Sayonara: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  THE CURATOR: “It Is unlikely that even one foreigner in all our history has truly understood Japan.”

  Early next morning we left Osaka in Lt. Bailey’s Chevy and drove along the side of a river which for untold centuries had carried water to the rice fields of this region. It lay far below the level of the road, hemmed in by strong dikes built many generations ago and upon all the land there was the mark of much toil and the footprints of many people. Wherever we looked women were at work hauling and lifting.

  Our entrance to Kyoto was memorable, for we saw in the distance the soaring towers of great Buddhist temples, their tiers built with corners upswept in the Chinese style. And along one street we caught a glimpse of the famed Heian Shinto shrine, a glorious vermilion thing with enormous blood-red torii guarding it.

  But today we were not interested in shrines or temples. We went along a side street burdened with age-old pines, where underneath a canopy of evergreen we stopped to enter a museum. It was built like a temple, with nearly a hundred statues of stone and wood, as if the old heroes of Japan had gathered to greet us, frozen forever in their stiff ceremonial attitudes. The curator hurried up to us and when he learned that I could speak no Japanese he summoned a striking young man. He was in his thirties, I judged, and wore heavy glasses. He had excellent teeth, a frank smile and a rare command of English.

  “I studied at Oxford,” he explained, “and served for some years in our store on Fifth Avenue and for two years in our store in Boston. What did you wish to see?” It was clear that he did not know Hana-ogi and that he supposed her to be merely some attractive street girl I had picked up for the day. He was therefore somewhat distressed when she spoke to him in Japanese, so I interrupted and said, “I understand you have an unusual collection of prints of Hana-ogi, of Ogi-ya.”

  Immediately he withdrew deep inside himself and studied me carefully. Then he looked at Hana-ogi and bowed very low. “You are Hana-ogi-san of Takarazuka,” he said in precise English. “You are very beautiful. And you, Major, are Lloyd Gruver. Yes, yes. Even in Kyoto we have heard of you.” I did not know whether he meant that he had heard of me as a flier or that he had heard of Hana-ogi and me, but he nodded formally and said, “I can truly appreciate your desire to see the famous prints of the other Hana-ogi.”

  He led us upstairs, past the frowning Japanese heroes, and I felt that I was in hostile land. In this strange building I at last got the feeling of being an invader, surrounded by an alien religion and a strange art many centuries older than my own native land. I experienced the feeling even more deeply when I sat on the floor in front of an easel while the young curator went to a locked cabinet. Hana-ogi must have sensed my uneasy thoughts, for she put her hand in mine and whispered, “Now you see greatest beauty.”

  I was totally unprepared for what I saw. I had developed a mental impression of the ancient Hana-ogi. She must have looked, I thought, something like my Hana-ogi: extraordinarily beautiful, yet with a distinctive oriental cast. I believed the pictures of her would look something like Botticellis.

  I shall never forget the extreme shock of that first print. The young curator held it from me for a moment and said in reverence, “The first one is of Hana-ogi as a young girl, just come to Ogi-ya. It is by one of our finest artists, Shuncho.” Then, bursting with pride and affection, he displayed the picture.

  It was disgusting. The girl’s face was pasty and flat. Her hair was a mass of yellow combs. She was swathed in seven kimonos that gaped at the neck. But worst of all, her eyes were caricatures, mere slants, and her teeth were a horrid black. In this portrait of dead beauty I could not find one shred of loveliness.

  I must have betrayed my disappointment for both Hana-ogi and the curator tried to explain that the design was controlled by Japanese artistic tradition, the way a portrait of a woman by Picasso does not appear really beautiful. I remember trying real hard to remember who Picasso was, but before I could get it they took away the first picture and brought in another by an artist whose name I didn’t catch, but my dismay was greater than before. The famous courtesan had the same pasty face, slit eyes and funereal teeth, but this time her head was twisted into such an angle that I remember thinking, “If she doesn’t straighten up shell strangle.” In her left hand she held one of the endless combs which she was jabbing into her mass of oily hair, and in her right she grasped a black ebony fan which made the whole picture look stupid. Even the half dozen kimonos were poorly painted and in odd colors.

