But then one particular exchange has come back to me which I gave little significance to before. Miyake and I had reached the main street and were standing in front of the Kimura Company Building awaiting our respective trams. And I remember Miyake saying:
‘We had some sad news at work today. The President of our parent company is now deceased.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that. Was he advanced in years?’
‘He was only in his early sixties. I never had the chance to see him in the flesh, though of course I saw photographs of him in our periodicals. He was a great man, and we all feel as though we’ve been orphaned.’
‘It must be a blow to you all.’
‘Indeed it is,’ Miyake said, and paused for a moment. Then he continued: ‘However, we at our office are at something of a loss as to the most appropriate way of showing our respect. You see, to be quite frank, the President committed suicide.’
‘Really?’
‘Indeed. He was found gassed. But it seems he tried hara-kiri first, for there were minor scratches around his stomach.’ Miyake looked down at the ground solemnly. ‘It was his apology on behalf of the companies under his charge.’
‘His apology?’
‘Our President clearly felt responsible for certain undertakings we were involved in during the war. Two senior men were already dismissed by the Americans, but our President obviously felt it was not enough. His act was an apology on behalf of us all to the families of those killed in the war.’
‘Why, really,’ I said, ‘that seems rather extreme. The world seems to have gone mad. Every day there seems to be a report of someone else killing himself in apology. Tell me, Mr Miyake, don’t you find it all a great waste? After all, if your country is at war, you do all you can in support, there’s no shame in that. What need is there to apologize by death?’
‘No doubt you’re right, sir. But to be frank, there’s much relief around the company. We feel now we can forget our past transgressions and look to the future. It was a great thing our President did.’
‘But a great waste, too. Some of our best men are giving up their lives in this way.’
‘Indeed, sir, it is a pity. Sometimes I think there are many who should be giving their lives in apology who are too cowardly to face up to their responsibilities. It is then left to the likes of our President to carry out the noble gestures. There are plenty of men already back in positions they held during the war. Some of them are no better than war criminals. They should be the ones apologizing.’
‘I see your point,’ I said. ‘But those who fought and worked loyally for our country during the war cannot be called war criminals. I fear that’s an expression used too freely these days.’
‘But these are the men who led the country astray, sir. Surely, it’s only right they should acknowledge their responsibility. It’s a cowardice that these men refuse to admit to their mistakes. And when those mistakes were made on behalf of the whole country, why then it must be the greatest cowardice of all.’
Did Miyake really say all this to me that afternoon? Perhaps I am getting his words confused with the sort of thing Suichi will come out and say. This is quite possible; I had after all come to regard Miyake as my prospective son-in-law, and I may indeed have somehow associated him with my actual son-in-law. Certainly, phrases like ‘the greatest cowardice of all’ sound much more like Suichi than the mild-mannered young Miyake. I am certain enough, though, that some such conversation did take place at the tram stop that day, and I suppose it is somewhat curious he should have brought up such a topic as he did. But as for the phrase ‘the greatest cowardice of all’, I am sure that is Suichi’s. In fact, now I think of it, I am sure Suichi used it that evening after the ceremony for the burying of Kenji’s ashes.
It had taken more than a year for my son’s ashes to arrive from Manchuria. The communists, we were constantly told, had made everything difficult there. Then when his ashes finally came, along with those of the twenty-three other young men who had died attempting that hopeless charge across the minefield, there were no assurances the ashes were in fact Kenji’s and Kenji’s alone. ‘But if my brother’s ashes are mingled,’ Setsuko had written to me at the time, ‘they would only be mingled with those of his comrades. We cannot complain about that.’ And so we accepted the ashes as Kenji’s and carried out the belated ceremony for him two years ago last month.
It was in the midst of the ceremony at the cemetery that I saw Suichi striding away angrily. When I asked Setsuko what the matter was with her husband, she whispered quickly: ‘Please forgive him, he isn’t well. A touch of malnutrition, he hasn’t shaken it off for months.’
But later, as the guests from the ceremony were gathering in my house, Setsuko said to me: ‘Please understand, Father. Such ceremonies upset Suichi deeply.’
‘How touching,’ I said. ‘I had no idea he was so close to your brother.’
‘They got on well whenever they met,’ Setsuko said. ‘Besides, Suichi identifies very much with the likes of Kenji. He says it could so easily have been him.’
‘But isn’t that all the more reason not to desert the ceremony?’
‘I’m sorry, Father, Suichi never intended to appear disrespectful. But we have attended so many such ceremonies this past year, for Suichi’s friends and comrades, and they always make him so angry.’
‘Angry? What is it he’s angry about?’
But more guests were arriving at that point and I was obliged to break off our conversation. It was not until later that evening I got a chance to talk to Suichi himself. Many of the guests were still with us, gathered in the reception room. I spotted my son-in-law’s tall figure across the room, standing alone; he had parted the screens which opened on to the garden, and with his back turned to the hum of conversation, was gazing out into the darkness. I went up to him and said:
‘Setsuko tells me, Suichi, these ceremonies make you angry.’
