by H. K. Bush
Of course, he had made it clear that we shared common academic interests—why else would he have been inviting me to tea? Or, more to the point, why else had I been selected for a Goto fellowship when one candidate had already been selected? Hadn’t I been told that my selection had been unusual? It is obvious in hindsight. But at the time, the fact that he had studied my dissertation was a huge surprise and a great honor. And hearing this after having held real letters written by Mark Twain was also quite intriguing. I was eager to discover what other “minor items” might be hidden in his storeroom, waiting to see the light of day.
“But not today. We have done enough for one afternoon, I should think.” That was the signal our meeting had come to an end. So I stood up, made my salutations, and departed. As usual, both of them accompanied me to the entrance door.
“Goodbye, Jack-san. Mika bowed. Her long gleaming black hair cascaded forward over her shoulders. I turned to walk away, and suddenly Professor Goto spoke again.
“Yu-san, would you be willing to come for longer periods of time, perhaps next Sunday? I think we might even have dinner together, if you are willing.”
His questions took me by surprise. I turned to face him. “Of course, Sensei. As I have said, I am at your service.”
He hesitated, looked to the side, and stroked his chin briefly. One of his hands was behind him. “Yes, well. I would be honored if you would agree to somewhat longer meetings, so that we can go into more detail on various … topics. Perhaps even weekly, at least during the terms. I think we have much to learn from one another. Would that be acceptable for you? You must be very busy, yes?”
I had not thought of regular weekly meetings, but those letters—and the mystery of what else was hidden away in his old house—were certainly a great incentive. Plus, there was the nagging comment about the “minor errors” in my research. “I’m sure I could make myself available, Sensei.”
“Is Sunday a poor day? Perhaps you wish to attend church services somewhere. I remember many Americans did so when I studied there in the fifties. I have asked for your audience on Sundays so far because it is the Japanese way. Would you prefer another day?”
“Sundays are fine, Sensei. I can come next Sunday again at 3:00 p.m, if that time suits you.”
“Yes, Yu-san, it does. Please do come at 3:00. I have other items to show you, and I need your input on many other matters.” He now bowed to me, said “Sayonara,” turned away, and disappeared inside the house. Mika still bowed respectfully before me, hands on thighs. In twenty minutes, I was on the train, heading for home, but mesmerized by possibilities.
Often our visits involved Sensei questioning me about various aspects of the literary life: with an old shriveled up Japanese partner my only listener—and possibly Mika, bowing forward on her knees and furtively listening to us through the sliding door. But there was one other episode that winter that accelerated things for me, and it sticks in my memory as a turning point.
It was one of those early December evenings, about a week before Christmas, when the weather is threatening to turn nasty and winter pounds loudly on the door, demanding entrance, like in an old Robert Frost poem. Winds howled down from the ridges above, and the trees bent nearly sideways as I trudged up the hill, almost late for our appointment, a dreaded no-no for a kohai like me. I shuddered off my coat, worried that I was tardy, and asked Mika, “Is he ready?”
She shook her head. “No, he is not yet ready for you. Please follow me.” She led me again down the long corridor to our meeting room, and we sat briefly facing each other across the table. She had a lovely set of beads decorating her long, ivory neck, and sat there as if a tropical bird had flown into the room. After an awkward pause—it was our first time alone in a room together—I noticed an old volume sitting at the exact center of the table. I reached out and placed my right hand on it, turning it to see what it was.
Surprisingly, it was Moby-Dick, an odd volume to discover sitting out on a table in a spartan, Japanese home. There were four or five yellow Post-it notes sticking out of the pages as well. I looked up at Mika, guffawed briefly, and smiled. “So Sensei likes Melville’s old sea stories, ne?”
I had taken on the habit of inflecting my English sentences with the Japanese-style sentence-ending ‘ne?’, meaning yes? or right? It is, for many Japanese, an habitual tick of their spoken language, just as “you know?” is for many Americans. The longer version, “so desu-ne?” had by then become similarly quite addictive.
