Death by Water

by Kenzaburo Oe

  Chapter 15

  Death by Rain

  1

  It was the final dress rehearsal, the afternoon before the play opened. Masao Anai and I were sitting together toward the back of the theater, far from all the Very Important People who had crowded into the front and center seats.

  Toward the rear of the stage there was a newly erected, complex-looking structure that I perceived at first as a tall, broad bridge with multiple levels. A woman, dressed in a dark blue linen dress and matching hat, was navigating one of those elevated catwalks, nimbly traversing from stage left to right and back again. Her head was hanging low, so I couldn’t see her face, but I assumed it was Unaiko, as in previous rehearsals. The woman vanished behind the drop curtain on the left side of the stage and then, a few moments later, reappeared from the other side of the stage on another level, walking with the same confident gait. As I watched her ascending ever higher, I realized that the complex structure was one continuous ramp—not unlike the spiral staircases you sometimes see in upscale houses, only wider and more sturdily built.

  By and by Masao told me that Unaiko had been called away for an emergency meeting, and the young woman in blue was a troupe member who had been pressed into service as a stand-in. (I still thought she looked a lot like Unaiko, especially from behind.) As the substitute was approaching the darkness at the edge of the uppermost level, the sound of a weeping girl, which had been faintly audible before, was suddenly amplified. The woman had been swallowed up in the darkness after taking three turns on the ramp, but the voice of the crying child kept getting louder, until it echoed through the hall.

  Then a little girl dressed in a flimsy floral dress and slip-on canvas shoes stepped onto the ramp, continuing to wail at the top of her lungs, and began to wend her way toward the ceiling. Up she went, one slow, arduous step at a time, bawling all the way, until she reached the top, whereupon she seemed to fall away into the darkness. (Meanwhile, the lighting had been altered to make the lower part of the staircase appear hazy and indistinct.)

  As the sound of the sobbing child died away, a single shaft of light illuminated the stage. Standing there was the blue-clad woman we’d seen earlier, still looking as forlorn as she had when she was climbing upward with downcast eyes. This time, however, she addressed the audience in a clear, strong voice that filled the entire theater.

  “I think there are a lot of people who have had some sort of chance encounter with a small female child who wanders alone along city boulevards or in the subterranean labyrinths beneath train stations, crying at the top of her lungs, but they have no idea who the child might be or to whom she belongs. The young woman is always a few paces ahead of the child and evidently doesn’t want to allow the little girl to catch up with her, because she always seems to be walking very fast. This is an urban phenomenon that actually exists today.”

  Typically for one of Unaiko’s productions, there was more exposition than in a conventional play, but the audience seemed to be listening raptly.

  “A hundred and forty-some years ago, in this area, a brave group of children placed themselves between the government soldiers and the front lines, forming a sort of protective shield for the farm women gathered to fight in the uprising led by Meisuke’s mother,” the woman in blue went on. “Wailing all the while, the children hunkered down on the ground and prevented the soldiers from penetrating into the heart of the battalion. As a result, the women were able to fight their way to a quick victory. The exploits of those female warriors are celebrated around here to this day. In fact, Meisuke’s mother’s call to battle became so famous that it has been preserved in the form of a chant, which folks here sing every year during the Bon Odori season. We basically used Mr. Choko’s version of the chant, which he originally wrote for a screenplay, but we took the liberty of adding a line or two of our own:

  Men commit rape—that’s nothing new / But countries can be rapists, too. / Women warriors, here we go / Off to vanquish every foe!

  “So, this is how our performance begins. We’re fully prepared to deal with any difficulties that might arise as a result of the ideological opposition to this play and (assuming we can overcome those challenges) for our finale we’re planning to call the weeping child and her despondent mother back to the stage. At that time, however, there will be several mothers and their children, rather than just one of each. And all the little girls, instead of weeping buckets of tears, will be smiling prettily, and all the mothers will be wearing expressions bright with hope.

  “What we would like to demonstrate with this play is that the same oppression that forced the local women to take up arms over a hundred years ago continues today, and is personified by the sad mothers and crying children most of us seem to have glimpsed on the streets of our cities. But while we all need to acknowledge that there are still a great many battles to be fought by women, at the same time we would like to convey a message of hopefulness and possibility, so the women warriors who went before us won’t have suffered and died in vain. That’s what we’re hoping to accomplish here tonight by showing you this play.”

  As the actress’s introductory monologue reached its end, the stage became dark and the sound of voices chanting the war cry echoed from far away.

  Women warriors, let us go

  Off to face our latest foe.

  Into battle we will soar

  Strong and brave forevermore.

  All together, here we go

  We shall vanquish every foe!

  Then the women—whose voices were far more impressive than those of the men in the chorus—let out a whoop of victory and that cheer swelled and intensified, growing louder and louder, to signify the successful conclusion of the uprising.

