The China Lover

by Ian Buruma

  “Hiya, fella,” he said, as he sat down at my table, nodding at my one fellow diner. “How’s tricks?” I don’t know why, for I barely knew Tony, and my troubles didn’t really concern him, but since I’d already confided in everyone else, I told him my story anyway. He listened carefully until I was finished, and said in his gravelly Brooklyn voice, “Let me tell you something about this country, kid. All this crap about ‘democracy’ and ‘civic rights’ and ‘social equality’ and ‘feudalism’ is just a crock of shit, to make the Americans feel good. Guys like Willoughby throw their weight around in Japan, because they think they’re big shots. And this Gunn fellow? In the end it don’t amount to a hill of beans. Japanese have their own ways of doing things, and the more you think you know them, the less you actually know. It’s only when you realize you don’t know them that you’re getting somewhere, do you follow me?”

  Though I’d never regarded Tony Lucca as an authority on Japanese culture, I still felt too blue to argue with him. Besides, I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. He gave off a smell of aftershave lotion, pungent but not unpleasant.

  “I’m not one of your eggheads,” Tony resumed, as if I hadn’t figured that out for myself, “but I’ve dealt with enough Mama-sans and Papa-sans to know a few things you can’t learn from books. Everything here is about connections, kid. This place is like a huge web of mutual obligations, duties, debts, little favors, big favors, all with consequences. Every favor given is a debt acquired. Haven’t you ever noticed how a Japanese won’t lift a finger if he sees a stranger being run over by a car, or keeling over in a heart attack, or getting roughed up by a bunch of hoods? Not because he is coldhearted. Quite the opposite: it’s out of concern for the other guy. If I help you, you’re forever in my debt, see? That’s how every Japanese is stuck to the great big web that is Japan. And the spider in the middle, well, let’s call him the Emperor. And if some Commie is stupid enough to lob a rock at him, it makes no blind bit of difference, because the spider never moves, he may even be dead, for all we know, or a convenient fairy tale, but he’s the God to whom all his subjects feel they owe the greatest debt, that of being born a Japanese.”

  I was thinking of Hotta. Wasn’t he Japanese? He sure didn’t worship the Emperor. But I was beginning to get interested. Tony was a rough diamond, but there was shrewdness there, perhaps even a kind of wisdom. “What about us?” I asked. “What about the Americans, SCAP? Will the Japanese owe a debt to us, too?”

  Tony looked at me with benign contempt. “Nah,” he said. “We’re here today, gone tomorrow, a mere ripple in the lake of Japanese history. It makes no difference what we do.” So, what were we doing here? “Making money, fucking, surviving, that’s all.” What about learning from the Japanese? “Learning? Let me tell you something, kid. There are two ways to learn something in life. There’s my way, the business way, sticking your hands deep in the common shit. Let me take a look at your hands, kid.” He took my right hand, turned it over, and stroked my palm. “It don’t look to me that you want to get these babies dirty, so you do it the other way, the way I never could. You go back to school and learn—the language, the history, the art, the politics, everything. You study until you know enough to come back and not just be another American bum. You know what the problem is with these guys who think they’re in charge of this place? The problem is that they don’t know shit, but they’re too ignorant to know that they don’t know shit.”

  15

  IT TOOK ME a while to get used to life back “home.” Despite my dismissal by Willoughby, I was still able to get a scholarship from the U.S. government, so I had enrolled for a Japanese language course at Columbia University in New York under Professor Bennet D. Wilson, a former missionary who had specialized in Ainu grammar. Professor Wilson was one of the last people on earth to speak Ainu. In the 1920s, he had translated the New Testament, a rather quixotic project, if you ask me, since there were only a handful of Ainu left who could speak their own language, and Professor Wilson’s Bible was, so far as I know, the only document ever written in Ainu. His spoken Japanese was not fluent, and rather quaint. I had heard that Wilson had met the Emperor once and impressed him by speaking in the traditional court idiom dating back to the Heian Period. If true, this was indeed impressive, but not much good to us as students.

  Us, apart from myself, consisted of two older men who worked for the government and kept to themselves; a loner with terrible acne whose only interest was Japanese prints; a tight-assed fellow who studied eighteenth-century Confucianism; and a homely girl with a ponytail and braces on her teeth, who studied Japanese because she had fallen in love with Arthur Waley’s translation of the Tale of Genji. I got along best with the homely girl.

