Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  At this point Ikuo spoke up. To Kizu at least, his forceful words seemed aimed from the beginning at intentionally introducing something completely at odds with the congenial, homey atmosphere they’d built up.

  “I think we’ve heard enough about the transfer of the Farm to our church,” he said. “There’s something else I’d like to talk about. I’m hoping Patron’s new church will begin here, in this building—on this piece of land, I suppose I should say—at the earliest possible date. I can’t imagine what direction the church will take, but like everyone else I trust in Patron and am looking forward to a new beginning.

  “As we’re waiting for the launch of the new church, all of us new residents—individually or in groups—each have our own approach to things. There’s no need for us to criticize the way others are standing by, waiting for things to develop. As Patron’s conception of the church takes shape, disagreements and agreements will naturally come to the surface, and we can cross that bridge when we come to it. At this stage, each group and individual must examine their relationship with the local people and ask how this might benefit the church. I’d like to mention what I’m doing myself. As this progresses, I hope you’ll let me continue to act on my own.

  “Right now, through the good offices of the former junior high principal and the head priest of the Fushoku temple, I’ve begun to meet with the local youth group. At first they were rather antagonistic to our church, thinking we just barged in here without consulting anyone. But the other side of this coin is their curiosity about us. The reason I’m interested in them is that they’re still young—high school and junior high students, the age when people still treat them as children—but there are some real individuals among them, and as a group they’re quite outgoing. About twenty or so well-disciplined members get together regularly with their leader, who himself is a unique guy. As I meet with them I’d like to consult with them and report any new developments in our church. May I have your approval to do this?”

  Ikuo came to a resolute halt. Nobody said a thing. The Technicians’ faces didn’t show whether they approved or not, but Kizu could sense that they and Ikuo had long since come to an understanding.

  “I’d like to hear Patron and the office staff’s opinion, but from what I’ve heard here I have no problem with what Ikuo’s been doing,” Dr. Koga replied generously. “Nothing’s more important than building good relationships with the local people. This may sound like I’m blowing my own horn, but that’s why I took over the clinic. We can’t give the local people the impression that we’re just shut up in our buildings concentrating on our own affairs, no matter how spiritual they may be. You only have to consider what happened with the Aum Shinrikyo satyans to understand this.

  “On the other hand, though, it was quite a lot of trouble for the Quiet Women and the Technicians to come to the decision to move here, and actually to carry it out. After finally settling in with their new church, do we really expect them all to be open to the local people right off the bat? I think we want to get deeper into ourselves and into our faith. That’s how very great our expectations are of this new path Patron’s taking. Which doesn’t contradict Dancer’s understandable call for us not to rush him.

  “Our honest thoughts on this might disappoint you, Ikuo, but what I want to say is that we’ve only begun. I find your dealings with the next generation here intriguing. And I promise you that every one of the Technicians will spare no effort to help you make the Farm a success. That’s all I want to say. Do exactly as you wish.”

  * * *

  The next day at lunch Kizu heard from Dancer that Patron, who except for his first announcement had remained silent throughout, was quite pleased with the results of the meeting. Patron had also said something else. Dancer lowered her voice so the Technicians seated nearby, who had returned for a late lunch from working to restart the facilities on the Farm, couldn’t hear.

  “Patron asked me, ‘What’s with the former radical faction? Why is such a formerly outgoing, active group now living like a bunch of monks?’”

  21: The Young Fireflies

  1

  Since his plan to run a children’s art class would be using a room in the junior high school, Kizu needed to look into how this would fit in with the second-semester curriculum—and though he had considerable time to consider this, with the summer vacation between now and then, he went again with Asa-san, the wife of the former junior high principal, to visit the school’s staff room. While they were there he asked Asa-san about the group called the Young Fireflies that Ikuo had mentioned during the meeting in the chapel.

  Asa-san began by explaining the local custom of the same name. She was nearing sixty and had first heard about it as a ceremony her mother had participated in as a child. When someone died in the valley, children ages seven to ten would light torches and climb up the surrounding slopes. The children were divided into pairs, and each pair climbed to a designated tree at the top of the forest. One of the pairs carried an object, representing the soul of the departed, to bury under the roots of a tree. Several pairs would go up at the same time in order to keep the chosen tree a secret.

  “My mother said her first memory of this was when she was three or four,” Asa-san went on, “still too little to be a Young Firefly herself. She said that when she looked up at the forest from the back sitting room of her house she could see countless torches ascending the slopes. The number was greater than the number of seven- to ten-year-olds who lived there, somebody told her later, because they were allowing smaller children to join them.

  “One other thing you should hear concerns a child named Doji, who led the second of two rebellions around the time of the Meiji Restoration. After the rebellion was a success, they say Doji returned to the forest. The name Young Fireflies might have grown out of this, since Doji is a homonym for the Japanese word translated as young.

  “The present Young Fireflies group that local junior and senior high school children have formed is connected with this history but has nothing to do with the defunct custom. They do, however, assemble at dawn and practice climbing up the forest, so at least they’re maintaining the form of the ceremony.

