I believe that the people of the Meiji era were like those described by contemporary novelist Shiba Ryotaro in his Saka no ue no kumo (Clouds over the Hill). They lived their lives as if their sights were set on the clouds beyond the hill they were climbing.
One day when I was in primary school my father took me and my sisters to the Toyama Army Academy. We sat in a bowl-shaped amphitheater that had grass-covered step benches. In the round clearing at the bottom a military band gave a concert.
As I look back on it now, it seems a very Meiji-era scene. The band members wore red trousers; the brass instruments glittered in the sunlight; the azaleas were in brilliant bloom around the garden; the ladies sported bright-colored parasols; and your feet couldn’t help tapping along with the melody the woodwinds played. Perhaps because I was just a child, I didn’t perceive the slightest specter of our dark militarism.
By the end of the Taishō era, in 1926, popular songs had become gloomy, full of glorification of despair. Some of them were “I Am But a Withered Pampas Grass in the Riverbed,” “Floating Downstream” and “When Evening Darkness Closes In.”
The sounds I used to listen to as a boy are completely different from those of today. First of all, there was no such thing as electric sound in those days. Even phonographs were not electric phonographs. Everything was natural sounds. Among these natural sounds were many that are lost forever. I will try to recall some of them.
The resounding “boom” of midday. This was the sound of the cannon at the Kudan Ushi-ga-fuchi army barracks, which fired a blank each day precisely at noon.
The fire-alarm bell. The sound of the fire-watchman’s wooden clappers. The sound of his voice and the drumbeats when he informed the neighborhood of the location of a fire.
The tōfu seller’s bugle. The whistle of the tobacco-pipe repairman. The sound of the lock on the hard-candy vendor’s chest of drawers. The tinkle of the wind-chime seller’s wares. The drumbeats of the man who repaired the thongs of wooden clogs. The bells of itinerant monks chanting sutras. The candy seller’s drum. The fire-truck bell. The big drum for the lion dance. The monkey trainer’s drum. The drum for temple services. The freshwater-clam vendor. The natto fermented-bean seller. The hot-red-pepper vendor. The goldfish vendor. The man who sold bamboo clothesline poles. The seedling vendor. The nighttime noodle vendor. The oden (dumplings-and-broth) vendor. The baked-sweet-potato vendor. The scissors grinder. The tinker. The morning-glory seller. The fishmonger. The sardine vendor. The boiled-bean seller. The insect vendor: “Magotaro bugs!” The humming of kite strings. The click of battledore and shuttlecock. Songs you sing while bouncing a ball. Children’s songs.
These lost sounds are all impossible to separate from my boyhood memories. And all are related to the seasons. They are cold, warm, hot or cool sounds. And they are allied with many different kinds of feelings. Happy sounds, lonely sounds, sad sounds and fearful sounds. I hate fires, so the sound of the fire alarm and the fire-watchman’s voice and drum shouting out the location of the fire were sounds that struck me with terror. “Bong, bong! Fire in Kanda district, Jinbōchō’.” At such noises I burrowed down under the covers and tried to make myself small.
During my “Konbeto-san” period I was awakened once in the middle of the night by my sister. “Akira, there is a fire. Hurry and get dressed.” Scurrying to pull on my kimono, I ran out to the entry, where I saw the house directly across from our gate in a mass of bright red flames. After that, I remember nothing.
When I became aware of my surroundings again, I found myself walking alone on Kagurazaka hill. I rushed home and found the fire had been put out, but the policeman guarding the emergency demarcation lines for the fire area wouldn’t let me through. When I pointed to the other side and said, “My house is over there,” he looked at me in surprise and let me pass.
As soon as I came into the house, my father’s wrath descended on me like thunder. Since I did not understand what had happened, we asked my sister. Apparently I had run away as soon as I saw the fire. In spite of her cries of “Akira! Akira!” I opened the front gate and escaped into the night.
