by James Webb
To my right, in the ruins of a firebombed building, a just-returned soldier was playing a slow, sad song on a bamboo flute. He was still in uniform, sitting in the dirt against his military rucksack. The khaki uniform was faded and worn, but he still wore it with the precision of a proud veteran. His large eyes followed me as I passed him. I nodded to him. He nodded back, still playing. Where had he served? I wondered as I watched him play. And what has vanished from his life, that brings out such a melody of lament?
I had found it necessary to stop frequently and ask for directions as I searched for the address Lord Privy Seal Kido had given me. Even without the wartime damage, Tokyo’s smaller streets frequently changed names, and the street numbers were rarely posted. I finally reached the building, which several helpful, giggling young women had assured me was the correct address, but it did not appear that the place was actually a restaurant. Its nondescript front facade was no different than the buildings that abutted it on both sides. There were no windows, no advertising signs, no hanging lanterns. And curiously, no line of patrons waiting for seats.
This was the place? I stared hesitantly at the narrow wooden door. Inside the building, according to Kido, was one of Tokyo’s best and most exclusive dining places. Finally I opened the door and entered, still wondering if somehow I had made a mistake.
On the other side was a dank cement landing. Nothing else, not even a lightbulb. I stood for a moment, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, then began following a strangely odorless corridor toward the rear of the building. It was almost sterile in the hallway. I could not imagine that anyone had lived, cooked, breathed, smoked, sweated, or even walked along it for a very long time. I began to feel eerie, looking for rats and spiders, as if I were in the dungeon of an old castle. The corridor turned right and then left. Finally at the end of the hallway I saw dim lights and another door. I reached the door, standing motionless in front of it. I could hear nothing on the other side. Hesitating, I opened it.
And the world changed.
I might have been Alice, falling through the Looking Glass. On the other side was a wide, low room that seemed to reach forever in front of me. The room was crisscrossed with bamboo screens, filled with rich colors, lit by warm lights, and resonating with soft, welcoming music from a hidden, harplike loto. I could smell meat cooking, candles burning, and the delicate aroma of an entrancing perfume.
The source of the perfume now stood before me. She was a long-limbed, firm-bodied woman of about fifty who had been waiting just inside the door, off to the side next to a little fountain that splashed into a guttered, artificial stream. The stream, which wound its way across the entrance area behind her, was lit by floor lights. At the far end of the stream I could see another entranceway, where several Japanese seemed to be waiting for tables. And then I understood. The front door, like so much else when it came to the elites of this intricate society, was indeed a facade. One had to know the secret path, just as he had to know the secret code word, the secret handshake, the secret society, so that he might conceal his advantages from the dust-covered commoners, entering and departing comfortably out of the public’s view.
The woman was wearing a gold-colored silk kimono. Her hair was pulled tightly back behind her ears, accentuating her smooth skin and high cheekbones. She watched me with flirtatious almond eyes from behind the mask of her official face. She seemed to recognize me, and began smiling and bowing deeply as I entered.
The lights glowed low and warm throughout the large room. Simple but beautiful paintings emanated like welcoming embraces from tall, lacquered screens that defined the entranceway. Three young and very beautiful geisha stood just behind the bowing woman, matching her bows and smiles, their eyes telling me that they also knew who I was, and had been expecting me.
I gave them a slight bow in return, and spoke to them in Japanese. “I am here to meet Marquis Koichi Kido, the keeper of the emperor’s lord privy seal.”
Listening to me speak their language, the older woman smiled graciously, as if I had just uttered a personal compliment. The three geisha giggled with delight, covering their mouths with their hands.
“You speak beautiful Japanese, sir,” the older woman said. She bowed a second time, more deeply, and despite my usual cynicism I felt flattered by their thanks.
“I am only a simple beginner,” I answered, for it would have been rude to agree.
One of the geisha knelt and slipped off my shoes. Another fitted slippers onto my feet. They were beautiful. They were trained. This was their profession, passed down for hundreds of years inside the lanterned, red-lacquered archways of officially approved cantonments: to learn and practice the very definition of femininity, and to deepen the enticements of hedonism by hiding them behind a mask of propriety, self-respect, and careful flattery. And I did feel both hedonistic and flattered as they knelt before me, giggling and fretting over the largeness of my feet and the strength of my calf muscles as they finally fit me with my slippers.
The older woman gestured inside, and I followed her toward the private dining room where Lord Privy Seal Kido awaited me. There were no open tables in the restaurant. I caught fleeting glimpses of other customers, all Japanese except for me. They seemed happy and well dressed, even content, dining in small groups as they sat on the floor around square tables on the other side of bamboo and paper screens. Few acknowledged my presence, even with so much as a glance. They spoke in hushed tones to one another, as if the world ended at their screens. They were sharing memories and secrets, their whispers occasionally interrupted with brisk little bows and stifled barks of laughs.
As we walked I felt the eyes of one table staring harshly at me. Turning, I saw four well-dressed men of about Lord Kido’s age. Their flushed faces and watery eyes told me they were well into their evening’s ration of sake. Their gazes could not conceal a deep and angry hostility. One of them spoke gruffly, unaware that I understood Japanese.
