by Kenzaburo Oe
PETER: Even if we’re just talking hypothetically, there’s no way you’re going to be able to steal ten automatic rifles from the camp.
LEADER: But weren’t you saying that there were piles of old, broken weapons that were used in the Korean War, just lying around out in the open?
PETER: Yes, there are, but an amateur wouldn’t be able to repair rifles that were damaged in combat.
LEADER: But Peter, that’s the whole point—there wouldn’t be any need to repair them. They don’t need to be in working order; they just need to look like American army rifles. If the soldiers in the camp see ten Japanese warriors charging at them with those rifles, they’re going to think it’s a genuine enemy attack, and that’s good enough for us.
PETER: But if that’s how it looks to the guards at the gate, you’ll all be mowed down in a matter of seconds.
LEADER: Well, why not? I mean, if we didn’t know that was going to happen, why would we charge into battle against an army camp filled with thousands of soldiers in the first place? Anyway, from the moment we came up with this strategy, we knew it was doomed. Like it says in the anthem of the Imperial Japanese Navy—you know, the song the kamikaze pilots used to sing before they took off on their one-way missions?—“I will not die peacefully at home.”
PETER: What if people realize you aren’t serious—that you’re just a bunch of suicidal wankers playing at war games?
LEADER: (suddenly taking off his yukata and standing there in an Etchu fundoshi, a traditional style of loincloth underwear wrapped in such a way that it ends up with a rectangular panel hanging down in front): In that case, we’ll strip down to our loincloths and back away, doing a colorful folk dance!
The first half of this true-to-life exchange actually took place at the party Kogito and Goro attended at Daio’s inn at Dogo Hot Springs, after the record concert. The latter half transpired at a subsequent party, which took place at that same inn on the following evening (Kogito had forgotten all about it), after Daio had run into Peter somewhere and had invited him to join the festivities. Kogito was surprised by the powers of observation that Goro had possessed as a teenager, but he was equally amazed that, as an adult, Goro was able to combine these disparate conversations into a single scene—especially since (as Kogito recalled) Goro had been busy drinking himself more or less senseless on doburoku and had appeared to be nothing more than a thoughtless, innocent young boy, awash in merriment.
Anyway, after the three-day sequence of soirees, and after Daio and his gang had returned to their camp, Kogito had started to feel intensely guilty about all the time he and Goro had wasted in the company of the paramilitary madmen. So Kogito, not wanting to backslide into the habit of staying out late and partying with Goro, very quickly reverted to his previous pattern of going to the CIE library every day after school with a group of his more studious friends, who, like him, were madly cramming for their college entrance exams.
One day, toward the end of library hours, the Japanese CIE employee who had shown Kogito and Goro the book of Blake’s illustrations at the record concert made a special trip to the reading corner. Calling Kogito aside, he told him that Peter was waiting for him down at the basketball practice area. This functionary was haughty and unapproachable at the best of times, and Kogito could tell that he was extra-miffed at being asked to run an errand for an American. The fact that the object of the errand was a lowly Japanese high-school student only intensified his obvious displeasure.
When Kogito arrived, Peter was standing under the basketball backboard, hanging his head and looking rather down in the dumps. The American was holding the ball in front of his chest, with his right arm bent, and the cherry blossoms, which had just begun to fall, were floating down and landing on the ball. Kogito could see the line made by the border between the fair skin at the nape of Peter’s neck and the red, sunburned part above it. As Kogito came closer Peter raised his head and looked at him with a quizzical expression.
Kogito sensed right away that Peter had been hoping Goro would show up, too. That intuition was confirmed when Peter asked, point-blank: “So your friend Goro isn’t with you today?”
Kogito didn’t reply, and Peter, undaunted, forged ahead alone. “Speaking of Goro,” he said, “he was telling me that after you’re finished studying, you Matsuyama high-school students like to jump in the Dogo Hot Springs baths all together to refresh yourselves. Is that true?”
“Dogo may be a hot springs, technically, but the bathhouse is public, so apparently there’s some question about the hygiene ... In any case, I’ve heard that it’s off-limits for GIs,” Kogito replied.
“Oh, is that so? I hadn’t heard. Okay, here’s another idea. At the end of this week—Saturday or Sunday are both good for me—I’ll be able to borrow a car. Would you like to go for a drive? Just you and me and Goro ... Mister Daio was saying at the inn the other night that he’d like us to come and take a look at his martial-arts camp, or whatever he calls it.”
Peter lapsed into silence, but his blue eyes were glittering like those of some evil bird, and Kogito couldn’t help wondering why his cheeks suddenly looked so flushed. He answered Peter’s question with the same careful choice of words he had employed earlier.
“I’m sure Goro would be delighted to go for a drive,” he said formally. “Daio also invited us to visit his training camp, and he asked me to repeat his invitation to you if I had a chance. I’ll let you know either today or the day after—you’re here on alternate days, right? Anyway, I’ll talk it over with Goro and get back to you with an answer.”
“Actually, I’ll be here every day this week,” Peter said. “So when you see Goro, tell him he can stop by and visit me, okay?”
