Death by Water

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “For that version of the opening, rather than using improvisation, we’d like to add a scene in which Unaiko would play a woman who speaks to the dispirited young mother and tries to give her a small ray of hope of the kind Katsura mentioned a while ago. Do you think you could write something along those lines for us, Mr. Choko? The beauty part is that the little girl would be wandering around, wailing at the top of her lungs—you know: Waa, waa!—so you wouldn’t need to write any special dialogue for her at all!”

  3

  The preparations for the performance proceeded apace, with Unaiko and Ricchan at the center of activity, as usual. While I was busy doing my small part, helping to work out the kinks in the opening scene and finale Suke & Kaku had proposed, I was unexpectedly drawn into a new situation. Asa telephoned me one morning, saying that since the young troupe members were going to be rehearsing at the Forest House during the afternoon, she was hosting a get-together at her house. She wanted me to attend because Unaiko’s aunt (the one who had featured so prominently in the shocking story we’d heard the other day) was going to be there in person.

  “I know this probably seems like a bolt from the blue,” Asa said. “It took me by surprise, too, but apparently the aunt says this meeting is an absolute necessity, and Unaiko wants us to be there, too, as witnesses and (I’m guessing) to provide moral support as well. Daio’s the one who arranged it. This is ancient history, but as you may have heard, at one time he was involved in trying to undermine the power of the teachers’ union in this prefecture. Long story short, a number of people who are opposed to Unaiko’s current project move in the same circles, politically speaking, as Daio’s former disciples. I’ve often been forced to listen to them boasting about how they sent you an extra-large live turtle as a prank, and even now the anecdote is gleefully trotted out during elections for the prefectural assembly to liven up campaign speeches. On the other hand, the junior high administrators seem confident they’ll be able to weather the storm of protest and opposition, in large part—ironically—because of my connection with Daio. So he has fingers in both pies, so to speak.

  “You’re probably wondering what this urgent meeting with Unaiko’s aunt is going to be about. Well, a certain person who used to be a big wheel in the highest echelons of education, with prestigious medals and decorations galore—I’m talking about Unaiko’s uncle, of course—anyhow, he has evidently become aware of the connection between Daio and me and between us and Unaiko. His faction is concerned that the recent additions to the play (you know, the ones regarding the way Unaiko’s personal history parallels the story of Meisuke’s mother) will make the uncle look foolish. There are rumors that the play could cause a major scandal for him, and he wants to find a way to shut it down or to at least remove the offensive sections. With that goal in mind, he and his wife supposedly want to meet with Unaiko, after eighteen years of silence, and try to patch up their damaged relationship. The aunt seems to be a rather assertive type of person, and she’s already in Matsuyama, staying at the ANA Hotel. Daio has gone to pick her up and bring her here.”

  That afternoon we assembled at Asa’s house by the river. While Unaiko was parking the car, Daio introduced me to the aunt. She was polite enough, but I got the distinct impression that she had very little interest in the likes of me. Clearly, her attention was focused entirely on Unaiko’s imminent arrival.

  Mrs. Koga, Unaiko’s aunt, appeared to be in her midsixties. She had an unusually large-framed physique for a Japanese woman of her generation, but there didn’t seem to be much flesh on those big bones. She sat down at a low table on the tatami-matted floor, and when Unaiko finally walked in her aunt stared fixedly at her and said, “You’ve really changed a lot, Mitsuko. Of course, it’s been a long time since we last met, so I’m not really surprised.”

  Not to be outdone, Unaiko shot back: “It’s been eighteen years, to be exact. The last time I saw you I was still just a kid. If I had been allowed to carry my pregnancy to term, the child beside me right now would be about the same age I was then. Who knows, maybe we—you, and I, and my child—could be having a jolly chat about old times.”

  “Yes, and I think my husband would probably be leading the way,” Mrs. Koga said matter-of-factly “You were such a cheerful, openhearted girl, so of course he couldn’t help caring deeply about you and sincerely showing his affection.”

  “Yes,” Unaiko said sharply. “He showed his affection, all right: day and night. Especially night.”

  The aunt looked pained. “It’s true that things ended up going too far, and my husband crossed some boundaries that should never have been crossed,” she said carefully. “I think it started because when you first came to stay with us as a girl of fourteen or fifteen, you were frightened by the ancient network of caves and tunnels around the shrine on one side of our mansion. (As everyone here probably knows, those catacombs are one of Kamakura’s most famous tourist destinations.) My husband started sleeping in your room to allay your fears, and it somehow got to be a habit. I was prone to headaches so I frequently went to bed early, and I didn’t know exactly what was going on between you. I just felt fortunate that when he came home at the end of the day, tired from work, he could always relax in your room for a while.”

  “Yes, and it was the nature of the ‘relaxation,’ as you put it, that was the problem,” Unaiko said. “Really, the boundary-crossing stuff began almost right away. Your husband explained to me that while it was forbidden for an uncle to put his hands inside his niece’s underpants, it was perfectly all right as long as his caresses stayed safely on the outside, or around the edges. I didn’t know any better, so I thought, Oh, okay—if you say so. By and by, things progressed to the point where he started putting his hands under my panties, but he promised he wouldn’t insert his fingers anywhere they didn’t belong, because he said it would be too close to having sex.”

