Sayonara

by James A. Michener

  I do not think that those who have always stayed at home can understand how terrible a thing language is, how dependent we are upon it. During the tremendous weeks that followed when May flowers bloomed along our canal there were times when I almost tore at my throat trying to find some way to express an emotion to Hana-ogi. It’s all right to gesture at a girl’s eyes and indicate that they are lovely but if you feel your heart expand at the very sound of her quiet approach along the canal—if you feel the earth tremble at night when she brings your soft pillow to the bed roll while beside it she places her canvas pillow filled with rice bran—then you feel that you must speak to her or perish.

  I knew exactly four Japanese phrases. Ichi ban meant number one and I used this interminably. When I first saw Hana-ogi undressed I gasped at her amazing beauty and cried, “Ichi ban!” When she cooked a good meal it was “Ichi ban.” When she saw President Truman’s picture in the paper I said, “America ichi ban.” And once when she suggested that her breasts were too small I protested, “Ichi ban! Ichi ban!”

  I also knew Domo arigato gozaimasu, which meant thank you. I used it all the time and it was curious how this phrase of courtesy came to mean so much to us. We were deeply indebted to each other, for we had undertaken unusual risks, so there was an extra tenderness about all we did. When I spread the bed roll I would say, “Dom’ arigato” but more often I used the full phrase. I was in a land of courtesy where great courtesy had been extended me.

  Of course I knew the universal Japanese words takusan and sukoshi for much and little. Every American in Japan used these words as his final comment upon an infinity of subjects. The words look strange to me as I write them, for in Japanese the letter u is not pronounced in connection with k and it was taksan this and skoshi that just as it was Ta-ka-raz-ka and skiyaki rather than sukiyaki. I remember once when I was moved to great depths by something Hana-ogi had done and I pointed to my heart, put her golden hand above it and cried, “Takusan, takusan!” And I indicated that it was for her that it had become takusan after having been sukoshi for so many years.

  And finally I knew the strangest of Japanese phrases, Ah, so desu-ka! It was usually abbreviated into Ah, so! and meant exactly what it would mean in English. It was also shortened to Soka, Soda, and Deska and I used it for everything. Often I would hear Hana-ogi and Katsumi talking and one of them would be narrating something and the other would repeat over and over in the most mournful way, “Ah, so desu-ka! Ah, so desu-ka!” We all laughed hilariously when Joe found an American newspaper item in which a famous woman journalist from New York said that even the Empress of Japan was becoming Americanized because she spoke a little English. “All the time I talked with the Empress she nodded her head and whenever she agreed with me she said clearly, ‘Ah, so!’ ”

  Hana-ogi, on her part, had acquired just about as much English. Like all Japanese girls her favorite phrase was Never hoppen! She could say this with the most ravishing wit and effectively kill any high-blown idea I might be trying to make, but once when I said that some day she would see New York she said with great finality, “Never hoppen.”

  A second phrase she used a great deal was one she picked up from Katsumi and it too was common all over Japan: I don’t think so. Hana-ogi had trouble with th and this phrase of classic doubt usually came out, “I don’ sink so.”

  But if Hana-ogi had difficulty with th, her conflict with l’s and v’s and f’s was unending. She had acquired, from her Takarazuka shows, a few American phrases which she loved to use on me at unexpected moments, but they were so mangled because of the limited alphabet of sound in the Japanese tongue that I often had to think twice to detect her meaning. Once, at the end of a long night when we stayed up to clean our tiny house she caught me in her arms and cried, “Oh Rroyd, I rub you berry sweet.” I was unprepared both for her emotion and her pronunciation and for one dreadful moment I almost laughed and then I looked down at her dear sweet slanted eyes and saw that they were filled with tears and we sat down on the tatami as morning broke and she told me in signs and kisses and strange half-words that she had never thought that she, Hana-ogi—dedicated to Takarazuka and knowing nothing else—would ever discover what it was to … She stopped and we had no words to finish the thought. Then she jumped up and cried, “I make you cawhee.” And she took down the coffee pot.