Apropos of fires I remember something else: the horse-drawn fire wagons of those days. They were pulled by beautiful horses, and they were very elegant affairs with things that looked like pure brass sakéwarming bottles on top. I hate fires, but I had long wished to see these fire wagons just once more. My chance came years later on an open set at the 20th Century-Fox studios. It was a scene representing old New York City, and the fire wagon was pulled up in front of a church where masses of purple lilacs were in bloom.
But let me return to the sounds of Taishō. All of them carry memories for me. When I saw the child of the freshwater-clam vendor, who raised a pitiful wail to sell his goods, I felt fortunate in my own lot in life. Noon on a stifling summer’s day when the hot-red-pepper vendor passed by, I remember holding a bamboo rod for catching cicadas and studying the insects’ movement in the oak tree overhead. At the sound of a humming kite string I see myself standing on Nakanohashi bridge clutching the string under a windy winter sky almost strong enough to take it away from me.
If I were to continue enumerating the somewhat sad childhood recollections that arise from sound stimuli, there would be no end to it. But as I sit here and write about these childhood sounds, the noises that assail my ears are the television, the heater and the sound truck offering toilet paper in exchange for old newspapers; all are electrical sounds. Children of today probably won’t be able to fashion very rich memories from these sounds. Perhaps they are more to be pitied than even that freshwater-clam seller’s child.
Storytellers
AS I HAVE mentioned previously, my father’s attitude was one of extreme severity. My mother, who came from an Osaka merchant family and was thus less sensitive to finer points of samurai etiquette, received frequent scoldings about the fish set out on the individual meal trays. “Idiot! Are you trying to make me commit suicide?” Apparently there was a special procedure for serving the meal that precedes a ritual suicide. It seems it extended to the position of the fish on the plate. My father had worn his hair in a samurai topknot as a child, and even at the time these scoldings occurred he would frequently take a formal sitting position with his back to the art alcove and hold his sword straight up to polish the blade with abrasive powder. So it’s probably quite natural that he should have been angry, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for my mother and thinking it could hardly matter that much which way the fishhead pointed. Yet my mother continued to make the same mistake over and over again. And every time the fish on his tray was pointed the wrong way, my father scolded her. As I think about it now, it could have been that my father’s fault-finding was so frequent an occurrence that she became deaf to it, as the saying goes, “like a horse’s ears in an east wind.”
I’m still not sure how a meal tray is supposed to be presented to someone about to commit suicide; I have yet to put a scene of ritual suicide in one of my films. But when you are served a fish on a meal tray, usually its head points to the left and its belly is toward you to make it easy to reach. If you are going to commit suicide, I gather that it is served with its head pointing to the right and its belly away from you, because it would be insensitive to place a cut fish belly directly facing someone who is about to cut open his own abdomen. This is my assumption, but it is no more than an assumption.
And yet I can’t imagine that my mother would do something no Japanese would ever think of, like serving a fish in such a way as to make it difficult to reach, with its belly away from the person about to eat it. So she must have mistaken only the part about pointing the head to the left or right. And this alone made my father angry with her.
I, too, received my share of scoldings on the subject of mealtime etiquette. If I held my chopsticks the wrong way, my father would take his chopsticks by the points and rap me on the knuckles with the heavy ends. My father was very strict about these things, and yet, as I mentioned earlier, he f
requently took us to the movies.
They were mostly American and European movies. There was a theater on Kagurazaka hill called the Ushigomekan that showed nothing but foreign films. Here I saw a lot of action serials and William S. Hart movies. Among the serials I remember especially The Tiger’s Footprints, Hurricane Hutch, The Iron Claw and The Midnight Man.
The William S. Hart movies had a masculine touch like that of later films directed by John Ford, and more of them seemed to be set in Alaska than in the Wild West. An image remains emblazoned in my mind of William S. Hart’s face. He holds up a pistol in each hand, his leather armbands decorated with gold, and he wears a broad-brimmed hat as he sits astride his horse. Or he rides through the snowy Alaskan woods wearing a fur hat and fur clothing. What remains of these films in my heart is that reliable manly spirit and the smell of male sweat.
