by H. K. Bush
He broke a piece of sembei, putting it into his mouth and slowly chewing it. Then he wiped his lips with a napkin. “Jack-san, I do not snoop. You misunderstand me. I pay lackeys such as Miyamoto to snoop on my behalf. In fact, the university has put you under Miyamoto’s charge from the very beginning, as I recommended they do. I am certain you have noticed this.
“But what the university does not know is the extent of my abilities, and my very strong desire to safeguard the books in the departmental library, most of which were donated by me. These are not difficult things to arrange. As you know, the library owns many books of excellent historical value, though generally these are of rather minor monetary worth. Rather than hire a full-time librarian for a library that gets almost no use, I discovered how easily one can install a system that is activated by movement within the rooms of the collection. Miyamoto handles all of that. He was the one who reported to me that you had ‘borrowed’ those books without signing them out properly. Since you arrived, you have been almost alone in visiting this library anyway, as you must have noticed. So if anything went missing, it would be obvious who must have taken it.”
He thought this over for a moment and again almost laughed. “I might add, I also resent your interest in another of my possessions. I have noticed your growing fondness for Mika, and I am afraid that it is not something I can endorse, Yu-san.”
A pause, then a shy smile came to his lips. “Yes, I can read the signs quite well. But as you must know—now that you have been among us here for almost two years—such an arrangement is not possible. In fact, I can assure you that her father would never allow such a … liaison.” He paused with sinister effect. “And I can assure you, his activities can be much more ‘fishy’ than mine.”
I was dumbfounded, but he didn’t stop there. “You also might be surprised to learn how much our growing relationship has disturbed Miyamoto’s world,” he said, biting into another sembei, again rubbing his hands together. “Yes, I do not think it is going too far to say that you are his archrival, at least in his own petty imaginings, and that he might be persuaded to do almost anything to return to his privileged status here in my household. As you must know, he formerly was much more active as my assistant, but we have had … well, many disagreements over the years, and I grew weary of his selfish ambitions. He also said and did things to Mika that were disturbing to her, and quite beyond his … well, his means. He had, shall we say, disrespectful … intentions. Clearly he is nowhere near her breed. So since then, and with your arrival, his work for me has been almost entirely curtailed. But I have occasionally asked him to help me, mainly, to keep an eye on you.” He made this confession with obvious relish, and I could almost feel his knife twisting in my gut.
“I suppose he does not think very highly of you, Jack-san.” He smiled as if sharing an inside joke, and then took another bite of rice cracker. He rubbed his hands together once more, brushing off any residual crumbs. “In any case, if you feel unprepared to help me in the future, I can easily arrange a suitable replacement.”
All of these disclosures revealed an entirely different side of Sensei. I had hitherto misunderstood him, or else had turned a blind eye. He was menacing, angry that I had confronted him—challenged him—and obviously felt he needed to show how much more powerful he was than I had realized. I had indeed been naïve. Blind to the vast control— or the illusion of control—he exercised over our lives. Me, Mika, Miyamoto, and, presumably, everyone else in the English department: we were pawns on his chessboard. As far as my feelings toward Mika went, I now perceived the remnants of a deep-seated xenophobia, a prejudice I had assumed must be impossible for such a liberal, cosmopolitan scholar. And the idea that Miyamoto had been my predecessor as kohai, or maybe henchman, further diminished my image of Sensei as enlightened academic. Then, as with another twist of the knife, I realized the surveillance equipment in the library could also be installed elsewhere, such as in the condo building that Sensei owned. The idea that Miyamoto had scrutinized security tapes of my home life floored me—even though I had no evidence for it. I suppressed a shiver as anger washed over me.
In short, that afternoon was a turning point. Sensei suddenly struck me as ruthless, cold, and manipulative, and I must have looked like a mere underling challenging his motives. Worst of all, I’m sure we both felt powerless to repair the breach that was widening with every passing moment. Nearly two years of slow and patient relationship building had all washed away like a sandcastle in a typhoon.
