The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

by Donald Richie

  24 august 1989. A walk with Eric along the new esplanade made on both sides of the Sumida River. The river laps right up to the steps. Both of us agree that the city fathers have, in this instance, spent our money wisely.

  But how different everything is. Not just the steps and the esplanade. I have been in Tokyo off and on for over forty years now (and Eric for longer) and we have seen the city change. It has become larger and taller and—strangely—cleaner, or at any rate less cluttered. But the former clutter was human. In this new post-modern capital of planned cityscapes, the lack of clutter is inhuman.

  Numata Makiyo. donald richie

  We look at the complex of towers rising from the Mukojima end of Azuma Bridge: a public housing construction, the multi-story Asahi Beer Building (shaped like a glass of that beverage, with the froth made of glass hexagonals and flashing lights), a disco on the top and an enormous, black granite beer hall with a with a great Miro-like flame-shaped excrescence on the roof. With that in the neighborhood, the neighborhood has to change.

  Eric had walked through Asakusa to meet me at Kaminarimon and complains at the extent of the gentrification. All artificial old-Japan now. One can tell by the number of girls dressed in cute camping clothes who time-travel. They run down from Harajuku to see olde Nippon. All of these painfully renovated yakitoriya and noodle shops must be losing money. In the evening no one is there. Everyone is back in Harajuku. The new Asakusa is an empty, barren place, expensively masquerading as what it once was.

  25 august 1989. [Numata] Makiyo over for dinner. He is twenty-eight now—I met him five years ago. Has not much changed though his circumstances certainly have. If I were to have to choose a spokesman and paradigm for his age, it would be Makiyo. He is quintessential.

  After only a bit more than a year he has made himself a company, one with branches in Kyushu and L.A., employs a number of people, is making a very good profit (took his whole family for a stay in Hawaii this summer), and hopes to continue to go straight up.

  This is because he has that ability to do only one thing at a time and to do it as hard as he can. When I met him it was soccer. After that it was English. And now it is real estate. There is nothing else to his life other than the reigning subject, and all of his considerable energy is devoted solely to it.

  If you want something badly enough you can do anything. I have suspected this for a time and Makiyo proves it. The problem is wanting something, anything, badly enough.

  Of course it is America he is buying large chunks of, and it is Japan that he is “developing.” In a way he has joined the other side—but then he never left it. And he is candid, boyish, decent, fair.

  He brings me his wedding pictures—I wanted them to add to his three volumes in my photo collection. Add and conclude it turns out. Just right—the last two pages will hold all the new pictures.

  28 august 1989. Early morning, waking. Why is this the lowest point of the day? Many apparently wake up depressed. Byron writes about awakening to the dumps. Why must the mind wake up to worry something, like a dog worries a bone, first thing? Is it that we wake up sane and screaming and that then comforting lies and customs return to us our living shroud? Or is it that we wake up inchoate beasts, and that sanity then comes with coffee and crumpet to make us ourselves? A friend of mine wakes up to suicide every morning, he says. I believe him. I wake up questioning life in a manner as profound as I ever get.

  29 august 1989. Took a walk along the Sumida and there sitting on a bench in a new cap was Morikawa. We were equally surprised. Over two years ago we had said goodbye in Asakusa and he was off to a new job in Nagasaki where he was born. He is in Public People, Private People (under his own family name), and though I left lots out (including his real first name) the picture is substantially him.

  One of the details I left out was that I financed the trip south so that he could get a good job. I mention this suppressed information now because upon seeing me he took off the new cap, stood up, bowed, and said, as family members do upon their return: Tadaima.

  He was mindful that I had provided the train ticket and might be thinking that he ought have stayed where I helped put him. When he was assured that I did not, in fact, think this, he then explained. He had really gone there. But after two years in the capital he just couldn’t take small town life any more. And after having learned to laze around in the big city, the nine-to-five construction job he was stuck in (diversions were TV, manga, and the attentions of a bar girl whom he really did not like all that much) seemed impossible. So he talked with his dad who said, well you got to do what you want to, and that is fine if you don’t hurt anyone doing it, and so he came back. Just three days ago. He had lazed around the big city; been surprised at all the changes (most of all, the higher prices), and just yesterday landed himself a job.

