Still running full tilt, Reizo Shiga feels the breath of fate brush over him. Tonight is going to be different. Why submit to years of servitude to the Blessed One? Why not take a shortcut to the highest level and show the Blessed One that Reizo Shiga is a disciple with exceptional qualities?.
Greater, perhaps, than the Blessed One himself?
15
Hiroshima – the Righa Royal Hotel – Beate Becht –
night, March 13th-14th 1995
Beate Becht thinks the Righa Royal Hotel is kitschy, overpriced and amusing. Its pompous domed ceiling makes the lounge look like an old-fashioned UFO. Her room looks out onto a neat square pond with an artificial island, trees and pontoons.
The hotel staff are also a source of amusement, if mixed with occasional irritation. They’re polite, servile and stereotypically inscrutable. Beate, whose friends call her “Peter Pan with boobs” because she’s boyish and has short hair, has spent the last few days wondering whether her father Hermann Becht would have approved of her latest photography project. Years ago, on his death bed, Hermann Becht told his daughter that suffering could not be aestheticized. He was a man of principle to the last. Beate’s publisher is a different kettle of fish. Bruno Günder of Bertelsmann Publishing, the man who canonised single malt whiskey, greeted Beate’s idea of publishing a tribute book to her father with “cosmic enthusiasm”. To her, it would be a way of exorcising her feelings of guilt. As a young photographer with the German army during WWII, her father Hermann had joined the fighting in Berlin to defend the city at the end of the war, when cameras, film and heroic Germans were few and far between. Beate sees echoes of the war in all his later photo-books. She wonders almost every day whether her father’s photo coverage of the Chernobyl disaster nine years ago wasn’t actually a painful, roundabout way of committing suicide. The man was 60 years old when he accompanied vomiting rescue workers and took pictures of men clearing radioactive rubble with spades and wheelbarrows, just after the disaster in Chernobyl. Hermann Becht had indoctrinated Beate from early childhood with his Calvinistic belief in damnation: man is predestined to evil. In her teenage years, Beate raged against her father’s fatalism. Now, at 30, she realises that her anger has become chronic, concealing a minefield of sorrow that she daren’t enter. She compensates by being friendly and polite to everyone. It uses up tons of energy. Beate knows well enough that she’s angry with her father for not understanding her work. Hermann Becht was a press photographer, every inch of him, and he was appalled by the sexually charged punk photos his daughter published. Her work, labelled “neo-symbolic”, was a complete mystery to him, “far-fetched”: shocking, slightly Gothic-looking female nudes, slender nymph-like creatures with chalk-white faces, blood-red lips, heavy eye-shadow – a glimpse of vampirism, a hint of lesbian lust with long fingernails; tethered silhouettes of women, powerless yet endowed with superior sensuality, slavish princesses, some wearing leather masks, their faces hidden, in tortuously painful poses replete with ambiguous passion. One critic wrote that her pictures “personified the ecstasy of the senses run wild”. Black-haired women with large crucifixes between their pallid breasts, naked female torsos with bull’s heads on their shoulders. Her father called her symbolism pretentious. Hermann Becht had never understood that his daughter’s pictures were an attempt to dispel her childhood fears. One of those fears, perhaps the greatest, was her uncertainty about being loved. Did her father love her? Beate Becht never found out. When she reached adolescence and first encountered sexual desire, she wondered whether she would ever be able to love anyone – the powerful intoxication she needed to stir her lust made love seem tame. Ten years later, she published her first book, Forbidden Fruit, which pictured beautiful young women next to dwarfs, invalids, decrepit tramps, and hunchbacks. Languid and pleading, the beauties gazed at their hideous partners, who humiliated and abused them and afterwards carelessly pushed them aside.
