The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

by Donald Richie

  Me, I think this kind of mindlessness is as deplorable as it is human. I dislike any kind of joining—the Catholic Church, the Soka Gakkai, the Communist Party, or kneeling and praying for HIH. In my ideal world no one would pledge allegiance to anything.

  I also notice a certain attitude. People sigh a lot. It is as though the Emperor is showing a lack of tact, of good taste, in being so long about it. Nonetheless I dread the days after the death. Certainly full national mourning—all for this frail, limited, stubborn little man. On the other hand I too can get a cheap thrill out of it. The longest reign in recorded history is about to end.

  4 october 1988. Walking down the street to International House—that annual odor. I remember the first time, many years ago. Since the street runs along a schoolyard I thought that bulging cesspools had overflowed, not stopping to consider that cesspools are long gone from central Tokyo. Then I noticed the squashed yellow splotches—crushed ginkgo nuts, and overhead a great yellow leafed ginkgo tree. I make a kind of haiku:

  Oh the smell of shit. Ah, autumn is once more here.

  Why should the fruit smell of excrement? If it were spring and the blossoms smelled that way I could understand. It would attract the bugs and fertilize the tree. But in deep autumn there are no bugs about. And in the spring the smell of the blossoms is that of semen. What kind of tree is this?—semen in the spring, shit in the fall.

  I remember the first time I was aware of the springtime smell. It was 1947 and I was in the courtyard of Engakuji in Kita-Kamakura, with Gene Langston, and we were spending the night at Dr. Suzuki’s guest house, and Gene suddenly stopped, his nostrils twitching: “Amazing—it smells just like semen.” And so it did.

  5 october 1988. Someone—who, Balzac?—said a man’s character is to be disclosed by his library. Very well, let’s see. In mine: the complete Jane Austen in the Folger Edition; all three novels of Lewis Carroll; all the poetry and a biography of Cavafy; all the short works of Kafka but none of the novels; some Henri Michaux, including A Barbarian in Asia; Jules and Jim; everything of Nagai Kafu in English; lots of Colette; historical fiction of Ibuse; short works of Naoya Shiga; Cocteau, all of the novels; everything in English of Borges; Sartre’s biographical writings; Isherwood’s Berlin Stories; collected Auden; collected Dylan Thomas stories; complete novels of Henry Green; lots of Marguerite Yourcenar (everything in English); lots of Susan Sontag; complete poems and prose of Elizabeth Bishop; Sleepless Nights of Elizabeth Hardwick; everything of Jimmy Merrill, etc. And that is only the fiction-poetry part.

  There is a section given over to books on Japan including all my reference works. And a whole stack of film books, including my own. Space is a problem. I have to get rid of things. Recently exiled the Bible and the complete Shakespeare—on the shelves for decades and never read. But not thrown out. I am too sentimental (and superstitious) for that. Both from my mother—one (the Bible), nearly half a century ago. I keep them on a shelf with other discards. Not the shelf in the entryway however. Those discards are for people to pick up and carry home.

  16 october 1988. Sunday. To the Kabuki with Eric. Some modern trash, and two classical dances. One of them is Yasuna with Baiko. Though a “national treasure,” Baiko still looks like a lady searching for a golf ball. In the other, Sagimusume, Jakuemon, his face often under the knife, looks odd but then he is supposed to be someone half a bird. But the hoyden way he carries on is not nearly elegant enough for this dance.

  The interesting play was Moritsuna Jinya, the single act surviving of a much, much longer work and now a “Kabuki classic.” As I watched its reprehensible story of a man quite cheerfully sacrificing his little boy, killing him because of loyalty to the lord, I was again struck by how wonderfully acted it all was. Takao as Moritsuna was immaculate. When he identified the (wrong) severed head he went through the canon of twelve emotions. And it was all there. It was like a great violinist. The violinist is only doing Paganini to be sure. And I realized that one of the most moving and touching things about Kabuki is that this talent is lovingly squandered on junk.

