by Kenzaburo Oe
“I know, that’s what I kept saying, but … I hope you’ll understand that I was pressured into acting against my better judgment. Forgive me, Kogito? Please?”
While Daio was stammering this apology in a particularly craven and obsequious manner, it struck me that his demeanor on this night was very different than during his visits to the Forest House. Yet even as those borderline-servile protestations of regret were streaming from his mouth, I seemed to sense a new forcefulness—you might even say authority—in his bearing.
“I think it’s absolutely despicable,” Asa fumed. “I mean, not only did that dreadful man practically kidnap Akari and Ricchan, he was even making threats like some two-bit gangster, saying something awful would happen to Akari if we got the police involved. We can talk later on about the part you’ve played in this reprehensible scenario, Daio. Right now, first things first. Where are Akari and Ricchan? I’ve brought Akari’s evening meds and a change of underwear, along with a light supper of sandwiches and so on. It sounds as if my brother needs to go and talk to this Mr. Koga you mentioned, but I would like to see with my own eyes that Akari is safe as soon as possible. Could you please take me to the place where my nephew is being held? If you’re too busy, I see some big lugs lurking in the shadows, watching every move we make. Please tell one of them to make himself useful!”
Daio didn’t reply to Asa’s impassioned screed. He simply ordered one of the young men hovering nearby—who, unlike the suit-wearing hulks we had met down by the carport, looked as though they might be farmers—to grab Asa’s Boston bag and take her where she wanted to go. Then Daio led me up the cobblestoned path to the office, with his small electric flashlight showing the way. The chilly, moisture-laden night air, which seemed to be closing in around us, made me shiver. Yet I also felt a sudden sense of clarity, as though Asa’s angry tirade had jolted me out of shock and into a more rational state of mind.
With his usual one-armed dexterity, Daio turned the knob and opened the door. After stepping halfway inside, he used his head to nudge aside a heavy-looking old curtain that covered the opening. As we entered the room, which was lit only by a low-hanging bulb, there was a long, narrow slab of hardened earth, rather like adobe, where we shed our shoes before stepping onto the wood-plank floor. Daio made a quick, deft adjustment to the electric bulb that hung from the ceiling, winching it higher so it would cast a wider pool of light.
A square table stood directly in front of us. A number of chairs were lined up on all four sides, making the smallish space feel even more cramped. Staring intently in our direction was a group of men who appeared to be perching tentatively on the chairs, as if they might need to depart at any moment. There was a woman as well: Unaiko. She had a voluminous shawl wound around her head and shoulders, which made her look somehow exotic and unfamiliar, but she didn’t appear to be particularly traumatized.
An older man stood up from his chair to let Daio squeeze by, and I knew right away that this must be Unaiko’s infamous uncle. His prominent, well-shaped nose and fleshy cheeks looked somewhat incongruous beneath a rather narrow forehead crowned with close-cropped white hair, but the glint of intelligence and perspicacity in his eyes reminded me of Unaiko. As the man glanced in my direction and gave a slight nod, those eyes showed no trace of emotion. Unaiko gestured at the empty chair beside her, which was across the table from her uncle, and I took a seat without returning the man’s perfunctory nod. He stared at his lap, plainly nonplussed that I had deliberately chosen to ignore his greeting. The chairs on either side of the door were occupied by the two men in suits whom Asa and I had seen earlier, and it was clear from their watchful demeanor that they had been tasked with stopping Unaiko if she tried to make a break for it.
Daio spoke first. “I’ll make the necessary introductions to save time. This is Mr. Koga, who believes there are elements of Unaiko’s play that could warrant a lawsuit for defamation of character. It might feel more natural to address him as ‘Sensei,’ but let’s keep it simple tonight. Mr. Koga had an illustrious career in the Ministry of Education and made significant contributions in that area. He used to hold a high-ranking position in the ministry—head of an important department—and he often used to appear on television in the news coverage of the Japanese legislature. Kogito, someone like you who has an interest in the finer points of postwar educational policies will surely remember having seen Mr. Koga on TV at some point.