She noted the volume and responded, “Ah yes. The Whale. My uncle is quite taken with that story. He will no doubt lecture you on Melville today.” She paused, then asked me, “You know, of course, where Ahab meets the whale, yes? He has lectured me on it more than once.”
But I didn’t remember, and as I was about to ask her for an explanation, her uncle entered the room. “Yu-san, welcome. I see you are discussing the Great American Novel, yes?”
Mika rose to her feet, bowing and backing out of the room. She seemed mildly surprised by his sudden entrance, not to say embarrassed, and immediately disappeared into the hallway without another word. Sensei was now clearly in charge. He thumped down onto his pillow, across the table from me, and immediately began interrogating me about Melville, as if I were being examined orally for another PhD.
“Does it surprise you that I find Melville’s novel so valuable?”
“Well, no, of course not, Sensei. It’s a masterpiece.”
“Yes,” he sighed. “And yet so little understood—by Americans, I mean.”
I hesitated because I had no idea where he might be going with this train of thought. Then I said, “Of course, the whale is a symbol that is meant to be misunderstood— or, perhaps we might say, a symbol of the impenetrable nature of things.”
He leaped on my phrasing, and looked me directly in the eye. “Yes, that’s true. The impenetrable nature of things. That is well put, Yu-san.” He was quiet, stroking his chin. “Let us consider this a moment. Can you tell me the other supreme symbol in Moby-Dick, for what you are calling “the impenetrable nature of things?”
I thought for a moment. “Well, there’s the doubloon, for example. The one that Ahab nails to the mast.”
“Ah yes. The mast.” I wondered immediately why he perked up to the second part of my response, dismissing my suggestion of the doubloon as being too easy, I suppose. He was pushing me to think deeper about Melville’s symbology. It was much later that I began to I realize that Sensei was revealing his mind in a new and deeper way, in this seemingly nonchalant discussion of Melville. He was ushering me into the energetic and rather quirky courtyards of his literary sensibilities that day, a side of himself that he had been holding in reserve, a layer I had not yet even imagined, including, it turned out, his obsessive side.
“Tell me about the mast, Yu-san. I recall a crucial moment in ‘Song of Myself,’ where Whitman says that the ‘kelson of creation is love.’ A kelson, as you know, is a structural support on a ship, meant to bolster it. The center mast of Ahab’s ship must be such a unifying and sublime eros. Might Melville be saying something similar?”
His mind worked at a rapid and invigorating pace. I remember thinking that while he might be old and wrinkled, it was I who had to struggle to keep up. Plus he had the advantage as he had prepared for our meeting that day. Hence, the many yellow Post-it notes.
“And so, the doubloon on the mast is missing the point?”
“The doubloon is mere money, a paltry thing. We must go much deeper.” Just then, Mika appeared, with tea and sembei. Her scent wafted casually into the room along with the ocha. It took her a moment to situate the tray, and pour some tea. Sensei was always very patient about such matters. Then he said, “Let’s forget about the doubloon for the moment, Yu-san. Tell me about the masts. Where are the ship’s masts from, in Moby-Dick?”
I had no idea, and told him so. Such a detail seemed fairly arcane, I remember thinking.
He bit into a cracker. “And where
was Captain Ahab injured? Where did he lose his leg?”
I thought about this. “Sensei, it’s been several years since I’ve read the novel. I don’t remember.”
He pounced. “And yet all of this is crucial to the novel. I might also ask you, where does Ahab finally encounter the monster, and where does the captain and his crew meet their demise? But I will assume that the answer once again escapes your memory. This is what I mean, when I say that Americans have largely failed regarding one of the most important aspects of the novel’s symbolism—as have you, Yu-san.” He calmly unwrapped another sembei, and slowly bit into it. “I might add, that for me, it is of equal importance to the Whale itself!”
