The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

by Donald Richie

  10 august 1993. The funeral of Madame Kawakita Kashiko. She died a month after Kazuko. I heard that after she had heard of the death of her daughter, she no longer ate.

  The funeral, held in Aoyama, was enormous. Banks of purple flowers, her favorite color, reminding of the lavender and mauve she always wore; a very large color photograph of her, six priests (nuns, I believe), and all the attendants who make the rite run so smoothly in Japan.

  Prayers, sutra readings, bells, drums—Jodo high church. Then, some speeches. The enormous picture, Madame Kawakita hanging like a Buddha herself, was addressed and spoken directly to.

  Again, Shirley Yamaguchi, “Chinese” star of many a Japanese wartime film. A friend of Mr. Kawakita, I knew, but now, as she called the deceased “Mama,” I realized that she was indeed a friend of the family and, as came out in her speech, had lived with them in Kamakura when they had returned from China after the war.

  Tamasaburo, severe in a black kimono, also spoke. I had not known he was so close to Madame Kawakita nor, perhaps, was he, but she had encouraged him as a film director, and a Japanese funeral is a Japanese funeral. The deceased does not invite the speakers, the family does, and someone of the fame of Tamasaburo looks good.

  Serge Silbermann, in from Paris, gave the “foreign” speech, and old Yodogawa gave the “family” one. Those who believe that Japanese never show their emotions in public should listen to one of these funeral orations. Yodogawa Nagaharu wept and kept pleading with Madame and Kazuko-chan to please meet together in paradise and be happy forever. Since he is of the age to think of such matters himself, he also asked them to tarry a bit until he joined them. This sort of thing is ordinary, and whether it goes down well or not it is tolerated and, indeed, customary.

  During the service I looked at the big, glossy color photograph and remembered Madame Kawakita as I had last seen her. This was less than two weeks ago, when I went to her house in Kamakura for the omiso. That room where I had spent happy hours with her and her husband, with Kazuko; that room where we had sat with Satyajit Ray (dead now as well) and talked about Ozu. Now the room was unrecognizable, all gotten up in black and white drapes, with banks of flowers. And there she was, so fragile looking, and so small in her box.

  With Kusakabe Kyushiro, Hashimoto Shinobu, Georges Sadoul, and Kawakita Kashiko. Cannes, 1960. kawakita zaidan

  We put flowers around her, and pictures of her husband and of Kazuko, as well as her favorite mauve shawl. Then the lid was shut and the coffin placed in a hearse, and we followed her to the crematorium in Zushi. Then, we waited while she was burned.

  We talked, drank tea, [Sato] Hisako and I comforted each other, and then we were called back. The ashes were ready. Ashes they are called, but there is more to them that that. Cooling, as though on a large cookie tray, were Madame Kawakita’s ribs, some of them, a section of the spinal column, a part of the pelvis, some of the cranium.

  That sounds shocking now as I write, but it was not shocking then. We formed a double line, and two by two picked up the fragments with our chopsticks, and together lifted these into the waiting urn. I stared at all that remained of Madame Kawakita—this cooling mineral. We felt only that great, aimless sorrow that is so close to pity. And it is only now, later, that I fear that I did not respect her privacy, as though I had inadvertently spied upon her in some undignified position, viewing her naked remains like that.

  With Kawakita Kashiko and Satyajit Ray. Kamakura, 1960. kawakita zaidan

  Today, however, during the service, listening to the chants and the banging of the drums, I thought about her alive and about what I was losing through her death. As though my mind were a projector, I ran those memories I have of her.

  Very early, the first—1948 or so—and she is young and beautiful, and I am twenty-four and sitting on the tatami in her old Kojimachi house, and she smiles because I am interested in films, and together we talk about Kurosawa because I have seen Drunken Angel. And perhaps she asks if I have ever heard of Ozu. I seem to think she did, but I no longer know.

