Please Enjoy Your Happiness

by Paul Brinkley-Rogers

  I was about to slip his meishi into my wallet, when he stopped me with a command in English: ‘Read!’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, my face bleached with fear, I am sure.

  The printing on one side of the card was in Japanese. I turned the card over. On the other side, in Latin letters, was:

  KANAGAWA PREFECTURAL POLICE DEPARTMENT

  YOKOSUKA POLICE STATION DETECTIVE

  GORO NAZAKA

  ‘There is no telephone number,’ Detective Nazaka said. ‘The important thing for you to remember is that the police know everything. Just ask for me, anywhere. Everybody knows who I am. If you want me, I am just minutes away, all the time, every day. Do not make the serious error of forgetting that in Japan the police know everything.’

  Thank God, I thought, Commander Crockett is not here to see this now, because if he were here they would have to call an ambulance to take him away. The other thought that flashed like a streak of lightning was the description of a Yokosuka jail cell given to me by my pal Red Downs after one of his friends spent a night there, for ‘insulting a policeman and offending the public’, whatever that meant. ‘They put you in a cage,’ Red said, ‘and you have to sit there with your legs crossed, not moving, for many hours, while they threaten you with castration . . . although that is probably just your imagination because the interrogation is done in Japanese until they acknowledge you don’t speak it and they have to hand you over to the US Navy shore patrol. So, in other words, your life, as you know it, is over.’

  Nazaka sat down at my table with a sigh, as if he was devastated by weariness.

  After telling me with some satisfaction that Japanese business cards are ‘vastly superior’ because they are a standard 91 by 55 mm – ‘much larger’ than Chinese business cards, which measure, he said, exactly 90 by 54 mm, and ‘many times larger’ than American business cards, a mere 88.9 by 50.8 mm – the conversation went like this:

  ‘You have not ordered your coffee,’ he said. ‘Please order!’

  ‘Yes, sir. Kohi kudasai [coffee, please],’ I told the manager, who was looking at me with amusement.

  ‘Oh,’ Nazaka said. ‘You speak Japanese. Very impressive.’

  ‘Oh no, sir. That is just something that Yukiko taught me.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Kaji Yukiko. You are both troublemakers. But you are interesting troublemakers. That is why you caught my attention. I don’t like trouble. But I do like to have my intelligence challenged. My imagination is important too. Thank you for stealing my patience.’

  ‘I am so sorry. I did not mean to do that.’

  ‘Well . . . I see. There is evidence that you are not an American. You apologize rather well.’

  ‘Oh! Thank you. Good detective work! I am British.’

  ‘British! British . . . A noble island people with a long history, like we Japanese. Of course, you were savages until the Romans came to conquer you. Your warriors were decorated with blue dye. So your cultural history is not as long as ours. We have never been conquered!’

  ‘That is true, I suppose,’ I said.

  I forgot on purpose that Japan had very recently been conquered – or maybe it was just defeated – by the United States of America. Because I was not sure who had conquered and who had been seduced and ravished after the end of the fighting, I decided not to raise this as an issue.

  But I did remember the heroics of Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, who was, in effect, the last queen of the Britons in those ancient times. After her daughters had been raped and she had been flogged, she fought the Roman legions in her chariot. Roman historian Cassius Dio wrote that she was ‘possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women’, I recalled from my English schoolboy days.

  ‘We had Boadicea,’ I said, trying to sound proud.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the detective said. ‘She was tall and had red hair to her waist. Boadicea also had a piercing glare, like your friend, Miss Kaji.’ There was a sudden smile, which just as quickly vanished.

  ‘That is an interesting thought,’ I said, wondering what you would look like, Yuki-chan, wielding a spear in defence of your house on the hill. I also wondered again whether I should remind Detective Nazaka that although it was true that Britain had been conquered by the Romans, Japan had been conquered by the Americans. But I did not, fortunately.

  ‘Boadicea was an excellent national hero for the British,’ Nazaka said. ‘She was defeated. Of course, we Japanese had Amaterasu, the sun goddess, the founder of our imperial dynasty. Yes. You had a queen. But we had a deity! Deities cannot be defeated!’