Just then a mixed group of Japanese employees and American women came up to the basketball court, making a big, noisy show of catching the falling cherry blossoms that were wafting about on the breeze. Holding the ball straight out in front of his chest with both hands, Peter stepped forward to face them. Turning briefly back to Kogito, he said dismissively, “If I’m not around the day after tomorrow or whenever, leave your answer on the secretary’s desk. You can write the letter in Japanese, if you like.”
Then, evidently losing interest in Kogito, Peter began to dribble energetically around the court, all by himself. He took a shot at the basket from a goodly distance away and missed. Undaunted, he grabbed the rebound off the backboard, and then, twisting his body, he tossed a high-arching ball into the center of the little crowd of Japanese and Americans, and everybody cheered as if he had done something heroic.
Wearing a sour scowl, Kogito went back to the library. But despite his bad mood, before returning to the reading corner, he peered through the plate-glass wall that separated the library from the office to make sure he knew exactly where to find the secretary’s desk.
CHAPTER SIX
The Peeping Toms
1
The following day Kogito discussed Peter’s invitation with Goro on their high-school lunch break, and then he returned to the CIE and delivered the answer: YES. The thirty-something secretary took the envelope while coolly looking Kogito up and down, but she didn’t say a word. All she did was to snort, with vague disdain: “Uh-huh.” (She was the first Japanese person he had ever met who responded with American-style informality ... or rudeness.)
But not long after Kogito had taken out his textbooks to begin studying for the university entrance exams, Peter came to the reading corner to fetch him. The American led the way to his own office, paying no attention to the snippy, stuck-up secretary, and told Kogito he could use the telephone there to call Daio at the training camp. Like Peter, Daio was in fine spirits; he even said that if they were really serious about paying a visit, he would come to the CIE to discuss the particulars. (That wasn’t necessary, as it turned out.)
Goro’s screenplay, with the attached storyboards, paints a detailed picture of that weekend jaunt. They set out early Saturday afternoon in a pale green, banged-up Cadil
lac with Peter at the wheel, Goro riding shotgun, and Kogito ensconced in the back seat. In the first scene, the Cadillac is pulling out of the parking area behind the library building. Goro was a car buff even as a high-school student, and he seems to have remembered this drive as an extraordinary outing during a time in Japan, just before the peace treaty took effect, when a glamorous American automobile was a very unusual sight.
Matsuyama still bore the fresh scars of the Allied air raids, but before long they found themselves on the streets of a neighboring town that hadn’t been burned at all. The Cadillac was so wide that it seemed to take up the entire two-lane road, and the old-fashioned houses appeared to be crowding in from both sides. Of course, it would have been impossible to re-create the entire scene of devastation around Matsuyama exactly as it was before the postwar restoration, but even now there were places along the highway that would be suitable as period-movie locations. The storyboards were drawn with an obvious passion for that sort of tableau: the medieval-looking towns, the charred ruins, the incongruous green Cadillac hogging the narrow road.
After passing through the densely populated areas with their rows of old-style houses jammed together along the street, the road began a long ascent through a pastoral landscape of fields and rice paddies dotted with houses, temples, and shrines. On the storyboard, the blossoms of the Yoshino cherry trees are already falling, but the double-flowered cherries are still in full bloom, and they line the route in glorious profusion. Gradually the Cadillac wends its way through hillside villages surrounded by deep green, bushy-treed tangerine groves (with none of the present-day vinyl greenhouses or other such blots on the landscape). At last the Caddy comes upon the entrance to a deep tunnel, near the summit of a low ridge of mountains. Just beyond the tunnel, Daio and his young followers are parked in a small truck, waiting. Following the truck’s lead, the gigantic American car (which is so broad that it brushes against the grass on both sides of the road) plunges ahead, oblivious to the clatter as its low-hanging undercarriage jounces along the rough, bumpy road. After briefly climbing a gentle slope, with a large, deep valley on the right side and a thick forest on the left, the road begins its descent.
Looking at the screenplay and the storyboards, Kogito found it odd that Goro had lavished so much detail on his portrayal of the poorly maintained washboard road the Cadillac had traveled, while not providing so much as a sketch of the plants that grew alongside, but Kogito was able to supply those details from memory as he looked at the illustrations. Not only had he grown up in a deeply wooded valley, but he was the type of person who liked to spend time wandering about in the forest, botany books in hand. Because of that, he not only remembered what an unusual experience that drive had been; he also had a clear recollection of the trees and shrubs, thick and leafy with new growth, and the cherry trees that hadn’t yet shed their blossoms.
The area they were driving through wasn’t too far from the mountain-valley village where Kogito had grown up, but there was something alien about the lay of the land and the aspect of the other villages they passed. Of course, Kogito was sensitive to that sort of thing, having been brought up in such an insular environment. When he used to go on nature walks with his class from the nationalized elementary school, their route often took them upstream along the tributary of the river that ran through his valley and crossed the small mountain. No sooner had the basin below come into view than he would be filled with feelings of awestruck dread, as if he were hopelessly lost in some strange foreign country, even though they were still, technically, within the boundaries of his village. He always half expected a pack of horned demons, brandishing wooden sticks over their heads like swords, to come charging out from the depths of the fields and paddies that were surrounded by quiet groves of trees, and force him to run for his life. Even at seventeen, those childish fears were still vivid in Kogito’s mind.
