As I read this I was listening to the NHK FM morning classical program. It is Beethoven’s Leonore no. 3, Sinding’s “Rustle of Spring,” Webern’s Bagatelles, Poldini’s “Waltzing Doll,” and the Brahms Requiem. I do not question the indigestible mixture—this is standard Japanese programming: all things foreign are equal. What I now notice, reflected from Oe’s words, is that classical music is tokenized. There is an aquarium of works, which is kept in good order (including new and exotic varieties, such as Webern) and thus protects the listener from the unruly waves of Western music. This mismatch of a concert I am listening to consists of items taken from this tank. There are national sub-tanks as well. In the American the fish are: MacDowell piano pieces, Billy the Kid, The Grand Canyon Suite, Scott Joplin, West Side Story, and selected bits of Leroy Anderson. Nothing else. I have never heard a note of Elliot Carter on NHK.
1 july 96. Moving. My belongings lie about me. Most of the pictures I have already taken to the new place. The books are out of the shelves and lie on the floor. I feel like the hermit crab, all naked, looking for another shell.
How much the illusion of self is created by the domestic environment one constructs. One knows this only when it is dismantled. Then, all of my disciplines break down. My orderly days come apart, my hours, unaccounted for, slop over. I get sleepy in the morning and my various compulsions just give up.
In the new place I will build this new home, where everything has a place and is in it. Things will get thrown out; things will get dusted or washed. And I can really see, feel, my belongings. Oh, that book (on my shelves for fifteen years), I must read it. Oh, that beautiful little bronze (on my desk for an equal time), I must put it where I can see it. Soon, however, I will again settle into the grateful cradle of habit.
8 july 1996. A party for Sato Tadao upon the completion of his four-volume Japanese film history. There was Hidari Sachiko. She has aged elegantly, and tends to be grand. Looking at a somehow different-appearing Kurisaki Midori, she said, “She has had something done to her face. One of those things where they make new holes for the ears and pull everything up.” I mention that the director of her latest film is there. “Where, where, I must snub him. He understood nothing about me. Nothing.”
Oshima’s wife [Koyama Akiko] is there with news that her husband is now in a wheelchair and is genki, if you can be that in a wheelchair. That he is going to be all right. The director of Violated Angels, Wakamatsu Koji, is there, now even more gray, even more affable. Since his old films were at the Haiyuza last week and my old ones are there this week, we talk of the brave days of 1965.
Adachi Masao’s films are also being shown. He was a friend of the Red Army members, got implicated, left the country and has now for the last thirty years been in the Near East, unable to return. I remember him as a short, serious, handsome, bright actor (he was the police inspector in Oshima’s Death by Hanging) and filmmaker. “He’s gone all white,” says Wakamatsu. I ask what he does there. Film? “Oh, no, well he works at what he can get. He speaks perfect Arabic now. Never got married.” Does he want to come back? “It wouldn’t do him any good. He never can. And he never did anything bad, you know.” Wakamatsu goes all that distance, Damascus twice a year, just to see his old friend.
With Karel van Wolferen, Edward Seidensticker, Tim Young, Gwen Robinson, Stephen Shaw, William Miller, Eithne Jones, 1996.
Obayashi Nobuhiko is the master of ceremonies and snares me into making a speech. I say whatever comes into my head, talk about the singular fact that one can trust Sato as a film critic, something rare in Japan; you always know he is speaking for himself and not for his old sensei, nor for some film company, nor for his country. No one listens—not to me, or to any of the other speakers. Once eating begins the ears are stopped. Me too. I always put away large quantities of lobster and caviar and uni and roast beef and lamb and don’t hear a word from anyone.
18 july 1996. Makiyo brought his wife and daughter over and I cooked. We had coq au vin and salad and ripe Camembert and a big chocolate cake for dessert. The little girl is three—very pretty, lively, and her father dotes on her. It is like being with a man very much in love with his dinner partner. His wife is more measured—after all, she is the one who must take care of the child.
