Toki wasn’t really complaining about Hideo; she was just offering their son’s lack of filial piety as grist for the conversation. Her gentle nature, which had led her to try so hard to blend in with a dialect and countenance so ill fitted to this rustic island, helped me to feel a bit more relaxed.
“I don’t want to inconvenience you, but Hideo invited me, and I was hoping to do some research on the place names of the island.”
Toki replied that I was very studious, but Eikichi cast me another glance. Did he think this silly amateur researcher was using the island and his son to make up for her own inadequacies? I gazed absentmindedly at Hideo, strolling through the Ufudā rice fields with his customary swagger.
I was majoring in geography at the University of the Ryukyus, which with Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972 had just become a national university. For my thesis, which I needed to complete to graduate, I had decided to do some fieldwork on place names. First, I researched the names of areas with various geographical features: limestone formations and fissures; tree groupings and enclosures; soil rises, falls, and expanses; water accumulations and flows; precipice bases and tips; capes; shorelines; sandpits; lagoons; reef drop-offs; and reef flats. When I finished, I wrote the names on cards, color coded for island and feature. Then I laid them out on the floor of my room.
gusuku. taki. chiji. hanta. mui. haru. suku. gama. hira. kā. nnatū. yuna. tumai. kumui. shī. kata. inō. pishi.…
As I looked out over the cards, I pictured the various islands that had risen up out of the ocean from the churning bowels of the earth. The place names on the cards quivered and then started to expand. Throwing myself on top of them, I was lifted to dizzying heights. Suddenly, just as the euphoric sensation was about to reach the breaking point, the formations shrunk back down into the letters on the cards. Could the traces of the thoughts and feelings of the people who had settled in those spaces actually surface from the cards? I had dared to embrace that hope.
“O. Island is over there,” said Toki, patting me on the back. “If you pass through these woods, you’ll come to a large beach. From there, you’ll have an excellent view of O. Island and its mountains. You should have Hideo take you there later.”
I looked in the direction that she pointed and gave a noncommittal nod. Ufudā was in a basin that looked as if part of the flat island had been eaten away. Surrounded by dense brush, we couldn’t see the ocean directly. Even so, I trembled at the thought that O. Island might rise up before me. I dropped the island from the list for my fieldwork. Considering its fluctuating topography and diverse villages, the island certainly would’ve provided excellent material. However, I was afraid that if I went there, I’d end up trapped in the wilderness under the glaring sun, forced to listen to the endless roar of the sea. What’s more, O. Island always reminded me of my grandmother, who went insane just before her death.
At the time, my family was living in Uimura, a small village on a hill in the northern part of O. Island. Our home and thirty or so others were deep in the woods, which cut the village off from the rest of the island as the woods stretched toward the coast. In those days, there seemed to be no end to the number of families leaving the island, and those that remained either had no place to go or were inextricably bound there by a lineage tracing back to the island’s beginnings.
My family, which didn’t have much of a role in the community, feared for its future in the steadily declining fortunes of the village and secretly plotted to leave. Everyone in my family knew that my grandmother was apprehensive about leaving, but no one sympathized with her. My grandmother was not usually an active person and spent every day doing almost nothing. As long as my mother, who was frantic with farmwork, housework, and taking care of her four children, didn’t raise a fuss or ask for help, my grandmother would spend the entire day loafing around in the back room—until one day, without any warning, all of a sudden she went crazy, as people saw it.
I was seven years old, and the Shitsi Festival was scheduled for late summer. Two days before the festival, a boat-rowing ceremony was held in which the village welcomed the gods from beyond the sea. When the tide began to gurgle around the so-called Standing God Rock out in the ocean, two boats were lowered into the water. The men of the village, who were now few, were divided into east and west, and at the sound of the gong, they dashed into the water, followed by the women, who gathered on the beach to cheer them on. At the same moment, every drum, cymbal, and conch shell rang out. To the accompaniment of finger whistling, the women squealed and broke out into boisterous dancing. Riding on the clamorous wave, those on the beach soared to elation—until the boats rounded Standing God Rock and returned. Even after the race was over, many hated to see the ceremony end, and for some time, the event dragged on. Finally, everything settled down, and the villagers started heading back to their homes.
