The China Lover

by Ian Buruma

  “Bombed?”

  I explained the meaning. Nambetsu waved his hand. “Oh, no,” he said, “all foreigners are strong. Have more.”

  Waterman’s face soon became alarmingly red, as though he were overheating. And his voice grew even louder. Like many people not used to drinking, he drank too fast, prompting Nambetsu to pour more saké into his cup. Isamu, just to be difficult, refused to speak English, so that Yoshiko and I were obliged to translate what little he said in his broken Japanese. Not as insensitive as his booming voice might have suggested, Waterman was quite aware of Isamu’s hostility and tried, in his American way, to defuse the tension: “Hey, Isamu, lighten up. I hear you’re a famous artist. Have you had any recent shows in the States?”

  Isamu’s face darkened. There was an awkward pause, filled by the tired-sounding cicadas. “That’s just what I’ve been telling him, Norman,” said Yoshiko, making an effort to sound bright. “He’s getting so stuck here in Japan.”

  Nambetsu was in the kitchen, preparing the next course. The smell of grilled mackerel wafted into the room. “I’ll go to the house,” said Yoshiko brightly, “and get a catalogue of Isamu-san’s last show in Tokyo.” Isamu told her to stay right where she was. Waterman said he’d love to see it. Sensing another storm brewing, I said nothing. I knew when to keep my head down. Yoshiko left the room and stumbled into her sandals in the dark.

  “So, when are you coming back to the States, Isamu?” insisted Waterman. “I mean, it’s great here, beautiful, but you can’t bury yourself in the boonies like this forever. You’ve got to have a show in New York, L.A. That’s where the action is. Look at Yoshiko. She knows the score.”

  Isamu looked at him aghast. “What do you know about art? You’re nothing but a vulgar, money-grubbing idiot. You’re the reason anything of value in America gets swamped by junk. Junk culture, that’s you. You’re a peddler of junk, a rubbish merchant, an enemy of art.”

  “Take it easy, fellow!” shouted Waterman, his face the color of beetroot. “You may not rate my movies—”

  “I’ve never seen your lousy movies, and I doubt I ever will!”

  “I produce quality products—”

  “Products?”

  “Listen here, you damned snob, I work my ass off to produce art for real people, while you . . . you just sit here in your little cave in Japan, thinking you’re too good to get your hands dirty in the only place that counts, where the public decides what’s good and what’s lousy. You talk about art. I know about art, pal. This is the way it’s always been, in Renaissance Italy as much as in Hollywood, USA. Michelangelo didn’t sit around jerking off in Rome. He made . . .”

  It happened in a flash. Waterman was howling, as the scalding tea from Isamu’s cup streamed down his face. This was the moment Yoshiko chose to return from the house, carrying the catalogue of Isamu’s Tokyo show. Waterman was whimpering on the floor, covering his face with a napkin. “Ice!” he cried. “For Chrissake get me some ice!” I was just sitting there, numb with shock. Yoshiko slammed the book on the floor and shouted at her husband in Japanese: “What’s going on? What have you done?”

  She looked at me, but I didn’t know what to say. In a fury I had never seen before, Yoshiko screamed: “I can’t believe what’s happening here. You’ve assaulted my guest!” Isamu told her to shut up. The man had insulted his intelligence. Nambetsu, quietly serving the fish, nodded his head in agreement.

  “Insulted your intelligence? Who do you think you are? He’s our guest!”

  “Shut up, woman,” said Isamu, replying in English to her Japanese. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve already insulted me by bringing this vulgar Hollywood shyster into my home!”

  “Shyster? What do you mean shyster. I . . .”

  Isamu had picked up an ashtray and hurled it at his wife, only just missing her face. It crashed through Nambetsu’s sliding door of the finest Shikoku paper, and thudded into the cypresswood wall, making a nasty crack. I was hardly aware of what I was doing. I was still a numbed observer, but this time a mad impulse jerked me out of my passive state. I did what one should never do, intervene in a conjugal fight. Absurdly, I lurched to my feet, the knight in shining armor, the protector of the gentle sex, and shouted the first thing that came into my mind: “Don’t you dare throw things at a lady!” Isamu’s eyes, hot with rage, swiveled my way. Even Yoshiko, the object of my chivalry, looked shocked. I had deflected the storm by turning it toward myself. Waterman had stumbled to a tap, splashing water on his face, with quick frantic movements, as though he were on fire. Nambetsu looked at me with contempt, perhaps even loathing. I will never forget his words: “You’re just an ordinary foreigner after all.”

