The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

by Donald Richie

  4 may 1955. The weather has now cleared and Tani has gone to the harbor while I, having slipped on the rocks in my geta this morning, stay in. We had rented a motorboat and gone to a pair of small islands off the coast, Yajima and Kyojima. These little islands, each only a couple hundred yards across, rise straight from the sea, and hold some tiny peaks, upon one of which Nichiren is supposed to have sat for a month or so. Clumping about in my geta, carrying my paper umbrella, I was thinking about the predicament of the foreigner—ridiculous if he does not adapt, amusing if he does—when I slipped and banged my foot.

  Now, laying down my pen, I look out over the bay and there is Tani now, tiny in the distance, black in his school uniform, paddling along in a small, perfectly round boat, unable to make any progress at all. I regard him for a time as he struggles and then wish I had gone with him so that we could have enjoyed the predicament together.

  5 may 1955. Boy’s Day, paper carp flying from the roofs indicating the number of male children within—some have up to five. We take a bus to Akadomari and get a room directly on the sea. Here people do stare, so I must seem truly odd. The girl at the inn tells me that no foreigners have come for five years. I believe it. I am followed about the streets by processions of small boys who perhaps think that I am part of their celebration. When I turn to show my fangs, however, they scatter.

  Tani and I leave the hotel to walk along the beach and a whole group is lying in ambush, but one look at my horrid face and they flee. All except one, who falls down. I stand over him and say that foreigners find nothing more delicious than a child. The others, coming back to rescue him, stand in a line, and I turn and ask which among them tasted best. They look wide-eyed, and then the older and more sophisticated begin to smile. By this time, however, the fallen boy under my feet has scrambled away in terror.

  We walk along the seaside so far as the shrine, high up on a cliff, surrounded by cedar. It is so still at the top, that I can hear the whisper of the surf far below and the cry of the distant sea bird. In every Japanese village there is such a place—clean and quiet, where anyone may come.

  Akadomari is a poor village, like many on Sado. Here the poverty hidden in the towns is displayed. The main street is unpaved, the houses are old, and the plaster is cracked. Children play in the dust and munch stalks of burdock. I do not see any of those candy stores beloved of the big town young.

  As the maid puts down our futon she tells me that I have been the main entertainment this boy’s festival, that the children are talking of nothing else. She also adds politely that she herself is so excited she does not know what to do. All this is Kansai-accented language, which she is not at all surprised to see that I understand. Indeed, no one is surprised that I speak Japanese. In the cities one is being forever complimented, as though learning the language of the country you live in is some kind of feat. Not here. Here we are so strange in ourselves that an added bit of oddness—knowing the language, for example—is as nothing by comparison.

  In the bath sliced iris stems are floating, filling the surface. Tani and I sit in this prehistoric lake, and I am a mighty brontosaurus, head breaking the surface. He says he is a baby brontosaurus and lies on his back to allow the smaller head to rise. I ask him if the iris, so much a part of Boy’s Day, is truly invigorating. He says he thinks so.

  6 may 1955. Waiting for the steamer back to Honshu we walk about, look at the souvenirs, eat when not hungry, drink when not thirsty, all those things one does when waiting. There are boats to rent and Tani is wild to row again, but after all we have now drunk and eaten we decide not to. Instead we get a haircut for me.

  The steamer is crowded and we can barely find room. Children everywhere, boys mainly. Perhaps returning from their holiday. Perhaps going for a holiday. On the island, as in the rest of rural Japan nowadays, lots of kids and oldsters, lots of girls too, but few young men. They have all gone to the city to work. Not many will return.

  In the train, waiting for it to start back to Tokyo. The station loudspeaker is playing Poulenc. In what other country, I wonder, would they play Les Biches as departure music? No other country. In Japan, however, the music is merely Western, of no particular cut or shape. Like Guy Lombardo, Bach, and “Jingle Bells,” it is appropriate, particularly for departure, adding its modish, festive, Western tone.

