王晉康：轉生的巨人

The Reincarnated Giant

By Wang Jinkang

Translated by Carlos Rojas

1. Three News Releases

THIS YEAR, 2012, J-nation’s media broadcast three heatedly debated news items,

all of which had to do with Imagai Nashihiko, the head of the Western Steel

Group. Of course, anything concerning someone of Mr Imagai’s stature would

inevitably become a hot news item. Mr Imagai was seventy-two years old, and

was the richest man in J-nation. Before the country’s economic bubble burst, he

had even been at the top of the Forbes 500 list for many years. He personally

owned more than one-sixth of the land in the entire country, making him an

embodiment of wealth itself, and I suspect that even the legendarily wealthy King

Solomon might well have been his inferior. Mr Imagai was ruthless and decisive,

with a gaze like a knife and a penetrating understanding of people and events,

revered throughout the country—and particularly within business circles—as the

spiritual father of J-nation’s financial world. Another famous tycoon, Harita Akio,

worshiped the ground he walked on, calling him ‘a great man who comes along

only once every few centuries, like Tang dynasty China’s Taizong emperor’. Then,

Harita would sigh and add, ‘Why should he be born, now that there is me?’ 1

The first of the three news items concerned Mr Imagai’s personal lawyer,

Kiminao Ninzen, who was asked to petition the court for an ‘uncontested, pre?emptive guarantee of rights’ on Mr Imagai’s behalf. This petition was truly

bizarre, and may very well have been unprecedented in all the world’s legal

systems, because according to existing legal practices the right to sue presupposes

that there be a counterpart who is alleged to have transgressed on the rights of

the litigant. It was, therefore, already a significant victory for Imagai’s resourceful

lawyer, Kiminao, to have convinced the court to acknowledge Imagai’s petition:

…

Mr Kiminao: On behalf of my client, I am petitioning the court for an

‘uncontested, pre-emptive guarantee of rights’. My client has developed a cancerous

tumour in his right arm and will have to have it amputated immediately, and

he is considering having a new arm attached in its place. But after his arm is

amputated, he will no longer be able to sign cheques in his original handwriting,

and will lose, furthermore, an important symbol of his identity—which is to say,

his fingerprints. In order to secure my client’s rights, I therefore request that the

court pre-emptively guarantee that he retain all his original rights even when he

loses his arm and has the new one attached.

Judge: First of all, I’d like to express my condolences to your client for his

illness. In a strict legal sense, however, a ‘person’ is understood as a holistic entity,

and although the concept of ‘personhood’ lacks clear statutory provision, someone

who loses an arm would clearly still retain all his original rights. On this point, it

is simply not necessary to request a pre-emptive guarantee of rights. With respect

to the issue of not being able to sign his cheques in his original handwriting, a

few simple technical adjustments will suffice.

Mr Kiminao (laughs): No, it is not so simple. My client truly shows great

foresight. From this seemingly inconsequential matter he has observed an

enormous loophole in the contemporary legal system, which is precisely what your

honour has just referred to: namely, the fact that the law is currently not able to

provide a precise definition for the term ‘person’. Suppose, for instance, that my

client were to lose not only his right arm, but—and please forgive me for raising

this unfortunate possibility—were to have a car accident in which he would lose

both arms, his eyesight, and which would furthermore leave him disfigured, with

damaged vocal cords and in need of an artificial heart. In other words, suppose

that he were to lose all of the external characteristics that currently define him,

to the point that even a genetic analysis might prove inconclusive, since his new

limbs and organs would contain foreign DNA. It is possible, in fact, that only

his magnificent brain would remain intact. Would you agree that, under these

circumstances, he could still be regarded as the same respected Mr Imagai?

Would he still retain all of the rights that Mr Imagai currently enjoys?

Judge: Of course. That goes without saying.

Mr Kiminao: Good! That is precisely my client’s wish. He doesn’t wish to

change the nation’s laws overnight, but instead simply wants to make a modest

arrangement with respect to his own personal rights. In other words, my client

simply asks the court to pre-emptively recognize that, with respect to his body, his

brain is the only determinant of his identity. This sort of arrangement may, in the

end, prove to have been excessively prudent, but there is never any harm in being

prudent.

…

In the end, Kiminao Ninzen won the case and received from the court a formal

certification of rights for his client. Although this ‘uncontested, pre-emptive

guarantee of rights’ was, indeed, unprecedented, there was no disputing the

analysis he had presented. Who wouldn’t agree that a person’s brain is his or her

most fundamental organ? Furthermore, J-nation, after a contentious multi-year

debate, had just passed a new law that made brain death, rather than cardiac

death, the new standard for determining an individual’s death.

