The Archipelago Under Three Empires’ Shadows, 2050 (a novel in the style of Haruki Murakami)

<Prologue>

By 2050, the place once called Japan is nowhere to be found.

A September night, rain falling outside my window. Fine rain, barely a whisper. Back when these islands were still Japan, late summer hummed with cicadas. Everyone cracked open an Asahi, watched baseball on TV. That air lives only in our memory now.

The islands, tagged a “nation of peace” long ago, got sliced into three—satellites of vast empires: Russia, China, America. Maybe it was bound to happen, caught between giants like that, torn apart without a sound. It started in the 2020s, with words like “Taiwan” and “Hokkaido” flickering in the news. No wars, no uprisings. Just a quiet carving from outside. No gunshots, no cries. Armies came—from the north, from the south. Someone stamped a document.

That was all it took. The island was painted in three different colors.

Thirty years back—give or take—an old magazine printed a small number. Asked if they’d fight for this country, only one in ten said yes. The lowest in the world. I’m fifty now, and I think: when I saw that number, something had already ended.

Each of the three lands, born from the fracture, holds on to borrowed nuclear bombs like a child clutching strange toys. And so, in some quiet, inexplicable way, balance is kept.

In the corner of my room, Bill Evans’s “Waltz for Debby” plays low. I let the piano carry me, tracing a summer gone.

<The Northern Wall: The Emishi Democratic People’s Republic>

In 2026, Russia sent troops into Hokkaido, claiming to “protect Russian residents.” Russian residents? There were barely any. The Japanese government fired off a half-hearted protest—little more than a diplomatic shrug—and did nothing else.

Through the Crimean War, the Russo-Turkish wars, even as global warming opened new ice-free ports, Russia’s southward march never slowed. What was once Hokkaido is now an extension of the Russian Far East.

I still think about that Christmas Eve, just before the split. In my tiny Tokyo apartment, I boiled pasta with my girlfriend. We ate together, slept together. Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” played softly in the background.

She happened to be in Hokkaido when the divide came. I haven’t heard her voice since. Loneliness, like acid, has been eating away at my heart for years, slow and steady.

In Sapporo, Russian whispers fill the streets. Road signs are in Cyrillic now, and a massive statue of Putin looms in front of the station. Japanese lingers as a second language, barely clinging on. Russian Orthodox churches line the roads, silent and solemn.

It’s not just the land they took—history got rewritten too. The Russo-Japanese War? Erased from textbooks. But oddly, The Giant Turnip, the story I read aloud in first grade, stayed untouched. I didn’t know back then it was a Russian folktale. Strange to think that even during the Cold War, when the West shunned Soviet culture, Japanese kids were innocently chanting Russian stories, tossing around words like “kombinat” and “norma.”

About ten years after the split, a defector—a fugitive from Hokkaido—told me my girlfriend took her own life long ago. Without a goodbye, she vanished from this world. Like the steam rising from that night’s pasta.

<The Red Paradise: The Ryukyu-Kyushu People’s Republic>

The “Ryukyu-Kyushu People’s Republic” keeps the façade of independence, but it’s China’s puppet, plain and simple. A few years back, I visited Naha for work.

Walking through an alley, I noticed the air carried a faint dampness. Late summer, September’s scent. Somewhere, a drone’s hum cut through the night—low, persistent, like an insect rubbing its wings.

At the end of the alley stood an old vending machine. Once it might’ve sold condoms or cigarettes, but not anymore. Its screen flashed simplified Chinese characters: “Check Your Social Credit Score.” Nobody uses cash. Swipe a card, and a soft beep logs your life in some distant server. What you bought, when you passed through. Your score ticks up or down, like a pachinko ball bouncing through pins. No one says it outright, but if your score dips too low, someone might knock on your door one morning.

I remember a young girl at the market, a People’s Liberation Army flag pinned to her chest. Those flags line the fences where U.S. bases once stood. The Stars and Stripes? Long gone. Nobody mentions it. Or maybe nobody dares.

Across the sea, families stream in from China’s impoverished interior, armed with new names and fresh scores, putting down roots. The government says, “Mixed blood is the future.” But that girl’s eyes, staring past the market stalls, seemed to search for something lost—or maybe to let something go.

In my hotel room, I turned on the TV. State broadcasts droned in Mandarin, subtitles crawling in simplified Chinese. The news shifted gears: “Crackdown on extremist ideologies underway.” Footage showed a reeducation center—concrete walls, iron gates.

An old friend’s face flashed through my mind. All he’d done was sip a beer and mutter, “Things were better before.” Did that tank his score? Did a camera catch his words? No one tells you. Some activist, locked away, might’ve heard he won a Nobel Peace Prize. But that medal’s just a pebble tossed into the night sea. Ripples spread, then fade.

