The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

  I ate my dinner alone and then put Sonoko on my back and went to the public bath. Oh, giving Sonoko her bath is absolutely the happiest moment of my day. Sonoko loves the bath, and when I put her into the warm water, she quiets right down. She paddles her hands and feet around and looks up steadily right into my face as I hold her in my arms. It almost makes me feel uneasy.

  The other people, too—they seem to find their babies so, so unbearably dear, and when they are in the water, each one nestles her cheek on her own baby. Sonoko’s little belly is as round as if it had been drawn by a compass, and it is white and soft as rubber shoes. I find it amazing to realize that she came perfectly provided right in there with a little stomach, a little coil of intestine. And then a little below the center of her belly, her belly button is stuck on like a little plum blossom. Whether I look at her hands, or her feet, everything about her is so beautiful and sweet that I am absolutely carried away by her. No matter what little garment I put on her, it is not equal to the loveliness of her naked body. When we have to get out of the hot water and I have to dress her, I feel a sense of loss. I want to stay right there, hugging her little naked body.

  When we went to the public bath, it had been light on the road, but on our return, it was now totally dark. We were under a blackout. This was no drill anymore. I felt an unusual tightening in my heart. But then, mightn’t this be just a bit too dark? I had never before walked down a road as dark as this one. I continued on, step by step, almost feeling my way, but the road was long, and I began to feel worried. The place where the fennel fields extended to the cedar forests, it was truly dark and terrible. I suddenly remembered when I was in the fourth grade of girls’ school how terrible it was to have to ski from Nozawa Hot Springs to Kijima in the middle of a blizzard. In place of the backpack I’d had on my back then, now Sonoko was sleeping on my back. Sonoko was sleeping without a thought.

  From behind me I heard very unsteady footsteps and a man singing completely out of tune: “We have been commanded by our lord. . . .” Two distinctive harsh coughs told me clearly who it was. “You’re making trouble for Sonoko,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “The trouble with you all is that you don’t have faith. That’s why you have trouble on a night road like this. Now I have faith, and so the night road is just like full daylight to me. Follow me,” he said as he plodded on ahead of us.

  Truly, I was disgusted with my husband. Is he even sane?

  ISHIKAWA TATSUZŌ

  Ishikawa Tatsuzō (1905–1985) was one of the first writers to visit the battlefields of the war between Japan and China. His alarming account of what he witnessed, Soldiers Alive (Ikite iru heitai), was first published shortly after he returned to Japan in 1938. His work was instantly banned, however, and the complete text was made available only after the war.

  SOLDIERS ALIVE (IKITE IRU HEITAI)

  Translated by Zeljko Cipris

  Chapter 2

  On the eleventh of November, having overrun Dachang-zhen and Suzhou to encircle Shanghai, the northern units joined up near Sijing-xian with the southern units, which had landed at Hangzhou Bay, crossed Huanpu River, and marched north. Shanghai was totally surrounded. It was at this juncture that the main force of the Takashima division sailing out of Dairen entered the Yangzitze River delta.

  The ships steamed upriver, cleaving the turbid water. Soldiers were warned to stay in their berths; coming out onto the decks was dangerous. Standing on the deck, buffeted by the river wind, Commander Nishizawa and his adjutant closely watched the riverbanks through the binoculars. The land rose a mere two or three yards above the water surface and was flat as a board, so they could see nothing but a long horizontal line of grass and willows along the banks. Above this line, dozens of airplanes flew furiously about. The mopping up of the enemy remnants in Pudong was, on this day, being carried out with the utmost ferocity. Black smoke rose to the sky from countless fires; at intervals the dull roar of the big naval guns reverberated in the wind.

  At length some twenty ships anchored upstream came into view. They were all Japanese troopships, flying the Rising Sun flags, numbers painted on the sides. The newly arrived ships merged with this flotilla and lowered their anchors. The men were now in the vicinity of the Wusong fort; what looked like gutted pillboxes were visible through binoculars. The sensation of having reached the front was powerful. Men’s nerves, relaxed ever since sailing out of Dairen, grew tense once more.