  But I missed Tokyo so much it hurt: my friends, the theater, the movies, the sound of the cicadas in summer, the cries of the sweet potato vendors, the public baths, the temple incense and pine trees of Kamakura, and the boys, the boys. New York City wasn’t Bowling Green, but to me it seemed a cold and joyless city, filled with tight-faced people rushing to and from their work. As for romance, the very idea terrified me. During my first semester at Columbia, a young man was stabbed to death after making a pass at another student. The murderer got off with a minimal sentence. His act of “self-defense” seemed entirely reasonable to most people. In any case, even if I had plucked up the courage to approach them, American men looked so unattractive, with their coarse skin and loud booming voices. And the homos, if anything, were worse. I did once enter one of those depressing bars, somewhere on West Fourth Street, where queens in tight pants and painted eyebrows congregated, screeching away in their peculiar argot. I lasted about five minutes, before fleeing alone into the night.

  And so I retreated into my lonely shell, eating box lunches with chopsticks at the university canteen, trying to read Japanese books, perhaps a bit too ostentatiously. But when someone, looking over my shoulder, was foolish enough to ask me a question, I gave them short shrift and crawled farther into my carapace. In short, I was a miserable and no doubt thoroughly disagreeable young man, a prickly show-off, out of place and smug about it. I didn’t like myself in my own country.

  The hard shell that I had constructed for myself was cracked open just a little bit by a new acquaintance. His name was Bradley Martin, the distinguished art critic and Japanophile. A friend of Professor Wilson’s, he would visit the Columbia campus once in a while, partly, I think, to cast his eyes over the latest crop of students. He liked “the young.” Well, he cast his eyes on me, evidently liked what he saw, and invited me to have lunch with him.

  In public, Martin was a man of great fastidiousness and respectability, his large, fleshy Kentucky body always perfectly encased in discreet custom-made suits and spotted bow ties. The private man was something else. The suits often gave way to splashy kimonos, of the kind worn by hostesses at the more disreputable hot spring resorts, or the full drag of evening gowns and jewelry. Martin actually looked quite convincing as a graned dame, apart from his waxed mustache, which, though incongruous, did look rather stylish even with face powder and lipstick. Not that I was immediately invited to his more exclusive soirées, where he received a few trusted friends, mostly fellow aesthetes who shared his interest in things Japanese.

  At first, our encounters, at a quiet little French restaurant named Biarritz, or at his apartment on Sixty-seventh and Park Avenue, were given to discussions on Japanese art. Martin was especially interested in art of the Kano School. I learned a huge amount from him, not least by looking closely at his own treasures, scattered around the apartment, while listening to his commentary on each piece. He had beautiful first editions of woodblock prints by Eisen, and three extraordinary Hoitsu paintings of peonies and cranes. The apartment was a kind of shrine to Oriental beauty: an Edo Period screen, a lovely dark brown Korean rice cabinet, walls covered in Chinese silk with flower patterns, an exquisite penis carved out of stone (Tibetan, eighteenth century).

  Our acquaintance advan
ced from that of avuncular master and willing pupil to something more intimate one Saturday afternoon. We were talking about a monthly journal, called Connoisseur, which I had admired, but which was far too expensive for me to subscribe to. After making some Chinese tea, Martin approached me from behind, laid his hands on my back, and softly ran a finger up and down my spine. “It would be my pleasure to let you have it as a gift,” he purred, while subjecting my back to a further exploration. I wasn’t absolutely sure what he was proposing to give me. “Connoisseur?” I asked tentatively. “Mmmm,” he said, while deftly opening my shirt. Martin was not exactly my type, but I must confess that being the object of desire for once, instead of the worshipper, gave me a certain narcissistic thrill. It had been a long time, anyway. I received my first copy of Connoisseur through the mail two weeks later.

  It was at Martin’s apartment, at any rate, that I first met Isamu Noguchi, the Japanese-American sculptor. Martin had not dressed up in drag; it wasn’t that kind of occasion. The other guests were Parker Tyler, the film critic; Jimmy Merrill, a rather tense young poet in owlish glasses; and a lady named Brook Harrison, who had a famous collection of Edo Period netsukes. Among his many other talents, Martin was an excellent cook, renowned for his Sri Lankan fishhead curry. We had a Chinese meal that night, which we ate with antique black lacquer chopsticks (late Edo).