  He remains cheerful, optimistic, not changed a bit. Then he said he was a little hard up. And since he did not mean money, I was happy to oblige.

  30 august 1989. Went in the back of Shinjuku Station, east side, and there were the pushers busy with their wares—uppers and downers and stimulant drugs. They would be serving out heroin if they could, but they can’t. Busy shifting supplies from one coin locker to another. I know some of them by sight now—ill-favored, rat-like faces. Then, in the corridor, I saw a couple of plainclothes cops. They were busy walking a youth toward a box. I followed. Inside the police box in front of the station they pushed him in, and in the back room, with all the doors open, began cuffing the lad about the head.

  I stood and watched. Since I was foreign and hence uncomprehending, I was not driven away. In the same way, the pushers had worked right in front of me. The boy was cuffed in that offhand, exasperated big brother way that Japanese cops cultivate. I am sure he deserved it, had done something wrong. At the same time, just in back of the station the criminals were unloading their drugs, and those thugs deserved the cuffing more than did the naughty boy.

  After I had stared my fill I got on the subway and came home.

  1 september 1989. Morikawa was early, so was I. He was sitting there on the bench, still in his new cap and beside him a bag with his belongings in it. Tokyo had not proved welcoming. “Just two years and everything is changed.” What had changed in particular was the method of hiring laborers. It has been consolidated. This means that, as in any kind of local distribution, so many middlemen have stepped in that no one makes much money. As a commodity, labor—like any product—has been ratified, which means that companies no longer use expensive labor brokers. They prefer to organize their own laboring forces. “So you either belong or you don’t.” And someone new from down country doesn’t. Further problem is the number of foreign workers in Japan—Chinese, Thais, Filipinos. They are made to do the worst jobs for the worst pay. Any unconnected Japanese must now start on that level.”Lots of middle-aged Koreans too—with no jobs.” What to do? “Well, tomorrow morning I am going to get up early and go to the labor union. I am not going to be fussy.” And as for tonight: “Well, I thought maybe you could put me up.”

  I did—the Asakusa hotel, clean rooms, air-con, TV, a little window to slip the money in, no questions asked. Lying on the futon we talked about Kyushu and then he said, “But no matter what, I learned one real lesson there. I am a city boy. I got to come back here. Back to Tokyo.”

  After a while it was midnight, time for me to go home. We talked about how to meet again. He did not know where he was going to be, but would probably go to the country to work and get some money together before he returned to Tokyo. We finally settled on a method which does not seem likely but which somehow always works. We agreed to meet on that bench some Saturday night around eight in the evening after New Year’s.

  6 september 1989. In the subway, no smoking allowed, I spot a smoker. When this occurs I am like a game dog at sight of a pheasant. Go, stare, and would bark if I dared. If the smoker snarls, however, I back off, tail between legs.

  What is this? Am I so conservative that I wi
sh everyone to obey all notices? Or, am I now so convinced that I am more Catholic than the Pope? It is a warm, full-blooded feeling as I go and pounce upon the prey and indicate my displeasure. But why? Even as I do this, I wonder. Something deeper? Like racism? Like misanthropy? Like being psychotic? The reward is that I feel righteous. How ridiculous.

  8 september 1989. Called a flaneur in print. Looked it up. “Witty, insouciant, man of the world.” Like that very much. Also, “not serious.” Like that even better. It is like being a dandy without having to pay tailoring bills. An element of pose and nothing, such as earnestness, to mar the effect. Also, though this the dictionary does not say, someone who sees through appearances and who refuses to abide by the dull rules. Have no idea if all of this was intended by the writer [Arturo Silva] but I like the fit of it.

  9 september 1989. Out in the afternoon with Richard Avedon. Brought over by Canon for what purpose he knows not. I take him to the Edo reconstruction in Fukagawa, since he likes small and enclosed worlds, then to see the few real Edo buildings left in Asakusa.