He turned and smiled. ‘I suppose they do. I get angry thinking about things. About the waste.’
‘Yes. It’s terrible to think of the waste. But Kenji, like many others, died very bravely.’
For a moment, my son-in-law gazed at me with a still, expressionless face; it is something he does from time to time which I have never quite got used to. The gaze, no doubt, is quite innocent, but perhaps because Suichi is a physically powerful man and his features rather fearsome, it is easy to read something threatening or accusing there.
‘There seems to be no end of courageous deaths,’ he said, eventually. ‘Half of my high school graduation year have died courageous deaths. They were all for stupid causes, though they were never to know that. Do you know, Father, what really makes me angry?’
‘What is that, Suichi?’
‘Those who sent the likes of Kenji out there to die these brave deaths, where are they today? They’re carrying on with their lives, much the same as ever. Many are more successful than before, behaving so well in front of the Americans, the very ones who led us to disaster. And yet it’s the likes of Kenji we have to mourn. This is what makes me angry. Brave young men die for stupid causes, and the real culprits are still with us. Afraid to show themselves for what they are, to admit their responsibility.’ And it was then, I am sure, as he turned back to the darkness outside, that he said: ‘To my mind, that’s the greatest cowardice of all.’
I had been drained by the ceremony, otherwise I might have challenged some of his assumptions. But I judged there would be other opportunities for such talk and moved the conversation to other matters. I recall standing there with him, looking out into the night, enquiring about his work and about Ichiro. At that point, I had hardly seen Suichi since his return from the war, and that was my first experience of the changed, somewhat bitter son-in-law I have now come to get used to. I was surprised that evening to find him talking in that way, with no trace of the rigid manners he had had before going to war; but I put it down to the emotional effect of the burial ceremony, and more g
enerally, to the enormous impact of his war experience – which, so Setsuko had hinted, had been of a terrible nature.
But in fact the mood I found him in that evening proved to be typical of his general mood these days; the transformation from the polite, self-effacing young man who married Setsuko two years before the war is quite remarkable. Of course, it is tragic that so many of his generation died as they did, but why must he harbour such bitterness for his elders? There is a hardness, almost a maliciousness to Suichi’s views now which I find worrying – even more so since they appear to be influencing Setsuko.
But such a transformation is by no means unique to my son-in-law. These days I see it all around me; something has changed in the character of the younger generation in a way I do not fully understand, and certain aspects of this change are undeniably disturbing. For instance, just the other night down at Mrs Kawakami’s, I overheard a man sitting further along the counter saying:
‘I hear they took that idiot to hospital. A few broken ribs and concussion.’
‘You mean the Hirayama boy?’ Mrs Kawakami asked, with a look of concern.
‘Is that his name? The one’s who’s always wandering around shouting things out. Someone really ought to get him to stop. It seems he got beaten up again last night. It’s a shame, taking on an idiot like that, whatever he’s shouting out.’
At this point, I turned to the man and said: ‘Excuse me, you say the Hirayama boy’s been attacked? For what reason?’
‘It seems he kept singing one of those old military songs and chanting regressive slogans.’
‘But the Hirayama boy’s always done that,’ I pointed out. ‘He’s only able to sing two or three songs. It’s what he was taught.’
The man shrugged. ‘I agree, what’s the sense in beating up an idiot like that? It’s just callousness. But he was over by the Kayabashi bridge, and you know how sleazy things get there after dark. He’d been sitting up on the bridge post, singing and chanting for about an hour. They could hear him in the bar across the way, and it seems a few of them got tired of it.’
‘What sense is there in that?’ Mrs Kawakami said. ‘The Hirayama boy means no harm.’
‘Well, someone should teach him to sing new songs,’ the man said, drinking from his glass. ‘He’ll only get beaten up again if he goes around singing those old ones.’
We still call him ‘the Hirayama boy’ though he must now be at least fifty. But then the name does not seem inappropriate, for he has the mental age of a child. As far back as I can remember, he has been looked after by the Catholic nuns at the mission, but presumably he was born into a family called Hirayama. In the old days, when our pleasure district was flourishing, the Hirayama boy could always be found sitting on the ground near the entrance to the Migi-Hidari or one of its neighbouring establishments. He was, as Mrs Kawakami had said, quite harmless, and indeed, in the years before and during the war he became a popular figure in the pleasure district with his war songs and mimicking of patriotic speeches.
Who had taught him his songs, I do not know. There were no more than two or three in his repertoire, and he knew only a verse of each. But he would deliver these in a voice of considerable carrying power, and between the singing, he would amuse spectators by standing there grinning at the sky, his hands on his hips, shouting: ‘This village must provide its share of sacrifices for the Emperor! Some of you will lay down your lives! Some of you will return triumphant to a new dawn!’ – or some such words. And people would say, ‘The Hirayama boy may not have it all there, but he’s got the right attitude. He’s Japanese.’ I often saw people stop to give him money, or else buy him something to eat, and on those occasions the idiot’s face would light up into a smile. No doubt, the Hirayama boy became fixated on those patriotic songs because of the attention and popularity they earned him.
