The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

  In the watch room at the entrance to the air-raid shelter, the watch personnel were on duty, but because they were on duty, how much could they think about their approaching death? I thought that I was the only one to feel it so acutely that I could not tear my thoughts away. My feelings were soothed by the thought that all fifty-two of the commandos had been able to sleep early into the morning of that night of tomorrow. Without moving I had been able to make out the words of the order and to fantasize the conditions for death. The commandos by themselves could prepare their one-man boats to put to sea. After seeing to the others, like the helmsman for my two man-boat, his death clothes, and the boat itself, I would have to concern myself with my own dress. On their sortie toward death, as if on a children’s outing, they would hook up their uniforms for embarkation, fix their buttons and belts, hook to their belts the grenades that could be used only if by chance they were separated from the battle line or failed to achieve their death, and assembled the field rations and canteens, even though they didn’t know where they would eat. Thus the passing hours of a night awaiting departure receded with a sense of incomprehensible incongruity.

  I felt surrounded by the troops that would remain after the commandos’ departure. These troops, now to be converted into marine forces, were taking over the watch. Although I had been given command authority over them, for some odd reason my attachment to the commando units under me was greater. Surrounded only by those later to become marines, I felt alone and misplaced in an environment robbed of its supernatural powers. Missing the lively behavior of the commandos, I was eyed by the unfamiliar companions who were being left as caretakers. Members of the same unit, they would be drawn away from me into some separate capsule at a juncture still dimly hidden. All the commandos who had so far failed to leave should now be asleep, and so as not to disturb their sleep, all duties along both shores of the narrow inlet were now conducted with muffled footsteps. As the sun climbed with certainty to its high point, the new day was beyond my understanding.

  In the critical day that had passed while our preparations had been made for only one end from which it was unthinkable to return alive, the ultimate objective had been assigned. The attempt under those conditions to go ahead together toward that unavoidable fate was sustaining us day after day. In my heart, however, I could not deny that the day would come when a wall of divided waters would stand before my eyes to block them in blackness. I would be swallowed up at the bottom of the sea, engulfed in the frightful void. Now the flow of everything around me appeared to stop. Rejecting the invisible, I was thrown into a curious sense of stagnation. I was caught in a spring that would not uncoil; I was tossed out, lacking a purpose; a congested weariness spreading through me; and a heavy discontent roiling my insides. Exasperated by the contradictions, I was happy that I had been spared for a bit from the path to death, yet I was enveloped in thoughts of unfulfillment. The completion of our task was delayed. Between the departure and the immediacy of waiting, there opened a limitless distance. The two states resembled each other not at all.

  The sun climbed mercilessly. It could not be held back. Regret flowed through me, unstoppable, inclining me to violence, a regret that the night had turned into dawn without our accomplishing our objective. Yet not wanting to blow up, I repressed my feelings and dozed off to sleep. Unless we attacked, we were no more than green troops of no other use. Our aim was crowded aside into a bunch of trivial actions that could not be ignored. Whichever way you went, by the morning after last night the act could be thought only the more excessive. Because its meaning was being lost and the end was growing ugly, the culmination of my death had lost its beauty. The reality of this life, however, could not now be changed for the better, and we had to continue with our tainted daily life. The anger that I could not contain consumed me and recoiled upon me.

  What I could do was to confirm the enemy situation through the guard unit of the S. Defense Forces at headquarters. The reply came back that conditions were deadlocked and showed no new developments. The stabbing pain from last night’s preparatory order had eased because the way to death had been set aside. My earnest need began to sound like a request for a loan, and I lost my nerve. With the change in the situation, the scales began to drop away from how I saw the martial spirit I had assumed. Sleepily I entered the air-raid shelter. The beds were made of unplaned logs and scraps of lumber piled up in a clutter, like racks for silkworms. The dampness was heavy and no one was using the beds. Since there was nothing but the framing beams around the crude excavation, water oozed from the ceiling and walls and made a light dripping sound. Pulling up the heavy damp blanket, wearing my seagoing clothes and leaving my shoes on, I lay down on the bed, only to feel the dampness penetrate my bones. Although it was not cold, a chronic disorder in my joints had left me feeling that my urine would not flow. The deep silence sank into the earth. As I lay there listening to the water dripping from nowhere and to sounds of crumbling earth, an immediate sense of comfort engulfed me. All the commitments of the day were put aside as I drifted happily into sleep.

