Chapter 87: “Gobi Map” and “Pace Martial Arts”

Gorbachev’s “Anti-Alcohol Campaign” had actually begun in July.
From a purely motivational standpoint, the campaign itself was understandable.
At this time, the per capita annual alcohol consumption in the Soviet Union reached 14 liters (pure alcohol).
The life expectancy for men was 62 years, and 16.5% of newborns suffered from intellectual disabilities due to parental alcoholism.
More than 500,000 people died annually from alcohol-related diseases.
70% of workplace accidents were related to alcoholism.
The economic losses caused by alcoholism far exceeded the tax revenue brought in by the alcohol industry.

However, in terms of execution, Gorbachev’s approach was somewhat baffling.
In less than the past three months, state-run liquor stores closed at an astonishing rate, breweries shut down in droves, and vineyards were bulldozed directly.
Hundreds of thousands of workers and farmers lost their jobs but could not find their next employment…
Compared to having no alcohol to drink, they now had to worry more about potentially having no food to eat.

Even a Yakuza like Yamagami Nobuo sensed that something was wrong with the problem, yet the Soviet government continued to expand the scope of the “Prohibition Campaign” regardless of the consequences.
However, the budding crisis in the Soviet Union had nothing to do with the Yamagami-gumi; the Yamagami-gumi only needed to know that the Soviet people needed to drink right now.
Prohibitions could not stop smuggling, especially when the people enforcing the prohibitions were purchasing smuggled goods themselves.

According to Yamagami Nobuo, since July, the price of black market liquor sold to the Soviet Union had generally tripled or quadrupled, while high-end wines and foreign liquors had at least quintupled or sextupled…
The Yamagami-gumi didn’t have its own distillery and lacked legitimate alcohol distribution channels.
But even if they just rounded up whatever alcohol they could find in Japanese supermarkets and shipped it to military bases in the Soviet Far East, they could still earn at least a two hundred percent profit.

Currently, Yamagami Nobuo had suspended all his other smuggling operations to concentrate his energy on flipping alcohol to the Soviet Union.
However, Seiko knew this business wouldn’t last long.
Gorbachev’s “Anti-Alcohol Campaign” would only last less than three years before he announced its cessation, unable to withstand the immense social pressure.
Moreover, by the second year, illegal home brewing would become rampant within the Soviet Union, encroaching on the profits of smuggled alcohol.
Therefore, Seiko couldn’t be bothered to pay too much attention to this business, leaving Yamagami Nobuo to worry about it himself.

The next day, on the train to Kawagoe City.

A middle-aged woman in her thirties sat by the window, looking boredly at the rain outside.
Sitting next to her was a man who kept his head down the entire way, writing something with a pen and paper.
These two were essentially husband and wife, but sitting together, it was hard to see the intimacy that a married couple should have.

The train stopped at a platform.
“Hey!”
Seiko and Aiko boarded the train.
The man looked up for a moment, then buried his head back in his writing, while the woman leaned against the window without moving at all.

A small figure put away her umbrella, swinging it in her hand as she looked around for a seat.
Suddenly, the man felt a coolness on his foot.
He looked down and found a little girl standing in front of him, looking curiously at what he was writing.
Water was dripping from the umbrella she held, and the drops happened to fall onto the man’s instep.

Although his shoe got wet, the man wasn’t angry.
Seeing the little girl look up to meet his gaze, and out of professional habit, the man felt an urge to tease her.
He pulled a straight face, looking fierce, and said with a rolling tongue:
“Hey, brat, you got my shoes wet, Bakayarou!”

The man’s features were already quite harsh and rugged; pulling a straight face made him look even more ferocious.
A timid child would have been scared to tears.
However, the little girl in the raincoat before him was not only unafraid but blinked her large, dark eyes and also spoke in a childish, rolling tongue:
“Bakayarou.”

“Huh?”
The man was momentarily stunned by the curse.
“Pfft…”
The woman beside him, who had turned to watch the commotion, laughed upon seeing the man eat humble pie.

“Aiko! What are you saying?”
Seiko, having just boarded the train, heard Aiko swearing immediately and scolded her helplessly.
It seemed the Yakuza environment really wasn’t suitable for a child’s growth; Aiko picked up swear words too quickly.

“Sister…”
Aiko shrank her neck, her eyes darting around.
She stuck to Seiko, hugging her leg and rubbing against it like gummy candy, trying to muddle through with cuteness.

Seiko pinched Aiko’s cheeks and rubbed them.
“Apologize to this gentleman immediately.”

“Mmmph…”
After being lectured by her sister, Aiko obediently bowed to the man:
“I’m sorry, Uncle. I got your shoes wet and said a bad word. I’m sorry!”

The man smiled and nodded.
Just as he was about to praise the little girl for being cute or something similar, he heard Seiko speak:
“Aiko has apologized to you, but speaking Bakayarou to a child is still too rude, Mr. Kitano.”

The man, Kitano Takeshi, raised his eyebrows in surprise.
He wasn’t surprised that he was recognized—he was the most famous manzai performer in Japan at the moment.
There was a saying that “at least one in three Japanese people has watched Kitano”—while certainly an exaggeration, it illustrated his fame.

What surprised him was that Seiko used a serious tone to reprimand him, and over such a common word.
Although there was an element of exaggeration in Kitano’s national popularity, it wasn’t strange for him to be recognized.
What surprised Kitano Takeshi was that he was actually being scolded to his face by a strange girl.

