by H. K. Bush
I also spent more and more time perusing the contents of the departmental library. I kept finding valuable old volumes, hidden away on darkened shelves. Most interesting were the many first editions, often by the most famous writers of the twentieth century—Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Travels with Charley; Cather’s Song of the Lark, The Professor’s House, and Death Comes for the Archbishop; and Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and The American Dream—all in nearly pristine condition. And there were many more. Some of them had evidently never been opened. They were untouched and forgotten. I found a personal favorite, On the Road, signed by Kerouac with the inscription: “Keep it rolling, dharma boy!” And I found a handwritten note inside the cover of a first edition of Howl: “For Bobby: Satori times are at your beck and call. Remember the night we saw God? Most gregariously, Allen Ginsberg.”
Now I’ll make a small confession. Actually, it brings a smile to my face in remembering those two volumes in particular, because, you see—I swiped them. I just couldn’t resist. They were signed by the authors, for crying out loud, and they were two of my all-time favorites. Anyway, I reasoned, they were just wasting away in that dusty, old library where nobody could ever see them. For weeks, the thought that it would be so easy to steal some of these valuable books kept crossing my mind. So finally, I just slipped Kerouac’s memoir/novel, and the slim volume of Ginsberg’s poems, into my backpack, and left. Nobody would ever know, I thought. Except me, of course. I had been instructed, and required, to sign out anything that I took from the rooms. But I didn’t, on purpose. I had every intention of keeping them both, forever.
That was the problem. I did keep Howl and On the Road on my bookshelf back at my condo, for about a week. I would look through them sometimes and relish their wild and eccentric contents. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.” What odd and exciting words they contained! And Ginsberg’s handwritten note! But even though the howl of the poems spoke to me, the howl of my moral conscience assured me that it had been wrong to purloin the books. I came to see that such a vice, were I to allow it to grow, might easily destroy my own relatively stable mind with madness (there were lots of other attractive first editions calling out to me, waiting up there in the library’s decrepit shelves). The words on the pages had enticed me, but they also chastened me, and forced me to admit the error of my ways. So at the end of a week, I smuggled On the Road and Howl back into the library and replaced them on the shelves from which I had taken them.
Soon enough, it seemed, near the end of September, the baleful Miyamoto again appeared at my desk with some news. “Sensei, I should tell you that your meeting with Goto-sensei was quite an honor, you must realize. He would rarely take such a measure as to meet with a gaijin.”
“Thank you, Miyamoto-sensei. And by the way, nice suit.” Miyamoto smirked just a bit, but I was pretty sure he did not understand my subtle joke. I’d already discovered that most Japanese are tone deaf to irony. I touched his greasy lapel and inspected it briefly—tiny chunks of dandruff were clinging to it, if you took the time to notice.
Even by then, I had grown weary of Miyamoto. He sometimes lurked behind me as I worked at my desk in the main office, and he often gave me glib and stupid advice about this or that. He was like the Orwellian big brother that we all get sick of worrying about, though in general he seemed bland and harmless. It would be a couple more years before I fully understood his more sinister aspect, and the reasons that made him particularly envious of my soon-to-be-discovered opportunities. For now, I had taken to gently mocking him to his face, in ways that only a native speaker of English might be likely to discern.
“What did Goto-sensei say to you at your first visit, if you don’t mind me asking?” In the several weeks since then, Miyamoto had never asked me a single thing about our first meeting; had, in fact, never even mentioned it.
“What did he say to me? I don’t quite understand you—about what? We talked for over an hour.”
“I mean about your position here. Did he say anything about that?”
I shook my head and shrugged. “Sensei, I really don’t understand your question. What are you getting at?”
He hesitated and looked down a moment. Then he glanced around the office, to see who might be in earshot. He lowered his voice, but he spoke with real emotion. “Jack-san, I think you should know that I have been an able assistant to Goto-sensei for many years. I have done justice to his requests, and I believe that I have earned some respect because of it. My hard work over many years has been hardly acknowledged by this department, however. And I do not take lightly your interference into these matters.”
“Interference? What matters?” I was clueless about any of this.
He went on as if I were not even part of the conversation. “I’ll have you know that he even arranged for me to have an apartment just down the hill from his own estate!” He stated this to impress me, evidently. “Obviously, Goto-sensei respects my assistance, if no one else does!” He paused and scratched his head. “Or at least he did, until you arrived!”
I could tell he was debating in his own mind what to say next. Miyamoto is one of those kinds of people who always act like they put other people first, but, in fact, are always thinking of their own interests. So I responded with more irony, just to see if it registered at all. “Sensei, no one appreciates you more than I do.”
Peppering my comments with American-style irony, knowing that my Japanese listener would completely miss it, was becoming a secret vice. Predictably, he failed to get my little joke, delighting me even more.