  “They’re children, so they may very well be drawn to the figure of Doji, the child leader of the insurrection. Satchan told me they debate among themselves how to live in this land and how to improve the environment. Her son Gii is the leader of the Young Fireflies. When he was little he used to come to our house to talk with my husband. An odd child, I’d say, to want to spend time talking with the principal.”

  “Don’t they say his father is the one who founded the Church of the Flaming Green Tree?” Kizu asked. “When I was buying ham and eggs at the market by the river, another odd person, a woman, told me the boy isn’t Satchan’s.”

  “Oh, that’s the former music teacher at the junior high. She’s been behaving herself these days, but I did hear she got worked up and caused a ruckus. A man by the name of Kamei in the former church gave his entire estate in order to build the chapel, and his wife tried so hard to dissuade him that something snapped in her and they were divorced. That’s the woman you met. She still carries a grudge against the church and directs her anger against Satchan.”

  Not long after this, Kizu heard from Ikuo about this leader of the Young Fireflies he’d been seeing. One evening at twilight, a week after the meeting in the chapel, after a calm, sunny, though unseasonably cold day, Kizu finished putting in order all the drawings and supplies he’d sent from Tokyo and was resting on his bed, which did double duty as a chaise longue, his head propped up high, when Ikuo returned. Youthfully flushed like some formidably featured young woman, Ikuo had come back to ask Kizu to dine with him at the monastery. His voice was excited.

  “The Gii of the Fireflies, who’s regarded as the new Gii, is an amazing guy, a genius, in fact. Because of this, he’s quite a confident young fellow. He’s so young it’s hard to say he has much experience, I guess, but there’s a deep connection
here between this land and the history of his clan.

  “Gii knows everything there is to know about this area’s legends and its past, recent events included. You know how we look back on things in our lives and say certain experiences were good and regret others? That’s how he has considered historical events that have taken place here. He also has a good idea of what he plans to do in future; he’s set on spending the rest of his life here.

  “When I suggested that at least he go to college, he shot down that idea with a scornful laugh. He has a strong conviction based on the history of his family as to the path his life should take. His father got a degree in agriculture from Tokyo University and started that church here that failed. His grandfather also graduated from Tokyo University, in education, became a diplomat, and retired to the Hollow, where he died of cancer. The things he learned at school didn’t help him reform anything in this small local society, let alone the nation. It didn’t amount to anything. So Gii says that living here in this anti-Center valley in the woods he can really do something important. The legends and history of this place will be his textbook. If he needs to know anything else, he said, he’ll read some books.”

  Kizu felt a twinge of childish jealousy, for Ikuo was full of a cheerful enthusiasm that had been missing at the meeting in the chapel.

  “When I saw you last time I thought I hadn’t yet met Gii,” Ikuo went on. “I planned to talk to you and the church only after I’d actually met him. But now I realize I had met him. Whenever I went to talk with the young people at the Farm there was always one young man who, though he never looked directly at me, was unforgettable. That’s Gii. They start their training every day while it’s still dark, and after they’re done the high school boys ride their bikes to the high school a half hour away. Today’s a holiday, Founder’s Day at school, so they could take their time practicing, and I was able to join them and finally talk to Gii.

  “After we crossed the bridge and entered the woods, I could sense he was the leader, even though he wasn’t obviously calling the shots. He has this very fetching way of walking. We followed a kind of animal path beaten down through the woods as we scaled the hill in a clockwise direction. Twice we crossed a river and a road, which they hurried over on tiptoe as if they didn’t want to sully their feet with profane ground. As I tried to keep up with them, Gii told me more details about the group. Steadily climbing the steep slope, he told me all this in a very thoughtful, precise way. He’s a splendid young man.”

  Kizu couldn’t help smiling when he heard this. His jealousy had vanished, replaced by a pleasant sense of how excited Ikuo was.

  When he saw Kizu’s reaction, Ikuo stopped speaking, and Kizu took advantage of the pause. “Let me make a suggestion,” he said. “You haven’t told any of this to the office staff yet, have you? Let’s invite Ogi and Dancer, and we’ll all have dinner together while you tell us about it. It’s a shame to not share this report with the others.”

  Kizu called Mrs. Shigeno in the dining hall to ask about the menu for that night—ham steak sandwiches made of ham the Technicians had helped to cure, as well as vegetable soup made of the ham bones. That sort of food was simple to transport, so it was easy enough for all of them to eat together at the office. Kizu asked Mrs. Shigeno to phone the office about his plan, and then he and Ikuo left their house on the north shore.

  Mrs. Shigeno enjoyed impulsive ideas, and she packed their dinners into the cardboard boxes with the logo the Church of the Flaming Green Tree used when they sold box lunches in the hotel in Matsuyama and the shops in the airport, the one Kizu had seen in the market. When Kizu and the others heard that Patron and Ms. Tachibana and her brother had received the same dinners packed the same way, they pretended that they were all on a picnic and settled down in the room next to the office, looking out over the moonlit lake. While they were waiting for their food to be brought over, Ikuo drove over to the general store and procured some cans of beer from the vending machine. Feeling he was on the same wavelength as the Fireflies now, Ikuo continued to be in a buoyant mood.

