“Yes, but so difficult to meet in Japan,” said Romola.
“Certainly easier than elsewhere,” I said.
“Ah, but you have the tongue,” said her friend.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You speak Japanese.”
“Oh.”
Then Romola suddenly, as was her way, began speaking of the past. “Ah, Ravel. Charming, you know. Too charming. A little man, small. But what you call a fashion plate. Oo-la-la, such clothings. I wild with jealous. But too charming. And cold. My late husband thought so too.”
This perhaps prompted further memories, “One man my late husband hate. Stravinsky! My late husband, he trust him, work with him, Le Sacre du Printemps, then monster goes writes horrid things in Figaro, Le Matin, I no longer know. He never forgive. And me too. Never forgive.”
“Then, years after, I hear Stravinsky ill in Azores. Is dying. Pneumonia. Me and Cocteau put together our heads and I send telegram. I will sue for millions. Igor and money! He read, he gasp—Roberto Craft and Vera come but too late. He die. He no die, hélas, not pneumonia, only cold.”
“Now you go home,” said the friend, towering over me, gray eyes, gray hair, gray teeth. “Today Takarazuka has performance. We go. We smile.”
So they went and they smiled, and somehow they also got backstage and at last met the one who had, perhaps, smiled at them. Then they left Tokyo and I did not hear the sequel until the following year when Romola returned.
“Ach,” she said, “it was hell. Los Angeles. But better now. Idiot Ed Sullivan, he want stupid ‘Dance Around the World’ so I go round and round the world. Very pleasant for me. I come see Harumi.”
Harumi was the Takarazuka girl. She sang and danced. She was also one of those who played girls. I was shown a picture. Very pretty she was too, too pretty to play a boy. She was in the starched organdy and picture hat that the Takarazuka girl-girls always wear. The boy-girls on the other hand wear flowing ties and sideburns.
Romola, with the help of one of Ed Sullivan’s helpers, had sent Harumi a letter in Japanese. An answer arrived. Then, also from Ed Sullivan’s office, Romola began a series of long distance telephone calls to Japan.
Since neither could understand the other’s language, the conversation was a series of sighs and giggles, the operator expertly switching these noises about. Eventually, curious, she was brought in to interpret. The foreign lady wanted to visit. Well, the Japanese girl guessed that that was probably all right. And the kind white person wanted to bring a gift. Well, the Japanese person had never owned a silver fox stole. “Stole?” said Romola, “Hah, I want bring mink—a cape.” So she went again to Ed Sullivan.
She showed the article to me the day before she made the presentation. Very handsome. Romola herself was also very handsome. The witch had vanished and she was magically transformed into an attractive matron with a smart Paris hat, a single gold ring on a slender finger.
Then again I did not see her for a time. A year later came a crackly call from Riga. “Riga? Oh, idiot ‘Dance Around the World.’ Harumi, she no write. She ill? She angry?” The anger, it appeared was perhaps due to Romola’s refusing to send a present to a favorite aunt. Romola had already sent gifts to mother, father, brothers, sisters and a single uncle and felt that the family might go on and on. “Family, family—uncles, aunts, cousins. It is like Russia.”
Again in Tokyo (idiot “Dance Around the World”), she had me to tea. How were things with Harumi, I wanted to know. “Not good,” she said. “Expense is OK but a lot.” She began counting on her fingers. “Adults’ Day, then Children’s Day, then Emperor’s Birthday, then her birthday, then . . .”
“And a present for each?” I asked.
“Oh, but you should see her dear little face, it light up when she get present.”
“I can imagine.”
There was a silence, then a sigh, then, “You tell me. How do you do it?”
“How do I do what?”
“Not you. How does one do it? In this country. With these people. It is so difficult. I no understand.”
“You mean . . .”
She nodded sadly.
“You’ve been putting out for the Emperor’s birthday and all and haven’t even . . .”
“One embrace. After the cape. That is all.”
“Romola, you are very slow,” I said. “At your age . . .”