  I wondered where our chat was going. I was piling hope upon hope that you, Yukiko, would not enter the Mozart.

  So I summoned up courage and said, ‘Thank you for your help at the train station the other day.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes. You are a lucky boy.’

  ‘Thank you also for your help at the suicide scene.’

  Again, he said slowly, ‘Yes . . . Yes. She is lucky you were there.’

  ‘Can you tell me about the man at the station?’

  ‘You are lucky he did not have his sword,’ the detective said.

  ‘Sword!’ I exclaimed, in a high octave, not believing what I had just been told.

  ‘Yes. That man was a minor gangster. Gangsters often carry a sword. If they carry a briefcase, they have a short sword – a tanto – inside. It is a matter of honour, as well as a good means of defence. If it is a matter of honour, they can use it to kill.’

  ‘Really!’ I was stumbling to express myself. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I will explain. English is not a problem for me, by the way. I was educated in Manchuria. Like your friend, Miss Kaji, I was repatriated at the end of the war. It is not a problem for me to speak with foreigners. I rather enjoy it, in fact . . . I even enjoy talking with foreigners who are trouble.’

  My face turned red again. The palms of my hands started sweating.

  Detective Nazaka was in total control. I had no power, no cards to play, other than the odd fact that I was a British kid in the American Navy, which must have caused the worldly Nazaka to take a small amount of interest in me and my fate.

  ‘You should remember that man’s name,’ the detective said. ‘It is Shinoda Yusuke. Do not go near him. I don’t know if your friend, Miss Kaji, told you this, but Shinoda is her boyfriend.’

  ‘Her boyfriend?’ I said loudly. My hand holding the tiny coffee cup was trembling.

  ‘Her boyfriend,’ the detective said again. ‘We Japanese call that kind of man a yakuza. He is a gangster. He is an aniki [‘big brother’ or leader of a small squad of gangsters]. We know all about him. The police know everything.’

  ‘I don’t understand. She never mentioned him.’ I looked alarmed, maybe even annoyed or jealous.

  ‘Well, you see, Miss Kaji left Mr Shinoda. He had beaten her with his fists. She ran away. When she arrived in Japan from Manchuria she settled in Hiroshima. Most of the city was destroyed by the genshibakudan [the atomic bomb]. There was a lot of open space there. Lots of refugees built shacks or put up tents. There were many guns in Hiroshima because the Japanese military had many warehouses and depots around the edges of the city. Many bad men got hold of those guns. That is where the yakuza criminal culture of my country began. With those guns they controlled all the thousands of black markets set up in Japan after the war.’

  I was saying, ‘Yes . . . Yes,’ over and over again. I was struggling hard to accept this information. My understanding of things Japanese was limited to the occasional glimpses of the small magic kingdom of fantastic emotions ruled by you, Yukiko, who had trapped me there for reasons known only unto yourself. Like a spider, I thought in a moment of terrifying inspiration, like the spider feared even by an authentic American hero, Commander Crockett.

  The detective gave me a minute to absorb the shock. After I blinked, and rubbed my eyes, he began again, but carefully, as if he were torturing me.

  ‘I have given you warnings,’
he said. ‘I am interested in you. I am interested in the history of Miss Kaji because as Japanese born in Manchuria we are both strangers in Japan. We were both educated in Manchuria too. I don’t know much yet about Miss Kaji’s history in Japan, but she is clearly an educated woman. I am still trying to understand why she took such an interest in you.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, remembering her letters. ‘I think she just needed someone to talk to.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe it was for reasons only known to a woman. I am no expert. I have never been married. I am a man who likes to drink . . . excuse me: I am a man who has to drink. The only women I know, I know from the bars. They are good, strong women . . . survivors, I suppose. Strength of character too! Admirable, in fact.’

  Suddenly, I was able to see Nazaka not as a policeman, but as a man. He was looking at me closely too. I think at that moment he saw me not as a puny military juvenile, but as a very young man.

