19 october 1948. Sho [Kajima Shozo] in to see me this morning, wanting nothing in particular, just to talk. Small, eyes so big they look round, he is the only Japanese I have met whose English is so good that we can carry on conversations about things that matter to us. Particularly matter to him. Anything foreign, as though he has been starved for so long that he cannot get enough.
Now we discuss the possibilities of translating Camus into Japanese, and how the intellectuals here now shun Sartre. Sho blames it on Life magazine, just now discovering existentialism and hence degrading its current reputation in Japan.
With Ono Tadamaro. meredith weatherby
Sho understands the subtleties of this and can express them. In Japan, he tells me, everything is fashion and the opinion of others. This is not a good thing but it is so. Even Juliet Greco is no longer so popular now that Life has taken her up.
Conversely, I can talk about nothing Japanese since he is not interested and says he does not know. I ask him about brush painting. Doesn’t know. Ask about the difference between waka and tanka. Doesn’t know.
I am to write something for his magazine. I suggest something Japanese, and then I could learn something too. Oh, no, not that. He suggests André Gide, since I am reading the journals and since this author is now back in critical favor in Japan.
20 october 1948. Late, a soldier, Irish, appears and stays for three hours. We talk mostly about him. He has a problem—which of the two sexes he likes better. He’s had no actual experience with either and so the discussion is a bit academic.
But I like people who look one thing and think they are another. Irish looks like an ordinary GI but has what he thinks is this problem. I tell him that one needn’t make the choice and point out that I have, at great personal inconvenience, put it off for a number of years by never calling myself one thing or another, and that I have consequently had a great deal of pleasure with all kinds of people. In his longing for security, however, Irish rushes to the grand and unnecessary generalization.
All the time, however, I think this talk might not be the real reason for his visit. He keeps saying that he has to go back to the barracks but makes no move to do so. I don’t know whether to be flattered or annoyed. It is nothing to me, however, and so he eventually goes home after having heard my preferences. He hasn’t “gone in” for the Japanese, he says, which puts rather a gulf between us, since I certainly have.
Later to bed with—instead—Gide’s The Immoralist.
23 october 1948. Al and I read through our translation of Sumidagawa for the final time and when it was finished we were each ready to leap at the other’s throat. He took the tone a stern parent takes toward a naughty child when I lectured him on the habit of his overusing that most sensational of punctuation marks, the exclamation point—thus destroying its efficiency. Consequently, I slid into a hauteur that found me separating each syllable, affecting an English accent and behaving in a manner I considered exquisitely polite. I offered no more suggestions but had prepared many pretty phrases had it come to a head. It did not however. Gene came back, and later guests, so the day passed with no argument. I’m not sure this ill feeling affects him as much as it does me, but I think he dislikes it more. As the Noh play is finished, however, we’ll have no more fights
Received the pictures taken of Ono today. The ones of him alone are nice and show his costume well, but I wish they were in color. The one of me with him is no good. I am standing in a strange attitude and even though you can’t see them you can almost smell the aliens—colonels, majors and captains—-surrounding me and being partially responsible for my stilted stance.
25 october 1948. This afternoon I went for a luncheon engagement at the new subway hotel. I have no compunction about eating the fine food, all of it black market. The hotel people I eat with all went to Cornell before the war; all speak good English. They are also charming to me, for I am going to honor them with a page in Stars and Stripes, the only American paper in Japan.
Later the Stars and Stripes soldier photographer came. Turned out to be the one who I heard was gossiping about me. Not afraid of his insinuations, for as he puts them they are false, but I am curious to know why he made them. Then he said, “Seen Richie around lately?” He hadn’t recognized me, and later when he showed me his assignment slip my name was not there, instead, another of the men on the paper. But, couldn’t I have taken advantage of this happy mistake? Apparently not, for I said, “I am Richie.”
Bit my tongue the minute I said it, for I had had the chance to play a real role. I can imagine the conversation that might have ensued had I been less self-assured and more afraid. I would have intelligently drawn him further and further out, cut off one by one his chances for denial. How cleverly I would have turned the conversation to the suspicions themselves—he would doubtless have readily repeated them. And as he gossiped on, I would have had the rare opportunity of watching a man’s mind innocently working before I, with a mighty pounce, brought him up short—thrown off my invisible cloak—and witnessed him skidding to a panicked halt. But no. I spoiled it. What is the good of admiring [Gide’s] Lafcadio if I miss the chance to be him?
26 october 1948. Watanabe [Isamu], met at a construction site, comes over. Gene, supposed to go out, has come back by this time and Al has arrived. Watanabe brings along many interesting pictures, some of himself as a pilot during the war, and also part of his WWII propaganda collection. The American is the most subtle, the German is not—it is completely obvious—the British does nothing much and there is no Italian. I think that the American was most successful because it illustrated Japanese poems and famous plays, proverbs and sayings already in the mouths of every soldier. These are necessarily so erudite that, as Watanabe said, all were astonished when they picked them up after they’d been tossed from the plane. I had no idea that anything that intelligent was going on.
