by Karin Tanabe
“If something terrible had happened to the Hartmanns in Shanghai, we would have gotten word,” her father had told her in Tokyo. Emi liked to think that was true, but who would get word to them? Leo’s letters were obviously being destroyed or lost en route.
When the train finally sputtered out of the station in a cloud of black smoke, precisely on schedule and accompanied by the sound of the stationmaster’s whistle, Emi looked out the window as rows of houses gave way to a vista of endless rice paddies dotted with distant farmhouses. What would Christian be doing in Crystal City night after night at sunset? she wondered. She enjoyed the thought of him missing her, thinking about her in the swimming pool in her navy blue bathing suit, or in the orchard wearing less than that. She would continue to cry over Leo, especially with her uncertainty about his life in Shanghai, but not over Christian. Her mother had assured her that the officials in camp said the Germans were staying until late 1944. Until he left Crystal City, she was sure he’d be safe.
The atmosphere on the train was solemn, even in the luxurious first-class compartment with its hardwood floors and blue velvet seats that swiveled so that passengers could face to the front or rear. Soldiers went back and forth checking passengers’ papers, not in order, but at random. The government issued travel permits, and no one could board a train without one. Emi’s was tucked tight against her identification card. Her father had told her that foreigners’ travel was severely restricted but that there would be some gaijin going to Karuizawa. That was where the government wanted them—all together, easier to watch.
As night fell, Emi was surprised to see that none of the stations the train chugged through were properly illuminated. Instead of electric lights, there were only fragile white paper lanterns, held by railway officials on the platforms. But the train did not stop at the smaller stations, steaming steadily ahead to the mountains and Yokokawa, where they would switch to electric power.
When she was just drifting off to sleep, the soldiers came stomping back into her car, jarring not only for the noise they made, but because they were the only people on the train who smelled clean. In their moss-green uniforms, their armbands stiff and proud on their biceps, they made it clear they were looking for anyone suspicious and that they alone defined what the term meant. Luckily for Emi, it didn’t mean her. They walked by without a look in her direction and she pressed her face against the window, listening to her ears pop as they climbed higher.
Two and a half hours after the train left Tokyo, it reached the large station of Yokokawa, gateway to the Kiso Mountains. Though the passengers were not let off the train if they were not disembarking there, the enterprising locals knew they would be bored and hungry. Roaming vendors sold hot tea and rice balls wrapped with seaweed to the passengers, who awaited them with open windows, despite the exorbitant prices.
Worried about how much she’d get to eat in Karuizawa, especially without her father to help her, Emi bought five rice balls and put them in her traveling bag. She looked out at the town, where if the streets hadn’t been bathed in only soft lantern light she knew she would have seen a large statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy. She closed her eyes and prayed to her for safety.
They were in Yokokawa longer than Emi had expected, to allow for the change of track and the switch from a steam engine to an electric-powered one, the train officials explained. The children had their heads hanging out the windows, despite the cold December weather, to watch the engine swap, craning their little necks as far as their mothers would let them.
As Emi finally slept, the train raced through the mountain towns, navigating more than twenty narrow brick tunnels before slowing to pull them up thousands of feet to the resort town of Karuizawa.
Emi’s father had told her that it was Western residents that had made the town so popular as they fled there in the summer months to escape the heat of the cities. The altitude kept it cool, and according to Norio, Westerners found the active volcano picturesque. But it wasn’t anywhere near as glamorous as some of the resort towns they had visited when in Austria and Germany, like Marienbad and Baden-Baden, he warned. There were a few hotels that catered to the rich, but the town was mostly dotted with modest summer cottages. The main draw was the weather, and the beauty of nature, not the architecture. Norio had drawn Emi a map, which showed that the town was originally a resting place for travelers going southeast to Tokyo and Yokohama or going west to Matsumoto Castle and Nagoya.
Emi’s eyes were just blinking open when the train eventually glided to a stop shortly after midnight.
A porter arrived to help the women with their suitcases, a man too old to be doing such a job, while Emi stood and watched the groups of women—mothers and daughters, sisters—feeling, for the first time in many years, terribly alone. Her mother had been her companion ever since the war broke out, but here she was by herself. They didn’t see eye to eye on everything, and they had gotten into arguments that they would not have dared engage in around Norio, but Emi could not have imagined her last few years without Keiko’s companionship. She leaned against the open door, wishing she was leaning against her mother, and didn’t move until the conductor warned that the train would be leaving.
When Emi stepped onto the platform, her lungs filled with fresh mountain air and she felt immediately calmer. Her parents had sworn she’d been to Karuizawa as a young child, but looking around she had no recollection of the station.
Emi stood for fifteen minutes on the dark platform, now nearly deserted, before walking to the entrance and waiting by the ticket counter instead. Her father had said Mrs. Mori was to meet her, but since Emi did not know what she looked like, besides an older Japanese woman, she would just have to wait and let herself be found.
After thirty minutes, it was clear that she was not going to be collected by Mrs. Mori or anyone else, and all the taxis that had been lingering in front of the station when the train arrived—the last train of the night—were gone.
