by Yu Miri
A little before the clock struck six that evening, the faithful of our village and the neighboring one, Minami Migita, thronged our house with shikisho draped around their necks. They sat in front of the altar with the head priest from Shoen-ji and chanted, “Namu Amida Butsu.”
After the wake, three low tables for the post-wake meal were set up between the living room and the altar room, now one large room with the sliding doors removed.
My father told me what I needed to say as the chief mourner. I repeated his exact words to those who had come to pay their respects.
“Thank you all very much for coming to the wake for my son, Kōichi, who died on the 31st of March in his flat in Tokyo at the age of twenty-one. I would like to invite you to share this simple meal that we have prepared, and to share your memories of Kōichi, too. The funeral will be held tomorrow at noon. Thank you for your support at this time.”
I sat down with the chief priest, and Setsuko’s relatives and our neighbors brought out vegetarian Buddhist dishes: burdock salad, vegetable stew, tofu salad, wild vegetable tempura, and pickles, as well as tableware. As the chief mourner, I walked around with a bottle of sake in both hands, filling up the glasses of those present.
“But he was only twenty-one, right?… And he died so suddenly…”
“Guess you never know what’ll happen…”
“What can you really say… I just can’t believe it, that Kōichi’s…”
“How awful…”
“Keep it together...”
“Wasn’t that long ago your wife told me he’d gone off to Tokyo and passed the national radiology exam. I was so proud, I said he had a bright future ahead of him… It’s such a shame…”
“Poor kiddo…”
Osamu, the Maedas’ boy from three doors down, had a young woman by his side.
“It happened so suddenly…” he said, eyes downcast.
“Is this your wife?” I asked.
“Yes, this is Akiko. We got married earlier this year. I asked Kōichi to give a speech at the reception and he—he was great. Even at the after-party, he was so full of energy, getting everyone to sing the school song; I just can’t believe that was the last time I’ll…”
Akiko sighed deeply, pulling a white handkerchief out of her bag and wiping her eyes, then the mix of tears and snot from her nose, before sitting back on her heels again. The babyish roundness of her smooth cheeks only highlighted her grief.
“Kōichi and I were in the same class all the way from elementary to high school, and at roll call, his name came right after mine: Maeda, then Mori, always one after the other. In high school we were in the kendo club together. I was president, he was vice-president… he was my closest friend…”
I knew none of this.
My children held little affection for me, the father they rarely saw. And I never knew how to talk to them, either.
We shared the same blood but I meant no more to them than a stranger.
All of a sudden, I wondered who he’d made friends with during his three years in Tokyo, if he’d had a girlfriend—but I could not ask my wife, who was even more inconsolable than I was. And anyway, it was too late to invite his friends or girlfriend to the funeral tomorrow.
The young couple, sticking close to each other, went up to the altar, pressed their hands together in prayer, and began to chant the nembutsu.
Setsuko went over and begged Osamu to take one last look at Kōichi.
Hands together, Osamu bowed on the floor next to the coffin as Setsuko lifted up the white cloth covering Kōichi’s face.
He kept his hands pressed together as he came face to face with Koichi.
“He looks just like he’s sleeping… I can’t believe he’s gone,” he said, praying again before going back to his wife’s side.
As I poured more sake into Osamu’s glass, I realized that I’d never had a drink with Kōichi, and now I couldn’t even dream of it. Then something swept into the corner of my eye—it was the bird, the one that I’d seen on my way to my neighbor’s house in the morning, the white-breasted bird, it really was Kōichi after all—but those thoughts may have only come to me after people poured me a few glasses of sake and I was quite drunk.
“Did Kōichi go to the Pure Land?” I heard Setsuko ask the priest, as if she were moaning in pain.
I hadn’t noticed that she had sat down next to the priest.
“In the teachings of the True Essence of the Pure Land, we use the phrase ‘to pass over’ instead of ‘to die’, because one is reborn as a Buddha and there is nothing to be saddened by,” he began. “Amida Buddha is the Buddha who has sworn to bring all to salvation. Amida Buddha has said that he will bring us to salvation if we simply repeat the nembutsu. Salvation means being reborn in the Pure Land as a Buddha who has attained enlightenment, and being reborn as a Buddha means being reborn on the side of those who offered us salvation. And the dead come back as bodhisattvas, a rank lower than Amida Buddha, to bring salvation to all of us who suffer in this earthly realm, in Amida Buddha’s place. This is why we should not think of death as an ending. Those who have passed on are with us, guiding us, when we say the nembutsu. Neither this wake, nor tomorrow’s funeral, nor the service forty-nine days after his death are meant to pray for the repose of the deceased, to console or mourn them. No, we are here to express our gratitude for the connection that the deceased gives us to the Buddha. It’s the same with the ceremony in a year’s time. In a year, we will thank the deceased for connecting us to the Buddha, and we will ask him to continue keeping watch over us until the day we can return to the Pure Land and find him.”