  After I awoke, short on sleep and in doubt of my judgment, I realized I was so stiff that I could hardly move. Indeed, I could not move at all. The hardness of the bed and the dampness of the cave had left me as if encased in a plaster cast. I was temporarily unable to break the stiffness, but after enduring a period of freezing, I was gradually able to relax and move. Like a bad hangover returning, I thought back to last night when I had fallen asleep, and I was overwhelmed by a feeling of disgust that I could not contain. To make sure of my ability to stand up in my usual manner, I concentrated on shaking off the mood. The light coming in from outside the shelter blinded me. It penetrated gently into the darkness, and I understood that the situation was no different from when I fell asleep. We had been granted a new day unchanged from yesterday. The whispers of the men on duty carried the echo of a gentle murmur to my bed, concealed in the dampness of the cave.

  I raised myself up with no clear connection to the conditions I found myself in. I stretched out my legs. When I looked blankly toward the incoming light, I saw things more clearly as if I had peeled off a veil. I had been going to take part in a commando raid. My bones would have been crushed, my flesh would have been blown off, and my blood would have drained out. Instead of going to that cruel scene, however, I had been confined in a deep sleep in that dank cave. No, I could not yet make glory mine. The distance that I could not conquer unfortunately seemed to have been stretched out. My feelings wilted. I languished in fatigue. Everything seemed phony and trivial. Why didn’t the enemy come near? Moment by moment I was being tested, and as a result the attack was pushed ahead without being conducted. It was a joke. With an air of doubt I left the place that smelled of the stink of my sleep, and I walked out into the bright sunlight.

  With the postponement of the planned activities that would have been so thoroughly conclusive, all my daily activities were revived. My abhorred death receded into the distance, and a creeping urge for life quivered under my skin. I knew I had to return to my overall commitment. Immediately after facing a monstrous death, sleep had come to me, but sleep did not conceal the need to satisfy my hunger. Because I was soon to die, the fact that I could get no reprieve from hunger and sleep drove me to nothingness. But what was that curtain of light spreading like a dense mist in the depths of my body? From somewhere a slackness eased the frozen surface that had shut me in so tightly, encasing my life in the cold. In contrast to my relaxation, the fact that we were awaiting orders to launch our attack irritated me. In my irritation I was walking along the edge of a dangerous cliff when I left the track and settled down in a sunfilled patch of weeds. There I could not control my inclination to enjoy my senses. What was it that made me agree to pursue such a course? I did not know.

  The guards returned to their normal schedule. Among them I recognized the commandos. I thought I had dozed for only a bit, but it already was noon. The commandos waking from their sleep had returne
d to their daily duties. They showed no feelings, and they had sloughed off any signs of strain from last night’s preparations for attack. The objective of the preparations had been missed, and because they did not know what work to do next, they appeared to fall into a sense of stymied emptiness as they walked head down among the readied units along the shore of the narrow waterway. Staring at their feet as they walked, they showed no sign of any coherent thoughts. The midsummer sun of the southern islands scorched them in their clothing and made them sweat. They walked like shadowy figures totally different from the people they were until yesterday. It seemed connected to the place where I had lain motionless for so long in the damp dark depths of the air-raid shelter. As long as the prepared-for departure for imminent death was delayed and nothing happened to change that, nothing could stop the act of bodily regeneration. The fact, too, that I had to eat shamed me, and a dark anger grew over me, burning my cheeks. If we received the order again and we were required to crash our explosive-laden boats into the enemy ships and were left with no other choice, we must embark on that unknown course that stinks of the dark abyss, predicted but unimaginable. Fear stretched out in little shreds, like the unpleasant jerks of bad brakes. The result strengthened our move toward our objective. How could one believe in the respite and peace evinced in that instant reprieve? Yet we could not doubt that they clearly enveloped us now. This morning before dawn we heard the dull thuds of bombing from one or two enemy planes, and as on many days before, countless planes flew past without staining the sky around our island while they headed in formation to attack the mainland, from where the dull echoes of the composite bombing pattern did not reach us. The unit members had long ago completed their preparations for battle; there was nothing more to do. Because of the enemy planes, the commandos could not launch their armed boats and conduct their training openly on the land and sea without being seen. If the crews of the enemy planes saw our little green patrol boats wriggling in the sea and along the shores of the inlet, suggesting a peacetime boat race, and if they were tempted to squash them like ants, would they in one capricious attack have caused the decisive explosion of the 230 kilograms of explosives stowed in the prows of our boats? How many boats would they have blown up, and if they had driven them ashore, how would it have changed the mountainous slopes of the inlet? The supply route from the mainland had long since been cut off, and there was no hope for a resupply of arms and equipment. Other than at least taking steps to restrict by a little the daily deterioration and damage, there was nothing to be done but to fold one’s arms. Then if we did have to carry out some daily tasks, there was nothing to do but work in the fields. To ameliorate to some extent the dreary struggle for food for the troops in the dimly foreseeable future, we must work at growing sweet potatoes. After the commandos had departed for the attack on some uncertain date, the remaining base and maintenance troops would dig the potatoes that had matured. They say that no enemy planes have appeared today, but with their boats loaded with weapons and fuses, the troops still could not conduct any probing exercises in the waters. Instead, they dabbled in the potato fields and gave themselves over to cutting pine trees to use to camouflage the barracks spread out along the inlet. The sun shone high and bright, and perhaps in a brief interval of rest, the men squatted down and chatted with their friends. From last night through to this morning, they had been in the palm of death, yet one could see no sign of their improbable reprieve.