Makiyo was himself like a child when I first met him fifteen years ago, but a very self-sufficient one. He had had to learn to be. [Numata Makiyo’s story is given in Public People, Private People.] Friendly and open, he nonetheless hid his emotions and I never knew what he felt. Now, however, with his daughter, the feelings shine. He is in love.
Later we walk, just across the street, to the festival going on around Shinobazu. People in summer yukata looking at the plants for sale, at the watered stones shining in the dark, at the bell bugs and armored beetles for sale. The little girl and I decorate two pieces of bisque and have them baked, and then I give her the one that I made—a plate with black branches and small green fruit.
Before they left, Makiyo turned back and then reappeared with an enormous lantern plant, orange and green, for my new apartment.
24 july 1996. Gwen hosts a party for her eminent oldsters. There is Karel van Wolferen, eminent author, Edward Seidensticker, eminent translator, William Miller, eminent publisher, Stephen Shaw, eminent editor—and eminent me.
Fine food, lots to drink. The latter much softened up the party. Owlish Ed wandered in late, had gotten lost. “And I finally thought, if it isn’t this place then it isn’t anywhere, but it was.” Stephen said, “Japan is doing quite badly at the Atlanta Olympics. Does one dare confess it makes one happy? Is one agreed with?” William said, “It doesn’t make me happy at all, you beast.” And Ed said, “It makes me happy, very, very happy.” To which William replied, “I love Japan, and I don’t care who knows it.” To which Ed made reply, “Well, I don’t and I don’t care who knows it.”
But before either could become too tiresome Gwen took away our plates, which had contained sea urchin penne, and brought in the bubbling Irish stew. Then Karel decided to treat us to the Dutch national anthem, in Dutch, following which Eithne [Jones] was forced to sing the Irish national anthem in Gaelic. Ed tried the German national anthem in German but forgot the words. “The words are not important anyway, the melody is sublime. That is because it’s by Haydn. He wrote it for Austria but the Germans unkindly appropriated it.” William decided we should make up anthems for those countries that did not have them, and attempted one for Zimbabwe but was shouted down.
Gwen looked at the ceiling and Eithne brought calm by reciting her Irish nun joke. The one where the head nun asked the novice her plans once out of the convent and fainted because she understood “Protestant” for “prostitute.”
Here the conversation broke into small groups. Karel and Ed talked about Haydn, William and Eithne about Galway, and Stephen and I about our hearts. “Does it hurt right now?” he asked. No, it did not, I told him. “Mine does. It hurts right now.” I pointed out that he had drunk almost a whole bottle himself and that this perhaps caused it. “Not at all, advanced medical opinion has it that alcohol, particularly wine, is good for the heart.” I doubted that but William chimed in that he had read the same article, and finished his own bottle to prove it. Ed did not think so. He thought whiskey much better for the heart—though our hostess had wisely prepared none—and so they wrangled.
Gwen brought peace with a big ice cream cake and, since every last one of us loves a sweet, silence prevailed as we crunched and munched. I began talking with Tim [Young], who compensated for being left out (we were originally all Gwen’s friends) by being a fine host and showing me big photos, which he had downloaded from the Tokyo University machine. One showed a just-exploded star, halo still intact. “That is what our sun will do,” he told me, “but not right now. It is halfway through its life now. It is middle-aged.”
“Who, who?” asked Ed. Then, “We’re all middle-aged, every last one of us.” William, five years younger, looked at him, “You are a so
mewhat mature middle-aged.”
Tim showed me the other photo, something like tadpoles swimming, wakes behind them. It was a close-up of the halo of the other picture. “Each one of these is much larger than our solar system, maybe even our universe. But the funny thing is that they are flying backward. You see that tail, like a comet? Well, that is the front of the object.” I say that this means a change in our physics and he, an astrophysicist, nods.
After the cake, the cheese and the fresh cherries. (Ed: “Oh, what a treat to get real American cherries, the Japanese variety are pallid, tasteless, and outrageously expensive.”) We all began examining our watches, wondered at the lateness of the hour, and one by one wandered out into the street.
