The Sun Gods

by Jay Rubin

  Bill shook him until he sat up. “It’s the famous Itsuki Lullaby,” he mumbled.

  “You already said that. Tell me more.”

  “Later,” Keiichi said, slumping down again.

  Just then the song ended. Grimacing, the bartender removed the record from the turntable, slipped it into its jacket, and brought it over to their table. Bill let Keiichi flop onto the table and took the record from the bartender with effusive thanks and apologies.

  “Folk Songs of Kyushu” said the big, red characters on green background. The rest of the album cover was taken up by a photo of a red demon mask with gold fangs and bulging gold eyes. The booklet inside contained extensive liner notes in tiny Japanese characters. Bill turned immediately to the description of the Itsuki Lullaby.

  The song was in the local dialect of Itsuki, which, according to the notes, was a village on the Kawabe River upstream from an old castle town called Hitoyoshi, which in turn was up the Kuma River from the city of Yatsushiro, which, he supposed, must be on the island of Kyushu, hundreds of miles southwest of Tokyo. Isolated, the area was said to have been settled by fugitives from the losing side of the Gempei War in the twelfth century. The song was known by virtually every Japanese.

  Bill’s heart sank when he read that. If all Japanese knew the song, Mitsuko could have learned it anywhere. But the liner notes held out one ray of hope: the song had suddenly become popular after World War II. She must have sung it to him before the war or while they were in the camp together. Certainly she had brought it with her from Japan long before anyone had dreamed of Pearl Harbor. She must have sung it to him over and over again, not merely because she had learned it by chance but because it was something deeply rooted within her. She had to be from Itsuki.

  “I’ve got it!” he exclaimed to Haruo. “I know somebody who lives in Itsuki. I’m going to go see her—tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? What about the seminar?”

  “To hell with the seminar! I’m going home!”

  30

  THE TRAIN CARRIED BILL through an unreal landscape into deepening darkness. The Hayabusa—“Peregrine Falcon”—left Tokyo Station exactly on schedule at 4:45 pm. It trundled across the Tama River, gained speed and left the city behind. The wind-driven gray hiding the sun since yesterday turned swiftly into black.

  At 6:30, the express train sped past Numazu and then through Fuji City. He had seen Mount Fuji only once from Tokyo—on a midwinter Sunday, when the factories were pumping less smoke into the air and the elevated train was passing one of those all-too-rare open spaces between the drab buildings that stood shoulder-to-shoulder along the tracks. But now, with the sun fully down and the clouds hovering low over the earth, there was no hope of seeing the legendary peak as the train raced past it.

  Not even hunger could lure him from his tiny sleeping compartment. In Shizuoka, he made do with food sold from the platform. Had he gone to the dining car, someone would surely have approached him for English practice or out of sheer curiosity, and he was in no mood for conversation. He had eight hundred miles to cover; he wanted no one intruding on his solitary thoughts.

  He was still wide awake when the train stopped in Kyoto after 11:30. This was the city in Japan that he had most dreamed of visiting, the cradle of the Imperial court, a treasure house of temples and museums arranged on the same grid of broad avenues that had been laid out more than a thousand years ago. Street lights revealed the dark silhouettes of a pagoda and a curving temple roof, but from here there was nothing to recall those days when emperors and court ladies traversed the streets in ox-drawn conveyances with bamboo curtains. He promised himself to return to this city someday—perhaps soon—with Mitsuko. They would renew their old ties here, in the spiritual center of her homeland, twenty years and thousands of miles away from the hostility that had torn them apart.

  Near midnight, he began to doze, waking briefly when the train jerked to a stop in Osaka. A long, smooth run thereafter permitted him a deeper rest, but the cry of “Hiroshima!” woke him with a chill, and he raised the blind to see the first hints of dawn lightening the sky. The city was still wrapped in darkness; he was almost thankful that there was nothing to be seen.