  A three days’ supply of field rations were distributed. The ships remained at anchor for the night.

  “Each of you’d better write a letter home. We’ll have the captain collect them. It might be the last letter you write. The enemy this time are the crack troops of the Chinese army.”

  Second Lieutenant Kurata took off his jacket to get ready for bed. His voice was extremely gentle as he spoke to his men. A bold platoon leader who fought flushed with rage muttering “Damn you!” over and over, he addressed his own troops with the calm affection of an elementary school teacher, an affection that seemed uppermost in the heart of the thirty-one-year-old unmarried officer.

  We warriors face

  Death with open eyes.

  Crickets in the grass,

  Hush your trilling cries.

  In the stillness of the berth, interrupted only by the sound of the river waves, the voice rose and fell with a strange emotional power. When the song had ended, he turned his face away and cried. His was not the sadness of a man going into battle or fearing violent death. It was, rather, the unendurable sadness brought on by the spectacle of 180 men around him silently waiting to be killed in tomorrow’s battles. This spiritual oneness that kept even a single soldier from muttering against the imminent doom struck him as worthy of tears. Hirao was a romantic young man who had worked as a proofreader for a city newspaper. His highly receptive, delicate nerves, out of keeping with his large bodily frame, could not but helplessly shatter in the harsh world of the battlefield. Coming to animate him instead was a kind of desperate belligerence. After arriving at the front, he had suddenly learned to boast. With the skill of a professional storyteller, he delivered vivid accounts of cutting down the foe. This was his romanticism in its new form. During the war’s quieter moments, however, his delicate feelings revived and threw him into utter confusion.

  “Hirao, aren’t you going to write any letters?” asked First Class Private Kondō, who lay nearby writing yet another in a growing heap.

  “I’m not!” snapped Hirao.

  “Why not?”

  Hirao said nothing for a while. At last, pulling a blanket over his head, he declared conclusively, “Those people at home have no idea how I feel.”

  Kondō lifted his pen from the paper and gazed at his friend’s reclining form. He thought he fully understood Hirao’s feelings, but he did not share them. “So what if they don’t? Write anyway! When you’ve finished, you’ll feel so refreshed, dying won’t bother you.”

  “Heh, heh, he talks as though he knows!” guffawed Corporal Kasahara, who had been licking his pencil and writing postcards. Second son of a farming family, he possessed no learning whatsoever, but had an unshakeable heart, all the more unquestioningly steady in his present circumstances.

  Footsteps of the guards patrolling the deck—now approaching, now receding—rang overhead throughout the night. Visible through the portholes, the sky over Pudong blazed a festering red.

  Early the following morning Lieutenant General Takashima, who had been sailing on a different ship, boarded a launch accompanied by the divisional staff and adjutants and set off up the Huangpu River. They were going to the headquarters, the soldiers rumored. In the afternoon the officers returned to their ship.

  That evening perhaps a hundred smaller vessels swarmed around the troopships. Where they had come from was a mystery. They ranged in size from twenty to sixty tons. The sun was beginning to set. The soldiers shouldered their knapsacks, loaded the rifles, and boarded the smaller craft one by one
, groping for footing in the deepening darkness. Two destroyers had somehow materialized alongside the ships.

  Just then, a brilliantly illuminated passenger ship of about a hundred tons came steaming up the river as if meaning to cut through the throng of smaller craft. “Wuchang, Great Britain” proclaimed the great white letters beneath the Union Jack. It was almost as though the ship had appeared in order to observe the units going ashore.

  Men of the Kurata platoon packed themselves tightly into a vessel named Nagayama-maru, which resembled a river steamer. They could not budge once they had sat and embraced their rifles and knees. The river night wind moaned in their ears, bringing with it the early winter’s chill.

  At one hour past midnight they received orders to proceed upriver. One of the destroyers led the way; the other, on full alert, patrolled ceaselessly up and down the line of boats. Neither stars nor moon shone on this cloudy night, nor a single light on land or water. Only the sky over Pudong to the rear burned as red as the night before. The voyage was extremely slow. The soldiers spoke in whispers and shivered with the cold; half of them had not yet been issued their winter coats.

