When I say “2,700 years since the founding,” there’s something I think of immediately. It’s just a stupid and silly thing, but the other day, my husband’s friend Mr. Iba came to visit for the first time in quite a while. I was in the next room, and I could hear them talking in the study. What they said made me burst out laughing.
“You know, I really have been worrying recently—when the 2,700th founding anniversary comes, do you think we should we refer to it as ‘twenty-seven hundredth’ or ‘two thousand, seven hundredth’? It’s definitely been bothering me. I’m really suffering over it. What about you—doesn’t it bother you?” Mr. Iba said.
“Hmmm,” my husband said, thinking seriously. “Now that you mention it, it does bother me a lot.”
“See what I mean?” said Mr. Iba, also sounding quite serious. “They all seem to be making it ‘twenty-seven hundred.’ That’s what they seem to be doing. But I’d rather see them do it ‘two thousand, seven hundred.’ Somehow, ‘twenty-seven hundred’ just doesn’t seem right. It’s kind of nasty, don’t you think? I mean, it’s not a telephone number, and I’d just like to see them do it right. Somehow or other, I’d like to hear it done as ‘two thousand seven hundred,’ don’t you think?” asked Mr. Iba in a truly worried tone of voice.
“But then,” my husband proposed in a horribly self-important tone, “in a hundred years from now, it may not be either of those ‘seven hundreds’—they may have come up with some totally different pronunciation. Say, ‘sivinty,’ or something like that. . . .”
That’s when I burst out laughing. How absolutely stupid! My husband is always perfectly serious when he says such ridiculous things to visitors. People with “sentiment” sure are strange. My husband makes his living by writing novels. He’s not very dedicated, and so he doesn’t bring in much of an income, just enough for us to get by from day to day. What kinds of things he writes, I can’t even imagine, because I do my best not to read the stories he writes. He’s apparently not very good.
Oh my, I am getting off the track. There’s no way I can write a record worthy to survive until the 2,700th Founding Day if I keep on with such stupid things. Let’s start again.
December 8th. Early in the morning, while I was still in bed already starting to get anxious about the morning’s preparations and nursing Sonoko (our daughter, born this past June), I could hear a news bulletin coming clearly from a radio somewhere.
“Announcement from the Department of the Army and Navy of the Imperial Forces: Today, the eighth, before dawn, the Imperial land and sea forces entered a state of war with American and British troops in the western Pacific Ocean.”
I could hear it strong and clear, piercing like a shaft of light into the total darkness of my tightly shuttered room. Two times, it was clearly repeated. As I lay there perfectly still, my sense of being changed absolutely. It was like being hit by a strong blast of light, making my body transparent. Or like receiving the breath of the Holy Ghost and feeling a single cold flower petal lodge in my breast. Japan, too, after this morning, was a changed Japan.
I started to call out to my husband, who was in the next room, to let him know what had happened, but right away he answered back, “I know, I know.” His tone of voice was harsh; he certainly seemed to be tense himself. He always stayed in bed until late in the morning; it was amazing for him to have awakened so early on this particular morning. They say that artists have strong intuitions; it might be that he’d had a premonition. It rather impressed me. But then he went on to say something so awful, it canceled it out.
“Where is the western Pacific? San Francisco, huh?”
I was disgusted; my husband had absolutely no sense of geography. There have been times when I have even wondered whether he knew the difference between west and east. Until just the other day, he apparently thought that the South Pole was the hottest place on earth and that the North Pole was the coldest. When I heard him confess that, I even began to doubt his character. Last year he went to Sado Island, and when he was telling me stories about it, he said that when he looked out from the boat and saw the island shape of Sado, he even thought it was Manchuria—really, everything is mixed up. And this man had managed to get into the university. It just disgusted me.
“The western Pacific must be the part that’s near Japan, don’t you think?” I said.
He sounded quite out of sorts as he answered, “Do you suppose?” After some contemplation: “Well, that’s the first I’ve heard of it. Doesn’t that seem wrong—to have America in the east, and Japan in the west? They call Japan ‘the land of the rising sun,’ and it’s also called ‘the Orient.’ So that can’t be right. It feels really uncomfortable to say that Japan isn’t the Orient. Don’t you think that there’s some way to have Japan east and America west?”
Everything he said was peculiar. My husband’s patriotism somehow goes to extremes. The other day, he said that no matter how tough those foreigners acted, they probably wouldn’t even dare taste this salted fish-guts conserve, whereas we can eat any Western food at all; and he seemed to take some weird pride in that.
I paid no attention to my husband’s peculiar mutterings but quickly got up and opened the storm shutters. A beautiful day. But I could feel the cold keenly. The diapers I’d hung out last night to dry under the eaves were frozen, and frost covered the garden. The camellia was blooming valiantly. Everything was quiet—even though at this very moment in the Pacific Ocean, war had started. I felt dazed. It sank into my very body just how blessed the Japanese nation was.