  Tani sits across from me, his feet in my lap. He is sleeping, indeed is usually sleeping when I write in this journal. He is tired but happy because this trip has taken him to the ends of the earth, the great edge of the empire. But now he has awakened and is looking at me writing. I shall stop, for soon we will start.

  17 september 1955. Fukuoka from the air looks like Cleveland; on the ground it looks like Pittsburgh—but a Pittsburgh that something has happened to. Fukuoka is one of the few Japanese cities that still looks as though it has been destroyed. And now the reconstruction chokes the streets and tosses its waste to the skies. Along with this, a lack of friendliness. My questions are answered politely but shortly, my inquiries with a firm courtesy and nothing more. Then I notice that there are still lots of jeeps and young male foreigners on the streets. The U.S. Army is still here, years after the end of the Occupation. I understand this aloofness.

  Karatsu—one of those seaside towns that seem always out of season. Just enough of the festive—strings of lanterns, plastic maple leaves—to lend an air of sustained melancholy. A few lights glimmer; there is a distant phonograph, a faraway laugh, and the sound of amado being slid shut. It is all very sad. I amble through the darkened streets and finally sit down in front of the bus terminal, where two men are already sitting. I remark that it is a sad town. Yes, they agree. Karatsu is a sad and lonely town. They are both carpenters, and both have had enough to drink, to become melancholy but still coherent. “If you really want to have fun,” says one of them, “there is some place to go, though, a really nice place—Fukuoka.”

  18 september 1955. Early morning at the Karatsu station, the clouds hang low over the far mountains then fall like cascades down the slopes, a part still clinging to the pines at the top. It begins to rain and the mountains are gone, their places taken by ink washes, only a dim outline remaining, impossible to see which is mountain, which cloud.

  Near me on the station platform sit two older women, two girls, and a baby. Every once in a while one of the girls turns to the baby and says o-me-me, and the child, obedient, opens wide its little eyes and turns them high into its little head. The girls shriek with delight and the baby, having performed its single trick, screams as well. Finally, the older women must shake their fingers in order to continue their own interrupted conversation. Then one of the girls says o-me-me, and it starts all over again. The baby crows, claps its hands, and the girls lean against each other in their delight.

  Kubata—a small, gray square surrounded by small, frame buildings. It rains, and inside, the station steams. Then the train shudders, begins to steam as well, and the trip to Nagasaki begins. We click and patter along an oyster gray sea, with high cliffs and houses at preposterous angles, leaning out toward the small islands that dot the bay, all decorated with small, fragile-looking pines. Around a bend slides Mount Unzen, the meadows in front foreshortened by the black and steaming mass behind. Staring at all these sights hitherto unseen, I buy a bento and recognize everything in it, except something that looks like orange peel and tastes like fish.

  Nagasaki, a true southern city, with parasols, shirtsleeves, palms, and a bright, dusty atmosphere. The downtown is hidden away in the alleys and is difficult to find. It reminds me of a Chinese city, with its labyrinth of lanes and its shops that open out into your lap. In all my wanderings here, however, I have not been able to find a cheap hotel.

  Determined to economize later, I now sit high above a formal-looking garden, gazing at the distant hills and drinking a sweet tea I have never tasted before. Made of flowers, it seems. And the sunny afternoon is so quiet, morning rains all gone, that I can hear the crickets below me.

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nbsp; In the evening I walk about the back streets of the city. In general, I am disregarded. Foreigners have been here before. Some even came and dropped an atom bomb on the city. I feel more of an outsider here than I ever do in Shinjuku or Asakusa. Yet, Nagasaki at night is much like those two pleasure quarters—everything is given over to the appetites.

  I go to Maruyama, the prostitute section. It is large and very logically laid out. Like Washington, D.C., it has main avenues, circles, spoked streets, and an apparent assumption that it will last forever. As in the Kansai, the girls sit in large and brightly lighted genkan, as though on stages. Dressed in the brightest kimono, each assumes a mannequin-like pose, fan in hand, head turned back or shoulder raised, an erotic neckline showing. Two old women on either side of the doorway attempt to direct the traffic, and occasionally the girls themselves cry out in shrill, birdlike voices.