According to Kogito’s recollections of the trip to Daio’s training camp, right after emerging from the tunnel not far from Kogito’s village, the little caravan turned off the highway that would have led them into the village and went down a slope on the north side of a beautiful stand of trees that seemed to be awash in the fresh green leaves of spring. Continuing along, they descended into a dark, ancient-looking forest of Japanese cypress trees. As they approached the mountain stream, which was churning with whitewater rapids, there were places where the shoulder of the road had caved in. Behind the wheel of the Cadillac, Peter was visibly nervous.
After they had safely navigated that hazard, they emerged onto a road that ran along a big river, which was quite wide but didn’t contain much water. Its high banks were stabilized by the thickets of shrubbery that grew on both sides. The sky, peeking through the steep walls of cedar forest that bordered the road on both sides, was a deep, intense blue.
Next they passed some long, narrow cultivated fields that lay on a level plain between the river and the road, but the land appeared to have been abandoned. The same was true of the fields and storage shacks that could be seen higher up, where patches of farmland had been cleared on the forested side of the mountain. As far as the eye could see, there wasn’t a single private dwelling, or perhaps the houses had been swallowed up by the vegetation when the people who used to live here had gone away for some reason, and now those houses were entombed beneath the tall thickets and wild cascades of ivy that had begun to engulf the old trees, as well, as time went by. That’s what the seventeen-year-old Kogito was daydreaming about as they rode along through the mutable scenery.
The unpaved road began to head uphill again, and as they gained altitude the river vanished into the deep valley below. On the opposite shore, surrounded by cedar trees, a wide slope opened up, and at the top were several roofs that looked as if they might belong to warehouses or granaries. As the road swooped down toward the river from a broad clearing, a rickety-looking bridge suspended from steel cables came into view immediately ahead. On the side of the road that faced a small mountain, there was a three-story building that looked like an abandoned inn. Nearby stood a miniature shrine to the local tutelary god, surrounded by its own little forest of dark-leafed deciduous trees.
Daio and his disciples stopped the truck in the wide clearing and signaled to Peter to park the Cadillac behind them. Then the group trudged down a steep hill, crossed the wobbly suspension bridge, and climbed up a slope that was covered with fresh green grass.
Goro’s storyboards included a sketch of the entire group standing on a road at the top of the slope, between the main building of the training camp and a large outbuilding. In the screenplay, corresponding to that sketch, the following dialogue appeared:
PETER: That tree with a single red flower is a camellia, and the one next to it, with no flowers but lots of buds, is a dogwood. This is so strange—we have the exact same trees in the garden of my house in America.
KOGITO: My mother grows lots of different kinds of flowering trees. I think my father probably brought these from our house in the village.
LEADER: Choko Sensei used these flowering trees as a way to lure the local maidens over here for a visit. It worked out pretty well for us, too!
KOGITO (ignoring Daio’s little joke): The one with amber-colored shoots is a pomegranate. And see the one next to it, with the yellow buds? My mother always calls that an ornamental pomegranate. I’ve heard people saying spitefully that our house is the only place that grows that useless kind of pomegranate. I guess they think it’s a waste of space because it isn’t actually edible.
PETER: You certainly know a lot about plants, Kogito!
GORO (jocularly, but with a critical undertone): Kogito’s an odd duck, for sure. He remembers everything he’s ever read, whether it’s a dictionary or an illustrated book about plants. Before long you’re probably planning to turn into an encyclopedia yourself, eh, Kogito?
PETER (laughing): An Encyclopedia Boy!
Back in the present day, Kogito remembered something. One day, before they embarke
d on the Tagame ritual, Goro had telephoned Kogito and said: “Hey, quick question. What was the name of that flowering tree in the forest where you grew up? If you saw it in early spring when the new leaves are coming out you’d know the name right away, but at the moment it escapes me. It isn’t something common like a peach or a plum, though, I’m sure of that.”
Feeling nostalgic for a peaceable time in his village, before he started clashing with his mother, Kogito replied that the tree in question could have been an edible pomegranate or an ornamental pomegranate or possibly a dogwood, since while oak trees did put out showy new leaves in early spring, their flowers were rather plain and unobtrusive. At the time of that phone call, did Goro get the feeling that Kogito was pretending not to remember the conversation that took place at Daio’s training camp? Or did Goro just assume that Kogito was shuffling through his own definitive memories of THAT, trying to help Goro out by providing the exact names of the plants he would need to mention in his screenplay?
Reawakened by Goro’s screenplay, Kogito’s memories of that springtime scene came flooding back, and he remembered that the mountain cherries had still been blooming, though only at the higher elevations, where temperatures were cooler than in the valley. Peter was standing with his back against an old cherry tree, its branches laden with fully unfurled double blossoms, that sheltered the meadow in front of the training hall. Kogito was standing beside him, explaining the surrounding vegetation and appearing, at that moment, to be on more intimate terms with Peter than Goro was ...