28 october 1948. I’m more than halfway through the second volume of the Gide journals. What impresses me most is his ability to put down precisely what he means. In reading over this journal of my own I see the difference. Gide lives close with himself; I live at a distance from myself. I only imply what I mean; Gide states.
His theory of literary construction (lengthy incubation) bothers me because I feel that I should not agree, but it fits too well with my laziness for me to object too strenuously. He says that things must grow within one, that yesterday’s blossom will wilt today and was therefore not worth the keeping, that the plant will prune itself and emerge, in time, effortlessly. But I remember another piece of advice—this from Bernard Shaw—which says that ideas are like ducks that fly by: you have to bag them at once for they’ll never fly by again.
I’ve not sufficiently made up my mind about either method. Perhaps both should be used, determined by the subject, or the nature, of the material. My novel on Tokyo [Where Are the Victors?] should use the Shavian duck-shooting method because it must deal with historical facts. If I were going to write another kind of novel however, like one by Gide, then it would have to hibernate. Gide says one shouldn’t force, yet he advocates daily writing.
How good to apply myself—yet I never do. What of the Tokyo novel? Daily I have thought of it. It stopped changing shape some time ago. I am counting on days and nights back in Ohio to put a quick end to this particular indecision.
29 october 1948. Most of the morning rewriting a letter beginning: “Dear Jesus. Usually I write Santa but this year I thought I would write you.” This is for the Christmas edition [of the Pacific Stars and Stripes]—for which, however, I’ve found some good Dürers, including a head of Christ by one of his pupils, that I must sandwich in somehow. The whole piece is preposterous in its stupidity. Worse, I could change it if I had the will. So much easier to obey orders and ask no questions. What could I do with it that would please me? Nothing.
In the evening I took Nomura [the room boy] to the ballet. Also along went Gene, Jimmy [Sekiguchi, Gene’s friend], and Al. It was Swan Lake, don
e in what is understood as the Russian tradition. The dancers all wear big blonde wigs, the boys wear makeup, the girls in the corps de ballet smile—the dental display is blinding.
While all of us were making fun of it, Nomura was quietly enjoying it. He was awed by the tinsel magnificence, appreciative of the efforts shown on the stage, and kind when obvious mistakes were made. In the end he laughed with us but it was plain that he enjoyed it and was but being polite. He was particularly taken with the dance of the little swans.
Later we all came back to the room. I typed Nomura a letter to the Suginami Police Station where they are holding clothes that I gave him—and which I said I did in the letter—but, oddly, they are not holding him.
Nice turn for the novel if I were to get picked up by the CID for giving the clothes to him. This in turn would reveal something, then more would be revealed and finally the novel would end for lack of characters still remaining in Japan, all having been sent back. Particularly ironic because Nomura is honest, I am honest, and we would be blamed and punished for something of which we were not guilty.
While we were writing the letter I saw a white figure behind me in the room and, at the same time, a sudden expression of dismay on the face of Nomura. Turning about I found myself faced with a lady of indeterminate age in a long white dress, with necklace and bracelets and wiry hair. Advancing into the room with heavy stride, she asked me, in a deep and familiar voice, if I knew where Bruce [Rogers] was. Then I recognized him. It was the sergeant acquaintance of Bruce’s whom I’d seen only once before—in uniform.
The transformation was complete. Pancake make-up, lipstick, mascara, wig and a long skirt that he kept kicking. I asked him what he had underneath. He obligingly lifted his skirts and displayed panties and garter belt as well as silk hose. Then I asked about his breasts and felt them. They were cleverly made of cotton.
Nomura remained dismayed and I realized that he still thought it was an extremely forward woman and was growing afraid of her friendly mascara-fringed glances. I introduced them and, once Nomura had understood that this was a man, he became even more terrified.
Al meantime, having glimpsed the soldier in the elevator coming up, had gotten interested, thinking her a loose colored lady. He was all affability until he was introduced to the sergeant. He looked closely and his face went quite blank; smiling tightly he left.
Sarge, it being near Halloween, had gotten himself up, and all over Tokyo traveled with other soldier friends, going to the rough Club Ichiban, enjoying the feels the other soldiers gave him; went to the Dai Ichi Grill and passed as an interesting person of color. He was having a good time, getting away with it, and sat down in the big chair as he told us all about it.
Later Al and I had a conversation about why people did things like this. He thought it might be to solicit young men but I pointed out that, so far as I knew, that almost never happened. If it had it would have been better somehow because some definite purpose would have been served—but instead, to merely go about acting female could only result in a trip into the mirror.
30 october 1948. To Hibiya Hall for the premiere of Hayasaka’s piano concerto. He gave me two tickets, but I went alone. What a nice piece of music, particularly the rondo with a Chinese-sounding tune that always comes back, looking different each time. The concerto was sandwiched between William Schuman’s American Festival Overture and Aaron Copland’s El Salon Mexico. CIE [Civil Information and Education] pushes things American. At the same time, however, the Japanese have not heard much modern music since before the war. Here is an elegant and nourishing sandwich for them. A big audience, and a young one.
31 october 1948. Not a cloud in the sky, all a brilliant blue and the air cool. There is a sharpness, an invigoration of the senses. Japan—mountains beautiful in the fog, forests in the rain—is even more beautiful when with such clearness every pebble is seen.
