by Arturo Silva
–I haven’t thought of it much, I must admit. I have no idea what sort of character it has; it is fairly large, after all.
–True.
–And some greenery. And it has the river.
–The river?
–The Tama. Is there another?
–Uh, well, some of us might think so. Yes, we’ll ask Roberta, on the weekend.
–But you, Kaoru, you live in Gunma Prefecture, don’t you? Whereabouts, Maebashi?
–No, a small town outside Takasaki. Been there all my life in fact. Except these past few years that the head office has wanted me here.
–And still with your parents?
–Oh no, no, they passed on some time ago, while I was in university in fact. Now there’s just my sister and I. Well, I shouldn’t say “just,” after all, she has three children, and I have two.
–Is that a fact?
–Yes, yes, nine, ten and eleven – those are my sister’s kids. Ours are three and five. Girls both. But I’m not the best of fathers, too much like my own, I suppose, rather sloppy. Not home much either.
–So much work?
–So much whiskey.
–Of course.
–But it’s not so bad, really. An old high-school girlfriend owns a bar, and I sometimes stay at her place after hours.
–Oh, a bonus, Kaoru.
–Occasionally. Usually I just stay in my non-descript apartment and contemplate my normal-dreary existence.
–Well, it doesn’t sound too bad, nothing out of the ordinary.
–Oh, it’s bad alright. I have no illusions about that. No love lost between my wife and I. I hardly know my children. The bar owner is not so much a dear friend as … well, let’s say we admit to a desperate clinch, and then we are off on our separate ways come morning. I’m walking forward to my grave, like most of my generation, like my father’s, and I daresay, like yours will do. Don’t get me wrong, I do not condemn it. It isn’t even worth analyzing. It is simply the way things are here. You know what I’m talking about, don‘t you?
–I suppose I do. Yes, yes I do.
–Shame about the girls, though. You try to keep them cheerful, all the while knowing you’re lying to them, and they will find you out sooner than you think. They’ll find everything out, and only pass on the same lies to their own children. And we will then indulge our own grandchildren in the same way, senile enough by then to think we can undo the lie. But again, don’t misunderstand me, it is simply the way things are here.
–Do you think things are different elsewhere?
–I don’t really know; I expect not; perhaps they are; but why should it matter to me? Other places are not Japan.
–No, no they are not. But don’t you have any hobbies, something you enjoy?
–Hobbies!? You mean like reciting Noh ballads, or photographing the irises in Meiji Park? No, no hobbies – commuting, whiskey, the bar woman. It’s a bit unfair, really.
–But you say she was an old girl-friend.
–Well, not in any happy, childish way. We just both happened to admit the convenience of our mutual recognition – you know what I mean – emotional indolence, sexual need. And we’ve continued to enjoy getting together now and then – but nothing more, no commitment, no ruining a perfectly good thing by getting all emotional about it.
–A perfectly good thing?
–Well, you know, you stick it in now and then, share a few laughs – that’s about all the positive side of things as far as I can see. That’s all you take with you. Mutual sucking and licking, mutual laughs. But cunt doesn’t really taste all that good, you know, but it has to be done really, to keep things all in their proper balance. Ah, but she’s a sweet woman in her own way. And you?
–Well, I suppose I have to admit that things are not really all that different for me; they may appear so on the surface, but I can see how my entire pathway was long ago laid out for me, through to the end. It’s funny, it is no tunnel with light at the end, you know. Instead, it’s all so clear and sunny, all the signs posted along the way, and no chance for a detour. Even if an earthquake strikes and a million people die, I will probably know what my next steps are to be. I might even be able to choose my own wife, but I’ll never really know if she was in fact my own choice, if she hadn’t somehow already been chosen for me unbeknownst to me. I know that at work certainly I have no choice; but it’s comforting in a way.
–Yes, it is. We are like tiny chips on the great motherboard called Japan – no, better, call it Tokyo, just the great capitol, and that motherboard works – that is the great thing, the comfort. There is our pride. To be even a small part in this great …
–Yes, yes, you’re right, I’m sure. Funny how others would see this all so negatively.
–Yes, after all, who complains here? Oh sure, a small minority, but we Japanese accept our lot, we don’t have too bad a time of it. Time is on our side, after all. So, you say there is a good sushi-ya near your house?
–Oh yes, so, do you think you’ll come on the weekend?
–Yes, it sounds fine. My own calligraphy may be rather slipshod, but I do appreciate a good hand. Your mother’s a teacher?
–Oh, amateur, you know, the occasional group exhibitions, a few students.
–And all the fees working their way up to the top man, eh?
–Of course.
–Will Lang be there with Roberta? Or any of their other friends? That quiet one, what’s her name, Arlene?
–Oh no, these are lessons for Roberta alone. She is serious about learning calligraphy, really, I am impressed. I doubt that her friends are. And Lang, no, he would never accompany her on such a task.
–No, I suppose not.
–Well, it might be interesting, going out to dinner with her, having a chat.
–Yes, yes, I always feel rather tongue-tied around her. I don’t know what it is. It’s not that she is a foreigner, oh it may have been that at first, but no longer. Maybe I just feel dull next to her.
