The Mask Carver's Son

by Alyson Richman

  Still, here things were different. Shopkeepers stocked exotic imported goods: tea from Ceylon, ground tumeric from India, shiny copper pots from Nepal. Rolls of British tweed and fine Egyptian cotton were stacked on the shelves of specialty stores. Japanese men wore Western dress freely and proudly, for no special occasion except to celebrate the changing of the times. Never in my wildest dreams had I seen so many new things.

  Shortly after my first day at school, however, I discovered that campus life at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts would be far from the progressive atmosphere that this new city afforded. To the contrary, the customs and curriculum of the school seemed archaic and regressive. Its aim was not to prepare its students to paint as Western-style artists in the modern age, but as native painters who worked in the ancient traditions, completely ignoring the influence of the West. I arrived, disgruntled and understandably disillusioned. I had left one citadel deeply pitted against change, only to replace it with another.

  Even our uniforms took their inspiration from the traditional dress of Nara period courtiers: a heavily quilted short robe worn over long, flowing hakama. Can you imagine how silly I felt walking to school while many of my countrymen were dressed like distinguished Englishmen!

  How I yearned to dress like them. I imagined myself in a stiff black jacket, matching vest, and crisp white shirt. I would hold my head high and soak up the sunlight with my proud, beaming face. But instead I found myself walking to my classes through Tokyo with great embarrassment, my head falling forward like a dying lotus, my hakama catching underneath my wooden heels.

  * * *

  The School of Fine Arts was cloistered away on its own small campus, adjacent to the community of the Imperial College. But unlike the rest of the college, the buildings of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts were constructed of the traditional materials of Japanese architecture: wood, bamboo, and rice paper.

  On the first day of classes, I arrived at a sparsely furnished room where the tatami were woven tight and green, where the walls were covered with parchment and the windows were nothing but small lattice slits beneath a bamboo ceiling.

  I watched as eighteen of my classmates filed into this stiff, spiritless room—a room ironically designed to inspire the nation’s next generation of artists. We sat on the floor, our legs tucked neatly beneath us, our robes falling to the floor. On the first day I believe every one of us searched the room for an easel or a stool, something that we later heard was strictly forbidden.

  “You are the emperor’s investment,” Morita sensei told us.

  “You represent the Meiji’s commitment to the arts, to the rebirth of our artistic traditions.”

  He sat before us, his deep purple robe and black skullcap making him appear priestly. Dark eyes that do not blink. Straight mouth that does not quiver. Morita would be instructing the first-year class in the art of sumi-e, Japanese ink painting. His would be the first face that we saw every morning. The one that we saw every time we looked up from our page.

  I took three classes: painting, crafts, and sculpture. Each course was overseen by a sensei, but each student was largely responsible for his own work. The school adhered to strictly traditional methods of teaching: all of the students were forced to use their individual powers of observation in order to reproduce an original work of a great Japanese master. We were given a model and expected to copy it.

  Noboru was the most gifted student in our class. I noticed this right away, as I am sure did Morita sensei and the majority of my classmates. He never strained his eyes to look at the model. Instead, he opened his mind to it, let it soak into his thirsty spirit and permeate his blue-red veins. With the brush between his long white fingers, the rice paper rolled out before him, he was able to reproduce a painting with the same intensity and perfection as the great Japanese masters. There was absolutely no separation between him, his art, and his brushes.

  His talent separated him from the other students, but I worshiped him from afar. He seemed to be not from this earth, as though he had not entered through the sliding door, but rather emerged from the matted floor. Upon first sight of him, I could concentrate on nothing else. The words of Morita sensei evaporated; my peers vanished into midair.

  Noboru, a sliver bound in blue cotton, gliding over the tatami. Noboru, with the body of a prepubescent boy and the eyes of a Heian priest. And Noboru, with a face so pure and undisturbed. Like the sacred image of the Kannon: his body lithe and his hands fanned out before him. Golden was his image, and his teeth glistened like pearls.

  Never had I seen anyone so exquisite. I had lived a secluded childhood where the most beautiful creature was the one I created in my head: my mother. But this face before me now was different. Porcelain complexion. Eyes shining like beads. My first instinct was to rush toward him, touch him, glide my fingertips over the doll-like perfection of his face. To feel the landscape of his features. To have their impression forever cast into the memory of my palms so they would be forever mine to recall.

  But I did not. For, infused into my spirit from the day that I was born a Japanese, was a deep sense of propriety. I bridled my emotions with great tenacity and tried to regain my composure.

  I was shocked by my initial reaction to him. I had never experienced such extreme feelings before. Their intensity frightened me at first. I felt as though he was somehow a catalyst for my awakening, and I was surprised that another man could stir me so deeply.

  For much of my childhood I had lain dormant, almost afraid to blossom as a full person, fearful it might scare or upset my father. But here I was alone. Father was far away. I was beginning to sense everything anew. Even my own skin felt different to me, as if each of my cells had just risen from a deep sleep.

