25 november 1990. Interviewed for a provincial paper. During it I mention that the Tokugawa period is not over, that self-imposed self-restraint, the acceptance of official guidance, the inability to stand out or stand up, and the fearful cowardice the government fosters—all this is Tokugawa. Wide eyes greet this. My interviewer has never once heard this opinion. Much intrigued. Wonder what it will look like in the paper. Japan-bashing? Probably.
27 november 1990. To my old friend Marcel Grilli’s wake. Since he was a Catholic it is a long, tiresome, self-serving affair with the priest giving his hype, saying such things as, “he experiences the greatest happiness who gives himself unconditionally, entirely, to God.” Service saved and made moving by a talk from Peter Grilli, who remembered his parent with temperance and consideration, and brought to the service the humanity it ought have had from the beginning.
After all this Thanatos, a touch of Eros—I am taken by Eric to the most expensive of the urisen bars. It used to be called The Herakles; now—times being what they are—it is The Fitness Boy. Due to the rain and the fact that it was Wednesday we had the place to ourselves, a number of bulging fitness boys lounging about. When we arrived they took off their T-shirts. In other professions you put on a shirt when customers come.
They sat around in their muscles, gratefully accepted drinks and smiled, and horsed about with each other in boyish fashion. With a bit of encouragement they would have horsed about with us as well. I inquire as to the financial arrangements. Expensive—about five thousand or so for drinks, then five thousand or so to take your choice off the premises, and then fifteen thousand or so for the boy himself, who always expects about five thousand for tip. It all comes up to three hundred dollars or so. “But,” says my host judiciously, “you must realize that girls nowadays cost twice this much.”
A large projected TV image (takes up one whole wall) of young Japanese doing unspeakable things to each other. At the corner, a smaller TV set showing something different—Roger Moore in fact. I ask why. Well, the big one is for the guests, and the small one (James Bond at present) is to give the boys something to look at. The boys, well trained, drain their glasses. Time for another round. The cute one, nude to the waist, stands up humbly and thankfully to clink glasses with us. Humble muscles—the way to the homo heart.
2 january 1991. Last night a New Year’s dream. Very vivid, beautiful, sad, mysterious. I am with Marguerite Yourcenar who is packing, getting ready to go. The train is waiting just beside the davenport, its smoke caught in the drapes. I am admiring her garden at the other end of the room. It is small, but climbs up the wall and is alive with lizards and salamanders, and water runs slowly down from the ceiling, and big snails fall heavily onto the moss beneath. I tell her she will hate to leave it. She says that she does not like leaving, but that it is necessary.
Then she gives me a large block of smoked glass. Holding it up I see, brown, dim, three men, as in a daguerreotype, one of whom is naked and shows a large, soft penis. They all shift back into the shadows, then out again. I understand that in their limited way they are alive. The entire effect is very beautiful, and I reluctantly hand it back to her. “Oh, no,” says Madame, “it is for you. You may keep it.” At once I am intensely, absurdly grateful. I cry, my voice breaks, and I make a small speech. I remember it still: “Oh, Madame,” cry I, “you have given me everything. And now you have given me my death.”
This was said with an insane sincerity, and such a gush of feeling that I woke up, the mysterious inhabited box in my hands as the dream began to fade. I know what it probably means but that is not important. Female approval of my looking at waving cocks may be what prompts that infant outburst, but what moves me is the beauty of it—the brownness of the miniature men, the broad whiteness of beautiful Madame, and my own emotion, surging, like a cut jugular, threatening to suffocate me with feeling.
3 january 1991. The annual party of Kawakita Kazuko and Shibata Hayato at their house—critic Kawarabata Nei, people from the Film Center and the Film Library Council, director Yanagimachi Mitsuo, and the dean of the TV film folk, old (eighty-two) Yodogawa Nagaharu.
And Osugi. He is half of an outrageous pair of twins. Pico is the other, but he has just lost an eye to cancer and is now more quiet. Osugi is not quiet. His screech cuts through any conversation, no matter how distant. And he is continually holding up his hands (a ring on each and every finger) for silence. However, he knows what he is doing.