  ‘You should know,’ he said, ‘that from our police records we know that Mr Shinoda violently assaulted Miss Kaji when she was a young person in Hiroshima. In this country it happens sometimes that when a young woman is attacked she will demand that her attacker should marry her. No one will want her, you see, because her honour has been taken. In this case, Shinoda’s big boss did not order him to marry her. So she lived with him. She was his woman. He treated her very badly. I am sorry I have to tell you all about this, but for several weeks I have been feeling that you should know.’

  I tried to say thank you. But the words would not come. I stayed silent. It was as if I had been hit by a bomb blast.

  ‘Also,’ the detective said, ‘we had to let Mr Shinoda go. He did not have his sword or any other weapon. He came to Yokosuka to look for Miss Kaji and take her back to Hiroshima. He found her by accident. You were there. Mr Shinoda did not know what to do, because you were there. But he is still in the city, we believe. Please be careful. I have already told Miss Kaji to be careful too, but she said she has the means to protect herself.’

  ‘What kind of means?’ I asked.

  The detective’s face became grim. Before it became grim he had looked a little like a schoolmaster counselling a schoolboy. But now he tugged at the collar of his rumpled white shirt. He pulled at the knot of his ultra-narrow brown and gold tie. He brushed the tobacco ashes from his raincoat. His teeth were bad. His eyes were bloodshot. He pulled a floppy hat of the kind usually worn by children out of his pocket and planted it firmly on his head. He looked at me closely again, as if he were sizing me up, as if he were measuring how much backbone existed, to the exact millimetre, in a British kid’s spine. He sucked in his breath and said, ‘Saaaaaaaaa.’ This is the expression, I came to know later, that Japanese often use when they don’t know, or don’t want to know, or don’t want to explain. ‘Saaaaaaaa,’ he said again. And then he was silent.

  The manager came over to ask if I wanted more coffee. I looked at my watch. You would be arriving soon.

  The detective got to his feet. ‘I am not going to say anything to the US Navy liaison officer about this conversation,’ he said finally. ‘This conversation is not official. In fact, it never happened.’

  With a nod first to me, and then to the manager, who bowed deeply, the detective headed to the door and quickly vanished, leaving me in state of confusion, the like of which has never been equalled. If you had not shown up that day to continue my ‘education’, as you put it, I probably would have accepted that as the best thing, under the circumstances.

  But suddenly there you were, with a smile on your face that caused me to gulp several times. It was as if the sun itself was smiling on the first day of spring. Maybe it wasn’t the smile. Maybe it was my reaction to a combination of this new glimpse of your past and the realization that you were so happy to see me, and that life would go on and on, no matter what. You studied the look on my face, and I could see from your lips that you liked what you saw when I was so happy to see you again.

  I thought at that moment of a fragment of verse by the impossibly handsome British poet Rupert Brooke, who my mother once told me she wished had been her lover. He died at the age of twenty-eight during the First World War, killed of all things by an infected mosquito bite.

  The way that lovers use is this;

  They bow, catch hands, with never a word.

  And their lips meet, and they do kiss,

  —So I have heard.

  ‘Come on!’ you said with an impatient delight. ‘Come on! Come with me!’

  You tucked your hand under my arm, got a firm grip, and marched me to the door.

  The manager beamed, and even discreetly clapped his hands, so I could get just a hint of applause.

  The uniformed schoolgirls dropped their French studies again and twittered like so many busy finches. I could hear their voices, their wonderment, at the sight of Anthony Perkins leaving the Mozart in the company of a mysterious woman.

  ‘Who was she?’ I am sure they were asking each other. ‘Are they lovers? Are they friends?’

  12

  Yukiko’s List

  For truth or illusory appearance does not reside in the object in so far as it is intuited, but in the judgment upon the object, in so far as it is thought. It is therefore quite correct to say that the senses do not err, not because they always judge correctly, but because they do not judge at all. Hence truth and error, consequently also, illusory appearance as the cause of error, are only to be found in a judgment, that is, in the relation of an object to our understanding. In a cognition, which completely harmonizes of the understanding, no error can exist. In a representation of the senses – as not containing any judgment – there is also no error. But no power of nature can of itself deviate from its own laws.