  Near Noboru I felt my senses come alive. I smelled the fragrance of his washing grains, the oil that smoothed his chin-length hair. I anticipated the rhythm of his footsteps, imagined the taste of his salty skin.

  I remember watching him during Morita sensei’s first lecture, as he was far more interesting to me than was Morita. I lingered over the length of his eyes, the full partition of his lips.

  During that first class our teacher outlined, in his slow monotone, the school’s objectives for over an hour. With the slow chant of a monk, he somberly informed us that we would be responsible for mastering the techniques of traditional Japanese painting. If we became proficient in these techniques during the four years of our education, only then could we contemplate creating a new style. “You will have to be recommended to the accelerated program, which demands a flawless academic and personal record,” he said flatly as I struggled to capture Noboru in my view.

  “Here,” Morita informed us, “you all will first learn how to hold your brush.” He paused before adding: “Hold it the proper way, not the slovenly way in which you all do your calligraphy.”

  I fidgeted. My robe felt heavy and cumbersome, my face flushed, and my body too warm. I tried to imagine the cool streams of water that I used to drink from near Mount Daigo. I tried to imagine myself submerged.

  “After you have accomplished that,” Morita continued, “you will learn how to grind your ink . . .” The list continued. Our sensei droned on, referring to the mastering of one technique before the next could be introduced.

  I remember that I tried to pretend that my face was a mask, to try to keep my concentration on the teacher’s words, but I could not. I sat upright, my legs folded, my shoulders tensed, and my eyes straight ahead. But all I could think about was him.

  I pondered the size of Noboru’s head compared to that of his body; I relished the curl of his upper lip, the arch of his brow. I sensed the weight of his shoulders, the compactness of his chest. Although he was small and slender, he appeared athletic, tight, and strong. Everything that my willowlike body was not.

  In a kimono one can hide nothing, and so it was easy to see the line of his skeleton, the curve of his back, and
the sinews of his muscles. He was a perfect specimen of the young boy at the cusp of manhood, someone Michelangelo would have begged to study.

  He was beautiful and he became my friend.

  I loved his laugh and I loved his way of speaking. I loved the lightness of his walk and the warmth of his eyes.

  He was so different from my other classmates, so different from my father. When I looked at him, I was intoxicated by his energy. He exuded a heat, an invisible fire. I saw him like a bodhisattva surrounded by a mandorla of white light.

  He was not a ghost, and yet I could feel myself being drawn into him, just as I had imagined the ghost of my mother so many times before; her outstretched arms and her long black hair wrapping me in a tight, protective embrace.

  I believed from the minute I first saw him that we were connected. He had looked at me and lowered his eyes. Like a doll that welcomes the heat of its owner.

  He was elegant; he had the capacity to break silence.

  It was Noboru who initiated our first conversation that first day outside Morita’s class. He too had sensed our connection.

  “Have you bought your o-bento for today?” he had asked.

  I was beaming because he had approached me.

  “No,” I replied, stumbling over my answer.

  “Come with me,” he said enthusiastically. “I’ll show you where to get the best salmon rolls in Tokyo.”

  Although he was petite, all of Noboru’s movements were elegant. For the Japanese, to have too strong a gesticulation would be vulgar, but when Noboru slightly turned his wrist, his hand sketching an invisible circle of air, there was nothing more charming.

  Several times during those first days together, I had to control myself from reaching out to touch him. I wanted to capture him, just as a small boy wishes to hold a butterfly in his palms. I wanted to study him, with my face pressed close to his. I wanted to trace the outline of his collarbone with my forefinger; I wanted to inhale the fragrance of his shiso-minted breath.

  But instead, I laced my fingers behind me, sucked my desires deep within, and wrestled with my emotions in the silence I had endured since birth.

  I knew that my feelings toward Noboru were not those that are commonly exchanged between men. I knew of Grandfather and Grandmother’s love story and the tragedy of Father and Mother’s. But I also knew that I was not typical at all. I had been carved out and brought into this world against my will. Even Grandmother’s coddling could not heal my internal wounds. I was the reason that Mother’s life had been sacrificed and the reason Father had lost the will to love.

  I often wondered, as my feelings toward Noboru intensified, if indeed I was born with my mother’s spirit, if I truly carried her deep within. Had Noboru awakened something inside that spirit, a boy whose hands were his genius? Had her spirit noticed them, as it had noticed those of my father? Did her ghost stir inside me these urges? I looked to her for justification, as I had with my painting, so that my guilt would subside and my passion would not be extinguished.

  Yet Noboru and I shared more than a mutual attraction; we also shared a love of Western-style painting.

  As my first few months at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts passed, Noboru and I became closer. He would assist me after class with some of my ink paintings and encourage me to spend hours after class at the college library looking at reproductions of Western paintings.

  I can still see him in my mind’s eye, stretching over the long wooden table, his navy kimono clinging to his elongated form. He was so free with his body, like a garden snake that wiggles and coils. He could drape himself over almost anything. Fall languidly and rise gracefully.