  The only man asleep was Corporal Kasahara, who snored hugging his sword. “Admirable,” muttered Lieutenant Kurata and chuckled. Though all knew this was the time they ought to sleep, no one could.

  At early dawn the procession of ships arrived at the confluence of the Baimao and Yangzi rivers. Nearly thirty small warships had lined up there, guns trained on the right bank; just as the day broke, they opened up with a volley of fire. It was a spectacular attack. The riverbank was instantly lost in clouds of dust and sand that obliterated daylight. The enemy fought back mostly with machine guns. The bullets pinged, ricocheting off the ships’ sides. Soon a smoke screen began to spread near the bank. Stirred by the morning breeze, dense billows of pale yellow smoke settled heavily over the water.

  Bows side by side, the first and second landing parties entered the smoke screen; the Kurata platoon was part of the third. Lieutenant Kurata, one knee pressed against the prow and sword planted in front of the other, kept his eyes fixed on the boat bearing the company commander, Kitajima. The company commander was a captain in the reserves, a man past forty; from early morning on, even during severe fighting, he drank the cold saké kept in his canteen and gleefully smiled. Big and slow moving, he ran a small trucking business in the countryside. Instead of shouting the order, he had merely said, still beaming his habitual smile, “Well, shall we go?”

  As his boat began to advance, machine gunners crouched by the gunwale, cheeks tight against the cold stock of their weapons. The other boats, too, swung into a line and advanced.

  Finally entering the cloud of smoke, Lieutenant Kurata was suddenly assailed by fear. He could see nothing in front. What if he emerged from the smoke only to collide with a large enemy troop? His unit was in the worst possible position.

  Enemy bullets flew past with a sharp twang. He had not heard that sound in a while, and each shot echoed in his heart. Yet he wanted to be killed, and he chafed with impatience for the end. Prepared for death at any moment, he wished to die quickly and be done with it rather than fight on. His right hand shielding his eyes from the thick smoke, he tried to peer ahead.

  The enemy bank suddenly appeared directly in front, and the boat struck against it. Jumping into the water up to their calves, the soldiers rapidly fanned out and lay flat in the riverbank grass. They met no attack. A rather sharp fight seemed to be starting to their right, but the shore facing them had already been secured several hundred yards in depth.

  The expected battle never having materialized, Kitajima company began to advance south. That evening they heard that a number of divisional staff officers on the right flank had been wounded.

  While cooking the rice in his mess tin over a fire on the floor of an occupied house, Second Lieutenant Kurata conscientiously recorded the day’s events in his diary. First Lieutenant Furuya of the same company laughed, nibbling on a cracker. “You do like to write, don’t you! Think you’ll have a chance to read it over?”

  In fact, keeping a diary was meaningless even to Lieutenant Kurata. He did not think he would leaf through its pages again. For that reason, he wanted to write it all the more. Perhaps it was a womanish sentiment, but being unable to tell another about his final days struck him as much too lonely. The feeling was natural, and one he could not discard to attain spiritual freedom. Consequently, he was tormented by a fretful anxiety and numbly came to long for a quick death.

  Near sundown, interpreter Nakahashi was wandering around a village looking for a horse some artillerymen had asked him to requisition. There were no more than five or six hundred houses in the village, and it became clear after twenty minutes of walking, not a single horse. The horse that had been pulling the cannon had fallen into a creek and broken its leg, creating a difficulty for tomorrow’s advance. The artilleryman gave up on finding a horse and instead suggested getting an ox.

  “If it’s an ox you want, I see no problem. A water buffalo! You don’t mind, do you? Off the horse and onto the buffalo!” said Nakahashi, laughing. Still only nineteen, he had volunteered to be an interpreter as soon as the war had started but was rejected as too young. He quickly filed a petition and was allowed to accompany the army. Although high-spirited, he did not yet seem physically strong.

