I LOVE LORD BUDDHA is the transgressive, transcendent first novel that some are calling the future of literature, and others are calling a post-pornographic revolution. Set in late-90’s Tokyo, it recounts the history of the Neo-Geisha Organization, a sex-and-death cult with an anti-consumerist, pro-hedonist, sub-Buddhist ideology. The cult is led by Hiyoko, a leggy Westerner with a penchant for Eastern philosophy and drug-fuelled sex binges. Her followers are the young women whose curiosity and perfect bodies have taken them thousands of miles from home to work in Tokyo’s neon-lit network of hostess bars.

I LOVE LORD BUDDHA takes its inspiration from the classical Japanese literature of the first millennium, the AUM Shinrikyo subway-gas cult, and the esoteric texts of Buddhism, while recalling the ultra-modern iconography of films like Kill Bill 1. Reading like manga, sounding like hard techno, feeling like fetish, I LOVE LORD BUDDHA paves the way for a new literature of undiluted aesthetics and ecstasy.

“Hillary Raphael’s devastating first novel delicately incises the raw sensorial material that makes Tokyo the most compelling contemporary city: sex, obsession, digital excess and religious terrorism. Haunting and innovative, it’s a brilliantly multi-vocal debut that will leave its readers begging for more of its intense and aberrant pleasures. Intoxicating.” –Stephen Barber

Hillary Raphael is 28 and lives in New York and Tokyo. She is also the author of OUTCAST SAMURAI DANCER, a study of Japanese avant-garde dance. I LOVE LORD BUDDHA is her first novel.

the cherry blossoms in ueno park were peaking on the evening the Neo-Geisha Organization took the Good Step. other lovely tokyo spots to view the blossoms were yoyogi park, komazawa park, the banks of the sumida, and yasukuni shrine, but where the Ancient Capital sat in regal splendor in the industrial wasteland of kawasaki, the only cherry grove was the one the girls had erected inside the warehouse— ten size-XXL plastic christmas trees dusted with pink glitter. fluffy white futons lay on the floor at varied angles, some in clusters of three, of five, others individual. an aerial view would have revealed a sky under the sky, where, within each cloud, lay a sleeping girl dreaming exquisitely garish textile-dreams in all-new colors, of dragons, clear rivers, tigers, magic mountains, hummingbirds, bodies of perfection performing dances with no end.

cortnée roused herself first, slipping naked from her futon, becoming aware of a dull headache, slipping into an antique kimono hanging from a hook on the wall, putting up water for tea, getting eyedrops out of the fridge and tilting her head back to receive their cooling tears.

maybe having heard her, or maybe just because her dream-book had slammed shut, susan woke next. she lay still, eyes still closed, letting herself feel the early evening, her body’s morning. she became aware of her breaths (counting them), the hard floor supporting her body, the tactile sensation of the cotton bundling her, and (more obscurely) the feeling of the white.

cassandra stirred, moaning something. her hand twitching, she moaned louder. then catapulting herself from the floor, she stood, eyes nearly six-feet above ground, in her white-cotton panties and little boys’ tee shirt. she rubbed her eyes with closed fists, cracked her back, and avoiding collision with cortnée, grabbed a bottle of pocari sweat from the fridge, and suckled it.

blondie got her first smoke of the day going before lifting her head from the pillow. the influx of chemicals to her brain ignited an awareness that the night would bring some special responsibility, but she successfully pushed that thought aside long enough to wrap herself in her balinese sarong, flip on the espresso machine, and rinse out her favorite mug. it was the one that read, “i drink cofee. and you? let’s share exiliration, special feeling, always genki!”

a cherry-scented-pollution breeze blew in through the jagged-edged glass “vents” of the hundreds of square little blown-out window panes. the abandoned factory would have to be a motherfucker to insulate in the winter— well, the girls had spent the one winter there pleasantly numbed/ tingling. besides, they spent a lot of nights out; and as for next winter... by then, they’d be somewhere- or someone- or both-else.

i never was able to discover what the previous tenants used to manufacture or assemble or wrap in cellophane (this might actually have been the first time i’d ever set foot in a factory. one seldom visualizes the actual process in which stuff is made. anyway,) here. i’d overheard the Leader give various versions on various occasions: (to brandy) disposable chopstick factory, moved to the tropics to be nearer the rainforest; (to cassie) yakuza-owned crystal-meth lab, fire-bombed by rival gang; (to reporter for the kawasaki courier, a local no-one-reads-it) incense factory, waning spirituality of nation > low revenues > bankruptcy; (to tea-girl aboard hikari bullet-train) aeronautical components, rendered obsolete by some very complicated technological advancements, a real pity as the workers had been all nice family guys.

the aforementioned tokyo-april evening breeze blew no more ominously that evening than usual. HIYOKO showed up in the restrained high spirits that become one in her position. the light danced along the padded ridges of her neo-mandarin-cyber-cheong sam-velcro-side-closure leather jacket maybe a bit more elatedly than usual, but we’ll dismiss that as poetry. from this point forward, conjecture takes the driver’s seat. there’s no way to really know anything.

HIYOKO, the Leader, distributes identical lacquer boxes to her devotees. they are black, inlaid with a mother-of-pearl crane. no, she wouldn’t have chosen that. they are okinawan red lacquer; decorated with a raised peony motif. or, white— yes, that’s it... i think hard enough and she’s inside me, choosing for me, telling me what happened, and where i went wrong. HIYOKO distributes minuscule lacquer pillboxes of a rare korean white lacquer (it takes on a greenish-grey cast in certain light like a south sea pearl) to her followers. the girls stand in a queue to receive this from her, one by one, like they are receiving an infinite sliver of the incandescent whites of her eyes. HIYOKO’s gestures are repeated as many times as there are believers. holding a slim hand in her own, the coolly geo-sensual receptacle between them, she pins the girl in space and time for an instant, looking past eye color to eye taste, eye sound, beyond, and tells her: then the next girl.

inside the box:

- standard crack-vial size glass tube of nobuyoshi’s how-can-we-call-it poison-when-it- heals-society? melted-topaz serum

- large iridescent blue capsule

- chinese-fortune-cookie fortune strip, reading YOU LIVE NEAR THE FUTURE view abbreviated excerpt only...

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