All Night, by Shigesato Itoi
my translation of the seventh story (out of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
Mister All-Night: that’s what they call Jokichi.
Other pimps stay up all night as well, but they aren’t Mister All-Night.
Every night, after the 11PM baseball report’s finished, he lets out an “Oh”.
This Oh more or less means Welp, I’d best get going. Who is he telling this to? No one’s there to hear him.
During business hours, Mika-chan’s busy working: bubble dances, periscopes1, the like.
Nonetheless, the exact same time Jokichi that says Oh, Mika replies, “Aii.” It’s nothing more than a single, private Aii, bothering no one. No customer for example asks her, “What’s that about? Aii?”
Jokichi is Mika’s pimp. “You simply have to be my pimp,” she’d told him once: certainly a generous offer. She’s often felt she must be in love with him, or something like love leastwise. This is what she thinks of as she works, though only absently, so as not to neglect her current customer. The possibility of feeling a love toward Jokichi is unquestionably a personal affair, thus not something to think of at the office, so to speak. Nonetheless (her customer’s penis peeks above the surface of his bath, she moves to mount it) Mika wonders, in her heart, if the feeling might not interfere with what she’s doing.
At the apartment Jokichi absently undoes the electric lock. He’s off to jog. His eggplant-purple tennis shoes bounce one after the other over the hallway’s red carpet.
Jokichi skips the elevator and descends the emergency stairs. It’s the end of fall, so his breath is white. Jokichi’s at his happiest when the Yoimuri Giants win. Mika-chan moved in with him in April, April’s the baseball season’s start. The Giants had played the Chunichi Dragons. Come to think of it, opening day had been rainy and just as cold as now. Then, as happens with time, the weather warmed and since then chilled again. The whole while Mika-chan had lived with him. Something like happiness, huh, Jokichi ponders. His happiness wasn’t caused by the Giant’s success, this much was obvious. Were they to only reach third place this year, in other words, he and Mika-chan would continue as they had. You’re bring dumb, he thinks, in other words.
He takes a break from jogging halfway to Mika’s storefront and starts to sing: “Dabada dabada badabadabah! Dababada-dah! Dabadaba-yoo-hoo!” It’s just passed midnight.
Jokichi sits on a bench, wipes his sweat, looks to the sky. He calls for Mika-chan.
Simultaneously she looks to the sky and thinks of him. They share a promise.
The way stormy days often clear by evening: so it is with them.
Unlike his other girls, Mika gets off at 1AM.
While she changes back into clothes, Jokichi stops by a 24-hour drug store. He calls a taxi after and gets inside. He drinks canned coffee and catches his breath. Soon Mika-chan will be there to meet him. She will jog up to this spot as well.
Why do they do this so much? He doesn’t know. It seems to make her happy that they meet up at this place.
They return the apartment and shower together, then Jokichi reads to her aloud. His voice ekes out his mouth, his quiet voice just at her earside. He reads like this to her till 2AM.
Next: thirty minutes asking Mika how she feels while drinking beer.
Once the dawn breaks, they have sex. Mika-chan has lots of sex for work, so with him she wants it slow and sweetly. Gently, sleepily, Jokichi moves sweetly and slow.
They go to bed.
Just before falling asleep Mika asks Jokichi, “Same tomorrow?”
“Hmm”, he says. He rolls over in his sleep.
Yes, I want to be with him tomorrow, Mika thinks. She smiles and falls asleep as well.
The planets had aligned and thus a pimp materialized---an intelligent friend had told Mika this once. “Don’t be silly,” Jokichi had said when she’d repeated this to him. Mika, at the time, had laughed as well.
translator’s note: this one was hard as hell to put together, maybe past my abilities now. there’s a lot of slang in it, and i know nothing of japanese sex work. still: i tried my best to paper over these inadequacies. hopefully the story comes thru well
Footnotes
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These are sex acts. Use your imagination. ↩
cream soda (2025-37 weekly post)
i always enjoy writing on the train. atm i work from home, so i dont ride it every day, but when i do (and when its empty enough and not shaking enough that i can do all it comfortably), i like to bring a notebook or tablet and scrawl. this weekend i drew on the J and wrote on the Q. years ago, i wrote on the S going home from a job i hated
(this week i revised revolution 2 and fiddled with code for “we dropped the bomb”)
Snuffy Smith 9/11 Comic, 2025
inspired by eruditorumpress.com’s wonderful yearly blog post, my annual redraw of the most important comic of the 21st century
i call my cat anus (2025-35 and 36 weekly post)
again, the dullness of updating, so simple: the revolution and translations; started going to a weekly writing night; dreaming of websites
again: dreaming of websites
better for your development (2025-34 weekly post)
wrote a lot this week! i’m happy with that, as I’m sure you are too. you are, after all, by point of fact, at least while you read this, one of my readers
most exciting (for me), I submitted The Girl to an agent. in doing so, i wrote a couple summaries of it, which felt (surprisingly) nice. i like the book. i like its gimmick. here’s to hoping this agent i sent it to feels the same way
also: less interesting single story submissions, to magazine, who will love me and publish my work; also: retooling notes on the classic “Uncle Konig”; also: working on Meet Me in a Dream translations (a difficult Ito story, our guy is slangy and referential in a way that takes real effort)
more fun for me tho was attempts to do some “web art” work, baby-stepping an engine for my three daughters with a fun little flash about a magic bomb (aint it always with me a bomb? who can accuse me of re-using my symbols?). web art’s fun