The Blossom and the Firefly

by Sherri L. Smith

  “No,” said a second radioman. “He said it was time for ‘drastic measures.’”

  He was young, Taro thought, a boy, really.

  They were probably the same age.

  “Drastic measures. That means gyokusai, doesn’t it?” the boy asked. He was sweating, but it wasn’t just from the run.

  Taro’s mouth went dry. These men would line the beach with whatever weapons remained—guns half empty of bullets, military-issued swords patterned with rust by the humidity, staves of wood and bamboo. All across the home islands, men, women, and children would hoist their pitchforks and kitchen knives, their homemade spears, hardening themselves to be the last rock upon which the Americans would dash their army.

  His mother, with her callused hands.

  His father, in a limping silver plane.

  Hana.

  Hana.

  Hana.

  He had failed.

  He had failed to save them all.

  CHAPTER 61

  HANA

  Fathers have returned from war, blown in with the curling leaves of autumn. But not all of them. Many died. And the ones who have come home are not the same. Mariko’s father lost the use of an arm and an ear. Sachiko’s father is whole on the outside, but his anger is bigger than his skin. Her mother bears the brunt of its presence. Sachiko has lost her silliness since his return.

  There was no gyokusai, no valiant last stand on the beach. Only this—a tired military stumbling home again and a sinking feeling that never seems to end. The West is in the East now. Our fathers, who should have been hailed as heroes, are instead defeated men.

  And my otō-san. He came home on a warm day in September with loose teeth and a head balding from malnourishment, the result of having only a week’s worth of rations for a months-long campaign. Infantry is not kind to soldiers. His unit was told to grow their own food on the battlefield, my mother tells me later in a whisper. My otō-san is not a warrior, nor is he a farmer. He is a tailor from a small town. Yet he survived.

  For a day and a night, he wept in my mother’s arms. I could hear her comforting him through the shōji screens to their room. He spoke of starvation, abandonment, and darker things I was careful not to hear. In the morning, he was a skinny older man, but still my otō-san.

  Now he wears his smile like a bandage, a sling for what is broken and may not mend. I smile too, let my Nadeshiko grin be a splint to help him walk tall again. It’s my turn to dig in the earth, to pull him back into the light. I play the koto for him until he can play it again himself. Now there are two musicians in the house. I play every night. Sometimes he joins me.

  Each day, there is news of arrests on the radio, of soldiers and officers “purged” as criminals. The Emperor has been allowed to keep his Chrysanthemum Throne, but he has surrendered his divinity. As if one can simply agree to no longer be a descendant of Heaven. This is the new world we find ourselves in. The Emperor is merely a man. His generals and admirals are on trial for crimes against peace, against humanity, for crimes of war.

  I do not understand the accusations the Americans and their allies are levying in these trials.

  Imperially sanctioned rape, murder, and torture in foreign places.

  Otō-san was in a foreign place.

  Where is the shining war of the boy pilots, bright buttons, and fresh faces full of Yamato-damashii? When I looked at a tokkō, I saw Japan. I was Japan. Now I look around and I’m not sure what I see.

  In whispers, I ask Okā-san what it means.

  Okā-san turns off the radio with a resounding click. She touches my cheek, something she has not done since I was a child, and she tells me, “The war is over, Hana. We will not speak of this again.”

  CHAPTER 62

  TARO

  A thin sheaf of papers, some money for a train. That was the way the war ended for Corporal Inoguchi Taro. The Japanese at the base in Kyushu looked haunted, weary. They processed his discharge under the watchful eyes of foreign men.

  The home islands were overrun with loud, stinking Westerners. They were everywhere. Oni on the islands—his islands. His home.

  As soon as he was able, Taro donned civilian clothes. He was not a soldier. He didn’t deserve to be a soldier.

  It was a strange feeling, then, to disembark at the station where he had seen his father off to war as a little boy. Where his mother had said goodbye for the last time, months ago. He had chased his death all the way back to Kyushu, and now he had followed it home.

  A cold wind blew across the platform, carrying the scent of winter. From the next car, a group of men in white hospital robes wheeled and hobbled their way off the train. Taro averted his eyes. How could he face men who had sacrificed their bodily health, when he, who was tokkō, had returned home unscathed?

  It had meant something, once upon a time, to be a musician. And then a cadet, then a pilot. It had meant everything to be Tokkō Tai. But what was he now?

  Someone who could not look a wounded veteran in the eye. Someone who hid in his civilian clothes and hurried home, ashamed to look back.

  The city and some of its people had been scarred by fire, by bombs, but his neighborhood and house were still standing. Taro was grateful for that. He crossed the little garden and climbed onto the porch.

  His father answered the door, hair white, face lined with unfamiliar woes. He wore the same yukata Taro had borrowed on his last visit. It hung loose on his father’s hungry frame.

  “A child returns,” his father said.

  Taro tried to read his father’s face before he bowed.

  “A child returns,” he agreed.

  When he looked up again, the expression in his father’s eyes had solidified. The mouth pulled up in a sneer.

  “I thought my son was a man.”

