Or perhaps I did. I was feeling the awful pathos of knowing what was going to happen, the inability to stop it, the touching innocence of the victim. Dreams mean something we are told. What does my role as messenger from the future mean? Anything?—Or is the brain at sleep really an idle computer amusing itself by punching at random?
28 october 1982. Dinner with Marguerite Yourcenar and Jerry Wilson, all of us taken out by Eric Klestadt—to eat at the very elegant Kicho, then for coffee at the equally elegant Nishi no Ki.
Madame Yourcenar at one point speaks of herself. Her mother, who died when she was young, was Flemish. Her father, who died in the 1930s, was able to read her first book, Alexis, in manuscript. He was a great reader. Books were all over the house and Madame Yourcenar began reading very early.
“What did your father do?” “Nothing at all. Nothing.” “But how did you live.” “Land, tenant farming.” “Did that devolve down on you?” “On neither myself nor my older half brother. My father lived gloriously. He lived right through it.”
Jerry tells me she is seventy-nine. That, I think, is quite old, but years are apparently light upon her. She speaks of catching cold easily. “Fortunately, I caught my cold in the most beautiful place—Matsushima.” And Jerry says that sometimes she forgets. Which she probably does, but part of the fond way in which he says this has to do with their relationship as much as with her forgetfulness.
She is fortunate she has him. He is devoted. Always ready with the wraps. Helping her, smoothing the way. They have that mutual look that certain married couples have. What is hers is his, his, hers, the look seems to say. They both turn to answer the same question.
During the conversation I learn that she is claustrophobic and once had a bad attack of asthma in the Paris metro. I describe my being caught in the same metro and experiencing the pangs of the same affliction. We smile and nod. Something in common.
She is very interested in Eric and his background: German Jew, fled, came to Japan. She also knows how to be the perfect guest. I admire this. Adaptability. I would imagine that she has a long experience as guest, being gracious with host. I do not know how she would be as hostess. Perhaps not so good. I can imagine her becoming tired of her guests very easily.
But now it is midnight, time to move on to the transvestite bar, which will have to serve as the place where the onnagata meet.
5 december 1982. Invited to dinner by Madame Yourcenar and Jerry, just the three of us, at the Takanawa—sole for her, abalone for him, steak for me.
I watch her and Jerry together. It is like grandmother and grandson. It is also not like that at all. They are as much themselves with each other as though they have been married for years. At the same time, however, he is also there for her convenience. (In the bar for pre-dinner drinks, Madame went ahead. Usually it is he. This time he followed her, large among the little tables, and said, with a smile, “Where she goes, I follow.” Said this with affection and good will.) At other times she is as permissive as a mother. Jerry did not like the Noh and, carried away, he turned it into a little act. He also, without knowing, turned himself into the very image of his Arkansas mother not liking the Noh. He used words (“land’s sake”) appropriate for her. This unconscious imitation apparently pleased Madame. She also offered further reasons for finding the Noh boring. But since she had not actually found it so, this was done with some playfulness, yet with no hidden acknowledgment to me that we were at this point seeing through Jerry. On the contrary, it was like a mother reveling in her child’s foolishness.
Later, talk about Mishima. Madame astonished me with the pronouncement that his wife could not have much loved him, since she survived him. I asked if she were indeed that romantic, that she thought a great love could not survive a death. “Oh, yes,” she said, cheerfully, “I’m just that romantic.”
“But, you,” I said, “survived and lived to write Les Feux.” She looked at me as though trying to guess how much I knew. Since I knew nothing, this did not take long. She said, “Yes, it was a difficult time but it could not compare.” Consequently, I learned nothing about this particular crisis of the soul she had undergone, and of which I had only vaguely heard.
She wondered if Mishima’s wife knew, then said, “Of course she did but she did not want to believe, did not want to know.” Said that sometimes the person himself did not want to know. Mentioned Henry James as an example. I told her I had heard that Leon Edel had kept back letters from James to Hugh Walpole that proved what the biographer did not want to believe. “Yes,” agreed Madame, “because otherwise much of James’s The Pupil, would not be understandable. Madame Mishima, like Edel, was merely trying to hide, not wanting to admit.”