Then he wiped his palms together, and took up the volume resting between us on the table. “Please allow me to read a few passages to you, which might be useful to our discussion today.” Opening to the Post-it notes, one after the other, he read me these passages:
“Her masts—cut somewhere on the coast of Japan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale.” He flipped to the next passage:
“Now, sometimes, in that Japanese sea, the days are as freshets of effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing focus of the glassy ocean’s immeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks lacquered, clouds there are none; the horizon floats, and this nakedness of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of God’s throne.”
He looked up at me. “‘Freshets of effulgences’; that is a masterstroke, is it not?” And again he turned to the novel, and continued reading:
“[of] Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans … the Oriental Isles to the east of the continent—those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s primal generations.”
And with that, Sensei closed the book. “Yu-san, my idea is that … well, I believe that the crew of the ship face a dual mystery. Moby-Dick and Japan, both impenetrable mysteries, both of which evade the penetrations of science and of the modern mind. It is absolutely crucial to recognize that the Whale can only be found in the waters of Japan, yes? Do you see?” He watched for my assent, but I was still confused as to his point. “Melville says at one point something like this: the waters of Japan are the ‘almost final waters,’ and all the action at the end of the novel, and the hunt for the Whale, occurs as they penetrate further and further into the ‘heart of the Japanese cruising ground.’ The crew of the Pequod, as it turns out, must confront not only the White Whale. They must confront also Japan.”
“So are you telling me that Japan is an impenetrable mystery for the American visitor? Isn’t that just another great myth that the Japanese have about themselves? ‘Poor Japan, it is just so inscrutable to foreigners’?” I smiled at him as I said this.
He actually laughed at my sarcasm, then quickly became serious again. “But you are missing my point. Don’t you see? The crew must confront the great Other. In this sense, of course the Japanese are inscrutable—but so are the Americans, for us!” We both smiled at this. “Besides, words are inscrutable, as well as symbols. Melville’s term before— “effulgences”—it is a brightness from something that remains unidentifiable. What you Americans glibly refer to as God. Ahab’s obsession is to penetrate the very mysteries of God, or Being—this Great Other. It begins with an imperial pride—one might say, as evidently Melville believed, a very American pride. But its end is in destruction.”
I will say this: it’s funny what the mind remembers with precision, and why. Because I remember that meeting, almost twenty years ago, like it was yesterday. Sensei’s brilliant interpretation of Melville was dazzling—not unlike the inscrutable beauty of Mika, pouring the tea. Beyond the general mystery of Japan, and its impenetrable nature, there was the confusion I was increasingly feeling about Japanese women, one in particular, and this even greater and much more specific mystery keeping me up some nights. Mika was beginning to get under my skin, and what I considered to be my growing understanding of Japan (another funny idea, in retrospect) allowed me to believe that perhaps I might actually have a chance with her. But in the back of my mind, I had real doubts. I also recalled how Ahab’s mission ended.
Long-time foreign residents often comment upon their curious ambivalence toward Japan. As gaijin begin to grow more knowledgeable and confident in their understandings of their adopted home, they simultaneously become more conscious of Japan’s great shortcomings. In fact, they also begin to despair of ever comprehending the “true” Japan. As Melville’s inscrutable white whale swam along, I wondered if I could ever anatomize the Japanese.
These ambivalent feelings also characterized my longing for Mika. It was impossible for me to say whether there was any affection from her. But another Sunday, I happened to arrive a few minutes early. Sensei was away on some other visit or errand of his own, so Mika greeted me in our customary way and escorted me into the main sitting room. I sat for some time alone, until finally she served tea, as was her wont, and upon telling me that Sensei would return soon, hesitated at the doorway. “Wait, Mika,” I stammered. At first those were the only words that came out. She paused, without quite turning to face me. Finally, I blurted out, “Please sit with me until Sensei returns.”
