A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding
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Praise for A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding
“I loved this book. I don’t often say that much anymore, but this one had me rapt. I read it on an airplane, and when I looked up weeping from the last several pages, my husband, alarmed, said, ‘What’s the matter?’ And I said, ‘This book is so beautiful.’ And it is. This is a mesmerizing, heart-wrenching story of love and regret, but ultimately, and most assuredly, the healing generosity of hope; I couldn’t put it down. Lovely . . . An exceptional tale of a family in crisis whose lives are shattered by the bombing of Nagasaki. At once intimate and sweeping, profoundly subtle and yet remarkably affecting, the story reminds the reader that public catastrophe interrupts myriad smaller, but no less devastating, private troubles, magnifying their consequences and obstructing their resolution.”
—Robin Oliveira, New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter
“Extraordinary . . . Like Snow Falling on Cedars and The Reader, here is one of those rare life opportunities to look again at ourselves, and forgive our shameful past, achieved with striking style, an unflinching eye, and through a clever narrative. Brava Jackie Copleton. I cannot wait to read your next novel.”
—Mary-Rose MacColl, author of In Falling Snow
“Iōjima, Nagasaki—names of places known from war. Jackie Copleton’s debut novel delivers an impassioned story of family, loyalty, and love that allows us, as she writes, ‘to appreciate the human foundations’ of these historic locations. It is through such intimate stories of people who have lived through war do we begin to understand the vulnerability of survival and the real meaning of peace. Following the surprising turns revealed in one woman’s remembrances—a memory made selective by loss and frailty—this story took me on an unexpected journey through Japan in a rarely examined era, and I closed its cover satisfied to learn it had led me to an elevated mutual understanding of our difficult global history.”
—Eugenia Kim, author of The Calligrapher’s Daughter
“A fully drawn portrait of a city and a life, this novel will hold appeal for history buffs, lovers of literary fiction, and readers of high-drama romance.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Astonishingly accomplished . . . A gripping love story and family dynamic is woven seamlessly with graphic descriptions of the aftermath of the bomb and the historical and cultural changes sweeping Japan. . . . While this is an often heartbreaking portrait of a mother’s love told through diaries, letters, and flashbacks, it is also a meticulously researched history of Japan. The graceful style and clarity of [Copleton’s] writing makes this an addictive read. With the seventieth anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approaching, this novel is a must.”
—Scottish Daily Mail (UK)
“Full of delicate imagery drawing on Japanese nature and culture, this is a rich, romantic story, brimming with restrained emotion—with a twist that will take your breath away. Superb.”
—Daily Mirror (UK)
PENGUIN BOOKS
A DICTIONARY OF MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING
Jackie Copleton graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in English before she moved to Japan to teach in English language schools in Nagasaki and Sapporo. She has worked as a journalist in the UK and the Middle East and holds an MLitt (Distinction) in creative writing from Glasgow University, where she was the joint winner of the 2011 Curtis Brown prize for best fiction writing. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband, though they hope to one day live by the sea. A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding is her debut novel.
PENGUIN BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
First published in Great Britain by Hutchinson, a division of The Random House Group Ltd 2015
Published in Penguin Books 2015
Copyright © 2015 by Jackie Copleton
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Published by arrangement with Hutchinson. Hutchinson is one of the Penguin Random House group companies.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Copleton, Jackie.
A dictionary of mutual understanding / Jackie Copleton.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-698-40732-9
1. Families—Japan—Fiction. 2. Hiroshima-shi (Japan)—History—Bombardment, 1945—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6103.O694D53 2015
823’.92—dc23
2015006931
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Julianna Lee
Cover images: (geisha) Chowol Park; (man) Ilona Wellman/Trevillion Images; (bridge) David Et Myrtille/Trevillion Images
Version_1
Contents
Praise for A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraphs
Endurance
Human Feelings
A Relation
Treasure of Children
Fighting Spirit
An Omen
A Charm
The Chirping of Crickets
Shame
Cultural Deviation
Problem Solving
Moral Indebtedness
An Arranged Marriage
Quiet Beauty
Japanese Women
Sharing an Umbrella
A Very Male Society
Conjecture
Humility
Suicide
The Pearl Divers
Filial Piety
Inner Feelings
Decency
Pathos
A Spirit
An Awakening
The Rising Sun
Professional Entertainer
A Subordinate
The Whore Spider
Sacred Day
High Spirits
A Foolish Parent
Disownment
A Lordless Samurai Warrior
The Wind
A Female Medium
Shade and Light
Lingering Attachment
India-ink Painting
Pilgrimage
Acknowledgments
To Robert Brooks and William Copleton
I was very thirsty, so I was looking for some water.
