) the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (MFA) and the Union Institute and University (PhD).

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      Book preview

      The Cyber Dust Stories - Alex Shishin

      INTRODUCTION

      Cyber dust? What’s that? That is what is left when a website dies or cleans house and the material that disappears from that site is not archived. The three short stories and four essays presented here were published and lost on websites that were closed. While the four essays were all first published in the now defunct small alternative press print journal The New Observer / The Japan Observer (Tokyo) and the now closed online Japan Watch, the three short stories only lived on the Internet.

      The dead websites represented here and the probable years of their demise are the following: News From the Brave New World (online literary journal): circa 2001, Fiction Warehouse (online literary journal): circa 2006, Japan Watch (once a part of Zmag.org): circa 2006.

      My co-author for Is there Depleted Uranium in Japan’s Future? is Jens Wilkinson, a professional translator and author based in Tokyo.

      All the essays are presented here as they were published online, with only typographical errors and problems of clarity and continuity corrected. The short stories, on the other hand, have all undergone significant revisions since their initial publications. In 2005 Bulldozer received a Million Writers Award as one of the Notable Stories of 2004 from storySouth.

      The Short Stories are:

      Burned

      Bulldozer

      Betrayals.

      The Essays are:

      In the Shadow of His Ancestors [Book Review]

      Is There Depleted Uranium in Japan’s Future? [with Jens Wilkinson]

      Slapstick on the Precipice: The Ascent of Koizumi Junichiro

      September 11, 2001: When the World Changed for the Worst.

      -----

      The Short Stories

      BURNED

      New of the Brave New World, circa Spring, 1999

      I grew up in the mountains of Okayama-ken in this stupid village of less than two thousand, not counting the ghosts. Anyone with half a brain escaped after junior high school.

      At sixteen I left for Osaka. As the slow local train started down the mountain I didn’t look back at my parents and brother who had come to see me off. I knew they were glad to be rid of me because of my fights with my brother, who, as oldest son, would inherit the stupid family house.

      A cigarette between my teeth, a can of beer in hand, I thought: Let my brother stay up here to scrounge for odd jobs and get prematurely old. In Osaka I’d make money, buy a fast car and fuck girls with big tits and long legs.

      The deal was I had to live with this uncle and his wife and go to a stupid vocational high school. This uncle permed his hair and wore blue suits. I never found out what he did for a living. The wife, who dyed her hair blonde, ran a bar. They lived in this dirty old house in Nihonbashi without a flush toilet. The wind seeped through the wooden walls. All kinds of bugs lived in the tatami mats. It was exactly like home. I didn’t run away only because this uncle and his wife were never there and I could do anything I wanted.

      I tossed school and lied about my age to get construction jobs. I joined a bosozoku hot rod gang. I was drag racing on expressways before I was old enough to get a license. I was strong and good-looking. I could pound anyone. Lots of girls let me fuck them. When I could have a license I quit construction and soon I was driving this rig hauling food for a supermarket chain between Nagoya and Kitakyushu. When I’d saved enough, I applied for an apartment in Nagoya.

      This uncle and his wife and I never had much to say to each other; but suddenly they got sentimental. They cried. They said I was like their son. They gave me a million yen as a farewell gift. Soon after I moved out of their filthy old house they retired to a condo for Japanese in Australia.

      Then my mother and father died. I angered my brother by missing their stupid funerals. I lost contact with him after he sold the house and moved to Shizoaka.

      I drove the truck for seven years, running between Nagoya and Kitakyushu three times a week. It wasn’t an easy job but better than breaking my back in a stupid factory or rice field. I’d still be a truck driver if it weren’t for this stupid accident.

      I was behind schedule with a load of fish about to spoil. The company made us pay for food gone bad on account of us being late. Naturally I was pushing the rig over the speed limit. There was this stupid old guy from Tokushima in a little K-car going slow in the fast lane. I tailgated him. Normal people would get out of the way. This old guy slammed on his brakes, I rear-ended him and he died.

      The company hired a slick lawyer for me to save its face. He convinced the court that since the old guy wasn’t wearing a seat belt his getting killed was half his fault. I still got my license taken away. The company fired me.

      One day I’m making good money, have a girlfriend in Nagoya, a girlfriend in Kitakyushu, an apartment and a new car with a stereo system; the next day I’m unemployed, broke and can’t even legally drive my own car. All because of a stupid old guy from Tokushima.

      Fortunately, I had a friend from my old bosozoku days who had gone up in the world. Wajii lived in a big house in Kitano-cho in Kobe because he’d married the ugly daughter of this company president who put him in charge of a chain of English conversation schools, never mind that Wajii couldn’t even write his own name properly in Japanese, much less speak English. Wajii took me to a bar in Osaka, where he had a girlfriend, and listened to my story.

      What a shame! A guy who’d be dead anyway in a few years messing you up. There ought to be a law to protect honest drivers like you, he said. Someone ought to education these judges that it’s the slow drivers who really cause the accidents. It’s an outrage!

      Wajii was in with politicians.

      No problem fixing you up with a regular driver’s licenses, he said. Trucking license will take longer. We need to find you a job fast, don’t we, good friend?

      I’d be grateful, I said.

      I’m the grateful one! Wajii exclaimed. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you!

      Years ago a friend and I had saved Wajii from some rival bosozoku who attacked him in an alley in Nanba. When Wajii drank he got sentimental about it.

      A guy I know bought a new Benz town car and wants a driver.

      What sort of business is he in, or should I ask? I said.

      Ordinary business, Wajii said. Collects debts. Persuades people.

      Should I go looking for a gun? I said.

      Naw. The Benz is for recreation. You’ll get good pay. I helped his brother out of a jam. The man wanted to start a trading company in Los Angeles and move in with his girlfriend. His slutty wife threatened to tell the cops what she knew about him. I shut her up by using my influence in English education to get her a job at a private university.

      Find me a job like that, I

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