  A water buffalo stood tethered in a shed by a farmhouse at the edge of the village. Deciding to take it and go, the interpreter looked in at the rear of the house. A wrinkled old woman was silently bending in front of the oven, kindling the fire.

  “Hello, granny,” called Nakahashi from the doorway. “We’re Japanese soldiers, and we need your ox. Terribly sorry, but we’ll just take it and go.”

  The old woman shrieked in violent opposition. “Don’t talk rubbish!” she screamed. “We finally bought that ox just last month, and how are we to farm without it?!” Furiously waving her arms, she rushed out of the earth-floored house only to see that three soldiers had already pulled the ox out of the stable and were discussing its uncertain merits, concluding it might be of use. In an awesome display of hysterical rage, the crone shoved the man holding the rein and sent him staggering, planted herself in front of the ox, and screeched at the top of her voice.

  Hesitant to intervene, the soldiers looked on with wry smiles at the vehement exchange between Nakahashi and the old woman.

  Suddenly interpreter Nakahashi erupted with peals of laughter

  “This granny is outrageous! The ox is out of the question, she says. She’s got two sons and she doesn’t mind if we take them and put them to work, but not the ox!”

  Standing around the placid water buffalo and the woman, whose temples were throbbing with indignation, the soldiers burst into loud laughter.

  “Maybe we should get her sons to crawl on all fours and haul the cannon!” But by now the sun had begun to set. The area was still dangerous after dark. The men resolved to take the animal.

  “Move!” A soldier thrust the old woman aside and took hold of the rein. “Keep still or you’re dead!”

  Wailing and screaming, spittle flying, the woman resisted all the more tenaciously. “The bitch!” Clicking his tongue, the interpreter grabbed her from behind by the nape and knocked her down with all his might. The woman tumbled backward and collapsed into a rice field by the side of the road. A shower of mud washed over the soldiers.

  Nakahashi laughed and started to walk off.

  “You may keep your life, but not the ox. We’ll send him back to you when the war is over.”

  The ox began to plod along the crumbling dusty road. The soldiers felt elated. This continent teemed with boundless riches. One merely had to take them. A vista was opening up before them in which the inhabitants’ rights of ownership and private property were like wild fruits for the soldiers to pick as they chose.

  The water buffalo exacted its revenge, however. At departure time the next morning when all preparations had been completed a
nd the order to start was being awaited, the ox lumbered off straight into a rice paddy, dragging the gun carriage with it. Forced to heave the cannon out by themselves, the soldiers became coated with muck from head to foot.

  On the fourteenth of November, the Nishizawa regiment met stubborn enemy resistance at a village on the approach to Zhitang-zhen. Stark, leafless willows lined the banks of a stream traversing the desolate landscape where the fight was taking place. Cotton grew over the expanse of the endlessly flat fields, white down shining in spots amid dry, rusty red stalks. Setting up a disagreeable howl, incoming trench mortar shells tore open fresh holes in the soil.

  First Class Private Hirao lay in one of the holes with his rifle at the ready but feeling somehow devoid of fighting spirit. With the midday sun overhead, the battlefield was bright and warm. Whenever the sound of machine-gun fire briefly ceased, a foolish sense of tranquillity permeated him. Heads were visible moving along the enemy trench less than sixty yards away. He aimed carefully and fired at each one.

  Crawling through cotton stalks, First Class Private Fukuyama drew near and rolled into the crater. Taciturn and stolid, the man had been a factory worker.

  “Give me a cigarette, will you?”

  Hirao handed him one. Neither one of them had a match. Cigarette in his mouth, Fukuyama clicked his tongue.

  “Well, guess I’ll go get a light,” he muttered to himself and cautiously raised his head for a look. In the field some five yards ahead, four soldiers clustered by a ridge, firing.

  Hirao plucked a white strand of cotton, stretched it out and, twirling it between his fingers, began to make cotton thread. Suddenly Fukuyama jumped out of the crater and sprinted forward. But before reaching the ridge, he dropped flat, tried to rise propping himself on his arms, and fell again. This time he remained still.