That moment is seared in my mind, in fact. Without a hint of remorse, he had peered at me and stated, “I can easily arrange a suitable replacement.” I was speechless. Without thinking of the consequences, I got to my feet. The air in the room was absolutely still. Sensei looked up at me, surprise etched in his expression. I’m sure my fists were clenched in rage. But he remained seated, arms and legs both folded in defiance. Tree limbs swayed in the wind just outside the window. An NHK news broadcast emanated from some other chamber in the house, describing further economic downturns. I bowed slightly. “Sensei, I see that I have displeased you, and I’ve let you down. You have always been a most gracious host, and I owe my life in Japan to you alone. But for now I think I should leave.” Another pause, as I looked around at the familiar room. Sensei said nothing, made no gesture of reconciliation. “I regret our differences of opinion. And I am genuinely sorry you feel betrayed.” I needed to get out of there before I said something I would truly regret. So bowing again, I backed out of the room.
Sensei sat there in stubborn silence. I think he was seething with anger, too, although I also detected some confusion and sadness. We both sensed at that moment that something unnameable had been ruptured in our relationship. Perhaps we both wished to offer an appeasement of sorts, but neither of us could muster a word. Sensei’s rigid Japanese manner overcame whatever romantic sensibility was wrestling with it, and as I walked down the hallway, he remained silent. The old wood floors squeaked with each of my footfalls. I stepped onto the tiled entryway and found my shoes. Except for the faint radio broadcast, the house was still.
That silence, as I opened the front door and let myself out into the cold windy early evening, was the last thing I heard in Sensei’s home until nearly one year later.
It was shocking, to say the least, to realize Jack had been caught up in doing the legwork for a man whose substantial literary collection had been accumulated by, perhaps, questionable means. And the recognition that an old academic, not unlike myself, can be revealed suddenly to contain twisted and even menacing traits of monomania and conceit was more than a little disturbing. I was shocked, that is, but also entranced by a sort of self-revelation. For Goto’s journey was one on which, but for the grace of God, each of us might embark, if and when we become obsessed by the delights of this or that passing shadow. The delights of those sirens we pretend are of no temptation or consequence to those of us of superior character, may, in fact, lead toward ignoble acts. Perhaps it’s a good thing I am lashed to the mast, so to speak, by my lack of Goto’s deep pockets.
The chapter reveals not only the underhanded side of such businesses as collecting and secrecy, but how quickly a breach can occur among friends. And, in this case, perhaps, even more sinister, the shifty side of controlling others and bending them to one’s imperial will. It was here, for both myself and for Jack I believe, that portentous rumblings from deep within the crust of the earth began to shake us to our cores.
CHAPTER 10
Suddenly it was April, and the busy time of starting new classes, and long, almost endless meetings in the department ensued. Springtime that year was stunning, with the cherry blossoms praising the sun and skies all over Kobe, and the hills singing almost as cheerfully as the Salzburgian variety depicted in movie lore. Unless you’ve lived in Japan through a long winter, it’s hard to communicate the elegance of the cherry blossoms in their full glory. The beauty of striding down the hill to the university, and, on weekends, walking t
he well-marked paths of the nearby national park, or driving Richard’s Nissan up into the craggy canyons and valleys of central Japan, all punctuated by rapturous cherry blossoms, was enough to send my benighted spirit soaring and assure me it was still good to be alive in Japan.