  There is, however, a difference. Even Verdi and a clutch of fine singers cannot make one sympathize with poor Gilda. But at the Kabuki there were sniffles as the little boy spilled his guts and kept right on piping (children’s Kabuki lines are all on one note—like the oboe sounding its A, for hours) and took as long to die as Camille. But people believed, for a time at any rate. I didn’t, but I too was moved, though in a different way. This presentation of emotions (rather than the representation of them) was moving as a fine carpenter or master stone carver at work is moving. I am moved by the artistry of how the thing is done, not by the thing itself.

  18 october 1988. Gave a talk at the Press Club. Talked about “Being a Foreigner” and was listened to by a hundred or so of different nationalities and a few races. Many Japanese. I have talked in public for so many years now that I can tell what people will take and what not, what they will laugh at, what they will shake their heads over, or nod at. And, finally, I know how to be evangelical. Christ lost a good witness when he lost me.

  But do I believe any of what I say? I do at the time, I know that. It seems such a good idea. But in the early morning hours when I wake, wake with such doubts that it awakens me, then I do not believe any of it. My heart beats like something trying to get out, and I am certain of nothing. Yet just hours before, there I was, certain of everything.

  19 october 1988. Sitting here all wired up. Electrodes various places on my chest, wires running into a tape recorder I must carry on a strap over my shoulder, complete with a special large switch on a separate wire that I must push to punctuate the tape when I “feel funny”—doctor’s term, chotto okashiku nareba. Have not felt funny once. Having the machine on has obviously inhibited the unruly organ. Actually, the only time it ever really acted up was five years ago, when it leaped for hours like a frantic fish—a frantic frozen fish, for my chest was as though filled with crushed ice. This I thought, is angina pectoris. And so it was—my first and so far last. Still, routine tests have located something okashii going on. Hence the wire-job. Had it five years ago and felt funny wearing it, everyone stared so. Now, half a decade of handbags, shoulder bags, earphones, and straps have intervened. I walk about today and no one notices, except an acquaintance at the porno where I had gone to stimulate the organ. And he says, “Hey, what a cute little tape walkman you got there. . . .”

  From now on Richie no longer used his journals as sources for other works and became more interested in them for themselves. They began to have a purpose all of their own. One of the reasons was that he was himself experiencing life in a more intense way—time was passing; friends were dying. The evanescence of which he had often spoken was now apparent. He thus wanted more than ever to leave some account of what things (including himself) had been like. This led both to a closer observance of the world outside, and to a deeper, more frank investigation of himself and his motives.

  12 may 1989. To see Bando Tamasaburo at the Embujo in an Ariyoshi adaptation, Furu Amerika ni Sode wa Nurasaji. It is Shinpa, but a comedy: Osono works in a Yokohama brothel: it is 1861 so the girls are divided between those for Japanese and those for foreigners, and one of the “Japanese” is claimed by a foreigner—so she kills herself. This at least is the story put out. People praised, anti-foreign ronin come to marvel; Osono becomes something of a priestess in this new cult but eventually goes too far and the entire edifice collapses.

  Tamasaburo plays Osono in a cool, big sister manner, half tough mizushobai mama, half whore with a heart of gold. A performance, always hovering on the edge of camp, never falling over. Playing the cynical “priestess,” he is at his best, in complete control until he comically loses it and must then retreat into “femininity.” He knowingly impersonates that male invention and does it so well that he shows only those seams he wants to show.

  Afterward I am taken backstage to call. He is in his mauve dressing gown, looking strangely Nell Gwyn—it is th
e decollete. All makeup off, he also has a scrubbed, very young look about him. “It isn’t really Shinpa, you know. I don’t think you’d like Shinpa—too weepy. This is a comedy.” Talking on about Shinpa, with which he alternates Kabuki, he spoke of Izumi Kyoka and wondered why the West was not more familiar with him. I said it was true, they only knew Taki no Shiraito thanks to Mizoguchi, and Demon Pond thanks to Tamasaburo. “Well, they ought to know more. Look, people know Tanizaki and Kawabata. Why not Izumi.” Why not indeed, we all wondered.

  Tamasaburo is, like many actors, concerned to make an impression of seriousness. He wants to talk about ideas, as though to prove he is capable of them. At the same time it is impossible for him to hide a frivolous charm. This showed in a small contretemps at the beginning.

