The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

by Donald Richie

  12 november 1992. I notice in the subway an advertisement for yet another revival of A Chorus Line. Why is this musical so popular here? It is revived more than any other. Then I realize that, of course, it is about a group—just like The Forty-Seven Ronin. It is a collective story and this is its enormous appeal to the Japanese. But only if it is done reverently, as A Chorus Line is indeed done. I remember the frowns I met when I suggested some years ago to a local dramatic group that I write a play to be called The Forty-Eighth Ronin, about the one who arrived late—overslept, alarm didn’t go off, hangover or something. Complete disapproval.

  14 november 1992. Last night woken at three by the bosozoku, boys on bikes who roam the neighborhood gunning their machines and making the night hideous for us honest folk. That is why they do it—to offend the good burghers.

  These are blue-collar punks we are told, caught in dead-end jobs, and this is their moment of relief. They are Japan’s modest answer to the skinheads. They were far from my apartment and did not really make enough noise to keep me awake, horrible as it must have been closer, but I was exercised that they would do it at all and so lay angry and sleepless.

  Today the rightist trucks bore down on me, blaring, black, and decorated with blood-red Japanese flags. Inside sallow, crew cut punks sat smoking, most wearing dark glasses. The discommoded populace paid no attention, as always. I noticed that these trucks now carry posters of Mishima Yukio, their idol, it being close to the anniversary of his suicide. And I wonder how Mishima would have liked this apotheosis, firmly in the grip of these scrawny, chicken-breasted youths, pimply and white as mushrooms. Not much, I should think.

  18 november 1992. My word processor turns on with a single chord. It is a minor chord. Today I suddenly recognize it. It is the chord which opens “Fêtes,” the second of the Debussy Nocturnes. I do not have perfect pitch, but then maybe I do. I know it is the same chord. Know it in the same way that I can tell how many times the clock has struck, how many times the phone has rung, without counting them, and long after the events themselves.

  Went to see the 1955 Shin Heike Monogatari. Went because it is about events only twenty-some years before my Kumagai takes place. Wanted to see what the world looked like back then and trusted Mizoguchi, his art director and his photographer. Therefore I remain undistracted by the silly story—it is based after all on that Yoshikawa Eiji novel, which is one of the anti-models for my own book.

  Mizoguchi creates past life in a different way. In the opening crane shots of Kyoto, in the slow, swooping glide that settles finally on a single character, and when Kiyomori confronts his mother with questions of his parentage, Mizoguchi makes fine use of a simple pillar—having each on one side of it. The pillar is always a pillar, never a symbol, and yet it shows us something that nothing else could have.

  19 november 1992. I awake at seven, make my first cup of coffee, and drink it with buttered and honeyed cornbread as I read the paper. Then, depending upon what is on FM, I take a shower. Today it is the “Archduke,” so I do not delay the douche. Some days I do the laundry, but today it is raining and so I do as I usually do—write letters and tend to small tasks until nine.

  This is when Frank calls. Every day. I encourage this. Living alone, I like something regular, a conversation with a close friend. And he needs me as part of his network. As one of his daughters remarked to me upon hearing of the morning call, “Oh, so you’re part of the company, too.”

  After the call begins my work, on whatever I am doing. Right now it is The Honorable Visitors, and notes for Kumagai. Or sometimes I do my column for The Japan Times. This goes on until noon. Then I make lunch—soup, sandwich, salad—and then go out: to International House, to Sogetsu, to the paper, or to see a film to review for the Herald-Tribune—things to make money.

  People seem to think that after forty-some books I could easily make my living from royalties. No, I would starve if I tried that. Five percent, or three—for my most popular book, two. In the evening, what is called social life. Tonight a late haircut, a quick burger, and ran into Jabu in the park.

  This then is my day. How interesting if other diarists had thought to so spell out the prosaic, that which always gets lost. If only Gide had told what he had had for lunch. The future—at which all diaries are aimed—would be able to decipher the precious quotidian from such an account.

  With Alan Booth, 1990.