Though there was much conjecture concerning Mr Imagai’s motivations at the

time, no one suspected that he was actually laying the legal groundwork for a

historically unprecedented operation. I was the lead surgeon for the operation, but

it was far from a simple amputation or arm transplant.

The second of the three news items concerned Mr Imagai’s lawyer’s advance

purchase of an anencephalic foetus for his client. The reporter who reported

this story remarked with consternation, ‘This must be in preparation for Mr

Imagai’s arm transplant, but how can he, who is 1.67 metres tall, possibly be

given an infant’s arm?’

At the time, Mrs Yamaguchi was already twenty weeks pregnant, and

ultrasounds and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) tests had confirmed that the foetus was

anencephalic. Mr Kiminao had placed informers at several dozen hospitals, and

the day he received news of Mrs Yamaguchi’s diagnosis he took me with him to

see her. My job was to examine the foetus and confirm that, apart from lacking a

fore-brain, all of its other organs were healthy. The results of my examination were

very reassuring. The Yamaguchis were fisher-people in financial straits, which is

the reason why Kiminao picked them. Meeting with the couple when they had not

yet recovered from the shock of the diagnosis and were depressed and disconsolate,

Mr Kiminao said to them earnestly,

‘Please accept my condolences for your tragedy. I represent a good-hearted old

gentleman, who would like to do something for you. You need not worry about your

medical expenses, as the gentleman is willing to cover them for you.’

The couple thanked us politely, though they were clearly suspicious of this

unsolicited generosity.

Mr Kiminao asked, ‘Do you plan to have the foetus aborted?’

Mr Yamaguchi replied sadly, ‘That is our only option. The doctor says that this

sort of congenital disease is untreatable.’

‘That is correct. Current medical technology has no cure. However, I have a

suggestion that I would like you to consider. Would you perhaps be willing to allow

this unfortunate child to live in someone else’s body? Yes, I am speaking of organ

transplant. The foetus’s eyes, heart, liver, gall bladder, kidneys, pancreas, spleen,

hands and feet, in fact its entire body could live healthily in someone else’s. I

believe that this might be of some comfort to you. Also, please rest assured, when

conducting the organ transplants we will use only the most humane methods.

We’ll hire the best doctors and nurses to look after Mrs Yamaguchi until she

safely delivers, and after delivery we’ll use a heart-lung machine to keep the

infant alive for at least half a year until we can confirm that there is no possibility

of a cure, and only then will we begin the transplant procedure. In addition,’ the

lawyer added softly, ‘you will receive considerable nutritional subsidies. You and

I both know that organ selling is illegal, but the law does not forbid the family

of a deceased patient from voluntarily donating the corpse, nor does it forbid a

charitable individual from giving some nutritional subsidies to an unfortunate

couple.’

A gleam of greed shone through Mr Yamaguchi’s eyes: ‘How much?’

Mr Kiminao replied, ‘It depends on your needs.’

Mrs Yamaguchi tugged at her husband’s sleeve, and he said hesitantly, ‘Can I

talk this over with my wife?’

‘Of course. That goes without saying.’

After we stepped out of the hospital room, we could see through the half-open

door Mr Yamaguchi and his wife conversing quietly. She seemed to be resisting,

while her husband was trying to persuade her. We heard him say, ‘The child

will not survive anyway, so it is not a question of our callousness.’ While they

were talking, Kiminao simply gazed off the distance with his hands clasped

behind his back. In the end, Mrs Yamaguchi gave in, and when Mr Yamaguchi

invited us back in he announced resolutely,

‘Twenty million J dollars. Not a cent less.’

I knew that the starting price for these negotiations had originally been

pegged at 80 million J dollars, and therefore Mr Yamaguchi’s asking price was

much too low. Mr Kiminao, however, replied calmly, ‘That is too much. For a

nutritional subsidy, this price is much too high. Mr Yamaguchi, you put me in a

very awkward position.’ Mr Yamaguchi opened his mouth to speak, but Kiminao

cut him off with a wave of his hand and said, ‘However, since I’ve already given my

word, I will find a way to deal with this problem myself. I’ll do my best to convince

my client, and I believe he will ultimately agree. As I’ve already mentioned, he is a

very generous man. However, I must emphasize one point: you may subsequently

learn who has received the infant’s organs, but you must not, under any

circumstances, disturb that person. There is a clause in your contract that spells

this out very clearly, and if this clause is breached you will have to pay a penalty

of double the amount. Please remember, my client is very benevolent, but also very

principled, and there is nothing he likes less than incessant demands from greedy

people.’

This calm threat clearly left a deep impression on the couple, and Mr

Yamaguchi quickly nodded his assent, ‘We definitely won’t break our word. We will

maintain absolute silence. You can rest assured of that.’