He is a faggot giving an imitation of a faggot and being very good at it. And since he is a Japanese faggot, the bitchiness is soon seen as a pose and the malice as made up. He has become society’s idea of a homosexual, and by being so has defanged the opposition.
Also, he has another and more traditional role. He is the taikomochi, the male geisha, a traditional figure, very necessary to the better parties. Being men, they can be much more outrageous than women are allowed to be. Camping it up is an ancient tradition in Japanese society.
Also, like the fool at the royal court, the taikomochi is allowed to tell the truth. This is what Osugi does. He is the only critic on TV who is outspoken. Everyone else is conciliatory, bowing to power. Not him. He openly called the new Kadokawa film a stupid little boy’s epic, an infantile executive playing at toy soldiers. Many people listen, not to be amused by camp, but for information. He gets away with it because the accepted opinion is that no one would pay much attention to the opinions of a notorious fag. But everyone does.
I see that he and the venerable Yodogawa are now quite close. He calls the elder critic “father,” and Yodogawa turns to me with a small smile and says, “Of course, I am really his mother.” When they leave (hired car, ten-thirty sharp) people stand up, applaud, as at the end of a performance—which it was.
9 february 1991. With Peter Greenaway—interviewing him. I see it as a meeting, he, initially, as a duel. “. . . and I find the tube more noisy and bigger than . . . well, than, you,” he says before we even begin. I recognize the ploy, having met many British. After charm is on the troubled greensward poured, he loses his suspicions, whatever they were, and becomes interested in himself. Literate, amusing, charming, and pensive, but always testing the way, every step. Maybe he has had bad interviews in the past. Or been interviewed mainly by the English. At first the information is heavy with quotations, Truffaut, Renoir, etc., as though to mine the field. Later it becomes more personal—he is seen playing tennis in the final shot of Blowup. Says that The Draughtsman’s Contract ushered in the Thatcher era and that The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover ushered it out. Laughs. Is intensely concerned over impression made—he and his films alike.
With Sofia Coppola.
With Carmen Coppola, Takemitsu Toru.
11 february 1991. In the paper this morning that Inoue Yasushi died, in his eighties, pneumonia. Not unexpected, but sad. Sad because he was a writer who could imagine. He imagined the wastes of Dunhuang, the ruined Loulan, the various lives of the Emperor Goshirakawa, and the death of Confucius. These he reconstructed with the most scrupulous care, a base for his splendid conjurings. I have never found an arbitrary passage in his works, nor one that was not scrupulous in exposing his sources. It is rare to read a writer who retains the wonder of the past, who shows us the links between then and now, who treats the dead with respect. And now he is dead himself.
I remember him two years ago: I had arranged a showing of a film based on one of his works—Dunhuang. Though the film was a travesty of what he had written, he nonetheless courteously came and was introduced before the screening. He even stayed afterward to answer questions.
A tall old man, kindly and meticulous, a slow and smiling concern for just the right word, and—I thought—a sad gaze as he looked at the insensitive and corrupt version of his work. Or, maybe not. Maybe he knew that commercial cinema has its limitations, and no more resented this than he would have a child’s version of one of his stories.
Perhaps his wisdom was deeper than his taste, dee
per even than his ethics. Maybe he simply sat and understood. And I remember his style: plain, particular, always in work clothes, and containing a great strength. He made no appeal, but after you read him you understood and you remembered.
16 february 1991. Party with Francis Coppola and family—wife, daughter, and father. Francis much less up, much more on an even keel. Have never seen him with his father before. “Don’t do that, Francis.” “Oh, you always say that,” says Francis. “Because you always do it,” says father. Then, to no one, “Know how I named him? Looked out of the window and there was this Ford going by.”
Daughter, only nineteen, is a forced bloom. I wonder if she was allowed any childhood. And now pushed into a movie role. Sweet. Unsure. Latches onto me in a nice kind of way. For protection. Looked around and decided I was the least threat. Also, I knew her before. Last time was when she was six. She does not remember but is told I am an Old Friend.
Later, the elder Coppola, Takemitsu, and I have long talk about music. Father talks. We listen. Tells about his lessons with Edgar Varese. “So poor he was. Used to meet him bringing back the garbage pail. Had to dump it himself.” Also, “He had no system of teaching. None.”
