When Kamo stood before him, watchful but confident, the inspector said without preamble, “You released those women.”

“Hai .” A lengthening pause suggested that his superior was waiting for this clipped affirmative to be decorated with a shamefaced Simata! - I have made a mistake. Well, his superior was in for a disappointment.

“Why?” The inspector asked.

Yoshi Kamo stirred. “They were not only Sumo wrestlers, but also deviants.”

“An interesting antithesis,” observed the inspector impassively, “coming from one such as yourself. It is known that you entertain a poor opinion of this new feature of life in our nation.”

“I consider them to be a dishonor to our people. An affront to order and morality, yes...”

The inspector raised a hand to abort the diatribe. If Yoshi Kamo were not stopped, he would launch into his celebrated lament for Mishima, the Japanese novelist and warrior who had a few years ago famously committed seppuku in protest against modern decadence.

“Yes, I’m familiar with all this, but why do you say they were also deviants?”

“Because there were no men in the bar where we rounded them up. And when we attempted to bind them together, they giggled...”

“All Japanese girls giggle.”

“But these cheered and shouted ‘Awri, Awri’ , to make my men go more quickly. And some even moved closer together and kissed each other. Masochists. They wanted the chains. That was not to be tolerated.”

“So, where are they now?” The inspector already knew he would not welcome the answer.

“Ito and I herded them into that disused police laundry where, as you know, discreet interrogations are conducted. We shot them, not without difficulty, and rendered them down in the boilers, which still work most efficiently. They will make high-quality grease, for domestic use as well as wrestlers. Most expensive in the supermarkets. Our wives will be very pleased. It is, of course, expected that you, Inspector, would be entitled to the largest share.”

“Logical and clean. The sadist must deny pleasure to the masochist. And they were fat in life, hence what better then, that they should be fat in death?” Yoshi Kamo, surprised by his superior’s understanding, bowed more deeply than usual and left. The inspector frowned as he picked up the telephone, punched in some confidential numbers, and arranged with the city’s top yakusa, who owed him many favors, for the killing of Yoshi Kamo.

Partly because, despite his great size, he was a vegetarian. For him, a matter of simple taste rather than complex morality. After all, he had often read that the gaijin Hitler did not eat meat, drink or even smoke. But mainly, because his favorite wrestler had been among the victims.

Only the previous week, he had composed an account of her latest - her last, as it had turned out - triumph in the newspaper Asahi . Under a pseudonym, naturally, he had evoked the erotic poetry in motion of both yokozuna coming together in migi-yotsu, or ‘right-hand inside holds.’ It was Mariko’s favourite grip. Mariko and Yasu had been lovers for quite some time. He had thought that no one knew. Neither was married, and they had been careful. But now, he wondered about Yoshi Kamo. The man missed very little. Had he somehow divined the affair? Was this knowledge, abetted by some dark desires of his own, the unadmitted impulse behind the slaughter in the laundry?

Well, it was no matter now. The inspector doubted that for all his alertness, Yoshi Kamo had even the faintest inkling that his superior officer was booked into the most expensive private clinic in Bangkok to surgically complete his transformation from man to woman. It would not be long before his career change would be as drastic as his body, from inspector of police to madam in charge of Tokyo’s most illustrious house of geishas. His pension would be amplified by funds from grateful businessmen and indebted yakusas .

He pondered, not for long, then jotted down some ideograms which engendered a summarising haiku:

Almost worthy of Basho, greatest exponent of the form. He would print it, under his own name, in the police newsletter with his resignation. The liquidation of Yoshi Kamo and the avenging of Mariko the Sumo wrestler were acts positive in themselves but too quiet to be of more than limited validity. It was time that he/she came out into open embodiment and support of the twin virtues of female and fat.

THE FOUR ETERNALS
By Derek Lee McPhatter

A beast, fiercer than all that came before, terrorized the people of the plains. The Children of the Four were not prepared for the cunning of this creature and its insatiable appetite for carnage. It hunted not for food, but for pleasure. A beast of destruction. A creature of chaos. Descending upon their villages, day and night. Unpredictable and undeniably terrible as the days of fear became weeks and finally months.

A plague. Nothing less than a plague.

Before these troubled times, the Children of the Four, for all their love of peace, for all their propensity towards virtue, seldom gave thanks for their fortune. Their lands were among the most fertile in the realm. Their men were always hearty and healthy. And the women? The women were rumored to be the most impressive, most ravishing…There were many reasons to envy these privileged folk.

And perhaps it was envy that brought this terror here. Indeed, some in the village thought this was so: “It is our neighbors of the Mountain. They are jealous once again and have sent this creature to kill us.” Many voiced this opinion (for the mountain folk were indeed an aggressive and disagreeable sort.) But some did not. Some of the older, nearly discarded folk dismissed this talk of war. They said it was an “otherworldly brute.” And there was only one source for such an unearthly evil:

The very heart of hell itself, the Shadowed Chasms.

And while the rest of the villagers spoke of a new warpath the older ones prayed.

They prayed and they prayed and they prayed. “For to stop the spawn from the heart of hell immortal champions must be called forth from eternity.”

They prayed day and night. They sang the old songs, some nearly forgotten. They danced the old dances and prayed even more.

On the high hill, just after dusk it appeared: that fierce and feral beast. It heard their prayers and songs. It saw their dances and grew angry. The beast roared. Longer and louder than ever before it howled at them with piercing rage and charged. The monster tore through these once-peaceful plains, galloping on haunches of blistered muscle, snarling as the sky grew darker.

From the north: She came. With the cold of the cruelest winters and a scepter of purest ice she appeared. She came with snow, wild and wondrous shawls of broken white. Her breath was beyond blue and her eyes the unrelenting frozen gaze of a goddess awakened. She came from the north upon the beast.

From the South: He came. With wings of flame and pillars of death-black smoke he descended. His eyes were the fiery passions from the hearts of a thousand suns combined. Blazing hammers rested on the titan’s scalded shoulders. At his feet, a river of searing red sizzled and crackled as the singed air around him melted into haze. He came from the south upon the beast.

From the east: She came, diving through clouds of gathering unrest. Her voice was the coarse whisper of a distant storm gone mad. The swelling plumes of deepest gray behind her, with a song swifter than the rush of the raging rivers, she shrieked the shrill cry of an unhinged spirit. From the east she came upon the beast.

From the west: He came. The earth opening itself at his command, he appeared on tumbling boulders of browns and blacks and greens. His arms were the limbs of the mightiest of trees, rough and rippled, grasping at the darkened sky above. His body held the strength of forbidden and forgotten ages past. His call was the channeled challenge of a giant grown from the dawn of time. From the west he came upon the beast.

The people cowered in awe as the Four came down upon the plains. If the creature had known fear, it would have run (as it should have). Yet, it stood its ground, growling and grunting as the Four drew closer.

Piercing shards of ice fell from the sky.

Flames erupted into blazes.

Raging winds rushed and ravaged.

And the Earth shook, grumbling and trembling, ripping and reforming itself as the battle continued.

The people stood now, silent as the four champions from heaven bore down upon the beast with their powers supreme.

They watched the beast struggle and snarl—resisting.

Struggle and suffer and finally die.

Back down it went to the Shadowed Chasms.

Then back east went the wind. Back west went the earth. Back south went the flames and back north went the cold.

Back to the heavens went the Four Eternals, scarcely to be prayed to or danced for again.