Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  When Patron ended there was applause, which startled Kizu. His surprise was also due in part to the strange feeling he got from what Patron had just said. Stretching themselves upward, the three vigorous young men behind the TV crew were among those clapping. Patron looked in their direction for the first time and appeared to be searching his memory.

  Seeing that Patron was not about to begin speaking again, a small dark-skinned man stood up to ask a question. He was the city section reporter from the national newspaper. He had been exchanging whispered comments with the woman beside him, a colleague by the look of it, as they eyed the three men in back.

  “You just stated your determination to fight the final battle on earth,” the reporter said, “which is a pretty frightening prospect when you think about it. You also said that you possess neither nuclear nor chemical weapons, and I can tell you that those of us in the secular world are thankful to hear that!”

  He paused for a moment, apparently expecting laughter, but none of his colleagues laughed.

  “Further, you have given us a surprisingly open view of the inner workings of your new movement and stated that you plan to restart your religious movement starting with just two hundred people. How can that be enough people to fight this final battle?”

  The reporter paused again, waiting for a merry response, but this didn’t work out as he’d hoped either. Kizu sensed it had something to do with the attitude of the three men who had earlier applauded.

  “I’m assuming that what you told us is based on the principles of the movement you are about to begin,” he went on, “but there’s something that bothers me. Recently there was another religious group in our country that advocated an Armageddon fight to the finish, a group that committed indiscriminate terrorist acts against ordinary citizens by releasing sarin gas in the Tokyo subway. No one in Japan has forgotten this.

  “The founder of this group, Aum Shinrikyo, was trained in India, and at the point where he first declared himself to be the Final Liberated One he had only thirty-five followers. By the next year this had grown to fifteen hundred. Later, a core leadership joined that committed several terrorist acts. The following year, the year their Mount Fuji headquarters was completed, they reached thirty-five hundred followers and became a religious corporation. Two years later they ran candidates in a national election, and even the one billion yen they spent in the effort didn’t seem to faze them, so great were their financial resources by this time. Finally, they made contacts with sources in the collapsing Soviet Union and purchased some large helicopters, all the while developing the capability to produce seventy tons of sarin.

  “So they started with thirty-five people and got to this point in less than ten years. If they’d really been able to carry out their Armageddon battle, the four thousand people killed and injured in the sarin attack on the subway would have been nothing in comparison. The people of Tokyo already know this all too well, wouldn’t you agree, that this religious group steadfastly did not compromise—not with Japanese society and not with mankind?

  “You were the leader of a religious organization that was also recognized as a religious nonprofit organization. You have the experience and, as we’ve heard today, the faith to be that type of leader. I’m not saying that the Anti-Subversive Act should be applied to your church as you begin a new movement, but as someone whose job it is to report to the public, I don’t want to be just a mouthpiece to publicize your group either. We in the media need to be self-critical. At a certain stage of Aum’s rapid growth, the media actually helped popularize it; this played well with the boom in interest in supernatural powers that the media also instigated. Even if we knew our articles were nonsense when we wrote them, many people began serious training in order to achieve supernatural powers, then became renunciates, abandoning their studies in college or their positions in society.

  “Ten years ago, you yourself, fearing new developments that the radical faction was instigating, abandoned your followers. As the leader you went on national television and revealed that nothing you’d done and said should be taken seriously. And you did your Somersault. This was absolutely necessary to abort the plans of the radical faction to take over a nuclear power plant. And the remnants of this radical faction have now taken your companion captive and killed him.

  “This is what we understand from police reports. However, here, at a press conference to announce a gathering to mourn the death of this victim, you make these antisocial pronouncements. What’s going on here? I really find it hard to fathom—”

  At this point Dancer cut off both the reporter and Patron, who was about to respond, and turned decisively to the assembled members of the media.

  “Please consider the gentleman’s words as more like a commentary on what Patron said than a question. For the rest of our time, we’d like to have a genuine question-and-answer session. Keep your questions concise, if you would. Since Guide met his untimely end, Patron has been exhausted both mentally and physically, so we’d like to keep this to a maximum of thirty minutes.”

  “All right, then, I’ll rephrase it as a question,” the reporter who’d just spoken said, raising his hand. “What do you mean when you say you’ll fight the final war with the world? What was the Somersault all about? Its after-effects have not disappeared even after ten years, as we see from this recent tragic turn of events—”

  Dancer wasn’t about to let Patron take over.

  “Why are you asking what the Somersault was all about?” she said. “Patron and Guide went through that painful experience because the Somersault was necessary at that time. And they fell into hell, didn’t they? Since you already know all this, I want to ask you how you could possibly ask what the Somersault meant.”

  The three vigorous young men clapped loudly and Dancer glared at them. To Kizu her stance looked like a mie, one of those frozen dramatic moments in kabuki when the actor assumes an exaggerated pose.

  “Then I’ll ask a different question,” the reporter persisted. “Since the direction you’ll be taking your church is toward a final war with the world, how do you differ from Aum Shinrikyo, which preached an apocalyptic vision of Armageddon?”

