Here Fumio, who was telling me all this, also began to cry. After his brother was dead, the doctor said he had never known a case of stomach cancer so painless. Then they found the diary, a diary he had kept and hidden when the family came. It spoke of the pain, of its texture, of what it was like; it was a description of pain. And yet he did not scream or shout. At the most he would close his eyes and say, in a small voice, that it hurt. In the same way, he only once, the day before dying, told Fumio that he was afraid. In the face of pain and in the face of fear to behave as he did makes the tragedy, in a way, worse: a boy capable of doing this would have been a splendid man. In another way, however, he vindicated his death.
3 october 1973. Fumio slept until noon, exhausted. But we spoke no more of his brother; instead we talked of Fumio and what he would do today, this year, the rest of his life. How close I have come to him, and how close he has come to me.
While he slept I worked on a new painting—my largest so far. It is of acrobats exercising, but it is the composition, a square within a square, which interests me—making the bodies fit and yet remain natural. The brain is stilled, for a time. It is my fingers that paint, not my head.
For this moment, I am whole.
4 october 1973. With Fujikawa Gyo, who has not been in Japan for thirty years. I imagined her shocked by the change. Not at all. It has changed so much that she recognizes nothing at all and, in any event, “I’ve changed too in thirty years, believe you me.” Lived all these years in New York. Unmarried, and with that restrained and meticulous independence that unmarried women have; a children’s illustrator and so all children everywhere are hers. We speak mainly English because her Japanese is good as far as it goes but doesn’t go very far. She still, however, speaks with the pure, prewar Tokyo accent, now almost disappeared, a language free from Osaka vulgarisms, though it had some of its own.
After eating, a walk on the Ginza. That has a Thirties sound to it, walking on the Ginza. Gyo says that in 1930 Tokyo was “the kind of city you stroll in. Everyone strolled and there were willows everywhere and you could hire a car or take a small taxi for longer excursions, but usually you strolled. “We, the young ladies of the period, strolled into the Imperial Hotel, the old one, though it was new then, and that is where we fashionable young things had our tea.”
We had earlier been to a photographic exhibition at Wako, forty-five years of Ginza—scenes in 1935, then in 1945, all ruined, and now in 1973, unrecognizable. I talked with the photographer and asked him where the smart matrons of 1935 met and had their éclairs and coffee. History always supplies the names of politicians, but equally important things such as which restaurant was fashionable at a period are never recorded. On the Ginza itself, he told me, the truly fashionable went to the Shiseido (still standing but no longer smart), but that the climbers and those not quite in went to the Columbin (which I remembered, now torn down)—I find information like this fascinating because it brings the past so very close to me. Later Gyo went on to again walk the Ginza (dodging the taxis, the drunks, the crowds of people still piling into the subways) but I came home.
Again a period of five years, during which, apparently, no journals were kept—or, if kept, not saved. Richie’s impetus for diary writing was not an everyday accounting, such as the habit that his friend Edward Seidensticker shared with one of Richie’s models, André Gide. Rather, something would occur that the author wished to save. He would put it down so it wouldn’t be lost, starting an interest in this sporadic journal, and he would continue with further entries—always spaced further and further apart—until the series stopped.
Deciding what to record from his life seemed to depend upon what the experience reflected. Perhaps something of Japan that was passing, something of himself he felt changing. He sought to make some form of his life in Japan and to achieve some kind of balance. As these journals progress, a definite shape is to be perceived and he, perceiving it, added to and reinforced it.
In his final editing of these journals he took care to choose themes whose progress he could follow: Kawabata, the Bugaku, Tani, Gide, the Kudara Kannon, Takemitsu, Seidensticker, Zushiden, Mizushima, among others. The story is that of a man who is remembering and ordering so that he can understand the shape he is creating. It is not surprising that Richie much admired the autobiographical writings of Nabokov (Speak, Memory) and Sartre (The Words), which had successfully attempted the same thing. Ian Buruma’s words are fitting: “Richie has found his home in Japan. He has turned this home into art.”