  He dozed fitfully to Shimonoseki, finally rousing himself there at eight o’clock. How could there still exist a place called Shimonoseki in the twentieth century? This was where, at the westernmost tip of Japan’s main island, the great armies of the Taira and Minamoto had staged their final battle nearly eight hundred years ago, arrows flying, spears slashing, and the doomed Taira fleet sinking beneath the swirling waters of Dan-no-ura with the infant emperor Antoku. Now the train would be diving beneath those same deadly whirlpools to reemerge in Kyushu, the island of refuge for some of those few Taira who escaped death. He would be following in their footsteps to the hidden core of this wrinkled volcanic mass in the ocean.

  The ugly skeletons of industry loomed up around the train when it rose to the light again in Moji. Could this be all that was left of the sacred island where Japan’s gods had first descended to earth? But during the three-and-one-half hours until he alighted at Yatsushiro, he saw that much of the green beauty of Kyushu still remained. Still, the same thick, gray layer of clouds covering the rest of the country hung in the sky here, too, brooding over the rolling hills.

  Within a few seconds of its scheduled arrival, the big, blue train pulled into the station and he stepped from his cramped compartment onto the bare platform at Yatsushiro. A howling wind tore past the station carrying straw, scraps of paper, and stinging dust.

  When the train pulled out, he crossed the tracks with a dozen or so other passengers. After surrendering his express ticket at the gate, he ducked through a peeling, glass-paneled door into the station’s waiting room.

  The doors and windows rattled in the wind, but at least the gusts could not penetrate here. A wood stove radiated just enough heat to provide some relief from the chill.

  Bill placed his small shoulder bag on the nearest bench and sat down to study the chart of arrivals and departures on the wall. Arriving at 11:42, the Hayabusa had deposited him here twenty minutes after the last express left for Hitoyoshi and an hour and a half before the next train, a local, was to come through.

  Good. He needed the time to collect himself.

  But an hour and a half turned out to be too long. He paced back and forth, freshened up in the washroom, ate a boxed lunch, slowly sipped tea from a little ocher pot, and still there was time to kill.

  Finally, an enormous, black engine quaked into the station, hissing and belching and emitting clouds of white steam and black smoke. Behind it lumbered in three dirty red-and-yellow cars. He followed four other passengers to the gate where the ticket-taker punched their tickets.

  He entered the hindmost car and sat on the long, empty bench that faced inward. The car was floored in ancient planking, furrowed and pitted and brownish-black from years of oiling. A man in his fifties, wearing muddy rubber boots and a dark green raincoat and carrying a large, cloth-wrapped bundle, came in a few seconds later, glanced impassively at Bill, then proceeded to the back end of the car. After some hesitation, as if the abundance of seating space demanded an especially careful decision, he sat on the opposite bench, placed his bundle on his knees, and closed his eyes.

  The train lurched out of the station with much squealing and coughing. It dragged itself alongside a wildly gushing river that cut a twisting gash deep into the mountains. As the train made its stops, passengers drifted into and out of the car in ones and twos. Glancing once again at Bill, the man in the green raincoat finally disembarked at the tiny station that hung over the rapids in Watari.

  Bill had been on the train over an hour when it shuddered and bumped its way into Hitoyoshi. Garish billboards on the platform and outside the station advertised an inn called the Nabeya promising the healing powers of the town’s natural hot springs. After twenty-two hours of travel with little sleep, Bill would have loved to take a room at the Nabeya a
nd soak in a hot bath, but decided first to check for buses to Itsuki. There were none. The uniformed station attendant explained to him that Itsuki was not a single village but a sprawling district comprising many little hamlets hidden away among the hills. The administrative center of Itsuki was an enclave called Toji.

  “How far away is that?” Bill asked.

  “Exactly thirty kilometers,” the attendant replied.

  Thirty kilometers … eighteen miles. He could be there in a matter of minutes. “When does the next bus leave for Toji?”

  “Saa,” hissed the man, scratching his head. “Maybe another hour.”

  “Are there any cabs?”

  The man smiled, revealing a silver tooth, and gestured toward the corner of the station. Half a dozen cabs were parked there, engines sending clouds of exhaust gas into the chilly air. The driver first in line needed no more encouragement than the station attendant’s glance. Gunning the engine, he screeched to a halt at the foot of the station steps, the passenger door flying open automatically.