  A few English words are tried out on me as I pass (Hey, you), but when I stop and step into one of the brilliantly lighted entryways, all twittering stops. After I offer polite phrases in Japanese (Konban wa. Ikaga desu ka?), there is silence, and then, suddenly, laughter. This is not derision, but a sort of surprise, a kind of friendliness that seeks to put me at my ease. Two come forward, smiling through their makeup, ready to maneuver me upstairs. Such, however, does not occur. Rather, we stand there and talk about various things—about how nice Nagasaki is; how I ought to have gone to Karatsu only for the festival, for it is then lively enough for anyone; that in Kumamoto I should try the horse—delicious. Then, a young girl in a red kimono asks, “And what is Tokyo like?”

  And the way in which she asks it, that half-hidden tone of longing, that self-deprecating shake of the head as though Tokyo has been often thought of, but—it is so far away, so expensive—always given up on. The two old ladies suddenly bark, and I suddenly see her life as she sees it. Then, with a show of vivacity, she asks, “And the Ginza? I was there once.” And the spell is broken. I am on the outside again, looking in.

  Past midnight, I stop and talk to the young doorman at a cabaret called The Florida. “Don’t bother,” he says, looking at me looking inside the paneled door. “We’re closing up anyway.” So, I invite him to come with me and have a drink. He hangs up his epauletted coat, and we drink beer and eat cheese in a small bar at the edge of Shinbashi, the night district. His name is Sakaguchi, and he is from the farm, and after graduating high school this was all in the way of a job he could manage. He then says his generation is truly unfortunate. I ask why. He says that those now over thirty at least knew the war, knew what life was like before it, and though much poorer now, at least they knew what they could do because they had done it. His generation, however, was different. It had never had the opportunity of doing anything, and so does not know what it can do and, he added, never will. All of this is said with no self-pity. He is sorry for his generation, not for himself.

  19 september 1955. The bus ride from Isohara to Shimabara, through Unzen Park, filled with forested mountain slopes and stately hotels with steam coming from the roofs like smoke. Here was the great prewar spa, where people from Shanghai and Hong Kong came to take the waters, to ride, to play golf, and to dance until dawn. It seems no longer so elegant. I see tour buses in front of the façades, like buggies at the Ritz. And here around the corner comes the tour group: office workers, keeping step, singing at the top of their lungs, safe in their crocodile.

  Shimabara, down by the sea, is not elegant at all. It is all business, all crisscrossed with narrow lanes and with no direct approach to the bay. Nets are carried through the streets; fishermen in their boots walk along the streetcar tracks, and for supper I eat a prawn as big as a small dog. This is where the last Christians held out after Hideyoshi went after them, but you would never know it.

  20 september 1955. On the boat to Kumamoto. The sea is a lake and the ship seems hardly to move at all. Only the passing fishing boats show that we glide through the heavy water with a kind of imperative energy, as though we must move like an airplane or else we will drop like a rock to the bottom. Away from the shore the sea turns light green, celadon under the first light of the clouded sun.

  I sit on the third class deck and wish for breakfast, while around me, those wiser drink cold sake from teacups. They are now well through the bottle and are singing. It is Saraba Rabaru, but in place of that lost Pacific port they have substituted Matsubara, which means some extra syllables to cope with. At the end of the first line they still have a mouthful, and turn to look at each other. Then they repeat it. They, indeed, never get further than this first line.

  A further complication is that the ship’s loudspeakers have decided to regale us with Stephen Foster. This, I feel, is no accident. Indeed, I believe that the majesty of Unzen looming over us, with its crags and peaks, is thought well-augmented by these homemade strains from far away. Soon the native singers themselves are all nodding their heads over Jeanie with the light brown hair, while the sublime mountain recedes.

  Kumamoto—the bombings still visible a decade later. Vacant lots in the middle of the city, cleaned up, but empty, naked looking. Indications of the Occupation as well—signs to the Ordinance Dump, a shirt maker’s sign in English, a jeep or two on the streets but driven by Japanese, perhaps sold to them by departing Occupiers. The conductor on the streetcar I took into town from the port was filled with understanding, a sure sign that he is used to the lost, the strayed, the foreign.