  27

  I SAW YOSHIKO only once before she left for America. We had coffee at our usual table in the Imperial Hotel. The Waterman incident was left unmentioned. But she did say that her marriage with Isamu was over. She had been foolish to think that she could live with a foreigner, she said. The cultural differences made it impossible. “Isamu thinks he knows Japan, but he’s a typical American. He never even learned to speak proper Japanese. You are different, Sid-san. But Isamu lives in a world of his own imagination. I admire his purity as an artist. But I can’t sacrifice myself for his art.”

  The breakup must have been hard on her. When she removed her sunglasses to rub her eyes, I could see that she had been crying. “Divorce is a terrible thing,” I said, sounding fatuous even to myself. “But you’ll soon get over it. Time is a great healer. Think of all the movies you’ll make in America, and the Broadway show.”

  “It’s not that,” she said with a slight air of irritation. “Believe me, getting divorced is a relief. I just had some distressing news today, but it’s okay. There’s nothing to be done about it.”

  When I insisted, as her friend and confidant, that she tell me the bad news, she shook her head. The fey-looking waiter came over and asked if we would be needing anything further. I ordered another coffee, and settled into my seat. A young woman in an evening gown was tinkling away on a white piano. Yoshiko began talking about her father. He had always been a feckless type, she said, a gambler, incapable of taking care of his family. But he had been a good man in China, a true idealist. He had genuinely loved the Chinese. China was his world, his reason to exist. But after the war, back in Japan, he couldn’t cope with life. He was barely able even to take care of himself, let alone his family. It was as if there were nothing left to live for. So he became a bum, stealing his own daughter’s money, only to gamble it away. At first Yoshiko felt sorry for him. He too, she felt, had been a victim of that terrible war. But enough’s enough. Though she continued to bear his name, she wanted nothing more to do with him.

  Again I offered my sympathy. It must be very hard to lose a father like that. No, she said, it wasn’t that either. So what was it? She looked so helpless as she cast those big dark eyes up at me. A solitary tear rolled down her cheek. “Sid-san,” she said softly, “do you remember that man who came up to me after the wedding?” I thought back for a moment, and said, yes, of course I did. Well, his name was Sato, Sato Daisuke. He had been more of a father to her in China than her real one, always looking out for her, helping her when she was in trouble. Sato had loved China as intensely as her father had. To be sure, he had a weakness for Chinese girls, and was always getting into scrapes, but he had a good heart. Here she paused, dabbing at her eyes with a silk handkerchief. “He deserved better,” she sobbed. What happened to him? Who was Sato?

  I received only fragments of information: how he had worked for the Japanese army, and been lucky to have escaped arrest by the Russians after the war. But, Yoshiko said, perhaps there was a fate even worse than dying in a Siberian slave camp. Back in his own country, Sato had no more reason to live. His world, like her father’s, had vanished. So he drifted like a ghost, appearing from time to time without warning. She had given him money. He promised to stay away. But he couldn’t carry on, and committed s
uicide. His headless corpse was discovered by a farmer in Yamanashi Prefecture. He had tied himself to a tree, after taking an overdose of sleeping tablets. It was at the height of summer. A red mountain dog must have found him several days later and made off with his head. The dog was spotted by a local girl just as it was gnawing on its prize in an abandoned shed.

  As I was listening to this horrifying story, my mind drifted back to my first glimpses of Japan, in those cinemas in the east side of the city. Dimly perceived story lines came back to me of shabby figures arriving at ruined homes they no longer recognized, finding their wives living with other men. The pianist in the evening gown was playing a Cole Porter song, skillfully and devoid of any human feeling.

  “Well,” said Yoshiko, smiling through her tears, “there is no point dwelling on the past, is there? There is nothing we can do about it anymore. You remember that song that everyone sung a year ago?” She sang the words: “Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be . . .” Still smiling, she said: “I believe in that. The world is sure to become a better place one day. That’s what I want to dedicate my life to. You know that, don’t you, Sid?”