  The dirt road followed the river’s twists and turns, some of them dangerously close to the cliffs rising above the water. Bill sat in the middle of the back seat, holding the arm rests on both doors to keep himself upright on curves, and looking at the deep wrinkles on the back of the driver’s neck.

  Neither driver nor passenger spoke for the first half hour, but Bill noticed the man glancing frequently at him in the rear view mirror. Suddenly he began growling some odd syllables, the gist of which seemed to be “Where are you going in Toji?”

  “I’m not sure,” Bill replied.

  The driver cocked his head and mumbled to himself, glancing at Bill a few more times. Obviously straining to speak the standard Tokyo dialect, he said, “I have never seen a foreigner here before. The Occupation soldiers only came as far as Hitoyoshi.”

  The man seemed determined to raise as large a cloud of dust behind him as possible on the straightaways. Several times Bill tried to look back at farmers they had passed on the road, some leading oxen, but they were too far away by the time the dust cleared. It was hard to imagine where the farmers could be working, so steep were the hills that came down on both sides of the road. High up on the left, he saw a hill that looked as though its tight, green foliage had recently been passed through by a huge comb. Something was growing there in neatly pruned rows.

  The driver asked, “Where should I drop you?”

  “How far is it to the village office?”

  The driver pointed beyond the windshield to a fork in the road a short way ahead, adding something through the haze of the local accent that seemed to be about a fire. Bill asked him to repeat himself in Tokyo Japanese if possible. This time he grasped that the village office and all its public records had gone up in flames sometime back.

  Just then, perhaps twenty yards ahead on the left, a sign for an inn came into view: Itsuki-soh.

  “You can drop me there,” Bill said. The driver slammed on his brakes, swerved into the inn’s driveway and came to a stop in a cloud of dust. He popped the trunk and handed Bill his bag.

  A very pregnant housewife showed him to his little matted room and brought him tea, kneeling by the low table at which he sat in the center of the floor. The air in the room was thick with the fumes of an oil stove that sat nearby, smoking. Comfortable with Tokyo Japanese, the woman confirmed that the village office had burned, adding that the new building was still under construction.

  “Are you here on official business?” she asked,

  “No, I’m looking for someone,” he said. “Maybe you can help me. I don’t have too much to go on. I’m trying to find a woman named Mitsuko.”

  The mistress of the Itsuki-soh laughed brightly, covering her mouth but not the red flush of her cheeks.

  “My name is Mitsuko,” she said.

  He smiled. “The Mitsuko I’m looking for is in her fifties.”

  She cocked her head and rolled her eyes up in thought. “I don’t know a Mitsuko of that age. My brother-in-law’s sister’s little girl is named Mitsuko. I don’t even know my brother-in-law’s sister’s first name. We mostly use the family name in Japan.”

  “My Mitsuko has a sister named Yoshiko Nomura. She is probably a few years older, and her husband’s name is Goro. They all lived in America before the war.”

  “I don’t think anyone from here ever lived in America. The man who owns the gas station at the fork is named Nomura, though. I went to school with him. I think his mother might be named Yoshiko, but I have no idea what his father’s name could be.”

  “It doesn’t sound very hopeful, does it?”

  She shook her head sadly. “Dinner will be served soon. You look tired. How about a hot bath?”

  “That does sound good,” Bill said.

  When he emerged from the bath wearing the inn’s blue and white yukata, the skirts of which came only to mid-calf, he found his meal waiting for him on the table. A teenage girl followed him into his room and remained by the table while he ate, pouring his tea and scooping his rice. A pink plastic barrette in the shape of a butterfly held her thin, lank hair out of her eyes, which she kept firmly focused on the table. He tried to engage her in conversation, but she responded only in monosyllables.

