Back in my apartment I slammed the door and let my own suspicions have their way. Oh, I knew why this was happening to me. I certainly wouldn't be treated like this if I wasn't foreign. It was because I was a foreigner that this crazy old woman had unleashed her paranoia on me. And it was because I was a foreigner that I was being fobbed off with talk of how tiny Japan was and how we all ought to be living cheerfully together. And this from the man who by rights ought to have been protecting me.
I told the piano teacher as much. She nodded in a sympathetic way, then remarked: But it's true, what he said. Don't you think you could put up with it, a little thing like this?
- A little thing! I cried: That crazy woman pounding on my door in the middle of the night! Is that a little thing?
- But if she thinks you are making all that noise... not, of course, that you actually are.
- Look. You live next to me. Have you ever heard any of my wild all-night parties?
- No, I haven't. But you must remember that these apartments have very thin walls and so one can hear a lot. Perhaps it's just the usual everyday noises that she's complaining about.
- Perhaps you're right, I said, now confirmed in my own paranoia: Because I can certainly hear all yours!
After that I talked to the retired postal worker:
- And the head of the residents' association will do nothing at all about her. Nothing. She's a menace!
- I know, he said, looking very unhappy: But we're all in the same boat. We've all got to make the best of it.
- Oh? Well, why then do I have to make the best of it and she doesn't—if indeed I am making all that racket every night?
I knew why, all right: it was because I was foreign and she wasn't; because I was an interloper and she wasn't. This I did not say, perhaps only because I had no opportunity—for at that moment his wife called out (Anata!) and with a show of helplessness he closed the door.
I stormed back to my room, and heard the telephone ring. It was, of course, Mrs. Shiraishi. This time, however, she was not complaining. She said, surprisingly: Naka yoshi ni narimasho—Let's be friends.
At once I was at her door, anxious indeed to be friends. She stood there, small, round, neat, and invited me into the kitchen. I stared about me, eager to see what kind of lair the monster had.
And there I was introduced to her daughter, a person about my own age, with rimless glasses, cold as ice, staring at me with open belligerence.
- I asked her to come all the way down from Gumma, I was in such a state, no sleep, every night those horrible noises, and she said that if we became friends maybe you would somehow be more quiet and I could get at least a little sleep. Here.
And she put a small glass of plum brandy into my hand.
- All right, Mrs. Shiraishi, I promise not to make any noise and you must promise not to telephone me or call the police or come banging at my door.
- But the noise, the noise.
- Look, Mrs. Shiraishi. There is no noise. It's in your head. You think you hear it.
I turned to her daughter for some kind of understanding. Surely she must know how crazy the old woman was—she was her own child. I met with none, however, merely a cold and rimless stare.
- Oh, I saw Mrs. Watanabé on the street, cried Mrs. Shiraishi: And she said you're getting neurotic, Mrs. Shiraishi, and I said to her yes I certainly was, and why not, me without a wink for weeks because of all the noise going on every night. So as a last resort Mariko here said we should try to become friends.
Despite my earlier eagerness, I did not in fact want to become friends with her or her rimless daughter. I wanted never to see either of them again. And yet I wanted to stop tiptoeing about my own apartment and wincing when I flushed the toilet. I wanted to take back from this old witch the power that I had given her.
Did she herself believe any of this business? I still wonder about that. Perhaps it isn't even a relevant question. She had merely found something, finally, to which to devote her life: me and my noisy ways. Her paranoia had found a perfect object.
And so, I now see, had mine. Mad Mrs. Shiraishi, her chilly child, the piano teacher, the postal worker and his spouse, the head of our ineffectual little organization, even the cop on the beat—all were united in this great plot against me, whose only sin, after all, was that of being a foreigner. This would not have happened to me, was my belief, if I had been Japanese.
As indeed, I realize now, it wouldn't have. For then I would have behaved quite differently. For one thing I would have taken no watermelons to crazed and dangerous neighbors, and even had I done so, I imagine I would then have moved skillfully through the association and among the neighbors until enough social pressure had accumulated to crush the old hag.
As it was, I finally did the thing that Japanese do when they fail. I gave up. When the phone calls began again with tearful pleas for me not to flush my toilet with quite such vehemence, when a new cop appeared and had to be informed, when the postal worker was out whenever I asked, then I did what any ordinary citizen would have done. I moved.
My apartment had become as though haunted. I was creeping silently about in it, sliding doors open and shut ever so carefully, and actually refraining from pulling the chain except when absolutely necessary.
The place is probably haunted still. Whoever was unfortunate enough to move into it probably received visitations from the same old body with her hair in a bun. And if they are fully and successfully Japanese they are probably putting up with it.
For that is the true difference. The problem is not simply whether one is foreign or not, but rather whether one can grin and bear it—whatever "it" is. This is what counts. That foreigners notoriously cannot do so makes the matter seem more fraught with prejudice than it perhaps is.
Now moved elsewhere, with nice quiet neighbors in the apartment below, I sometimes think of Mrs. Shiraishi. Old, alone, with only that cold child to call her own and relations not too good there either, shunted off into an apartment, forgotten—is she not symptomatic, in her way, of these times, of this society?
