by Helen Dewitt
Kambei: A good samurai would never get so drunk
A man runs through the door; Katsushiro brings down the stick hard on his head. It’s Toshiro Mifune, who falls to the ground.
Mifune looks at the samurai. He recognises Kambei.
You had the nerve to ask whether I was a samurai
I’m a samurai all right
Don’t go away. I’ll show you something [takes out scroll]
Look at this
Handed down in my family for generations
Mifune is making strange faces and noises now replicated in miniature by my side. Kurosawa is right, he can turn on a dime & watching quicksilver Mifune stern Shimura ardent Kimura I suddenly realise that everything is going to be all right, I am providing my fatherless uncleless boy not with 8 male role models (6 samurai 1 gatecrashing farmer’s son 1 fearless farmer) but 16 (8 characters 8 actors) 17 including Kurosawa who does not appear. Only one of the characters is a perfectionist in the practice of his art but all 8 actors & the director who does not appear show this terrible perfectionism making a total of 17 male role models (not including the extras).
[Kambei, reading] You’re this Kikuchiyo?
Born in the Second Year of Tensho … [bursts out laughing]
You look remarkably old for your age
Looking at you I can hardly believe that you are 13
[All the samurai burst out laughing]
L: Where did you steal this?
L: Who do you think you are, calling me a thief?
Now we are six.
iii
After this superb battle … one might expect the picture to end with some kind of statement that he has at last grown-up, that he has arrived, that he has become something—the great judo champion.
Donald Richie, “Sugata Sanshiro,”
The Films of Akira Kurosawa
1
1, 2, 3
20 March, 1993
Today is my sixth birthday.
I got an Oxford-Duden Japanese Pictorial Dictionary and a little book about a cat in Japanese that was all in kana and a book which I couldn’t tell what it was because it was all in Japanese, but Sibylla said it was Sugata Sanshiro by Tomita Tsuneo. She said I would have to share her kanji dictionary and her Kodansha romanised dictionary and her grammar and she said unfortunately Sugata Sanshiro was not available in English so I might find it rather hard going, but that it seemed to be a marvellous story going by what Mr. Richie says about the film and she got out a book by Mr. Richie and said look at this, can you read this? I asked if it was in English and she said yes so of course I could read it. Apparently there is quite a dramatic scene in the book when Sugata’s judo teacher tells him to kill himself. This is what Mr. Richie says about my book:
He is using all of the correct judo procedures, besting one man after the other. All of this is shown with fast cutting at its most seductive. It is an exhilarating passage. It is like something from the ordinary Japanese fight-picture, only much more skillfully done. We—not yet guessing what the picture is about—think: that Sugata is a real man, a real hero. The crowd thinks so. There are cries of how wonderful he is, how marvelous. Sugata, carried away, attacks one man after the other, always winning.
There is a cut to the judo teacher’s room. Everything is still. He does not move, there is no movement on the screen, and after the furious motion of the sequence directly before it is like an admonition. He sits there, as though waiting, the seconds pass. Then Sugata, his kimono torn, comes in.
Then Sugata does an extraordinary thing. He opens the shoji and without a look backward or below he leaps.
I am really looking forward to reading the book.
The Pictorial Dictionary had a picture of a samurai on the front so first I looked for that. It was quite hard to find because it is in Ethnology, and when I found it the only words it gave were the words for samurai and for armour, and it didn’t even give the character for samurai it just spelled it out in hiragana.
I did not want to say anything to Sibylla because I did not want to hurt her feelings but I think she guessed something because she asked what’s the matter. I said Nothing and she said Doh ka na? very sceptically. Doh ka na? means Really? in Japanese. I showed her the samurai and she said it was absolutely appalling that it did not give the kanji and that it was probably because they thought it was too hard for people, so what I should do was write a letter to the editor and sign it Ludo Age Six. I asked if I could write it on the computer and she said how will he know you are really six? She said to be sure to put the character in my letter so I am going to.
Sibylla is watching Seven Samurai again. I have seen it before several times so I decided to start reading Sugata Sanshiro. We are each going to pick a character every day and master them thoroughly on a daily basis starting tomorrow. Today I just learned two words that Sibylla gave me that come up in the book.
Ju means soft and jitsu means art or skill and do means way and apparently the characters turn up in other compounds. I already know all the hiragana and katakana.
Finally I looked at the first page of the book. Japanese is the hardest language in the world.
I did not want to colour in the characters that I knew because this is the only Japanese book that we have apart from two of Sibylla’s. So I decided to try to find another character in the dictionary and it took about an hour to find it. The characters all look quite similar so it is hard to remember anything if you do not colour them in as you go along. After a while Sibylla looked up. She stopped the video and said what’s the matter. I said Nothing. She came over and looked at the page of the book and said how are you ever going to learn this if you don’t colour in the characters? She said these little Japanese books are so cheap, it only cost a fiver, we can always get another. She said she wanted me to enjoy my birthday, and she said if anything was bothering me I should let her know.