Not wanting to admit was also treated as just as normal, as was the homosexual impulse itself, however. Everything is normal in Madame Yourcenar’s world; hence everything is understandable. It is not that she is Olympian, as has been said, but that she is so absolutely accepting.
She did, however, find Japan the most difficult country she had ever been in. The simplest things defeated them. They went out to buy pencils and returned, defeated, no pencils. I wondered how this could be and then realized that her world is entirely one of language and she has no language for this country. Some kind of converse, this is what she expects, and this is what she misses here. Not that it is not here. It is that it is not open to her. No Japanese language, and the Japanese themselves not often making the intuitive leap one finds admirable in Mediterranean countries. Blank incomprehension or evasion is what she is met with. This intrigues and puzzles. Of a consequence the two of them go mainly to the theater. Jerry simply “adores” the Kabuki and so this is what they have seen. Some forty hours of Kabuki since arrival—both because of interest and because it is, oddly, a place of refuge from Japan itself for them.
Looking at her I was suddenly struck by a resemblance I did not before see in her similarity to Colette. Not that they are both women, not that they are both androgynous, but rather their interest in detail, their fascination in how something is done, their acceptance of the natural world and their celebration of it—a combination of interest and awe. I watched her eating her sole with interest and concern, watched the way she savored a chopstickful, crumbling it with her lips.
What was it in this gesture? Something I have seen in Flemish paintings. Then a phrase, not a particularly good one but a descriptive one occurred: She is a patrician peasant. The lips are those in Brueghel, the eyes are those in the Livre des Heures. Feet squat on the ground she soars to an enormous height, her eyes (those eyes—she shares them with Simone Signoret) looking into the far distance. Is that the reason for her charm?—that she manages to encompass a dichotomy, closes it, and consequently appears so whole.
The evening was over. She picked up the tiny pot of living plumeria I brought her, and held it as though warming it in her rough hands. She was not tired, but she would be. I took my leave. She and Jerry looked after me as I departed, the two of them there, a woman who likes strange and beautiful sons and had none, a young man who likes old and wise mothers and had none.
10 december 1982. I learn today that Herschel [Webb] is dead. And my first thought is that this is impossible because he was so young. But then I remembered that that was thirty-five years ago. Afterward he went to teach at Columbia and became a scholar and a full professor. I was here; he there, and we rarely met. And now he is dead. I had heard that, as I remembered, he retained his taste for martinis but I did not know to what extent until now. The Herschel I remember, though, was not a teacher; he was more like a student, an endlessly inventive one. And as I remembered him today I heard from somewhere the opening bassoon solo from Sacre and Herschel singing along, “Oh, baby, see the moon . . .”
12 december 1982. I go to Kamakura. I sit in the train and look out of the window as Herschel and I had thirty-five years ago when we went down to spend the weekend at Dr. Suzuki’s house. But I will get off at Kita-Kamakura today only to take a taxi to th
e museum.
Today is the last day of the Italian show and it has three Morandis I want to see again. One is particularly fine, all made of a single color, a reddish gray, against which the objects stand, their own contours often of the same color so that line becomes invisible. A work from 1928 to 1929, done with the paint oily, lots of brush marks, all invisible from three feet back.
Walking down from the Hachiman I notice a small print shop into which I had not gone for years. Go in. A small pile of original prints, all of them overpriced. And then, at the bottom, a beautiful Toyokuni. A tattooed man being ferried across a river on the shoulders of porters. Obviously just the middle section of a triptych, but quite splendid nonetheless. Done mainly in blue and red. Red for the tattoos, blue for the rest, with that Delft-like shading from very light to very dark. I admire, put it regretfully to one side, then notice the price. It is only fifty dollars. Upon asking why I am told that, though a first impression, it has watermarks on one side and, being part of a three-unit panel, is not complete. I do not argue—a Toyokuni this superior belongs in a museum. Nonetheless, it is now here in my house.