  But that memory brings up the next reel. She is taking me to Shochiku to the Ofuna Studios, to the open set of An Autumn Afternoon, and to meet Ozu, who drinks tea with us and seems amused at my reverent gaze since I indeed now know who he is. But before that (reels out of order), the party that she and her husband gave me when The Japanese Film came out, and I so enjoyed myself that I stayed and stayed, and finally Mr. Kawakita had to take me to the elevator and walk me right out onto the street so that the other guests could go home.

  With Ozu Yasujiro, Kawakita Kashiko, and Noguchi Hisamatu. At the Shochiku Ofuna Studio, 1960. kawakita zaidan

  Another scene, with her in Cannes at the Mizoguchi Retrospective, and she is introducing me to the eighteen year-old Kazuko. And, another scene—we are in New York. She has come to see me at MoMA, and I take her to Paris Theater to see a film she wanted to see. What was it? I wonder. I do not remember. But I remember she liked it, and I remember her smile afterward when we went to have ice cream at Rumpelmayer’s.

  And I remember her instant acceptance, as though such occurred every day, when I finally got my courage up to ask her if she would be my sponsor when I applied for permanent residency in Japan. And she knew, which I did not, that it meant intrusive bureaucrats who would look, even, into her tax records.

  One after another, the scenes of our friendship ran through my mind as I sat and looked at her up there, on the big screen as it were, and the soundtrack carried the farewell cadences of the sutras.

  With Takamine Hideko and Kawakita Kashiko. far east film

  Then it was over. Outside the rain had begun. Very light, almost like a heavy mist. It descended in clouds as we, one by one, the hundreds of us, made our ways home.

  11 august 1993. The most absurd urge upon coming home last night—to go out into the park, to lose myself in someone else, to forget about death in the fountain of life. Once I heard of a man who, on the evening of his beloved wife’s funeral, went to the whorehouse. I understand why he wanted to. He was that afraid. Show me a promiscuous person and I will show you one who truly dreads death. I have had enough of death—Kazuko, her mother, and upon my return from Europe, the news that Holloway died when I was gone.

  But now a brilliant post-typhoon sunny day, hot, damp—lizards appear, the water lilies pop open, bevies of butterflies, and the stones steam. After so much cold and rain it is suddenly festive, and clouds of amorous pigeons descend in their little pink spats, each with a dove-gray cravat.

  16 august 1993. People are returning from the obon holidays and the streets are filling up again. This week they looked like those of any other big city; now they begin to look like Tokyo’s—packed.

  Having lived most of my life in the most crowded city in the world, I have become used to this constant physical proximity. Wherever I look the gaze is broken by people; in train and subway I am constantly brushed by others. One learns to ignore them, to see past them or through them. And when they get in the way, one politely endures them.

  They are not regarded as people. There are too many of them. They are things. I read once that a wolf can tolerate the company of only fifty other wolves—after that he turns savage and attacks. With humans the number must be higher. Attacks occur, however, and will become more frequent as the earth fills up. And it will.

  As humans become more and more common they become less and less valuable. The marketing of violence in entertainment is a symptom. Soon any sanctity of human life will be a memory. Even here.

  Though Japan is still held together by its own brand of social glue, and what the neighbors think retains a power lost elsewhere, order is sagging. Rudeness is common now, as well as a growing disbelief in the feelings of others—particularly among the young. From a typical and isolated criminal (the young man who collected cartoon videos and eventually killed a number of little girls because they were “cute”) one can learn nothing. He is an anomaly. But he is also a paradigm. And I can see him
in the person who steps over one of the homeless without a glance, he who ignores the plight of the girl being harassed, she who pushes aside an old woman in taking a seat—all of which I have seen this week. I think of what rats do to each other when curious scientists keep five thousand in a container intended for five hundred.

  17 august 1993. Party at Frank and Chizuko’s for various birthdays, mainly hers and that of the Kabuki actor Jakuemon. There he is, dapper in a light cream summer suit, his tanned face beaming. He keeps himself tanned I am told because the failed face-lifts are less noticeable. They are still noticeable, but one forgets them because of the affability and good will that animates the man. And in full makeup on the stage as Fujimusume or, this fall he tells me, Sakurahime, he is an eighteen-year-old girl rather than an eighty-year-old man.

