'WHY DON'T YOU FIND yourself a new wife, Pops?'
It was this question, posed by his son, Shige, that precipitated Aoyama's decision to remarry.
Shige's mother, Ryoko, had died of a viral cancer some seven years before, when he was eight and Aoyama thirty-five. Because of her relative youth, Ryoko's cancer had spread rapidly. She was operated on once, but recurrence was almost immediate, and within a month it was all over.
'She didn't have time to suffer, or even to grieve,' Aoyama had told a close friend at the time.
Ryoko's father was the owner of a venerable little firm that had been manufacturing fine musical instruments for generations. He and his wife, devotees of jazz and classical music, had raised their only daughter in a strict but loving household. Ryoko was cultured, intelligent and strikingly attractive. She was also a woman of great inner strength, and as a wife she'd been quietly supportive of Aoyama in every aspect of his life and career. He would never forget that it was only because of her and understanding that he'd succeeded in his Great Adventure: leaving the giant ad agency where he'd worked for more than a decade to start his own video production company.
Although this was during the bubble years, when it seemed to be raining money, the sheer number of fledgling production companies ensured fierce competition, and for many months Aoyama's adventure had teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Ryoko's father was the one who'd saved him. His firm had designed and built pipe organs for Catholic churches throughout South-East Asia, where VRCs were just beginning to proliferate, and Aoyama hit upon the idea of producing a simple visual presentation of scenes from the New Testament. Dubbed into various languages, these videos sold literally hundreds of thousands of copies — thanks almost entirely to the old man's connections.
Many wives might have made a point of dangling something like that over their husband's heads, but not the ever-modest and self-effacing Ryoko. Naturally, Aoyama had nothing but love, respect and gratitude for this remarkable wife of his, and yet it is also true that ever since his days at the agency he'd been rather extravagantly unfaithful to her. The most critical instance had occurred just after the Jesus video took off, when he got entangled with a nightclub hostess to the tune of millions of yen. But even then Ryoko had maintained her cool and her quiet dignity, and no serious fights ever occurred in the home. Her main priorities — first, last and always — were Shige's wellbeing and education.
What husband has never speculated how free he might feel if his wife were suddenly out of the picture? And how many count the days till she takes the kids off for a week with her folk? Let these men actually lose their wives, however, and few can even summon the will or energy to run wild; it's only then that they recognise the support system they've been taking for granted. When Aoyama lost Ryoko he became mired in feelings of utter powerlessness. Eventually he'd consulted with a physician friend, who warned he was just a step shy of clinical depression. 'You really will get ill if you don't set some positive goals for yourself,' this friend had said, and Aoyama set himself two.