  Noguchi was without any doubt the most beautiful man I had ever seen; delicate without a hint of girlishness, penetrating Oriental eyes, long sensitive fingers, a smooth ivory-colored forehead. He had just returned from Tokyo and was keen to show us some Japanese art magazines featuring his latest work. It seemed that Isamu had made a bit of a splash in the exclusive pond of Japanese art. Even as Japanese artists were turning their backs on the classical tradition, tainted in their eyes by “feudalism,” Isamu had introduced a startling new range of sculptures that showed the influence not only of Zen rockeries but of ancient Haniwa funeral ornaments. The Japanese, he told us, were shocked and fascinated at the same time. This was a place they daren’t go themselves, even if they felt so inclined.

  Isamu spoke fast, in bursts of feverish enthusiasm, as though there wasn’t enough time to express everything he wanted to say. “There is so much richness there,” he explained, “and all the Japanese want to do is imitate the kind of modernism that went out of style here years ago. They refuse to see that their own tradition is way more modern than anything produced in the West. Zen is avant-garde—”

  “Ah, Zen,” remarked Jimmy Merrill, “the sound of one hand clapping—”

  “Those Kamakura Buddhas, aren’t they just the most adorable things you’ve ever seen?” gushed Mrs. Harrison. “I do believe that Unkei is a genius. I think I’m pronouncing it right. Do you know his work, Mr. Noguchi?”

  “Of course,” said Isamu, a little brusquely, I thought.

  “The space not filled, pregnant with meaning,” said Parker Tyler, who was beginning to feel left out. “You see this in Japanese film, Mizoguchi, and so forth.”

  “And in Naruse, too,” I chimed in, not wishing to be outdone, “especially in Spring Awakening.”

  “But,” said Tyler with a flicker of annoyance, “even more so in A Man with a Married Woman’s Hairdo.”

  I was defeated. I had never heard of this movie. So I just nodded my agreement and tried not to notice Tyler’s smug little smile.

  Isamu, however, was not a connoisseur but a young artist in a hurry. He couldn’t wait to get back to Japan, he said. There was so much work to be done there. He felt the urge to reinvent the Japanese tradition because, as he put it, “it’s in my blood.” His training, he said, was in New York, Paris, Rome; but his instincts were Japanese. That is where he had spent his early childhood in the 1930s with his American mother. His Japanese father was a poet, whose famous ode to the Japanese martial spirit was banned after the war. I later learned that Isamu and his mother had been more or less kicked out of their home by his father, and had been forced to return to the United States pretty much destitute. During the war, Isamu had actually volunteered to be interned in Arizona with other Japanese-Americans, even though, with a Caucasian mother, this was not really required. He soon came out again, apparently after seducing half the women in the camp. Isamu rarely talked about this part of his life. He rarely talked about anything that didn’t concern his art, about which he talked a great deal: “You can find the spirit of a people in their soil, in the rocks, if you know how to dig it out. That’s my mission, to rediscover that spirit, before the Japanese forget who they are.”

  I was impressed by Isamu’s enthusiasm, slightly put off by his manner, and I must confess, a little bit envious. How marvelous it must be, I thought, to be Western and Japanese at the same time, to fuse his sharp analytical intellect with the natural sensibility of the East. He had the very best of both worlds. He was born with everything I had to acquire by learning, painfully, frustratingly, a little more every day. The Japanese have an expression for mastering a difficult skill, so that it becomes second nature, like the Zen archer who can still hit his target with a blindfold: “Learning with the body.” I wish I could have learned Japanese with my body.

  16

  I HADN’T HEARD anything from Yoshiko since I left Tokyo. Typical of her. Out of sight, out of mind, I’m afraid. I hadn’t rated her chances of coming to America very high. Only one movie actress had managed it since the war: Tanaka Kinuyo. She was a very grand lady, and rumor had it that General MacArthur himself intervened.