Beate is now convinced that things aren’t as bad as they seem and that she simply doesn’t have time for love. She makes sure her needs are satisfied on a regular basis. Man or woman? She leaves that to fate. It makes no difference to her sweaty palms or feelings of inadequacy, of being small and saying the wrong things. She describes herself to her artistic friends as a workaholic, pronouncing the word with a rolling ‘r’ in a self-deprecating parody of her Bavarian accent.
She came to Japan to complete her latest photo project, but the country has been a disappointment thus far. It irritates her that the Japanese, who treated their Second World War prisoners worse than the Nazis, claim to be the victims of the war because of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She’s read in the news editorials that extreme right-wing nationalism has gained more support than ever before during the economic crisis. Powerful political factions are openly demanding Japanese domination of all of Asia. The journalists who wrote about them didn’t capitalise “Great Japanese Empire” for nothing. The atmosphere in the country is not the only disappointment for Beate. Why isn’t the renowned Japanese sense of aesthetics visible in the street? Hiroshima gleams with false glamour and uninspired replicas of American architecture. The city centre, on the other hand, feels grimy and neglected. There’s hardly a trace of classical Japan anywhere.
Beate is lying on her bed in her neat hotel room, which resembles many other neat hotel rooms she’s stayed in over the years. But this one is smaller. She blames the legendary Japanese lack of space. It’s also a little old-fashioned, decorated in beige, light-brown and pink, with large flowers on the bedspread. She lies on her bed of flowers and leafs through the magazines she bought at the supermarket. The pictures disappoint her, their gaudy lollipop colours like cheap MTV ads. Many of the people in the photographs look like mental patients, recently escaped from some institution or other. A garish colour photograph takes up almost the entire cover of one of the magazines.
Beate Becht looks at it and holds her breath.
16
Hiroshima – the Suicide Club squat – Kabe-cho – Mitsuko –
night, March 13th-14th 1995
The sounds of sleeping people around me make my own sleeplessness all the more painful. I’d like to get up and go into the city, which looks like a colourful funfair at night, but it’s as if my limbs are paralysed. Earlier today, Reizo said: “You have the face of a murderer.” He was teasing, of course, but his words stuck in my mind. They remind me of Mayumi’s death. I must have been about ten. It was towards the end of the day. I remember seeing the sun, the colour of red ochre, drifting in the water like a gigantic egg-yolk. The dilapidated central watchtower of Hashima Island cast long shadows, and I’ve never dared ask my father why I, a child, was taken to the tower. I recall asking for “uncle” Mayumi while two of his followers escorted me up the steep path to the island’s highest point. Mayumi, cheerful and chubby, always ready with a joke, looked after me when my father went on his nocturnal trips to the mainland. He bathed me, told me stories, and brushed my hair with a hundred strokes. Mayumi bowed to my father like a jack-knife and would have walked through fire for him. Why then, had my father’s followers tied him naked to one of the watchtower’s supporting masts? I never found out.
I can remember a stiff breeze tugging at my clothes, but I can’t recall my exact feelings. Disbelief and bewilderment, most likely. I do seem to remember being choked by fear, as if I had been the one tied up there naked, and not Mayumi.
I understood nothing of the speech my father gave to the large group of followers who had assembled at the top. I heard his voice, but my mind refused to interpret the sounds as words. I looked at Mayumi, a few metres away from me. He was staring at the ground, but lifted his head a little every now and then to peer at me. His expression was that of a beaten dog, infinitely sad. I felt something change in me, a dreamy state, as if part of me had separated itself. The same feeling, now sharp and sizzling, shot through my body like a bolt of lightning when my father stopped t
alking, pulled out his katana, turned with the fluidity of water and chopped off Mayumi’s head.
My father took me back down to the building where we lived, his hand on my shoulder, patiently pointing to the places I should tread carefully on the steep, overgrown path. For once, he didn’t seem to be scrutinising me for some shortcoming or weakness.
I was prattling on about nothing, acting all busy and grown-up, like a little lady.
When we were almost at the bottom, he said casually: “Mitsuko, don’t you want to know why you had to see this?”