“Moving along, I’m guessing most of you will have already recognized the novelist Kogito Choko, who is also well known for his outspoken views on politics and social issues,” Daio continued. “He and I go way back—his father was my mentor—and, well, one way or another, here we are today. In case you might be wondering, I’ve known Kogito since he was knee-high to a grasshopper, and that’s why I still call him by his first name. We were originally expecting Mrs. Koga to be joining us here as well—she actually came down to Shikoku earlier this week for a preliminary meeting, but the discussion wasn’t exactly productive so she decided to let her husband deal with things on his own from here on out.
“Anyhow, Mr. Koga was saying he would like to talk things through with Unaiko, as a more peaceable alternative to taking this matter to court. However, Unaiko stood firm, saying that because she had already met with Mrs. Koga to no avail, there was no point in trying to set up an amicable meeting with her uncle. It wasn’t Mr. Koga himself but rather his two associates here who said, ‘Well then, we’ll just have to take matters into our own hands to make sure the two parties get together, face-to-face.’ From Unaiko’s perspective, this is a meeting she was forcibly compelled to attend. The thing is, if this gathering were to go smoothly and yield a positive result, the legal dogs could be called off and everyone would benefit, so let’s try to make it work.”
Pushing aside the heavy curtain, the two young men whom I had identified as farmers cleared some space among the jumble of papers on the table and set down a carton filled with cookies and sweet rolls, along with paper cups and individual plastic bottles of water. Then they left the room. The ancient curtain had been effectively muffling the noise of the storm that had begun to rage outside, but for the short time the door was open, the sounds of the pouring rain and the gale-force winds roaring through the forest were clearly audible. When Asa and I stopped off at the Forest House before driving up here, I had added Akari’s noise-canceling headphones to the other supplies in the Boston bag and that, I reflected now, had been a good impulse. He hated the sound of stormy weather.
“Well then, let’s get started,” Daio said authoritatively, handing me a marked-up copy of the script. “Before you arrived, Mr. Choko, the parties who gathered here earlier—well, Unaiko was dragged here under duress—but at any rate, this group has already spent some time discussing the problems at hand. From Unaiko’s standpoint, this radical and potentially scandalous section of her play is a necessary inclusion, while if we look at it from Mr. Koga’s point of view, the only question is whether the offending portion should be expunged completely, or just heavily revised. Leaving it intact is not an option.
“Actually, I should have said ‘sections,’ since there are two of them. Let’s take a look at the first sticking point, which talks about the relationship (if that’s the proper term) between the uncle and his niece. I must say, I was surprised when Unaiko said right off the bat that she would be fine with deleting the section entirely. In the script, all the disputed parts have been circled in red felt-tip pen, and Unaiko said, ‘Sure, go ahead and delete the whole scene.’ According to her, since the entire segment was going to be removed, it was simply a matter of cutting. There would be no need to tailor the scene in question. Anyhow, the point is, Mr. Choko won’t have to go to the trouble of revising the script to ensure that the deletion doesn’t affect the overall literary style, or flow, or whatever.”
While I was inspecting the red-lined alterations, Mr. Koga was staring in my direction, and I got the distinct sense that he was inspecting me. He wait
ed until I had finished reading over the disputed scenes, and then he spoke.
“Since Unaiko has agreed that this section should be deleted, there’s really no need to discuss it in any detail,” he began. “However, what still gives me pause, Mr. Choko, is the fact that you had apparently signed off on this inflammatory scene, and if we hadn’t intervened it would actually have been performed on a public stage. I mean, I just … you and I are from the same generation, and as someone who has been reading your work since I was young, I honestly don’t think the scene we’re talking about is a worthy representation of the prose style of such an eminent author. I thought including it would be rude to the author and might even have an adverse effect on his literary reputation, so that’s why I asked Unaiko to delete it.” Koga made this blatantly manipulative and disingenuous claim without batting an eye, then continued: “However, my wife seemed to feel there was some deep malice concealed in this scene, with the express intention of exposing our family secrets and making me look bad.”
