Four Black Japanese gay men team up to exact revenge in a culture where discrimination is deep-seated. A searing, darkly funny debut from the Akutagawa Prize–winning author. Nobody at the corporate offices of Athletius Japan knows much about the massage therapist, Jackson--but rumors abound. He used to work as a model. He likes to party. He’s mixed race--half-Japanese, half-somewhere-in-Africa-n. He might be gay. Fueling the gossip is the sudden appearance of a violent pornographic video featuring a man who looks like a lot like Jackson. When Jackson serendipitously meets three other queer mixed-race guys, he learns he’s not the only one being targeted. Together they concoct a plan: find out who’s responsible and, in the meantime, switch identities and play tricks on people--a boyfriend, a boss--who’ve wronged them, exploiting the fact that nobody can seem to tell them apart. A short, blistering gut punch of a novel, <Jackson Alone< is at turns satirical and deadpan, angry and tender--a frank exploration of identity, race, and queerness in contemporary Japan that announces Jose Ando as a singular new talent in the global literary scene.

Autorentext

Jose Ando; translated by Kalau Almony

Klappentext

Four Black Japanese gay men team up against a culture where discrimination is deep-seated and revenge is just a click away. A searing, darkly funny debut from the Akutagawa Prize–winning author.

Nobody at the corporate offices of Athletius Japan knows much about the massage therapist Jackson—but rumors abound. He used to work as a model. He likes to party. He’s mixed race—half-Japanese, half-somewhere-in-Africa-n. He might be gay. Fueling the gossip is the sudden appearance of a violent pornographic video featuring a man who looks a lot like Jackson.

When Jackson serendipitously meets three other queer mixed-race guys, he learns he’s not the only one being targeted. Together they concoct a plan: find out who’s responsible and, in the meantime, switch identities and play tricks on people—a boyfriend, a boss—who’ve wronged them, exploiting the fact that nobody can seem to tell them apart.

A short, blistering gut punch of a novel, Jackson Alone is at turns satirical and deadpan, angry and tender—a frank exploration of identity, race, queerness, and discrimination in contemporary Japan that announces Jose Ando as a singular new talent in the global literary scene.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1.

The cocoa skin, the devilish eyes, too big and too bright, the limbs like a panther’s. Jackson knew the moment he saw the video that the man tied to the bed was him. He didn’t remember it, and he knew there were tons of people in this world who looked like him. But this was Japan, and here in Japan it was Jackson alone who looked like that and was treated this way.
That morning the temperature had suddenly dropped, and since it felt like fall, Jackson pulled on a long-sleeve T-shirt before biking to work. The shirt was from a brand he didn’t recognize, but he was almost certain his company dress code said he could wear whatever he wanted so long as it wasn’t from a rival sportswear line.

• On a spacious plot of reclaimed land sat two corporate-looking buildings: an office tower that loomed over the entire area and another, smaller building that looked like the first building’s child. That smaller building—the staff fitness center of Athletius Japan’s headquarters—was where Jackson worked. He spent all day in there, giving massages.

  His schedule was packed that morning. The company basketball team’s offseason had just ended in August and the players were now back in full swing. His first appointment was with the team’s forward, a man called Zen. For sixty minutes, Jackson tore into Zen’s muscle fibers, shocked by just how quickly they recovered from his touch. All Jackson had to do was run his fingers down Zen’s back two or three times and his muscles would go from being shrunk stiff with disuse to sucking up blood and swelling with each beat of Zen’s heart.

  At a certain point during the session, Zen asked Jackson, “What did you wanna be when you were a teenager?”

  “I really just wanted to party,” Jackson said.

  “Did you ever think of becoming an athlete?”

  “No, never.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I found out about partying.”

  “Too bad. I bet you’d’ve been good . . .”

  No, you’re way more built for this than I am. Jackson thought this but didn’t say it aloud, just continued to knead his fingers into Zen’s muscles.

  And the conversation ends yet again, Zen thought. It always stops when we get to Jackson’s turn, doesn’t it? He’s unreadable. That was the impression Jackson left on Zen. What did Zen know about Jackson? He was half Japanese and half some kind of African. He used to run track. He’d modeled. He might be gay. All this Zen had heard not from Jackson himself but secondhand—from the rumors his teammates passed around.

  Maybe Jackson could’ve been a professional athlete, Zen thought. Or a professional model. Or at least worked at a more gay-friendly business. It was strange that he was here of all places, at the Athletius fitness center, massaging people. The fitness center staff were not technically employees of Athletius, and Zen and the other athletes used the facilities only for a small part of the year, so presumably Jackson mostly worked on the full-time office staff. They probably complained to Jackson about routine aches and pains, ones that were impossible to tell apart from the normal processes of aging, then just returned to their desk jobs. His days must’ve consisted of that and just that, over and over again.

  There were people who talked, who said Jackson had become a massage therapist only because he was gay and just wanted an excuse to touch men, but Zen knew that wasn’t right. He could feel the restraint in Jackson’s hands as they made their way down his back. Zen occasionally slept with men, too, but he planned to marry a girl and raise children one day. To Zen, sex with men was the same as S&M or threesomes. It was just another category of porn. He never had a problem finding someone to sleep with and wasn’t really looking for a special someone at the moment.

  They never did get into anything personal, but since neither of them was “pure” Japanese, they still found plenty to talk about. After the session, they added each other on LINE and parted ways. For the rest of the morning, Jackson gave massages and Zen joined team meetings. At noon, they saw each other again at the food court.

  It was packed. Jackson ordered chicken breast and grain tacos with 25 g of protein and soup, then hurried to grab an open seat by the window. The fitness center staff all wore Athletius gear, so everyone looked like some sort of athlete, but the real athletes could be easily identified by their sense of superiority. They held court in the center of the cafeteria, their table so messy it looked like they’d been there for hours. That was where Jackson spotted Zen again. Their glances were out of sync, though, so whenever Zen looked at Jackson, Jackson was turned away. This only reaffirmed Zen’s impression of Jackson: He really was unreadable.

  By lunchtime the clouds had cleared, and yesterday’s full-blown summer heat had returned. Jackson took off his long-sleeve shirt and changed into his Athletius attire before he began crunching on his tacos. The food dried out his mouth. He downed each bite with soup, and, after clearing his plate in less than ten minutes, he changed the …