During this time Richie published Ozu (1974), directed a program of four verse plays by Eliot, Cummings, Yeats, and Stein, and for Ito Teiji wrote (under that author’s name—a commission) The Gardens of Japan (1973). He also scripted and directed the documentary Akira Kurosawa, and with Eric Klestadt translated the Ozu/Noda script for Tokyo Story (1977).
5 may 1978. With Lynn [Levy-Matsuoka] to sketch the sumo wrestlers. Met her on the other side of the river in Ryogoku, center of the city in the eighteenth century, now all warehouses. The sumo stadium is still there, however, and so are the stables of the wrestlers.
It is a small world of its own, and a closed one. We are admitted by six-foot apprentices in stiff loincloths, and then sit on the dais and watch the practice. This consists of one young wrestler after another trying to push the head wrestler, an enormous man, from the earthen ring. He does not budge—then slaps them to one side and they roll to the ground. One after another they take their turn. The man stands there like a mountain.
Lynn sketches—her strong line holding the bulging form, suggesting the latent force. When practice is over all the wrestlers go to take a bath, and we are invited upstairs to watch them and then eat with them. A large tatami room, their washing drying at the windows, a long low table, and a big kitchen, since they eat a lot. The younger wrestlers already busy, grating daikon, slicing squid and cabbage, their enormous fingers awkwardly holding knives and chopsticks—all still in their stiff loincloths as they stand, sit, or squat. It is like a boys’ school, or like a barracks.
It is also like a stable. The men are so enormous that they are like animals—fat animals, with slabs and rolls of meat and wide, vacant faces. And they behave with the silent deference of beasts, swinging their heads. I am bid to eat with syllables and lowered eyes and an awkward hand. In contrast, the oyabun, a seated mountain, is at ease and it is I who defer to him and use my most polite language, sitting properly all through the meal on my aching calves.
Theirs is a world of order—the old order where differences in station are never questioned. Without a word, he holds out his rice bowl and a young wrestler hurries forward, eyes averted, to take it. The older man leans on an elbow, his strength, his visible power, making him appear arrogant. As he eats, another young wrestler squats and massages his thigh. In the corner of the kitchen, two more young wrestlers whisper, hug each other, and giggle. He pays no attention, shaking his head as though a fly is bothering him—a very intelligent bull. All of this Lynn captures with her pencil, this whole Genroku world she is so in love with, this living remnant of old Edo.
6 may 1978. To the Israeli Embassy. The wife of the ambassador is dancing. In kimono she flutters to some haiku that Ted [Wilkes] reads, as he has read at such entertainments for years. The flutist accompanies with something by Fukushima. Marian [Korn] is thinking of the days when she had soirées-musicales, and when Fukushima was a young composer she was taking up. She turns to me and says quite audibly, “That is our Fukushima, isn’t it?” She is still Madame Verdurin.
With Aratama Michio, Kawakita Kashiko. Tokyo International House, 1978.
With Mori Iwao, Noguchi Hisamitsu, Matsue Yoichi, Kurosawa Akira, 1978.
It is, in other ways as well, Proust’s last party. I am introduced to a venerable Japanese with a white walrus moustache. It turns out to be young Mr. Hasegawa, once so dashing with his camera, who used to take pictures of such artistic gatherings for the local newspaper.
The I
sraeli dancer is now Spanish, Ted is reciting Lorca, the flute is playing Ibert. Sheelagh [Lebovich, née Cluny] with whom I came, whispers, “One does not know where to look.” She is Oriane de Guermantes, with her Rolls, her amusing comments, her forthright way, and her aura of awful boredom.
The ambassador’s wife is now doing the Bible. Arise, ye daughters of Zion. This she does very well, her cropped and birdlike head impressive, like an Assyrian relief. Movements precise, practiced. She is professional. I think of Rachel performing in the homes of the great. Except that in this society Rachel herself is great. Lots of Barons de Charlus around, all now stout and discreet, as they eye the young Japanese waiters.
Marian, eyes shining, remembers when we did Façade at her house and Sheelagh in another part of the room turns and says to a wall, “Lilly and Daisy, silly and lazy.” “Oh, we must do it all again,” says Marian, just like a girl with gray hair. “We should never have stopped. Donald you must help again.” But Donald—Marcel for a day—is feeling old.