11 august 1996. Sunday morning, very early. Yesterday I fell asleep at five in the afternoon and woke refreshed and ready for a new day at three-thirty in the morning. Since Shinobazu is now my front yard, I—never having seen it at this hour—decide to take a walk.
Dressed, I walk out into the still, cool dark and cross the street. The park is a negative of its daytime self—black water, gray closed lotus, dark trees among which a few white figures wander. One of them a late okama, the dyed one in the pants suit who is too shy to call out to possible customers. There are a few late young, coupled and huddled, waiting for the morning trains. But most of them are roused and ragged men—the homeless.
There are hundreds in the park, some still sleeping on the benches or on cardboard on the ground. So many, all lying about in abandoned attitudes. The roused ones wash at the drinking fountain and then I see a few have found brooms and already begun the day’s work.
I walk to Ueno Station, the familiar street all now different, shutters down over all the shops. Even the electric cuckoo, leading the blind over the crossing, is silent. At the station I ask the two cops on duty when the station opens. Four, they say. Is there no all-night coffee shop, I wonder? Oh, no, they say, surprised at the question, perhaps implying that a well-run society like this, no one at all on the streets at this early hour, would never need such.
Back in the park the sky has lightened and the black trees have turned gray. In the pond, glowing a faint pink, the closed lotus, surrounded by dark leaves. Above, the first crows cross, and soon their calls will grow to that morning cacophony that sometimes awakens me at five or six. Seeing and hearing them now is like attending the rehearsal of a performance I know well.
The pink lotuses glow and I turn to look at the closest. And there, this being Japan, are two photographers, lens extended, waiting to catch the moment of opening. We all wait and at just four-thirty I hear a plop, like a stroke on a finger drum, followed by the click of the shutter, and then—hanging for an instant in the air while the crows caw flying against the slowly lightening sky—the sweet and watery smell of the water lily.
15 august 1996. The end of World War II, fifty-one years ago today. I was on my way to China in a Liberty ship, happy it was over but unhappy that now I would to return to Ohio, since my country no longer needed to be defended against the foe. And now, fifty years later, I am in my tower, happy in the land of the former enemy, looking at the expanse of lotus below, pink as a funeral in the sunset.
A typhoon is on the way and I decide to descend and walk along the shore, enjoying the south wind. The sun has now gone and the sky is already that deep blue of autumn, against which sail enormous clouds so white that their reflected light makes it more morning than night.
The kingfisher is still there, motionless, right by the rail, waiting for fish, occasionally darting and showing a sliver of silver minnow before it swallows. In the daytime he sometimes attracts a small crowd, and I can see them below me, circled there, like curious town folk in Hokusai prints. Now, however, I am alone with the bird and then he too flies off.
Alone under the luminous sky, I think about my recent tic, which has a life of its own, then wonder if Debussy’s portrait of Little Tic included the tic, then remember that Claude-Achille was a kleptomaniac and all his friends hid their silver when he came; then I thought of how something this common could somehow give rise to something so rare as the Saint Sebastian music, which made me think of Guido’s painting, which made me think of Mishima, and thence to voluntary death.
With Gwen Robinson, 1996.
I decided that I will not fight against the dying light. Only an egocentric like Dylan Thomas would do that. Even Stravinsky, who set the lyric and who was all ego himself, was too aware to fight against the dying light. We have an allotted time, and to hang around is as unseemly as staying on at the party even after the weary hostess has twice looked her watch and mentioned a heavy day tomorrow. The only problem is arranging the exit.
And I thought of the minnow. A flash of silver, a small movement—and then all gone. That is really all it is. A tiny spasm—man and minnow alike. Easeful death, another phrase from the poets. And I think of Jimmy [Merrill], bravely opening the closet and stepping into the eternal dark. And I think of Madame Yourcenar staring at the blackness with open eyes.
20 august 1996. I look at myself. In Japan I have lived my life in a state of consciousness. I look at everything, register it, and often judge it. I am aware of people on the street, the cracks in the pavement. Here too I have judgmental thoughts, but these are really for the purpose of shifting and sorting, putting things into categories, comparing.