  He had asked about my small role in Teshigahara’s film Rikyu, of which he had heard. Then, with no transition, asked, “First time?” I, not unnaturally, thought we were speaking about me. “And not very good,” I said. At which he gave a high, infectious laugh, and looked at me with apparent amusement. Then I realized that he meant was it my first time at Shinpa. Straightened out, the conversation continued but I had had a glimpse into the charm of an actor whose instant reaction was to disarm with laughter.

  I sat on the fake Louis XVI petit point until the conversation stopped for a second and then, before it began again, stood up and thanked him. That is the way to behave in the green room. Otherwise the host becomes one’s captive. Then, for the first time, he became effeminate, the good hostess seeing off her guests. Life is made of such roles—most men are male at hello and their mothers at goodbye.

  14 may 1989. Go to get a haircut. My barbershop, the Ogawa in Shinjuku’s “My City,” is expensive enough that it is grand. Boys in attendance to bring things and take them away at a gesture from the head barber. Barbers calling each other sensei, flourishing with hot towels, or in convergence over a difficult head of hair.

  While my sensei snipped and combed and I faced the large mirror and watched the goings on behind me, I was reminded me of the Utamaro, an even more expensive bath cum brothel in Kawasaki in the old days. One was met there too and bowed at, and the girls were forever having conferences, and probably calling each other sensei.

  It was most striking, this similarity, when the new customer was brought in. Here at the Ogawa there was the same subservient leading gesture, the same fuss getting the patron seated, the same airs and graces with towels and scents. And the same expression. The girls had no choice over whom they got, and one saw a wry smile or an almost invisible shrug. Looking in the mirror too, I now saw the same thing. A barber made a small moué while escorting in a thug with an unkempt punchi pama, that permanent wave so notoriously difficult and time-consuming to set.

  16 may 1989. Dinner with Brad Leithauser. We talk about Elizabeth Bishop, under whom he studied, and Elizabeth Hardwicke, whom he knows and whom I would like to know. (“She sort of takes you over of an evening, you know, hands on shoulders. Once my mother was along, and so I had two of them and infantilized at once.”) And Robert Lowell. (“Knew him only when he was practicing to be old. ‘Could any of you young people help me find a taxi?’ sort of thing. And they told me what kind of commanding lion he had been and I could not put the two together.”)

  Leithauser now lives in Iceland. When he was in Japan he went to the Oki Islands. He likes that elemental landscape. It shows in his poetry. Strong lines, and few. Like that poem about looking down from a plane on one course at a ship he had once taken on another. I tell him about Marguerite Yourcenar. We both like to talk about people. Something we share with James Merrill, who is a friend of both of ours and, indeed, the reason we have met. We talk about reviews. He talks about how the bad ones he gets are crushing. I wait for indication that he has read mine of his first novel. This does not come. I realize that he had not read it. Shall I tell him about it, send him a copy? Absolutely not. If he doesn’t know, that is good. And I know me. Now that I know him, I would not have written the way I did, even though the novel didn’t seem very good.

  17 may 1989. Went to see Imamura’s Black Rain again. This time, knowing what would happen, remembering the power, I am relatively unswayed and can pay attention to the construction. Before, immersed in the story I did not realize just how many doors are opened and shut, just how many windows are peered through. The interior architecture encloses and delineates this film. As in Ozu, the fact that domestic architecture confines also serve to shape these people. How free is the great outside, the paddy—and the big fish jumping. Perhaps a symbol, but more a big happy fish. No doors and windows for him. And the sick girl forgets herself in wonder at this great jumping fish. This is what art is made of, I think—a concern for parallels and balance, enclosure and freedom—contrast, opposites, but not many. Just two or three, enough to make a container to hold the strongest of emotions.

  18 may 1989. Lectured the Harvard students on Japanese film aesthetics at International House. As always (I do this every year), they trouped in looking positively post-atomic, with tangled hair and Arab slipovers and Chinese blankets. And as always, they shortly revealed themselves as open, intelligent, interested, and imaginative—perfect students, at least perfect for me. I felt every word was landing on ready loam.

  Also, as always, I feel phony. Not in what I say, that is solid enough, but in the little affectations of a populist egalitarianism that I display. I find myself using the colloquial, making depreciative asides, and demolishing popular agreed-upon demolition sites. Either they are too young to detect this act of mine, or else they are too polite to mention it. On the other hand, if I did not do this what would I do?