  Ricchan was the musical director for the play, of course, and she had used Sakura’s DVD of Meisuke’s Mother Marches Off to War as a resource for the musical components of the play. Ricchan wasn’t present at this rehearsal, either; the last time I’d seen her was when she headed up to the Saya early that morning, along with Tamakichi and some of his friends (many of whom had also been involved in the filming of the movie), to pitch a giant tent for the public screening of Sakura’s film. The showing took place a couple of hours before the rehearsal, and I had heard reports that because of the way the wind was blowing the voices of the actors on the screen were audible all the way down to the houses along the river. I couldn’t help thinking that because of the auspicious breeze, quite a few local residents who would attend the following evening’s live performance might experience a frisson of recognition when they heard the battle-cry chant again. Tickets for the performance had already sold out, and the local newspapers and TV stations had also given a great deal of publicity to the showing of the original film at the Saya. As a result, the event had ended up being standing room only.

  Meanwhile, back at the dress rehearsal, a spotlight revealed a stage bare except for two straw mats spread out in the center. Meisuke, the valiant young farmer who led the first uprising, was lying on a futon spread out over the mats. Projected on hanging curtains around him were illuminated images of square columns made from oak, which created the optical illusion of a jail cell. Several young samurai came stamping into this enclosure. Then Meisuke, obviously unwell, launched into a heartfelt plea as the samurai listened with quizzically tilted heads.

  “You fellows represent the new fiefdom, and your social standing was undermined by my group’s victory in the uprising. I know you had to find a scapegoat in order to save face with your overlords, but we were always friends off the battlefield, were we not? Yet I was captured and thrown into jail for the crime of having won in combat, fair and square, and you’re keeping me prisoner here even though I’ve fallen ill. What good does that do?”

  A young samurai warrior replied: “It’s nothing personal. As you said, we just needed someone to step up and be punished for the insurrection, and you happen to be the leader.”

  Then Meisuke said, “But why won’t you let me escape n
ow?”

  To which the samurai replied, “The truth is, even if we set you free you’re so ill that you wouldn’t live very long on the outside, much less be able to lead another insurrection. However, try to see our point of view. If we keep you here and let you die in prison, then the old regime will start to believe in and trust us again in spite of our ignominious defeat in the uprising. That will be politically useful to us in the future.”

  The group of young samurai turned on their heels and departed. A woman—Meisuke’s mother—had been squatting outside the illusory jail cell, and a despairing Meisuke tearfully appealed to her for help. His mother, who was still very youthful-looking, responded by uttering a line that has become one of the more famous parts of local lore about the uprising: “There’s no need to worry—even if you die, I’ll just give birth to you again.”

  The projected images of oaken columns flickered, then disappeared. Meisuke’s mother stood up and, advancing to her son’s bedside, she began to straighten the lapels of his kimono and tidy his bedding. The spotlight trained on Meisuke’s bed began to fade away and the stage was plunged into darkness, signaling a brief break for a scene change.

  There was a smattering of tepid applause from the people in the first few rows. I knew what that meant; the disagreement between Unaiko and the opposing faction regarding the reincarnation story had not yet been resolved. The school group, which included the two teachers who had waylaid us behind the shrine, objected strongly to the older version of the folktale in which Meisuke’s mother gives birth to her deceased son again years later (that is, the same spirit in a new body), but Unaiko had refused to yield.

  I remembered that when I first told this story to Sakura, she had responded by saying, “I don’t see anything unnatural there. It seems like a perfectly maternal thing to do. Besides, millions of people all over the world believe in reincarnation.”

  Not wanting to fuel the controversy, I had glossed over the “rebirth issue” in the script and had written only a few vague lines to suggest the mother’s lovingly solicitous behavior toward her dying son. Of course, I was coming to this project from a long background in novel writing, and I was still in the habit of adding accretional layers to any text by means of multiple rewrites, but one of the bits of conventional wisdom regarding this technique is the idea that if you don’t feel confident about a rewrite, you should completely delete the section in question. That’s what I had done with the section on the reincarnation of Meisuke, but Unaiko had subsequently inserted her own revisions.

  As the stage lights came up Masao whispered, “I think the applause just now was for you, Mr. Choko.”

  “No,” I replied. “The applause was for Unaiko, for the way her direction brought everything together and gave the play its distinctive shape, and for the trouble the young actors took to learn their lines and the splendid way they delivered them, even in her absence.”

  At that moment I caught sight of Asa standing over on the left side of the theater, in the narrow aisle separating the front-row seats from the elevated stage. She was hanging her head in a way that reminded me of the doleful-looking young mother who had been onstage a short while before. My sister didn’t glance in my direction; she seemed to be passively biding her time, waiting for someone to notice her presence.

  I got up from where I was sitting, ducked into a space behind the audience seating, and waited there for Asa. On the stage, the play was progressing with a scene in which the members of the second uprising were marching off to battle, led by the possible reincarnation of the late Meisuke (that is, Meisuke II) and the courageous woman who had given birth to both of them.

