A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

by Jackie Copleton

  ‘I made a mistake telling Mother about the nursing positions. She is even more determined to marry me off, no doubt terrified I’ll somehow find Jomei again. She wants marriage to become my new prison after this one. She tells me again and again that Jomei has left Nagasaki but I do not believe her. Yes, maybe he could leave me, but his work, his life, this city? She wants to kill my hope of a reunion. But if Mother is right, if Jomei never loved me, I need to hear him say this, not her. In his absence, I will believe what he told me. He will come back for me.

  ‘I write him letters but I am never allowed out on my own so I have no way of delivering them. I need an excuse to leave the house. Perhaps the only answer right now is to go along with Mother’s plans? Today I told her I would meet this Shige Watanabe. She said they would invite him to the house for dinner but the thought was unbearable. I asked that the meeting happen outside our home. She insisted I take a chaperone. At least, in the city, free to walk the streets, I can believe in the possibility of seeing Jomei once more. There will be a reason he hasn’t contacted me.’

  Quiet Beauty

  Yugen: Elegant simplicity is one of the traditional aesthetic concepts of Japanese poetry and often regarded as a term for ideal beauty pursued particularly by poets and novelists of the medieval times. Later it became a kind of critical term used for discussions of Japanese classical literature. It has now several shades of meaning: the subtle and profound, the simple and elegant, or the tasteful and graceful.

  I crouched down on the wooden stool between a woman humpbacked with osteoporosis to my left and Yuko to my right. She had coiled her hair high on her head in a damp, loose knot but tendrils had worked their way free and snaked down her shoulders. Other women, naked and wet, sat in the communal baths as steam sizzled from floor to ceiling in the tiled room. Frosted-glass windows high above our heads depicted green dragons and white cranes flying over autumnal orange ginkyo trees. Mirrors reflected the light from outside onto clouds spewing from the boiler room. I filled a bucket with hot water from a tap in front of us. ‘Let me clean your back.’

  Yuko slouched forward and I slid the bar of soap along her shoulders and down her spine and began to rub with a rough cotton towel. ‘Give me your arm.’ Yuko lifted her hand and we intertwined fingers. She closed her eyes and surrendered to my touch. The heat made my head dizzy and my heart pound. ‘This reminds me of when you were a baby. You hardly ever cried. It made me worry so much. Aren’t babies supposed to cry?’ I picked up her other arm and my words caught and rode through the ringing of blood in my ears. ‘You were born so prematurely. We thought for weeks we might lose you. Maybe those early fears never left and made me too protective.’ She glanced up at me. I had not realised how physically alike we were but our naked bodies differed only by the weight of years. This difference made me sharp with my own vanity. ‘You were so reserved as a child. I thought you shy, but it’s not shyness at all, is it?’

  She replied neutrally, ‘Shall I wash your back?’

  I thought of those hands on Sato’s body. ‘No, thank you.’ The old woman next to us was cleaning her feet, the only part of her that she could reach with any ease. ‘Excuse me, would you like my daughter to help you?’

  The woman twisted around. ‘Thank you, most kind.’ Yuko accepted her offering of a cloth and soap and placed the rag against those domed shoulders. ‘No need to be gentle, dear. Scrub away.’ I remember the way the old lady sat with her hands on her knees, braced, her toes curled around the edge of the gutter that took the dirty water away. She would probably have been younger than I am today, but she seemed ancient, shrunk by life. Is this what people see when they look at me, this costume of old age: the liver spots, the raised veins and watering eyes?

  I washed my legs upwards from ankle to knee and then thigh. Wisps of air curved around my feet, calves and up to my hip and across my breasts. I shivered against the caress.

  Yuko studied me as I reached for more soap. ‘You never talk about your childhood.’

  Voices from the men bathing in their own section seeped over the gap at the top of the partition that separated us. ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘No.’ She tipped the water from her bucket and turned on the cold tap.

  ‘That’s because there is nothing to tell.’

  ‘You never say where you grew up, you never talk about your family or how you and Father met.’ Maybe she felt emboldened in this public setting.

  I washed between my legs and then rinsed the rag out beside a metal drain, where clumps of hair had gathered. ‘I’m getting fat.’

  The old woman tutted. ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Believe me, you should have seen me when I was young.’ I whistled.

  The old woman laughed. ‘You should have seen me too. What a body.’

  ‘You still have a good figure,’ I said in a chiding tone.