–Dull?
–Well, like we said, our lives are already laid out for us, what could we possibly have to say new? What contribute? Whereas she seems to be making out her own life, carving a path, laying out the road herself, complete with detours, sudden turns, you know the way roads and walkways go every which way here.
–Interesting that you think this of her. But there is everything to discuss with her! What does it matter that ours are one-way streets – there is still conversation. A few words never changed one’s direction, only distracted one along the way. Mutual amusement, not abusement. Yes, Hiro, talk is our only gift, when all the clinches have been forgotten, it is all we can offer. Yes, I am sure that she will be able to learn much from speaking with us. She is so enthralled with life in Japan, we certainly have much to enlighten her about. What does she know, after all, of the salary-man’s point of view? Of Gunma Prefecture, of life among rice-paddies, of real Japanese women, traditional women with more than one-point-two children? Or of Setagaya-ku and its own traditions? No, she will be able to gain much from our mutual intercourse.
–I admire your confidence. But I’ll have to think hard about that one, “Setagaya-ku’s traditions.” Maybe I’ll ask my mother.
–Yes, yes, you do that. I’d like to know too, after all. It will also be good for me to see a bit more of Tokyo than Marunouchi.
–And you get along with Roberta?
–Oh, well enough. She has always been pleasant to me. I don’t know why, really. I can’t see myself as being at all interesting to her. Maybe because I get along with everyone, with her other friends, those girls, and maybe because I introduced her to Cafferty.
–Oh, how did that come about?
–He did some work for my company once, and one day I happened to run into him and Roberta at the same time in Ginza. They seem to like each other. Anyway, she doesn’t seem to mind me.
–Do you think she’s attracted? You know how foreign women are always curious about Japanese men.
–Good for you!
– Well, in any event, it should prove to be an interesting afternoon.
–Well, I’m very glad you’ll be coming. I’ll let her know beforehand not to plan anything else for after her lesson.
–Do you usually have dinner with her afterwards?
–Oh, no, I usually walk her to the station; once or twice we’ve gotten noodles together, but nothing more.
–Well then, it will be a first for the three of us.
–Hmmm.
***
THE NAMES OF LOVE
Who are these people for whom love?
Who these cycles of names?
Who this Roberta, this Arlene, Marianne?
Who this Lang, this van Zandt, Cafferty?
Who are these people for whom love?
Who this cycle, who these names?
Who this Hiroko, this Hiromi, Kazuko?
Who this Hiro, this Kazuo, Kaoru?
Who are these people for whom love?
Who would love?, who would love and want to love?, and who would – perhaps – love?
Who would love many and love one?, who love many, thus losing himself?, and who would leave love to chance?
Who are these people for whom love?
Who would love and love and love?, who would insist on love?, and who would love once and – no more?
Who would play at love?, who has loved once and will only once more?, and who questions love, indeed, calls it “the big whatsit”?
Who are these people for whom love?
For whom is it a Poetics of Union?, for whom a State of Desire?, and for whom a Prospect on to the Infinite?
For whom is love the Condition of Knowledge?, for whom a Situation of Plenitude?, and for whom is it an act of Denying, of Refusal?
Who are these people for whom love?
For whom it is the Realization of both One’s Self and Non-self?, for whom is it a Fall from All Future Grace?, and for whom does it form the very Responsibilities of Memory?
And for whom is love a Fateful daring of the Absolute?, for whom an Acceptance of his Mastery, and for whom, finally, is his love a Refusal of any and every Surprise?
Who are these people for whom love?
Who are these people?
For whom love?
***
Like some pure demon the blackest eyes reddest lips whitest skin float off the page the poster the billboard hover over and haunt me – and yet, by the mid-90s Miki Imai is wholly benign.
***
–Nakano already?
–Born walkers, nothing can stop us.
–So, what do we do now?
–What do you mean?
–Well, isn’t it most people’s impulse to walk along the Chuo line?
–You mean on the tracks? That’s dangerous!
–No, but alongside, you know.
–Not my impulse.
–Why would anyone do that?
–Because if you think of going west from Nakano – well, what’s the first picture that comes to mind?
–Uhm, next comes Ogikubo.
–Yes, but comes where?
–Along the way, you know that.
–No, but visually, where does it come.
–Do you mean geographically?
–No, visually.
–Topographically?
–Ok. When you imagine in your head the path from Shinjuku to Nakano –
–Is there a path? Is that what you’re getting at, a path along the tracks?
–No. If you imagine the way, the two places on a picture, what kind of picture is it?
–You mean like a photograph?
–No, but, yes a printed picture.
–A map.
–Right!
–So, there’s a map, Roberta, what’s the big deal.
–I forget.
–I don’t – it has to do with how one goes from Shinjuku to Nakano.
–Right, and all I’m saying is that most people imagine a straight line from one to the other because they have this Chuo Line map-image fixed.
–I don’t.
–Me either.
–Not me, I drive, so I think of the roads.
–Not me either, I take a bus.
–I have my scooter.