The Moris, Emi concluded, had forgotten about her.
Emi knew very little of the Moris, besides the fact that Jiro had been a diplomat in London and Washington. His wife, Yuka, had gone to grade school in America. They didn’t seem like the worst people to be dispatched to, sounding like older versions of her parents, but that made the reality even more preposterous to Emi. Stand-in parents when she could have just stayed with hers.
Emi had the Moris’ address, but since it was very dark outside, she didn’t trust herself to start wandering the town searching for the house. And even though she had been forced to live in it in America, Emi wasn’t comfortable in the countryside. She looked at the address—which was no more than the house number, as was typical for Japan, as very few streets had names—and considered her options.
Emi took a few steps away from the station, turning onto what felt like the town’s main road, the ginza. In the dark she could just make out a few small stores, some with signs outside in English. A photographer’s store, a furniture store. Perhaps some proprietor would be open late and might know the Moris. She was about to pick up her suitcases and head to a shop where a light still burned when she heard a voice ask in heavily accented Japanese if she needed any help. She turned and saw two soldiers approaching—Germans, she knew immediately from the swastikas on their armbands. They walked up to her with interest.
Out of instinct she shook her head no.
“Are you sure?” the other one asked in German, gesturing that he was happy to pick up her bags.
Not thinking before she spoke, Emi responded in German that she could handle her luggage alone, but thank you. They both stopped short.
“Who are you?” the thinner of the two asked. “A Japanese woman speaking German?”
Emi guessed that the soldiers were not used to being treated with hatred or fear by the Japanese. Her father had warned her that she would be one of the only people in Japan who had seen, who understood, that the Nazis were torturing the Jews. Information was extremely controlled
in Japan, Norio warned. When he had told their neighbors in Tokyo about Kristallnacht, what they had seen in Vienna, they did not believe him. The average citizens knew nothing about what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in Europe. All they knew were that the Germans were on the side of the Japanese, and that they were going to win, they were quite sure of that. Japan was a hierarchical society, her father had reminded her when she’d come back, and no one dared question what was proclaimed from the top, except those familiar with America and Europe. Men like him.
But Emi had reason to hate the Nazis, and she was terrified that that hatred was all over her face.
“We must know who you are,” said one of the soldiers, his smile wide and friendly.
“Oh no,” said Emi, still in German, but trying to backpedal away from what she’d just said. “I only speak a little.” She picked up her suitcases and hurried away from the men as they called out for her to stop. Dragging the bags, she made it up the street and glanced behind her, relieved to see that they had not bothered to follow her. In Tokyo she hadn’t had to interact with any German soldiers. Why had her father not warned her that they were in Karuizawa? Did he not know?
A store, closer to the station on the main street, had just turned on a light and Emi headed straight there. She put her suitcases on the ground outside and turned the door handle, which was locked. She knocked on the glass door several times, pressing her face against it, now afraid that she would have to spend her first night in Karuizawa on a bench in the train station or on the street with German soldiers. After her fifth loud knock, a second light came on and a man stepped out from the back of the store and walked toward the door. Emi was surprised to see he was a foreigner.
“Konbanwa,” she said, greeting him when he opened the door.
“Konbanwa,” he said back, offering to help with her suitcases. He spoke quick, confident Japanese with only a trace of an accent, which Emi thought might be Russian or Polish, certainly Eastern European.
He moved his slender body aside and let her enter, and she explained that she was just in from Tokyo and looking for the Moris, who lived at number 1462. “They never came to fetch me at the station and there are no taxis now,” Emi concluded, apologizing for knocking at such an hour. “No taxis, but plenty of German soldiers walking the street,” she added.
“Yes, you will see many German SS here,” said the storekeeper. “So many that the notices printed in town are now written in both Japanese and German. For some in Karuizawa, it’s unsettling.”
“The Jews?” asked Emi, wondering if this man was Jewish.
He shrugged and didn’t give any more detail.
He put a cloth over his cash register and started wiping down the counter. “I know the Moris, of course,” he added, looking at Emi with red, tired eyes. “Their home is down a long dirt road a bit set aside from the others. It will be difficult for you to find on foot at night, especially with your luggage. All the roads in Karuizawa are dirt except for around the machi,” he said, referring to the shopping area. “I would take you, but I’m afraid I still have a lot of preparations to do in the shop for tomorrow. It’s Monday and that tends to be the only day we get business anymore.”
Emi nodded. Her gut was gurgling, implying that now was the right time to panic.
“But my wife can surely drive you,” he offered. “The children are sleeping. She can leave them.” He called out, using a word in a language Emi was unfamiliar with, and a young Japanese woman came out from behind a door to what Emi could now see was the stockroom.
“This is my wife, Ayumi,” the shopkeeper said, though he hadn’t introduced himself. He explained Emi’s predicament to his wife, a slight woman with a bit of a slope in her back, who smiled and nodded at Emi, telling her to follow her to their truck behind the shop.