  So I was astonished, to say the least, to open my New York Times one morning and read about the arrival in Los Angeles of none other than my beloved Yoshiko. “Madame Butterfly Flies into Town” was the headline. Madame Butterfly had actually changed her name a little; she was now Miss Shirley Yamaguchi. She told reporters that she had always been a huge fan of Shirley Temple. She also told reporters that she had come to America “to learn how to kiss.” Whereupon the photographer from the San Diego Union offered his cheek and shouted: “Why don’t you start right here, honey.” The photograph of Shirley planting a kiss on the grinning snapper’s mug was reprinted all over the country, even in the august pages of the New York Times.

  I still didn’t see Yoshiko (I couldn’t bring myself to call her “Shirley”) for several months. She was busy touring California and Hawaii, giving concerts for her Japanese fans. Then, a short note, in English, which read:

  Dear Sidney-san,

  Long time no see. Weather in California so sunny. Arriving New York on 5 June. Meet me at Delmonico’s for lunch on 6th.

  Thank you. So long.

  XX Shirley Y.

  Once again it was she who invited me. I couldn’t possibly have afforded Delmonico’s, anyway. I arrived there first. When I told the maitre d’ that the table was booked under the name Yamaguchi, he looked at me a bit curiously, as though I were some kind of imposter. Japanese names were not yet so commonly heard in New York in those days. Thank God she soon came sweeping in, every inch the diva, in a high-collared crimson Chinese dress with a pattern of silver chrysanthemums. “Yoshiko!” I cried, glad to see her finally after such a long time.

  “Sid-san, I’m Shirley now, we are in the States, no?” She was bubbling over with excitement. There was so much to tell. Oh, the people she had met! Charlie and Yul and King! I had no idea who she was talking about, so I asked her to elaborate, while carefully avoiding the use of her name. By the time we got to our porterhouse steaks, I was firmly in the picture. She had met Charlie Chaplin; Yul Brynner, an actor; and King Vidor, the director who happened to be an old acquaintance of Kawamura. Charlie, apparently, adored Japanese culture and showed a great interest in her views on world peace. “And Yul is such a sweetheart, Sid-san. You know we might star together in The King and I, on Broadway. On Broadway! I’ll be a Siamese princess, and Yul the King of Siam. Yul loves my singing. Can you imagine, Shirley Yamaguchi in a musical on Broadway! And after Broadway, I want to be in a Hollywood movie.” Oh, how she loved “the Sta
tes,” its openness, and its businesslike manners. “Sid,” she squealed, “I think I feel at home in this country. You know something, it reminds me of China.”

  I was pleased for her, of course, but curious to know how she had managed to come to America at all, despite all the travel restrictions. After all, Japan was still an occupied country. “You remember Major Gunn?” I did, with a great deal of distaste. “Well, he fixed it for me. He’s a good guy, really. He makes sure my family gets enough food from the PX.” I didn’t wish to know what price he had exacted, nor, quite understandably, did Yoshiko volunteer any such information.

  Instead, she gushed on about Charlie and Yul. Charlie loved Japan. They had met at the house of Richard Neutra, the architect, and Charlie had entertained the guests with his version of a Japanese country dance. And she had sung Japanese folk songs. She was so glad no one had asked her to sing that vile “China Nights” again. She refused even to sing it for her Japanese fans in L.A. and Honolulu, no matter how many times they requested it. That’s why it would be so great to do The King and I. It would be a new beginning, a rebirth, as it were, the launch of Shirley Yamaguchi on a world stage.

  “Yul is half Asian, you know,” she said, as her plate of half-eaten porterhouse steak was efficiently removed by the waiter. “The first time we met, it was as if we had known each other forever. Like me, he is a citizen of the world, a Western man with an Asian soul. His real name was Khan, you know, and he was raised in Harbin. His father was a Mongolian and his mother a Romanian gypsy. He invited me for dinner at Charochka’s Russian Restaurant. It brought back so many memories of home, of Masha, who saved my life, of the phantom film we made in Harbin, of Dimitri and the Harbin Opera Company.” Here she paused, drying a tear with her little finger. It was no more than a second, though, before the words came tumbling out again: “Then Yul took me to his house in Santa Monica and played his guitar and sang Russian songs for me. He understands my feelings, like no one else before . . .” And then what happened? She giggled and slapped my arm. “Sid-san, you’re so naughty.”