“Perhaps you’ve been deceived,” Kiyoshi ventured. But he wasn’t certain, and his doubt must have shown.
“Young man. Some of these warnings came from the Imperial Presence itself. Forgive me, but you’re foolish to be so conspicuous. They might single you out for the worst. Put on your oldest clothes and keep your head lowered like the rest of us, if you’ll take my advice.”
Kiyoshi thanked him, and they exchanged polite bows.
Despite the warning, the train north to Sendai—with returning soldiers packed almost to standing in a single dirty car and the trip prolonged by frequent halts—delivered him without incident. But his hometown on the coast was still miles away. He was able to ride part of the way on a rusty bus that puffed black fumes, bumping over and around holes in the road. He’d paid for it with a few carefully doled sen from the money the Americans had given him. But when the bus sighed to a halt, the driver declared humbly that there was no fuel to take it further. Some passengers politely requested a return of their money. Kiyoshi watched the man’s hands shaking over each note he found to pay them back. A hungry scarecrow of a man. He shrugged and walked to the door with a dismissive wave. It made him feel in control, worthwhile even, for the first time in months.
At last, moving on foot and tired beyond caring, Kiyoshi Tsurifune looked down from a rocky bluff at the town of his youth. There were, of course, small pockets of charred remains, but also whole clusters of rooftops still intact. What of his own house? It was lost in details but the neighborhood had survived! Boats and small ships lay moored in the harbor. The sun caught on the blue sea beyond, rippling as if nothing had ever gone wrong. Around him, the hills were green with vines, while the maple leaves had begun to redden. In places, small waterfalls cascaded over the broken roadway. He cupped his hands and drank. Pure and cold, like the springs of the Kiyomizu-dera. So. Neither the great temple nor wild nature itself had been destroyed. Nor his home! He threw out his arms and knelt to kiss the earth.
In town he walked through the narrow streets, trying to ignore the stir he was attracting with his stiff American clothes. His stance and stride were such that some people bowed as he passed. Yes. There it was. The wood of its curved roof was paler, more sun-baked than he’d remembered, and the paper covering the windows was browned with age—but home! A figure in a sunbonnet was bent over some greens planted in the narrow strip of earth between houses.
“Mother?”
Mrs. Abe Tsurifune looked up from her work. At the sight of the unshaven, razor-thin man in a dirty blue shirt and pants, she cried out and collapsed, touching her head to the ground.
Kiyoshi knelt down to lift her. “Yes, Mother, I’m home.” He brushed strands of graying hair from her face. It was a face grown older than it should have in a mere three years, a face now with wrinkles that stretched around the bones. To hide his emotion, he blurted: “I need a bath. And where’s Father?”
The old woman clung to him, laughing in order to cover her sobs. “Yes. Yes, you need a bath—your odor, I bless it, but it’s terrible. Somewhere I’ll find firewood to heat the tub.” When Father appeared, frowning at the stranger through thick glasses, she exclaimed, “See! Just see!” and hurried away, still laughing and crying.
Kiyoshi’s father stood less straight than he had in the past. He wore a dark blue kimono patched in several places with a lighter cloth. His hair, remembered as black, had grayed, although the mustache clipped in imitation of the Emperor remained dark.
“We have no food for ourselves,” Father declared brusquely. “My wife is foolishly sentimental. But we can’t be expected to feed every beggar. Beggars not even in the uniform of those who lost our Emperor’s war.”
“Father.”
“Don’t profane that name! I am a father whose sons have both died hero’s deaths fighting the barbarians. Move on to some other house, and leave us to our grief.”
“Father, I am Kiyoshi.”
Mr. Yuichiro Tsurifune, first-generation director of Tsurifune Suisan Fishing Company Ltd., adjusted the thick glasses on his nose. He advanced, one hand stretched out, to touch his son’s face. Those fingers lingered to tousle the matted hair, then explored an eyebrow, a cheek, the curve of the lips. At last, he said softly, “You’re not dead.”
“No, Father.”