  20 may 1989. Took John Ashbery and his friend David Kermani to see the Edo Shiryokan. Noticed that Ashbery shuffled and, since I knew he drank, thought it might be drink. We passed a toilet and he wanted to use it. A block later another toilet, which he used. On the way back he asked me if I thought there might be a toilet somewhere. I said yes, up the street. Then David said that perhaps that gas station over there had one. They did. John used it and then, alone with his friend, I learned why.

  Almost eight years ago Ashbery contracted some rare and strange infection that polluted, if that is the word, the spinal fluid. As the toxic levels rose, his legs became paralyzed, then his hands. The lungs were stilled, and next the heart. Unconscious, he was taken to a hospital and pronounced deceased. Turned over, an autopsy was begun. Thinking he was dead they took little care, but opened up his spine to have a look. Then it was noticed that he was alive. So he was sewed up and the doctor said he was living, but would always be a vegetable.

  Yet, several weeks later he was sitting up, then eating, then talking, and now walking about on a Japan tour reading his poems. However, there has been an amount of neural damage. Hence the shuffle. He wears special pads in his trousers just in case, but has become adept and rarely needs them.

  Walking along I look at him. That fine beaked profile, those large intelligent eyes. Back from the grave by, apparently, iron will power. I find this admirable. And his continuing with his life, his ignoring this, his getting on with his work.

  23 may 1989. Awakened from sleep, three in the morning, by the cries of fire engines, as they rounded my corner and ran screaming into the maze of wooden houses that is Yanaka where I live. I raised the blind and looked out. There in the middle distance was a tree of flame, shooting into the air, capped with black swirling smoke.

  Flowers of Edo, what such fires used to be called—a blossom of growing crimson on the deep gray of the nocturnal city. And I felt a deep dread at the awfulness of that devouring element. Far away as it was—it took me ten minutes to walk there the following morning—and safe as I was, still I felt the cold of an unreasoning fear.

  In the morning I found where the fire had been. Just off the road, back in a warren. Four houses, each very close to the other. Just charred supports now, the whole front of one burned to a crisp, like a deformed face. Inside, one whole room
exposed. And there was the bookcase. And all the books were carbonized.

  Over it all the desolate smell of burned wood and wet ash. Puddles still on the ground from the firemen’s rain. These pretty wooden houses are the reason I live in Yanaka, old Edo, and I have often looked at them from my windows. But also I knew last night that I am somewhat safer living in this ugly, modern, tiled and more or less fireproof apartment.

  26 may 1989. I go to see Gene Langston in the hospital. Still in a bad way. Hole in his throat, trouble breathing, unable to eat, bone-thin. Today, however, though still thin, still with hole, still on respirator, he is better I am told.

  I try to imagine it. In a country hospital, on his back, unable to read, fighting every inch of the way—toward what? Not to health—simply fighting to reach some level where he may continue to live. He is alert (no brain damage from the time he was shut down for hours) and—sign of health, perhaps—extremely impatient. Since he is weak, he is brusque. Nurse came in with her invariable thermometer and for the first time in all our years together I saw Gene rude to the help. He ignored her.

  How good that made me feel. As though health is burgeoning in him, making him selfish. He must offer all of his energy to simply getting one thing done now. He has no time for niceties. And he knows it and he does not apologize for it. Also he is finally being fed—a nose tube. And he does seem less thin than he was. He wants to renew his International House membership. He has made up his mind. He wants to live.

  29 may 1989. Roppongi is taking itself seriously: it is all “now” with post-modern architecture (the buildings chromed, mirrored, looking like big cigarette lighters or enormous lipsticks) and mottoes: “High Town Roppongi” is the slogan embossed on the overhead at the crossing. The veneer stops short, looks tacky. A striving for Trad but Mod. Traditional is on the sign of the Red Lobster. Established in 1988, it says. Modern is everywhere else. Particularly the people. Lots of dark glasses on the boys, and wet-looking clothes and hanging-bangs haircuts. A touch of punk but not much—a few pink locks, a few Mohawks.