  The woman patted the air and giggled. ‘Back then, the men, so many, all taking turns to knock at my father’s door with gifts and proposals and poems, so many poems. Always some dreadful haiku. He had to beat them away with a broom. It’s true.’ We all laughed then. Even Yuko. She lifted the strands of the woman’s grey hair and washed her neck.

  I wondered how many more visits to the bathhouse I would have with my daughter after we found her a husband. I had always cherished my hours spent at the sentos, especially when her age. I’d come two or three times a week with my friend Karin. We would listen to the women chatter about annoying husbands or disappointing lovers and emerge into the cool air with tingling skin, blanched and renewed. Those visits had done more than clean me. I turned to the old woman. ‘My daughter wants me to reveal all the secrets of my youth. Should I tell her, Grandmother?’

  She cackled and tried her best to stretch up. ‘Secrets are best kept just that. The past is the past is the past. No good can come of raking over those used coals.’

  I soaked a fresh cloth in the water from the running tap and squeezed it over my breasts.

  ‘Listen to the wise woman, Yuko. You would do well to follow her advice.’

  Yuko handed the soap and rag back to the woman. ‘There we go.’

  ‘Thank you, most kind.’

  The old woman smiled. ‘You forget, don’t you?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The comfort of the human hand.’

  I placed my palm on the woman’s shoulder. ‘Celebrate with us, Grandmother. My daughter is meeting a man today.’

  The old lady clapped her hands together. ‘A husband?’

  ‘Maybe, if my daughter so wishes.’

  ‘Want some advice?’

  Yuko bent down to the woman’s level, ever polite. ‘Of course.’

  ‘If he comes bearing a haiku run all the way home. No poetry.’ This time Yuko did not smile.

  ‘Come, Daughter, we must get ready.’

  The woman raised her cloth aloft, a white flag on a twisted pole of sinew and bone. ‘Good luck, good luck.’

  We entered the changing area where steam, carried from the hot pool, lingered below the ceiling. I was surprised Yuko had agreed so easily to the meeting with Watanabe and this surrender in turn had led to many smaller ones. Her diary revealed her quiet cunning.

  ‘I could feel the thud of my heart and the flush of burning skin. I felt woozy, drugged into submission. Mother was using a cloth to wipe her damp skin and pat dry her hair. I looked at the eggplant-coloured kimono she had chosen for me to wear. No patterns adorned the material, nothing vulgar, or garish, a blank canvas to be sketched upon as this Watanabe desired. I have agreed to Mother’s demands, but she does not know why. The arranged meetings with him will give me enough time and opportunity, I hope, to apply to nursing college. Money is an issue. I cannot afford rent or food yet, but when I work out a way, I will leave, and if I find the courage, look for Jomei. I need to find him, whatever he says. Until then, I will submit to Moth
er’s wishes. She is easier to handle when she thinks she is getting her own way.’

  Yuko was right, she had fooled me. As we dressed in the baths, I had no idea that such plans were afoot. I was too involved in the immediate task at hand. ‘Be polite to the man.’ I stepped into my slip and it clung to my damp thighs. ‘Do not embarrass us.’ I pulled my white under-kimono across my shoulders. ‘If not Watanabe, we will find you someone else.’ I tied a ribbon around my hips. ‘With each instruction, she covered the old painting of me with these clean, new strokes.’ I bared my teeth. ‘And remember to smile. If there is one talent that most women possess, it is the ability to hide our worries.’ I dipped my head and arched my eyebrows, curled my mouth into the teasing smile of the concubine. ‘See?’

  Japanese Women

  Yamato-nadeshiko: Though very few young Japanese today use the word, it used to be very often employed as a synonym for a Japanese woman. It was the case especially when emphasis was put on her traditional virtues of modesty, obedience, patience and, moreover, bravery and determinedness when she was faced with difficulties. Yamato is another term for Japan; nadeshiko is a plant well known for its lovely flower and slender yet rather strong stalk.

  I did not go with Yuko to meet the engineer but sent the matchmaker in my place. The introduction would be awkward enough without my presence. My daughter’s resentment of me would cloud her judgement of Watanabe. I left her outside the baths and watched her take careful steps in her wooden sandals along the flagstones. She wrote that she found Mrs Kogi waiting for her at the bottom of the Dutch Slope. Mist clung to the path and covered the old woman’s kimono up to her knees. The matchmaker’s hair was dotted with frost when they greeted one another. Five minutes or so passed until Mrs Kogi looked up the hill and waved as a man made his way toward them. Shige Watanabe grew larger and larger until he was standing next to them.