  It was true that not being able to talk made our physical love, there on the tatami mats, more powerful, but when that was past, when you lay there on the dark floor and heard feet along the canal path, you yearned desperately to talk of ordinary things, and once I thought of what Joe had said and I wished to God that I might be able to talk with Hana-ogi about the country club or the braces on junior’s teeth or anything trivial at all—like the news that Katsumi-san was going to have a baby. I wanted to talk about that baby, what it would be like, would its eyes be Japanese, would it live well in America, but all I could do was to place my hand on Hana-ogi’s hard flat stomach and whisper, “Katsumi-san takusan—takusan.” And she kept my hand there and said back, “Maybe some time Hana-ogi takusan” and we looked at each other and I think we both prayed that some day Hana-ogi would be takusan.

  The matter of praying gave us some trouble, as it did Joe and Katsumi. Joe, being a good Catholic, was repelled when Katsumi established in their home a Shinto shrine, complete with symbols to be prayed to. There were some heated words and the shrine came down, but I don’t think Hana-ogi would have agreed to surrendering her Shinto faith, for one day I came home and found that she had erected in our home three separate shrines: Shinto, Buddhist and Catholic. I tried to explain that I wasn’t any of the three, but she said she was willing to be all of them for me. I asked her why she honored both Shinto and Buddhism and she said that many Japanese were both and that some were Christians as well, and she found nothing curious in tending the three shrines faithfully and I noticed that she paid just as fair attention to my one as she did to her two.

  It became so imperative that we converse with each other that we looked forward with sheer delight to the visits of Joe and Katsumi and I was glad whenever Katsumi sneaked away from Joe’s surveillance and came to our house to pray to her Shinto gods for her baby to be a boy and strong. Whenever she appeared Hana-ogi and I would unleash an accumulation of questions about the most trivial things. I would say, “Tell Hana-ogi I like more salt in all my vegetables.” Imagine, I had been unable to convey that simple idea accurately. And Katsumi would reply, “Hana-ogi want know, you ever eat octopus?” and I would cry, “Is that what she was trying to ask?” and I would repeat the word octopus and Hana-ogi would tell me what it was in Japanese and thus we would possess one more word to share.

  But the hoard of meanings grew so slowly that I used to look with envy upon the G.I.’s I saw who had mastered the language. Once buying groceries I met a tough Texas boy with his Japanese girl and they were having an argument over some apples. Finally he asked in disgust, “Hey, whatsamatta you?”

  The little Japanese girl caught her breath, grew trembling mad and slapped the Texas G.I. right across the face. Then, hands on hips, she demanded, “Whatsamatta you, you whatsamatta me? I whatsamatta you first!”

  The G.I. laughed and picked up a box of candy, saying with a bow, “You my gal friendo ichi ban. I presento you.” The little girl put her arm in his, cocked her head on one side and asked him if he thought her pretty: “Steky-ne?” He kissed her and cried, “You’re steky-goddamned-ne, baby.”

  I envied the couple, for they had created a language of their own and it permitted them to convey their affection accurately. Like young children who refuse to be bothered by language, they ignored both Japanese and English and inhabited a delightful world of their own.

  I returned with my purchases and asked, “Hana-ogi, what steky-ne?” She thought for a moment then put my finger on an especially attractive design on her kimono and said, “Steky-ne.” I thought she was referring to the needlework and I pointed to another part of the kimono and asked
, “Steky-ne?” but she shook her head.

  I was perplexed, so she thought and took my finger and outlined her wonderful oval face, leaving my hand at her chin, asking, “You think—steky-ne?” and then I realized what the word meant and I kissed her warmly and whispered, “Steky-takusan-takusan-ne.”

  But as the days passed and as we fell more hopelessly in love we discovered that it was impossible to exist as passionately as we insisted without better communication of ideas, so I started to learn a little Japanese and Hana-ogi—who despised Americans and what they had done to Japan—reluctantly joined an English class. She bought a little conversation book which she studied each day on the train back and forth to Takarazuka and one night she volunteered her first complete sentence in English. Screwing up her courage like a schoolgirl reciting Milton, she swallowed, smiled at me and declaimed, “Lo, the postillion has been struck by lightning.”