“It’s just a short drive to the Moris,” Ayumi said as she helped Emi with her luggage. “I’m happy to take you. I’ve known them for many years; it’s probably time I did them a favor,” she said looking down at Emi’s large bags. “Besides, you would only make it a few steps with these. You must be coming from Tokyo.”
Emi nodded. “Mrs. Mori is my mother’s cousin,” she said, “but I’ve only met her once.”
“You’ll like her,” said Ayumi, starting the truck and pulling out onto the main road. “Both of them are very interesting, though I don’t see them in town much anymore. They are in ill health, I believe. I’m glad they’ll have some company now. They never did have children, did they?” She looked at Emi questioningly.
Emi shook her head, though she had no idea about the Moris’ family and her father hadn’t said a word about their health. Emi wondered if she was being called down to Karuizawa to play nursemaid. Unsettled, she managed to say, “Yes, it will be better for all of us.”
Emi looked out at the thickly clustered pine trees lining the dirt roads. Emi’s father had told her that many senior European diplomats had houses there that they passed to each other with the changing of the guard. What she hadn’t realized was how many of them had stayed in Japan despite the war.
“Is your husband European?” Emi asked Ayumi as they turned onto an even smaller road in the compact truck. Emi knew it was obvious that he was European; she just wanted Ayumi to be specific.
“He is, depending on your definition of European,” said Ayumi. “Evgeni is Russian. There are a few Russians in Karuizawa now, but nothing like the number of Germans. They are everywhere. You saw soldiers tonight, yes?” she asked.
Emi nodded and admitted that she had stupidly spoken German to them.
“There are many soldiers,” said Ayumi. “And you will see the Hitlerjugend, too. The Hitler youth. They parade down the street very proudly. They have matching brown shirts and coats and swing the Nazi flag like it’s an extension of their arms. You’ll see. But you, you speak German, you said?”
“I do,” said Emi, thinking for a moment about Kersten and the beginnings of the Hitlerjugend that she’d witnessed in Vienna. “I lived in Germany as a child and then in Austria when I was older.”
“The Germans have all the food. They even have their own bakery that makes dark bread,” said Ayumi. “It’s the color of mud, but it’s delicious. They gave me a loaf once in the store when I was working without Evgeni. If you befriend them, they might give you one, too. They have many things to eat and we have almost nothing.”
Emi stayed quiet for a few minutes as Ayumi detoured around several holes in the road, picturing Leo and what he would think of her if she took bread from a Nazi.
“Evgeni’s parents emigrated to Tokyo following the Russian Revolution,” Ayumi explained. “But after the earthquake in 1923 they went to Kobe, which is where Evgeni and I met. When the war broke out, we came here, and Evgeni opened the store.”
“I’ve lived many places and met all kinds of people,” said Emi. “Though I wanted to stay in Tokyo, I was happy to see a foreign face when your husband came to the door. It reminds me of the life I just left behind.”
Ayumi nodded as if she understood, but suddenly stopped the truck and pushed the clutch into reverse, the wheels spinning loudly on the wet dirt.
“I missed the road,” she said. “It’s so hard to see between these trees at night.” Ayumi drove fast down the narrow road but pulled up when they could just make out a light in the distance. “That’s the Moris’ house there,” she said, pointing. “If you don’t mind, I’ll let you out here and help you with your bags. We had rain yesterday and Mr. Mori isn’t known for keeping his road . . . well, I’ll let you out here.”
The two women got out of the truck and between them hauled Emi’s large suitcases the rest of the way. Their shoes and pant legs were covered in mud by the time they reached the house, where the only visible light was a single lantern sitting on the front step.
“I’ll go now,” said Ayumi, backing away. “Let you three get acquainted.”
Emi thanked Ayumi repeatedly as she headed down the road, bowing at her befor
e she disappeared into the wooded darkness. She turned and looked at the house, which was two stories high, but much smaller than Emi’s family’s house in Tokyo. It had large sliding windows, which was nice for a summer house but not, she imagined, ideal in winter. The entire structure was covered in stacked, stained wood tiles, and its pointed, clay roof, layered in waved shingles, gave it a more European look than many of the houses in Tokyo.
Emi looked down at her feet, which were wet and growing cold. The bottoms of both her suitcases were covered in mud, too, as neither she nor Ayumi had been strong enough to lift them very high. She stood there and wished that her amah or her mother and father were with her.
She knocked on the door and waited. After a minute, she tried again, but still no one came. When she had knocked for almost five minutes, she reached for the handle and was relieved to find it open. She made her way inside and looked at the narrow staircase off to the right of the entry. Struggling to find a light first near the stairs, then in the living room, she almost tripped over a body on the floor, right in front of the fireplace, which held the last glowing embers of an evening fire. Emi looked down and saw, in the very dim light, that there were two bodies hidden under piles of blankets on two futons in front of the fireplace. They were as close to it as possible without being in it. She could make out the bodies only slightly, seeing a small protuberance under each blanket. She looked for the top of their heads, and soon realized that both the Moris’ hair was covered by zukin, a thick fireproof hood that many now owned and Emi assumed was imperative if one slept with their head nearly in a fire.