  I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. “Dedicate it to what, darling?”

  She softly squeezed my arm. “To peace, of course,” she said.

  And so Yoshiko went off to the United States, where a glittering future awaited her, or so she hoped. Isamu went off on some tour of the world, paid for by a big American foundation, to investigate art and religion, or perhaps it was culture and spirituality. Nambetsu went on, without my help, to have a big commercial success in New York. The Japan Society organized a huge exhibition of his works, and one of the Rockefellers bought all his paintings.

  Shangri-La got off to a decent start. Reviews in Boston and Baltimore were respectful, though not exactly effusive. Still, there was time for improvements. The costumes were much praised and Sam Jaffe, older and even more like a wizened old grandma than in the movie, was said to be terrific as the Grand Lama. Yoshiko certainly looked the part, from what I heard. “Pretty as a tropical flower,” declared the Baltimore Sun. Yoshiko gave an interview to Time magazine, reflecting with proper modesty on her role as an Oriental ambassadress. Her photograph, showing her dressed in a Tibetan-style costume, was published as a full spread in Life. She was consulted on The Ed Sullivan Show about the spiritual wisdom of Buddhism. Bob Ryan came round to see her backstage in Philadelphia. He assured her she would be a triumph on Broadway. Tables at Sardi’s were booked for the opening night. Flowers were ordered, stars invited, crates of champagne stacked up high. All of New York would be there.

  And it failed. Not just failed, it bombed. The costumes were praised once more, and Sam Jaffe was again lauded as a superb Grand Lama. Yoshiko looked “as pretty as a peony,” declared the New York Times critic. But the music stank and, as the New York Herald Tribune put it, “the story was as soggy as a piece of cardboard left in the rain.” Shangri-La limped on gamely for three weeks. Party invitations were canceled, lunches postponed. Yoshiko was suddenly in the big city all alone.

  She never heard from Waterman again. But the doors of Hollywood had not yet entirely closed in her face. Yoshiko was cast in a comedy called Navy Wife, directed by a fellow named Ed Bernds, who started off as a soundman for Mr. Capra, and went on to have some success with the Three Stooges. I never saw Shangri-La, but it must have been a masterpiece compared to this mawkish little confection. Joan Bennett is the wife of a U.S. Navy commander based in Japan (and the actual wife of the film’s producer, Walter Wanger, hence her appearance; I can’t think of any other reason why she would have bothered). Her name is Judy, or something, and the Navy man is Bud, or Bob, or Jack—I can’t recall. The point, if there is one, is that a Japanese housewife, played by Yoshiko, observes how Judy, or Debbie, or whatever, bosses Bud or Jack around, and not just in the house. So Yoshiko wants “equal rights” too, just like the American wife. It all comes to a head at a military Christmas party, a scene that is supposed to be humorous but is in fact deeply depressing.

  Since the movie was assumed to be of special interest to the expatriate community in Tokyo, I was compelled to review it. I wrote: “Too talented to be in this turkey, Shirley Yamaguchi’s beauty is still worth the price of a ticket. Given the severe limitations of the script, she makes the most of a part that is so ludicrous it isn’t even funny.” Not the most stylish piece of writing, I know, but I too had to struggle with unpromising material. My charming editor, Cecil Shiratori, had adored the film and asked me why I had to be so “b-b-bloody negative.” I don’t think the movie played for more than a week in Japan. The Japanese critics politely ignored it.

  It can’t have been long after her appearance in Navy Wife that Yoshiko announced to the world that she was retiring as a movie actress, and would marry a promising young Japanese diplomat. I was stunned. A failure on Broadway and one dud movie shouldn’t have fazed her, let alone sink a budding international career. She was still Japan’s best hope. Perhaps it was “true love” that prompted this mad, impulsive act. If so, it confirms my doubts about true love. I fear the promising young diplomat made his move when she was feeling most vulnerable. Alas, however, by marrying an older actress with a somewhat checkered past, he ensured that his youthful promise would go unfulfilled. He wasn’t exactly fired from the Foreign Ministry, just sent to Rangoon. What the hell Yoshiko would do in Rangoon was anybody’s guess. I felt caught in a tangle of emotions: abandonment, loss, even a certain sense of betrayal. A great legend had died before her time. A bright star had suddenly gone dark. It felt as if I had been yanked roughly out of a wonderful dream.