  The shock of these words was so great that I burst into uncontrolled laughter and I saw Hana-ogi slowly freeze with hatred. I had laughed at her best intentions. I too was an American.

  I rose quickly from the floor to apologize, but when she saw me move toward her she ran away. Grabbing her English book she tore it to pieces and threw them at me. Those pages which fell at her feet she trampled upon and screamed in Japanese as she did so.

  Finally, I caught her hands and kissed her. I held her head to mine and when she started to sob I could have torn my tongue out. This cruel inability to speak was killing us and we were becoming lost people in a void of ideas … We were lovers who could not love and when Hana-ogi had sought to bridge this gap—humiliating herself and surrendering her hatred of the enemy—I had laughed at her.

  I realized then that words must no longer be permitted to keep us apart. I lifted Hana-ogi to the bed roll and placing her beautiful legs toward the fire, I held her head close to my heart and burst into my own words, whether she could understand them or not. That night I said, “Hana-ogi, Hana-ogi! I love you with all the heart and mind within me. I’ve been a barren desert … I’ve been a man flying a lost plane far in the sky and I have never before known a human being. Now I’ve come to an alien land among people I once hated and I’ve met you and taken you away from these people and brought you to a tiny house and you have made a shred of heaven here. Hana-ogi, if I’ve hurt you through my ignorance you ought to lash me through the streets of Osaka, for my heart is in your care and if I were to hurt you I would be destroying myself. Whether you understand or not, these words are for you.” And I kissed her.

  I believe she comprehended what I said, for with her face now pressed to mine she spoke softly in Japanese and I think she unburdened herself of the accumulated passions that had been tormenting her word-stricken heart. I closed my eyes and listened to the wonderful sound of her voice as she uttered the strange, angular syllables of her native language. She said one word which sounded like hoshimashita and I looked up and said it and she laughed and kissed my lips to keep them still while she completed her statement. She did not use one word I understood, but the meaning of her thoughts somehow seeped through and we knew that we were more deeply in love than ever before.

  From that night on Hana-ogi and I talked with each other a great deal and we discovered that in love what is said is far less important to the person spoken to than to the one who speaks. If I wanted to tell her that the days were growing longer and that I first noticed this during the year when I was a young boy on an Army base in Montana, I said just that, and it was marvelous for me, for then I remembered how I felt as a boy—the great cleanness of life and the bigness—and I had a larger heart with which to love. And Hana-ogi spoke to me of her childhood and of how she dreamed of going to Tokyo and of how, when she got there, it seemed so much smaller than she had imagined. I understood only a little of what she intended, but one thing I understood with amazing clarity: when she had talked of these things for a long time she was lovelier than I had ever imagined a woman could be. In those long nights of talking, there in the bed roll on the tatami mats, I think we came closer to sharing with complete finality two human lives than will ever be possible for me again. Forbidden the use of words, we drove our hearts to understanding, and we understood.

  In the morning after Hana-ogi tore up the English book I gathered the mutilated pages to burn them, but in doing so I noticed that her book had been published in 1879 by a brilliant Japanese scholar who had apparently been bowled over by English during those first wonderful days when Japan was opening her gates to Western learning. This gentleman’s first sentence “for young ladies to use when starting a conversation in public” was Hana-ogi’s epic “Lo, the postillion has been struck by lightning,” and although I am sure the ancient scholar never intended it so, that sentence became the gag line of an American-Japanese home. Whenever trouble appeared in any form Hana-ogi would declaim, “Lo, the postillion!”

  I became intrigued by the book and smoothed out some of the other pages which yielded gems like “The portmanteau of my father is in the room of my mother.” Hana-ogi asked me what this meant and I tried to explain, but the more I endeavored the sillier it all became until we were convulsed with laughter and I remember thinking, while Hana-ogi tickled me in the ribs, of the G.I. booklet on Japan which said: “The Japanese have no sense of humor.”

