The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

by Donald Richie

  Thereafter, we always breakfasted together. He had read part of Proust, had braved a delinquency report to sneak into a Noh drama, believed that we should democratize the Japanese, and showed a healthy disrespect for authority.

  “Shall we go see Jeanette?” he asked over a late breakfast. I was mystified. Jeanette who?

  My wonder grew as we walked across to Ginza, past Yurakucho and—just in time—joined the throng in front of the Dai Ichi Building. I knew what was going to happen because the great local sight was neither Ginza nor Fuji, but an important event that occurred twice a day: once at lunchtime, once just before dinner.

  An olive drab limousine pulled up to the curb. The MPs guarding the pillared façade directly across the moat from the Imperial Palace, smartly straightened. Snappy salutes were proffered and out from the portal sailed General Douglas MacArthur.

  The performance was always the same. In the wings he had put on his famous hat, tilted it at the proper angle, adjusted his profile, and started off, this soldier whom some called with no irony at all “The New Emperor of Japan.”

  A number thought so. Today, a country mother held up her child, pointing out the famous sight to the infant’s wondering eyes, an ex-soldier with one leg stood more sharply, and an old man gazed at the pavement in, perhaps, reverence.

  And as the famous general sped past and stepped into his sedan, Gene turned to me and said: “There goes Jeanette.”

  The mysterious reference was later explained. Singing film-star Jeanette MacDonald, dressed as a page, had, in one of those movies of hers, navigated a staircase in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, in just such an assured, even pert fashion. Struck by the resemblance between the performances, Gene occasionally came to enjoy it.

  “Also,” he said, “you might say it is a kind of penance.” He said this with a smile that was already half a question, a slight invitation to partake, and at the same time indifference if I did not.

  I had somewhere read that identity requires the presence of someone by whom one is known—someone who knows who you are, often before you yourself do. Gene observed my enthusiasm, shared some of my dislikes, but always put some distance between himself and these. Though I was beginning to find him a possible model in my relations with this country, he did nothing to encourage me.

  He believed in a kind of perfection yet excused everyone from attaining it—except himself. We were talking about The New Yorker, a publication excluded from both commissary and PX after it ran John Hersey’s issue-long account of Hiroshima.

  “It never contains a typographical error,” he said.

  I, believing in unavoidable sloppiness, said that this was impossible.

  “Oh no, it’s not,” he said mildly. “It is quite possible. All that is necessary is that every error is caught. I admire the editor.”

  Perfection was possible, all one had to do was to take all possible care. I watched him doing so. When he practiced his calligraphy no mistake was made—the forming of the kanji, the width of the stroke, the pressure of the brush—everything was as it ought to be. Methodical, he built up, line upon line, his ideal world.

  Eugene Langston. donald richie

  And yet he was never solemn and could smile at the foibles (Jeanette) he found around him. He was serious without being earnest, and I had never met anyone like him. Yet, he was not a very good model for me. Besides that he would not have wanted to be; he was ascetic, which I certainly wasn’t.

  Austere—he was not making a statement with his Japanese breakfasts; he had a liking for the acerbic—he was rigorous with himself and even seemed to enjoy the forbidden. Once when I was dreading our next worming, he said, “Oh, no, think of it as purification.”

  “They have a right to live too,” I said, surprising myself.

  He gave me a look of deep approval, “So they do, so they do.”

  Herschel Webb. donald richie

  It was then that I thought of penance and hazarded that the worming might be some sort of atonement. But for what, I wondered. Hiroshima? Jeanette? Being Occupiers? And if so, why? I certainly felt none of the compunctions I sensed in him. Healthily opportunistic, I never questioned a single opportunity and Gene seemed to be questioning them all. He was not, however, usable. I could not model myself on him. But the deeper I knew him the more I admired him.

  *

  Through Gene I met his roommate. Tall, inquisitive eyes, intelligent nose—this was Herschel Webb. I admired him as well. Even though there still were signs around that sternly mandated “No Fraternization with the Indigenous Personnel,” he had confounded the MPs and gone to the Noh drama.

