Sometime in mid-October, Brautigan met writer/singer/actor Akiyuki Nosaka at The Cradle. A hard-drinking brawler, Nosaka was a rebel hipster masked by dark glasses. He burst onto the scene in the 1960s with a series of poignant stories about adolescent youth adrift in the chaos of war. He was best known for his novels The Pornographers (1963) and Grave of the Fireflies (1967), a powerful autobiographical story about struggling to survive starvation with his little sister in the ruins of Kobe after the 1945 American firebombing raids. As a chanteur, he used the stage name Claude Nosaka. The two literary outsiders formed a drunken bond. Richard had a presentation scheduled in the American Center in Tokyo. Akiyuki was set to give a lecture at the Yonago hospital at the same time. They agreed it would be a fine idea to travel together and share the experience.
The two writers planned a three-day trip. Nosaka suggested to Mr. Isohachi, his friend at the Tokyo American Center, that he and Brautigan make the trip without a translator. Near the end of the month, they set off on the bullet train. Along the way, both got totally drunk. Through his shades, Nosaka observed Brautigan with a hipster’s acid dispassionate reserve. He considered him an American Davy Crockett clone, overweight, pale skin splotched by red patches.
Akiyuki had a secret agenda. He planned on writing about the episode and asked Richard numerous questions. Nosaka’s published account of his trip with Brautigan appeared as a short I-novel, Nichibeisakegassen (Japan–USA Drinking Battle), in December 1979. Japanese I-novels (shishosetu) often distort the truth for artistic reasons. In his novel, Nosaka claimed the first Japanese translations of Brautigan’s books stated that Richard had been born in Minnesota in 1930, and he assumed they were both the same age.
When the fictional Nosaka inquired about these biographical details, the make-believe Brautigan insisted they were true and said he worked as a journalist in Europe during the Korean War. The fictional Richard told Akiyuko that he’d gone dancing at a fireman’s hall in Minnesota to celebrate America’s victory after VJ Day. In his book, Nosaka mentioned how this greatly upset him. The real Akiyuko had been a starving orphan in a burnt-out city at the time.
In spite of the fabrications, many of the I-novel’s details reverberated with the clarion clarity of truth. Nosaka described his visit with Brautigan to Yonago, where instead of giving a lecture, Akiyuki reverted to his Claude persona and started singing. This soon became a karaoke session. Richard got into the act, belting out “Buttons and Bows” and “Rock Around the Clock.”
Afterward, Brautigan, Nosaka, and a number of doctors and nurses waited for a taxi outside the hospital, on their way to a ryoutei (a restaurant serving traditional old-fashioned Japanese food). They were startled by the heavy sound of a falling body hitting the ground. Brautigan walked back along a path through the shrubbery and encountered the corpse of a fifty-year-old cancer patient who had committed suicide by leaping from a fourth-floor window. He returned ashen faced as white-clad hospital personnel hurried to the scene. “Dead,” Brautigan said.
At the restaurant, Richard seemed in deep thought, drinking heavily. Every time the waitress poured his sake cup full, he said, “Arigatogozaimasu,” but when one of the doctors asked his opinions on euthanasia, Brautigan made a reply that Nosaka was incapable of translating. Later, at their hotel, Akiyuki invited Richard to his room, where they continued drinking beer. Nosaka wanted to talk about death, but Brautigan, pale with fatigue, expressed no interest in the topic. “Life is life,” he said. “Death, I do not understand. I saw the face of the dead for the first time.” Akiyuki likely made this up, as Richard had seen his uncle Edward in his coffin. Brautigan wrote of his uncle’s death several times but never mentioned a suicide in Yonago.
“I saw a lot of death,” Nosaka replied in his I-novel.
Brautigan fell asleep on the sofa beside Nosaka’s bed. The fictional Akiyuki stared at him, bewildered that his companion had witnessed death up close only so late in life. He had read five of Brautigan’s books in translation before embarking on this trip and was surprised to find no mention of the deaths of friends or family members in them.