  20 november 1992. Talked with Fumio about who survives from Mizoguchi films. Most do not. From his last, Wakao Ayako and Kyo Machiko. From the others, only Kyo. Then we talk about types, and I say that I, who for over half my life was only interested in Japanese, am surprised to find myself enlarged: Greeks, Turks, and Iranians. Fumio answers that it is because some Japanese are no good (yokunai) now. I ask why, wonder if it is all this money. No, he thinks that many are now simply not educated to be responsible, caring, or imaginative. They have no fellow feeling and so they are not attractive. He thinks it is the failure of their parents to properly teach them how to be human. Then, thinking of the decades, he said, “Did you know that in just three years I will be as old as you were when we first met?”

  7 december 1992. In the late evening, sleepless, walked around the pond. There sat ten drunk young women. Had been out at a year’s end party. All in their early twenties, dressed up, lolling, smiling, but at the same time wary. Oh, a foreigner. Where did I come from? Canada? One had a boy friend from there once. A bad lot. Giggles. We were joined by a resident prostitute—the little one with frizzed hair.

  “Hey, you’re no girl,” said the leader—even drunk they had a leader.

  “No, I am not,” said the skirted whore. “I am a hard-working husband and father.” This is true. I have seen his kids when they drop by to get their allowance.

  “But you got a wee-wee,” said the drunkest.

  “Yes, I have,” he responded with dignity. He then told them how his lucrative act was accomplished—a temanko, a “hand-cunt”—and the girls all leaned forward, fascinated. He was also fascinated, since he is very fond of girls and once asked me all sorts of leading questions about a foreign lady friend whom I had taken for a park walk. Wanted to practice further perversion—troilism. Now, his audience before him, he dilated and became more animated than I had ever before seen him.

  8 december 1992. Go with [Kawakita] Kazuko to the Ginza Mikimoto to watch Francis [Coppola] as he deliberates between a large pearl pin and two pearl rings. For his mother, he says. I say that the brooch looks more motherly. “You don’t know my mother,” says Francis. “But mothers like brooches,” says Kazuko and this apparently decides him.

  10 december 1992. To the wake of Atsuta Yushun, Ozu’s cameraman. He survived by over thirty years the director who made him famous. And when people talked with him, they only wanted to talk about Ozu. I remember Wim Wenders going after him, pushing, probing, demanding, until the poor man burst into tears on camera, with Wim gloating through the view-finder.

  Now here is all that is left—the remains hidden under the altar, the picture, smiling out of its frame. I remember watching him work. It was on the inn set for Akibyori. Ozu would indicate each set-up, look through the finder himself, and suggest. And Atsuta, attentive, a small smile on his face, would shift the camera. He liked working with Ozu. The small smile was approval.

  11 december 1992. Alan Booth is now dying. Has about a month left, says Timothy [Harris]. Neglected tumor got through to the lymphatic system and thence everywhere else. Says Alan is in pain but tries to ignore it. Tries, says Tim, to punish his body for doing this to him. He has so believed in the power of the will that he has thought it would save his life. I think of Alan, feisty, charming, self-serving, his orphaned London life still towering behind him. And I think of spleen and black bile and The Road to Sata. Then I realize what I am doing: Trying to simplify, to create some false cause and effect, to find reason in the unreasonable. I watch myself doing this and do not condemn. It is fear that makes me do it—fear of the unknow
n, fear of the vulnerable self, as bile-filled as was ever Alan.

  13 december 1992. Walking through the high-priced shambles of Roppongi, I am suddenly aware of a feeling that I have seen it all before. In 1947. Why, I wonder, gazing about. Then I realize that I am looking at empty lots, lots of them, between the high-tech buildings. And this reminds me of the destruction of Tokyo—empty lots between the few buildings left standing. Except that now the empty places are all parking lots, land still too expensive to build on.

  17 december 1992. PIA [Magazine] party for young filmmakers. Oshima there in a kimono straight out of the Takarazuka All-Girl Opera. Yokoo Tadanori in black leather came up, very pleased, he said, with my essay about him. “You know me better than I do myself,” he said appreciatively. “You know things about me that even I don’t know.” I nod. Probably so. For example, I bet he will now do something to distance himself from all of this official culture. After all, he is the big anti-establishment figure on the established jury.