Work, more than the wonders of nature, was quite redemptive in that respect. I had terrific classes my final year in Japan. One in particular was a group of seniors I met with weekly, outside the classroom, for informal discussions on a variety of topics. These conversations took place at what I had dubbed our “Munchen coffee-train,” a regular meeting I had managed to keep going for almost two years, except for breaks in August and January. Mondays and Fridays at 3:00 p.m., the coffee train kept chugging along. Some of the students who came regularly had been in classes with me over the entire time of my stay, and most were young women: charming, shy, with their long black hair and irregular yet beaming smiles. They were excellent in conversational English, and wanted to stay in practice. Yuko, tall, willowy, and with that mildly erotic innocence that so many college women have in Japan, had been around the longest. She had an amazing knowledge of old British and American rock and roll, which obviously gave us an immediate connection. Now that she was graduating, she spoke hopefully of going to live in London and working in some aspect of the music business. As a senior, she came to almost every meeting of the coffee-train, along with her silent and rather disturbing cohort, Minami, who still could not bear to look me in the eyes and almost never spoke, but who laughed even if the jokes were not funny to anyone else, covering her mouth obsessively. I had heard only about a dozen sentences issue from her in over eighteen months.
Yuko and Minami had been twinned in my mind since I began teaching in Kobe. In other cultures, one might think they were lovers, but that did not appear to be the case. Perhaps they were just friends spending time together. I sometimes got the feeling Yuko was waiting for me to make the move on her—an energy that eluded me, though in truth, the thought did cross my mind. But then, all at once, she made a move, something I thought I would never see from a Japanese-born woman. It was not long after my falling out with Sensei. Considering what she said to me one late Friday afternoon—“Jack-san, you look so lonely”—I must have been looking pretty forlorn indeed.
I glanced up at her, and caught a glimpse of something warm and sparkly in her dark eyes. “I’m OK. Just tired, I guess.”
Minami was not there, probably away on one of those rare occasions when the two were not bound together. In fact, we were all alone at the Munchen. The sun was drooping below the trees, the barista in a back room. Yuko hesitated shyly, then pounced. “I’ve been wanting to ask you … possibly, can I cook you dinner tonight? Do you like yakisoba?”
I admit the combination of fried noodles and several bottles of cold Asahi Dry, followed by a lusty encounter with a young, beautiful student was a powerful temptation. But somehow I begged off and got away with my scruples intact. That surely sounds Spartan to me now, in my dying days, when some hot noodles with Yuko sounds like a pleasant prospect. It remains memorable all these years later because it was the only time I was offered such an opening—at least so far as I was able to pick up. And who knows? Maybe Yuko just wanted to feed me and practice her English. But that night, lying in bed, again my fantasies drifted off toward a detailed bodily investigation of Japanese women. A “close reading” and analysis, as I might undertake on a poem by Ezra Pound. Eventually, of course, my imagination led me, lamely, to Mika. Her overpowering effects on me had a claw in my brain that I had no luck pulling out—and I admit, still haven’t.
A few of the male students also came regularly to the coffee-train. Some of these were also students I had met the first year and who kept coming back for more. Tohru, Eddie, and Kenichi among them. Eddie was tall (6’3”), and he played forward on the school basketball club. Once he learned of my days as a gym-rat back in Indiana, he invited me to scrimmage with them, which I did every Wednesday afternoon for about a year. (He could actually dunk, a pretty unusual ability among Japanese players, who tend to have hands too small to palm a regulation basketball, and arms and legs slightly shorter than they would be on North Americans of the same height.) One evening we rented the classic film Hoosiers, and watched it together. I laughed at the dubbed Gene Hackman chewing out the players in a high-pitched, nasal Japanese voice.
The star of the senior class was Kenichi, still hanging around me, and still desperately dreaming of securing a job like mine. He loved American literature and spoke eloquently of the haunting tales of Poe and Hawthorne, considering them to be very much akin to the ghost stories so prevalent in old Japanese writings, including the Noh dramas, many of which were preserved by those lonely and eccentric American expatriates, Ernest Fenollosa and Lafcadio Hearn, Kenichi’s favorite. Kenichi often wore an old blue sweatshirt with PENN STATE emblazoned on it, commemorating a long visit he had made to see a friend who lived in State College, PA. While there, he visited New York City, Boston, and Washington DC—all on his own, via buses and trains. He was understandably proud of this accomplishment. I thought so highly of his abilities that I encouraged him to think about graduate school in the States. I eventually wrote some letters of recommendation for Kenichi, and he managed to get a TA position at the University of Texas, and took a PhD there. That led him to a decent job at Hiroshima University, a position he still holds, along with some prestige and notoriety within the American studies community throughout Japan. He has translated numerous works into Japanese, and produced a fine volume describing the Hawthorne-Melville relationship, making brilliant use of their letters and journals.