The next morning, the two writers parted company in Mineyama, on the platform of the bullet train exchange station connecting Tokyo and Kyoto. A discussion between them had been scheduled to take place in Osaka after Brautigan’s Kyoto reading, but Nosaka called it off. He thought Brautigan behaved like a “sissy” at the Yonago hospital. In his I-novel, Nosaka described Richard reacting in a similar fashion when he witnessed another suicide after someone walked in front of his train. This was pure fiction.
Brautigan’s own version of this event mentioned traveling on the Tango 8 bullet train to Kyoto for his October 31 USICA presentation at the American Center. Brautigan was working on “The Empty Nest,” a short story about a Tokyo porn theater and had just written “[. . .] wants to see these girls in action acting erotic fantasies with interruption” when something dramatic occurred. One of his party, sitting at the front of the car, got to her feet and started toward him, “a look of total horror on her face.” Eyes filled with tears, her cheeks flushed and red, she looked to Richard “as if she was going to throw up.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
“A child was just hit by the train.” As she spoke, the Tango 8 express came to a stop. Everyone in the car hurried to get a look at the accident. The child had been struck at a crossing. A crowd gathered outside, making it difficult to see because the body lay so close to the train. The child was struck only a glancing blow to the top of his head. On his way back to Tokyo later that night aboard the Hikari 6 bullet train, Brautigan learned that there had been no concussion and the kid required only several stitches.
Having fulfilled his commitment to the International Communication Agency, Richard was free to leave Japan anytime. He still had seventy-three days left on his cultural visa, taking him through the holidays into the new year. Brautigan had an hourlong book signing scheduled at a “famous” Tokyo bookstore on Sunday, November 4, and wanted additional time to write more Japanese stories. Richard penned a letter to Aki, saying he planned to extend his stay.
On her return from the East Coast, Akiko began working for $3.50 an hour at a Victoria’s Secret shop. She was getting used to life without Richard, making her own way in the world again. Aki had also been hired as an interpreter and driver for a Japanese film crew sponsored by Suntory whiskey. Their schedule included travel to Chicago, Albuquerque, and Sacramento to interview the reggae star Bob Marley, scientists at the Solar Energy Lab, and the mayor of California’s capital city. Akiko would be on the road between November 12 and 17. She wrote to her husband agreeing with his decision to stay on in Tokyo to complete his writing project, but the tone of her letters had grown matter-of-fact and much less affectionate.
Caught up in his work, Richard remained oblivious to Aki’s feelings. The day of his return from Kyoto found him scribbling away furiously at a sidewalk café table in Tokyo. By late in the afternoon, Richard had written eight new short stories in his spiral-bound notebook. He thought this was one of the best writing days he’d ever had in his life. The stories were about piano movers, looking for fish under the surface of a pond where actors simulated sex in a porno film, an alcoholic dreaming of all the bottles he’d emptied in his lifetime, and a little French girl eating an ice cream cone. They had little to do with Japan. He might have written them anywhere.
During the coming week, Richard wrote another twelve stories, dining alone every night for nine days. Brautigan always found company over drinks at The Cradle later on, but drunken conversation with strangers in a bar wasn’t quite the same. On the second Friday in November, Richard wrote “Japanese UFO,” the title story for his planned book on Japanese pornographic movies. It began, “This is a fantasy, a science fiction book about Japan. It even has UFOs in it.” The story is a rumination on drive-in movies. Brautigan had been thinking about them “off and on for five years.” He’d also been thinking about
God, perhaps “3,972,411,000 times.” Richard connected his religious speculations with drive-ins. “The screen god just starts them movie-less every night.” He compared drive-in theaters to the Roman Coliseum and “the great ancient structures of Mexican civilization,” and concluded, “it’s Friday night in Tokyo. Once it was Friday night in Montana and people went to the drive-in movie show. Then they stopped.”
Thinking of his projected book-length “Japanese UFO,” Brautigan wrote another tale about porno movies that night. His subject was the instrumental music played in the intermissions between films. While the Japanese men in the audience took naps, read newspapers, or ate ice cream purchased “from an old woman who walks up and down the aisle,” Richard listened to the banal music. Little by little, Brautigan heard something familiar, an instrumental version of “Dust in the Wind,” the top-twenty hit from the summer of 1978 that had influenced the new title for his novel about his childhood in the Pacific Northwest.