I found some oil on the surface of the water.
I really wanted something to drink.
After all, I drank that water.
– Nine-year-old girl injured during the A-bomb attack on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945
The voice of the waves
That rise before me
Is not so loud
As my weeping,
That I am left behind.
– Thousand-year-o
ld Japanese poem
Endurance
Yasegaman: The combination of yaseru (to become skinny) and gaman-suru (to endure) literally means to endure until one becomes emaciated, or endurance for the sake of pride. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict once said that Japanese culture is based on shame while American culture is based on a sense of sin or guilt. In a shame-oriented society, for persons to lose face is to have their ego destroyed. For example, in olden days, samurai warriors were proudpeople. When they were too poor to eat, they held a toothpickin their mouth to pretend they had just eaten a meal.
Even the kindness of the half-light could not hide his disfigurement. The man stood on my doorstep hunched against the chill of a winter morning. Despite the scarring, I could tell he was Japanese, in his forties or fifties. I had seen such burns before, blacker versions, in another life. He wore a suit, no coat, and held a briefcase in fingers fused together. He bowed his bald head low, cleared his throat and apologised for the intrusion. Years had passed since I last heard it but the southern Kyushu dialect was unmistakable. He asked if my name was Amaterasu Takahashi and, despite my apprehension, I nodded. The muscles in his face twitched, perhaps in a smile. ‘Then I bring you good news.’
Few visitors came to my door except for passing men with their preacher pamphlets or health insurance policies. I had use for neither. The stranger before me looked like no salesman, despite the briefcase, which he placed by his feet. He glanced at the ground, breathed in as if drawing up courage. The silver sun broke through the clouds and I saw the full force of his injuries. His expression was impossible to read, lost among the ruined flesh, but he sounded happy. ‘I have long dreamt of this day. It really is extraordinary when you think of it.’ He seemed almost to laugh. ‘Miraculous, even . . . but also a shock.’ He bowed once more, and then stood tall, arms stiff by his side. ‘Please don’t be alarmed. My name is Hideo Watanabe.’
Who knows how long I stood there before I realised he was asking me whether I needed to sit down. I looked again at what passed for his face. Hideo is seven years old, dressed in his school uniform, his hair brushed forward on his forehead. He holds my hand as we walk down the garden path. We spot a praying mantis on the bird table. He asks if he can keep the insect as a pet. I tell him no. We walk to school and he waves to me from the gates. That is Hideo Watanabe. That was how I chose to remember him. The man standing in front of me was an aberration. I had mourned Hideo for too many years to believe him resurrected.
‘Hideo is dead. You can’t be him. I’m sorry.’
‘This must be hard to take in. You might need some time.’
‘Please leave. I want you to go.’
The man nodded, put his hand in his suit pocket and pulled out a business card. He said he was staying at the Penn’s View Hotel. His flight home was in a few days. He offered me the card but I did not take it. He reached again into his pocket and this time produced a letter, crumpled by age or the journey undertaken. ‘This will help explain why I’m here today, why it’s taken me so long to find you.’ I did not move and the envelope and card trembled in his grip. ‘Please, you will find the contents difficult, but helpful.’
Seconds passed before I took both from him. I looked at my name printed on the top left corner of the letter. He picked up his briefcase and as he moved to go I asked, ‘If you are Hideo Watanabe, you will know what we saw in the garden that last morning?’
His words when they came were as delicate as a spider’s web caught by a summer breeze. ‘I ask that you read the letter. That will get us started. It is good to see you, Grandmother. It really is.’
He raised that claw hand in farewell and began to walk away. I confess, when he spoke, I recognised some echo from the past. For one moment I imagined my daughter, Yuko, was talking to me in that careful staccato beat of hers, but I did not call him back to my door.
Human Feelings
Ninjo: Japanese people believe that love, affection, compassion and sympathy are the most important feelings that all human beings should nurture. This assumption emanates from the fact that one of the virtues that Japanese society emphasises is cooperation among people. In daily life, Japanese people are bound by the code of ninjo in their attitudes toward others. Suppose that you are sent many apples by your relative. Then you will want to give some to your neighbours. This ‘give and take’ attitude is based on the belief in the wisdom of mutual reliance.
I try to imagine how Yuko would look if she were alive today but instead I see her thin from the privations and worry of war, head bowed by the weight of the burden she carries. She sits on a pew with her back to me. Light from the west illuminates her hair which is cut short to her shoulders. I want to call out, warn her to go home. She needs to go far from Urakami and she must leave now. But the words do not come and instead I see her slowly turn around until I must close my eyes before they meet her gaze. Dear Daughter, the life I sought for you was not a bad one, was it? Could you understand why I acted the way I did? Could you see I had no choice? Only child, did you forgive me in those final moments? Did you forgive yourself?