  Late at night, after we had completed our assignments, he would almost instinctively find the most secluded noodle shop or tea shop, and he would succeed in hypnotizing me with the sweet melody of his voice, the fluttering of his long black eyelashes.

  In the privacy of these small, intimate spaces he would confide in me. Speak to me of his desire to paint, to use his hands, to create the incarnation of his voice with pigment rather than words. He would rest his right hand on the shelf of his jaw, his long fingers wrapped around the base of his neck, and that would be the only movement between us for several hours.

  I once asked Noboru why he liked me, for I believed I was not his equal in so many ways.

  “Your name is beautiful,” he told me, and I looked at him, my eyes revealing my confusion.

  “Pure wood,” he translated the characters, although I of course had known the depth of their meaning since birth. “You are the first person I have ever encountered whose name and face reflect the same.”

  “Do you mean that I appear to be as cold and as inanimate as the trunk of a fallen tree?” I asked, wounded that someone I held in such high esteem would think me similar to something from which I had spent my entire childhood hoping to escape.

  “But why does this cause you so much concern, my friend?” he asked. “Such a beautiful name, such a beautiful face.” He paused and moved closer to me, his gaze reflecting his intensity.

  “Your face is tranquil and still on the surface. The skin smooth and palpable. Young like a child. But behind your eyes, I see you are wizened,” he continued. “You are like an old spirit trapped behind a young boy’s mask.”

  I remember that these words caused me to pull away from him, remove myself from his gaze. It had never occurred to me that I might carry so many traces of my father.

  “I am attracted to your purity,” he said once more. “The wood makes you more intriguing, but it is the celestial quality to which I am drawn.”

  I was no longer hearing his words. He had pushed me back into the grasp of those who brought me into this world: my mother’s purity, my father’s wood. Noboru had seen me as the fossil I truly was, and I shuddered to think he had seen me so clearly.

  TWENTY-ONE

  There is something to be said for the first person who can look at you and tell you who you truly are. In a way, that person becomes your first mirror, the one who sees your reflection and encourages you not to look away but rather to take a deeper look. Such was the case with Noboru.

  * * *

  After he had confessed why he had pursued a friendship with me, I found myself withdrawing from him and immersing myself in my work.

  He came to me one day when I was reproducing a painting inspired by the tradition of Kano Eitoku. I had been working on the rendering of cranes for nearly three hours.

  “Hello, friend,” he whispered from behind me, and I turned around to see him. “I have not seen you outside of class for several days.”

  His eyes were gleaming like a mountain lion’s, and I turned away from him, unnerved by the intensity of his gaze.

  “I have been busy,” I answered. “I have had little time for recreation.”

  “Let’s get some tea,” he suggested playfully as he extended his sockless foot over the dry section of my painting.

  “Not today,” I replied, and even I found myself bored by the tone of my voice.

  “Aren’t we friends, Yamamoto-kun?” he tried once more.

  I knew that if I looked at him again, I might crumble. His large wet eyes looked at me languidly, his silky hair dangled in front. But he knew so little of my past. Already he had seen a sliver of my life in Kyoto. He had read it in the markings of my face. But still I struggled there silently. I did not know if I was ready to reveal any more to him.

  “I see you are painting cranes,” he said wistfully, interrupting my interior monologue.

  He looked up at the ceiling, the flood of afternoon light penetrating the thin bamboo slats.

  “Have I ever told you, Kiyoki, that I grew up by the sea?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Noboru hated nothing more than the smell of salt water, even though he was practically born at the sea’s foaming mouth. He told me that his fat
her’s house was built on bamboo stilts and that it stood like a long-legged beggar whose feet were submerged in the sand and who pleaded every night with the raging waters not to be carried away.

  Most of the men in the village earned their living by making fishing nets. But Noboru’s father made paper fans. While his father fashioned the split bamboo into smooth, tiny handles, his mother spent the day painting the rice paper with either the palest landscape or the calligraphic lines of a poem.

  Noboru attributed his talent to his mother; she was the holder of the brush and the keeper of color in the family. She would take the half-moon circles of paper and, through her subtle washes of ink, give them life. His father gave them backing and structure. She gave them the pinkness of sakura, the orange of momiji, the blueness of the waves, and the height of the tsunami.

  The ink and paper had been his guardians while his parents worked until dusk, leaving him alone. He learned to control the bleeding of the ink by holding his brush high, and to trace the movements of his brush by propelling each line by the force of his body. He learned that he should never be afraid of black, that he should always be bold.

  But Noboru also had the gift of subtlety. He could paint a sakura hubuki, he could paint the fog, and he could paint the snow.

  Every night he slept in darkness, to the sound of the water roaring and his parents’ muffled sighs. He tossed between their sleeping bodies, their shadows rising on the walls like the crashing waves beneath the house. In these nights, he would will himself to sleep and delve into the darkness to search for his dreams.