Japanese dreams
By William Wetherall
The adventures of a zainichi scorpion
Began 1 June 2025, completed 31 July 2025
Last revised 11 August 2025 (2,467 words)
Japanese dreams
By William Wetherall
Growing up in India was not, for me, easy. I was one of a brood of 23 scorplings who clung to our mother's back for a couple of weeks while our exoskeletons hardened. After our first molting, we were off her back and scattering across the terrain, on our own. We learned, or not, the lessons of survival, while molting a few more times as we grew. If we survived long enough, we might mate. And that, too, could be a hard lesson.
A year later, most of my siblings and half of my cousins had been eaten by snakes or birds, or had starved to death. Some had ended up deep fried, roasted, grilled, skewered, or even pickled for snacks and garnishes. Others had been dried and ground into folk medicines.
Our venom is liquid gold, and some cousins has been captured and sold to industrialized scorpion farms that supply venom to pharmaceutical, biotech, and cosmetic companies. They are periodically stimulated by an electric current to release venom, which is lyophilized into a powder that finds its way into a variety of experimental cancer and pain treatments and antiaging products.
Early this year, a sister who had survived like I had, was abducted and sold to a popular singer in Japan, who lavished attention on her, in the center of his full wall collection of critters, each species in its own terrarium. The singer made a point of pairing his critters, and seduced the female groupies that he favored with his address with stories about the sex lives of roaches and grasshoppers.
One day my sister's keeper dropped a male scorpion into her world. As the shock of his own abduction subsided, his wariness of my sister also slackened. And one night, while foraging through some decomposed leaves crawling with pill bugs, their dinner that evening, the newcomer surrendered to my sister's pheromones. His pincers reached for hers, hers reciprocated, and they began to dance to Sweet Caroline, the singer's signature song, covers of which had made him more money than his originals.
My sister, who shares everything with me, told me that as soon as her pincers touched his, her ovariuterus began to secrete hormones, and her chelicerae salivated. But suddenly there was shouting, the music stopped, and her terrarium was flooded with light from a policeman's torch. The actor was arrested on suspicion of violating the Law Concerning the Prevention of Damage Pertaining to the Ecosystem inter alia by Specific Living Things From Outside -- better known as the Invasive Alien Species Law. My sister and her would-be mate awaited their fate. He, she told me, was euthanized in liquid nitrogen, while she ended up in a private scorpion laboratory on the outskirts of Tokyo.
My sister urged me to visit her in Japan. She might be able to arrange a place for me at the laboratory, she said. The director had written a paper reporting that scorpions in captivity lived longer than in the wild. And he had recently founded the International Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Scorpions.
within
the confines
of quarters
The director studied only living specimens. All of them, my sister said, including herself, were free to pursue happiness within the confines of their laboratory quarters. None would suffer the indignities of milking their venom with electricity. And none would ever fear involuntary death.
To my sister's knowledge, since she had been at the laboratory, only one scorpion, a male, had committed suicide -- and not by stinging himself when surrounded by fire, which is a myth. He was found half eaten, and an autopsy had linked his death to a female with whom he had just mated.
Sexual cannibalism among scorpions is not common, but it is known. The problem was, whether to charge the female with scorpiocide or scorpioslaughter, or possibly self defense. Interested parties at the inquest went back and forth. Everyone agreed that it couldn't have been just an accident. And there were no signs of a struggle, or evidence to suggest that he had sedated her with his venom.
"If her chemistry led her to kill and eat him, then she deserves a psychiatric defense," someone said. "Wouldn't that be a cultural defense?" someone else said. "It couldn't be cultural, because then everyone would be doing it," the first said. "If due to her chemistry, it wouldn't be psychiatric, either," a third said.
"What about the guy's mental state?" wondered the second. "Could he have wanted to die, and manipulated her into making his death wish come true?" At which impasse, the coroner presiding over the inquest ordered a psychological autopsy.
The panel of distinguished arachnologists who reviewed the case concluded that the male had been despondent. He had long agonized over the nocturnal struggle to feed himself and flee predators that saw him only as food. He knew that the female he chose to approach was hungry. He also knew that she would see him as weak -- and that hanging around afterward would provoke her into turning on him for the calories she needed to survive.
***
I myself was growing weary of the struggle to survive in India, where I was essentially alone. Both parents had died violent deaths. The heel of a pedicab driver had squashed my mother as she was crossing the road. The driver, who truly believed in rebirth, was devastated. He would have stopped for an ant, if he hadn't been eyeing the truck bearing down on him in the side mirror.
As for my father, I never knew him. Nor, in the scorpion world, was I supposed to. Males are expected to mate and go on their miserable way. Still, I wanted to meet him. So one day I asked my mother where he was. "In me and your siblings," she said. "After we mated, I ate him."
I had heard of such things while growing up, and I sometimes felt such urges, but I didn't understand what they meant. Was it all just gentic, or did my mother have a reason?
"I would have let him go," she said, "but the idiot lingered around, and I didn't know what to do with him. It then dawned on me that, if he cared that much about me and the brood in my belly, he would best contribute to our nutrition."
I can't help wondering if my dad knew what he was doing. He's not around to tell his side of the story, though, so I've left it at that. It was what it was.
learned
to keep
a low profile
I told my sister I would figure out a way to get to Japan. "Be sure you study Japanese," she said. "Learn to read signs, too, so you don't have ask your way around." I knew what she meant. The first lesson I learned had been to keep a low profile. Between my second and third molts, I had to hide from my own mother, who was constantly hungry.
I became a huge fan of anime and computer games. They made learning Japanese fun. I won a Japanese speech contest at a cosplay event. The prize was a two-week stay in Japan. Then the sponsors discovered that I really was a scorpion, and I was disqualified. My chances of getting a visa were gone. I would have to sneak into the county.