It seemed like a very long time until I got any sort of response from her. She must have also been wondering how to respond to this foreign professor from America. Then: “Jack-san, since my uncle is elsewhere, I am uncertain if it is … proper for me to be alone with you?” It was both a statement and a kind of question. I realized that it was a gesture of opening from her, however, so I insisted. And she did, finally, sit down with me. It was a graceful act to see her fold her legs underneath herself and rest like some precious bird on the floor opposite me. She cupped her drink with both hands and sipped almost imperceptibly. The sleek long hair swayed before me like the device of a hypnotist. For the first time we were alone in the room as two individuals, a man and a woman seated across an antique table in a magical old Japanese home, drinking tea. In reality, we were not alone. I later came to understand that Omori and the cook were almost certainly elsewhere in the house, perhaps even lurking nearby.
Sitting with her, suddenly I understood that, despite all of the treasures of Sensei’s collection, here before me was his prize possession. I had certainly noticed Mika’s beauty and grace, on every visit so far, and I knew I was attracted to her—how could I not be?—but now I sensed the vague possibility of something else growing inside me. At the thought, a thin sweat broke out on my forehead. She had turned up the heater underneath the table to counteract the damp and frigid air as it was surprisingly cold that day, but that was not why I was suddenly sweating. Mika noticed and asked, “Are you uncomfortable?”
“No, I’m fine.” But in reality, I felt like an eighth-grader trying to make small talk at recess. She looked down shyly at her hands while I tried to think of something to say. We chatted briefly about the trivialities of the day. Finally I realized we had one rather obvious thing in common. “How long have you been staying here with Sensei?”
“Well, that is quite a long story. It has now been almost ten years. I came down shortly after finishing my college years in Tokyo.”
“I know your father is important up in Tokyo, so I’ve always wondered why you left to come down here to Kansai?”
She again was coy and hesitant. She thought about my question for a period of time, then smiled secretly. “That is also quite a long story, and hard to—how to say— summarize?”
She looked up to me for approval of her choice of vocabulary, which was obviously just right, so I nodded and said, “Yes, summarize.” This seemed to give her more than a little enthusiasm and joy, which in turn did the same for me. My heart ached to find her approval, and it was just in these trifling gestures that I was beginning to realize that small wo
nder. In fact, I think we both realized that sticky day that some sort of bewitchment had begun to overtake both of us—or at least, I began to believe it for myself, and began fantasizing that it could become a two-way street. Whatever her feelings were, I allowed myself to embrace the fullness of the spell that she could cast my way—a fullness that I can still dredge up these many years later.
Perhaps she sensed the spell as well. So she began to spin her own tale. “My father is, as you say, quite important. Yes, and in many other ways that you have never even dreamed of. For example, he has become friendly with the emperor, and has visited the Imperial Palace, on many occasions.” She now smiled shyly at me for a momentary pause. “Here in Japan we are very reserved about what we say about family to … outsiders.” This word also seemed to stifle her a bit—the use of “outsiders” was undoubtedly her rough translation of gaijin, which can be deployed in a derogatory fashion. “I’m sorry, Jack-san, I am not saying you are such an outsider as all that. You do understand, I mean outside the family, yes?” I nodded at this. “But I think you must know a little about the Goto Industries; it is common knowledge. My father, as you must imagine, is rather”—again she searched for a proper term— “shall we say insistent? Or autocratic? One must be of such a character, to succeed as he has in the world of big business and industry. And yes, he has been extremely successful.”
She paused some more, nodding slightly. I was used to this idiosyncratic feature of much Japanese storytelling— frequent and generous pauses for reflection and emphasis. “Father is a very good man in so many ways. But somehow all of his business concerns have made him forget the things that some of us Japanese value even more—things like art, tradition, the past. Our history together. I remember how much he tried to help me achieve my own success, but he had a very rigid sense of what such a success might include. Meanwhile, I tried to … reconnect?”