It’s possible that I had already seen some Chaplin films, but since I don’t remember doing Chaplin imitations at this age, it may not have been until later. Something else that may have taken place around this time or a little later remains an indelible movie memory. It happened when my oldest sister took me to the Asakusa district of Tokyo to see a movie about an expedition to the South Pole.
The leader of the sled dogs falls ill, and the exploration party has to leave him behind and drive on with the rest of the team. But the lead dog follows them, staggering, on the verge of death, and resumes his place at the head of the team. Seeing the faltering legs of this lead dog, I felt as if my heart would break. His eyelids were stuck together with pus; his tongue hung lolling from his mouth as he panted in pain for breath. It was a pathetic, gruesome and noble face. My eyes overflowed so with tears that I could hardly see.
On the blurry screen, one of the expedition members led the dog away across a slope. Finally he must have killed the beast, because a rifle report sounded loudly enough to frighten the other dogs and make them jump out of line. I burst out crying. My sister tried to comfort me, but it was no use. She gave up and took me out of the movie theater. But I kept on crying. I cried in the streetcar all the way home; I cried after I got inside the house. Even when my sister said she’d never take me to the movies again, I kept on crying. To this day I can’t forget that dog’s face, and whenever I think of it, I am overcome with reverence.
At this time of my life I did not have a great deal of enthusiasm for Japanese movies, in comparison with foreign pictures. But my interests were still those of a child.
My father didn’t just take us to the movies. He quite often took us to listen to storytellers in the music halls around Kagurazaka. The ones I remember are Kosan, Kokatsu and Enyu. Enyu was probably too subtle for my childish mind to find entertaining. I enjoyed Kokatsu’s introductions, but Kosan, who was called a master of the storytelling art, was one I really liked. I can’t forget two of his routines, Yonaki udon (Nighttime Noodles) and Uma no dengaku (The Horse in Miso Sauce). Kosan would pantomime the noodle vendor pulling his cart and lifting his voice in a whining refrain, and I remember how quickly I was swept into the mood of a frosty winter evening.
I never heard anyone but Kosan tell the Horse in Miso Sauce story. A pack-horse driver stops at a roadside teahouse to have some saké. He leaves his horse, which is carrying a load of miso salted-bean paste, tethered outside. But while he drinks, the horse gets loose and wanders off, and he sets out to look for it. As he asks everyone he comes across, his speech becomes sloppier and more hurried. Finally he asks a drunk by the road if he has “seen my horse with miso on it.” The drunk replies, “What? I’ve never even heard of horse cooked that way, much less seen it.” Then the pack-horse driver goes off down the tree-lined road, a dry wind blowing as he continues his search. I practically shuddered at the feeling of dusk on my skin, and I thought it was wonderful.
I liked the stories I heard the masters tell in the storytelling halls, but I liked the tenpura on buckwheat noodles we had on the way home even better. The flavor of this tenpura-soba on a cold night remains especially memorable. Even in recent years when I am coming home from abroad, as the plane nears the Tokyo airport I always think, “Ah, now for some tenpura-soba.”
But lately tenpura-soba doesn’t taste like it used to. And I miss something else. The old noodle shops used to pour out the day’s broth in front of the entrance in order to dry the bonito flakes used to make it; they could be reused. When you walked past, the flakes gave off a familiar fragrance. I remember this with great nostalgia. This is not to say that noodle shops never pour out the broth in front any more, but if they do, the smell is completely different.
The Goblin’s Nose
IT WAS NEARING graduation time. I was going down the steep street called Hattorizaka in front of our school on a “Taishō skate.” It was like a giant skateboard or a scooter, with one wheel in front and two in the back. You put your right foot on it, grabbed the handle and pushed with your left foot. I was careening down the hill, holding my breath, when the front wheel hit the metal cover of a gas main. I felt myself somersaulting through the air.