More stories, these about playing first flute under Toscanini. The Italian conductor shared the orchestra with Stokowski one season, and when it was Toscanini’s turn he would raise his baton, listen, then start screaming. “Bruta, bruta, that white hair freak he ruin my orchestra!” Coppola also indicates the difference between the two conductors. The Italian knew precisely what he wanted to do when he stepped on the podium. It was all worked out. The fake Russian, real Brit, knew nothing, waited for the orchestra to teach him—emoted, got inspired, etc.
And what is the most difficult flute passage in the orchestral repertoire? Is it the long exposed part in Daphnis? No, not at all, it is the last half of the scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when Mendelssohn makes the flute “hop, skip, jump and skitter right up to the top.”
Takemitsu agreed, again, kind of, to do the score for the film they are making of my Inland Sea. We try to remember how long ago it was when we first met. Thirty years, thirty-five? He pats my cheek, “But you haven’t changed at all.”
No—he is the one who has not changed. Only grown. I heard the viola concerto on the radio the other day. That little boy could create such big, strange, wonderful sounds.
17 february 1991. Fumio in hospital, undiagnosed, danger of peritonitis. I find the hospital, go see him. He is lying curled up in bed looking much like he did twenty years ago when I would come back from work and wake him up. He is asleep and I look at him, needles in his arm, tubes everywhere, eyes closed, breathing deeply.
I weep, suddenly, unexpectedly. It is the sight of time recaptured, to be sure, but, more, it is worry and fear and the sudden possibility of his dying. All of the physical affection I once felt returned, and I put my hand on his arm. Unlike twenty years ago, when he was still young, he now woke at once, his eyes opening, staring at me, knowing neither himself, nor me, then slowly intelligence returns. “Oh, Mr. Richie,” he said, which is what he has always called me for two decades. We talk of the illness, what the doctor has said, how happy he is he changed hospitals, the good care they are taking of him. And we gradually return to being two adults.
There were no more journals for the spring and summer of 1991. The time was spent traveling, writing the Japan Times weekly literary column, all of the occasional pieces requested, and gathering material on early foreigners in Japan for what was to become The Honorable Visitors. His oldest foreign friend in Japan, Eric Klestadt, suffered a stroke.
21 september 1991. Rain, a different kind of coolness, and something determined—autumn. Even a few days ago summer cicadas called—but in vain. Now they are silent—the only sound is the rain falling steadily, purposefully.
Fittingly elegiac sound for the continuation of this journal, sporadic as it is. But I want to continue it for a while because I do not want to see life going by unrecorded, no notice taken other than the living of it.
The early fall of 1991—the Soviets lie in ruins, Yugoslavia ruptures, China simmers, America whines, and selfish, natural, pragmatic Japan, uninhibited by any fellow feeling, opens wide its little mouth. Peaceful here, except for those who came seeking it. The Iranians silently starve in the park, the Pakistanis have learned to batten off the others, the Chinese slyly rob each other, and the Japanese, stepping over the bodies, ignore all these frightened barbarians in their midst.
And Eric’s stroke, his lying for six weeks now, unable to read or write, barely to speak, right arm and leg gone, buried alive. He who took such an interest in everything can now take interest in nothing. No books, no TV, no radio, no music. Nothing left.
His nurse tells me that he throws away all of his magazines, unopened and unread. Though I don’t want them, trying to break through his apathy I tell him he should give them to me. He stares at me in that lopsided way that stroke sufferers have. I say, slowly, deliberately, that he is selfish. I say this because I want to reach him, to go beyond those little nods and noises that so insultingly seem to say that everything is all right. He opens his mouth and gets out a sentence: “I am selfish.” He has to be. He is fighting for his sanity, locked up there with only the windows of his eyes to look out of.
I go every day and the nurses are chipper, the doctor is optimistic, and Eric lies there nodding and trying to smile. Trying to agree, no words coming. And I remember how adroit he was with language, and how proud of it, how dapper he was with words.
His mind remains clear. He knows what has happened to him.
27 december 1991. Go with Chizuko to the private showing of Teshigahara’s new film, Basara: The Princess Go. Director there, and star, Miyazawa Rie. Also the big TV star Beat Takeshi [Kitano], and the well-remembered boxer Akai Hidekazu, star of Dotsuitarunen [Knockout].