I went out to the well to wash my face, and then as I got involved in washing Sonoko’s diapers, the wife next door came out, too. We exchanged our morning greetings, and then I began to talk about the war: “Well, things are going to be tough for you from here on.”
The woman had become the leader of our neighborhood assistance group just the other day, and she was probably thinking about that when she said, “No, there’s nothing I can do.” She sounded ashamed, and it made me feel a bit awkward.
I mean, it’s not that my neighbor wasn’t thinking about the war; it’s probably instead that she was feeling under pressure of the heavy responsibility as head of the assistance group. Somehow I felt I’d done something wrong to her. Really, from here on it’s probably going to be hard for the assistance head. It’s different from practice drills—if we really do get air raids, her responsibility as leader will be enormous. I might end up having to put Sonoko on my back and evacuate to the countryside. And that would mean that my husband would probably stay behind alone, taking care of the house. But he’s so incapable of doing anything that I feel quite depressed. He might be utterly useless. Really—even though I keep telling him to, he hasn’t even made any preparations. Not his national emergency clothing, not anything. If anything does happen, he’d be lost for sure. He’s a lazy person, and so if I were quietly to get all his clothes together and lay them out for him, he probably would notice them—Huh! Look at this stuff!—and put them on with a feeling of relief in his heart. But his size is extra large, so even if I did go out and buy ready-mades, they probably wouldn’t fit. It’s a problem.
So—this morning my husband gets up around seven and finishes his breakfast quickly and then immediately turns to his work. Apparently he has a lot of small pieces to do this month. While he was having breakfast, without thinking I asked him, “Do you think Japan really will be OK?”
“We’re all right—don’t you think that’s why they did it? We’re sure to win,” he answered smugly. The things my husband says are always lies, and utterly beside the point, but anyway, this time at least, I deeply wanted to believe absolutely his serious words.
As I cleared up the kitchen, I thought about various things. Different eye color, hair color—is that enough to arouse this much hostility? I want to smash them to pieces. When China was the other side, it felt totally different. Really—I thought of those cruel, beastly American soldiers meandering all over our dear, beautiful Japanese soil,
and the very thought was unbearable. If you dare even set foot on our sacred soil, your feet will rot off, for sure. You’re not qualified to be here. Oh, our pure soldiers of Japan—you’ve got to beat them all to a pulp. From here on, as things get scarce, even in our homes we’ll probably have quite a hard time of it. But don’t worry about us. We don’t mind. You’ll never hear us saying how much we hate it all. You won’t find us pitying ourselves and whining about how horrid it is to be born at a time like this. Instead, I even feel that being born into this world gives us a reason for living. I think it’s great that we were born into such a world. Oh, how I’d like to really talk to someone about the war—well, we really did it, it’s finally got going, stuff like that.
Since this morning, it’s been nothing but war songs on the radio. They went all out. They broadcast one after the other, until I wondered whether they wouldn’t run out at some point, and then they ended up pulling out those old, old chestnuts: “We’ll beat the enemy, no matter how many thousands there are,” and stuff like that. I burst out laughing to myself. I felt affection for the broadcast station, how innocent they were. My husband absolutely hates radios, and so we’ve never had one in our house. And then, until now, I’ve never especially wanted to have one myself. But at a time like this, I found myself thinking: Wouldn’t it be great if we had one ourselves? I wanted to keep up with every bit of news. I think I’ll talk to my husband about getting one. Somehow I have a feeling now he’d buy us one.
As noon approached, I could hear important news reports coming in one after the other, and I couldn’t stand it any longer. I grabbed Sonoko up in my arms, went outside, stood under the colored autumn leaves of my next door neighbor’s trees, and listened avidly to their radio. Surprise attack, landing on Malay Peninsula. Attack on Hong Kong. Imperial edict declaring war. As I hugged Sonoko, I couldn’t keep the tears from coming. I went back to the house and interrupted my husband’s work to tell him all the news I’d just heard. He listened to it all and then said, “So that’s it,” and he laughed. Then he stood up and sat down again. He seemed to be unable to settle down.
A little after noon, my husband somehow or other managed to finish up one of his pieces of work, and he left the house in a rush, taking the manuscript with him. He was taking the manuscript to the magazine company office, but I could tell from how he looked that he was probably not going to be home until late again. Somehow, whenever he ran away in such a hurry, he usually got home quite late. But as long as he didn’t stay out all night, I didn’t mind how late he got home.
After I saw him off and finished up a simple lunch of grilled sardines, I put Sonoko on my back and went out to do my shopping by the station. Along the way I stopped off at Mr. Kamei’s house. We had gotten a bunch of apples from my husband’s family in the country, and I wanted to give some of them to the Kameis’ Yume-chan (their sweet five-year-old daughter), and so I had wrapped up a few and brought them with me. Little Yume was standing at their gate. When she caught sight of me, she immediately ran clattering into the vestibule and started calling out: Mother, Sonoko-chan is here. Sonoko apparently had a big friendly smile as she looked at Mrs. Kamei and her husband from my back, and they made a great fuss over her. Mr. Kamei, wearing a windbreaker, came out to the vestibule with a somehow brave attitude; and saying that he had been stuffing straw mats under the veranda, he went on:
“Somehow, crawling around under the veranda is hardly any better than landing in the face of the enemy. I apologize, looking as messy as I do.” What on earth was he doing, laying straw mats under the veranda, I wondered. Was he planning to crawl in there if there should be an air raid? It was all quite strange.