I sensed that much depended on my answer and my heart raced: “Because I’m your daughter and I deserve respect.”
He gave me a long, inscrutable look and finally nodded. I was deeply relieved, but hadn’t yet realised that I wasn’t the same girl who had gone up to the watchtower.
He then took my hand and asked: “Don’t you want to know what Mayumi did?”
I surprised myself with my answer: “I don’t know enough of the adult world, but I’m certain about one thing: Mayumi loved me.”
We were almost at the bottom. He let go of my hand and walked in front of me, an angular giant in warrior’s clothes from a different era, in a world of his own where darkness was falling rapidly.
I’ve always wondered whether I imagined his answer, but tonight I can feel my feet searching anxiously for the path after he let me go, and hear his voice again in the gathering dusk: “He loved you too much, and that’s why he had to die.”
I saw the gang my father called his followers commit many more atrocities in later years, but I’ll never forget the look on Mayumi’s face just before he died.
It all happened so quickly and unexpectedly and I was rooted to the spot. I remember Mayumi looking up at me just before the sword was pulled, I remember his smile.
* * *
How can a child witness such a thing and grow up normally? Everything I did seemed ambiguous after Mayumi’s execution. I was unable to accept the reality of my life, so I made everything unreal.
It only occurred to me much later that Mayumi is a woman’s name. It made me distrust my memory – and as a consequence, my life.
17
Hiroshima –Mayima-sou restaurant – Xavier Douterloigne and Yori – night, March 13th-14th 1995
The girl has brought Xavier Douterloigne to a restaurant in the centre of the city. She was quiet on the overcrowded Hakushima tram, a little frown between her eyebrows as if she regretted her suggestion. Hiroshima’s nightlife is just as noisy and colourful as Xavier remembers it, yet it amazes him all over again. The restaurant doesn’t have a single photo album to help non-Japanese speaking tourists choose their food – a good sign. The interior may be a bit cluttered – bright red plastic walls and a steaming open kitchen – but it’s not Western. There are trees opposite, on the other side of the street, date palms colourless and bony, like old men against the cloudless night sky. Xavier orders himself a healthy meal. The waitress smiles at him approvingly; a tall blonde man speaking fluent Japanese is something to tell her friends about. She looks as if she wants to touch him. His table companion introduces herself as Yori, but doesn’t say much else. She attacks the food, licks her teeth with every bite, her pink tongue darting in and out. Xavier notices she’s still wearing her gloves. She starts to talk again in the middle of the meal and before long she’s bombarding Xavier with questions about his life, buzzing around his head like a bee. A girl with seven-league boots. He smiles. He knows that women find him attractive, especially Asian women. He’s evasive when she asks about his family: “My parents have been diplomats all their lives, but they wanted to round off their careers close to home and moved to Brussels. They’re the best. I’m their only son... just graduated. This trip to Japan, where I lived for many years, is my graduation gift.” Yori flashes her eyes at him as she asks about girlfriends.
“Enough about me,” says Xavier with a smile. “My life is boring. A diplomat’s son with doting parents, nothing exciting ever happens to me. Your body’s a story in itself.” He touches her right temple carefully. “And I guess there’s plenty more inside.”
Yori quickly rubs the spot where Xavier’s fingers touched her skin.
“Have you got a boyfriend?”
She nods with a wry smile. “If you can call it that. Our relationship isn’t conventional.”
“So what is it?”
“Passionate.” She lowers her eyes and adds quickly: “But not always in the traditional sense of the word.”
“What’s the traditional sense of passionate?”
She turns her wrists and stretches her body, unable to sit still for a second.
“Sex.” She peeks at Xavier to see his reaction. Xavier smiles. New dishes are served, soup perfumed with delicate yuzu lemon, and fish wrapped in cedar leaf. Excellent food for such a modestly priced restaurant. Xavier watches her as she eats with great relish, but still with the lightness and elegance of a bird.