  Dancer looked ready to snap at him again, but Patron, the sleeves of his oversized denim shirt flapping, stopped her. To Kizu this action was yet another of Patron’s gestures he’d perfected over time.

  “In the past,” Patron said, “both Guide and I believed that only through our own deaths would we be able to send out a clear message for people to repent. The idea of occupying a nuclear power plant and using it as a nuclear weapon that didn’t need a delivery system was based on this. When our shock corps went into action, it would mean that Guide and I were going to die—together with these young people who, through their actions, repented, cleansed their souls, and were headed toward rebirth.

  “However, what would we do if—in this suffering world—some people decided that they alone would survive? Realizing that what we’d said and done was being used to justify this erroneous way of thinking, we did the Somersault. This new church we’re starting, however, is not at all like that.”

  At this point Dancer, who was there to support Patron physically, skillfully took over. The three men seated behind the TV crew seemed about to protest—not at Patron’s words but over the reporter’s attitude—but Dancer raised her hands to stop both them and the reporters and helped Patron to his feet. By the time Ogi announced that the press conference was over, the two of them had already disappeared down the darkened hallway.

  Kizu watched as Ikuo stepped in to smooth things down among the three men as they shouted at the dark-skinned reporter, who had been the sole interlocutor at the press conference. Freed by Ikuo’s intervention, the reporter walked over to talk with Kizu.

  11: Wake Mania Without End (II)

  1

  In the end, the indomitable reporter talked Kizu into going with him to a coffee shop on the road back to the station from the office. The owner of the s
hop, busy brewing some coffee through a siphon, took their orders and slipped back behind the antique counter, while the reporter turned to Kizu and reintroduced himself.

  “I originally worked for an economics trade paper, but soon after I shifted over to a regular newspaper I began covering the story of those men; in my first article I called them the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of new religions. Using the names the people in the church used at the time, the Prophet, tall and thin, was Don Quixote, while roly-poly Savior was Sancho Panza. But my editor complained that readers would get confused unless I called the founder of the church Don Quixote, so they reversed the names.

  “I’m not just saying this to butter you up, but I find it interesting that you also, as Patron’s new adviser, are a fairly large-boned man.”

  Without any indication that he was absorbing this, Kizu asked a question of his own. “Have you been gathering material on the two men all this time?”

  “In our paper I’m mainly the one who covered them.”

  “I’d like to help you as much as I can,” Kizu said, “but I don’t have a lot of background knowledge. Could you fill me in on Guide’s childhood and the background to his joining the religious movement? I’ve been asked to take over his job—only a part of it, of course—but it bothers me that I know next to nothing about my predecessor.”

  The reporter’s dark skin and features put Kizu in mind of a karasu tengu, a legendary goblin with a crow’s beak.

  “Guide was born in Nagasaki City,” the reporter began, as he stared back at Kizu, “and as an infant survived the atomic bombing. His mother died; his father, an army doctor, was at the front; he was rescued by his uncle, also a physician, who came back for him in the chaos following the bombing. A dramatic sort of childhood, I’m sure you’d agree. His family had been Catholic for generations, and Guide was baptized as an infant. He ended up leaving the church when he was in high school, though, when he read in the paper that a famous Catholic man of letters was granted an audience by Emperor Hirohito. That was enough reason for him to bid Catholicism adieu.

  “Guide admitted this was a childish reaction, but at the time he concluded that he couldn’t continue in his faith. This relates to the dilemma that’s been around since the Meiji period, when Christianity swelled in influence at the same time that nationalism came to the fore. You know the old saw: Who is greater, Jesus Christ or the Emperor?

  “As a young man, Guide decided that Christ could never have real authority in this country. So he spent the following years cut off from the church, entered the science department at the university, and became obsessed with a new idea—that it was exactly in a country like Japan that Jesus Christ must appear in the Second Coming. Guide started attending Protestant churches with only one goal in mind. When he found a minister who was open to him, he would confront him: Who is greater, Jesus Christ or the Emperor?

  “Our country’s Emperor was no longer the god people thought he was before and during the war. The new constitution defined him as a symbol of the state, with no actual power. This is what the minister told Guide. Stubborn young man that he was, though, Guide insisted: Who is greater, Jesus Christ or the Emperor? And this led to a falling-out between him and the Protestant church.

  “His dream was for Jesus’ Second Coming to take place in Japan so he could finally answer the question of who was greater. But since it didn’t look like Christ was going to appear, he came up with the radical idea of people creating a substitute with their own hands.

  “In Guide’s heart, then, someone like Patron was necessary, and from early on he had the idea of creating that sort of figure. I think the explanation for the two of them getting together might lie in this, don’t you think?”

  “I can see you’re a real reporter, since you’ve cut right to the core of what I’ve been concerned about. You’ve given me a lot to think about concerning Guide’s background,” Kizu honestly admitted.

  The reporter smiled, a friendly, shy smile.