He has gotten a little beefy, but is still astonishing looking. Impressed, hence—not like me at all—I actually go and introduce myself, tell him about my titles for his film, about my taking it to San Francisco. At once, with an athletic grace, he is up and off the sofa and bowing. Delighted, has heard my name. Big, beefy hand proffered in acknowledgement of my Westerness. And, the most ingratiating smile. It is one I know from the films and the TV, and can identify. Most people in love with themselves have this captivating smile, one that illuminates inwardly and does not warm. One sees it a lot in sportsmen, particularly body builders. You sure see it in the captivating Akai. He in turn introduces the model turned actress.
Actually little Rie-chan and he have more in common than their presence here. They both posed for the same photographer. She, notoriously so. Shinoyama Kishin posed her in Santa Fe with no clothes, and the portfolio Santa Fe, at nearly $40 the copy, has sold, says the papers, five million. She is more famous now than the Prime Minister who shares her family name. But unbeknownst to her and to everyone else is that the famous photographer has also taken a portfolio of equally nude pictures of Akai.
Once this very long movie is over, everyone has to pee, and I find myself at the trough with Beat on one side of me and Akai on the other. Beat does not get a glance but my eyes still ache from trying to look down at Akai without turning my head. Glimpsed the private part. Blunt, heavy, Osaka-type.
Tell Chizuko, who smiles, then tells me of her bathroom adventure: Little Rie-chan was in tears in the lady’s room. Why? I wondered. Doesn’t know. I think it was the strain of seeing herself for the first time in her first major role. Today was her first viewing. She had not known what to expect. Since she is very good, these must have been tears of relief.
28 december 1991. Cold night, chill wind. Came home early. Made own supper. Sausage from Frank, and French toast on which I put the Maine maple syrup, gift of Marguerite Yourcenar, and treasured in the back of the fridge. She sent it before she went to hospital, just after Jerry died. That was long ago. Now what remained was all lumpy from years in the cold. And it had chan
ged. It had made its own mother, as we used to call what formed in vinegar. But it was sweet, like honey made from very old bees. I could spread it on the French toast. Which I did, and ate it. Mother Marguerite.
29 december 1991. Thinking back over New York—Jonathan [Rauch], Chester [Biscardi], Tom [Wolfe], and Susan [Sontag]. They live in an element I do not. Theirs is the current of contemporary thought, and they swim—mostly against it—and grow sleek. I have no intellectual climate at all. I have no one with whom to speak of these concerns, no one to learn from, no one to teach. For fifty years I have lived alone in the library of my skull. Thus, I have learned to live with the immortals. But, I no longer live with people who think as I do. Consequently, I am out of touch with the climate of my times, except for what I can glean by reading the New York Review of Books, the TLS. Susan once asked me how I managed to keep up with things, presuming that I did. And I innocently answered: “Newsweek.”
31 december 1991. Dinner with Fumio. He is forty-two now and fat. But I still see the boy of twenty-two, slim. And his character has never changed. He is still honest, no cant at all. Tonight we remember the times were got drunk together: Tsugaru on New Year’s, Ishigakijima, Amami Oshima, and (worst) Kurashiki, just before he got married. We were feeling awful and drinking made it worse.
Now he is divorced and I no longer feel awful at all, have not for years. He has his friends; I have mine. We are family now. He also has a hangover this evening. Party at his bar last night. Master has to drink or customers won’t. He has to make them drink to make a living. So he has to get drunk. “Threw up three times on the way home, managed to get out of the taxi to do it.” We eat Korean food. He perks up and by the time the kimchee is gone no longer looks bleary-eyed.
Now sixty-eight years old, Richie found ever-increasing interest in his journals. They became a way not only to salvage experience, but also to assess it. As his attitude changed, so did his tone. It became more intimate and more conversational. In addition to thinking of his journals as a work in themselves and not merely a repository for future use, Richie felt he really had someone to talk to—the future readers whom he now acknowledged. The journals began to show a structure of their own. Richie was aware of this and was interested to see it emerging, unwilled as it were, from the chaos of everyday life.
The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 Page 34