I notice again that nothing now is actually incongruous in Japan. Everything fits. The period may be a bastard one, like rococo, but everything is harmonious. Temple boys in full costumes on motor scooters and neon signs on the Kamakura Kannon are no more incongruous than is Fuji at sunset.
Al and I took advantage of the weather and drove out to the Emperor Taisho’s tomb. When there is no reason for disagreeing we get along well, like today when we anticipated each other’s words, laughed at the same things and made wide allowance for each other’s whims. We do a number of things that put the trip in the category of an adventure. We drink beer and take pictures in a secluded glade of the mausoleum, shout to all the little children we see, and carry back to his house from the bottom of a hill he could never have climbed, a very old and very drunk gentleman. We arrived home late, half frozen.
1 november 1948. Saw Meredith briefly and asked about Ono. I had merely, it seems, desired to photograph him. Meredith says a meeting can be arranged now at anytime but I hang back. I have often noticed that it is quite sufficient for me to know that something is within my grasp for me to lose interest. When I know that something I want is possible, finally, after weeks of attention, I cease to want it. I don’t thereby want it to go away, however. I don’t want to lose ground, but I am satisfied that I can have it if I want it. Its immediacy and its availability both conspire to afford me more satisfaction than, possibly, the thing itself. All of this, of course, without one thought about the feelings of the object.
2 november 1948. The afternoon spent in gathering pictures for the Christmas Edition: “I want pictures of hungry babies—of poor starved mothers and hungry babies—of sick babies, poor families,” says the editor. I search the morgue, our modest picture collection, and find none. Do not want to. Would if I could have believed that this would do starved mothers and hungry babes any good, but it won’t.
I will always remember with pain last month when I had to go with the photographer and get pictures of butt sniping in Tokyo. I hated it from the first but it wasn’t until later that I hated myself. I had to plant the cigarette—smoke it half way and then throw it down—in Ueno—and the hidden photographer would snap as the next person stooped to pick it up.
With Stars and Stripes staff, 1948. stars and stripes
But none of this happened. I had to go under the arcades and implore an old woman to pick up the cigarette, to pose with it. She was frightened and wouldn’t. A ring of people, wondering faces, surrounded me. Finally I had to stop a poor young boy. Showed him what I wanted him to do. Held him until the photographer was ready and them make him stop in the humiliating position while the picture was taken. I wanted to give him every cigarette I had, but the minute he felt my hand leave him he ran into the crowd, afraid probably I’d attempt to retake the cigarette he’d just picked up. Yes, I did that. Now, I would never do that again—I would quit first.
The unpublished In Between contains further scenes taken from the original Journals. These, below, now indicate a chronology that the journal remnants themselves do not.
Japan—I was continuing to learn about my new land by writing about it: bonsai, ikebana, Japanese dance, festivals—all in my rage for knowledge I inflicted on my GI readers. Here I am on the Kabuki, an Allied-only night when the Occupiers gathered at the Tokyo Theater, just up the street from the ruins of the Kabuki-za. “Japan’s most refined art . . . receives boost into former favor when wartime banned classic employs services of the two greatest Kabuki actors.” (Don Richie, Staff Writer).
The banned classic was Sesshu Gappo ga Tsuji and the actors were Nakamura Kichiemon who impersonated old Gappo and Nakamura Baigyoku who played his young daughter, O-Tsuji. It was she who, married, had fallen in love with her stepson.
This had led to the play being banned a number of times including during WWII. Now, however, continues shameless Don Richie: “with the freedom brought by SCAP, the play has been revived for the first time in seven years.”
Also, for the first time since the Occupation had begun, SCAP did not find it necessary to powder the seats and sets with DDT.
The actors were thus spared—though earlier artists had made their entrances coughing and wheezing.
The TokyoTheater, now officially bugless, was filled that evening—brass in the front, government issue and civilians in the rear—all attentive before culture as only Americans can be. Me too, seeing all this for the first time. Seeing it with emotions that, as the play progressed, slowly became mixed. Though I was much in favor of it because it was Japanese, because it had been banned, because I had a small part in publicizing it, I now became aware that I was also disapproving of it.
So long as I thought Tsuji loved the stripling, I nodded at true romance and sided against the adamant father. But when it turned out that she was merely some kind of Japanese Camille dying for the beloved’s own unwitting good, I began to disapprove.
I still do. Warriors who cut off the heads of their young to spare those of the lord, mothers who stab daughters to save their betters social embarrassment—these continue to repel, and these are mainly what Kabuki seems to be about. At the same time I knew my feeling was foolish. It would make equal sense to take seriously the dramaturgy of Donizetti.
But disapproval was not all I felt. As an appreciative if baffled audience drifted out of the Tokyo Theater and into waiting sedans, jeeps, and buses, I (looking back at the striped curtain—deep green, terracotta, black, colors I had never before seen in this combination) remember thinking again of what I had seen.
Amid the feudal remains had stood something that made me believe in a kind of reality I had not known before, an impossible authenticity, a false actuality. For I had seen a seventy-three-year-old man turn into a nineteen-year-old woman.
The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 Page 6