–I don’t think I’ve ever gone from one to the other – or at least walked it like we are now. I just go by whatever means are available. So what are you getting at, Roberta?
–Yeah, it sounds like you’re the only one who imagines this Chuo Line straight line.
–Ok, ok, I give. It’s no big deal. We’ll just keep walking – away from Shinjuku –
–You can still glimpse it a bit –
–And past Nakano, Sun Palace and all, and –
–Into the sun!
–The real Sun King’s palace!
–Right, well, due east at least.
–Right, due east.
–Anyone got a compass?
–Not me.
–Not me.
–How are we gonna know we’re going the right way?
–Think we should try to keep it straight?
–Like – I hate to say it –
–Go ahead.
–Like along the Chuo Line?
***
I saw that van Zandt guy the other day in Roppongi with Hiroko and Hiromi, Hiro considers. Very late, and all three very drunk. A girl on each arm. Lucky guy. I’d certainly like to have either one of them make me happy. And I saw Arlene the other day too, in a coffee shop. She was talking with a Japanese woman. They each had a stack of books and papers with them. Were they working? Arlene. Very pretty. But too quiet for me.
***
Okoi
The most famous of modern geishas was destined for heartbreak; after all she was born into it: her parents had married for love!
All we know are her stage names. First there was Teru, and then Okoi, Carp, known as her biographers tell us for its “voluptuous grace.” The careful reader could do no better than to view her life in light of Saikaku’s A Woman who Loved Love and Mizoguchi’s version with our beloved Kinuyo Tanaka, respecting the differences between all three of course.
We know nothing more of the parents, unfortunately, other than the fact that their livelihood (lacquer) soon came to a stop and they were forced to give up the four-year old product of their love to a ‘tea’ house. In turn, her foster parents too lost their small fortune and once again, now aged seven, the little girl entered another house where the foster parents became servants to an aging geisha. (In time, they would become Okoi’s servants.) The little girl’s charms eventually lead to her becoming a geisha. She made her debut in 1893 at age thirteen in the Shimbashi house Omuja.
Waley tells us that “She possessed an unusually striking form of beauty: full lips, a pronounced chin, a slender nose; hers was an intelligent mature face, quite different from the other faces – childish, demure or featureless – that peer out of the photographs of the geisha of her day.” We can’t help but noting that things have not changed very much in the decades since Okoi’s prime.
Within five years she was so well known for her many skills that her first patron, HeizoYajima, a stock-broker, set her up in her own teahouse. Soon enough, her fame grew and the great rake and Kabuki actor Ichimura Uzaemon became infatuated with her. And she was starstruck. So too was Yajima. He was so taken by being so near the center of attention that he voluntarily acted as Okoi’s go-between for her marriage to Ichimura, who, having won his prize, soon forgot her. Though she remained starstruck: she eventually spent her fortune covering the debts accrued by his profligacies. In time (Waley says two years, the Longstreets say four) a divorce was worked out. Heartbroken, Okoi had had it with men: she opened a new house and this time was hell-bent on her own pleasures. She was soon enough back in demand: this time by two sumo wrestlers, whose names should be recorded
, Araiwa and Hitachiyama. The two behomeths dueled in their fashion, the former won, but was refused marriage. Of poor Araiwa, it has been said, “He was a simple simon of a fellow – all lard including his brains.”
In 1903, our heroine was introduced to Taro Katsura, who three times would be Prime Minister of Japan. His was no temporary infatuation. He first redeemed Okoi for two thousand yen, and in 1906 married her (Waley), and she was now a respectable and settled woman. None of this will be found in the history books, of course. But still, hers was not a happy lot. In 1905, for example, the Russo-Japanese war was concluded with an unfair-to-Japan Katsura-negotiated treaty which incensed the nation. Okoi was reviled by the public as “the mistress of the betrayer of the Sun God.” Katsura died in 1913, and Okoi mourned him for five years. And then her past life beckoned once again: she opened the National Bar in Ginza, and then another house in Akasaka. And then in 1934, her patron’s “crooked political dealings,” brought on another scandal, and again she became the victim of the mob. But, we are told, her “innate pliability ... shrugged off suicide.”
In 1938 Okoi took the tonsure. For the last ten years of her life she either lived in a temple in Meguro Ward or did charitable work. For example, she traveled through China during wartime, praying for both the Chinese and Japanese victims. She also played a part in preserving what remains of the Temple of Five Hundred Arhats in Meguro. At the temple where she lived we can find a statue of the great Goddess of Mercy Kannon – it is known as the Okoi Kannon.
Perhaps there is something to contemplate here, some moral lesson to learn – something about this karyãkai, this “flower and willow world,” something perhaps especially Buddhistic and Tokyoish about the heights and depths of great passions, about the waywardness of both poverty and wealth, and that one’s only refuge is renunciation. Perhaps.
***
She made love like he imagined a lesbian to. Clinging, sucking, wanting to get “under his skin,” as Arlene had told van Zandt once in a rare drunken state. Needing so much to penetrate.
***
suddenly went mad
suddenly blank
suddenly – saw you
***
ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER
(To the memory of Thomas Bernhard)