  Taro’s jaw clenched. He stood stock-still. His military spine stiff and straight. He saluted his father, his superior officer.

  His father walked away.

  The house, so solid and familiar, neither welcomed nor reprimanded him. He could not expect the same from everyone else.

  And then his mother was there, in the doorway, just as she had been months ago. But this time, she didn’t bother with shoes or propriety. She ran from the house and threw her arms around him as she hadn’t done since he was a little boy.

  “At least you are home,” she said into his shoulder. “At least you are home.”

  CHAPTER 63

  TARO

  The first night had been the worst. Taro’s father had refused to join them for dinner. After a sleepless night on his childhood futon, Taro rose the next morning determined to find somewhere else to stay. The house was too small to shoulder the shame he had brought on his family. He said as much to his mother over rice and natto.

  “The shame is not all your own,” she had replied, much to his confusion.

  He was gathering his bags when his father blocked the doorway.

  “It would inconvenience your mother,” he announced.

  And so Taro had stayed.

  From there, it was little different from his early days in flight school riding the simulator. Only this time, his father held the model, and Taro followed along, mimicking his motions. His father opened a small engineering firm, applying his aviation skills to rebuilding the country. Taro worked beneath him, drafting plans and running errands until an office boy was found. They never spoke of the war, nor of the future beyond the company’s concerns.

  Not long after he had returned home, Taro slid open the shōji door to his room to discover a black case lying on the little table there.

  “Do you like it?” his mother had asked, padding up behind him on eager cat feet.

  Like a wave of color in a black-and-gray world, he felt the wash of river water, the downspout of rain, a girl in a kimono beneath an umbrella sharing her story. I had no bu
rdens.

  “Yes,” he said. “But . . .”

  How could he explain to his mother that the violin belonged to another Taro, one who had died on the beach in a burning aeroplane? That he did not deserve to feel joy—that he was dead?

  “There are some children in the neighborhood whose parents would be interested in lessons, I think,” his mother continued, pleased. “I thought perhaps . . . ?”

  Taro bowed a thank-you. “Father keeps me very busy.”

  He did not like to see her face fall. “Of course,” she replied. “Of course.”

  He sat alone in his room for some time after that, the violin case unopened. Beside it sat the letters his mother had tried to show him—one sent by the commanding officer at Chiran, another from Tomihara-san, and the last from Hana’s mother. Each had sent their condolences, as promised. Before the time the army learned otherwise, the others believed he had died a hero. How could he face them in his disgrace?

  He would not repay their faith in him with the truth. Nor would he risk losing his father’s forgiveness by picking up the violin. The Emperor had even less use for musicians now.

  It was one thing to choose death, quite another to choose life. Taro would not make a choice.

  1946

  CHAPTER 64

  HANA

  Cling! Cling!

  The bell at the front of my parents’ shop jingles as the American enters.

  “Hey there, Hana-san, is your dad around?” Lieutenant Thomas Grossman is a giant of a man, almost two meters tall and half as broad. He has become a regular at Tomiya Shokudo and at our tailor shop. When the Americans finally came to Chiran, they took over the air base for their own headquarters. Our bamboo staves went unbloodied. Instead, we gained customers. Nothing in Japan fits a man the size of Lieutenant Grossman, so my family has plenty of work. In fact, enough for us to move our business out of the house and into a small shop on the main street a half block away.

  I smile my Nadeshiko smile, and the lieutenant grins back. I will never grow used to how often the Americans show their teeth. Not all Americans are as friendly as Lieutenant Grossman. But Mariko assures me his grin is not meant as a threat. Her fiancé, Daisuke, knows this. He studied English in college before the war and now works as a translator and attaché for the American forces at the base.

  We could use a translator here in the shop. Lieutenant Grossman’s Japanese is as bad as my English, but he can only be here for one thing. I hold up a hand to ask him to wait. I have been out doing deliveries, so I take a moment to remove my shoes and jacket before slipping behind the curtain that divides the small shop between the counter and the back work area. Here, customers can try on clothes for alteration, and my parents can sit close together—their knees almost touching, although there is more than enough room for them to spread out—as my mother hand stitches and my father runs our newly acquired sewing machine.

  “The big foreigner is here,” I announce.

  Otō-san smiles up at me, but Okā-san scowls.

  “Hana! We treat all customers with respect,” she says.

  “It is respectful!” Otō-san says. “Grossman-sama is proud of his size. He boasts of it nonstop, Tomihara-san says.”

  My otō-san is the opposite of Lieutenant Grossman. The war whittled him away until he was nearly skin and bone. Okā-san poured all of her worry into fattening him up again. Now Otō-san has a potbelly, but his arms and legs have stayed skinny.

  “He can lift three sacks of rice in one arm,” Otō-san says, making a small muscle with his thin biceps. “He says they all are this size back home in Nebraska.” Otō-san struggles with the foreign word, the ill-placed b and r side by side. Only Western tongues would make such an ugly pairing. Japanese is a much more accommodating language.