Well, maybe, but I am not interested in that. Mrs. Shiraishi remains for me a real person, not some representative of her people. A real person who in several and highly uncomfortable ways resembles me. We both cause disharmony. Perhaps that is the real reason why I could not put up with her, why I could not somehow manage to live peacefully with my neighbor in this small country.
Hiroshi Momma
Busy behind his desk, he always had time for the foreigner. Leaning back, he smiled indulgently.
- Well, what is it this time? he wondered, showing his even teeth: More about Ozu?
He knew that I liked the work of this film director and was concerned that it was never shown abroad, though he had told me often enough why it wasn't.
- They wouldn't understand, he had said, smiling: It's just too Japanese for them. You know that all our critics call Ozu the most Japanese of all film directors. So there we are.
This had been stated with such finality that I could think of no reply except: I'm not Japanese and I understand.
He had looked at me as though about to challenge the latter part of the statement, then seemed to think better of it, opting instead to laugh and say: Oh, you. You aren't a real foreigner any more. You've stayed far too long for that. If we tried to judge them all by you we'd be in big trouble.
Big trouble he wanted to avoid. The trouble of having prints subtitled. The trouble of sending them abroad. The trouble of having them fail, as they certainly would. And his position as head of a department in the large motion-picture company that had produced, among many others, the films of Yasujiro Ozu did not permit this sort of failure.
So today, as always, he visibly braced himself when he saw me, and gave me his best smile: More about Ozu?
I nodded. The people at the Berlin Film Festival were interested. Wouldn't the company permit a retrospective?
- But why? he wanted to know: The whole idea is wrong. We'd
simply be wasting our time. And money. Making those prints, having them subtitled. And for what?
- For getting Ozu's films known abroad, I repeated. Then, anticipating his next comment: Why can't foreigners understand Ozu's films anyway?
- But I've told you. They're just too Japanese. They haven't been adapted for the foreign market. Look. Foreigners like our sword-fight films, our action dramas. They can make sense of them. They're almost the same as their own pictures except for the swords. And they like that. Exoticism. That's what they like.
- But what about Rashomon? What about Ugetsu? What about the other films by Kurosawa and Mizoguchi? They were successful.
- Exoticism. That's what foreign audiences want. And Ozu just hasn't got it. His films are realistic. They're about the way we really live. And they're just as slow as life is. Look, films like that would go over nowhere else.
And so it continued during the following weeks; but eventually I had my way and some Ozu films were sent to Berlin—not the full retrospective I had hoped for, but five of the later films, subtitled. I took them there and the reception was intelligent, enthusiastic. And, more to the company's point, the foreign rights were sold.
When I returned I presented myself at his desk and was greeted with the same big smile. I then thanked him for his cooperation and asked if he was satisfied.
- Satisfied?
- Yes, the Ozu films all got excellent reviews, and the foreign rights were sold.
- Oh, yes, I do believe I heard something about that.
- I think that means that they were understood and liked.
- Hey now, wait a minute, not so fast, he said with that laugh of his: Don't you go jumping to any conclusions.
- But, look ...
- Okay. So a few were sold. Well, good. But I don't think that means anything. You know what they saw, those people? Exoticism. Modern Japan must look pretty weird to people in Berlin, I bet. That's all they saw.
- Did you read the reviews?
- How could I? They're in German.
Yet, despite company skepticism and indifference, the films of Ozu did gradually make their mark abroad. When Tokyo Story opened in New York and there was a line at the box office, I visited Momma again, with a newspaper picture of the event.
- Look, he said finally: What do you want?
Forced to examine my motives, I replied: I want you to admit that Ozu's films can be loved and understood abroad.
He stared at me, for once not smiling: Now, how could I do that?
Suddenly, I saw the world through his eyes. It was black and white and divided down the center; they were on one side, we were on the other.
I wondered what made such orthodoxy so necessary; what made its continuation so imperative.
- I'm not saying that you don't understand Ozu, if that's what's worrying you, he went on: I know you do, because you've been here so long. And that's just fine.
He glared. It wasn't just fine. I ought to have gone back to my own country long, long ago.
- No, he continued: It's the others over there that I'm talking about. Look, be sensible. How could they understand?
How could they, indeed!
- They can understand Ozu, I said, but I don't think they could ever understand you.
He looked at me, surprised, and his smile slowly reappeared. He was pleased at the thought that he personally was a mystery.
- Do you understand me? he asked, the smile broadening, waiting for me to say no, waiting to have his prejudices fully confirmed.
Suddenly, I saw the world through my own eyes. It was all gray, everything sliding about, love and understanding whipping up little waves on its surface. And there I stood, right on the brink. For I had been about to confirm all my own prejudices as well, about to turn into a person who needed an orthodoxy too, who felt its continuation was imperative.
- Yes, I understand you, but I don't approve, I finally said.
His laugh was genuine: And I don't approve of you either.
At this I also laughed.