Three days later, after eating his dinner alone in a supermarket cafeteria, watching the shoppers go up and down on an escalator, Richard wrote, “I’m beginning to imagine that I will spend Thanksgiving by myself in Tokyo.” He had just received enough money to stay another month. He ended a third story with, “Home is a sweet sound [. . .] Tomorrow I’ll make my reservations. I want a rest waiting for me just to be on the safe side.”
Brautigan finally made his plane reservations in another couple days. He also wrote the final three stories composed during his sixty-six-day stay in Japan. The last was “Woman in a Snake Skin Coat,” an image he’d carried around in his head for over a month. It was late in the evening, and alcohol consumption made his writing clumsy. The story concerned his uncomfortable feelings of “nervous repulsion” while waiting for the down elevator on his floor at the Keio Plaza, standing next to a middle-aged woman in a full-length snakeskin coat. Once he finished, Richard wrote “The end,” added the place and date, and scrawled beneath the story:
Happy Birthday
Merry Christmas
Fuck ’m
Fuckm
Brautigan departed Tokyo Sunday the eighteenth of November at 4:40 pm, flying eastward on Japan Airlines flight 004. Thanks to the international date line, he arrived in San Francisco at eight thirty in the morning of the same day. Richard returned to a deeply troubled marriage. Altogether, he wrote seventy-nine new stories while in Japan. Brautigan would pay a heavy emotional price for this never-published work.
Jimmy Sakata opened Cho-Cho, his Japanese restaurant in North Beach, in 1960, when he was thirty-six years old. It’s impossible to say when Brautigan first started coming into the place. Sakata recalled that he’d been a customer for some time. “I never paid attention to him,” he said, “I didn’t know who he was.” Jim first took notice of Richard “when he started to come with his Japanese wife.” He remembered how they’d sit in the back “and have powwows.” They still remained strangers to him. “She’d be crying or something.” Tears were again on the menu when they stopped by after Brautigan’s return from Tokyo.
By that time, Richard had introduced himself and Aki to Jimmy. “He said he was a writer, showed me a book.” Sakata couldn’t understand why they were together, “except for some sexual attraction.” Jimmy didn’t think Akiko could speak English very well and saw this as detrimental to a relationship. The way Sakata saw it, Aki “came over here, followed him here, came after him.” He didn’t know it at the time, but Akiko’s tears in the back shadows of Cho-Cho that night were washing away any hope of reconciliation.
Nancy Hodge planned an elegant Thanksgiving dinner to welcome Brautigan home. The Hjortsbergs had also been invited. Gatz set off on Tuesday with his two young children, driving down from Montana, “My Sharona” blasting out of the car radio. He’d become involved in an extramarital affair over the summer. To even the score, Marian flung herself into a fling with Ken Kelley. She’d flown on ahead to San Francisco to spend time with her new lover.
Gatz arrived at the Hodges’ home in Berkeley late Wednesday afternoon, bringing along a fruitcake his wife had baked as a house present. On Thanksgiving Day, Hjortsberg drove into San Francisco with the kids to pick up his wife at Kelley’s place on Larkin Street. Designated the Brautigans’ driver, Ken took his car over to Green Street to collect Richard and Aki. With his long legs, Brautigan occupied the entire backseat of the little automobile. Kelley was forced to make amiable chitchat with Akiko, whom he detested. “I felt insulted that she was riding even in the same car as me,” Kelley recalled.
Nancy Hodge remembered Thanksgiving dinner as “one of these long, laborious meals. We ate all this wonderful stuff. Everyone seemed to be in a pretty good mood.” After dessert and the last of the red wine, Richard suggested they all go into the living room and dance. It was about five in the afternoon. Nancy brought in champagne, frigid in an ice bucket, setting it on a glass table with a number of crystal flutes. The three couples danced on the rug in front of the fireplace. “Brautigan wanted everybody to be very happy that day,” Nancy said.