“Not dead honorably, then, like your brother?”
“Shoji? Dead?”
“You didn’t know from my letter?”
“No. No!”
Yuichiro Tsurifune clutched his son’s face with both hands. “All this later, then. Only one son honorably dead. Are you a fugitive in disgrace?” He glanced around. “Come inside quickly before the neighbors see.”
Kiyoshi bowed his head, and his good feeling vanished. Even though he’d given up all thoughts of suicide days before, suddenly it again seemed the only course.
“I’ll go now. Before more of the neighbors see.”
“But you’re alive? Not a ghost playing tricks?”
“Can you touch the hair and the lips of a ghost, Father?”
The older man slowly dropped to his knees. He clutched his son’s legs and rested his head against them. Kiyoshi could feel his father’s body shaking.
“My brother Shoji is dead, then?” Kiyoshi kept repeating.
When the emotion had spent itself, Father cleared his throat. “Later. Later. Now help me up and come inside, son.” He rose, clutching his son’s shoulder, and forced a laugh. “By the way, you smell bad. Have you forgotten how to bathe?”
“There’s been no opportunity, Father.”
“Hah. How much has changed.”
A glance inside the house showed Kiyoshi that much had indeed changed. All was neat, but the house was bare of anything but tattered mats and a hibachi with no coals to burn against the chill. Gone was the precious ancestral cabinet that had been treasured for generations. Only the god shelf, the kamidana with its shrine of beautifully grained wood, remained intact in a corner of the small room off the main living space. Beside a photo of the stern grandfather and docile grandmother he’d never known, dishes still contained offerings of water, salt, and something leafy. The white tablets lettered with names of ancestors and priestly charms still stood upright in the sand. And a vase of artificial chrysanthemums maintained its place beside the photo—now brown and curled—of the Emperor and Empress. But no candle burned.
Shivering in the unheated bathhouse, Kiyoshi scrubbed at the dirt with the small, hard piece of soap his mother handed to him like it was something precious. The water in the tub had been heated only to the point of warmth, but he grunted with relief as he sank into it and expelled his breath with a sigh. Then, clean again for the first time in days, Kiyoshi accepted the kimono offered him. But as he handed over the American denim he said, “These must be washed as soon as possible so that I can continue wearing them.”
“Why?” his mother asked. He shrugged, not sure himself.
When he tried again to speak of his dead brother and also of his dead little wife Yokiko whom he’d barely known, Father cautioned, “Later. Later.” As in times past, they settled on cushions around a central platter. The meal Mother served consisted of a scant helping of soybeans and small fish. Even though she’d decorated their plates with cooked leaves, the size of the portions could not be disguised. And a shamed glance showed Kiyoshi that his parents’ plates held more leaves than his and only one fish each.
“The ration office had no rice this week for our block of houses,” said his mother brightly. “But next week’s collection may be better. Have you ever tasted grasshoppers? Like crackers. I learned about them in a paper issued by the government last year, but now everyone has caught so many for food that it’s hard to find them, or I’d have been able to fill our plates further. Be sure to chew the leaves. They’re very nourishing. The best are tea leaves after they’ve stopped giving off any more tea, but these from the bushes are also good when you get used to them.”
“I should register immedi
ately to get a ration too,” said Kiyoshi. “And I’ve heard I’ll get some discharge pay when I apply for it. Even, perhaps, some clothing.”
“Where would clothing come from around here?” said Father. “The soldiers, when they return, stay in their brown uniforms. I suppose you’re lucky to have that blue shirt and pants.”
Kiyoshi picked slivers of meat from the small fish, before sucking the spine of each for any food that remained. The time for salmon had passed, but surely the waters held other, larger fish than these. “Your boats then, Father. They haven’t yet delivered today?”