  Okā-san clucks her tongue, but she is smiling. Otō-san had always been able to do that, make her smile. Another thing that was rationed during the war.

  While Otō-san goes to tend to the American, my mother adjusts the combs in her hair and gives me a sly look.

  “The post came while you were away.”

  I rush to her, eyes scanning the workroom. “Did it come? Where is it?”

  Okā-san pauses to carefully fold the jacket she is altering. She reaches into the drawer beneath her worktable and produces a cream-colored envelope.

  I’m too nervous to open it. “Read it for me?”

  Okā-san shakes her head. “Where is my Nadeshiko with her nerves of steel?” she jokes. But she takes the envelope and slices it open with a small paper knife.

  The paper crackles as she unfolds and smooths it flat. She clears her throat.

  “Dear Benkan-sama, we are gratified to inform you of your acceptance to—”

  I snatch the paper from Okā-san’s hands, then hand it back to her, ashamed. “I am so sorry—”

  “No, take it.” She reaches it out to me. “It’s good to see you so lively for once.”

  I take the paper and devour it with my eyes. I have been accepted. I am going to Tokyo to study koto music under the great maestro Miyagi Michio.

  * * *

  —

  Mariko is not so happy to hear the news. “You’ll be one of only a handful of girls there!” she exclaims. It’s true, the music school is accepting women for the first time. War has changed much in Japan. I choose to think we women have proven capable. But rumor has it there are no longer enough men left to enroll.

  I cluck my tongue.

  “Mariko, we have worked in an army hospital. We’ve cared for tokkō—don’t you think I can handle myself at a music school?”

  She twists her mouth into a frown. “But it’s in Tokyo, Hana. Such a big city. And so very far away . . .”

  And that is the trouble with it. Chiran is a tiny town on the southern tip of our country. Tokyo is on Honshu, more than a thousand kilometers away. For the first time in our lives, we will no longer be a short walk apart.

  “Think of it this way. Once you’re married, you’ll have no time for your old spinster friend. You’ll have too many fat children to chase around.”

  “Iie! Don’t say that! You’re not a spinster—we’re barely seventeen! And no matter what Daisuke says, we won’t have more than two babies, three at the most. And I’m waiting until I’m nineteen.”

  “But you’re getting married in two months. How will that work?”

  Mariko stamps her foot in frustration. “Oh, don’t bother me with questions! I’ll miss you, Hana. You will be here for the wedding, won’t you?”

  I take my oldest friend by the hand and give her a gentle squeeze. “Of course I will. Who else will explain to Daisuke that he won’t get his wedding night for two more years?”

  “What are my girls laughing about so heartily?”

  Mariko and I gasp, and laugh even harder. Daisuke stands in the doorway of Mariko’s house, still in his work clothes. No longer a uniform—he now wears a Western suit.

  “Toshi-san, do you hear them cackling like geese? Have you ever seen such pretty girls sound so brash?”

  Laughter in the doorway makes me fall silent, although Mariko still has the giggles. Sato Toshiro, the handsome captain from the hospital, has decided to stay in Chiran. Daisuke says it’s because of the opportunities at the base with the Americans. Mariko says it’s for me.

  He follows Daisuke into the room, and I drop my eyes. Mariko says you can’t be a spinster at seventeen, but I am stubborn. We quiet ones often are. He has yet to ask, at any rate, because every look I give him says no. Today is no different.

  “Oh, sad news!” Mariko says, reminding me of Sachiko and her constant gossip. “Our little flower is a big-time musician now. She’s moving to Tokyo!”

  Daisuke crows and congratulates me with a handshake and a big grin. His time around the Americans is rubbing off on him. Toshiro-san is much more reserved i
n his congratulations. “I will never have your ear for music,” he says, “but you must have worked very hard.” Those dark eyes are so sincere. “Chiran will be much smaller without you.”

  I can feel Mariko swooning on my behalf, but my balance is better than that.

  “Arigatō gozaimasu,” I reply. “I’d best get back to help my parents close the shop.”

  I rise, and Mariko jumps up after me. I can feel her eyes on me as I bow my farewells. Toshiro is still in the doorway when I pass, and I remember another doorway, another brush of cloth, one year and a lifetime ago.

  Any doubt leaves my mind.

  I may be the one for Toshiro, but he is not the one for me.

  * * *

  —

  That night, my parents and I celebrate my good fortune. We also shed a few tears. And when they have dried, my father and I uncover our kotos. More and more often, I am the only one who plays. But this is a special night. We build a duet that fills the house and rises into the evening sky. On the far side of the wall, the American soldiers carousing at Tomiya Shokudo fall silent, listening to the music on the wind.

  I will remember this night when I ride train after train, climbing the length of Japan. I will look out the window at landscapes I have only ever imagined, recalling how I once felt these islands were my body, these mountains my bones.

  When we skirt the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I will shrink back from the sight. We in Chiran have only recently heard the details of the Americans’ “new and most cruel” bombings. But even the rumors we’ve heard will not compare to the reality of what I will see.

  This duet in the night will bring me comfort. I hold on to it for whatever may come.