  It was the third picture which caused the argument. I took down the name of the artist, Masayoshi, for he showed Hana-ogi returning to the House of Ogi-ya after her elopement. She was dressed in many kimonos covered by a purple robe and followed by two barefoot servants carrying an umbrella and a massive bouquet of flowers. I studied the picture with dismay, for I recognized it immediately as one that Hana-ogi had described for me that night when she danced the story of her predecessor, but what she had not told me was that this picture of Hana-ogi showed a remarkably ugly woman with a big nose, dirt smears over her eyebrows and paunchy cheeks. “Why she’s ugly!” I cried. I felt defrauded.

  My Hana-ogi withdrew as if she had been struck and the young man pulled the print away. “I am afraid,” he said in clipped syllables, “that you have no appreciation of our art.”

  “I was told that this Hana-ogi was the most beautiful woman in Japanese history.”

  “She was,” the young man insisted.

  “But these pictures …”

  “It’s our style of art,” he explained.

  “But look at Hana-ogi-san here. This one. She’s really beautiful.”

  The young man did not look at Hana-ogi-san. Instead he took the portrait of the ancient Hana-ogi back to the cabinet and returned with another. Quietly he said, “I am afraid you are blind to the problem, Major. But would you like me to explain in a few words?”

  “Indeed I would,” I said.

  “You’ll forgive me if they’re very simple words?”

  “I will. I’ve heard so much of this Hana-ogi I don’t want to go home disappointed.”

  “If you have a free mind,” he assured me, “you will go home elated The picture I’m about to show you is by one of Japan’s supreme artists, Utamaro. Have you heard of him?”

  “No.”

  “No bother, but will you believe me when I say his work is prized all over the world? Good. You are going to see one of his loveliest creations. When you look at it don’t think of Hana-ogi. Think only of this heavenly yellow.”

  He flashed the picture before me and the yellow was indeed like a fine sunlight. He continued his narration, pointing out the perfect proportions of the design, the exquisite line, the subdued color harmonies and the suggested textures. I followed him carefully and agreed with what he said. Then brusquely he said, “As for the face of Hana-ogi, we Japanese think it was sent down from heaven.”

  The intensity of his comment caught me unaware and from some distant corner of my brain came the affirmation, “The men who knew this woman thought she was beautiful.” And immediately there came another terrible memory—of a time when some of us young officers were attending a wedding and we saw the bride and there was a moment of awful silence and somebody behind me whispered, “Well, every man thinks the girl he’s marrying is pretty.” And I could see myself back in America, about to introduce my Hana-ogi to strangers who had never known her and I could feel them cringing away from my Japanese girl—unlovely to them—as I now cringed away from the long-dead Hana-ogi. I looked again at the treasured face, at the curious slanted eyes and the black teeth and from my own humility and the vanished green houses of Yoshiwara came the assurance that she was beautiful. I said, “I think I understand.”

  The young man started to take the Utamaro away but I said, “Let me study it some more.” I pointed to the colorful printing in the upper corner and asked what it was. During the remarkable discussion that followed the young curator stood crisply at attention with his left hand up
on the easel. I have only to close my eyes to see him standing there with his faded echo of the great Hana-ogi.

  “It’s impossible to say what this printing means, Major. It’s a poem, written by some unimportant man who visited Hana-ogi. These symbols are his name: The man from the other side of Yanagiwara. That’s all we know about him, a stranger who came from a distant village and saw the great woman once. But his poem will live among us forever.”

  “What did he write?”

  “I’m sorry but I cannot tell you the meaning.”

  “You can’t translate the symbols?”

  “Oh, yes!” he assured me proudly. “I was translator to our Foreign Office during the peace treaty at San Francisco. But the Japanese language like Japanese beauty and Japanese life can never be truly translated For example, the name Hana-ogi means flower and fan, and its symbols are woven into the poem, but what they are intended to mean in this particular poem no one can say. The stranger from Yanagiwara himself did not know.”

  “What do you mean, he didn’t know?”