Nobody minded idiots in those days. What has come over people that they feel inclined to beat the man up? They may not like his songs and speeches, but in all likelihood they are the same people who once patted his head and encouraged him until those few snatches embedded themselves in his brain.
But as I say, there is a different mood in the country these days, and Suichi’s attitudes are probably by no means exceptional. Perhaps I am being unfair if I credit young Miyake, too, with such bitterness, but then the way things are at present, if you examine anything anyone says to you, it seems you will find a thread of this same bitter feeling running through it. For all I know, Miyake did speak those words; perhaps all men of Miyake’s and Suichi’s generation have come to think and speak like that.
I believe I have already mentioned that yesterday I took a trip down to the south of the city, to the Arakawa district. Arakawa is the last stop on the city tramline going south, and many people express surprise that the line should extend so far down into the suburbs. Indeed, it is hard to think of Arakawa, with its cleanly swept residential streets, its rows of maple trees on the pavements, its dignified houses each set apart from the next, and its general air of being surrounded by countryside, as being part of the city. But to my mind, the authorities were correct to take the tramline as far as Arakawa; it can only be of benefit to city-dwellers that they have easy access to calmer, less crowded surroundings. We were not always so well served, and I can recall how the hemmed-in feeling one gets in a city, especially during the hot summer weeks, was significantly greater in the days before the present tramlines were laid down.
I believe it was 1931 when the present lines began to operate, superseding the inadequate lines which had so irritated passengers for the previous thirty years. If you were not living here then, it is perhaps hard to imagine the impact these new lines had on many aspects of life in the city. Whole districts seemed to change character overnight; parks that had always been busy with people became deserted; long-established businesses suffered severe losses.
There were, of course, those districts which found themselves unexpectedly benefited, and among these was that area on the other side of the Bridge of Hesitation soon to become our pleasure district. Prior to the new tramlines, you would have found there only a few dull back streets with rows of shingled-roof houses. No one at that time considered it a district in its own right and one could only locate it by saying ‘east of Furukawa’. The new tram circuit, however, meant that passengers disembarking at the terminus in Furukawa could reach the city centre more quickly on foot than by making a second, highly circuitous tram journey, and the result was a sudden influx of people walking through that area. The handful of bars that were there already began, after years of mediocre trade, to flourish dramatically, while new ones opened one after the other.
The establishment that was to become the Migi-Hidari was known at that time simply as ‘Yamagata’s’ – after its proprietor, an old veteran soldier – and was the longest-established bar in the district. It was a somewhat colourless place in those days, but I had used it regularly over the years since first coming to the city. As far as I recall, it was not until a few months after the arrival of the new tramlines that Yamagata saw what was happening around him, and began to formulate his ideas. With the area set to become a fully fledged drinking quarter, his own establishment – being the oldest, and situated as it was at the intersection of three streets – stood naturally to become a sort of patriarch among local establishments. In view of this, so he saw it, it was his responsibility to expand and re-open in grand style. The tradesman above him was ready to be bought out, and the necessary capital could be raised without difficulty. The main stumbling block, both as regards his own establishment and the district as a whole, was the attitude of the city authorities.
In this, Yamagata was undoubtedly correct. For this was 1933 or 1934 – an unlikely time, you may recall, to be contemplating the birth of a new pleasure district. The authorities had been applying arduous policies to keep the more frivolous side of the city’s life in check, and indeed, in the city centre, many of the more decadent establishments were in the process of
being closed down. At first, then, I did not listen to Yamagata’s ideas with much sympathy. It was only when he told me just what sort of place he had in mind that I became sufficiently impressed and promised I would do what I could to help him.
I believe I have already mentioned the fact that I played a small part in the Migi-Hidari’s coming into existence. Of course, not being a man of wealth, there was little I could do financially. But by that time my reputation in this city had grown to a certain extent; as I recall, I was not yet serving on the arts committee of the State Department, but I had many personal links there and was already being consulted frequently on matters of policy. So then, my petition to the authorities on Yamagata’s behalf was not without weight.
‘It is the owner’s intention’, I explained, ‘that the proposed establishment be a celebration of the new patriotic spirit emerging in Japan today. The décor would reflect the new spirit, and any patron incompatible with that spirit would be firmly encouraged to leave. Furthermore, it is the owner’s intention that the establishment be a place where this city’s artists and writers whose works most reflect the new spirit can gather and drink together. With respect to this last point, I have myself secured the support of various of my colleagues, among them the painter, Masayuki Harada; the playwright, Misumi; the journalists, Shigeo Otsuji and Eiji Nastuki – all of them, as you will know, producers of work unflinchingly loyal to his Imperial Majesty the Emperor.’
I went on to point out how such an establishment, given its dominance in the neighbourhood, would be an ideal means by which to ensure that a desirable tone prevailed in the district.
An Artist of the Floating World Page 6