But then Mrs. Kamei’s husband, quite unlike my own husband, did truly seem to love his family, and I felt envious. I hear that he loved them even more before, but ever since we moved into the neighborhood, my husband had gotten him into drinking, and he wasn’t as devoted as he’d been. His wife must hate my husband, for sure. I felt apologetic toward her.
In front of the Kameis’ gate there were all kinds of things in case of air raids: fire-beater brooms, some sort of weird rake, and the like. They were all prepared. There was nothing at my house. My husband is lazy, and so there’s nothing I can do.
“My, you have prepared well,” I said. He answered cheerfully:
“Well, yes, you see, it’s because I’m the leader of the neighborhood assistance group.”
Actually, he’s just the assistant leader, but the leader is an elderly man, and he’s helping him out, his wife explained to me, whispering. Mrs. Kamei’s husband is truly a hard worker, and the difference between him and my husband is like between day and night.
I had some cake with them and then said my good-byes in front of the door.
Then I went to the post office and picked up a sixty-five-yen manuscript payment that Shinchō magazine sent and headed for the market. As usual, there wasn’t much choice. Sure enough, again there wasn’t anything to buy but squid and dried sardines. Two pieces of squid, forty sen. The sardines, twenty sen. And again, at the market, the radio.
Serious news reports were announced one after another. Air attacks on Philippines, Guam. Major bombing of Hawaii. American battle fleet totally destroyed. Imperial government proclamation. I was ashamed at how badly I was trembling. I wanted to give thanks for everyone. As I stood rigidly in front of the market’s radio, two or three other women gathered around me, wanting to hear it for themselves. The two or three became four or five and then around ten.
I left the market and then went to the concession at the station to buy my husband’s cigarettes. The town looked just as it always did. The only thing that was different was that a piece of paper had been posted in front of the vegetable store with the radio news written on it. The scene in front of the store and people’s conversation were not much different from what they usually were. The silence was reassuring. And today I had a little money, so I resolved to get myself some shoes. I hadn’t known at all that starting this month, there would be a 20 percent tax levied on things like this that cost more than three yen. I should have bought them at the end of last month. But to give up buying them seemed stingy, and I didn’t want to do it. Shoes, six yen, sixty sen. And then other shopping: face cream, thirty-five sen. Envelopes, thirty-one sen. Then I went home.
Soon after I got back, Mr. Satō of Waseda University came by to say that he was graduating and that at the same time he’d decided to get a job with a particular company, and he wanted to pay his respects; but unfortunately my husband wasn’t home, and I felt bad for him. I told him from the bottom of my heart to take care of himself, and I bowed deeply to him. Right after he left, Mr. Tsutsumi from Tokyo Imperial University stopped by. Happily, he, too, had graduated; he said that he had taken his physical for the draft, but he’d turned out to be 4F and felt bad about it. Both Satō and Tsutsumi had been wearing their hair quite long, but now they’d had it all cleanly shaved off; and I found myself deeply moved: wow, it’s really tough for students, too.
In the evening, Mr. Kon came by for the first time in a while, twirling his walking stick. But my husband wasn’t home, and I felt really bad for Mr. Kon. Really—it’s such a shame when he comes all the way to this backwoods part of Mitaka for this specific purpose, and then my husband’s not here, and he has to go home just like that. How awful he must feel all the way back. As I thought about it, I felt a dark feeling growing inside me.
While I was getting dinner together, the neighbor wife came over to tell me that the December saké ration coupons had arrived and to consult with me about what to do. We had gotten coupons for only six two-quart bottles to divide among the nine households of the neighborhood association. First we thought about doing it in turn but realized that every household would want some, and so in the end we decided to divide the six bottles into nine portions. We quickly gathered together a bunch of bottles, and then she went out to the Ise store to buy the saké. Because I was right in the middle of prepar
ing dinner, I was excused from going with her. When I reached a stopping point, I put Sonoko on my back and went to see where things stood. I could see several members of our neighborhood association coming toward me on their way home, each one carrying a bottle or two. I, too, quickly had them hand me a bottle to carry, and I went back with them. Then, right by the entryway of the association leader’s house next door, the division of saké into nine portions began. We lined up the nine bottles in a straight line right next to one another and carefully, carefully compared their fill levels, in order to fill each one to the same height. To divide six two-quart bottles into nine portions is no easy matter.
The evening paper came. It was four pages, quite unusual. “War Declared between Empire and U.S.” was in big headlines. For the most part, what was written in the paper was what I had been hearing on the radio news all day. But I read every last word anyway and felt the same deep feelings welling up.
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 100