  “In Japan a man sees a beautiful woman and he expresses words, but they have no specific meaning.”

  “How can words have no specific meaning? There’s the symbol. Right there. Why can’t you read it?”

  “Ah, but I can, Major. Trouble is, I can read it in so many ways. According to one way the stranger from Yanagiwara is saying, ‘Even a mere glimpse in autumn of that night-blooming flower, Hana-ogi, floods my soul with summer.’ ”

  “That’s clear enough,” I said.

  “But it isn’t clear, because I’m only guessing that that’s what the stranger meant, for the words can also be read, ‘Hana-ogi is more beautiful than that evening flower I once laid on a fan for a love of old days and brings no chill of autumn to my heart.’ ”

  I was confused. “You mean those same symbols can mean such different things?”

  “They can also mean many other things, Major. Our life in Japan is one of implied meanings, hidden significances. For example, they say that you have fallen in love with Hana-ogi-san. Which Hana-ogi?”

  At the mention of her name Hanayo-chan put her hand around mine and I said, “Which one? This one. The living one.”

  “But which of the living ones?”

  “This one. Here!”

  The young man, who must have hated Americans for taking his art galleries in Boston and London and New York, stood bitterly erect by the easel and said softly, “But there are many Hana-ogi-sans with us today. She is famous in Japan, this girl, and deeply loved. There is the peasant girl who is good to her mother and her six sisters. There is the young courtesan who was in training to be a geisha. Didn’t you know that her father had sold her to a green house? There is the famous beauty who was rescued by one of the rich Matsudaira men. The one who committed suicide. His daughter, Fumiko-san, is at Takarazuka now. Or the gracious actress Hana-ogi who always used to be seen with Fumiko-san. Or the ascetic young woman who aspired to be Japan’s greatest dancer. Or the reckless girl who ran away with an American flier. You see, we are a very subtle people. Our words mean many things.”

  I think that Hana-ogi had some intimation of what the young man was saying, for she kept her hand close about mine and when he was finished she rose and pulled me to my feet. Staring purposefully at the young man she said quietly, “I never tie my obi so,” and she pointed to the picture of long-dead Hana-ogi, the rare, the wonderful courtesan whose memory still burned and she indicated Hana-ogi’s obi, tied in front the way professional prostitutes did to advertise.

  I wanted to maul the young curator for having told me these things but suddenly he smiled at me and said, “I must show you one more portrait, Major. In some ways it is the loveliest of all.” He brought us a delicate thing, all gold and yellow and faded blue. From it a young Hana-ogi looked back across her shoulder at us, sweet and beautiful as I had wanted her to be. She seemed to tantalize the mind and in a lower corner of the picture appeared one of her youthful attendants, a child of nine playing with battledore and shuttlecock. Lovingly the curator indicated the child and said, “This was Tatsuta. Even the names of the children who attended our immortal Hana-ogi are recorded.” Then quite unexpectedly he placed his hand tenderly on my Hana-ogi’s head and rumpled her hair. “This one was a Tatsuta, too. See, the obi tied in back.”

  I thought for a moment that he had told me of my Hana-ogi’s history because he was in love with her and jealous of me; but as we left the treasure room I turned and saw him jealously storing the forty-one portraits of the famous girl who long ago had graced the green houses of Yoshiwara and I realized that he was indeed in love with Hana-ogi, but not with my Hana-ogi.

  On the drive home we were silent until we came to a part of the river bank where three women were tilling a rice field. Then suddenly Hana-ogi took my hand and kissed it and whispered, “We very poor. My father no want to sell to geisha house. Japanese fathers love their daughters. Same like in America. But …” We never said another word about it, not about the Matsudaira man who had bought her nor about his daughter Fumiko-san for whom Hana-ogi now felt responsible. For a few minutes after leaving the museum I had feared that knowing my Hana-ogi’s history might make it impossible for me to marry her, but one mention of her father ended such doubts, for I recalled the old Japanese farmer we had watched on that first night we had slept together. That was poverty, when a man sifted each grain of soil by hand to make it yield a little more rice. I knew that if Hana-ogi’s father had sold her it was because he had no human alternative. I said with new dedication, “Now we’ll get married,” but she merely drew closer to me and I believe that she had taken me to Kyoto so that I might know of her childhood and that if the curator had not told me, she would have done so when we studied the pictures. With my right arm I drew her tousled head to mine and drove the car quite slowly beside the ancient, turbulent river.