  ‘There he was, the engineer from Iōjima, dressed in a suit and overcoat. He is a foot taller than me, broad-shouldered with a square face made up of flat, wide planes. He bowed and his cheeks were flushed when he raised his head. He introduced himself and I replied, “Well, who else would you be?” Mrs Kogi giggled and blamed my impoliteness on nerves. Watanabe said my reaction was understandable given the unusual circumstances. Nonsense, the matchmaker replied, this was quite the norm for her. He glanced at me. “But perhaps not for Yuko? Certainly, this is my first meeting of this nature. I’m not used to such self-scrutiny. What to wear? What to say? What not to say? A minefield.” Mrs Kogi’s eyebrows moved up and down in confusion as he spoke. I tried not to laugh at the sight but I think he caught my amusement because he smiled too.’

  They headed up the steep path of stone slabs and Shige tried his best to make small talk. He was concerned Yuko was cold; she told him she was fine. He hesitated before telling her in a rush of words, ‘Your kimono is most becoming.’ Embarrassed perhaps by his forwardness, he turned to look behind them. ‘We appear to have lost Mrs Kogi.’ Yuko glanced around. The matchmaker was one hundred feet behind, bent at the hips with her hands on her knees. Yuko’s smile was mischievous, if cautious. ‘I hope we haven’t incapacitated her.’

  ‘Watanabe laughed and said, “You’re right. No one would marry in Nagasaki again.” He must have noted my unease at those words. He looked annoyed, not at me, but himself. He tipped his head down, as if in confession. “You know what I told myself? This is just a walk with a friend you haven’t seen for a long while. A school friend. We lost touch many years ago, perhaps?” I asked, “Wouldn’t that make us still strangers?” He considered this. “OK. How about acquaintances in need of reacquaintance?” I felt relieved that he too felt the circumstances odd. “So, Mr Watanabe . . .” He held up his hand. I must call him Shige; we were old friends after all. “So, Shige . . .” The intimacy of his name on my lips made me blush.’

  Yuko enquired after his health and he in turn asked how she was. She could think of nothing to say other than ‘Passably well’ and this amused him as they stopped by one of the Western-style clapboard homes painted olive-green. He turned to her. ‘We’re so fortunate, don’t you think, to live here in Nagasaki? We’ve come so far. Think of it, Japan shut off for more than two hundred years, and then in 1859 our port was one of those chosen to open to the world. Can you imagine? All those young men from Britain, France, America, coming here, trading our tea, silks and seaweed, making lots of money, yes, selling us weapons and ships, yes, playing fast and loose with our politics, maybe, but helping Japan become what it is today. The end of the shogunate, our navy, the railroads, the lighthouses, our heavy engineering, it’s extraordinary, Yuko, but our city helped start all that. We are so lucky to be here.’

  She couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm. He asked if she was laughing at him. ‘No, but you make it sound as if we couldn’t have done it on our own.’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean to suggest that. But can you imagine, Yuko, doing what they did? When you see all those ships down by the docks, could you imagine one day, leaving all you had known, going to a strange country, building something out of nothing?’

  His exuberance after so many days of misery was intoxicating. Yuko gazed at the sea and beyond to the horizon. She could not imagine a life beyond Nagasaki. Hers had been contained to her island of Kyushu, to visits to her aunt in Fukuoka north of Nagasaki, eating smoked eel and caramelised pork in Kagoshima to the south, day trips to fishing villages to the east and west, and Iōjima. The rest of the world remained a flat map on her father’s study wall. Kenzo would point out the Japanese footprint on other lands: Korea, Taiwan, Port Arthur, Tsingtao in China, the Marshall, Caroline and Mariana Islands and Manchuria, but that was different. She understood the world was more than naval bases and the stamp of soldiers’ boots on foreign soil. If she were to leave, she asked Shige, where would he suggest she go? He spoke of Asia and Europe and America. ‘Think of all those Japanese already living in Hawaii or the west coast of America. The Wild Wild West? Would you come, Yuko?’