When I woke up, I was stretched out in the police box at the bottom of Hattorizaka hill. My right knee was badly hurt, and for some time I was virtually crippled and had to stay home from school. (My right knee is still bad to this day. Trying to protect it, I seem to do the opposite—I am constantly bumping it on things and hurting it. This knee is the reason I’m no good at putting in golf. It’s painful for me to bend over, so I can’t anticipate the undulations of the putting green very well. Otherwise I would no doubt be an expert putter.)
Around the time my knee healed, I went with my father to a public bathhouse. There we met an elderly gentleman with white hair and a white beard. My father seemed to know him, and exchanged greetings with him. The old man looked at me in my nakedness and asked, “Your son?” My father nodded. “He seems to be pretty weak. I’ve opened a fencing school near here—send him over.” When I asked my father later who that man had been, he explained he was the grandson of Chiba Shŭsaku.
Chiba Shŭsaku was a famous fencer of the late feudal age who had had a school at Otama-ga-ike and left behind many a tale of his prowess. Hearing that this man’s grandson’s school was in our immediate area, I was greedy for fencing lessons and began going there right away. But the white-haired, white-bearded person who was called the grandson of Chiba Shŭsaku did nothing but occupy the highest-ranking position at the school. Never once did he deign to give me a lesson.
The man who did give the lessons was the assistant to the master, and he had a shout that went “Chō, chō, yatta! Chō, yatta!” like a folk-dance refrain. Somehow this shout prevented me from respecting him very much. On top of that, the students were all neighborhood children who approached fencing as if it were a game of tag, and it was all very silly.
Just as I was feeling all these frustrations, the head of the fencing school was hit by an automobile, still a rarity at the time. For me, this was like hearing that the famous feudal swordsman Miyamoto Musashi had been kicked by his own horse. All the respect I had for the grandson of Chiba Shŭsaku disappeared completely.
Perhaps as a reaction to my experience with the Chiba school, I made up my mind to take lessons at the fencing school run by Takano Sazaburo, who had taken a whole generation by storm with his art. But my resolve proved to be no more than that of a “three-day monk.” I knew his reputation, but the reality of the violence of Takano’s lessons surpassed even my imagination.
In the thrust-and-parry practice I called out “O-men!” and struck. The same instant I was thrown flying against the wainscot, and darkness descended before my eyes, interspersed with scatters of stars resembling a fireworks display. Like these stars, my confidence in my kendō ability—or rather my pride in it—went plummeting through an empty sky.
A hundred proverbs and tag phrases come to mind. “The world is not an indulgent place.” “There is always something higher.” “The frog in his well.” “Looking at the ceiling through a hollow reed.” Once thr
own against the wall, I gained a bitter understanding of how presumptuous I had been to ridicule my previous fencing master for being hit by an automobile. My long, smug “goblin’s nose” was summarily broken off, never to grow back again. But prior to my graduation from primary school it was not only kendō that shattered the pride of my goblin’s nose.
I had hoped to attend Fourth Middle School. I failed the entrance examination. But my case was different from my brother’s when he failed the exam to enter First Middle School. It was an event that aroused no surprise. Even my record at Kuroda Primary School was something you would have to call representative of a frog in his well. I had applied myself only in the subjects I liked, such as grammar, history, composition, art and penmanship. In these areas no one could surpass me. But I couldn’t make myself like science and arithmetic, and only very reluctantly put enough energy into these subjects to stay a shade above disgrace. The result was obvious. Attempting to deal with the questions on science and arithmetic in the Fourth Middle School examination, I was at a complete loss.
I still have the same strengths and weaknesses. It seems I am of a literary rather than a scientific turn. An example is the fact that I can’t write numbers properly. They end up looking like the decorative ancient cursive syllabary. Learning to drive a car is out of the question; I am incapable of operating an ordinary still camera or even putting fluid in a cigarette lighter. My son tells me that when I use the telephone it’s as if a chimpanzee were trying to place a call.
Something Like an Autobiography Page 6