Suddenly I remember a dream I had last night. It was a continuation of something that really happened two years ago. What really happened was that Francis Coppola called me up, was in a bar across the street, come on over. There was Toru Takemitsu, a good friend, and Richard Brautigan, whom I had been avoiding. He knew this, had been told, and so now refused to shake hands, glowered, then turned to Coppola, and with that whine of his said, “But, Francis, you know you are making masterpieces, you know that, don’t you, man?” I talked with Francis and Toru and then went home. Wondered after just why I had been called out. Because they were all drunk? Or was Francis staging one of his scenes? Never found out, but that was what happened. Now the event had a continuation in my dream last night. Continuation: I punch Brautigan and lay him out.
13 december 1982. Did not sleep well last night. Do not sleep well unless I am alone or with someone I know well. Did not know well the soundly sleeping Hisashi, having only met him an hour before as he was dozing in a Steve McQueen all-nighter. Sturdy, rural, from Tohoku, twenty, in for a Saturday night in the city, not caring at all what happened to him so long as something did. Now, satisfied with his new experience, he sleeps with the audible sighs of farm youth everywhere.
In the morning he admires my paintings. Talks about their space (kukan), knows what he is talking about. Most Japanese know about art, and all can draw maps and carry tunes—and dance. He shows me some of the steps for the local Tohoku matsuri, thumping big-footed in his underwear. It is as though we have known each other for years—the gift for instant intimacy that the rural young still have. Later, went to have breakfast at the Park where I taught him the intricacies of eggs benedict.
7 january 1983. Sogetsu-ryu ikebana, the Hilton, the Pearl Room—chandeliers made of ropes of pearls—big party, mostly women, most in kimono, much display of good manners, lots of food including seven different kinds of cake, and lots of money spent, but then Sogetsu has it—the most affluent of all the flower-arrangement schools, thousands of pupils all over the world, and leading all the rest when it comes to paying taxes.
Iemoto Teshigahara Hiroshi, now grand in hakama, white-maned and patriarchal, makes the opening speech. And I remember when he was still a schoolboy, wanting to make movies, and getting to—the money coming from old Sofu, his dad, who had founded the lucrative school. Then Sofu died and Hiroshi’s elder sister took over, but then she died and (Japanese arts schools having lineage, just like royalty) the position of iemoto devolved upon Hiroshi. He hated it, knew nothing about flowers, but the pressure of the school was stronger.
That was three years ago. Now he has become what was wanted—the head of the school. He handles himself well, has been a great success. The ladies love him. He speaks in respectful tones of his father while his mother, her hair now a light violet, sits and beams.
He has done a perhaps typical but nonetheless I suppose admirable thing. Since he could not change his circumstances, he changed himself. Knows all about flowers and the other materials (cellophane, plastic, egg-crates) avant-garde Sogetsu makes use of, left off his tweeds and suedes, and is now usually in kimono.
At the same time I wonder just how much this cost the director of Woman in the Dunes. My Western self says that he sold out. But my Eastern self wonders if what he did does not indicate a higher wisdom. We are so prone to think any accommodation a surrender. Hiroshi has chosen continuation. If the cost has been great, he seems—standing there, leonine, grand, a master—already to have discounted it.
7 june 1983. Rereading The Immoralist. First read it nearly forty years ago. Sitting in Hibiya Park, as Michel sat in the park at Biskra. How old was I then—twenty-four? Proper age for reading this book. I am no longer at the proper age but I am curious. This book much influenced me. What is it like now; what am I like now?
How little I remembered of it. Almost nothing. And how I had colored what I had remembered. One’s memory of a book is never accurate. It is a memory of the impression the book made. The impression now is much different. Michel I once found admirable. Now I find him pathological. Not in his immorality, of course. Rather, in his symptoms.
I suppose it is because I recognize them. I am impressed now rather by the truthfulness of Gide’s observations about his travels with his wife, the compensatory neuroticism of the husband. The urge to rush from one place to the other, as though a new goal will be somehow better because it is new. I recognize this, having experienced it twenty years ago with my own new wife.