“Hey! You can’t leave! You can’t leave yet! The gods still haven’t arrived!”
Everyone stopped to gawk at the senile old lady screaming about the gods. From the midst of the crowd, I stared at the eccentric lady with her chest thrown out in defiance. With the eyes of every villager upon her, she began to moan, “Hya, hya, hya hya,” toward the sea. Then she broke into wild dancing and waved for the villagers to join her. Her thick-boned yet thin body seemed to dance in midair. Like a mechanical toy that had been switched on, her arms flailed and her feet kicked sand into the air. It took me a while to realize it was my grandmother. But when I did, I unconsciously clutched my sister’s arm. She was standing beside me, and I tried to hide in her shadow. My sister, however, pushed me forward.
“You gotta stop her! You gotta! You gotta.…” Then she shoved me out even farther and kept repeating, “You gotta, you gotta.…”
Her tone of voice made clear that resistance was futile, so I went up to my grandmother—even though I had no idea what to do. As she chanted, “Hya hya, hya hya,” and hopped up and down at the water’s edge, I stood in front of her and yelled, “Grandma, stop it! The dragon boat races are over! Stop it!” Ignoring my desperate plea, she continued with her wild dancing. Her eyes, which seemed to be staring beyond the sea, looked like the entrances to a cave. Terrified that I’d be pulled into the darkness, I scampered around her in a dither and kept yelling, “Grandma! Grandma! Grandma!”
My grandmother never acted normal again. During the day, she confined herself to her room and became increasingly inactive. In the evening, she raised a strange cry to the sound of the wind and performed her wild dance. Every night, the family had to endure her chants and cries from the back room—until, finally, her body could no longer accept solid food, and she became bedridden.
“Let’s call it a day, Eikichi,” said Toki, slowly getting up. “Takako’s come all this way, so let’s go home early and make something nice for dinner.” She seemed worried that I had become so quiet.
“We’re heading home!” she called out to Hideo, who was walking along a ridge between some rice paddies in the distance. “Be home in time for dinner!”
Mr. and Mrs. Ōmichi walked over to the cultivator, which had a cart attached to the back. As the cultivator slowly climbed the hill, I followed their progress from the shade of the tropical almond tree, whose branches stretched out like an umbrella. Whenever Mr. and Mrs. Ōmichi got thrown off course by a twist in the road, Toki muttered something to her husband and then raised her hand as if beckoning to me.
About an hour had passed since I’d started walking from the pier. The sun was still high in the sky and burning bright. During the island’s off-season, once the passengers and freight from the boats were carried to the village, all traffic ceased. Even so, I figured I’d see at least one car. I now regretted not having boarded the microbus. I was also worried about Toki, who must be fretting about her missing guest.
Just then, I heard a violently roaring muffler from afar. I pinned my hopes on the sound, which swelled up as if from the center of the earth. A blue van, trailed by a cloud of dust, appr
oached from ahead, and before I knew it, the vehicle came flying toward me at a breakneck speed, as if it were willing to mow down any barrier in its path. I shrunk back and stepped to the side of the road. A split second later, the revving engine grew quiet, and the van skidded to a halt. A round-faced man with a crew cut leaned out from the driver’s-seat window. I didn’t recognize him.
“You’re Takako, aren’t you?”
After a slight flinch, I nodded. Then he made a U-turn and pulled up beside me.
“Aunt Toki asked me to pick you up. She’s really worried ’cause, uh, you were supposed to come today but weren’t on the bus. That’s why, uh, she asked me to come get you.”
After his faltering explanation, he pushed the door open. Feeling as if I had been rescued, I climbed into the passenger seat. Without the slightest pause, his reckless driving resumed. Every time we hit a bump in the road, the van bounced up into the air. The profusion of light along the road painted the trees and plants a dazzling bright green. The scenery in the windshield sped toward us like a scene in a movie, not so much being passed as being pulled toward us.