  Once again, the aunt looked distinctly uncomfortable. “After you left us, when I asked my husband how things could have gone as far as they did, he told me he was startled by what he called the ‘extreme abundance’ of your secretions in response to his affectionate caresses, and he said that was the trigger for the inappropriate escalation of your relationship,” she explained. “As he put it, the physical evidence seemed to suggest you weren’t exactly averse to what he was doing. Tell me honestly, Mitsuko—isn’t it true that you enjoyed having my husband touch you?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose I did on some level, after I got used to it,” Unaiko admitted. “But I really didn’t understand what was going on, and I made the mistake of believing that my uncle would never do anything inappropriate.”

  “Mitsuko, another thing I heard from my husband, after you had gone home to Osaka, is that when you were a junior in high school you came home one day and told him about a term that, you said, described what the two of you were doing. (Apparently you had heard it from some of your more grown-up classmates.) It’s a little awkward to say this out loud in mixed company, but the term was ‘simultaneous mutual masturbation.’”

  “Yes, it’s true, I did tell him about that,” Unaiko said. “I wanted him to assure me that what we were doing wasn’t actually sex, per se.”

  “But as an intimate physical relationship develops and escalates, isn’t what you two ended up doing simply consensual intercourse?”

  “No,” Unaiko said flatly. “It’s called rape. This was back before houses had air-conditioning in every room, and when the weather was hot I would lie on my bed stark-naked, with my legs apart, just trying to cool off. One day my uncle was lurking nearby, as usual. He stared at my crotch for the longest time, and then he suddenly said in a loud voice, ‘Okay, enough is enough. I’ve had it with this nonsense!’ And then he proceeded to rape me. (At the time, you were off in Kyoto for some kind of women’s college reunion, Auntie.) When I started crying from the pain, my uncle said, ‘Don’t worry, it won’t hurt after the first time,’ and then he went on to rape me again, twice, until it started
to get light outside and he finally went back to his own bedroom.

  “That morning, I waited until the government car came to pick Uncle up and take him to his office, and then I got on the train and went home to Osaka. As proof of what had been done to me, I took along the underpants I’d put on after the third round of rape, which were covered with blood and semen. I think you all know what happened after that.

  “It was a little more than three months later when you called, Auntie, and asked me to come to Tokyo and meet you at one of the most solemn (and controversial) places in the entire country. You told me we needed to talk about my future, and you were proposing that I undergo some kind of purification ceremony, presumably because you had an inkling of what had happened between me and my uncle. While we were at the shrine someone waved a gigantic Japanese flag in front of my face, and I was overcome with dizziness and began to vomit. I guess that was when you realized I must be pregnant, because you promptly hustled me off to get an abortion. Afterward, once again, I took certain items home as proof, and I still have them today.”

  “I see,” Mrs. Koga said. “And now they say you’re planning to reveal this sordid ancient history as part of a public performance in a school auditorium? I’ve heard that your little play tells the story of the woman who led an uprising among the local farmers many years ago. But what on earth does that ancient history have to do with what you’ve told us here today?”

  “The woman you mentioned was known as Meisuke’s mother, and she and her son led a ragtag group of women from this area to fight in an uprising,” Unaiko replied calmly. “They emerged victorious, but after the battle Meisuke’s mother was raped and her child was killed. I’ll be in costume as Meisuke’s mother, and I’ll act a scene in which she is gang-raped by a bunch of wayward samurai. Some of the teachers and mothers of students have banded together to scheme against me and try to undermine the play, and they’ve blown things way out of proportion, telling everyone the rape scene is going to go on and on at great length. Because of that, I’ve had to modify my approach. Originally, I wasn’t sure how to convey the full extent of Meisuke’s mother’s suffering and sadness. But then I realized that I had to own my personal truth, publicly, and declare through the medium of this role I’m playing that I, too, was raped, and I really did have my unborn child killed. I want to say, ‘Look at me—this actually happened. And this kind of thing is still going on in this country, even today.’ I think my personal testimony will get through to the teenage kids in the audience. I mean, we’ve all seen historical dramas where actresses in insanely elaborate period costumes pretend they’re being thrown to the ground and forced to have sex, sobbing the whole time, but does that kind of stylized charade hit home for anyone who’s watching? On the other hand, if an actual person stands on a stage and says, ‘Listen, people, I myself was raped in real life,’ the audience will be taken by surprise, and maybe then the flesh-and-blood truth will get through to them. That kind of visceral connection is the essence of our dog-tossing style of theater, except in this case we’ll be throwing words back and forth instead of the usual soft toys. In the ideal scenario, I would say something to my uncle and he’d respond, the way my aunt is doing right now, by cross-examining me. I would give him a chance to throw terms like ‘abundant secretions’ and ‘mutual masturbation’ at me, as if they were ‘dead dogs.’”

  “But what’s the point? I mean, what good could possibly come of that type of public display?” Mrs. Koga said, abruptly scrambling to her feet and drawing herself up to her full height. She truly was an imposing figure.