I could see the tension in Setsuko’s hands, resting on her lap. Her fingers seemed to be trying to catch something—
“But Kōichi just turned twenty… he died all alone in his apartment in Tokyo, with nobody with him… the death certificate says he died of illness or natural causes, but the thing is, I don’t know how he died, or when he died… It’s so painful… Did he call out for me?”
The thirty mourners in the room fell silent, and the grandfather clock struck seven, as if in agreement with the silence.
It was like seeing the invisible hands of time stand still.
The chief priest’s voice broke the silence gently.
“Humanity’s worst impulse is to imagine those final moments. Those of us left behind wonder whether it was a good death, or a bad death. The judgement as to what kind of deaths are good or bad is entirely our own. In Aizu there is a statue of Kannon, the bodhisattva of mercy, dedicated to sudden deaths. It originates from when a son went to the temple asking for his parents to pass on without suffering. These days, it is no longer sons and daughters who go there but parents. Old men and women pray that they die suddenly so they don’t become a burden to their families. When they pass on a few years later from a cardiac arrest, their sons or daughters will always say that their parents had the best of it, that they went on to the Pure Land without becoming a burden to anyone, that there is no more perfect way to die, that they would like to go that way, too. And of course, they say that this is a good death.
“But once the services on the seventh day, the forty-ninth day, the hundredth day, and the one-year anniversary have passed, they start saying: ‘I wish I’d had one more week with them, just three or four days more, even, to hold their hand, to talk with them.’ They come to think that perhaps a sudden death may not be such a good death after all. Nothing has changed about the death—only their judgment. So I cannot tell you what a good death looks like. Amida Buddha committed himself while Kōichi was alive to lead him back to the Pure Land, no matter how he died, and to return Kōichi to us as a bodhisattva,” he concluded.
Setsuko began to tremble.
“And now that he’s a bodhisattva… can I talk to him? Just one more time?”
“If you repeat Namu Amida Butsu…”
>
Setsuko took a deep breath and tried with her right hand to calm the trembling of her left, but she collapsed on the tatami, weeping.
Yoko, sitting seiza in front of the pillar, sobbed even harder.
I wasn’t crying. My face was frozen, as though I’d been slapped, and my mouth was so stiff it hurt.
—
Morning came.
It was the fifth morning since Kōichi had died.
Before, I used to wake up, think about where I was, what I was doing, what day it was, then open my eyes, but afterward, I was woken up by one fact alone: Kōichi was dead.
The fact that my only son was dead kept me from sleeping every night; and when I did nod off, exhausted, it broke through my sleep every morning like a kid smashing through my window with a baseball.
It was still dark in the house. I heard the chirp of a swallow, followed by the cry of a hawk. Trying to pick up the broken thread of sleep, I wondered what sort of call the white-breasted bird made when I suddenly noticed a bad smell lingering in the air.
It was, I realized, the smell of food and sake from last night’s wake mixed with the smell of decomposition.
It was warm out. The decomposition could’ve already started—
I was overwhelmed by an emotion, one which I was so tired I could not place. I was exhausted, yet I was still tensed. My whole body was on guard against my emotions. I could not bear it, no more, I could not bear to be sad, to suffer, to be angry—
My stomach ached, clenched like a fist. Still wrapped in my duvet I pressed my right hand to my stomach, rubbing it.
The stench was still there.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing.
The smell passed from my nostrils to my lungs, circulating through my body with my blood—I wondered if I would start to decompose now, even as I lived on.
It was over.
It was all over, but I was alive…
I had to live to mourn my son.
To live…
After breakfast, Setsuko handed me a package wrapped in cloth. I opened it to find mourning clothes. The head of the neighborhood association had lent them to me.
I put on the black kimono and hakama, and Setsuko helped me with the obi.
They brought in the coffin.
We put a thin mat and a pillow inside.
Then we lifted Kōichi up and unfurled the folded sheet he’d been laying on top of.
Setsuko put a shikisho around his neck and we gently placed him in the coffin.
My mother looked at the coffin, slipped prayer beads into Kōichi’s hands, and then pressed her hands together at her chest.
The priest placed a white sheet of paper, folded three times, on Kōichi’s body. On it was written: Namu Amida Butsu.
“As Kōichi did not receive his religious name during his lifetime, I will now, as head priest of the temple with which he was affiliated, pronounce in his stead that he takes the Three Refuges, by which he takes and respects the Three Laws.”
We all put our hands together in prayer.
“It is difficult to take human form, but now we have taken it; it is difficult to hear the dharma, but now we have heard it; if we are not liberated in this life, then we will be in the next one; we must all take refuge in the Three Treasures.”
The head priest put the razor to Kōichi’s hair three times as he continued:
“I take refuge in the Buddha.