“Boats? Where? They took my factory canning vessel for wartime cargo. The barbarians probably sank it. If they didn’t, and it’s returned in bad shape, where could we find materials to repair it?” Father lapsed into silence, looking forlornly at the patches on his kimono. Kiyoshi wondered how he ought to respond, when, with some of the vigor of only a few years earlier, Father went on: “For a long time, our fishing vessels haven’t dared to leave harbor with the American planes flying overhead. The barbarians would fly low and shoot at us. But even if the water were safe, now our boats all leak for lack of patches and material for caulking. And where’s the fuel to take them to sea? One or two community nets fish close to shore, reached by oar when the weather allows. But hold up one of those nets and it’ll fall apart in your hands. They’re so rotted and patched that they lose more fish than they catch, they say. Especially the big fish that can easily thrash themselves an opening. You see what’s on your plate, from the community ration.”
After a silence, Mother glanced at her husband to make sure he had finished before adding cautiously, “Like everyone else we live from day to day. And pray that our emperor can endure the unthinkable.”
“Endure? Do you think he goes hungry?” snapped Kiyoshi. His own vehemence surprised him.
“Oh, I hope not.”
Kiyoshi glanced at his father, who shrugged. They picked at the remnants of their food in silence, morsel by morsel to make it last.
Father spoke first. “I’ve given up, you see. Strength gone. Empty house. Your sister married a navy officer whose death was confirmed and his ashes returned after barbarian bombings two years ago. She lives with his parents in another town. Without sons, I thought, what did the two of us here need, waiting to die?”
“Well, one of your sons has returned.”
“I rejoice at that. But I am still tired.”
“He reads the newspaper that comes every day,” said Mother. “So he follows all that’s happening and tells me about it. There’s nothing, really, that we can do. Except pray.”
“You go to the priest too often,” grumbled Father. “And each time, for some charm or piece of wood he’s blessed, he expects five, or even ten, sen. Now, it seems, we spent money uselessly trying to reach the spirits in the other world since we had no ashes of yours to pray over. That priest. He’d even given you messages from this Kiyoshi’s heroic spirit.”
Mother looked down to avoid answering.
Kiyoshi felt a strange excitement, but tried to make a joke of it. “Well then, what did the priest say about my heroic spirit?”
“Happy in fulfillment of duty,” murmured his mother. The words made Kiyoshi feel that he had indeed known death and had returned from the dead.
“Yes, I follow the news,” Father declared to change the subject. “The American conquerors have taken over everything after they bombed our cities to pieces. What’s this general’s name? MacArthur. He’s announced that Nippon will never again become a world power. What arrogance!”
In the pause that followed, Kiyoshi put down his plate. “All right now, Father and Mother. I must be told. First tell me of my little wife.”
Father shrugged and glanced at his wife. “Well. We didn’t see much of her. She continued to live with her mother and father.” Yokiko had been the daughter of Father’s vessel colleague and fellow vessel owner, Munio Nitta. “If you had given us a son with her it would have been different.”
Kiyoshi burst out defensively, “We had three nights together before my leave was up and I went off to war again! You and Nitta-san were so anxious that our two households be brought together. The time had come at our ages, and we liked each other, so we agreed to marry. We tried! I know you wanted a son, but it didn’t happen. Not even a daughter.” He paused, glaring, then asked more calmly, “How was it she died?”
“All young people were required to do useful work for the war, and she was recruited to cut metal in a small factory. She cut herself, Nitta-san told me, and it didn’t heal. And there was no medicine to be had to treat the infection. So it happened.”
Kiyoshi closed his eyes to contemplate the information. It was so distant. Even as he tried, he could feel no emotion. Finally “All right,” he said. “Now it’s time to be told of my brother Shoji.”
“Not here,” said Father gruffly.
“My final child,” murmured Mother. “Dead and not yet twenty. You were nine years older, already interested in your father’s fishing vessels while little Shoji grew up. Barely noticed him, I think.”
“No. No, Mother. I sometimes hugged him. Shoji was my brother.”
“Always happy. My joy. So handsome and straight on the day he left for the navy!” She swayed, dropping her head close to the floor, and she began to sob.