  He is given a very good leather coat with fringes. This is a somewhat daring reference to the full leather drag into which he sometimes fits himself for walks through the bars of Shinjuku 2-chome. He is delighted, and keeps turning this way and that to make the fringes fly out.

  Other guests include Chizuko’s famous calligraphy teacher, who makes an enormous kotobuki on a huge piece of paper on the carpet and does not spill a drop; Mr. Soda—his birthday too—now at an age to be anxious for details of my prostate operation; the lady who owns the Perrier franchise with her girlfriend; and the artist Kaneko who, as usual, brings his tall, boyish chauffeur and then makes him sit in the corner and excludes him from the group photos.

  Frank had asked me to mix, so I make conversation with everyone from the grand calligraphy sensei down to the little flower girls who help with the ikebana. I even politely include the chauffeur, but keep my congeniality distant, quite aware of Kaneko’s staring, boring a hole in my head.

  Wonderful food: whole salmon, brace of rabbit, sliced beef, champagne, chocolate cake, and mocha coffee. We all get boxes of Japanese cookies from the shop they are supposed to come from, the Toraya. Then all spill out into the street into waiting limousines or, in my case, the train.

  29 august 1993. People show themselves. The carpenter used to indicate his calloused forefinger, a creation of the plane, and the newsboy had one shoulder lower than the other. Now the indications are less structural—not what you do but how you do it. I look at Chizuko and see traces of the mizushobai, that demimonde in which she spent a part of her life: a certain looseness, a certain professionalism, the ability to build and carry on what we used to call a kidding relationship.

  I notice other signs in other people—for example, smoking homosexuals. In all countries they smoke their cigarettes at their fingertips. Everywhere, everyone—an indication certainly, but no indication that they know they are doing it. Wonder how it started. Wonder what it means.

  5 september 1993. Sunday—to Kamakura, Eishoji, for the internment of the remains of Madame Kawakita. There they are on the altar of this Jodo temple. While I have been living my life since last I saw them, there they have been sitting in their porcelain chamber, surmounted by their gold brocade cozy. Now the nuns chant and bang, and on a gilded shelf sits the black lacquer tablet with the posthumous name on it. Since she will, according to Buddhist belief, be starting a new life, she needs a new name after death. This one is made of elements of her old one—the first written is: Kita-en. A nun takes a wand and dips it in water, then draws one end over the name, anointing it. In front of her are numbers of wooden post-like objects, also containing the new name. These will be put at the grave.

  Which is why we are gathered—for the installation of the remains. After the service all fifty-some of us start up the mountain. I had been there once before to see the grave of Mr. Kawakita, ten or more years ago. It is a small mountain but steep, and some of the company are the age of the Kawakitas, so it is a slow procession. Mr. Oba, the decent, harried, conscientious head of the Film Center; the Sato Tadaos, she walking second but really leading; the tall Takano Etsuko of Iwanami Hall, her hair in the eternal braids of the unmarried—and many others, all of us united because we were close to Madame Kawakita.

  And now we are truly saying goodbye, for the remains of Madame Kawakita are being put into a small crypt under the family stone, and in its pantry-like recess I see the containers holding the ashes of both Nagamasa, her husband, and Kazuko, her daughter. The caretaker lowers Madame Kawakita into place, in the middle. The family united at last. And before the tomb is again closed, I see them sitting there, in a row, all three, a family scene. It is cozy, pleasant, and homely—and the cicadas sing away like a choir.

  I turn and look from this mountaintop out over the forest spread beneath us under the Sunday afternoon sky, and remember when I last stood here—with Kazuko after we had put flowers on her father’s grave and then turned and looked over this scene, beautiful enough for all eternity.

  During this year Richie traveled more than ever; he received awards, and The Honorable Visitors was published. Also his journal became more full—this year’s entries were the most complete yet. There are several reasons for this. A lot was happening, and he wanted to capture it. He was becoming more disciplined and was writing more. Also, he had few larger projects to take up his time, though he was doing research for The Temples of Kyoto.