“You used to come here all the time way back when, didn’t you?” yelled the man, battling the sound of the engine. The question threw me for a loop. His mention of “way back when” brought back a flood of memories. “You did, didn’t you? You’ve been here before.”
I hesitated for a moment and then nodded reluctantly. “Yes, I have. The first time was about ten years ago, and I stopped coming about eight years ago.”
He stole a sideways glance at me and then hesitantly said, “You were Hideo’s girlfriend, weren’t you? Yeah, I remember. You used to walk all over the island with your camera. I used to see you all the time.”
I stared out the window in consternation. You could hardly expect people to forget everything from a mere eight years ago. Still, I had assumed that even if I couldn’t remember the villagers’ faces, I’d be prepared for the disapproving looks from those who had remembered my running away from this island I had once resolved to live on. But being spoken to in this way so suddenly made it impossible for me to maintain a calm façade.
“Why the heck didn’t you marry Hideo? Not just his family but the whole village said you’d make a great couple. Everybody was thrilled.”
My knees shook. Embarrassed, I shifted my bag to my lap so that he wouldn’t notice the trembling.
“’Cause on a boring island like this, it isn’t every day we get a young couple saying they want to settle down here. And when I say there weren’t many young people, it’s the same way now. Take me, for example. I’ll be thirty-five pretty soon, but I’m the youngest guy on the island, and I’m still single. Not that bragging to you does me any good.”
The guy kept rattling on, apparently figuring that once he got started, silence would be uncomfortable, and he had no choice but to continue. I didn’t think he meant any harm, but his insensitive way of speaking started to grate on my nerves.
“After you left, Hideo married a city girl who had been teaching at our junior high school. She put in for a transfer, and they both left—even though they didn’t get married for another year.”
I had heard the news through the grapevine. I supposed that Eikichi and Toki, having lost their son and daughter-in-law, now spent their time taking care of the rice fields and Hideo’s aging grandmother.
“Aunt Toki seems really lonely, being all alone every day.”
“All alone?”
“Yeah, recently she doesn’t go out, and she doesn’t bother with the fields at all. She’s really wasting away.”
“What happened to Eikichi and his mother?”
For a second, he just stared at me in disbelief.
“Jeez, you don’t know anything about what’s happened, do you? Eikichi and his mother died five years ago!”
I felt as if I had been slapped in the face. I unconsciously raised my hand to my cheek and gazed blankly at his lips. He stared back at me.
“About six months after his mother died, Eikichi had a stroke. And that’s how it’s been ever since. But even with all that, Hideo never visits. Even now, he only comes to the island if there’s a major problem. I heard he’s got three kids and that he bought a condo in the city. I guess he never wants to live here again. So anyway, that’s why Toki lives here all by herself.”
After spitting all this out at once, he glared at me with a look of indignation that seemed to say, “How could you come here without knowing all this?” His shock was only natural: I had convinced myself that the island would be exactly as it was eight years ago. He made me realize how thoughtless I had been to visit here on a whim, for my own selfish reasons, without even considering how things might be at the Ōmichi home.
As if his smoldering anger had poured from him all at once, he closed his mouth tightly and never opened it again. Included in that silence was perhaps his criticism of a son who would leave his aging mother on an island all by herself, while enjoying his own life in the city. Or maybe he was disgusted with himself for having been left behind on a lifeless island—even though he was still young. I considered these possibilities, but when I noticed how intractable he had become, I could only feel that his anger was mainly directed toward me. His driving became even more reckless, as if he were taking out his pent-up frustrations on the car.
A sparsely populated village popped up from among the fields that cut through the flatlands. The van passed various homes, all with their doors and gates wide open, and entered the old village. When we reached the Ōmichi home on the northern outskirts, the man dropped me off unceremoniously and turned back the way he had come. The disgusted look was still on his face. I didn’t have a chance to thank him—or even to ask his name.