“Well, Jack-san, for now I will just say that you should remember that I am your superior here in Japan, and that you are under my care and supervision. The matters I speak of should become clear to you in time. I have been asked by the chair of our faculty, Aoyama-sensei, as well as by other officers of this university, to make myself available to you for counsel and advice, and I am trying to do that for you right now.” He fidgeted with his thin little tie, then wiped his brow with a smudged handkerchief. “I also suggest that you keep me informed about anything that Goto-sensei tells you about the affairs of this faculty or university. My advice is that you remember your place in all of this.”
“My place in all of what, sensei?” I honestly had no idea at the moment what he was getting at (I do now, of course). “I truly honor your efforts on my behalf” (more irony), “but I would appreciate a little more information, if you don’t mind.”
He looked at me for his own clues. “I have said enough already, sensei. You simply need to be aware of certain aspects of the university’s reputation that may be involved in all of this.”
I tried to imagine what my visit with Professor Goto had to do with the university’s reputation, but I could not come up with anything. “Miyamoto-sensei, I really am confused. Are you asking me to report to you what happens every time I meet with Goto-sensei?”
He glowered at me for a moment. “There is much at stake regarding your relations with Goto-sensei. Surely you must recognize this.” He scratched his ear and looked away. Then suddenly he stared at me again. “Just try to hear the words that I am not saying as well.” He turned abruptly, and left me in his wake. He was about as irritated, and irritating, as any Japanese person I ever encountered, virtually smoldering as he stalked off.
But now I was the one scratching my head. I gulped hard, truly perplexed. My initial interpretation of his mysterious behavior, and of this very unsettling (non-) conversation, was that he must be protecting himself from what he considered an invasion of his turf. But I had no idea, at that point, what was the nature of that turf. There was much more going on than met my foreign eye, I remember thinking. And I was right.
Miyamoto’s rude interruption and dramatic departure actually kickstarted my curiosity once again about Goto and his past, so I put away my dull paperwo
rk for an hour and tried to track down more information. The faculty kept some records, including off prints of the publications of professors, and yet I still knew almost nothing about Goto’s research, except for the tiny bit about his interest in American writers like Emerson. I asked for help, and secretary rooted around in a cabinet for a minute and produced a listing for me to look at. But it was mostly in Japanese. Hardly any of his work had been published in English. I don’t know why this surprised me. One essay did appear in the Yale Journal of Criticism back in 1966. It was called “Fathomless Elements: Some Late Letters from Mark Twain to his Pastor, the Rev. Joseph Twichell of Hartford.” Almost everything else was written in Japanese, though for some reason the publications were sometimes listed in English: places like the Japanese Journal of American Studies, or the American Review. I asked for a copy of the list, and the office staff acted surprised, as if I were requesting classified state secrets, and as if doing so would have been a major breach of protocol. They clearly had no intention of providing such information without consulting the president of the university, or perhaps the prime minister himself. (The obtuseness of Japanese bureaucracies can be like something out of a Kafka novel.)
But they did refer me to Professor Aoyama, and I entered his office. After some pleasantries, I requested a list of Professor Goto’s writings. He paused, thought this over, and ultimately produced it from one of the many large filing cabinets in his office. “Please ask the secretary to copy this, sensei. And please excuse me for now, as I must work on some other pressing matters.” He sat back down and resumed what he had been doing, so I backed away. The secretary made the copy, and I was on my way.
Glancing at the list, the one title that leaped out at me was at the very bottom of the list: Goto’s dissertation at Harvard, which he finished in 1956. It was titled, Transcendental Friendship in Emerson’s Essays, Letters, and Life. Of course, it’s hard to say much about a monograph based on the title, but it was clear we had research interests that overlapped. Along with the one essay on the Twain-Twichell letters, it appeared that Goto had a very serious interest in letter writing—as did I. And it also appeared that we venerated many of the same writers, like Emerson, Whitman, Twain, and so on. Even the main words of the title intrigued me: the idea that a friendship might become transcendental, somehow revelatory of the nature of God, or the Oversoul, and that such a friendship might be partly inspired by the writing of letters. I recalled that Emerson had written a lesser-known essay called “Friendship,” which I could probably find a copy of quickly. All of this sudden information made me a little giddy. Perhaps we had much more in common than I ever suspected. And perhaps I could figure out a way to request Goto’s original dissertation, through interlibrary loan.
But that would take some time, and I wanted more answers immediately. Of course, “immediately” is a relative term, and in Japan it often means some time within a week. So I managed to get in to see Professor Aoyama a few days later, and asked him about Professor Goto’s scholarly work and his contributions to the university.
He was seated at his desk, both hands resting in front of him in repose. But he wore a serious expression. Slowly, Aoyama began his response. “Ah, yes, Goto-sensei. Naturally you would have some interest in his work. He has been a stalwart in this department since the sixties. A very soft-spoken man, but a true lion in the classroom. An entire generation of students, including myself, sat at his feet as if he were the Buddha himself!” He laughed at his own funny saying and so did I.