  But the phrase that quite captivated me was the very first one for use at a formal tea “where the participants are not well acquainted.” The professor advised loosing this bombshell: “The camel is often called the ship of the desert.” It seemed to me that this sentence was the essence of Japan: few Japanese had ever seen a camel and no one could care less what a camel was like than young ladies at tea, but the stubborn fact remained that the camel had sometimes been called the ship of the desert, so the sentence was judged to be just as good an opening salvo as any other. I tried to explain to Hana-ogi how ridiculous the whole thing was but she went to great pains to explain, with gestures, how the camel strides over the sand and seems to be a rolling ship and how the beast can go for many days without water and how there are two kinds of camels, one with one hump and the other with two. I tried to stop this flood of information, but she grabbed me by the hand and ran me down the alley to Katsumi’s, where the two girls fairly exploded Japanese and Katsumi brought out her treasure chest and Hana-ogi ran through the magazines till she found one with her picture on the cover and on the inside were a half dozen pictures of her as a noble Arabian bandit in a desert extravaganza called The Silver Sheik. Then she commanded Katsumi to translate and Katsumi said, “But the camel really is called the ship of the desert.” I bit my lip and pointed to a picture of Hana-ogi in flowing robes and said, “Ichi ban, ichi ban,” but Hana-ogi studied it and shook her head no. She pointed to another and said, “Very nice” (“Berry nice,” she called it), and this one showed her in better profile.

  FIRST OFFICER’S WIFE: “American men buying underwear for Jap girls always look so pathetic.”

  From time to time during this long spring of the year I used to reconsider Mike Bailey’s question: Did I love Hana-ogi because I was afraid of American women? At first the question had seemed ridiculous. True, I was afraid of the incessant domination of a mother-in-law like the general’s wife, but I was certainly not afraid of Eileen, except when she imitated her mother, and so far as I knew I had never been afraid of American women in general. In fact, I had always liked them very much and so far as I can remember there was never a dance at the Point or at any of the Air Force bases that I didn’t attend—and almost always with my own date. I decided that American women didn’t scare me. But then came the problem of the weekies and I was never again so sure.

  I had noticed that for some days Katsumi-san had been trying to speak with me alone and I guessed that she was hoping I might know some special way whereby she could get into the United States. Since I could give her no help I tried to avoid discussing the doleful question, but finally she caught me and asked, “Major, you my friendo ichi ban?”<
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  “Yes.”

  “Then maybe you buy me weekies?”

  “What are weekies?”

  “You go P.X. Pleeze, Ace, I not able to buy weekies.”

  “Why not?” I demanded. “All wives get P.X. cards.”

  I remember that Katsumi held back, as if not wanting to report Joe’s troubles, but under my questioning she said, “Colonel Craford not give me pass. Not give any Japanese wife pass. He hate us. He hate Joe for marrying Japanese.”

  This made me sore, so I started out for the big avenue where the Osaka P.X. was but I stopped short and returned to the alley. “Katsumi,” I yelled, “what in hell are weekies?”

  She slid back the paper doors and tried to explain but she was promptly overcome with embarrassment and said only, “Pleeze, Gruver-san. I want to be same like American girl. I want to make Joe takusan happy.” So I set out.

  At the P.X. two tall guards shrugged their shoulders when I asked what weekies were and I would have given up the job except that I was disgusted to have a gentle person like Katsumi pushed around. So I found one of those super-efficient Janapese officials who sit at desks and always seem to know everything. When I consulted him he frowned noticeably and said, “Fifth floor, frame four.” He spoke slowly, wrestling with each difficult letter so that his reply sounded: “Hihth hroor, hrame hore.”

  I took the elevator to the fifth floor and found to my uneasiness that it contained women’s wear. On the whole floor there were only three men, enlisted soldiers buying things for their girls. But there were nearly a hundred American wives and when they saw me in this department they were unanimously outraged. I was obviously another American man shacked up with some cheap Japanese girl and I had come here to buy her nylons or a dress or some other gift as part of my purchase price. I started to blush as stares of disgust followed me and mumbled to myself, “You’re out of your depth, squarehead.” But that was before I knew what weekies were.