He paused to take a deep breath, then said, “Unaiko has invited me to attend the performance tomorrow night, and she seemed to be hoping that at some point a confrontation would take place between me, in my seat in the audience, and her up on the stage. I gather that’s the way the dog-tossing approach to theater works. As I understand it, first Unaiko would present the details of my so-called crime against her, and then I would give my side of the story. Unaiko would respond by summoning two actors who had been waiting in the wings (dressed in costumes from the seventeenth century, like the two characters in the famous TV series Mito Komon whose names and personas they’ve borrowed for their comedy act) to join her at the front of the stage. And then she would give the order: ‘Suke, Kaku—show the audience what you’ve got.’ One of the men would be holding a stick with a plastic bag attached to the tip, which I’m told was going to be crammed full of dirty laundry (quite literally) and other unspeakable things. Beating the floor with the other end of the stick, the two actors would try to intimidate me, saying, ‘You can’t look away this time.’ Not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. Choko, but I was surprised and, quite frankly, disappointed to hear that you had given your approval to the gratuitous inclusion of such a lurid scene in the final version of the script.”
“The addition was meant to be inserted as a secondary scene,” I replied. “It was just an improvised attempt to imagine what might have transpired between you and Unaiko if a hypothetical defamation-of-character case were being tried in court with forensic evidence.
The young actors were going to be in costume (and in character) as their alter ego duo—inspired, obviously, by the TV show we all know so well. Since you’ve been talking about suing for slander, Mr. Koga, in this imaginary court of law you would be giving the plaintiff’s testimony while Unaiko conducted the cross-examination. That was the concept behind the skit, which arose naturally out of improvisation. What you’re saying is true, though: I did indeed sign off on the addition to the final draft of the script.”
At this point, Unaiko spoke up. “In the scene we’re discussing, the usual ‘dead dogs’ were going to be replaced by plastic bags filled with things that really could have been considered admissible evidence in a court of law, if the lawsuit you’ve been threatening had gone ahead,” she explained, addressing her uncle. “The first item was the underpants I wore after you raped me, the summer I was seventeen. They were soaked with blood and semen, and I’ve hung on to them all these years, preserved in a ziplock bag. The second object was some clinical evidence from the abortion I was forced to undergo. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it took all my courage to ask the nurse for that memento. I recently consulted an expert who assured me that even with such old evidence the DNA would stand up to scrutiny.”
“Putting aside the question of whether such materials really would be admissible evidence in a court of law, can we agree that for tomorrow’s performance, at least, the vulgar ‘underground theater’ aspect will be removed—you know, the sort of deliberately offensive avant-garde nonsense that was popular when we were young?” Mr. Koga said, looking straight at me. “I think this is for the best, not just in terms of my reputation but also for your good name, Mr. Choko, as an illustrious international literary figure.”
“I don’t think this has any bearing whatsoever on Mr. Choko’s literary reputation,” Unaiko snapped. “I’ve agreed to give you what you want by deleting the first section, so let’s move on now. We still need to discuss the second sticking point, to use Daio’s term, so can we please get started? All right? Good.
“The second point of contention has to do with a claim Mr. Koga’s lawyers have been making. They’re saying that up until the day when the event in question took place, I had been living in my uncle’s household in perfect harmony for nearly three years, and they’re claiming what happened was the natural extension of what they euphemistically call the ‘friendly feelings’ that existed between my uncle and me. To put it another way, they’re alleging that there was a mutually acknowledged foundation in place, which led to full-fledged sexual activity as part of a normal, voluntary progression. They’ve also been emphasizing the fact that I was already seventeen years old, even though technically eighteen is the age of consent in the prefecture where the events took place.”