  He talks about how he felt, still feels, at exclusion in the photography field. He remembers the years when he was considered not serious by the establishment because he worked for magazines and did advertising features. This at a time when Stieglitz had done photos for Cunard. But that was forgotten.

  Photographers on the West Coast would have nothing to do with flashy Easterners. “They liked their rocks, their integrity.” And it continues, he says, which is why MoMA [New York Museum of Modern Art] has nothing of his. Talks of John Szarkowski [MoMA’s Director of Photography] and his limitations. I listen and remember John, seeming to pursue some Calvinist ideal of photography. I remember what an unhappy man he seemed.

  “But it hurt. It still hurts.” And Avedon still feels excluded. I look at him, a very open man, always interested, and perhaps consequently always vulnerable. He has enormous charm as well. I understand part of it now. He seems really interested in the person he is talking with. Royalty sometimes cultivates this naturalness, this interest, and a very few of the wealthy (Mrs. [Babe] Paley) have acquired it as well. With Avedon it seems innate.

  10 september 1989. Took Richard Avedon and Norma Stevens to the DX Gekijo sex theater. When we went in a serious middle-aged man was earnestly sucking the breast of the girl on the stage, stroking her vagina the while. When he attempted to move downward, however, she, following some choreography of her own, moved up until he found himself facing her rump, which he then in somewhat perplexed fashion began to lick. She kept turning and he kept trying to catch up. It was like a pas de deux in which only one of the two knows the steps

  It was amusing but no one smiled, because in this temple no one ever smiles. Then we looked at two girls who simulated lesbian passion, and watched another satisfy herself, or appear to, with a small device. And then we watched other customers play counting-out games and climbing onto the stage. One young man with a large member excited some interest, and his coupling technique was more uninhibited than most. But he was also a long-timer. After the others had somehow or other finished he still continued. Finally the girl told him to get off, which he did; still unfulfilled, he struggled to get his large hard cock back into his pants, then went and sat miserable in the corner.

  Dick and Norma were astonished by this, as most foreigners are. The experience offers no handles; it is so smooth and featureless, so practiced, so benign—it is the last thing that the Christians and the Jews expect from sex. When I took Susan [Sontag] she said it all: “Well, I guess it is sexy but it is about as erotic as a cake bake-off.” Richard thought of kindergarten; Norma thought of a day-care center. They also thought it very “sad”—which is a common reaction from liberal Americans. This tells more, however, about their assumptions than it does about the Japanese DX theater. They found it sad. I found it matter-of-fact. But then I think that Americans believe that being matter-of-fact about sex is sad. One must make it special: either celestial or infernal.

  With Oba Masatoshi, Yodogawa Nagaharu, Yanagimachi Mitsuo, Kakeo Yoshio, 1989.

  21 october 1989. Gene Langston is very ill again, not expected to live; his trials—sufferings emphysema, with asthma, with his various pneumonias—seem about to end.

  Today I went out to his hospital. The new nurse did not know me but bowed deeply. A bad sign. Before, the busy nurses waved a hand or indicated the room with their chin. This was a full, hands-folded bow.

  Gene has much changed in the past month. He can no longer be fed because he can retain nothing. Can be given no more chemicals because they too now seep away. Consequently he is starving to death.

  There is a generic similarity among such unfortunate people. I thought of pictures I have seen from Bergen-Belsen or Auschwitz, where people were systematically starved. Gene’s starvation results in the same expression. The skull is visible, the skin taut, the eyes seeming larger. When I came in his eyes turned. He tried to smile but his skin was stretched too tight. He is alert, his eyes show this. They also show that he knows. He is lying and watching himself dissolve. He cannot talk because of his tracheotomy but his eyes speak for him.

  I began to cry and he shook his head in gentle reproof, which I remembered from many other times during the more than forty years we have been friends. Then we talked, or I did. I told him we all know, we all wanted to do something, we all can’t. He nodded and mouthed: Thank you.

  When I left he looked at me again. And raised his hand to wave goodbye, that open-fingered gesture, hand moving sidewise, which had always been his. But the strength did not last. His hand fell.