  20 january 1994. Reading a new grammar book. It tells me that there are at least seventeen forms one can use in Japanese to refer to self—all are first-person singular. They are also graded—one could probably stack them up from most respectful to least. Maybe that is why so few of them are actually used—the difficulties of juggling social status. I know enough not to say boku in reference to myself when I am speaking to a superior. And I almost never use ore (further down the scale), because I find it hard to condescend. The book tells me that women now use watashi rather than atashi, because it less hackneyed and because watakushi must be reserved for formal occasions. Also that atakushi, as opposed to watakushi, hints at cultivated elegance, rather than breeding. And that jibun reeks of discipline within some rigid system—that policemen tend to use this.

  21 january 1994. The economic recession is making the poor more obvious. The tunnel between the Ueno Keisei and Japan Rail stations is now a place for derelicts, two between each column. They lie there all day long, bundled up in the cold, some of them reading newspapers, most sleeping. None beg—they all have a quiet self-sufficiency, returning stares from passersby with a neutral gaze. And I remember some forty years ago, when the Ueno tunnels were filled with the poor and the police helped rather than hindered. So much has happened in between—and so little.

  30 january 1994. The worst cold weather since the threadbare days of the Occupation. Everyone complaining. The habit of putting up with things never did extend to the weather. No one complains about what he can do something about. I wear two pairs of socks and a blanket around the house—and I have the heat full on. What of those in the streets? The newspaper tells me that Japan now has ten thousand homeless, and then adds that in a country of over one hundred million this is “not bad.” I look at those who are in this not-bad category: Old men trying to find cardboard to lay on during the raw night, one old woman who has found a futon and wears it like a coat, kneeling on a piece of carton outside a closed boutique that sells fake fur.

  4 february 1994. To the opening of Alexandra Munroe’s show, Scream Against the Sky: Japanese Art after 1945, at the Yokohama Museum of Art. I remembered much of this when it was new and I saw it in ateliers or small galleries. There was Noguchi’s big haniwa called “War,” and Kusama [Yayoi]’s silver dressing table made of erect cocks, Miki [Tomio]’s enormous aluminum ear and Shiraga [Kazuo]’s wild boar skin with red acrylic. And I remember standing by that boar skin decades ago with Porter McCray and his saying, “Well, really!”

  Hijikata Tatsumi is given a whole dark little room to himself. In it are some artifacts from this father of Butoh, white hangings on which are projected the filmed records of performances, and for this opening only, five naked boy dancers, their heads covered with tied-up news
paper. Also, spotlighted on a pedestal: the golden penis with which Hijikata used to dance.

  I turn to his widow, Ms. Motofuji, a large, commanding and self-possessed woman, and ask her if that is really a cast of Hijikata’s cock. “Now, you would be just as good a judge of that as myself. Of course not. It belonged to some student of his. What was his name now? Something with mura in it.” “Komura?” I guessed. “Yes, that’s it. Works in a bank now. A bucho. You remembered him, how nice.”

  Now all of this art is up there on the walls—official, institutionalized, set into history, and looking much more handsome and much more important. Me too. I am the only white foreigner included in the show—(Nam June Paik is a yellow foreigner.) Two films of mine are there, Boy with Cat and Five Filosphical Fables. And I see now that I am a part of my times, something I had not noticed before.

  11 february 1994. Lunch with Ian [Buruma]. We talk about methods of composition. He says that he is like me—must have some kind of map, or blueprint, even if it is only a page long. Otherwise it seems arbitrary. And we agree that the arbitrary freezes. He tells me that Susan [Sontag] has a different method. She starts out just writing whatever occurs to her and fills pages. It is a great mess, she says, but then she carefully reads it and sees what she is trying to say. Then she begins cutting and underlining, and though it is hard work, eventually what she wants to say emerges.

  12 february 1994. Much going on about the liberalization of the rice market. American rice was bad enough, but at least it could be used for some non-traditional dishes, maybe. But, horrors, now Thai rice is on the market. And it is worse than useless. Already stones and twigs and bugs and dead mice have been found in it. “Found in it or put in it,” said Takano Etsuko when we talked about it at last night’s party. “But rice is Japan’s roots.”