  Prizes are given. All the winners are about twenty, and how differently they behave from their elders. Only one or two take the trouble to appear embarrassed. Only one faked being overcome. Most chewed gum and stared at the audience and accepted the prize without a word or a bow. One young woman stood up and said she was very disappointed that she had only won the jury prize, when she had had her heart set on the grand prize. And sure enough, Yokoo, called upon to give the awards, stumbled over the pronunciation, pretended he could not read the characters, laughed, shook his head, scratched it, and behaved as I had expected.

  11 march 1993. Spent the day in the train, all the way to Kamogawa. Holloway has had more strokes and is in the hospital there. Found him cheerful, or making an effort to be, lying propped up in bed, surrounded by the mess of a country hospital. Small strokes in the frontal area of the cerebellum, caused by not getting enough blood to the vessels. The reason for that is age—he is seventy-two now—and also that he is so stout that he doesn’t breathe deeply enough, and in addition his septum is closed, or something. They will ream it out or will make a hole in his throat. He looks mildly about as though not sensing his coming apart. Under all this I can still, in a smile or a glance, detect my friend of forty years ago. He also seems unaware that his friend, Michio, who has been with him for thirty of these years, is even more coming to pieces. Trembling hands, deep depression. It is hard for them to look at what is now staring at them.

  I nap a bit in the train going back to Tokyo and wake up at Mobara. Why do I know this name? And then I remember. The village of Mobara was the turning point for the sea road to Kujikurihama, when back in 1947 we used to drive out in the jeep, Holloway and I, to the beach house, and I remember how he used to shout with pleasure and gun the motor as we raced across the fields to the open sea.

  16 march 1993. Call from Michio, Holloway’s friend. Voice tight, control apparent. He cannot be helped by hospital. Nothing to be done. Brain will be permanently starved for oxygen. The doctor says he might die at any time, probably in his sleep. An apparent alternative is a stroke, which will leave him like Eric. “What will we do?” asks Michio. What is there to do, I wonder. They live far away, have no friends out there. “You are his only friend,” says Michio. I do not say that they ought to have made more. I offer to help, but there is nothing I can do except go to see him.

  Afternoon call from Tokyo Shinbun. A statement, please. On what? “Oh, you didn’t know? Ryu Chishu died a few hours ago.” Bladder cancer, aged eighty-eight. I tried to think of something to say. I saw him first as the young projectionist in I Was Born, But, then as the father in Tokyo Story, and all the roles in between and after. I remembered There is a Father, for in that picture he had a stroke and died on screen. I remembered him on his back on the tatami while his son tried to help him. And that was fifty years ago and now he is truly dead. The reporter at the end of the line was waiting. I said something about his honesty as an actor. “Ah, honesty,” said the reporter, as though it were a new word.

  Cold, a bitter wind, and my concrete square is chilled. I start the bath and go and sit in it. In my box of warmth I think of the coldness of the spring night. From the window I can see the stars through the steam.

  18 march 1993. To Kamakura for the wake of Ryu Chishu. In the station I learned that Ryu, always a gentleman, had arranged for buses to take us to the wake. Also, waiting there, were [Kawakita] Kazuko and Non-chan [Nogami Teruyo]. So we all went together. Small temple, outside klieg lights, cameras, like a nighttime set. Inside lots of efficient Shochiku people, the family kneeling, the body hidden behind banks of flowers, and a recent picture of him. They accepted no money, so I put mine back in my pocket and offered incense.

  I remembered fifteen or twenty years ago when there was a party for the Ozu book and Ryu came and did the whole hayashi sequence from Record of a Tenement Gentleman. I now looked at his picture over the banks of chrysanthemums and remembered him smiling and singing as he banged the plates with his chopsticks.

  With Kuroyanagi Tetsuko. tokyo-to

  “Oh, I remember that,” said Kazuko. Nogami hadn’t been there but had heard about it. Then, “I didn’t much like Ryu’s picture up over the casket.” We all agreed that it made him look old and sick. To be sure he was eighty-eight and had bladder cancer, but this was not how we remembered him.