I want to believe she was at peace when the clouds parted over Nagasaki and that B-29 dropped its load. I cannot bear to think of those last moments as a torment for her. I need her to have died if not content then maybe reconciled to the decisions she made as she prayed to her god. My husband and I would tell each other when pikadon fell over the north of the city her body would have evaporated: bones, organs, even the ash of her, gone in an instant. We were adamant she had felt nothing and this gave us a kind of solace. The absence of a body to bury or cremate helped us sustain this version of her death: she had not suffered on August 9, 1945, at 11.02 a.m.
No, I am not haunted by how she died but why. If I am to be the only remaining teller of this tale, what and how much can I admit to myself and to others? Should I begin with this acknowledgement: my daughter might be here today if it had not been for me. I tell myself I acted out of love and a mother’s selflessness but how important is the motivation when you consider the consequence? The darker truth is this: she wouldn’t have been in the cathedral unless I had insisted that she meet me there. I have carried that knowledge with me through these long years. Not even Kenzo knew. What an impossible admission to tell a husband and a father. I taught myself to carry this guilt lightly so that no one could see the monster in their midst; but sometimes, when my guard was down, I would tell Kenzo I wished it had been me that the bomb had claimed. He would hold me in his arms and say he too would swap places with Yuko and Hideo if he could. He would reassure me there was nothing that could change what had happened; forces beyond our control had taken them. We were all victims, only he and I had lived, that was all. He did not understand what I meant: death’s greatest cruelty is to claim the wrong people. Sometimes the weakest live.
I convinced myself an edited version of my past was necessary for a bearable life. I told myself I must not think too long on the mistakes I had made that led Yuko to the city’s death zone. How else could I get up in the morning and face another day? How else could I endure the years as they trickled by, one too slowly following the other? Me, the last one left, or so I had believed until that winter’s morning. I had thought leaving Japan would keep Kenzo and me safe from the past. When people asked me about my life before America I changed details I didn’t like, underplayed or erased entire years depending on my mood or audience. Sometimes my inquisitors made the connection between my age, Nagasaki and the war. Too curious perhaps to retreat from their question, they would ask in the embarrassed tone of the victor, ‘Were you there that day?’ I could not lie about this one fact but at least my poor English helped. It allowed me to reduce my account to a few nouns, weak adjectives, a verb in the wrong tense. ‘Grandson and daughter kill, gone. Too sad. Big problem for me.’ In response, they grasped for the best words to use, so as not to confuse my limited language: how terrible, just horrible, simply awful, you are very brav
e. I hated that word, brave. It implied choice. Others hid behind my poor understanding of English to tell me what they really thought, and I guessed at what they said. Those bombs ended the war; think of the thousands of lives saved by your daughter’s death; at least you and your husband have each other. Such casual dismissal of the loss. This was the survivor’s sorrow: people expected you to be grateful. I didn’t edit my past for sympathy, or persuasion; I did it to ease the guilt just enough to function. These lies or omissions gave me the strength to look in the mirror and be able to stand the woman I saw. And yet, if called upon to turn the magnifying glass on my past, how to cleave fact from fiction? My memory had intertwined the two like wild nasturtium to some rotting trellis, inextricable, the one dependent on the other. This man who had stood at my door would want to know the truth. What a request to ask. To look back would bring neither forgiveness nor release.
I took the letter he had given me into the kitchen and sat at the table by the window. The red Formica shone with bleach, the plastic jars by the cooker stood neat in line and only the hum of the refrigerator broke the silence. We had bought it not long before Kenzo fell ill. He insisted on buying an American brand, Frigidaire, which came with an ice dispenser. He loved to press against the lever with a plastic tumbler and watch the chunks of ice clatter down. ‘America,’ he declared that first time, shaking his head in wonder. ‘What will you think of next?’ I had planned to feed him good meat and fresh vegetables but in those last weeks he wanted nothing more than processed food in tins. Macaroni and cheese, SpaghettiOs and corned beef delighted him the most. His last meal before he went into hospital had been vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. He watched me from the kitchen table as I squirted Reddi-wip into the bowl and brought him his dessert. We sat across from each other and held hands while he ate a few shaky spoonfuls. A drop of cream rested on his unshaven chin. ‘Good?’ I asked. ‘Good,’ he replied. I could not help myself, I leaned forward and wiped the white blob away with my thumb. ‘Let me give you a shave, you look like a wild man.’ He shook his head. ‘My skin hurts.’