“My age. That is the problem.” She looked at me, her eyes bleak. “When my age and then love comes you must not hurt it, you must shelter it,” and she folded her hands as though they contained a bird. “It is precious. It is all that I have.” Then, recovering some animation, “How they do it, Japanese girls?”
“Well, I don’t know . . . fingers maybe?”
“No, that I know. The occasion, I mean.”
“Maybe you ought to be firm.”
“She says she want go to Paris . . .”
“That’s it, Romola. You take her to Paris, you lock her up at the Ritz or somewhere, and you have your way.”
“But what will she think?”
“Romola! She is in the Takarazuka. This will come as no surprise to her. All the girls must know about it after the first week.”
“Yes,” said Romola with sudden scorn, “The big ones, who play men, with hats.” Then as sometimes happened, the past clouded the present. “Ah, Debussy. Such a nice man, so warm. Nice eyes. And all the last pretty things written standing at the mantelpiece. Yes, no sitting down. Cancer. Behind. Oh, no, no,” she wagged a mischievous finger, “Not what you think. Not at all. No, hélas, bicycle accident when small.” Then, “My late husband like Debussy, but Debussy no like my late husband’s Jeux. So sad.”
I heard nothing further. Then a friend called to my attention a small news item. One Takaoka Harumi, deported from France where she had been living. Had run up massive bills at Le Printemps and others of the grands magazins. Curious, I tried to discover where Romola was. I called Ed Sullivan’s Tokyo representative and was hung up on once my business was known.
Months later a friend told me that he had seen Romola at a spa in Austria. She was there for treatment. Arthritis. Said she was wearing black, looked like a spider. She had again transformed back into a witch. And she was wearing a veil, they said. And when asked if someone were dead, she answered that, yes, someone was.
philip johnson, 1958. We were at the Sanbo-in, near Kyoto. Reconstruction was going on. The pagoda had been newly painted—orange, white, and green.
“Now that I like,” said Philip Johnson. Someone demurred. “Not at all,” he continued, “This is the way they were and this is the way they should be. That is why Nikko is better than Nara. They keep it up.” Then, after a glance at the guidebook, “But, where is it?” Where was what? “Why, the geometrical sand garden, of course—the one with the circles. Tells all about it right here.” A strong finger jabbed the guidebook.
Johnson then forged ahead, tall, strong profile, like the figurehead on a Yankee clipper, cleaving his way through whatever separated him from where he wanted to be. “We’ll find it,” he said, shortly, then, “Trust to them”—they were two young Buddhist acolytes we had brought along—“and we’d never find it. Don’t know your own culture too well, eh?” he said, turning to the acolytes who knew no English but who now laughed politely at what they took to be a jest.
“Yes, here’s where the corridor bends,” he said, consulting the map in the guidebook, “but where are those damn gardens then?” He strode on, leading, peering left and right, now more American bald eagle than clipper. “Philip,” said someone, “Remember to check your guidebook after you’ve run something down. If you don’t put a big check mark there you might forget you’ve seen it.” Philip nodded vigorously, striding on, then brandished the book and said, “Oh, yes, yes. I always check it.”
“He’ll love these gardens if he finds them,” said one of his friends. “They have no people in them, you see. And we’ll have some quiet. The only time he has remained
silent for more than two minutes was at that inhuman Ryoanji the other day. For a full five minutes he said absolutely nothing. It was heaven.”
“Now where in the hell are they,” asked Johnson, forging ahead.
Hideyoshi’s garden spread before us. “Oh, lovely,” said someone, but Johnson complained after a swift glance. “Doesn’t have any sand circles in it.”
“It was a pleasure garden . . .” someone began.
“Do be quiet,” said someone else, “that’s enough to turn him against it . . . pleasure, people!”
I had been told about a row he had had once. New building, all completed, and then an argument about there being no drinking fountain outside the auditorium. “No, no, no,” he is supposed to have said, “drinking fountains are hideous, they would spoil the line.” “But people have to drink,” he was reminded. “No, they don’t,” was the reply.