The foetus was delivered by Caesarean section at seven months (on account

of the fact that anencephalic foetuses often die before they reach full term).

As promised, the parents did indeed disappear after receiving their money.

Regardless of how hot the news subsequently became, they apparently kept their

word, since there was no further sign of them. We used a heart-lung machine to

keep the infant alive for six months. You could say that this was to abide by the

terms of the contract, but in reality this clause of the contract was nonsensical.

Who, after all, has ever heard of an anencephalic infant being cured? There

was not the least possibility of this. To tell the truth, we had planned from the

beginning to carry out the organ transplant operation after six months, as the

chance of success would be greater then.

At the end of the year, Mr Kiminao held a press conference in which he

announced that Mr Imagai would undergo organ transplant surgery. This was

the third piece of groundbreaking news. This announcement did not comport

with the discretion with which this godfather of the financial world normally

conducted his business. However, people would subsequently come to realize

that he had his reasons for proceeding in this manner.

The reporters rushed forward, desperate for inside information, each hoping

their coverage would make the front page. They were all very bewildered

however: What organ is Mr Imagai going to receive? The previous report of

Mr Imagai developing a malignant bone tumour in his right arm was clearly a

misdiagnosis as, for nearly a year after these initial reports, he has remained

perfectly healthy, continuing to use his distinctive florid handwriting to sign one

enormous cheque after another. Some of the more astute reporters had already

guessed that this was not even a misdiagnosis, but rather that the earlier

announcement had simply been a smokescreen put up by Western Steel. What

organ, therefore, was the great Mr Imagai going to receive from the anencephalic

infant?

Mr Imagai did not appear at the press conference because, at the time, he was

actually in an operating room in the Neurological Surgery Clinic in Yamadai

prefecture. I myself was in the disinfection area washing my hands, and was

about to put on my green surgical scrubs and begin the operation. Apart from Mr

Kiminao, Western Steel’s director of general affairs, Nakasane Ichū was also at

the press conference. Nakasane was one of Mr Imagai’s most competent assistants,

and for a month after the operation (which is the amount of time it takes for

accelerated nerve regeneration), he would oversee the company’s daily operations.

Mr Imagai’s personal assistant, Komatsu Yoshiko, also attended. The pretty Ms

Komatsu Yoshiko was often referred to as Mr Imagai’s ‘sleep-in secretary’, because

everyone knew that the great Mr Imagai was also sexually very well endowed, and

even at seventy-two he was still in full possession of his sexual prowess. His semi?public girlfriends numbered in the dozens, including movie stars, Olympic athletes,

bar girls, college co-eds, and female politicians. Komatsu Yoshiko, however, was

the most highly favoured of them all, and received 60 million J dollars a month

(and remember that Mr Imagai only paid 20 million to purchase the anencephalic

infant!). It was impossible for outsiders to know with certainty the exact reason

why she was so highly favoured, but it was rumoured that she could use a very

you-know-what technique to satisfy this old man’s peculiar sexual appetites.

The media had never criticized Mr Imagai’s promiscuity, which was probably

due to the widespread attitude that it was perfectly natural for this alpha male,

who owned one-sixth of the nation’s land, to have more than one woman. In fact,

some people even complimented him on his egalitarian style, given that when it

came to potential lovers he didn’t limit himself to high society.

As I watched Komatsu Yoshiko’s showy demeanour on screen, however, I

couldn’t help suspecting that her 60-million-a-month salary was no longer secure,

given that following this operation and for many years to come, Mr Imagai

certainly won’t be requiring her services.

None of Mr Imagai’s family was present at the press conference. His wife had

already passed away, and neither of his two sons made an appearance. I, of course,

knew the reason for this: If this operation proved successful, the two unfortunate

sons could no longer be able to look forward to inheriting the Western Steel

empire. They must have been very unhappy with their father’s decision, if not

actually hating him for it. Mr Imagai, however, had already arranged to give each

son a portion of his fortune, and they had already left the company to set up their

own businesses, following different paths from their father.

…

Capital Daily reporter: Could you tell us precisely which organ Mr Imagai will

be receiving today? We already know that he didn’t really have a tumour on his

right arm.

Mr Kiminao (smiles): This is precisely why I have convened today’s press

conference. I am officially announcing that Mr Imagai will receive a full body

transplant, including both legs, both arms, heart, liver, gall bladder, kidneys,

pancreas, spleen, eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and torso. All organs but one—his

brain.

KHN reporter (dumb-struck): You’re saying … that Mr Imagai is not actually

having an organ transplant, but rather he is transplanting his own brain the

body of the anencephalic infant?


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