“Possibly you did not know this, but I began my college education right here at Kobe University. It was in the early ’70s, and all I knew at that time was that I loved books and wanted very much to become a teacher. But Goto-sensei— well, he had other ideas, it seems to me.” Pausing, he looked upward and thought about how to say something. “He was simply a quiet inspiration for me—my sempai.” He looked at me to see if I knew the term. “My senior, a mentor. He detected something in my character, I now believe. And his calm reading of those wonderful poems he assigned—well, yes, it had some sort of … sublime effect on me. I wanted to become like him. That is his major contribution, at least in my own life.” He nodded, smiling, as he recalled his own youth.
“And what about his research? Can you tell me about that?”
He scratched his left arm, thinking back. “Goto-sensei has been one of the leading scholars of American literature in Japan for many years. He helped to found the Japanese Society of Americanists, and has generously supported that endeavor with funding ever since. As for his writing, his two books are very famous among Japanese scholars of America. The first book was about the friendships of the many people surrounding Ralph Waldo Emerson. Of course it covered Henry Thoreau and Thomas Carlyle. And a brilliant chapter on Hawthorne as a friend. But it was most important, I believe, in introducing Emerson’s friendships with some of the women who were previously forgotten about, such as Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller. That was rather novel for Japanese scholarship, particularly where Goto-sensei indicated the positive ways that those women influenced the great Emerson and his vision of friendship and of the life of the mind. That Emerson had close friends who were women seemed an oddity at that time. Nowadays that seems rather obvious, but it was groundbreaking and rather influential back then.
“The second book was a collection of letters to and from Ernest Hemingway in the 1920s and ’30s, mostly during the Paris years, along with very interesting commentary about the friendships revealed in those letters. Many of them were from Ezra Pound, another of Professor Goto’s great interests. These letters were translated into Japanese by Goto-sensei himself, and they reveal his mastery of both languages, especially English, another of the hallmarks of his career. Beyond that, he has written many essays and articles, and published numerous documents that he discovered in archives and libraries around the world. Those would be his major achievements. We are all very proud to have had his company over these many years. Though he is rather … well, quiet nowadays, his reputation is exceedingly rich in Japanese academic circles. He is a living legend, I suppose you might say.”
“And what about his family, and his brother?”
Here Aoyama seemed to flinch a bit. He looked off to one side, then simply replied in a sly manner that Japanese sometimes utilize, when they do not wish to answer. “Sensei, it is an interesting matter, is it not?” (This was his vague translation of whatever evasive non-answer he would have used with a native Japanese underling who was getting too close to the flames. Possibly a long, drawn-out “So, desu-ne?”) He now looked across his desk for his pen, and picked it up with some urgency, then pretended to resume some urgent work with the papers spread out before him. “Unfortunately, perhaps it is best to speak of those matters at some other time, as I have very much to deal with at present with the new term off to such a busy start. I do hope you can forgive me.”
He noticed a form off to his right, and slid it toward the middle of the desk, peering down at it as if it were an original copy of the Magna Carta. Suddenly the meeting was over.
I stood up, bowed slightly. “Sensei, thank you for your time.”
He looked up quickly, then down again. “Yes, Springs-sensei, it is my pleasure.” And then began scribbling on the document.
The title of Professor Goto’s dissertation at Harvard, “Transcendental Friendship in Emerson’s Essays, Letters, and Life,” struck a deep chord within me. As if one might be so lucky to enjoy such friendships. These are friends who come along—if we are fortunate—half a dozen times over our adult lives.
The discussion here of Professor Goto’s research reminded me that Jack’s last letter ended with a quote from Emerson. He asked me to be his friend, you will recall, and then he quoted the great author himself: “A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”
Such romantic allure! But besides these meditations on the bonds of companionship, I must admit that my heart began to accelerate with the mention of arch
ival, primary documents such as the letters that record such bonds—topics near and dear to my heart. Hearing of these materials, and of any scholar’s longing for the solitude of the archives and for whatever secrets they might hold for the diligent detective, is perhaps one of my own key purposes in life—my own “kensho,” as I might say now. There are of course the glorious repositories at which I have been fortunate enough to be invited to conduct my own research—the Beinecke Library at Yale, the Houghton Library at Harvard, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, and the Bancroft at Berkeley, being among the highlights.
But besides these crown jewels of western civilization, I’ve found sometimes even greater joy in the less well endowed dungeons off the beaten trail, those facilities of musty odor, poor lighting, and weak ventilation, with cheap bookshelves crammed into intolerably small spaces. And yes, especially in the old days, some not even air-conditioned in the stifling heat of mid-summer, when most college teachers have the luxury of time necessary for any serious archival research. What atrocious conditions in which to discover the hidden confidences of those great, enigmatic masters of the pen! In retrospect, I loved every minute of those experiences, although I understand that may be hard for the layman to grasp.
CHAPTER 5
About a week later, Miyamoto presented me with a second invitation from Professor Goto. He simply walked up to my desk as I was filling out some of the bureaucratic nonsense that is one of the raison d’etre of Japanese society. I turned to look up and immediately noted that my colleague was in another foul mood. The irksome Miyamoto spoke not to me, but at me, without emotion on the outside, but seething somewhat inside.