She said I could ask as many questions as I wanted because it was my birthday. I said who is my father? Sibylla said she was sorry, but she could not tell me. She said he was a travel writer and she had only met him once.
I think maybe he is somebody famous.
21 March, 1993
Today we each picked a character. We are going to do this every day until we know them all. There are 1945 and I already know three so if we do two a day we will know them all in 971 days. I wanted to do 20 a day because then we would be finished in three months but Sibylla said no it would be terrible to wake up thinking we had to do 20 whereas we could always do more if we felt like it.
Sibylla picked JIN person/hito person. JIN is the exogenous Chinese lexeme and hito is an indigenous Japanese lexeme.
I picked
yaku flute 17-stroke radical for musical instrument
Unfortunately Halpern does not seem to have any characters that use the radical.
After we had thoroughly mastered our characters I asked Sibylla where she met my father. Apparently Sibylla met my father at a party. Everyone at the party wanted to talk to him but he decided to talk to Sibylla and when she decided to leave the party he decided to leave too.
22 March, 1993
Sibylla picked DAI TAI (big)/ō/(big) and she wanted me to pick TAI huge/futo(i) (thick) because it would be easy to remember.
I picked
JI (imperial seal). I said if I could have
JI (that) she could have but she said we could do them tomorrow.
After breakfast I started going through Sugata Sanshiro. I coloured in Sugata Sanshiro wherever it appeared and also the characters for judo and jujitsu in the second half of the book. The ones I picked have not come up yet.
Today I asked Sibylla about my father but she said she did not want to talk about it. I said at least tell me his first name but she said No. I said she could just tell me the letter it starts with but she said No.
23 March, 1993
TAI huge/futo(i) (thick)
JI (that)
24 March, 1993
Today Sibylla picked SUI (wate
r)/mizu (water). This time she wanted me to pick HYŌ (ice)/kōri (ice)/hi (ice)/kō(ru) (freeze)(!). I said I thought that was boring because it was almost exactly like mizu and Sibylla said that was the whole point. I said if she wanted to pick boring characters she could but I was picking
SŌ (algae, seaweed; elegant expression, rhetorical flourish)/mo (algae, duckweed, seaweed)
I said I would learn if we could also learn
KEN (cocoon)/mayu (cocoon)
25 March, 1993
HYŌ (ice)/kōri (ice)/hi (ice)/kō(ru) (freeze)
KEN (cocoon)/mayu (cocoon)
26 March, 1993
BOKU MOKU (tree, wood)/ki (tree, wood)
taiboku (gigantic tree)
SUI (jade green, emerald green, verdure; kingfisher)
27 March, 1993
SHIN (thick woods)/mori (thick woods)
shinshin deeply forested
KI (turtle, tortoise)/kame (turtle, tortoise)
After we had thoroughly mastered our characters we went to the library. I have been trying all week to find out my father’s name but Sibylla will not even tell me the first letter. I decided to borrow Kon Tiki.
28 March, 1993
Sibylla and I had another argument today about characters. Sibylla said if she picked KA (fire)/hi (fire) and I picked EN (flame,
blaze)/honō (flame, blaze) and if we bore in mind the fact that was the radical magarigawa for river we would understand in an intuitive way why SAI/wazawa(i) meant natural calamity/disaster and we would then see why jinsai was a manmade calamity and kasai was fire or conflagration. I said is Thor Heyerdahl my father? Sibylla said certainly not. I said well if you want to pick all those characters you can, are you picking them? Sibylla said aren’t you? I said if she got four including the radical for river I wanted
EI (shade, gloom)/kage(ri) (shade, gloom)
kanae (ritual cauldron, tripod vessel)/TEI (triangular)
BŌ (toad, frog) and
KO (tiger)/tora (tiger)
I said so are you picking four, and Sibylla said yes because she could not wait four days for the term jinsai which was obviously an indispensable euphemism for small child. I said in that case I wanted
GYAKU (cruel, savage, tyrannical, oppressive)/ shiita (geru) (oppress, persecute, tyrannise, grind down)
instead of
BŌ (toad, frog).
Sibylla said Dozo, jinsai. She obviously thought this was very funny.
29 March. Today I finished Kon Tiki. I have decided to learn how to clean a fish.
30 March. Today Sibylla and I practised cleaning a fish. Sibylla was rather annoyed because I did not want to eat it.
31 March. I have started reading Into the Heart of Borneo. I wanted to practise cleaning a chicken but Sibylla said she was not in the mood. We went to Ohio Fried Chicken instead.
1 April. Sibylla still did not feel like cleaning a chicken today. I asked if my father’s name was Ludo and she said no. I asked if it was David and she said no. I asked if it was Steven and she said no. I said well what is it then and she said Rumpelstiltskin. Then she suggested we go out to Ohio Fried Chicken. I asked if it was really Rumpelstiltskin and she said no.