  Had the salt content in my body been depleted? Even as I was being bathed in the direct rays of the midsummer sun of these southern islands, the sun became obscured enough that I could suddenly look all around it. A shadow suffused the strong rays of sunlight and a thin veil-like film appeared burning with dark soot drifting from the center. In a reaction like the fear that strikes when the earth shakes, I lost strength from the muscles beneath my skin. The effect spread throughout my whole body and made me lose interest in life. As I trembled with fear, I anticipated the day of attack, thinking it would be good if it came quickly. That was because we were waiting without departing, even though the day had come in accordance with our wish. All the business of life troubled me now; it seemed that the strength had seeped out of both of my arms and my temperature had dropped.

  In the afternoon, too, the sun was shining and no enemy planes appeared. The fact that they, who never missed a single day, did not come was suspicious. What had happened to the impending circumstances that might have caused an attack last night by the commandos’ boats? I could not clearly understand why time was ticking away on such a quiet day as today. When the familiar sound did not reach my ears, those ears were left to make it up. Those unheard bombing explosions, like a buzzing in my ears, sounded like an unearthly symphony. Within the range of my vision, though, I couldn’t see any planes. I couldn’t recognize the sound of bombing that was not an illusion. The move toward battle was at a standstill, and hadn’t the borders of our changed world widened? I was having trouble tuning in to the texture of the atmosphere, which I could not receive through the skin of my body, clothed in its accustomed way. I could not say what was where, but things were different. I wanted to escape the tangle of my responsibilities, but I hesitated to find the way to a new world order. Against the surface of my impatience, the world as it was moved without hesitation in circumstances all the more critical. The occasional trumpet of the signal troops calling us to our duties and the orders from the watch sounded through the air like plaster, hardening immediately.

  I waited for the sun to go down as I clutched at my heart to keep me from flying away like a flock of birds taking off. The coming of evening should be conducive to danger. As darkness descended, enemy ships in the vicinity could sneak in and provide the opportunity we must seize to sail out into collision. The conditions we steeled ourselves yesterday to meet today made us feel as though we were waiting restlessly backstage for our turn to enter after the curtain had been raised. Yet we had lost the spirit to do our duty skillfully without failing. Just as one waits when the clappers sound, but no news is announced, one doesn’t know why the appointment is broken, but one is unhappy that it was the other side that broke the promise. When the signal comes, one goes. Feeling themselves scorned and uprooted, the commandos could endure any fear, and becoming enraged they could launch suicide attacks without thinking about strategy. Death was frightful, but so long as it did not become one’s own, one could not stop being pulled in its direction. The night that harbored death had stripped away the darkness and the cold under the direct rays of the midsummer sun, and a drama had unfolded in which I could play the leading role. The darkness of night concealed my trembling, and I thought it covered over our lack of experience and the shortcomings of our strategy. I wanted to be enfolded quickly in the darkness of night.