With Lincoln Kirstein. Nara, 1958. donald richie
And I remembered that in Tokyo he and I had talked about people. I had asked what kind he liked. “Oh, any kind. But, here, in Japan, well—I rather want to be like Madame Butterfly, but in reverse. I want people to like me, and then be terribly disappointed when I leave, to feel miserable, and never quite get over it.” I asked him if he also wanted them to kill themselves. “Heavens, no. What a bother.”
“Philip can’t help it,” said someone, the one who had spoken of the pleasure garden. “He’s just like that.”
“Now, God damn it,” said Philip. “Just where the hell does it think it is.” He turned a corner. There it was, circles and ovals of gravel.
“Lovely,” he said.
I asked one of the acolytes what the gravel meant, why it was in that shape. The acolyte told me that it was because this garden had been used for drinking parties. The guests sat there, on those little islands of greenery outlined by the gravel. That was why some of them were in the shape of gourds. That was because they used to drink sake from gourds. I explained all this.
“Drinking parties?” said Philip Johnson. His tone indicated surprised displeasure. “You mean that people actually sat there?”
“Lots of them,” I said, “And drank sake too.”
He shook his head. It was really too much for him, the way people behaved, even back in the seventeenth century. Then he turned, garden forgotten. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve had it.” And again he strode back through the corridors.
“Philip,” called someone, “don’t forget to check your guidebook.”
lincoln kirstein, 1958. He looks very Western in Japan, the large nose, the black eyebrows, and the big body—a seagoing New England prophet. At the same time a natural, massive gentleness. He is here in Japan even more, as though his large feet might stomp holes in the tatami. Tall, he apologetically curls under lintels. Heavy, he tries out floors with a smile of trepidation.
His is the gentleness of very strong people, those who do not need to exhibit their strength. The clumsiness is also that of the big—particularly here in the land of the nominally small.
Hands too big for any practical purpose, head too large for easy thoughts. Lincoln in his own home decides to move the big chair and does so with one hand, holding it aloft. He could, one thinks, have as easily moved the bed. But Lincoln in Japan in the print shop trying to turn over the pictures with his thick fingers; Lincoln trying to leaf through a book, the pages jamming; Lincoln trying to pay the bills, the money refusing to separate, the thousand yen bills sticking together in the mighty grasp, fingers ineffectively shuffling—it is like watching Moses trying to pick up the tab.
Lincoln and money. Here he turns very Japanese. It is there for use but is not somehow quite right. Old-fashioned Japanese wrap it in white paper in order to be able to handle it. Perhaps he ought to try that. Certainly, he thinks of money as the Japanese do. It is for use. Its only value is in its buying potential. It is for the present and perhaps the future.
In the same way both Lincoln and the Japanese regard people. These are also a kind of currency. A man is worth what he does. Lincoln upon hearing a new name asks, “What does he do?” Almost never, “What has he done?” Much more often, “What does he want to do?” He invests in people—as do the Japanese, and just as freely, just as openly. People are currency. They pay dividends. Both Lincoln and the Japanese pay high dividends too. The resulting relationship is one of nature’s happiest—symbiosis.
Flesh may dazzle, wit may seduce, but not for long. Infatuation over in a matter of minutes, Lincoln wants to know, “Now, what is it that you can do best?” He wants to know because then, to protect his investment, he will put you on the proper road, help you achieve your potential. Often in his own country Lincoln is misunderstood. They do not comprehend that there are rewards for accomplishment but that there is no sympathy for failure.
Japan understands well. This most pragmatic of people do not count hopes or intentions as accomplishments. A man is what he does. After his death, he is what he has done.
Consequently Lincoln in Japan for the first time meets a nation that feels as he does, a whole people whose values are his own. Since such values are, eventually, about power, Lincoln soon learns to use it in a very effective and quite Japanese fashion.
When he wanted the Kabuki to go to New York and could not get the proper cooperation from its sponsors, the mighty Shochiku entertainment combine, he deliberately went up to the man in charge of the troupe at a formal function and gave him the longest, lowest, coldest, most venomous bow that this Japanese could ever have seen a foreigner give. Such a show of submissive despicability could not go unanswered. It led to a series of meetings the outcome of which was that, Lincoln getting his way, the Kabuki went to New York.