  “I saw Funa Benkei,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means ‘Benkei in the Boat,’ ” and it refers to one of the exploits of the strong bodyguard and friend of the rebel General Yoshitsune, as you will remember.”

  I remembered nothing of the sort but Herschel always gave one credit for more learning than one had.

  “And now we must have Denwa Benkei,” he continued, not even smiling, and it was some time before I discovered that this means “Benkei on the Telephone.”

  Holloway Brown. donald richie

  Herschel could also sing all of Bach’s forty-eight preludes and fugues, managing this through a series of mnemonic aids: “Oh, once there was a crocodile and he was sunning on the Nile.” He could sing opera in English as well. A favorite was from Il Trovatore. It went: “Oh! Oh! They’re burning her at the stake. Oh, how I quake. At the sight.”

  Much as I liked him, he was also no model for me. Despite all the fun he was deeply shy. Every day one had to thaw him out before he could begin to respond. Often he helped himself with whiskey. Once thawed he was a delight, but it took time, during which he was polite but reserved, gave short answers if any. When I mentioned this to Gene he nodded and then said that if one wore a lot of armor it took a long time to take it all off.

  Sometimes I invited them out for weekends. Across the valley from Engakuji, the temple where Dr. Suzuki lived, was a guest house, empty, which I was told I could use. Square and spartan, it was two rooms, a kitchen, and a view over the Kamakura hills. It had no running water, no gas, and the toilet was an outhouse over a pit. Ideal—so different from the American comforts with which I grew up and which were being imported into the billet where I was presently living.

  Trying to boil water for tea over a charcoal hibachi, trying to battle the bees that had taken lodging in the benjo, I felt that I was truly living. Back in Tokyo I was, somehow, merely existing.

  We brought food from the PX, and camped out in the two rooms. Gene took at once to its austerity. Like me he believed that the spare was the authentic. When he discovered that the Engakuji library was next door and that he might use it, he was even more contented and would disappear into it for hours.

  Noh drama, with Herschel Webb, 1947. eugene langston

  Herschel approved of the austere more on aesthetic than on ethical grounds. Also he regretted the absence of ice for the afternoon martini, saying sadly that a warm martini was like a Manhattan with an olive. And, though fearful of the bees in the benjo, and refusing to use it unless absolutely necessary, he admired the view and would sit on the veranda and look at it for hours.

  We also amused ourselves in various ways. Once we decided to make a musical comedy out of Le Sacre du Printemps, and put words to the melodies. Those for the opening bassoon solo went: “Oh, baby, see the moon. Oh, baby, see the moon. Way up high, so high. Oh, baby, see the moon.”

  Also, using the bedding—sleeved quilts—we put on a Noh drama. Gene was the waki, the character who always explains who he is and where he comes from: “I am an American scholar. I come from near Nihonbashi in Edo.” Herschel was the orchestra, expertly simulating the whistling, pops and groans. I was the shite, the protagonist given to protean change. Most often I was a monster.

  We talked about an opera based on Proust. Odette was a mezzo and would have many sforzand
o markings. Swann would be a typically French tenor: lots of vibrato and a tendency to bleat. A first act aria contained: “O, seul, monotone, all alone by my telephone.”

  We also cast a Warner Brothers’ Proust. Odette was, naturally, Bette Davis, and Joseph Cotton was Swann, for want of better. Sydney Greenstreet was, of course, Charlus, but who could Jupien be? “Peter Lorre,” said Herschel with a laugh that soon turned into a cough for he, like Proust, was asthmatic. He used to wheeze on the Ginza and later, after he had become a well-known Japanologist, he could visit the country no longer. “Oh, dear,” he used to say, “I’m allergic to my specialty.”

  Evenings, the sun going behind us, flooding the roofs of Engakuji across the valley, we would grill our Spam on the hibachi, boil the wiener cocktail sausages, crunch the Ritz, guzzle the gin, and enjoy the luxury of our Japanese life.