  Nogami continued, recalling a conversation she had had with him a year or so back, when he was making the final sequence of Dreams with Kurosawa. The way to really please him, she said, was to remember how handsome he was in the Thirties, “I had seen Asakusa no Hi and he was really something in that, so I told him how good-looking he was and you should just have seen him shine all over, he was so pleased.”

  23 march 1993. Kurosawa’s eighty-third birthday party at the Tokyo Kaikan. Everyone there but Mifune—not that he was expected. Things have not been the same since Red Beard. And that was Kurosawa’s last good film as well. He knows I think that—I have written it. Consequently he has become wary of me. I went over to congratulate him. He shook hands and then shook a mock severe finger. “Why weren’t you here to make the titles for my new film? I was counting on you.” I apologized. “So we got someone else,” he said, “but he wasn’t any good.” Then he smiled. This is his way of being friendly. Kazuko was there and lots of people I know and talked to but whose names I have forgotten or never knew. Press got in free but friends and family had to pay ¥15,000 each. I was friends. Food was very good. I ate lots.

  With neighbors in Yanaka, 1993. seki photo

  25 march 1993. In trying to write my memoirs I am aware of a life design: Where I have chosen to live seems to have redressed the lack of it where I was born. Young, I feared dissent because in my family I saw too much of it, so I came to a land where dissent is hidden under manners, ritual, falsehoods. It became manageable. Back where I was born I decided to be a coward, and now I live in a land where cowardice is called common sense. When younger I feared competition so much that I would become physically ill during the gym period. Now I live in a land where I have no competition, no gym periods. To be sure, those around me have lots. Many Japanese suffer from terminal competition, but I am not Japanese. If I were I would never stay here—it is much worse than where I came from.

  Richie wrote many short autobiographical pieces. These were to help him write a proper memoir. Among such attempts are Family History, First Memoirs, In Between, Sections of a Child, and Watching Myself. The proper memoir remained a project, however, though Richie regarded editing these journals as a promising first step.

  29 march 1993. In honor of my getting the Tokyo Culture Prize people give me money. What a nice custom this is. My dentist, Dr. Fujieda, gave me thirty thousand yen; [Kawakita] Kazuko gave me a silver spoon; [Teruyo] Nogami gave me a wallet, money inside; and this morning a limousine pulled up and I, all dressed up in my black suit with the pomegranate-colored tie Dae-Yung gave me, got in and was carried off to City Hall to be given (along with poet Ooka Makoto and Miyagi Mar
iko of the handicapped children) my own Tokyo Metropolitan Cultural Award. Ushered in with lots of bowing, meeting with Mayor Suzuki, who seemed to be taking the proceedings seriously indeed. Then the photographs, the investiture, and official speeches. The other two each talked for ten minutes, but I talked for a merciful three. In the audience I could see my friends. There was Fumio, who had brought his camera. There was [Numata] Makiyo with his now quite pregnant wife. There were Frank and Chizuko, he “resting his eyes” during all the speeches. And Kana­seki Hisao and Jean Silvestre and the Satos, Tadao and Hisako. It was like the last book of Dante or the end of a Fellini film, where you meet all your dead friends.

  Speeches over, we were ushered into a hall, which had lots of food spread out, and were given flowers. Non-chan gave me roses from Kurosawa, and Hayashi [Kanako] a big bouquet from the Kawakitas, and Kuroyanagi Tetsu­ko came with an enormous bunch of hybrid tulips all with their thighs spread wide, a full-frontal genital display. She gave a little speech. We had been friends for a long time and though she knew the other two awardees well, still, it was to me (brandishing those pornographic flowers) she wanted to give this floral tribute.

  Then lots of going from friend to friend, having pictures taken. I usually go onto automatic pilot during festivities this demanding and so do not remember everything. But in the limousine going home, with so many flowers that it was like being in a hearse, Fumio told me that I had behaved OK. Opened my presents—a gold lapel pin with the Tokyo crest (a ginkgo leaf) on it. The two million yen is already in the bank.