by Kenzaburo Oe
“I had actually started to give up on this project,” Takamura said, “but then an American reporter came to visit me yesterday, and he told me that he had heard about the idea for an opera from Goro. So I thought, wishfully, that if you had reached the stage of talking to Goro about the opera, maybe it was on the way to being finished, and I began to feel cautiously hopeful again.”
“When I started to think about writing a story about that experience (the one we refer to as ‘THAT’), I told Goro right away,” Kogito explained. “After all, he was there, too. And Goro said, ‘The fact that you’re going to write a libretto about our shared adventure—well, I guess that means it won’t be long until I’ll have to think about making it into a movie.’”
“I imagine the two of you must have talked about that incident quite often over the years,” Takamura ventured.
“No, not really. Of course, it’s something that happened ages ago, when Goro was eighteen and I was a year younger, and several decades have passed since then. Maybe it’s because we’ve never really talked it through, but I don’t think the big picture of the incident is completely clear yet, either for Goro or for me. This may sound as if I’m being evasive and making excuses, but I really don’t feel that I have a firm handle on the story at this point.”
“According to the newspaper reporter, Goro told him about a terrifying memory from his boyhood, but he told it in a very short form,” Takamura said. “The reason he put special emphasis on ‘very short’ is because apparently the film that Goro wants to make would be exceptionally long. The reporter said he couldn’t tell whether Goro was really serious or not, but I gather he was talking about making a film that would last for ten hours or more. I won’t say it would be impossible to make a film of that length, but the result would have a very different feel from the usual style of Goro’s movies, don’t you think?”
“Actually, there’s a big difference between the films Goro made when he was a student and the commercially successful movies that he’s been making over the past decade or so,” Kogito said. “I remember one of his early student films where two young men were in a room, and one was practicing a meandering, serpentine piece on the violin, while the other just sat there, listening intently. That went on for thirty minutes.”
For the first time that day, Takamura showed a trace of the devastatingly incisive smile that often used to appear on his face before he was attacked by illness. “What was he practicing?” he asked.
“Bach’s Unaccompanied Partita No. 1,” Kogito replied. “Once in a long while the boy who wasn’t playing the violin would say something to the other one, but he didn’t seem to expect an answer.”
“Now that you mention it, Goro’s ex-wife, Katsuko, was talking about that short film, too,” Takamura said. “She said that when her mother (who subsidized the production costs) asked Goro what sort of thing he was planning to make next, he replied nonchalantly, ‘I’m going to make a film using the same techniques, only ten or fifteen times longer.’ Even after she and Goro broke up, Katsuko was always saying that if he ever decided to give up making movies with one eye on the box office, she would get her mother to shell out the money again and she herself would be the producer. She even said that she wanted to have me write the score, and she was talking like that right up until she collapsed with a stroke.”
“Do you suppose Goro talked to that reporter about his own ideas, or maybe even shared part of the synopsis?” Kogito asked.
Takamura shook his outsized head, which was snugly covered by the extra-large cap. In his eyes and around his mouth, as well, Kogito could discern faint vestiges of the familiar perspicacious smile. “I wanted to ask that question, too, even though I knew it was probably just a pipe dream that would never come to fruition,” he said. “If Goro was the only person you had talked to in detail about the story for the opera, the next step before that would have to be for Goro to gather everything together in a notebook. I have a fantasy where I steal a peek at those notes, over Goro’s shoulder, and realize it’s the libretto I’ve been hoping for ...”
Kogito’s heart lurched as he returned his old friend’s gaze.
“But the newspaper reporter didn’t seem to have been able to ferret out much information, either,” Takamura went on. “Sometimes you can find a breakthrough solution to this kind of dilemma in a dream, but it occurs to me that lately I seem to have ended up in a state where I’m half dreaming all the time, even when I’m wide-awake.” This sort of naked, self-revealing talk wasn’t at all like the Takamura whom Kogito knew so well, and he had to lower his eyes again in discomfort as his friend continued:
“Even if my disease progresses at a slower rate than the doctors are projecting, who’s to say which of us is responsible if this opera doesn’t get finished, you or I? So what I’d like to say to you today is that I have just one vision about this piece, which I’m assuming I’ll never see completed. After I die ... well, if you could at least begin it while I’m still alive, I wouldn’t have any complaints. But anyway, after I’m gone, I just hope that you’ll eventually get around to finishing the story. That’s all. As for Goro, I hope the same thing will happen with his idea for a ten-hour-plus film. I’d like to think that your novel and his film are each one vertex of a triangle, of which the third point would eventually turn out to be my opera. I envision a scene wherein the two of you, through your respective work, are getting stimulation from the galvanizing plasma of imagination, and even though my flesh and spirit have vanished, my opera will somehow come into being by spontaneous combustion, thus becoming the third side of the creative triangle. You may be disturbed by my imprecise use of words, but ...
