Asakusa 2-chome was northwest of the station, so I approached it through the Sensoji, the Asakusa Temple complex. I entered through Kaminarimon, the Thunder Gate, said to protect Kannon, the goddess of mercy, to whose worship the temple complex is dedicated. My parents had taken me here when I was five, and the site of the gate’s ten-foot red paper lantern is one of my earliest memories. My mother insisted on waiting in line to buy kaminari okoshi, Asakusa’s signature snack, at the Tokiwado shop, whose crackers are reputed to be the best. My father complained at having to wait for such touristy nonsense but she ignored him. The crackers seemed wonderful to me-crunchy and sweet-and my mother laughed as we ate them, urging me, “Oichi, ne? Oichi, ne?” Aren’t they yummy? Aren’t they yummy?, until my father broke down and partook.

I paused before the Sensoji Temple and looked back at the compound. Around me whirled the general din of excited tourists, of hawkers exhorting potential customers “Hai, irasshiae! Hai, dozo!,” of squealing schoolchildren being mobbed by the legions of pigeons that make the complex their home. Someone was shaking an omikuji fortune-telling can, full of hundred-yen coins deposited in the hope of good tidings. Incense from the giant brass okoro wafted past me, simultaneously sweet and acrid on the cool air. Clusters of people stood around the censer, pulling the smoke onto those parts of their bodies they hoped to cure with its supposed magical properties. One old man in a fishing cap gathered great heaps of it onto his groin, laughing with gusto as he did so. A tour guide tried to arrange for a group photo, but waves of passersby continually obliterated the shot. The giant Hozomon Gate herself stood silent through it all, brooding, dignified, inured by the decades to the clamor of tourists, the frantic photographers, the guano amassed on her eaves like wax from immolated candles.

I headed west. The din receded, to be replaced by an odd, depressing silence that hung over the area like smoke. Outside the tourist-fueled activity of Sensoji, it seemed, Asakusa had been hit hard by Japan’s decade-long decline.

I walked, my head swiveling left and right, logging my surroundings. Hanayashiki amusement park sulked to my right, its empty Ferris wheel rotating senselessly against the ashen sky above. The esplanade beyond was given over mostly to a few pigeons that had wandered there from the nearby temple complex, the occasional flapping of their wings echoing in the surrounding silence. Here and there were small clusters of homeless men smoking secondhand cigarettes. A mailman removed a few envelopes from the back of a postal box and hurried on, as though vaguely afraid he might catch whatever disease had decimated the area’s population. The owner of a coffee shop sat diminished in the back of his deserted establishment, waiting for patronage that had long since vanished. Even the pachinko parlors were empty, the artificially gay music piping out of their entranceways bizarre and ironic.

I turned the corner at the end of the street I was looking for. A heavily built Japanese kid with a shaved head, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, was leaning against the wall. I made him as a sentry. Sure enough, at the other end of the street, there was his twin.

I walked past the first guy. After a few steps I turned my head casually to look back at him. He was watching me, speaking into a radio. This was a quiet street and I didn’t look like one of the pensioners who lived in the neighborhood. The call felt routine: somebody’s coming, I don’t know who.

I walked on and found the address-an unremarkable two-story building with a cement façade. The door was old and constructed of thick metal. Three rows of large bolts ran across it horizontally, probably attached to reinforcing bars on the other side. The bolts said Visitors Not Welcome.

I looked around. Across from me was a blue corrugated shed, ramshackle, its windows caved inward like the sunken eyes of a corpse. To the right was a tiny coin laundry, its three washers and three dryers arranged facing each other in neat rows as though set out to be taken away and discarded. The walls were yellowed, decorated with peeling posters. Spilled laundry powder and cigarette butts littered the floor. A vending machine hung tilted from the wall, advertising laundry soap at fifty yen a packet to customers who might as well have been ghosts.

There was a small black button recessed in the mud-colored brick to the right of the building’s door. I pressed it and waited.

A slat opened at head level. A pair of eyes regarded me through wire mesh from the other side. The eyes were slightly bloodshot. They watched me, silent.

“I’m here to train,” I said in curt Japanese.

A moment passed. “No training here,” was the reply.

“I’m judo fourth dan. Your place was recommended by a friend of mine.” I said the dead weightlifter’s name.

The eyes behind the slat narrowed. The slat closed. I waited. A minute went by, then another five. The slat opened again.

“When did Ishihara-san recommend this club?” the owner of a new pair of eyes asked.

“About a month ago.”

“It took you a long time to arrive.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been out of town.”

The eyes watched me. “How is Ishihara-san?”

“Last I saw him, he was fine.”

“Which was when?”

“About a month ago.”

“And your name is?”

“Arai Katsuhiko.”

The eyes didn’t blink. “Ishihara-san never mentioned your name.”

“Was he supposed to?”

Still no blink. “Our club has a custom. If a member mentions the club to a nonmember, he also mentions the nonmember to the club.”

No blink from me, either. “I don’t know your customs. Ishihara-san told me this would be the right kind of place for me. Can I train here or not?”

The eyes dropped down to the gym bag I was carrying. “You want to train now?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

The slat closed again. A moment later the door opened.

There was a small antechamber behind it. Cinder-block construction. Peeling gray paint. The owner of the eyes was giving me the once-over. He didn’t seem impressed. They never do.

“You can train,” he said. He was barefoot, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I placed him at five-feet-nine and eighty kilos. Tending toward the burly side. Salt-and-pepper crew cut, age about sixty. Past what I sensed had been a formidable prime, but still a hard-looking guy with no bullshit, no posturing.

“Sore wa yokatta,” I replied. Good. Behind the burly guy and to his right was a smaller, wiry specimen, dark-complected for a Japanese, his head shaved to black stubble. I recognized the bloodshot eyes-the same pair that had initially regarded me through the mesh. Though slighter than the first guy, this one radiated something intense and unpredictable.

The smaller guys can be dangerous. Never having been able to rely on their size for intimidation, they have to learn to fight instead. I know because, before filling out in the army, I had been one of them.

The antechamber was adjacent to a rectangular room, about twenty feet by thirty. It smelled of old sweat. The room was dominated by a judo tatami mat. A half-dozen muscular specimens were using it for some kind of randori, or live training. They wore shorts and T-shirts, like the guy who had opened the door, no judogi. On a corner of the mat, someone was practicing elbow and knee drops on a prone, man-shaped dummy. The dummy’s head, neck, and chest were practically mummified with duct tape reinforcements.

In another corner, two heavy bags dangled on thick chains from exposed rafters. Large bags, seventy kilos or more. Man-sized. A couple of thick-necked guys with yakuza-style punch perms were working them, no gloves, no tape, their blows not quick but solid, the whap! whap! of knuckles on leather reverberating in the enclosed space.