I began hanging out in an area haunted by critter hunters. And one day, while absorbed in a feast of termite larvae at a streetside cafe, for the grace of the gods that be I was snatched by a poacher who supplied a syndicate that smuggled forbidden critters into Japan.
A few days later, I was forcepped into a small box disguised to look like one of those cardboard fillers that slips into the front part of a shoe, like a shoe tree, to preserve its form when shipped or stored. Another scorpion, a male, had been put into a similar box, and my box and his were slipped into a pair of red patent leather stiletto heels that smelled like they'd just come out of the factory. The pumps were wrapped in tissue paper and placed heel to toe in a shoe box.
When the shipper was consigning the goods to the carrier in Mumbai, I overheard talk of 8 large shipping cartons, each containing 40 pairs of shoes. If only one of the cartons was full of shoes with critters, that would be 80 critters, maybe all scorpions, or maybe a Noah's Ark of exotic bugs. If the other cartons were decoys, then the risk of my carton being discovered was 1 in 8.
The shipping cartons were banded together on a pallet that was forklifted to a loading dock, and craned into the hold of a Taiwan-flagged freighter with a mostly Vietnamese crew sailing out of Mumbai for Tokyo. I wouldn't learn the final destination until the shipment was picked up after clearing customs.
My shoebox was located along one side of the shipping carton. As soon as the vessel got underway, I made a hole in my toe filler box. The scorpion in the other shoe had done likewise. So there we were, pincers to pincers, but with no intention on his part, much less mine, of reaching out to touch each other.
We stared at each other for a few seconds, arrived at an unspoken agreement, and proceeded to make our own separate holes in both the shoebox and the shipping carton. That way there would be no fighting over who got to escape first. We then returned to our respective berths in the toes of the pumps -- he in the right shoe, I in the left one nearer the side of the carton -- where, without food or water, we conserved our strength for the rest of the 17-day voyage.
We had understood that we were in the same predicament. We had also understood that the less we knew about each other, the better off we would both be, if either of us were caught.
***
At the Port of Tokyo, I remained in the shoe as a forklift set the pallet on a dolly, and the dolly was rolled to a customs inspection station. The bands around the 8 shipping cartons were cut. The inspector walked around the pallet, tapping each carton with the grip of a cutter knife.
I trembled when an assistant inspector pulled out one of the bottom cartons beside mine. If I hadn't been so dehydrated, I would have wet myself as my pectines and sensory hairs translated the vibrations, set off by the inspector's knife slitting the carton, into the direction and distance of an approaching enemy.
The inspector pulled out a couple of shoe boxes and examined them for contraband. Apparently she found only shoes, for the boxes were returned to the carton, which was taped and returned to the pallet. The pallet was then rolled to the pick-up station, where the recipient of the shipment signed the Bill of Lading and Proof of Delivery, and took possession.
The recipient and another man loaded the cartons in the back of a van. The recipient called someone on his phone and reported that the shoes had arrived. He then told the other man, who was driving, "Go straight to Okachimachi. We'll just offload the shoes tonight and distribute them in the morning." The men then started talking about the races.
I couldn't believe my ears. "Yatta!" I thought, in Japanese. "Just a skip, hop, and jump from Akihabara!" I wanted to hug my travel mate in the other shoe. But he'd probably get the wrong idea, which would not have ended well for him. In any event, did he understand the significance of what the recipient had just said? Did he have a clue about anything Japanese? I had to acknowledge, however, that he, too, had made getaway holes, as feverously as I had. So perhaps he too had a Japanese dream.
Neither man, though, had said anything about we passengers. Maybe they were just lackies, who didn't know that they were part of a bug-running ring. They would offload the cartons and return to their respective abodes for the night. Whoever the recipient had called would go to wherever they left the cartons, and collect the contraband -- before the shoes were distributed the next day, to shoe stores in Ueno, Okachimachi, and Akihabara.
always alert
and sometimes
paranoid
Then in that part of my cephalothoracic mass that is always alert and sometimes paranoid, I pictured the recipient himself immediately returning to the cartons. Or perhaps the driver would leave first, and the recipient would simply stay.
I momentarily panicked. But I knew what I would do. I'd slip out at the earliest opportunity after they offloaded the shoes. The men were engrossed in a passionate exchange about the upcoming Japan Cup. Both knew every horse on the card. They'd still be talking while unloading the shoes. I could see them going out for beers and yakitori.
I had no choice but to wait and see what unfolded. Whatever opportunity presented itself, I would have to move quickly. I would have to be gone before anyone turned their attention to the passengers in the shoes.
My goal was to visit my sister at the scorpion lab and possibly settle there. First, though, I wanted to indulge my fantasies at a few maid cafes and video game shops in Akihabara. With my Japanese as good as it was, I would pass as a local, dressed to look like a scorpion. This was, after all, the world's capital of cosplay.
The problem was, I was determined to go to Akihabara by myself. I did not want to be followed by the other passengers, who I had to assume were also planning to escape.
Much less did I want the company of the guy in the mate to my shoe. The last thing I needed was a male companion who depended on my Japanese to get around -- and who at any moment might find himself unable to control his courting impulses, and extend his pincers toward mine, inviting me to dance.
While thinking of how to avoid him, or discourage him if he insisted on tagging along, I felt the pangs in my mesosoma, after weeks without food, and realized there was a solution.
The driver was complaining about the congested traffic, with everyone getting off work.
There would be time, and no one would hear his cries for help.
This story is for Yile Yang, who introduced me to zainichi scorpions in the course of her creation of Let Me Hear Your Song.