  After eating, he dressed warmly in sweater and coat. The wind had subsided, but his breath made clouds in the cold night air. He ambled down the left fork until he came to a short concrete bridge over a gurgling stream. It reminded him of a little bridge in Issaquah, where you could watch the salmon struggling upstream. This must be the Kawabe River the cab had followed up from Hitoyoshi. He stood at the bridge railing, staring down into the blackness, wondering if Mitsuko or Yoshiko had ever stood in this spot doing the same thing. Perhaps if he waited here day after day, they would eventually happen by and find him. Or possibly this whole thing was a waste of time and they were living thousands of miles from here.

  The gas station seemed deserted, but a man in his thirties popped out of the room in back at the sound of Bill’s footsteps. He was chewing something as he stepped into his sandals and began to walk toward Bill, but he stopped short when their eyes met. When Bill said he was looking for a Yoshiko Nomura, the man said his mother’s name was Sawa, but perhaps she could help him. He called into the house for his mother.

  The woman was also chewing something when she came to the door. Mrs. Nomura invited him in, but he thanked her and stayed at the threshold, where the gas station joined the house. Yes, of course, she said, she knew several Yoshikos her age, but none named Nomura. Why was he looking for her?

  “She used to take care of me when I was a little boy.”

  “That’s sweet! Have you lived in Japan for a very long time? Your Japanese is so good.”

  “She took care of me in the United States.”

  “You mean, this woman was living in America?” Mrs. Nomura asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “That settles it. I know everybody here, and I would know if anyone had lived abroad. I’m sorry.”

  That seemed to bring his search to a dead end. He looked at the woman’s son with a shrug.

  The man asked his mother, “How about Momigi?”

  “But that’s so far away,” she said. “It’s hardly even Itsuki up there.”

  “True, but don’t you remember we heard something about a woman or a family or somebody who came back from America after the war?”

  Mother and son launched into a long discussion, their dialect growing so thick that Bill could hardly understand a word.

  Finally the son told Bill about the tiny village of Momigi, which was another twenty-seven kilometers north into the mountains. The only way into the village was a bridge suspended over the Momigi Gorge. Neither mother nor son was sure of the American connection, but Mr. Nomura agreed to let Bill take his old Suzuki pick-up to Momigi, asking only that he replace whatever gasoline he used. Bill thanked them and said he would give it a try the following morning.

  It h
ad rained during the night, and thick patches of mist hung in the narrow valleys on either side of the dirt road. Never having driven in Japan before, Bill had to keep reminding himself to stay on the left, especially when huge logging trucks came tearing around hidden curves, forcing him over to the cliff edge above the river.

  Mr. Nomura had told him to go through a place called Shiibaru and, a few kilometers later, turn right at Hakiai, but road signs were either nonexistent or lost in the fog. At Shimoyashiki a shaven-headed priest told him that he had missed the turn and would have to backtrack three kilometers.

  All but their massive trunks shrouded in the mist, ancient trees towered over the narrow track to Momigi. A river was surely out there, just past the edge of visibility, but there was no fear of plunging in: with its grassy middle hump and two parallel ruts, the road itself probably would steer the truck even if he did not. He moved along slowly in first gear, the transmission whining, until the road suddenly broadened into a bumpy open space where there were parked an odd assortment of vehicles—two trucks, some hand carts, and three dust-smeared automobiles. He pulled up between the trucks and stepped out into the fog, buttoning the collar of his overcoat. Chilly drops fell from the branches high above, grazing his cheeks.

  A path led to the right between two monstrous, shaggy trees. A short way down the incline, two rusty cables were anchored to the ground. The first few planks of a narrow bridge led out into the milky air. He grasped the cable on the right, stepping tentatively onto the first plank, and gave the bridge a good shake. It hardly budged. Mr. Nomura had told him that vines had supported the bridge in the old days, but even the steel cable was not entirely reassuring. For one thing, the railings formed by the cables on either side might be high enough by Japanese standards, but for someone his height they provided disturbingly little protection against toppling over the side.

  Crouching slightly at the knees to keep his center of gravity low, he grasped both cables and set his whole weight on the bridge. The bridge swayed with each small step he took, but it was obviously not going to give way. Soon he was moving with more assurance, thankful that the thick mist prevented him from seeing what lay beneath him.