  I still adored Yoshiko, of course, and had hoped to resume my role as mother confessor as soon as she came back to Tokyo. Surely her husband wouldn’t mind me. He must have heard that I was no threat. I was dying to hear all about her adventures in New York and Hollywood. She did call me once, from her husband’s apartment. We gossiped and laughed, just like old times, and then I made my fatal mistake. The subject of Navy Wife came up and we happily agreed that it was an awful picture. She said: “And let’s face it, I wasn’t much good in it either, was I?” “Truthfully, darling, you were not.” I heard a sharp click as she put the receiver down. I’ve not heard from Yoshiko since.

  28

  THE RAINY SEASON of 1959 seemed never to end. Everything in my apartment, from the tatami floor to the clothes in my closet, had the rank smell of old mushrooms. My shoes in the hall had turned a gangrenous green. The covers of my precious books were bent out of shape, as though they had passed through the hands of a circus strong-man. Yet I had little desire to venture out into the gray drizzle, or the sheeting showers, or the never-ending drip-drip of warm spring rain. No wonder the Japanese have so many words for rain. I wish they had had as many words for principle, or spontaneity. I was bored with my job as a movie reviewer, tired of hearing my own voice, week after week, pronouncing verdicts on the work of others. I was trying to write a novel set in the occupation years, but realized with a steadily sinking heart that it was going nowhere. The words remained abstractions, without the smell of life. Opinions kept intruding. Perhaps I had written too many reviews. Frankly, I was getting bored with Japan.

  Precisely the things that had delighted me when I first arrived, the strangeness, the childlike innocence, the courtesy, the attachment to form and ceremony, all these things had begun to grate on my nerve ends like a file. Now, instead of exoticism and formality I saw insularity, conformism, and narrow-mindedness. The obsessive politeness was really a form of social hemophilia, the terror of pricking a person’s self-esteem lest he or she bleed to death.

  These moods can pass, I know, and the odd, unexpected encounter with a beautiful young man with a gap-toothed smile and sturdy thighs would lift my spirits, but never for very long. I should have rejoiced at the revival of Tokyo from a charred wasteland to a prosperous city. It was good to see the disappearance from the streets of young children fighting over cigarette
butts and eating out of garbage cans. It was a blessing that millions of ordinary Japanese were beginning to lead civilized lives once again. Every new neon sign and concrete building was surely a sign of progress. And yet I couldn’t help feeling that the hope of something more inspiring than material comfort had been dashed. Thinking of the indomitable spirit of those defeated people gathered in the cinemas in 1946, their openness to new ideas, their honest stoicism, I felt a sense of loss, of promise unfulfilled and hope abandoned. Something great could have come from the catastrophe. What the Japanese acquired instead was the worst of the American way of life, imported wholesale with much greed and no understanding. We gave them democracy, and what did they do with it? They elected a prime minister who had been arrested for war crimes just a few years before.

  I complain about the Japanese. But my own country was largely to blame. We had taught them to mimic us in every way, and they were our all too willing pupils. We instilled the idea of our superiority, and they believed us, poor lambs. We released Kishi Nobusuke, slave driver of Manchuria and wartime minister in General Tojo’s cabinet, from prison, just because he was an anti-Communist. Did anyone protest? Not a bit of it. The Japanese were willing to forget the past, and be corrupted by the promise of riches. More than willing. Like a submissive pan-pan girl, Japan spread her legs for us to impregnate her with the seed of our own shallow mediocrity. She got her chewing gum, her Hershey bars, her perfume, and her silk stockings, but she lost her soul. And now she hated us for it.

  The loathing of the seduced for the seducer, of the hooker for the john; I saw it in the movies: the endless succession of sour-tempered stories set around U.S. military bases, or the films about Hiroshima, one of them featuring a group of gloating American tourists buying souvenir bones of their incinerated victims.