“Speaking of word use, do you remember when you explained to me, quite some time ago, about Origuchi’s theory about finding repose for the restless souls of the dead? If your novel and Goro’s film are two sides of a triangle, then if you can channel my spirit and conjure up my opera to become the third side, wouldn’t that put my soul to rest, in Origuchi’s terms? You know the Dutch term orgel, meaning ‘music box,’ of course. Well, let’s postulate that after I’m gone my soul will live on, appropriately enough, in the form of a music box. Suppose you and Goro—that is, your two sides of the triangle—are feeding off and inspiring each other, and gradually so much static electricity builds up that the music box representing the third side suddenly starts to ring out with an original operatic aria ... I don’t want to get all sentimental on you, but I feel that would be your gift to the repose of my soul.”
In his palatial digs in Berlin, Kogito realized that Takamura, who had talked for so long that the weariness was starting to show in his eyes, had been feeling sorry not for himself but for the people he was going to leave behind. Because of that, he had made a special effort to leave Kogito with some words of encouragement and inspiration.
5
On one of the cassette tapes he made for Tagame, Goro talked about his plan for that superlong film. This was another bit of evidence that made Kogito suspect that there might be a link between Goro’s preparation of the Tagame tapes and his plan for jumping off the roof of a building—albeit not a simple, straightforward connection.
“These days,” Goro said (this was in the mid-nineties), “now that so many households have a VCR, there are young people who watch the same movie ten or twenty times, if not more. But the question is, can you be properly receptive to a film as a work of art when you’re watching it over and over in your living room or bedroom? Is that kind of casual viewing really fair to the work of art? To put it in terms of your field, there are libraries where you can borrow books, but people generally keep quite a few volumes on their bookshelves, as a permanent collection. Nevertheless, even if you’re profoundly interested in a particular author or a specific book, you probably wouldn’t read the same work over and over during a span of a few days or weeks. Of course, it’s not uncommon to go back and reread a certain book after some time has passed. But even a masterpiece like The Magic Mountai
n—you aren’t likely to read it more than five or six times in one lifetime, are you?
“As for movies, they have these so-called revival theaters, where they show nothing but classic films, and people—myself included—can end up going to see the same film repeatedly over a long period of time. Like Hitchcock’s Balkan Express, which you and I once went to see at a revival theater on the outskirts of Paris, remember? But nowadays the younger movie buffs and aspiring filmmakers will just watch the same movie over and over on video, back-to-back. When it comes to the details of a given scene, they can spout any number of perceptive-sounding things, but I’ve never really learned anything productive from that kind of discussion.
“In the case of films, if somebody watches the same film any number of times over a short period of time, even if he’s the dullest-witted person on earth, he’ll end up being able to see every facet of a scene, in extreme detail. I’ve met people like that, and they can go on and on, in the most pompous way imaginable, about all the nuances of the way the actor is portraying the character at the center of a given scene or whatever. It really gets ridiculous sometimes.
“I know I’m repeating myself, but is that really a legitimate way to approach the experience of watching a movie? I mean, can’t you say that one work of art, flowing along for a little under two hours, should give you the experience of living those two hours one instant at a time? Maybe on the second viewing you’ll catch some things you missed the first time, but does that really deepen your receptivity or your perceptions? From the second viewing on, isn’t our hypothetical viewer really watching what you might call a meta-movie of the film he saw the first time? In which case, unlike the strong emotional effect you get from seeing a new film, isn’t it just a separate, diluted experience? That is to say, a secondary, meta-movie experience? That’s why I’d like to make movies that you don’t need to watch over and over again. I want to make films that you can totally ‘get’ after just one viewing with fresh eyes. But I won’t do anything painfully obvious like using a lot of extreme close-ups to signal to the viewer when there’s something they need to notice.” (Goro pronounced “close-up” in perfect English, instead of using the phoneticized Japanese loanword kurosu-appu.) “The guiding principle is to film the entire scene in a single take. That way, you give the people who are watching the movie enough time to get a firm sense of the details of the scene.
“Needless to say, the films that I’ve presented to the public thus far don’t meet this criterion. They’re films made up of discrete sections or vignettes. Someday, when people watch the films that I plan to make from here on out, they’ll be able to take them in as a seamless, natural whole, so there won’t be any need to watch them twice. What’s more, through the overall experience of seeing a film just once, the viewer’s way of looking at the world will end up being transformed.”
On another topic, Kogito had never met the Los Angeles–based newspaper reporter who went to visit Takamura in the hospital and told him that Goro’s idea for a superlong movie appeared to have something to do with the opera libretto that Kogito was planning to try to write eventually, when the moment was right. However, he knew that Goro trusted the man and gave him preferential treatment.
Kogito remembered being impressed when he read the journalist’s account of the yakuza attack on Goro in the Los Angeles newspaper. (This was while Kogito was stopping over in California, after his visit to the University of Chicago.) The article reported that late one night, when Goro came home and parked his beloved Bentley in the garage, he was attacked from behind by two armed men as he was taking his baggage out of the back seat. While one of the men pinned both of Goro’s arms behind him and the other was slashing his cheeks with some sort of knife or sharp-bladed tool, Goro didn’t resist at all. (The reporter emphasized that fact.)
But then, a few moments later, Goro began to struggle with almost superhuman strength, managing to free himself and send both thugs flying. On top of that, he actually tackled one of the fleeing gangsters and tried to hang on to him. The hapless hit man, trying desperately to escape any way he could, ended up ineffectually waving his lethal weapon in the air as he fled.