Once Lincoln woke from a sound sleep and sprang up to say, “Oh, a vision.” He had seen Tokugawa-period Japan as a system of closed fusuma. One opened and there was the shogun himself. But then the doors behind him opened and there was the real shogun manipulating the first like a Bunraku puppet. But then the doors opened behind him, and there was the really real shogun. But then those doors behind him opened and on and on. He was going to tell Balanchine about this. It would be the basis of a new ballet.
It was not, but the grasp shown of the structure of power and responsibility in Japan remained. The Kabuki, the Bugaku, the Gagaku, anything that Lincoln had liked and thought worth seeing, were all eventually pried loose and sent over. People too, talented people, sculptors, designers, all were one after the other sent back to the land Lincoln came from.
They gained much from the experience and, from Lincoln’s point of view, they had paid off their investment. They had been successes. He had helped. Trouble he might have sorting out the bills to pay for the dinner but he had no difficulty at all in manipulating all of the powerful sources that would eventually pay for everything and make the potential into a reality.
And what happens when the potential had become a reality, when it had happened, when it was done, when it was over? Why then, in the most natural manner possible Japan loses its interest. Lincoln too. It had been done, why look backward? Everything, everyone, must pay his, her, its own way. After it had done, so it gets dropped.
Dropped. The massive fingers loosen; the colossus turns its head, attention elsewhere. The fingers open and down you go, away from the multiplicity of opportunity, away from the infinite possibilities of life with Lincoln.
And then, so Japanese of him, Lincoln’s, “Oh, no, you don’t want to know him. A horror of the first order. An utter and complete shit.” Or, if the retained memory remains a good one, a smile and, “Oh, absolutely, unbelievably monstrous.” But these are only token attentions to the past. In actuality Lincoln lives in the fluid and promising future. The present is there only in order to lead to promise.
This being precisely the way that Japan as a nation also thinks, I—firmly dropped myself—waited with interest to see which of the titans, Lincoln vs. Japan, would first get rid of the other.
Of course, i
t was Lincoln. He won. He dropped Japan before Japan was ready to drop him. He found that it had really little of interest. It was actually, he discovered, a very provincial little place. Funny in its way but dowdy, tawdry actually. Now that he had plundered it, there was not, he seemed to say, very much there. Balanchine was advised not to come. The ballet, misunderstood its first time in Japan, was not to give these people a second chance.
How Japanese of Lincoln. They too, having taken what they wanted from other countries, always despise the rest. When they have what they want, they bad-mouth. And what could be more natural? The Japanese and the Lincolns of this world are the true realists.
So, the Japanese would have dropped Lincoln and his demands after a time had not Lincoln first dropped Japan. But, had they been wise, they would somehow have held onto him. He would have made the most remarkable ambassador Japan had ever had. He was, for one thing, one of the few foreigners who instinctively understood. And he was, for another, just as pragmatic as they are. Life is, after all, for use.
angus wilson, 1959. An animated manner, a vivacious tongue, a high-pitched voice: “And so there I was, my dear, in the midst of one of our famous fogs, could see nothing whatsoever, and became quite lost. Stumbling into trees I eventually collided with a gentleman and I said that I begged his pardon but could he direct me out of the park, and he said, ‘I believe it is over in that direction, but these fogs often lift quite suddenly and once it has I will take the pleasure of guiding you out myself, madame,’ and the fog did lift just then and there we were face to face, two middle-aged gentlemen confronting each other.”
Like many of his jokes, this one was against himself and he relished the telling, the high voice modulated itself into a melisma and with a dying fall into “confronting each other.” Then, the yelp. There was always a little yelp at the end, as though there were a canine inside enjoying the tale.
He curled up in the chair, tucked his feet under, and extended a paw for his tea. There was indeed something doggy about him, something to do with the gray mane, the docile but guarded eyes, the bulldog expression. But not all was canine; there was something more.
The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 Page 12