I passed through the simple, unadorned gate. The front door was left wide open, and I could see the empty rooms. A long veranda stretched across two Japanese-style rooms, one with a small Shinto altar. No one was home. The heavy, humid air seemed to have dulled the wood of the pillars and sliding doors, and the house itself seemed to be withering. Where was Toki? I didn’t have the energy to call her. Engulfed in the stagnant air, I stood there holding my bag limply.
I sensed someone behind me and turned around. A woman in a light-colored dress came slowly walking toward me from the gate. It must be Toki. And yet I thought it could be someone else. The plumpness was gone from her smiling face, and her cheeks were sunken and sallow. She moved with sluggishness rather than her usual grace, and her way of walking was unnatural, each step shaky and unsure. Even so, I knew it had to be her. She was carrying a shopping bag, so she must have just returned from the nearby market. The bag seemed heavy for her, so I ran over and took the groceries from her hands. Self-conscious about my contorted smile, I struggled to speak some simple words of greeting. With what strange look did I greet her?
“It’s so good of you to have come, Takako. I’ve been waiting for you.” Toki’s clear voice rang out, and my confusion was swept away. She sounded full of life.
“Sorry to have worried you. I decided not to take the bus. It’s been a while, so I wanted to walk and see the island.”
“So that’s where you were. I thought that might be what happened, but I got a little worried and called Hideo’s cousin, Morio. He’s the guy who picked you up. Anyway, I completely forgot that walking around the island was your specialty. I guess I worried myself unnecessarily.” Her eyes squinted as she smiled, but for some reason, they weren’t focused on me. Morio had mentioned that Toki no longer worked in the fields, and I noticed that her tanned skin was peeling away and that blotches stood out on the white skin underneath.
At Toki’s urging, I sat down on the edge of the veranda. Facing the front yard, we sat side by side, our feet lined up on the stone patio. “It’s so good of you to come,” Toki kept repeating, showing no signs of wanting to talk about anything else. Her head never turned away from the yard, and I began to feel more and more uncomfortable.
“I didn’t kn
ow about your husband and mother-in-law,” I ventured to say.
Toki slowly shook her head. “It doesn’t do any good to think about people who’ve died.” She showed no signs of grief. The coldness I felt in her words sent a shiver down my spine. She wasn’t looking at anything. Her gaze was focused on a point directly in front of her, as if she were staring into a gaping hole. Feeling that I was being urged to look into my own heart, I averted my gaze.
With a sudden handclap, Toki’s voice perked up: “Well, then! It’s been a while, so let’s have a party tonight, just us two girls. Okay, Takako?” Her outburst, in a high-pitched, almost hysterical voice, rankled my nerves.
From my perch on the veranda, I watched as Toki scurried into the kitchen with the groceries. I followed her with my eyes from my perch over the patio. Something was definitely wrong. She must already be in her mid-fifties. No, she was certainly pushing sixty. Even though her body was in decline, for some bizarre reason, she spoke and acted like a reckless young girl. Could she have lost all that grace and self-restraint during a few years of living alone? Or was the image I had of her from before merely a figment of my imagination? No, that couldn’t be. It had only been eight years. Even if there were some minor discrepancies in how I remembered her, the powerful image I had of her could not possibly have been an illusion. Even so, perhaps things had had to turn out like this for her. I was struck by the thought that chance had made me part of the cause. With Toki puttering around in the kitchen behind me, I stepped down into the yard.
It was the spring of my junior year in college, several years after political realization of that strange slogan “reversion to the motherland.” I was living in a small, four-and-a-half- tatami mat room, which I rented for seven thousand yen a month. It was one of four rooms in a one-story wooden house partitioned by thin walls. One day, after my part-time job working as a tutor every other day, I was passing through the dark alley heading for my room when I overheard a young man singing to the accompaniment of a sanshin. His voice, sounding as if forced from his throat by a power in the pit of his stomach, overwhelmed the accompaniment, and the elusive melody resonated through the alleyway.
Islands of Protest Page 14