  “At any rate,” she went on, “my part in this seems to be at an end, and now it’s time for my husband to take center stage, so to speak. As I understand it, your dramatic method would involve having you share your testimony, followed by a sort of cross-examination by my husband. You know, your uncle isn’t as young as he used to be, and these days he’s just kind of a doddering old buffoon, so he would probably respond by simply echoing those unseemly terms you mentioned in a gravelly voice, and he’d insist you were a willing participant. Since Mr. Choko here is such a strong proponent of the democratic process, I assume we can rest assured that no one would be censoring my husband’s remarks?”

  Turning to look directly at Unaiko, Mrs. Koga went on: “Even before you got involved in the world of theater, Mitsuko, you were always an unusually expressive person. By the way, I recently got to see you in a play on one of the cable TV stations. You were playing the role of a medium who was trying to appease the vengeful spirit of an aristocratic lady, and I was impressed by your passionate, fiery performance. I was also struck by the eloquent way you moaned and groaned, and it occurred to me that I had heard those same sounds before, many times, emanating from the room where you and my husband were supposedly ‘relaxing’ together …”

  4

  The protest movement against Unaiko and her forthcoming play appeared to be gathering momentum with every passing day. However, when those activities were reported on the theater-group website Ricchan maintained, the majority of responses—rather than siding with the protesters—voiced strong support for the upcoming show. Ricchan, who was always cautious and prudent about everything, started saying things like “This play of ours is generating a lot of buzz, and I’d like to harness the energy productively. There’s no way everyone who’s interested will be able to squeeze into the theater for the actual performance, so Unaiko and I were thinking we might put on a separate event, up at the Saya, the day before.”

  By chance, I ended up playing a small role in implementing the plan, with an assist from fate, or happenstance. Asa had been on better terms with Sakura Ogi Magarshack than anyone else who worked on the doomed movie about Meisuke’s mother, but she and Sakura had fallen out of touch in recent years. First there were problems with the international opening of the movie, followed by the death of Tamotsu Komori, the producer of the film. Some months later, we had each received a letter from Komori’s office saying that while it wasn’t a done deal, there was a chance the movie might get a premiere after all. That, too, came to naught, and Asa subsequently lost contact with Sakura.

  Years later, a national newspaper ran an article about the organized opposition to Unaiko’s upcoming play about Meisuke’s mother. The reporter mentioned Sakura Ogi Magarshack by name, and as a result, a younger friend of hers was galvanized into getting in touch with me and then stopping by. The man taught English and American culture at a university on Kyushu, and while studying abroad at a college in Washington, DC, he had become obliged to Sakura’s husband, a college professor whose field was Japanese studies. Professor Magarshack had since died, but the young instructor from Kyushu had stayed in touch with Sakura, who had been so kind and supportive when he was a student in a strange land.

  Last year he’d had an opportunity to return to Washington, and when he paid a visit to Sakura (now living the quiet life of a pensioner) she had happened to remark that she missed hearing from Asa and me. During his brief visit to the Forest House I asked the instructor whether he could share Sakura’s contact information, and he promptly provided her addresses. He explained that while Mrs. Magarshack (as he called her) was still hale and hearty, it had become increasingly difficult for her to read letters in Japanese, and as a natural consequence her contact with friends and acquaintances in Japan had diminished over the years.

  I wrote Sakura a letter in English, which Ricchan scanned and emailed from her computer. In the message I explained that I was currently working with a group of friends and colleagues, including Asa, on creating a stage version of Meisuke’s Mother Marches Off to War. We knew the film’s public release had been plagued with a series of problems (I wrote), but if the circumstances had changed—if, for example, there was now a DVD of the film we could take a look at—it would be incredibly helpful to the actress playing Meisuke’s mother onstage (the role Sakura had played on film) to have a chance to study the DVD, especially the battle-chant scenes. I received an alm
ost instantaneous email reply from Sakura, also in English, offering to assist us in any way she could.

  At that point Ricchan took over and began corresponding directly with Sakura. They exchanged a flurry of emails, and the situation evolved quite rapidly. Sakura told Ricchan that at the present time, she held the exhibition rights for the film. She would be happy to dispatch a DVD of it right away, but she suspected the village probably didn’t have a movie theater suitable for showing a feature film. The movie had never been shown publicly in Japan, and since so many local women had participated in the filming, as extras, Sakura said she hoped as many of them as possible would have a chance to see the finished product. After giving the matter some thought, Sakura came up with the idea of putting on a free public screening of the film as an adjunct of the stage performance. The showing would take place up at the Saya, where some of the film had been shot. Of course, in order to screen a movie outdoors in the middle of a meadow, we would need some special equipment, including a large portable screen. Sakura said she had all the necessary gear at her house, and since she suspected that Komori had probably never gotten around to paying Mr. Choko a penny for writing the screenplay for the film (she joked), she would be happy to send those items to us by air freight, at her own expense.

  That was how Unaiko and Ricchan, with some help from their friends, managed to expand the festivities beyond the theater in the round. Of course, Asa pitched in along the way, as usual, while also continuing to act as unofficial den mother and cheerleader in chief for her talented young protégées.