7 may 1978. Dinner at Kuroyanagi Tetsuko’s. Her apartment has a real Marie Laurencin, and in the bedroom an enormous portrait of herself done by a local artist in the Laurencin manner. Lots of Dresden around, kitchen full of unworkable gadgets, gilt picture frames in the bathroom, and a bottle of Chanel for those using it.
With Oshima Nagisa, Gosho Heinosuke, 1978.
With Ryu Chishu, 1978.
“I have the tastes of a little girl,” she says, noticing my looking about. “A virgin, of good family.” Then she laughs—not at all taken in by herself. At the same time, however, she is not really laughing. She loves her role. She is roguish. Little her fixing a big meal for us. Can she? Assisted by a stolid assistant who does everything, she squats on the floor (“This place is so tiny . . .”), as she grinds the coffee.
The party is for Oida Yoshi, the actor, who is putting together a new show to take to Europe. Among the guests is Hira Mikijiro, matinee idol, who is talking about “my Hamlet.” He is careful to use the rough and masculine ore no for the “my” thus hopefully countering any vanity or affectation. It is not successful because he cannot resist bridling, smiling, throwing back his head. His will be a strange Hamlet. He has just played Euripides’ Medea in drag. It was a big success. Whole busloads of women’s organizations came. They love this kind of entertainment. It is cultural but daring.
I look at the two actors. Yoshi, hair short, is like an old-style Japanese carpenter plunked down in this Frenchified drawing room. Hira is all poses, hands carefully arranged, as phony as the furniture. And Tetsuko, playing at being little-girl hostess (“Oh, do sit on the floor!”), but not really fooling herself. Conversation lags and she takes over. She is not a television star for nothing.
Tells a long funny story about a local impersonator who went for a sex change operation in Morocco. “. . . and he was on the second floor and on the third was the maternity ward. It was awful. Women screaming and breaching on the third, men screaming and—well, what would you call it?—on the second. And apparently the resulting hole must be the size, or width at least, of the organ removed, so men well-endowed come out with something like this”—she held up her hands. “Unusable, one would think.”
This is soberly listened to by two muscle-bound young men in neckties. They are two of the chanbara boys from Yoshi’s troupe who have gotten dressed up and are being awed by the famous people and the Chanel in the bathroom. They sit on chairs, away from the “family” group on the floor that Tetsuko has arranged. No attempt is made to include them. Nor would they want to be included. They sit with their whiskey-waters in hand and must be urged to eat. They are the audience. Tetsuko loves an audience. It is her undoing. She is an actress of great delicacy and real feeling, but she is also dependent upon instant gratification. TV answers this need. Instant playback, instant feedback. She does it well, but it is only TV. I speak about her roles on stage, in film. “Oh, those,” she says.
9 may 1978. Party for the publication of the Japanese edition of the Ozu book. I was given a corsage of red roses to wear, such being the custom. Forty people came; food, drink, speeches; it lasted three hours, from six to nine.
Madame Kawakita [Kashiko], in a mauve kimono as always, spoke about me and Japanese movies. Lots of other speeches—testimonials to Ozu and to me. Shinoda [Masahiro], standing stiff like a schoolboy, rubbing his boyish head, now gray. Gosho [Heinosuke], the oldest of the directors, hand in sling (car door), talked about the old days. He was the only one who got to call Ozu, Ozu-kun. And Ryu Chishu, who did something splendid. In the middle of the party he announced that he was going to again sing—thirty years later—the hayashi that he did in Ozu’s Record of a Tenement Gentleman. And he did.
At the end I made a short speech. Ozu never much liked parties but he liked to drink and he liked to talk. We’d all drunk and talked—we’d made just the kind of party that Ozu would have liked.
10 may 1978. Oda Mayumi to lunch. She is getting back to woodcuts and silk screens after a bout with oils. Oils give one too many chances, too much opportunity, too many ways to correct: she prefers a medium where she cannot make a mistake. More big women? Oh, yes, many more. I ask if her original influence came from otsue, which her pictures seem to me to resemble. Not at all. She was influenced by kimono designs, both the design of the kimono and the design the woman makes in wearing one.