Tsurifune Senior gestured for his son to follow him to another room. He began in a lowered voice. “All right. Your brother heroically crashed his bomb-plane into an American war ship and thus destroyed it. It was on the sixth of April this year, in waters near Okinawa. This ultimate sacrifice for the Emperor was described to us in a letter from his commander.”
Kiyoshi bowed his head.
“He volunteered,” Father continued. “He was a Thunder God. That’s what they called themselves and how he’s now enshrined. Thunder God! And their little bomb-planes were called Ohka. You’ll see the letter. It’s protected from rain in a rubber envelope that I made from torn fishing clothes, housed in a box
I made that stands beside his shrine. We had ceremonies with a priest. All the town officials from the mayor down walked in procession to the shrine along with our associates, neighbors, even many strangers. A hundred mourners at least. I wrote you all this.”
“It never reached me. By then we were living deep in a cave on terrible Okinawa, to escape from the guns those American ships fired at us. Waiting for their soldiers to land and reach us so that we could fight honorably. Could die when necessary. Nothing you wrote ever reached me.”
“And then two months later, another letter came that said you—our oldest son—had also died heroically for the Emperor. Again we went in procession, again without ashes, your mother now barely able to walk in her grief.” Father seemed to hold his breath, then asked, “Do you think, if the letter announcing your death was wrong, that Shoji might also be alive?”
“The glorious kamikaze pilots had no chance to return, Father.” Kiyoshi said it softly, but his manner was firm.
“Your mother goes almost every day to the town’s shrine of heroes. She leaves a flower there for each of you—or at least a twig with a bud or a leaf. That’s a woman’s way. I seldom go, although my sorrow is equal to hers. Now we should remove your place at the shrine. Do you think we need a priest to do this?”
Kiyoshi shook his head. “I don’t know, Father. Don’t know.”
Father suddenly exclaimed, “And then, tell me what good was heroic sacrifice?” His mouth tightened so that his emperor-mustache stretched thin.
“Don’t know.”
Father put a hand on his shoulder. “All right. There are other things we must discuss. Tell me frankly. In what ways did the Americans torture you before they let you go? I should know the worst, to prepare for the future.” Kiyoshi thought of his own harsh treatment of prisoners two years before. Should he be honest, or tell Father what he wanted to hear?
“No torture. Occasional kindness. I . . . they aren’t barbarians. The ones
on Okinawa were harsh sometimes, but they didn’t starve me. The ones on the ship coming home put me to work but gave me food and these clothes. The two that took me with them to Kiyomizu-dera gave me food and some money.” Father continued to stare. “I . . . I think that I like Americans.”
“That’s treason!”
“Last year, perhaps. Not now, Father.”
“Pay attention. How did the trains bring you home? Didn’t you see for yourself? Hiroshima was destroyed by their inhuman bomb!”
“We had to go around Hiroshima. But through Kobe, yes, buildings were leveled into fields. Fire bombs, they said. Nothing left but ashes and posts burned to charcoal. Then Tokyo, where I needed to transfer to a train north. Ueno station is leg to leg with refugees. And the ruins. Ai!”
“There. You see!”
“We ourselves did things as bad, Father. Worse.”
“Pfah. Our heroic soldiers were on a mission to save Asia from greedy foreigners and to create the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Whatever our men might have done was done to create peace and prosperity. Now look at us. Because of this atomic bomb, the greedy foreigners have prevailed with their evil. And this American general. He tries to make sure that Nippon will never rise again. I’ve heard rumors—he plans to destroy the great zaibatsu companies that trade and manufacture. And what after that? I’ll tell you. Next to be destroyed will be small fishing companies like my own. Eh?”
Kiyoshi found himself smiling. “You just said that you no longer have a company, Father,” he said mildly.
“For others. Others. And I’ve also heard rumors of what they call ‘war crimes trials.’ The papers tell us the Americans will be holding these in defeated Germany. What do you think? Will I be put on trial for heading my small company? For feeding the people who are now defeated, thus in disgrace and without rights? In truth, this worries me at night.”
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