  After a moment my sister appeared beside me and said in a dazed voice, “Three men have kidnapped Unaiko, and they’re holding her prisoner at Daio’s old training camp. Apparently two of the men went there in their own car, while a third kidnapper forced Ricchan to drive another car, with Unaiko and Akari as unwilling passengers. The men ordered one of the young troupe members to warn you that if you notified the police, something terrible would happen to Akari. A bit later I got a phone call from Daio, telling me to share this information with you, and you alone, and instructing me to bring you to the training camp. I told the young actor not to say a word to anyone, so Masao doesn’t even know what’s going on.

  “The people at the training camp aren’t asking you to do anything specific, but they want you there as soon as possible. It sounds as if they just want to go over the script and get Unaiko to make some changes. I gather Unaiko is holding her ground even on the improvised sections, telling the other side you approved those portions. Maybe they’re hoping you’ll be able to persuade her to change her mind.

  “I’m not really clear about Daio’s role in all of this,” Asa added. “I only know that he seems to be on good terms with Mrs. Koga—Unaiko’s aunt—and her husband, and as we saw the other day, they’ve apparently been acquainted for quite some time. To be honest, I really don’t know whether Daio is friend or foe, but the good news is that the situation doesn’t seem to have escalated to the point where the police would need to be called in.”

  2

  Asa and I left the theater right away, and after a quick detour to pick up some things at the Forest House, we headed for Daio’s training camp. After a short drive we found ourselves on the far side of a deep valley with a view of the camp, which was built into a sloping hill, and the rolling farmland above it. The terrain looked very familiar to me, even though I hadn’t been here since high school.

  It wasn’t dusk yet, but the densely overcast sky had already turned completely dark. We crossed the river on a steel bridge that had replaced the rustic suspension bridge I remembered. On the other side of this bridge there was a carport containing a lightweight truck and a small tractor. A passable road climbed the hill, which probably explained why the cars that had brought Unaiko, Ricchan, and Akari were nowhere to be seen. The only light came from a naked bulb hanging on a lamppost made from a tall, round log.

  Two bulky men dressed in suits, who had been standing outside the circle of light, suddenly appeared and gestured to Asa to leave the car behind the carport, where it wouldn’t be visible. When that task had been accomplished, they led the way up the long incline to the training camp, with Asa and me at their heels. The cultivated fields on either side had been carved out of what had once been dense forest, and the area appeared to have settled comfortably into its new role as fertile, tillable farmland. (This impression was dramatically different from my teenage memories of those same fields as livid, freshly clear-cut gashes in the landscape.) My heart lurched when I glanced ahead and saw what I thought was a crowd of men milling around in the crepuscular murk, each holding aloft a slender spear, but as we got closer I realized the shadowy soldiers were nothing more than an army of giant tomato plants, standing tall inside supportive cages made from bamboo poles.

  Asa’s late husband (a school principal) came from a farming family, and after he died she had thrown herself into raising vegetables on a scale far beyond the normal family garden. During that brief phase, she had often mailed boxes of fresh vegetables to me in Tokyo. Now she said, as we hiked up the hill, “This strain of tomato really is exceptionally sweet and meaty. I remember once, after he had delivered a batch to a hotel in Matsuyama, Daio told me his tomatoes were being used to make gourmet salads in the hotel restaurant, along with some kind of extra-special romaine lettuce.”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said.

  “Of course, when Daio starts a new project, he tends to become obsessive about it,” Asa went on. “Right now he’s totally focused on cultivating these high-end tomatoes. Some of the children of his old disciples, after moving away to Osaka and Yokohama, have even come back here to work. Maybe their parents called them home, but anyhow, Daio was saying that at any given time there are four or five young apprentices on the premises, learning how to raise prize tomatoes and so on.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  We both knew that Asa’s
compulsive chattiness and my disinclination to reply sprang from an identical concern about the current situation, and the polarized dynamic continued as we trekked up the long hill. At last the buildings of the training camp came into sight, looking just as they had when I’d come to visit one weekend as a high school student, accompanied by my classmate and future brother-in-law, Goro Hanawa, and a young officer named Peter, who was stationed in Matsuyama as a language officer during the Occupation. The main building, which included a bathhouse with mineral-rich water piped in from a nearby hot spring, was completely dark, but the lights were ablaze in a two-story building on a hillock to the left. Farther into the complex, there was a bungalow that (as I recalled) housed a gloomy office; its curtains were drawn, but some light was leaking out. Daio emerged from the front door and headed our way. He obviously recognized Asa and me, even from a distance, and he began speaking even before we were fully illuminated by the beam from his flashlight.

  “Asa, Kogito, I’m so sorry you had to get dragged into this,” he said. “Unaiko and her uncle, Mr. Koga, are up there in the office, waiting for you to arrive. As you know, he’s the husband of Mrs. Koga, whom you met the other day when Unaiko was airing some of her past grievances. You may remember that the aunt mentioned her family’s desire to vet the script for any references to their, um, history. I know this goes far beyond the call of duty, but Unaiko was saying that if you could stand by and listen while both sides present their cases …”

  “If it’s a simple matter of revising the playscript, why did you have to create such a melodramatic brouhaha?” I asked sharply. “And who on earth decided to involve Akari in this absurd situation? That is completely unforgivable.”