“It is not over. It will never be over. We will defeat them, even if it takes a hundred years.”
“What is a hundred years?” said the man next to him.
“For us, a heartbeat. For them, more than half the life of their barbarian civilization.”
A man across from him grunted, staring directly at me. “Warui osoroshii kaibutsu gaijin …”
Evil, horrible monster foreigner …
My hostess blanched, noticing that I had heard the exchange. Seeing that I had slowed down, she gestured forward, regaining her smile as if the words had not been spoken.
“Please, sir, this way—”
I stopped and stared directly at them. Come to think of it, I did feel slightly monsterish, not to mention offended. Who were the people in this plush restaurant, dining in comfortable extravagance with their talk of eventually prevailing over the evil monster foreigners as the supreme commander sent cable after cable to Washington, urgently requesting his seven billion pounds of food?
I stood before their table and bowed slightly, speaking to them in Japanese. “Good evening, gentlemen. I am here on behalf of General MacArthur. He will be most pleased when I report to him that you have eaten so well this evening. He sends his best wishes to all of you for a happy and prosperous future.”
They stared at one another for a shocked and inebriated moment, then concealed their embarrassment and anger with wide smiles. Suddenly they were nodding their heads toward me as if I were a friend.
“Ah, so. Ah, so desuka.”
“Please, sir,” said my perfumed, smooth-skinned hostess, gesturing again toward the restaurant’s rear. “It is only a game they were playing with each other. You should not misunderstand Japanese word games!”
“Then I am sorry for my misunderstanding,” I said. I smiled and bowed to the drunken men. We all were lying, and we all knew we all were lying. “I am a simple barbarian, still unfamiliar with your customs.”
And resuming my pace, I decided that I did not like the patrons of this fairy-tale wonderland very muc
h at all.
At the very rear of the partitioned restaurant, in its most private dining area, Lord Privy Seal Kido waited alone. He was pacing away with a nervous energy that reminded me of MacArthur himself. I had been warned that Kido could be something of a poodle and he was indeed groomed impeccably, wearing a light waistcoat, wool trousers, and a red silk tie. When he saw me his face took on his customary look of practiced astonishment behind the binocular-thick round wire glasses. After our past meetings I was now used to this startled gaze, recognizing it as a shrewd way of disarming me by pretending my presence made him unsure of himself.
He raced to greet me, bowing before me. “Captain Marsh, you are very good to join me! Please, sit down! Sit down!”
A pot of steaming green tea had already been placed on the low hardwood table, above a small charcoal-fired hibachi. Kido eased himself onto a set of silk-covered cushions and immediately poured me and himself a cup. As he sipped his tea a sense of calm and even strength seemed to visit him. He stretched easily onto his cushions, at once becoming happy and magnanimous. In this little room, it mattered not that I was with the conquering army, or even that he had invited me for reasons that had not yet been fully revealed. I was inside his culture, and he was both older than I and my host.
“I consider myself fortunate to have met an influential American who speaks Japanese with such fluency,” he said, waving with his hand toward the cushions where I was to sit. “You are certainly a much smarter man than I, for I cannot speak a word of your own language.”
I eased quickly into my cushions, taking a sip of tea. “I am lucky only to have had some training, Lord Privy Seal. I can struggle through another language, but you, sir, have advised emperors.”
“Oh, you are very kind,” he replied, giving me a scrutinizing smile. “But even at your young age you are serving General MacArthur, who has more power even than the emperor.”
With our smiles and flattery, Kido and I both knew we were playing out a careful ritual. We were “belly talking,” saying one thing while meaning something else entirely. In Japan, any meeting between two men of power, the precursor even to a game of Go, the national equivalent of chess, required that each man attempt to convince the other that he himself was less powerful. To pretend you were less powerful in this excruciatingly indirect culture was to call attention from others to your very power. And if the other side did somehow believe your protestations, to be actually seen as less powerful might lull the opponent into an exaggerated self-confidence, causing him to lose. And it also saved face if one did eventually lose, making one’s loss more palatable by calling intricate attention to the strength of the adversary.
Kido sipped his tea and relaxed into his cushions, visibly delighted that I knew his game. And so I continued.
“General MacArthur is a great and powerful man,” I said. “But I am nothing to his power. At times his ears, perhaps. But you, Lord Privy Seal! You are the source of great wisdom to the emperor.”
“Oh, no!” protested Kido. “The emperor is a very wise man without me. It has been my duty only to protect him at times by preventing unscrupulous schemers from harming him. But for you to be the General’s ears is in many ways to be his brain and his voice. It is the ultimate form of power, Captain Jay Marsh.”
I sipped some more tea, smiling and waving him off. “As you know, General MacArthur allows no one to be either his brain or his voice. I am more like—a reference book that he might choose to read from time to time. But to be the emperor’s gatekeeper, Lord Privy Seal—to decide who might spend a few precious moments with him, and who should not—that is the ultimate power.”
The lord privy seal grinned and serenely nodded his head as if in great deference. “But I am sure your book is filled with wisdom, even for so young a man.”