“May I, with all beings, understand the great way and make the greatest vow.
“I take refuge in the Dharma.
“May I, with all beings, delve deeply into the Sutra Pitaka and gain an ocean of knowledge.
“I take refuge in the Sangha.
“May I, with all beings, come into harmony with all beings, entirely without obstruction.
“The ultimate, profound and mysterious dharma is rarely encountered, even over hundreds, thousands, and millions of centuries, and now we must hear it and see it, accept it and preserve it. May we discover the meaning of the truth of the Tathagata.”
I received a sheet of paper on which was written Kōichi’s religious name.
Passed on 31 March 1981
Dharma name: Shaku Junkō
Name in life: Kōichi Mori, age 21
“The Buddha teaches us that we, his followers, must rid ourselves of our worldly name to take his own, Shakyamuni. The character ‘shaku’ signifies that one has become a follower of the Buddha. The character ‘jun’, meaning ‘obedient,’ signifies obedience to the Buddha’s teachings. The final character, ‘kō,’ is borrowed from his name in life, Kōichi.”
—
The service ended, and it was time for the coffin to leave the house.
We surrounded it and covered Kōichi’s body with white chrysanthemums.
The lid was placed on the coffin, and six of our relatives lifted it and carried it to the entrance.
I carried the funeral tablet, inscribed with his posthumous name.
I put on straw sandals with black thongs and went out.
Outside, the light was dazzling.
I knew that the people of Migita were wearing mourning clothes, but the light was so bright, everyone’s faces were a blank, and I could not tell who was there or what their expressions were.
It must have been a little windy, as cherry petals fell to the ground.
The air smelled of daffodils.
I looked down and saw a large bunch in bloom.
It’s spring, I realized.
The only thing I could see clearly was the white, wooden hearse, adorned with a copper, gabled roof.
I entrusted the funeral tablet to my father and took a step forward to say a word of thanks to those in attendance.
The light was now even more blinding. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. My legs felt unsteady, as if I were hanging in midair.
My wife and daughter came to my side.
My father spoke in my stead.
“We thank you for coming today to say goodbye to Mori Kōichi. Kōichi’s life was short, but it was a happy one thanks to you. We are full of sorrow, but we hope that the ties that connect us to you will remain unchanged. Thank you again.”
When the coffin emerged from the house, all in attendance began to recite the nembutsu.
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
This invocation of Amida was made with the same sad tone that once made us known as ‘Kaga whiners’ in this region.
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
My father told me that his great-grandfather, the third generation of the Mori family since their move to Sōma, still spoke Kaga dialect. He said that in the old days, the dead were placed sitting up in coffins that resembled palanquins, and were taken to funeral pyres in the mountains, accompanied by all the people of the village reciting the nembutsu. The coffin was placed on the wooden pyre, then lit with wood or straw, the mourners taking turns to keep watch until all that was left were the bones. Then the family members collected the bones by hand—
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
I carried the funeral tablet and walked at the head of our short procession to the hearse.
Around here, when a son is born, we congratulate the parents by telling them that now they have someone to carry their funeral tablet. “What, this kid?” people laugh in response.
I had lost my tablet carrier.
I was the one who carried his tablet.
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
My hands… my feet…
My hands carried the tablet, my feet walked toward the hearse.
I had hands and feet, but there was nothing I
could do.
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
Overwhelmed by grief, the grief that had taken everything from me…
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
I had no feeling left in my hands or my feet.
I walked as if sleepwalking.
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
We borrowed the first character of his name from the Crown Prince born the same day, 23rd February 1960.
And in death, that character remained with him.
Shaku Junkō.
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
Kōichi would soon be put in the hearse.
The hearse would take him to the crematorium.
Soon, Kōichi would be nothing but bones.
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
NAMU AMIDA BUTSU
The hearse’s door closed.
The horn blared to signal the hearse was about to depart.
*
Ding-dong, diiing-dong. “Your attention, please. Smoking while walking in the park is not permitted, as it may pose not only discomfort but also serious health issues to others. Please use the designated smoking areas. We thank you for your cooperation and understanding.”
Ding-dong, diiing-dong.
A cloud of smoke hung over the bench where the day laborer recruiters and the homeless sat.
Construction got you 10,000 yen, demolition anywhere between 10,000 and 12,000, and if electrical work or scaffolding was involved, the rate sometimes went up to between 13,000 and 15,000 yen a day. If you didn’t want dangerous work, and if you had a driving license and a mobile phone, you could register for temp work putting up blinds. Moving work for companies, or setting up or taking down for outdoor events could net you 6,000 to 10,000 yen a day, but anyone who had the drive to do blinds probably wouldn’t have been homeless; they would’ve packed up their tent and moved into a flophouse, or gone to the social welfare office and found a way to get benefits.