  Most of the other pages of this period have been previously used, particularly in Where Are the Victors? and in the unfinished memoir In Between. Here are some excerpts from the latter.

  late summer 1947. Wandering in the city after work, smelling camellia hair oil, dusty long unaired kimono, the passing night soil wagon with its patient ox, listening to the incomprehensible murmur of conversation around me, looking into eyes suddenly averted, I try to make sense of what I see.

  In a way it already makes sense—Tokyo in ruins still reveals something known from Chicago, New York and, during the war, Naples, Marseilles: the look of a big city just anywhere. In another way, however, I begin to apprehend alternatives to things as I already know them.

  The way the buildings stand—those that still do—in relation to each other; the way the rooms—those few I have seen—with their tatami matting, their interior stages for scrolls and flower arrangements, divide space: this is different. The politeness—for so I read it—of people who might not be starving but who clearly do not have enough to eat: this too is unlike. And the acceptance, the shrugs, the smiles, the willingness to continue, to begin again, to look on the bright side of things—I wonder how my hometown would have reacted to a near annihilation.

  Another country, I am discovering, is another self. I am regarded as different, and so I become different—two people at once. I am a native of Ohio who really knew only the streets of little Lima, and I am also a foreigner who is coming to know the streets of Tokyo, largest city in the world. Consequently I can compare them, and since comparison is creation, I am able to learn about both.

  Already I am as absolved as I will ever be from prejudices of class and caste. I cannot detect them here and no one here can detect them in me, since my foreignness is difference enough. So, I remain in a state of surprise, and this leads to heightened interest and hence perception. Like a child with a puzzle, I am forever putting pieces together and saying: Of course.

  Or, naruhodo, since I am trying somehow to learn Japanese. And knowing a language does indeed create a different person since words determine facts. Here, however, I am still an intelligence-impaired person since I cannot communicate and have, like a child or an animal, to intuit from gestures, from intent, from expression.

  Language will perhaps eventually free me from such elemental means of communication but at the same time ignorance is teaching me a lesson I would not otherwise have learned. While it is humiliating to ideas of self to be reduced to what one says—nothing at all if one does not know Japanese—it teaches that there are avenues other than speech.

  I knew a little about this. In Italy or France during the war, sitting through foreign films without English titles, I did not learn much about the film but I learned a lot about filmmaking. How the director and his writer and cameraman had thought about time and space, the assumptions they had made, the suppositions they had built upon, their apparently unthinking inferences. Now again, in a very different country, I am again beginning to understand the film without comprehending the plot.

  I look at the janitor’s closet in the Kokubu Building where I work, see the box for shoes and otherwise the luxury of empty space; peer into the translator’s desk drawer and notice that she has classified differently—all long things are in one place, all round things in another; gaze at the mat-floored room where the ex-president once sat, and perceive the tokonoma, the stage-like space where sat time itself, in the shape of a seasonal scroll and an oft-changed arrangement where the flowers were always fresh and always looked the same—both renewed by an ancient secretary whom the war had left untouched though it had carried the president away. Trying to read things like this is like learning Braille, as though another sense is involved, where sensing becomes something like grammar.

  After only a month, I see that I risk ignorance if I remain typing away in what I scornfully call Little America. My job, nine-to-five in an office that could have been anywhere; my home life at the Continental Hotel, all Spam and powdered potatoes and lumpy pillows; my recreations, the PX, a cheap made-in-America bazaar, the allowed entertainments, movies with the GIs and bingo night at the American Club, occasionally special Occupier-night, one performance only, at the Kokusai Gekijo All-Girl Dance Theater—all of this begins to appear more and more unreal to me.