“Well,” Unaiko’s uncle said smoothly, “the truth is, we had both been enjoying what you called ‘mutual masturbation’—and I must say you seemed to get quite a kick out of using the grown-up term—for quite some time, and it was completely consensual. And then we somehow got into the habit of using our hands to bring each other to, um, culmination at the end of those sessions, because prolonging the, um, pleasure for too long somehow seemed (and again, this was your choice of words) ‘over the top.’”
“That’s all very well and good,” Unaiko said, “but the fact is that at no point was I ever aware that we were having sex, per se.”
“I’ll grant you that,” her uncle said. “But on the day in question, it was really just a matter of accidentally wandering off the usual path in the heat of the moment, wasn’t it?”
“Accidentally wandering off the usual path?” Unaiko echoed incredulously. “So, Uncle, are you saying what you did to me that day was some small, insignificant misstep on your part and no big deal at all?”
“Look, we can stay here arguing about semantics until the cows come home, but if you could only see your way clear to accepting our proposal for resolving the situation, I think we should be able to overcome the second problem as well,” Mr. Koga replied smoothly. (He appeared to feel that being addressed as “Uncle” was an encouraging sign.) “Let’s face it, we both enjoyed what we were doing, and truth be told we had the kind of easygoing relationship where we could use a term like ‘mutual masturbation’ in complete awareness of its absurdity. Isn’t that a fact? Then suddenly, out of the blue, I get dragged into a situation where you’re proposing to go public with our old secrets, using your radical underground theater tactics to make me look like some kind of villainous deviant or something.
“I must say, I was speechless when I heard that if I hadn’t agreed to participate in this dramatic contrivance of yours, someone was being prepped to play my role as a stand-in. The actor would have had a placard hanging around his neck bearing my full name and listing the various medals and awards I’ve received for service to the nation. I really have to ask: Why do you suddenly feel the need to drag me through the mud after all this time?”
“The thing is, there’s a fundamental question I’ve been thinking about continuously during the eighteen years since we last met,” Unaiko replied slowly. “So how would it be if we did a sort of table read of the relevant pages in my script right now to get some closure? There’s a big storm raging outside, so even if we end up shouting at each other nobody will be able to hear a word we say.”
Unaiko’s tone was even, but her eyes flashed with angry defiance. She sat up straighter in her chair, and it was clear to
everyone in the room that she had thrown down a gauntlet. Mr. Koga got to his feet looking visibly shaken. I realized much later, in retrospect, that he must have been in the throes of a complex conspiracy of emotions: panic over the peril to his precious reputation, shock at the depth of his niece’s resentment, and a burgeoning resurgence of the old feelings of illicit desire—although apparently, in his advanced state of self-righteous denial, there wasn’t even a trace of guilt.
“Well, Daio, it looks like we’re back to square one. This has been a colossal waste of time,” Koga said briskly. “Apparently this young person here hasn’t been listening to a word I’ve said, and this so-called discussion has been an exercise in futility. In any case, I need to take a break; I was supposed to call my wife and one of my attorneys more than an hour ago.”
As he spoke Mr. Koga was already striding away, with his two henchmen close behind.
(I remembered then that his wife had described him as a doddering old buffoon, but on this night he didn’t seem to have lost any of his forcefulness or mental acuity.) Daio gave me the most minimal of nods, then followed the others outside into the slashing rain and the buffeting wind.
I was left alone with Unaiko. The two lookouts were still stationed outside the door at the front of the office, which had been left ajar, and I could see the backs of their white shirts flashing as they paced back and forth in the darkness. Unaiko turned her face to me: that uncommonly open face, which somehow looked simultaneously weary and agitated.
“I am so terribly sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you, Mr. Choko,” she said earnestly.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about our options,” I replied. “I’m always doing rewrites on my novels, and for stage performance, too, it seems to take a while for the various elements to shake out and settle down, rather than having the script set in stone from the beginning. So I’ve been thinking we could try applying that methodology, in accordance with Mr. Koga’s request. In the part of the script where you and your colleagues integrated the improvised lines that would have been spoken by him, or by his stand-in, perhaps I could go ahead and take a stab at making the changes you feel you can live with, at least.”