2 April. Today I finished Into the Heart of Borneo. I have decided to practise sleeping on the floor. I have started Arabian Sands.
3 April. Today I was still reading Arabian Sands. It was interesting. The Bedou do not wear shoes. This is to harden their feet. I asked Sibylla if we could clean a chicken today and she said No.
25 April
I have read Kon Tiki, Into the Heart of Borneo, Arabian Sands, Journey into Danger!, Quest for Adventure!, The Snow Leopard, In Patagonia, Amazon Nights, To Caucasus, Tents on the Steppe, Igloo Winter, With Camel and Compass, Among Pygmies and After Alexander. Today I asked Sibylla if she ever read any of them. She was watching Seven Samurai and I thought she might drop a clue while her mind was otherwise occupied. It was at the part where Kyuzo fights the other samurai. She said she had read In Patagonia. After Kyuzo killed the other samurai she burst out laughing. She said she had never even met Bruce Chatwin. I asked if she had ever met any of the others. She turned and looked at me without a word and then she looked back at the TV.
I am a bit fed up with these Japanese characters as none of them turn up in Sugata Sanshiro. We have mastered 98 so far. A few of Sibylla’s characters have turned up but not one of mine. Also I have looked up most of the characters in the book now and some of them are not even in the dictionary! It is extremely frustrating.
26 April
Today we went to the library. I got Tracks Across Alaska, Ticket to Latvia, Night Train to Turkestan, Idle Days in Patagonia, In the Steps of Stanley, In Search of Genghis Khan and Danziger’s Travels.
12 May
I have finished Sugata Sanshiro. There were some things that I did not understand because Sibylla could not answer a lot of my questions. Sibylla said I was being very quiet these days and she had done an enormous amount of work and we would go to Books Nippon and buy me another book in Japanese. I said I would like to get a book about an octopus. We asked at the counter and the lady said she would see if they had anything. Finally she showed us some books. We think we have bought a book about an octopus but we are not quite sure.
13 May
Today I finished Tracks Across Alaska. I decided to start reading Ticket to Latvia. Sibylla did a lot of typing and then she watched Seven Samurai for a while. When it got to where they get to the village I asked if she had actually read anything by my father. She said not if she could help it. I said what do you mean? She said someone in the office gave her one of his books so she had to read some of it. She said she said to the person that it seemed to have rather a lot of logical mistakes and the person said what difference does it make. I said casually do you still have it? She turned her head and looked at me. Then she said no, I didn’t keep it and looked back at the TV. I said who was the person? She kept looking at the TV. She said she couldn’t remember, they had all been crazy about him.
So all I need to do is find someone who was in the office and ask who they were all crazy about. The only problem is that I think they were all fired. When I am a bit older I can do some detective work and trace them.
14 May
Today was a real false alarm. I was practising my Japanese characters when all of a sudden I noticed that Sibylla was looking at my library books! I held my breath and watched her. After a while she picked up Danziger’s Travels and started turning the pages, and then she went over and sat down! She looked at it with a very sad expression and read pages here and there, sighing from time to time. At one point she said Isfahan under her breath! And then without even looking up she said ironically don’t leap to conclusions.
I said Why won’t you tell me who it is?
She said Because he doesn’t know about you.
I said Why didn’t you tell him?
She said Because I didn’t want to see him again.
I said Why didn’t you want to see him again?
She said I don’t want to talk about it.
Maybe he was about to set out on an expedition when they met. He had raised all the money for the expedition and if she told him about me he would have had to give her the money. But she knew his heart was set on the expedition so she didn’t tell him.
15 May
Sibylla got mad at me today because I asked a question about my father. All I did was ask if he knew any languages. She looked at me and said I want you to hear something. She had been typing but now she got up and said we had to go to the library even though we had just been there yesterday.
We went all the way to the Barbican and into the music library and she asked if they had anything by Liberace. They said they didn’t. Sibylla said this couldn’t wait so we took the Circle Line to King’s Cross and then we took the Piccadilly Line to Piccadilly Circus and we went into Tower Records. They said Liberace was in Easy Listening so we went up to Easy Listening.
They had a l
ot of things by Liberace but the cheapest was a cassette for £9.99.
£9.99! exclaimed Sibylla holding it in her hand. It breaks my heart but it must be done.
She bought the tape and we went home.
When we got home Sibylla put the tape on the tape player. It was quite old-fashioned music, and before each piece the performer would make a few jokes to the audience. The whole time it was playing Sibylla watched me. When it was over she said, What do you think?
I said it was rather old-fashioned but he played the piano quite well.
Sibylla didn’t say anything. She went to a drawer and took out a postcard. It was a picture of some Greek girls painted by Lord Leighton.
What do you think of this? she said.
I said it was a picture about ancient Greece and they were playing ball.
Anything else? she said.