The Ryukyu-Kyushu government encourages intermarriage, and waves of migrants from impoverished inland China have gradually settled in, pushing forward a slow integration into the Han majority.

Unlike the former Japan, where local communities had withered away, this region has seen a revival of kinship-based communal ties. But in a society where family bonds are everything, few people smile at those outside their bloodline. The old Japanese traits of restraint and courtesy have faded—like the muffled hiss of an old cassette tape, barely audible anymore.

On the hotel balcony, the drone’s hum returned. I looked up, but the sky was empty.

<America’s Mistress: The United States of Yamato>

From my apartment window, the city looks almost the same, yet somehow off. New Tokyo City—that’s what they call it now. When did that happen? September nights, damp air brushes the curtains. Somewhere, a car horn blares. As a kid, this was just Tokyo.

Outside the convenience store, a young guy sips canned coffee, an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. AR18, I think it’s called. Fresh from mandatory service, his eyes gaze somewhere far off. Back when I was in high school, the kids loitering here were just smoking, maybe causing a little trouble.

At the bar, I sit at the counter. Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight” drifts through the air. The bartender polishes a glass, the sound blending into the music. Next to me, a white businessman laughs loudly, his tie loose, English words slicing the room. I think of my old colleague, Sato. Last year, he quit, giving up on promotion. “Glass ceiling,” he said with a smile, but his eyes were dead. Climbing the ladder here, for a Japanese, is like reaching for stars in a midnight ocean.

The TV flickers in the corner, showing the imperial family’s YouTube channel. A young royal speaks softly, explaining traditional crafts. Nobody says the emperor’s just a name now.

I think about the 2036 Nankai Trough earthquake. That night, over 290,000 lives vanished. The news promised American aid “coming soon,” but all we got were old blankets and expired canned food. Nobody complained. Since Perry’s black ships, people on this island have been used to bowing to power. After World War II, following America felt like breathing air. Nothing’s changed, maybe. Watching kids scarf down Big Macs at the bar, rifles on their backs, I can’t shake the thought.

Somewhere, someone’s making new rules, striking new deals. Trump’s voice laughs in my memory. When Russia and China came to devour this country, America swooped back in. They’d abandoned the security treaty, but somehow grabbed the wheel again. What’s it changed for me? I’m not sure.

On my coffee table sits an old photo from my grandmother. A family smiling in front of Tokyo Tower. A time like that existed, I guess. Sipping beer, Monk’s piano loops in my head. “’Round Midnight.” Is it singing the end of the night or the start? Nobody tells me. Or maybe I just don’t have the energy to hear the answer anymore.

<Epilogue: Echoes of What Was Once “Japan”>

A September night, rain falling outside my window. Fine rain, barely a whisper. My apartment holds an old wooden table, a worn sofa. On the table, a glass with melting ice. The amber liquid sways, like a tiny ancient sea trapped inside. In the corner, a player spins Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue low. The trumpet weaves into the rain, slipping somewhere far away.

Russia’s cold wind, China’s heavy steps, America’s neon flicker—they drew lines on the map, carving up where we live. But here’s the strange thing: maybe we were the first to let “Japan” go.

My father used to say, “This country’s always been shy about saying its own name.” On TV, intellectuals threw around words like “identity” or “self-assertion,” but to me, they felt like distant noise.

I head to the kitchen, grab some cheese from the fridge. Spread it on a cheap cracker, chew slowly. No taste. Or maybe the will to taste anything’s been draining out of me, bit by bit. When despair becomes routine, it’s funny—you wear it like a comfortable coat. Shouts, protests, they fade into memory. All that’s left is a plain fact: this country lost its name. Nothing more, nothing less.

I close my eyes, and a city rises in my mind. An imaginary place. There’s an old diner in an alley, and she’s sitting at the counter. Christmas Eve, snow falling outside, her red scarf bright against the window. Of course, she’s not here. Maybe she was once, but not anymore. Still, another sip of whiskey brings her voice a little closer.

The rain stops. The night deepens, quiet. Somewhere, a car engine hums. Someone out there’s living by new rules, in some corner of this archipelago. Or maybe, like me, they’re listening to old records, cradling a name that’s gone. Either way’s fine. Tonight, in this room, I’m free.

My girlfriend’s smile. Her red scarf. They’re all left behind on some far-off map. But when I close my eyes, just for a moment, they come back. In that imaginary city, on Christmas Eve, her faint smile lingers in the falling snow, as if whispering a name we’ve all let slip away.