The reporter went on to explain, with great empathy, why Goro suddenly began to fight back after having submitted passively while he was immobilized by one gangster and the other attacker carved up his face from behind: it was because one of the hit men had started to slash the upholstery of Goro’s luxury car with the same sharp blade he’d used on Goro’s face. That made Goro so angry that he went on a rampage, undaunted by his massive bleeding, with such fury that the two gangsters were unable to subdue him. Their reaction was to panic and try to escape the madman’s wrath.
Kogito understood very well the motive for the anger that had transformed Goro from passive victim into invincible super-hero. To put it simply, Goro was goaded into action by the injustice of seeing a beautiful, classy object like his Bentley being gratuitously vandalized by a couple of low-class thugs.
Back in the days when Goro hadn’t yet had any major movie roles—at the time, he and Katsuko were living at a hotel in Paris and depending on her rich parents to pay their living expenses—the moment he got his hands on his first paycheck for acting in a foreign film, he immediately invested in a Jaguar. A year later, when he returned to Tokyo, Goro had the Jag shipped home, and he always took very good care of it. After that, as the years passed and he became wealthy through his spectacular career as a film director, his Bentley seemed to be the corporeal manifestation of that success, and there was no other material object in Goro’s life at that time (and quite possibly no spiritual entity, either) that he cared as much about.
Kogito had for a long time sensed a kind of nihilism behind Goro’s lavish lifestyle. “Nihilism” may seem like an extreme term, but that diagnosis seemed to be corroborated by the fact that Goro didn’t put up any resistance to the thugs’ initial attack on his face and body; indeed, he responded with complete passivity. Kogito had noticed that aspect of Goro’s character from the time they were boys, and it had caused him a great deal of sympathetic concern. There was, in Goro, an element of willingness to fling himself into the sort of danger that had the potential to destroy him. Kogito couldn’t go so far as to say that Goro was somehow intrigued by the potentialities of self-destruction (or oblivion), but he had seen evidence that his friend wouldn’t necessarily go out of his way to avoid a perilous situation if it sidled seductively up to him.
Back in their schooldays, Kogito remembered, there was more than one teacher who picked up on this behavioral trait, which they saw as brazen insolence, and took a strong dislike to Goro as a result. One teacher in particular came to mind. He was the director of the physical education class that Kogito and Goro both attended, a giant of a man who had been sent to the Asia Olympics as a wrestler before the war. His deeply tanned face had the eerie luster of a bronze idol.
When the swimming pool opened for use every year, this instructor would stand at a platform with a grove of poplar trees behind him and explain the rules. One cardinal regulation was that when anyone walked on the pool deck, he was required to be barefoot. In spite of this, Goro would invariably show up wearing rubber-soled sandals because, he explained, the rough finish of the concrete surface that bordered the pool hurt the soles of his feet, and he hated that. On top of that, Goro would blatantly saunter right in front of the teacher, apparently oblivious to the loud slap-slap sound his sandals were making, whereupon he would immediately be dragged out of the line of students and yelled at (and often struck) by the irate instructor. Due to the large number of pupils and the relatively small size of the pool, each student was only allowed to go swimming three or four times each summer, but on every one of those occasions Goro would show up wearing the forbidden sandals and would be routinely smacked around by the apoplectic phys-ed teacher.
Kogito felt the same sort of apprehension and uneasiness about Goro’s relationships with women. Before Goro’s first marriage, and
during the time between his divorce from Katsuko and his remarriage to Umeko, Kogito happened to meet a number of Goro’s female companions, usually by chance, and he got the sense that there was an alarming pall of gloom hovering over all of them. Whoever the girl might be, Kogito always got the feeling that the relationship was headed for disaster—or, if it didn’t quite reach such an extreme point, at least for some sort of trouble or unpleasantness. But Goro had a pattern of forming attachments with difficult young women from complicated backgrounds whose appeal, at least from Kogito’s point of view, was not immediately evident.
In any case, when he heard that Goro had been attacked by gangsters, the first thought that popped into Kogito’s head was that Goro might have been targeted because he had gotten mixed up with some yakuza moll.
6
While Kogito was talking to Takamura in the Akasaka hospital room, it had started to snow. When he emerged from the university hospital’s front entrance, the almost horizontal snowfall, which was blowing directly into his face and upper body, suddenly ramped up to blizzard level. By the time Kogito had managed to flag down a taxi and was headed for home, the roadways were completely blanketed in white.
The next day the storm continued, and it was so dark that the entire day seemed to be one long, endless night. Kogito was gazing out at the incessantly falling snow while listening to an FM radio station with Akari (who seemed to share his father’s indistinct yet substantial feeling of foreboding), when the classical-music disc jockey announced the death of the composer Takamura Tohru.
It was just about a year later, on another night in the depths of winter, when Chikashi came to the army cot in Kogito’s study to waken him with the news that Goro had thrown himself off the top of a building. So now, when Kogito thought about Takamura’s three-sided creative triangle, he realized that the only side left standing was his own.