  This is the only place in Kyushu where I know anyone—the family of a friend in Tokyo. I find the house and they, having been forewarned, are expecting to see me. My loneliness lifts like a cloud when they take me into the family. Watermelon is produced, the son is spoken of, and a soft futon is provided.

  21 september 1955. The younger brother of a friend shows me the ruins of Kumamoto Castle and describes the siege of a century ago in a vocabulary I cannot possibly understand. Then we go to the museum. Since he is keen on history, he acts out some of the historical exploits, waving his arms, jumping up into the ramparts. I ask how Saigo died, hoping for a harakiri, but he tells me that he expired in Kagoshima, and that is out of his province.

  In the afternoon I take the express to that city, and pass many fishing villages, each so beautiful with its coves and crags and little seaside shrine that I want to stop and stay forever. But the train goes so fast that by the time I have managed to read the first syllable of its name, flashing by on the platform sign, the entire place has been yanked from view, never to be seen again.

  Viewed from the city of Kagoshima, the volcano of Sakurajima seems as big as Vesuvius, and the city huddles around its skirts like a smaller Napoli. Here I encounter the famed and feared Kagoshima-ben, a dialect so fierce that those from other parts of Japan are intimidated when they hear it. Still, I am understood when I ask a question, and I can understand the answer. Then I realize that those addressed are resorting to hyojungo, standard Tokyo dialect. I realize this after I have talked to some children who are ready enough to talk, but who know no hyojungo.

  Later, a young man in a yukata takes me to a bar where we sit in a large room, drink, beer, and look at four girls. One of them, fat little face and lustrous large eyes, sings a song apparently daring, but all lost on me. The yukata-clad youngster laughs uproariously. His mood changes, however, when the bill is produced. Parting, poorer, I am walking back to the inn when I am stopped by a young taxi driver who wants to talk. Since there are no customers, we drive up into the hills and park, and in the dark look at the city laid out in its Neapolitan splendor beneath us. Afterward he drives me back.

  22 september 1955. The taxi driver was supposed to call for me at noon but does not, so I walk into town. It is easy to meet people here, but difficult to keep anything going for very long. Perhaps it is because here, unlike Tokyo, people do not want anything from me—or, better put, I have nothing to give anyone. Different from the cities where people want to learn English. Here, no one has any interest in English. What would they do with it? So I
am deprived of one of my attractions and feel a bit poorer, as though a stranger with no coins of the realm jingling in my pocket.

  23 september 1955. A crowded train ride through the mountains and I stand most of the way. Get off at a small town on the sea named Shibushi. I go swimming and the children come and talk. They speak right out, in their native ben, as though there is no other. A few of the older, having been to school, know Tokyo dialect. They act as interpreters—Japanese to Japanese. Jabber-jabber, says the smaller boy. “How old are you?” translates the larger. “I am thirty,” I answer. Jabber-jabber, translates the older to the younger, who shakes his head.

  Late in the afternoon, passing the station, I see a youth I remembered speaking with on the streets of Kagoshima last night. He had taken the noon train to, he thought, Miyazaki, but it had stopped here. What to do? No more trains till morning. Guessed he would have to spend another night on the streets. So I bring him back to my inn.

  Modern-minded type. Has been to Tokyo, learned just enough to rub off some of his country innocence, but by no means all: “Yeah, just tell the bartender you’re twenty-one, and it’s OK.” “How old are you?” I ask. “Eighteen,” he says, ducking his head in a rustic manner. All country children are asked how old they are. All of them duck their heads when they answer.

  “With girls you got to be tough. I got these dark glasses. They work sometimes.” I ask if that means that he takes advantage of the young ladies. “You bet,” he says with a city grin. “They’re just a bunch of country broads anyway.” I pull out my dark glasses and put them on. He laughs nervously, very much a country youth.

  He is going to Tokyo tomorrow. Is excited at the prospect. Can hardly wait to get back to Kabukicho—“that’s in Shinjuku, you know, a really swell place,” he says in his rustic accent.