  Richie’s first feature in Stars and Stripes, 1947. stars and stripes

  Unreal and unpleasant. Little America, try though it does to impart democracy and individualism, is also a territory where the Japanese are worried over, and are made objects of condescension. They are treated like blacks in the American south, or like the “natives” in Forster’s A Passage to India, a work I recently read. Or worse. Our two GI drivers call our janitor a gook. I soon see I will experience nothing, learn nothing if I stay within these commodious and American folds.

  Thus when I learn that we, the Occupiers, are regularly wormed, I am somehow pleased. Back in Ohio worming was for animals or what we still called “poor white trash.” Here, however, our salads are cultivated with something called “night soil,” a fertilizer composed of the excrement of the Occupied. We consequently get whatever they have.

  This is indeed an Occupation—our American bowels a nurturing home to native Japanese fauna. No matter our own sense of superiority, our manifest efforts to recreate our own civilization in these far islands, we are every three months reminded that we are merely human after all. This we ascertain by glancing into the bowl and then hurriedly flushing it. Going to the toilet after having taken worm medicine is a great leveler.

  While never looking forward to the doses, I welcome the effect. Not only am I then worm-free for another three months, but also I am sharing something with the Occupied. In a situation where our people call their people gooks and where we are forbidden to make their social acquaintance, where they are held to be morally as well as socially inferior to us and are thus in need of purging, their worms seem positively friendly.

  I look about the office of the Allied Cultural Property Division where I work. Stay I must in body, since I am here to work, but SCAP has little control over my ambitions. Therefore I long to fraternize with the forbidden indigenous personnel. Indeed such aggressive and self-conscious segregation—Japanese and Americans, Occupied and Occupiers, Them and Us, Gooks and Gentry—make me want to flout such authority. Abrogating arrogant and useless rules is attractive in itself, but a further reason is that these orders are the glass against which I press my longing face, no less than do the Japanese when, alien in their own country, they gaze packed and flat-faced at solitary me in my Allied-Only car on the Tokyo trains.

  *

  The offices of the Allied Cultural Property Division have a weekly mimeographed bulletin and I know the person who compiles it. She tells me they are looking for “human-interest” material and I decide to fill this need. Having read Nitobe Inazo on Bushido, Ruth Benedict on toilet training, R. H. Blyth on the haiku, I now want to write something myself.

  I have the means. I can type—indeed, I have often thought that I became a writer simply because I know how to typewrite. First comes technique, then style; no typing pr
owess and I would have turned into something else. My problem in Japan is where to begin—there is too much to write about. But here, however, was something specific—human-interest.

  I find some. Just upstream from our building just off Nihonbashi is this other bridge, smaller and so far as I know, nameless. A man lives under it, among the girders. Having moved in after the war, he there remains. Grizzled, he is often seen perched in his watery home. So I go to see him, taking with me the unwilling office interpreter.

  She had said we would be bothering him. No, I said, we would be interviewing him, trying to make it sound as though this would be no bother. He is a poor man, she had said. We couldn’t pay him, I said, but we could give him something—maybe Spam, or cigarettes.

  Cigarettes, she said, so we set out with pencil, pad, and a carton of Camels.

  Our host, Iwasaki Kiyoshi, is appreciative of the cigarettes and loquacious in return. Shortly, our newsletter carries: “Man Under a Bridge—The Story of a Refugee from Ruin.” This refugee “though clothed in rags, maintained a venerable dignity,” as he told his uncomplicated story. “He answered questions courteously and simply but there was no hint of the obsequious in his manner.”

  There was plenty in mine. I had written about the amenities of his dwelling using such phrases from far Ohio as “snug as a bug in a rug,” and observed that “the sight of the foreigner coming to visit apparently caused no alarm, though later he said he had at first thought that we were coming to take his home from him.”

  My completed work excites some interest among the office staff—this kind of “coverage” is still rare. Some think the Japanese still somehow enemies. My kind of condescension is new. Consequently, it also attracts the notice of the feature desk of the Pacific Stars and Stripes, the Occupation newspaper. Summoned thither I am told by the editor that he guesses I have gotten myself a new job. I have, he says, the human touch.