Do I now experience this because Michel so influenced me forty years ago? I wonder. Probably not. I was attracted to Michel because I was of the temperament to experience what he did. It was thus not Michel’s rebellion that attracted me, but his feeling of guilt. This I seem to have recognized.
It is this that leads one to feel so responsible for another, to use them for this purpose, then to dislike them for it, and then to feel guilty for the dislike. How vulgar—because it has nothing to do with them. It has only to do with self.
And perhaps that is the true immorality of Michel—of all of us. This use of others for one’s own dramatic purposes. As though one would not exist otherwise.
And I sense the chill that comes when one suspects nonexistence—the flight that follows, the rationalizations, and the panic terror. Gide, however, makes very little of this. Did he know what he was describing? Perhaps not. To him, Michel is still a hero.
8 june 1983. Lunch with Richard Brautigan, one that came about in a curious fashion. I had seen him at a Parco opening and went up and asked why he had refused to shake my hand when he was here before. He was confused, remembered, said it was all a misunderstanding, as it indeed must have been; then last week he sent me a letter, very small writing on hotel stationery: “It is always very pleasant to clear up misunderstandings and I admire your courage to come up to me when last we met to talk it over and have it done with.” Then he asked me to have a drink with him, and that turned into lunch.
Denim and corduroy, granny glasses, wispy red hair, uneven red mustache. Bright blue eyes, the moustache concealing an affable mouth. The aging hippy persona is there but is mostly due to the clothes: the studied appearance of the unlearned, does not know foreign languages, careful mispronunciations. Part of it is a pose, I think: the American anti-intellectual, Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad. But not all.
He talks about himself, which is perhaps to be expected, given our manner of meeting. He is not precisely attempting to justify himself, but is giving me a lot of information. Among the things spoken of is how different the public persona, created by “the media,” is from the real self.
Speaks of Norman Mailer, apparently a close friend. Finds him generous, sweet, understanding, warm—all things different indeed from the public persona. From there we speak of ways in which the persona may be used. It is of use in getting people to go to bed with you. In fact, fame-
fucking is a known result.
He has had much experience. Further, he prefers his partners young. His persona is very reassuring. He is filled with earth-wisdom and, as one of the original hippies, is by definition kind and understanding, things that female children, males as well, find attractive. He is at present with a young girl, “young enough to be my daughter.”
We drink sangria, growing more mellow with each sip, and eat an excellent Spanish bouillabaisse. We talk about Francis, we mention the very bar where we first met and where the affront occurred. But we do not speak of it, being much too well bred to do so. I find his air of the faux-naïf very refreshing but I still do not know how faux it is. Perhaps it isn’t. What he finds in me I don’t know—we speak little about me.
17 june 1983. Dinner with Paul Schrader, in Tokyo for the Mishima movie that he will direct. Talks about difficulties with Mishima Yoko and her efforts to make her dead husband into something more fitting. We talk about Yukio. “That is undoubtedly him. And that is just what I can’t put into the movie, damn it. Not that we can’t, you know. We have not signed anything away. We want to make our kind of movie, not hers.”
I say that Mishima himself would probably have sided with Paul; that he would not, I think, have approved of the amount of censorship that Yoko is exercising. He was enough of an exhibitionist to want to project a little of the truth at least—to tantalize his audience, if nothing else.
Paul still has his engaging stutter, still has his charm, his bent smile, the sudden crinkling of the eyes. These he somehow kept in Hollywood. Or maybe has them back now that he is here. Talks of how he is going to structure his film: Mishima in real life, then Mishima as a boy, then Mishima as one of the characters in his various novels. These three will have a kind of conversation, and somehow in the interchange he hopes that something like the real author will appear—and that Yoko will not notice.
He is going to have his production man over; it is going to be all studio; it will be completely professional, all designed. I do not say that this is not the proper work for a Bresson scholar. But Paul never became Bresson and I suppose there is no reason why he should have. One need not become what one admires.
The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 Page 25