“What does your boyfriend do?”
“Reizo? He wants to write a novel. A book about what he calls “Japan the whore”. I’ve read some of it. A lot of violence. It’s about young people...” Xavier isn’t paying much attention. He’s basking in the sparkling light of her presence.
“I think Reizo has a screw loose,” Yori concludes. “He’s so over-the-top at times. He regularly ties a hachímalá around his head, one of those headscarfs with special ritual symbols, the kanji, supposed to have the power to fend off evil spirits. Then he sits cross-legged and meditates in zazen, with a dagger in his hands. After a bit, he starts to shake like a madman, pretending to plunge the blade into his belly.” She giggles, again covering her mouth. “Playing the macho comes naturally to him. Man as warrior, flirting with death, that kind of thing.”
Xavier decides not to respond to her comment. “And what do you do?”
“I’m a street jester. I sing karaoke and invent reasons for people to fill my money box. It’s getting tougher by the day. More and more people are losing their jobs. We’re all going down together. The proud yellow race, captain of Asia, blah, blah, blah. In actual fact, we’re a sick people, Xavier.” Douterloigne loves the way she pronounces his name: it sounds almost Spanish like Javier. He’s not in love, but he knows that love is the only natural force in the universe capable of striking faster than the speed of light. After what happened to Anna, he’s having a hard time looking at life through rose-tinted glasses.
“Where do you live?”
“I rent some rooms with a bunch of young people in the centre of the city.” Yori smiles and coughs delicately. “What the hell, I can trust you with the truth. We’re actually squatting in a disused factory. We’ve divided it up into living spaces, using stuff we either found, scrounged or chipped in to buy. And we have our own club: the Suicide Club. Some of us are thinking of really doing it, if they can get enough publicity first. Suicide as a happening, you could call it. If there’s no other way out, suicide is a noble option.” She shrugs. “Want to hear a funny story about my boyfriend Reizo, the crazy he-man?”
Xavier is amused by her attempts to use English. Before he can answer, she’s laughing in her furtive, nervous style. “Maybe you won’t think it’s that funny. Westerners have a different mentality from us.”
“Not me.”
Yori shrugs. “A year and a half ago, I was attacked on the street close to our squat by a man wearing a motorbike helmet. He stabbed me four times with a knife and left me bleeding. I can still see him standing in front of me, licking the blade clean. He wanted me to see. I was found by an acquaintance, who contacted my boyfriend. Reizo came running, wept onto my bleeding chest, picked me up and took me to the hospital on his moped. It was touch and go.”
“That was very noble of your boyfriend.”
Yori lowers her eyes, and this time Xavier notices her face twitch nervously. “He still think
s I didn’t recognise him.”
He doesn’t understand what she means and knits his brows.
“The man with the helmet who stabbed me was Reizo himself. Completely out of his mind on amphetamines. That’s what I believe.”
“How do you know?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “When he’s high he cuts himself, the back of his hands, then he forgets. His hands are covered in scars. I got a good look at my attacker’s hands.”
Xavier knows how ambivalent relationships can be, but he still suspects she’s made this story up. He doesn’t know why. It makes her even more interesting.
“You stayed with him, though.”
“We’re two shipwrecked people on a raft,” she says. “If one of us jumps off, the balance is disturbed and we both end up as dinner for the sharks.”
“Dangerous love.”
Yori shrugs and looks at the tabletop feigning bashfulness. Her lips are the colour of an open wound and as soft as silk.
“Love is for sick minds. In Japan, we only refer to it in novels, or when there’s a crime of passion. Reizo is my koibito.”
Xavier nods. The word “love” is a nineteenth century French invention, exalted by the literati of the day. He’s aware how uncomfortable the Japanese are with it.
“Koibito: the one who arouses your passion.”
She nods. “Against your better judgement.”
“Did you know that your word for love, ai, is a cry of pain in my language?”
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