I would have it no other way since, if extremes are to be considered, it is better than a life of unconsciousness, of blank eyes, deaf ears, dead brain. At the same time, I would sometimes like to relax this habitual and vigilant regard, would long to sink into oblivion, into the unself-conscious.
7 september 1996. I look from my window and see that a small crowd has again gathered on the paved plaza in front of the southern reach of the pond. The kingfisher has again come and is fishing.
A large, handsome bird, he perches by the rail and intently searches the water for small fish. When he discovers one, there is a lizard-like stretch of the neck and a flash of silver in the beak as the fish goes down.
Various people watch, the late afternoon light casting their shadows black in back of them. Young couples giggle and pass on, salaried men clutch their briefcases and briefly stare, a housewife or two wave their parasols at the bird, and the many homeless who have nothing else to do come to watch.
To one of these the bird has become important. He is a mustached, heavy, middle-aged man in shorts who has appropriated the creature. He arrives with a bag of crusts and these he drops into the water in front of the bird to attract the fish. I can see him gesticulating as he explains. If I were near enough I could hear him expound.
The bird has become his occupation, since he has no other. Whenever it appears, so does he. As it sits, still as a snake, he moves about, tossing crusts, commenting upon its habits, explaining. A number of people listen for a time. They are learning something.
Then, for no reason, the kingfisher flies to the signboard that says not to fall in, and after it has surveyed the lotus for a while it takes flight. The mustached man, with no sign of disappointment, rather with the air of a man who has finished his work for the day, closes his bag of crumbs and likewise departs.
10 september 1996. I come back late from teaching my course at Temple University, and find the back streets of Ueno awash with beautiful young women, all in the epaulets and monograms, brocades and miniskirts that signify the mizushobai service industry of the downtown. Usually the sight is hidden away in bars and clubs named You and Etoile and Hope, and costs an amount of money. Money is now not to be had, however, and so they have come outside, like exotic insects from under their rocks, and—much ill at ease in their indoor finery—stand in the open night air, hand out leaflets, and cajole.
With Sam Jameson, Edward Seidensticker, Karel van Wolferen, Eithne Jones, 1996.
They are joined by the homeless who are bedding down for the night, on cardboard in front of banks, or curled up in the little niche by the porno. A piquant combination: lon
g tanned legs next to dirty shoes and sockless feet; much-brushed hair, stained fashionable mahogany or deep maple side by side with dirty, lank, infested strands; the smell of Chanel mingling with that of the rotgut that the homeless take to put themselves to sleep.
19 september 1996. Gwen and I go and see Ed, propped up in bed, covered with a blue blanket, getting solvent for the blood clots that have formed in the knee and are keeping him hospitalized. “These damn Japanese beds,” were among his first words. “In America you just push a button, but here in the land of the Twenty-first Century, oh, no, you have to get out of bed and crank yourself up or down.” I suggest he call a nurse. “Oh, I do, I do.” I then say that, yes, and she comes and she smiles and she happily cranks his bed up or down and that I doubt this would invariably occur in the Land of the Free. We then go on and talk about his mysterious collapse in Sasebo and how long he must stay in hospital—two weeks.
Afterward Gwen and I go and have coffee. It being an old-fashioned place, we are then given tea. It is old-fashioned tea as well. Konbucha. “It tastes like cunt,” I say. “I would not know,” says Gwen, “but it smells like me if I’m not careful.” “But it tastes good,” I mollify. “Yes, some men quite like it. I have heard that some girls have been encouraged not to douche. It builds up.” “Well,” I counter, “some people like cock cheese.” “Like feta, I have heard,” she observes, then, “Always wanted to ask, how does it get made?” “Same way as cunt tea,” I explain. “It is a real cheese too, fermented, everything.” “One could toast it perhaps.” “Perhaps, but it might be uncomfortable.”
Finishing our repast we repaired to the street and linked arms and she said, “It is so good to talk with you. I know of no one else from whom I learn so much.”
The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 Page 49