However, after the surprise, Kitano Takeshi also realized that he had indeed gone a bit too far.
He was used to being outspoken during his stage performances, daring to say anything without limits.
But in reality, facing a child, he obviously couldn’t behave recklessly.

“It was my fault,” Kitano Takeshi was easy to talk to and readily apologized to Aiko.
“I’m sorry, young lady. It was I, Kitano Takeshi, talking nonsense. You mustn’t learn from a terrible adult like me; children shouldn’t say bad words.”

The woman beside Kitano Takeshi, his current wife Kitano Mikiko, laughed even more happily seeing Kitano Takeshi eat humble pie twice in a row.

Kitano Takeshi glanced at his wife, for whom he had no deep affection but also no way to deal with, and felt annoyed.
Turning his head, he vented his anger on the two young men sitting opposite him:
“What are you still sitting there stupidly for? Give up your seats to these two young ladies! Don’t you know what ‘Ladies First’ means?”

The two young men opposite were Kitano Takeshi’s disciples (“Gunman”).
Ineciably scolded for no reason, they had to get up sheepishly to offer their seats.

Seiko and Aiko thanked them and sat down in the empty seats.
The three girls accompanying Seiko—Sakura, Aoi, and Tsubaki—sat a little further away.

“You recognize me as Beat Takeshi, so you must be a fan. Do you want me to sign an autograph for you?”
Kitano Takeshi waved the small notebook in his hand and smiled at Seiko.

“Beat Takeshi” was Kitano Takeshi’s stage name.
Kitano Takeshi had a habit: he used his real name “Kitano Takeshi” when acting in movies and his stage name “Beat Takeshi” when performing manzai.

Seiko shook her head and smiled:
“I haven’t watched much of your manzai. I am a fan of your movies; I liked your film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.”

“A movie fan? That’s rare.”
Kitano Takeshi was genuinely intrigued.

At this time, he was still considered a newcomer in the film industry.
Although Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence was nominated for the Palme d’Or, he wasn’t the protagonist.
In this field, Kitano Takeshi indeed had no representative works yet.

“Then have you seen Yasha, which I just released?”
“I’ve seen it.”

Seiko had indeed seen it—on a pirated videotape recorded by the Ishiwata group.
Ishiwata had even wanted to release a wave of pirated videotapes at Oshin-ya before the movie was out of theaters.
After being scolded by Seiko, the group of Yakuza abandoned this shortsighted practice.

“How did it feel?”
“Not that great.”

“Huh?” Kitano Takeshi was struck a blow again.
“How could it be not that great? The reviews for Yasha were clearly very good.”

“It was too childish,” Seiko smiled.

Yasha was a Yakuza movie, and the plot was the usual cliché—a ruthless Yakuza hitman wants to retire from the underworld and live a normal life, but due to exposed identity, love, promises, or similar reasons, he has to return to the underworld and start a massacre.

Although this movie exposed the hypocrisy of Yakuza “benevolence and righteousness” to a certain extent, it was still filled with outsiders’ romanticized imagination of the Yakuza.
Essentially, it was still the same old “hero and beauty” trope.

“I also think that movie wasn’t good,” Kitano Mikiko smiled and agreed.

Kitano Takeshi was very unconvinced, muttering continuously about children not understanding aesthetics and the like, muttering until the train arrived at Kawagoe Station.

After the train arrived at the station, Seiko took her sister’s hand to get off, only to find that Kitano Takeshi’s group also got off.

“Are you two also going to the Hattori family?” Seiko asked.
“Yes,” Kitano Takeshi was surprised. “You are too?”
“Yes.” Seiko raised her sister’s hand. “My sister is Ms. Otake Shinobu’s apprentice.”

“Otake Shinobu’s apprentice,” Kitano Mikiko stared at Aiko’s face for a long while.
“I thought you looked familiar just now. Are you… Rena?”

“Yup,” Aiko nodded vigorously.

“Oh my, I actually didn’t recognize you! Poor little thing, come let Mommy hug you; Mommy will buy you delicious food…”

“Uwu…”
Rena’s lethality towards adult women was simply too high; Aiko was pulled into Kitano Mikiko’s arms for kisses and hugs before she could even react.

“Since we’re going the same way, Mr. Kitano, why don’t you take our car and go together?” Seiko asked Kitano Takeshi.

“Uh, sure, that would be troubling you then.”

Kitano Takeshi was hesitating between calling a friend to pick him up or having his disciples find a taxi.
Since there was a free ride available, he didn’t refuse.

Yamagami Takashi had come to Kawagoe City in advance and prepared transportation for Seiko and Aiko.
Walking out of the station, a black passenger car quickly stopped in front of Seiko’s group.

Two men jumped out of the car nimbly, opened the door, and bowed to Seiko and Aiko:
“Young Miss! Little Miss!”

These two were Yamagami Takashi’s subordinates, and like Yamagami Takashi, they were burly and thickset.
However, what Kitano Takeshi cared more about wasn’t their build, or the tattoos revealed at their cuffs and collars when they moved, but the missing little finger on one of them.

“Crap,” Kitano Takeshi muttered in his heart.
“I play a Yakuza in movies; did I just run into real Yakuza?”