  Gii had asked Ikuo whether he thought they were all free to choose their own fate. Ikuo agreed in principle, and Gii went on to tell him how he’d surveyed the people in Kame Village, before it merged into Maki Town, to find the different paths people had chosen in their lives. When they had their school festival in the second year of junior high, Gii had made a display presentation of his findings in the social studies corner. Teachers and parents ignored it, but his display had turned out to be the impetus to forming the Fireflies. Gii had taken a copy of his findings out of the back pocket of his jacket to give to show Ikuo, clearly having prepared in advance for their talk. His list read as follows:

  a. People who live in the village who have some role to play in the social system. Those who control and who are controlled. Each side views the other critically.

  b. People who live in the village but have fallen out of the social system. People without any abilities: the elderly, those with severe handicaps, those who have committed crimes, children.

  c. People who live in the village who tried to create their own subsystem but failed. Leaders and followers in various movements. On the surface they have no influence, but behind the scenes it is a different story.

  a.1 People who’ve left the valley to live in urban areas and have found a role to play there. These people are greatly respected in the village society, but since they live in cities they have no role to play in the village. Even if they return to the village, they aren’t given a role, either up front or behind the scenes.

  b.1 People who’ve left the village for urban areas and have fallen out of the social system there. Generally they’ve vanished, with no reports about them. Occasionally reports surface of some of them becoming criminals.

  c.1 People who have left the village to live in urban areas and are attempting to create an independent subsystem. Though the possibility exists, no one has yet been victorious or been defeated in these endeavors. One example from the distant past of this would be Fujiwara Junyu from the lower reaches of the Maki River.

  “Gii certainly has the ability to think abstractly,” Ogi said, in innocent admiration, as he read Gii’s notebook page. “If you took this to its logical conclusion, wouldn’t there also be a classification in c and c1 of people who were successful?”

  “That’s probably because there weren’t any specific examples in c as there were in c1,” Ikuo said. “When Gii was dividing these into groups, I understand he did have some examples in mind. It’s kind of a typical junior high school way of doing things, but that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of abstract thought. In fact, as you say, it’s quite the opposite. In this classification system, I think Gii himself wants to be a successful example of c. In other words, one of Ogi’s missing pieces—someone who’s created a successful subsystem. That’s why he founded the Fireflies. Pretty bold fellow, I’d say.”

  As Ikuo was bragging about them, Kizu thought that if it were up to him he would have called them nice kids—and he would have included Ikuo in this category.

  “Gii knows that in this region there are examples in the c category who’ve failed. First of all there’s the man said to be his father, Satchan’s husband, the Brother Gii who made this lunch box.” Ikuo showed them the lunch box resting in his hand, the contents of which had been devoured, a box with trees painted on it with detailed green leaves. “There were still a lot of these lunch boxes left over at the farm. And Former Brother Gii, who led the so-called Base Movement. Also there are the leaders of the various insurrections and the legendary figures he’s uncovered.

  “Gii told me, with a laugh, that he’s thoroughly investigated all these figures from the past in order not to follow their examples and has come up with his own idea: a plan—through his own subsystem of the Fireflies—to conquer this land. The children have pledged themselves to create this as their program for the future. This isn’t to say that all the members of the Fireflies have to re
main here. Most of them would go to be educated in cities. But they would never forget their pact and would return here as soon as they could. Those unable to return would support the Fireflies from the outside. It’s that sort of flexible pledge.

  “What I find most intriguing is Gii’s notion that this land is the center of the world, and that creating his own subsystem here is equivalent to creating a subsystem in category c1 in the entire society. He grew up listening to legends of this land from old people here, who in turn had learned them from their own grandparents, and that’s where he came up with his worldview.”

  Ikuo leaned forward to pop open a can of beer, and Dancer took the opportunity to ask a question.

  “Ogi and I first thought the incident we experienced was a bit of harassment on the part of adults opposed to the church taking over the chapel, but later we learned it wasn’t the antichurch faction in Old Town at all but the work of these young boys. Do you get the sense that they have special feelings toward the Hollow?”

  “As I mentioned,” Ikuo said, “the Fireflies have gone around collecting the legends of this region, and as they’ve done so they’ve started to believe that the Base Movement and the Church of the Flaming Green Tree are historically important. The Hollow for them is a kind of sacred ground that links all these groups. That being the case, when a bunch of outsiders from an unrelated church comes in and occupies this historic building, they can’t help but express how upset they are.”

  “It’s like the Palestinians and the Israelis,” Kizu added, “though naturally there are more differences than similarities.”

  “Actually,” Ikuo said, “Gii told me that with the sacred Hollow snatched away from them by our church they do feel like Palestinians.”

  “But surely there are brighter prospects for coexistence here than in the Middle East,” Dancer said.

  “First of all I’d like to get them to consider our position,” Ikuo said. “Also, as one member of the church, I’d like to consider what we have to offer to this land. Instead of cooperating with the village authorities to suppress the Fireflies, I think it would be much smarter to get to know them better. At any rate, Patron has agreed to my negotiating. And I want to. After all, Gii’s the son of the owner of the Farm, with whom we’ll be working closely.”