Ken Kelley remembered things differently. “It was like the Last Supper,” he said. “Richard was being rude to everybody. He was very drunk.” According to Kelley, Brautigan was “pinning insults” on Hjortsberg, who “was going out of [his] way to be a gentleman, trying to presume some dignity in the situation.” Perhaps his perspective as Marian’s lover put things into different focus. In spite of laughter and dancing and champagne, all three couples at the party were headed for divorce.
The Brautigans were the first to split. Akiko blamed it on Richard’s alcoholism. “He tried to quit,” she said. “So many times. When he was sober he was so sober. He was so sincere and so sweet and tried to make up [for] the previous day. And he tried to quit so many days. And it didn’t work. We loved each other [but] can’t live together because of alcoholic things.”
Margot Patterson Doss told a different story. She claimed that Akiko, hurt and angry over being left behind when Richard took off for Japan without her in September, jumped into an affair with Fumio Wada. Fumio’s wife, Mieko, had gone on a trip to visit her sister in Germany and didn’t return to San Francisco until early October. “For three weeks it was a hot little affair,” Margot remembered. If her story was true, the relationship must have started not long after Brautigan departed for Tokyo.
Truth almost always gets lost in the poisonous fog of gossip. Whatever the real story, Aki and Fumio teamed up to host a “bachelor party” at Sunday noon, the last day of September, on the deck of the Wadas’ Russian Hill house. They served pot stickers. The guest list included curious neighbor Margot, along with Tony Dingman, Shig Murao, and others. “When Richard came back she told him about [the affair],” Patterson Doss claimed, “and that’s why they got divorced.”
For whatever reason, shortly after the Hodges’ Thanksgiving dinner, Richard and Akiko decided to separate. One weekend afternoon, they took Ianthe to the neutral setting of Enrico’s to break the bad news. “She was kind of crying,” Aki recalled. Ianthe couldn’t understand why people who loved each other would want to do such a thing.
All at once, Ron Kovic rolled up to their table in his wheelchair. Ron never mentioned it, but Akiko thought he must already have heard rumors of their impending breakup. Kovic carried a knapsack with him. He asked Brautigan to close his eyes and slid a blue telephone out onto the tabletop. Ron took it with him so he could plug in anyplace his travels landed him.
Kovic asked Richard to guess what it was. Brautigan touched the phone and said something Aki thought “very beautiful,” his words lost in the emotional moment. “Obviously, Ron tried to make him laugh,” she said, wishing she could have been just such a friend. “Because he knew he’s down and he’s sad.”
Akiko moved out of the Green Street apartment the first week of December, relocating to Los Angeles. Brautigan drank his troubles away at Enrico’s. “There was a lot of bitterness,” Ward Dunham recalled. “He would sit at the bar every night and
was not happy about how it was going.” One day, Aki sent word that she wanted to come over to the apartment “and take a bunch of stuff out that she wanted.” Richard had no desire to stay home and see her but wanted someone there to keep an eye on things. Brautigan asked Dunham to help, and he got his wife, Marian, to go over to Green Street while Richard sat at the bar in Enrico’s. “God, he was in the blues,” Ward said.
Brautigan busied himself with work. He read many of his recent Japanese notebook stories aloud to his secretary, Glenise Sibbern, who took them down in shorthand, typing fair copies later. A good deal of time was spent on the phone with Helen Brann. As soon as Richard arrived back from Tokyo, his agent sent him the Targ Edition galleys for The Tokyo–Montana Express by express mail. Brautigan went right to work, correcting them by hand. He express-mailed them back to Brann’s office, and she sent them by messenger over to Targ on the last day of November, six days after the author received them in San Francisco. When his wife walked out, Richard received more bad news. Helen Brann phoned the same day to say that Targ, in a last-dash effort to get the book out in time for the Christmas market, planned to publish it without his corrections, inserting an errata slip instead.
Brautigan, a stickler for typographical accuracy, was very upset. Brann reminded William Targ of their May 23 agreement granting Richard “final approval.” The published text must agree “in every aspect with the text as supplied by the Author.” Targ was not happy. Neither was his printer, Leonard Seastone, of Tideline Press, who phoned Brautigan, pleading with him to change his mind about the inclusion of an errata slip as “a personal favor.” Furious, Richard phoned Helen, complaining about these backdoor tactics.
Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan Page 121