  IMMANUEL KANT, FROM CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

  You were taking me to see Rashomon. This was the first film you and I saw together. It was screened in a small, damp theatre, the odour of which replicated the smell of a dark English forest, but with added Japanese touches of burnt tobacco, dried fish, and umeboshi, the sour pickled plums you nibbled with teenage abandon.

  ‘Umeboshi. Very good!’ you said with extraordinary enthusiasm. ‘Umeboshi keeps you young. Umeboshi keeps you strong. Do you know that long ago samurai ate umeboshi to stay strong in battle? You are a military man. You should know that! Umeboshi are good to eat when you need to fight. Also, many famous poets and writers eat umeboshi too, because the sour taste stimulates the imagination . . . Yes! Yes! You must eat umeboshi too. You must eat right now!’

  ‘But I am already young. I am already strong,’ I protested. ‘Also, I am not really a “military man” at all.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I know that. But you will need to fight. It is natural, you know, for young men. It is not good to spend all your time in thought. Sometimes there has to be action. You have to act. Sometimes you have to act and fail. But you will probably mostly succeed. I believe that with all my heart . . . Please have an umeboshi. They are supai [sour]. You will suffer, but that is a natural part of being man too. Women know those kind of things, by the way. Please respect that. Women raise their sons to suffer, and to die. It is very, very sad, but you must accept that truth. If you accept truth, then you can be happy, happy! Also, women raise their daughters to give life. Yes, give life. But not to suffer.’

  I understood immediately when I bit into one of those salted plums that you needed to be very brave indeed to be able to love them as much as you did. Maybe it was you who was anticipating a fight. Maybe you were thinking about the future. For the moment, I had decided not to tell you about my encounter with Detective Nazaka. I wanted to see whether you would tell me more about the man who growled like a bear, and whether you would specify how you would defend yourself if he attacked again.

  ‘What is this film – Rashomon – about?’ I asked, unaware that asking the question would prompt you to launch into fifteen minutes of feverish explanations marked by hand waving, finger pointing, exaggerated facial expre
ssions, much biting into umeboshi to stimulate the imagination, frantic questions (‘Are you sure you understand me?’), and such statements as, ‘Please open your mind and try not to be stupid . . . oh, I am sorry, I forgot. There are no subtitles.’

  We saw at least nine films that summer. Sometimes we saw two and even three films in one day. I know now – thanks to the availability of vintage films on DVD – that I had a front-row seat to what has become known as the golden age of Japanese cinema. I also know now that you bought tickets for both of us, resolutely pushing my hand away if I offered to pay, because you were determined that I should know something about cinematic art. You were also trying to show me the totality of post-war Japan – including the often desperate plight of its women – by insisting that I watch films with a strong social or political context, especially those that dealt with devastation caused by war.

  Rashomon was the first of these films. You said in reply to my question about the meaning of the film, ‘No one knows what this film is about . . . Some say it is about truth, or the relative lack of truth.’

  I stared at you, not understanding. The only films I had seen to date were at the so-called Saturday Morning Pictures for children at the Odeon Theatre on the banks of the River Thames in Staines, England, and B movies at drive-in theatres in Freeport, Illinois. In England: The Cisco Kid, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry flicks. In the United States: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Teenage Monster, Teenage Cave Man.

  Also, I was in the navy, where everything had to have meaning. There were manuals and diagrams and charts and rules for everything, all outlined in excruciating gibberish. There were, of course, those training films on venereal diseases illustrating in great detail the meaning of voluminous amounts of pus, hideous sores, spots, rashes, itches, and painful swelling of the testicles. Everything was labelled on the Shangri-La:

  Urinal

  Men’s

  Aim (not on deck)

  Flush

  Button5

  ‘But, how can that be?’ I said of the plot of Rashomon. ‘How can there be any doubt about truth? Man bites dog. Dog bites man. That’s a story, right?’