  28 october 1989. Kawakita Kazuko had a party for Hou Hsiao-hsien at her new house. Non-chan [Nogami Teruyo] was there and we talked about Kurosawa’s next film. “Oh, it is late, as usual,” she said. Not only because of Martin Scorsese, however, who was a month late himself. (He plays Van Gogh in what sounds a very peculiar picture [Dreams].) “Warners wanted it about now. They’ll get it late winter. Opening at Cannes, they want. We’ll see.”

  Yanagimachi Mitsuo there too, back from Hong Kong. “It was extremely difficult,” he said about making his new film [Shadow of China] there. I had heard of some of it. Plans to shoot in Peking around beginning of June for example. Also heard about script problems, producer problems, John Lone problems. He did not speak of these, however, just kept shaking his head. “Well, it is finished now, the shooting. I am editing it now.” Now he wants to make a nice “easy” film right here in Japan.

  Said some of his problems were caused by the way Japan is perceived now. Seen as economic threat and this affects everyone, particularly Americans, particularly West Coast Americans. “I’m no threat,” he says. “Yet being Japanese gets in my way all the time.”

  At that point Hou came over with his hands in his pockets, singing. He was imitating one of the characters in Yanagimachi’s Fire Festival. Then he stopped and asked in his new English, “You name song?” And Yanagimachi had completely forgotten it. He turned red, stuttered.

  31 october 1989. At midnight Teshigahara Hiroshi called. People have told him Rikyu is too long. Wants to cut. Where? My opinion is asked because I am, after all, foreign, and it was abroad that his film was thought too long. I told him I thought the whole pre-credit sequence should go, that it was distracting, and poorly done. Silence at the end of the line. The iemoto of the Sogetsu School is not used to being told that he is capable, like everyone else, of sometimes doing poor work. Then he said he would think about it. Other foreigners have told me that they thought it a coffee table film, but this I did not tell him.

  2 november 1989. At Frank’s, sitting on the sofa with his sister Eva, a stout and highly opinionated person who often takes exception to whatever one is saying. She has stayed, visiting for two months. Frank and Chizuko are being very good to her. The toll is apparent. Anyway, I was on the sofa with her, and she turned to me and, talking about her various ills, said, “Well, one good thing. It is almost over. I do not think I would have
the strength to do it again.” At first I thought she was talking about the trip and then realized that she was speaking of her life. “I sometimes think of that,” she said with a smile. “It will be nice, having everything finished. Having had lived.” I looked at her, aware that I was being given a glimpse deep, very deep, into another human being who has fears and hopes the same as I, and who was facing these with more openness and bravery than I do.

  7 november 1989. Trying to get my reentry permit since I will be going to Hawaii shortly. The Otemachi office is now impassable, with hundreds of Asians trying to extend visas and dozens of Japanese immigration officials trying to obstruct them. Hearing of the new, small office at Hakozaki, I went.

  Too late. The yakuza have discovered it. Parties of Filipinas escorted by men in pinstripes. The girls chatter and show their curves. The Japanese gents bow low to the immigration officials who stamp away. If the girls want to make money, and the guys want to make money off the girls, that is fine. But what renders the scene comical is that officially Japan is shaking its warning finger, deploring what it so openly allows. And what renders the scene irritating is that I must wait until beauty is served. Still, it only takes an hour and a half. In Otemachi it would have taken three—merely to pay my fee (¥6,000 a time, which is why these reentry permits are needed) and get my passport stamped.

  In the evening I go to see a selection of the earliest films of the brothers Lumière. These magical pictures show the world a century ago. And they are real. This is something only my generation can have seen—the living past. It is a truthful, reliable, actual picture. (Cataloging less so. The one called Tokyo Street Scene is not Tokyo. It is someplace in China.) I watch the baby being fed. That child, if alive, is ninety now. And during the entrance of the king of Sweden, a guard turns to look suspiciously at us, at the small, square black box whirring away. Little did that long dead soldier know that he was actually peering into the future—that a hundred years later, I would be peering back at him.