  I was disturbed, however, that she had not yet actually said that she would come with me to America. I judged that she was hesitating in order to provide me with an escape from my rash promise to leave the Air Force. Then, in a dramatic way, I learned that perhaps she really was determined not to marry me, for an elderly woman showed me Hana-ogi’s reasons for staying in Japan.

  TERUKO-SAN: “These wonderful little girls work desperately to learn the steps—the way Hana-ogi once did.”

  This Gentle mask-faced Japanese woman came to the Marine Barracks in Takarazuka accompanied by a smart young woman who spoke good English and they explained that they wished me to accompany them on a matter of greatest importance. I followed them to the Bitchi-bashi, then through the vegetable stalls and onto the footpath leading to the girls’ dormitories.

  This was the first time I had been on this path and as I approached the building where Hana-ogi had lived before she met me I grew quite excited but then I saw the dormitory itself and it was forbidding: a plain wooden building covered with bamboo matting and protected by a row of cryptomeria trees planted to make a high hedge. The house was like a fortress and I was pleased at the prospect of invading it.

  But my guide didn’t stop there. Instead, she led me down a narrow path past the cryptomeria trees and up to a small hill that overlooked the river. There she stopped at a curious gate that looked like the miniature entrance to a temple and after opening this she took me into a beautiful garden which surrounded a superior Japanese house made of highly polished wood. It was guarded by an enormous flat stone upon which sat nine young girls wearing the green skirts of the Takarazuka uniform. The girls jumped to their feet and bowed very low until the elderly woman had passed.

  She led me to a room covered with exquisite white tatami and containing at one end a raised platform of matched cypress planks polished a golden brown. It was obvious that this was the room of a dancing teacher.

  The woman introduced herself as Teruko-san, one of the first great Takarazuka stars. She had been, in her day, a legend and now she handed the legend down to the young girls waiting
for her on the rock. They came to her five days a week and submitted themselves to the tyranny of her masklike face which now drew close to mine.

  Teruko-san sat with me on the floor, arranging her kimono with precision, and I saw that her garments were five shades of gray matched in delicate harmony and accented by a single thin line of blue showing about the neck. Her tabi were white and accentuated the outlines of beautiful and powerful feet. They reminded me of Hana-ogi’s superb feet and Teruko-san must have intended this, for she said promptly, “Major Gruver, if you cause Hana-ogi to leave us it is not only the great stage she will lose. It is also this.” With a slow motion of her hand, as if she were participating in a dance, she indicated the perfect room, stopping with her finger pointed at a frame containing a massive motto written in strong characters by a great Japanese novelist.

  She said, “Our motto: ‘Be pure. Be right. Be beautiful.’ ”

  Then she said, “When I die Hana-ogi is to follow me, for she is our finest dancer. I believe she is to be even greater than I, for when I danced I was alone and stood out like Fuji-san. But today there are many good dancers and Hana-ogi dominates them all. And do you know why they are good?”

  I bowed deferentially toward her and she said, “Yes, they are excellent because I teach them as a famous old man taught me. In this way we keep alive the art of Japan.”

  As Teruko-san droned on I could hear Hana-ogi’s bright voice with its sometimes-hoarse edge cutting at my heart, I could see the meticulous manner in which she folded the edges of her kimono to outline her wonderfully strong neck, and I could see the classic manner in which she danced. I could believe that these things had come in part from this room. Teruko-san said, “If you persist, Hana-ogi will never return to this room.”

  Then she pulled a clever trick. She said, “You must sit here, Major Gruver, for I am to give a lesson,” and the interpreter went to fetch the nine young girls. They came in quietly, practiced little steps on the tatami then deftly dropped away their green skirts and climbed onto the low stage in bright dancing tights.