The Zen roshi from California, Richard Baker, also at lunch and much taken with her—keeps asking questions, trying to define her. I know that temptation. Mayumi is not easy to define. She is so natural that one thinks she must have some secret. But she has none. She is as natural as the tree in the garden that she stops to admire. I cannot imagine her having any doubts. She sees connections in everything—the tree and the rock, the picture and the pattern of the shadows. Richard much taken because Zen is in the connection business.
With Asami Tadashi, 1978. ian buruma
Mayumi has made and brought a pie. She did not want the pie to be sweet and so she made it, not sour, but non-sweet. I have never seen a pie that looked so much like a pie and yet had so much difference about it. It crumbled at once, like a fragile work of art, dissolved into crumbs, and it did not taste like a pie at all. It had all the appearance of itself, and yet it was something else. Just like her.
She was also taken with Richard and they went off to her yoga lesson together. He is very like that. If there is food he eats, if not he fasts; will drink if there is something to drink, otherwise not. I see an affinity between them.
12 may 1978. To see the rough cut of John Nathan’s new film about Katsu Shintaro. Katsu created Zatoichi, the blind swordsman, and to that extent became him. John’s picture is about these two—creator and created. Which is which? As always, John shows and never says. Katsu at work, Katsu drunk, Katsu and his children and wife. Bit by bit, like a mosaic, the pattern is revealed. At the end, the coda after credits, Katsu is driving and singing along with Zatoichi’s son. The fusion is complete.
Curious effect. To show (and not tell) is to reveal. And to be dispassionate is in film (somehow) to disapprove. Katsu is never put down, but the film ends by questioning all of his values. Cinema seems so real (its only virtue and at the same time its prime limitation), that it demands some kind of ordering. The director (a subtle one, like John) imposes order, but only from the inside. The result is something cool and—though this can be unintended—critical. This fat little man, Katsu, held together by an ego that consumes all those around him, not very talented himself, he is consumed as well. An hour with him reveals everything—the hollow space behind the films he makes, the absence of anything and anyone when Zatoichi is not there. It is we, the watchers, who put all of this together.
One strange scene: Katsu being interviewed by a fatuous young fan magazine reporter. Did not want to be. John apparently insisted. Result is that John is in scene, sitting beside him. One silly question follows another. John sits silent as Katsu expostulates. He rubs his chin, and glances warily at
the camera; John does too. The effect is that the director is questioning the validity of the film fan. Another effect is that he is putting down Katsu for going through with this. Actually, however, he tells me, these actions were only intended to convey to the idiot cameraman that he ought to tighten in to Katsu and take John out of the frame. No matter this intention, what is on film is richly ambivalent.
Had hoped Mayumi [Oda, Nathan’s wife] might be there. She wasn’t—home watching the kids, I suppose. Another girl was—Belgian, beautiful. I would have stayed longer and talked about the film, but it became apparent that John (compulsive as ever) really wanted to put the make on her. (At noon? At the Aoi Studio?) She was intelligent about the film. It is sad she said, but only because life is.
15 may 1978. Sunday, Ian [Buruma] over early with two tattooed men. The rest of the morning and early afternoon spent photographing them for our book [The Japanese Tattoo, 1979]. Asami Tadashi, thirty, has an Oniwaka on a carp on his back, cherry-blossoms on his shoulders, and on the sides of his chest the strong boy, Kintaro. Obara Tsutomu, twenty-eight, a sushiya, has a fierce Fudomyoo on his back, an Oniwaka (again) and Goban Tadanobu on chest, with Setaka Doji and Kongara Doji crouched on his thighs. Both came in elegant and subdued kimono, under which they wore white underwear, under which were white fundoshi. These all they eventually removed, and they stood in the garden, or in the bamboo grove, or by the rokka, while Ian snapped away with three different cameras. Both men were polite, but not reserved. Proud of their decorations and quite willing to have them admired. I, in turn, admire them. They both know how to tie obi in the old Edo style and they move as naturally in 1778 as in 1978. For them history is a part of their environment. But I doubt they think of it. Both were born after World War II, when the last of old Japan disappeared, and yet here they are, embodying it. In the West we would find such people pedantic and affected—which they would be. Not here—they are simple, unaffected; they simply are what they are.
The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 Page 21