  “Saying I’m a real reporter also points out my weak points. When I interviewed Guide he explained things in great detail. He’s quite well read and had some interesting ideas. One concerned the nature of symbols, which came from something he’d read by a Jewish scholar. The work he read discussed the Star of David, the symbol of the state of Israel. Some people insist that the Star of David calls to mind the Jewish people’s road to the gas chamber and that a new symbol of life would be more fitting for a new country. After reviewing these arguments, the scholar insisted on the exact opposite interpretation. For his generation, the Star of David was a holy symbol born of their suffering and death. And precisely for this reason, it’s valuable to light the path toward life and rebuilding. Next, in somewhat cryptic language, he wrote that before ascending to the heights the road descends into the darkest abyss, and what had been a symbol of utter humiliation thus achieves greatness.

  “Using this scholar’s work as a reference, Guide began to have doubts about whether the symbolic Emperor for Japan and the Japanese defined in the postwar constitution was like the sort of symbol the Jewish scholar had discussed. What Guide and others were searching for was a holy sign or symbol for their generation created from suffering and death, something they could hold up as lighting the way to life and regeneration.

  “I couldn’t write this in my article, but that’s what I concentrated on. Right after I heard this, however, Guide and Patron did their Somersault. ‘Everything we’ve said and done has been one big joke,’ they said, as their parting shot. I was thoroughly disappointed, even angry. In other words, with the Emperor greater than Patron, this would be just a repetition of the same old cycle the Japanese people have experienced since the creation of the Meiji constitution.

  “After the Somersault I gave up reporting on them. But then, ten years later, suddenly Guide is murdered, which explains why I’m here today. Patron didn’t criticize his own actions in the Somersault, though, and even though he says he’s starting up the movement again he doesn’t seem to have any idea where he’s headed. In place of the murdered Guide, you’ll be a member of the leadership. What do you think: Has Patron picked up on Guide’s ideas about life and regeneration?”

  “I have no idea either of the direction Patron’s renewed movement will take,” Kizu replied. “I started working for Patron simply because a young friend of mine was drawn to him. I’ve only known Patron for a short while, but I’m very impressed by him. I want him to be resurrected as a spiritual leader, and I plan to do whatever I can to help him. I guess my viewpoint is that of a father who can’t just sit by idly and watch his son take on some dangerous task but has to leap in and share the responsibility. Also, Patron asked me to replace the murdered Guide. A strange request, and equally strange for someone like me to accept, but I did, though I don’t have the foggiest idea of what he wants me to do.”

  “To use Patron’s phrase for it, with Guide—his companion in the fall into hell—suddenly taken from him, things must look pretty uncertain for him, now that he’s alone. Even so, I imagine it must have been a shock to be told you’d be the new Guide.” The reporter’s eyes behind his glasses softened somewhat as he smiled.

  “From what you’ve told me, I’m convinced that Guide was a religious man,” Kizu said. “The words he quoted, too, are in keeping with what I know of him. I also understand the intensity with which Patron considered Guide, through his suffering and death, the holy symbol of this generation. When I consider the ten years following Patron and Guide’s Somersault, I think I understand even better both the idea of falling into a dark place before you ascend to the heights and the idea of a symbol of utter humiliation.”

  The reporter sat mulling over what Kizu said. Then he nodded, snatched up the check on the table, and signaled the owner of the coffee shop.

  “A lot to think over before the memorial service,” he said. “One thing’s clear, though: Patron’s found himself an excellent new Guide.”

  2

  The nex
t day when Kizu and Ikuo showed up at the office, Dancer and Ogi were huddled together in the midst of a dispirited discussion. Several newspapers were spread out on the office desk. Kizu imagined they were depressed because the only article on the previous day’s press conference was written by the single persistent reporter. That morning Kizu had checked all the newspapers in the below-ground meeting room of his apartment building. When Ikuo came in the minivan, he reported that the morning TV news anchors had showed a scene of Patron talking at the press conference and made comments on the death of Guide that touched on the Somersault ten years ago.

  When Kizu mentioned this to Dancer and Ogi, however, it turned out they were discussing something completely different.

  “I’m not surprised, since all the newspapers are definitely anti-Patron,” Dancer answered. “What’s unfortunate is that the attitude of the media has spread to society in general. All the halls and conference sites have turned us down. This is a memorial service for someone killed by terrorists, right? Why won’t they let us use their hall? What a bunch of spineless idiots!”

  A hand bell rang out from Patron’s room, and Dancer leaped to her feet. Once again her generous response impressed Kizu as she disappeared down the darkened corridor, a worried look on her face. The hand bell, Ogi explained, was originally used in Patron’s church to signal the beginning and end of prayer time. After the Somersault, neither Patron nor Guide had touched it, but since Guide’s death, Patron had sought it out.

  As was his wont, though, Ogi didn’t explain any further, instead taking up where Dancer had left off. “None of the people we’ve been negotiating with over possible venues has criticized Guide for being responsible for terrorist acts. And they remember Patron and his Somersault very well. All the early reports in the papers touched on the former radical faction that held him captive and drove him to his death. Could they be afraid of an attack on Patron?”