  Mrs Kogi was upon them before she could respond. ‘You young things, so much energy,’ she wheezed. Shige smiled at both women. ‘I have a suggestion. Why don’t we walk up to Thomas Glover’s house?’ The Scottish trader’s bungalow had been built above the waterfronts of Oura and Sagarimatsu. The house, with its wooden veranda, a roof shaped like a four-leaf clover and the demon heads on red tiles, had a fine view across the bay to the Mitsubishi shipyard. Yuko thought of climbing to that high spot, the brief freedom she might feel seeing an expanse of water to those unknown lands. ‘I’d like that.’ He nodded, pleased. ‘I hear a performance of Madama Butterfly is coming here in summer.’ He blushed, perhaps embarrassed his remark sounded like an invitation. A rumoured love affair between Glover and a Japanese woman was thought to be the inspiration behind the opera’s story of the young pregnant girl Cio-cio, abandoned by an American husband and later driven to suicide. The matchmaker lifted a fluttering hand to her gold locket. ‘Poor Cio-cio, such tragedy.’

  ‘The name caught me. I was back in Chinatown in the mildewed room, Jomei’s hand on my shoulder, whispering the name in my ear. Surely, the name was a coincidence, or was Mother right? Had Jomei only seen me as some plaything to use for a while? What would have happened if Father had not come that day? Had I expected Jomei to leave his wife and marry me? What if, like Cio-Cio, I’d fallen pregnant? What would have happened to me, the child? The distraction that Shige might have been, if only for some moments, was broken. Mrs Kogi filled the void with her chirrup but after a while Shige must have realised my silence was more than a bout of shyness.’

  He asked if Yuko was feeling unwell. She hated the weak lie but could think of no other: she had slept badly but she had enjoyed their day. ‘I apologise, Mrs Kogi, I’ll be unable to eat cake with you.’

  The matchmaker forced a tight smile. ‘I’m sorry you’re feeling unwell, Yuko.’ There was an awkward pause, while Shige seemed to assess
what had happened.

  ‘He glanced at me and asked, “Might we do this again?” I looked at him, this engineer. He was not as unpleasant as I had feared, handsome even. Still, the thought of marriage is preposterous. The fever of Jomei will never leave; I will carry him forever. This Shige can never compete. He is some distant satellite to Jomei’s sun, but the doctor is gone, I have heard nothing from him. No word. The cruelty of such disregard. What remains? Mother says marriage is not about love but practicalities, and that true lasting love is built over time. Maybe she is right, and even if she is wrong, I need to be allowed more time. Maybe a life exists beyond Jomei, beyond this engineer, a life just for me, bound by no others. So I told this Shige Watanabe that I would agree to see him again. He smiled and said another meeting would be passable for him too.’

  Sharing an Umbrella

  Ai-ai-gasa: In feudal times, men and women in intimate relations were not supposed to be close together in public, to say nothing of linking arms or holding hands. One of the rare occasions this was permissible was a rainy day when they could enjoy intimacy by sharing an umbrella. Therefore, if a man offered one to a woman, it was often interpreted as an implicit expression of his love for her. Since then a man and a woman in love have been described as sharing an umbrella.

  That is how Shige and Yuko began, on the Dutch Slope. If Sato was Iōjima and Chinatown, Shige was Nagasaki. Yuko and he would meet at some landmark, find ways to distract Mrs Kogi with cake at a cafe and retreat to a sheltered spot. He would tell her the history of her own city and she would marvel at how little she knew, so ignorant of such a familiar place. ‘I have walked the cobbles, and passed the buildings, and watched the ships arrive and know nothing.’ Shige brought the place to life. They passed shops selling lanterns, spectacles or parasols and he conjured up those foreigners drawn here by trade and industry and adventure. Christians from the West and Chinese from the East marked the city’s architecture and their bones filled the ground. Yuko would listen to his stories and beneath the wood and metal and stone she began to appreciate the human foundations that lay among the physical structures. Shige spoke of the Portuguese traders in the sixteenth century, the rise and then suppression of Christianity, the Dutch and Chinese traders allowed entry to Nagasaki. They lived within designated areas to suppress smuggling, the spread of the Bible, the debasement of public morals. Little remained of the houses built for the Chinese in Juzenji-Go in 1689 save for a few stones, a ditch, some lattice doors. Yuko tried to understand what it must have been like to be one of those inhabitants kept in isolation. Shige read from a history book, ‘Tenkohodo was built for the sea goddess, Maso.’ He drew a circle with his arm. ‘All the buildings were surrounded by three rings of containment: a six-foot fence, an empty moat and another bamboo fence.’