I shook my own head, declining the compliment. “I am a simple tome, Lord Privy Seal, very quickly read.”
“Not so!” Kido answered. And then he frowned, as if carrying a great burden. “Besides, holding a gate when scheming men wish to see the emperor gives me no power. No! Instead it gives me fresh enemies every time one unsuccessfully wishes to abuse the kindness and good graces of the emperor.” The lord privy seal gave off a false sigh. “But even that does not matter. Those were other days.”
I smiled, as if giving encouragement to a longtime friend. “You are too modest, Lord Privy Seal. I see that your influence has not waned. Just think of our discussions while I was observing the proceedings of the diet! The emperor seems to treasure you greatly.”
Kido breathed more easily, now satisfied with our relative positions. He smiled indulgently. “Do I detect a flavor of, perhaps, Osaka in your dialect?”
“Perhaps,” I answered.
I hid my amazement as I relaxed further into my own cushions. Kozuko’s family had indeed emigrated from Osaka, and it was from her and her mother that I learned my first Japanese. But that had been so long ago. Since those lazy, playful college conversations I had spent a year in an army language school and another two interrogating Japanese prisoners, thoroughly homogenizing my diction. Kido had either a finely attuned ear or a remarkable intelligence apparatus still in place that had delivered him a background file on me, replete with Kozuko’s family history. Either was possible, and either possibility was both impressive and disarming.
“Osaka is a wonderful city for merchants, but unfortunately they do not make very good soldiers.” He seemed to take delight in confessing this tidbit of inside information to me, as if it made us conspirators. “Not like, say, Hokkaido, where they are farmers and it is cold and they grow up tough and strong. Oh, yes, I am speaking openly to you, Captain! The Osaka regiments fought without great heart, even against the Chinese. See? There are no secrets anymore.”
The three beautiful geisha soundlessly reentered our room, shedding their lacquered geta at the doorway, their stockinged feet sliding along the floor. They knelt near us, replenishing our tea and laying out bowls of dried fish and seaweed appetizers. The woman closest to me was the one who had commented on the strength of my calf muscles as she fitted my slippers. She was wearing a sea blue silk kimono. She was slightly younger than I, beautiful and slender, almost delicate. Her long fingers worked the pointed ebony chopsticks without conscious effort. Her dark, laughing eyes were as warm as a memory. My own eyes sought to swallow up her averted stare just for a moment as she leaned toward me, and Kido intercepted my secret wish as if I had suddenly announced it.
“She is from Kyoto,” he announced without prompting. “Very well schooled. A practiced musician, trained carefully in the martial arts, and an expert at Ikebana! Only the very best geisha are allowed to work here! Her name is Yoshiko. I think you like her very much, yes?”
Yoshiko had risen as he spoke, and I watched her with appreciation as she glided back toward the bamboo door. “She is very beautiful,” I said. She heard me and turned and smiled to me as she departed. “But I don’t wish to embarrass her by saying that in front of her. And I am engaged to be married.”
“You do not embarrass her, Captain Marsh! You make her very happy! In these times, when General MacArthur’s ears find you beautiful, there is no greater compliment. Especially when he is a young and handsome man.”
Kido was seizing on my moment of vulnerability and now was taking on an air of command. “All powerful Japanese men have women other than their wives. It is expected. If you have more talent and more responsibility, you will need more women also. As long as a Japanese man takes care of his wife, there is no shame. We understand these things.”
“She is very beautiful,” I repeated, surprised and yet suddenly uncomfortable with the open encouragement Kido was giving me. “But I already told you that I am not a powerful man.”
Kido brushed off my truthful disavowal as simply more belly talk. He dabbled in his appetizers. “You must be from a very fine family, to have studied Japanese and then to be with General MacArthur. Maybe your father has served with the diplomati
c corps, and you have spent much time in Asia? Or maybe your father knows the General?”
“My father is dead.”
“I’m very sorry. Did he die in the war?”
“No, he died in a cotton field.”
Kido smiled with embarrassment, stifling his own confusion, not knowing how to respond. “Cotton field?” he said, rolling the words as if they contained a hidden mystery. It was clear that he thought I was making a joke, or that I was perhaps being too intellectual, even too subtle for him to understand.
“My father was in fact a genius,” I continued, not wanting Kido to feel he had lost face. “And actually, he did serve with General MacArthur. In France, in World War One.”
This seemed to satisfy the lord privy seal immensely, enabling him finally to place me in an understandable Japanese hierarchy. And I had not totally lied, since my father, then known as Private Aloysius D. Marsh, had indeed served as an infantryman in France, certainly at times within a hundred miles or so of the General.
“Ah, so,” said Kido. “So you are from the warrior class. Just like the General.”
“More than that,” I answered, beginning to enjoy this new version of my family history, “we are both born in Arkansas. Many great warriors are born in Arkansas. Like maybe in Hokkaido.”
“Strong and tough,” announced Kido, giving me a warm, encouraging grin. “I see. And highly intelligent. Yes, I see that in both of you.”
“And what about you, Lord Privy Seal? It is said that you are first among the emperor’s Big Brothers.”