Kenichi’s success is a source of great satisfaction for me. It makes one feel like a midwife, I suppose, an academic birthing process that one both inspires and oversees. He occasionally still sends me letters, nowadays mostly e-mails, and it all started with those happy coffee-train meetings at the Munchen Café. It was a mild form of bohemianism, in their eyes, and I was the reigning presence, a pseudo-Walt Whitman at the head of the table. At the time I saw it as all about the students. But eventually I discovered how important this little group was, not just for the students, but also for the maintenance of my own sanity and enjoyment during those last alienated months in Kobe. I found myself looking forward to the coffee-train more than just about anything else; to tell the truth, I think it was the students like Eddie and Kenichi (and yes, Yuko) who kept me dragging myself out of bed each morning.
The Munchen Café and the coffee-trains helped to fill the hole in my life that had been produced by my falling out with Sensei. But the rift kept gnawing at me. I knew I must wait and not initiate anything, or at least I felt that way. But for several long months, I heard not a word from Sensei. I even wished to hear from Miyamoto, in the vain hope he might deliver another invitation or some request for my assistance. These messages never arrived, however. When I saw Miyamoto on the campus grounds, he forged ahead without acknowledging my presence. I had my own pride, and never once initiated a conversation with him. We were total strangers, functionally speaking.
Finally, I admitted that I missed seeing Mika as well. I fantasized about her more and more, often as I lay awake in my bed late at night. My room would be dark and quiet, with ambient noise drifting up from the late night taxis on the streets below. I could easily conjure images of her brilliantly fashioned silk garments, and the swaying black hair, and the way she moved so gracefully in and out of the room. I even recalled her particular odors: the faint sweetness of some Parisian scent, or the mild dustiness of some skin powder that she was fond of brushing on to her slender torso and unseen legs.
Yes, it finally dawned on me that I needed very much to see Mika again—and on more intimate terms, perhaps, than we would ever be able to achieve. I also wondered if she thought about me in similar ways, in the dark as the breezes fluttered through the open curtains on a sultry midsummer night. But I did not act on my desires.
Days and then weeks paraded forward,
and soon enough we were deep into autumn. The mountain forests were changing their colors in anticipation of the final blaze of glory in late October. The weather was sunny, almost perfect, with brisk breezes offering the balancing counterpoint to the day’s heat. The clear air of the mountain heights was rejuvenating to me in ways that almost nothing else in Japan was, at least since my time with Sensei had evidently run its course. And the many long months of silence led me to believe that it had.
One day, while driving toward Kyoto with no particular destination or agenda, it hit me that my time in Japan was nearing its end, unless I could come up with a compelling reason to stay. I thought about American football, of all things, wondering how the Colts were doing, and suddenly decided that three years was enough. There was no compelling reason, and it was time to go home. I could not put off finding a permanent position any longer. But then another, more vital realization hit me, again, suddenly out of the blue: the only truly compelling reason to stay would have to be Mika. She was still stuck in my brain, though I had not seen her in nearly ten months.
My car probably played a major part in my thinking that day. As cultural critics are fond of reminding us, cars are quintessential American symbols of power, movement, possibility, and even sexuality. I suppose, then, it makes perfect sense that my own cogitations about lost love came tumbling together one late October day as I drove through the hills. Almost without realizing it, I pulled off the road and sat there for a while. I remember it was just past 10:00 a.m. Then, I suddenly recognized what I had to do. I backed the car into a dirt pathway and turned around to head back to Kobe, spraying loose gravel into the ferns nearby. Other issues besides trees and mountains pressed into my mind with urgency and speed, and I had to attend to them, abruptly and certainly. Once and for all.