  At last the sun sank low, but at a time I could not confirm, when a group of people from the village far back on the inlet appeared and informed us they were gathering in a small glen outside the unit base. Five or six men from the officers’ quarters went there to find that all the people of the village were smiling, but the smile was only in the muscles of their faces. The expression in their eyes was tense. Their look betrayed the knowledge that the commando boats, last night in the attack phase, were now on instant alert. They were tenacious in keeping their gaze on us and not turning away. They appeared to be crying at our fate that must take us again tonight on a mission of death. That, I thought, was the look of having already seen the dead. While I thought it was an overreaction, it did make my flesh crawl. Those grinning faces, showing the white of their teeth and the wrinkles around their mouths, were transmuted onto bodies that faced tomorrow’s events, and I could not bear the mincing of the time or the changing of atmosphere. They looked to me like people with bodies who had been given exaggerated dolls’ heads. My surroundings assert their presence, and what controls me are my sensibilities. Thus the abyss of demoralization opened at once at my side. The expectation of whatever demand they might place made me grou
chy. Ten large bombs that had been transferred from the air unit on the island across the strait had, because of the lack of a place to conceal them, been tossed into the thick brush under the trees in a ravine, but nothing that might be thought unusual had affected the parched atmosphere. I thought I could recognize most of the village people, but was that a false impression? I suspected that those I knew by sight might have deliberately stayed home, and there were many faces I did not see there. From a small village of some ten houses, would so many have come? Whoever they were, the most familiar ones crowded around to establish by the smiles they nursed and the gaze they focused that I must refresh my memory. Because they were undernourished, the rows of pasty faces and the mass of people pressed together made a frightful sight. While they must offer their sympathy, they, who with no special privileges must face death empty-handed, had instead come with their few remaining rice cakes in hand, bringing boxes which they piled before us. Because of emergency work, our whole unit could not be there together to receive their condolences, and the villagers said they had come to extend their sympathy to a representative group. I realized that among the old men there were eyes blurred and dimmed with tears. No matter how secret the affair was, through the movements of unit members, the news would somehow have gotten to the village, and there could be no doubt that last night’s concerns were known to them. The skinny children, their eyes looking blacker and larger, the pupils sparkling with longing, even though they did not understand the consequences; the adults jammed together and smiling in a way that struck me; the women in formal kimonos, country style, their obis tied up in the rough undersash way and barefoot without wearing clogs; these figures impressed me irresistibly. As my eyes became accustomed to the sight, the number of familiar faces grew. It unsettled me to think that the condition I had been thrown into might be a serious illness. These were unfamiliar people I’d never seen before and were of no concern to me. Suddenly, faces that I had thought were unknown were now well known. I found it appropriate that they were smiling in a friendly manner. Soon there was an announcement by a song and dance group accompanied by someone strumming a bamboo plectrum on a traditional Okinawan shamisen. The musicians came into view on a narrow seaside path leading to the cemetery and overgrown with weeds. The voices wrung from those throats carried an intonation I could easily believe could be learned only from experience. The conditions of a world were revealed there with the power to entice a person into it. The dance was unrestrained. Hands, feet, and bodies moved wildly but not in drunkenness. When I looked around suddenly, I saw the women had white powder applied to their skins, which were bronzed by the sunburn of the southern islands. It was not rubbed into the skin but was applied in a mottled pattern that I thought displayed an impression of public service. The gestures of childish exaggeration gave the illusion that I was in the midst of an unrestrained outdoor assembly, being escorted toward the beginnings of the world. With a feeling of mystery I watched these free movements that were understood to be deliberate. There was no bitterness in them. The emotions did not break down into stagnation. Because the purpose was to titillate and entice, the spectators had to respond with smiles. I strongly wanted to show them that at no time was there any unusual excitement in the life of the troops. These appearances heightened the pitch of the laughs and induced the next laughs at unpredictable moments. I, too, corroborated the experience of these unrestrained revelations. The mottled makeup and the bare feet of the musicians created a direct intimacy, and when one became accustomed to their folksiness, the makeup of the eyes gave great weight to the faces they marked. That by itself brought a greater sadness to their faces.