Then we sat down and had a business talk. I pointed out that if foreigners were prepared to go and see the Ozu films, as they apparently were, then it didn't make any difference if they got the point or not, did it? No, he was the first to admit that, not as long as they actually bought tickets and went to see them. Well, I answered, this is what they were doing, so the company ought to send out more prints, ought to do a catalog, ought to sponsor a major retrospective—as a business venture, mind you. A small initial outlay should bring in considerable returns, I suggested.
And it was not until much later, years later, that I realized how very like an Ozu sequence—both of us busy at his desk—this had all been.
Chishu Ryu
It was 1958 and Chishu Ryu had been asked by Kinema Jumpo, the big film magazine, to write something about Yasujiro Ozu, the director, his mentor. Equinox Flower, Ozu's latest, was about to open.
But he did not know how to begin. Usually when he talked about Ozu, people said: There you go, off on Ozu again. And it was true, he often talked about him. But how could he talk about himself without mentioning Ozu? It was the director who had formed him, turned him into an actor.
How to begin, that was the problem. And I can imagine him looking puzzled, that boyish pursing of the lips, so like the fifty-two-year-old actor on the screen, so like Ozu.
They had been together almost from the first, director and actor; in fact, he claimed to have appeared in all but two of Ozu's fifty-odd films. And then in 1930, despite his youth and inexperience, Ozu gave him one of the leads in I Flunked, But ...
Ryu had no idea how to begin there, either. Ozu helped him, gave him something to do, indicated where hands, feet, eyes should be. But he never once told him what the character was like.
- I remember one time, he wrote later, when I was playing the father, the leading role in There Was a Father (1942). And there was this difficult scene. And I didn't know how to start. So Ozu told me to stare at the end of my chopsticks, then stare at my hand, and then speak to my child. The simple act of doing these things would convey a certain feeling, an atmosphere. But Ozu never explained what the feeling was. The actions came first. Ozu merely told me what to do and then let me discover how it felt. That can be very difficult. I remember once, in one scene, I tried to follow his precise instructions up to twenty times and each time I failed. So I finally gave up.
Ozu arranged the look of his cast just as he arranged the look of his set. They did what he said, and it usually worked—the Ozu atmosphere being founded on the simple premise that if the outside is all right the inside will take care of itself.
Ryu's outside was perfect. Later on, critics were to say that without him the Ozu atmosphere could not exist. And Ryu was aware at a very early stage that he was the Ozu persona, nothing else.
- I was so awkward, so raw and untrained at the beginning. Ozu showed me everything. He gave me absolute support, as long as I followed his directions.
- Since everyone in the studio knew that I wasn't very good, the whole staff used to take a break when the time came for me to do a big scene. They just walked out and left Ozu and me alone. It was then that we rehearsed, endlessly, he giving me all sorts of advice, showing me just how he wanted it. This went on until somehow I managed to get it right.
- Then at the first screening of the film I would see what I'd done and I was always surprised to find my performance so much better than I'd expected.
Whoever Ryu had been before Ozu, he now became an Ozu character. He felt, he said later, as if he were one of his colors, one of the colors with which he was painting his picture.
- There was this 1936 film called College Is a Nice Place and I played a student. In one scene I had to take my new suit to the pawnshop. Then, when I received the money, just two bills, I was to look sorry for what I'd done. I had no idea how to do it. So Ozu told me that when I got the money I should look first at one of the bills, then look at the other, and then lo
ok up.
And there it is, up there on the screen—sorrow. In the midst of a comedy we have these poignant few seconds, where the fact that the eyes have looked at the bills at all means surprise or concern or disappointment, and the fact that the actor then looks up implies knowledge, comprehension, and the fact that the two are joined to what we know of the story results in sorrow.
- There was another film, made in 1947, The Record of a Tenement Gentleman. I was supposed to be reading someone's palm and was drawing the lines of the hand on a piece of paper, one by one, with brush and ink. Every time I pressed the brush I bent my head forward. Ozu stepped in and stopped me.
- When I saw the film I realized why. My bent head would have ruined the unity of the composition. At the same time, the fact that I did not bend my head, as one would normally have done, lent the character a kind of comic charm which is just what Ozu must have wanted. At least that's what we got on the screen when the picture was released.
Then, in 1963, on his own birthday, Ozu died. And shortly after that, on a train returning from Osaka, I happened to meet Ryu again. He was fifty-seven at the time, about the age of the father he had played in Tokyo Story some ten years before. We spoke about the dead director.
- Ozu used to tell me, you know—and not just me, told everyone—that Ryu wasn't a very good actor. And that's why I use him, he would say. And it's true. I can't think of myself without thinking of him.
I wonder now if that death seemed like a betrayal. Deaths often do. There is a dreadful sense of being left behind. For who was Ryu now that Ozu was dead?
The bullet train raced on and we sat in silence and thought about Ozu. And, though I said nothing, I wondered about Ryu's future.
But his future was assured. He later appeared in picture after picture and with director after director, and he was always good, a fine actor, and he always played the Ozu character.
I have seen monster-films in which the scientist is the Ozu character, teen-age singing star films in which the schoolteacher is the Ozu character, lurid murder-mysteries in which the inspector is the Ozu character. Always the same person, whether mad scientist or wily police officer—and always Ryu.
Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People Page 19
