The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

by Donald Richie

  23 may 1995. Ed [Seidensticker] takes Patrick [Lovell] and myself out to dinner—to thank the former for helping him with his computer, and the latter because three is better than two. We naturally speak of computers for a time, and of the Aum menace. It is difficult for Ed to speak well of the police, but I am appreciative of the way they plugged up all the holes before they smoked Aum out. “But they did it in a very suspicious manner,” says Ed. “And they used illegal methods. Plainly illegal. This gives the police more authority than ever and there we go again.”

  With Susan Sontag, 1995.

  I tell him that Phyllis Birnbaum was very disturbed about this aspect of the police’s actions, that it reminded her much of the police in pre-Nazi Germany. “Precisely,” says Ed. I then quote to him that lovely ditty (to be sung to the tune of “America, the Beautiful”) that finds a place in his recently published novel:

  In wabi land, in sabi landOne can yet find some peace.And quietly disturb itAnd enliven the police.

  1 june 1995. Susan [Sontag], Annie [Leibowitz], Ian [Buruma], and I went to the opening of the Araki [Nobuyoshi] photo show. Four walls of naked girls sporting their pubic air while being tied up, strapped down and otherwise held into place—a display little differing (except in size) from what is found in the pages of s/m albums. That, and the fact that it was public. It would not have been allowed five years ago.

  This I tell Susan. “Progress?” she asks rhetorically, then, “How any woman could look at this and not feel angry I just don’t know.” Ian says, “Well, you know, it is really ritual display, nothing moral about it, just narcissistic.” “Just!” says Susan. “Nothing moral!” says Susan. And Annie says, “Well, it makes me feel hungry.”

  Agreed, we go to Shin Okubo and before eating at the Shin Sekai, I take them on a tour of the Hyakunincho. But also taking tours are lots of cop cars, and they drive the girls off the street. I talk to one fleeing group. “Are the cops dangerous?” I ask. “Not really,” says one—South American perhaps, in good Japanese—“but a royal pain in the ass (mattaku mendokusai).”

  At the restaurant we eat fish and frog. Annie tells about when she was first in Japan, as a child, taken on the crowded subway: “And when we got off my dress was up to here!”—points to her ribs, indicating, I think, the press of the crowds. Susan says that when she comes to Japan she feels like a European going to America. The new world, the twenty-first century, the burgeoning of the coming.

  Later she tells me how much she liked my essay on Mishima. “Donald, as I have said a hundred times and will keep right on saying, you are truly smart—so much smarter than you usually write. You must stop not writing at your full potential.”

  So I must, but how do I begin to tell her of the difficulties? Or does everyone have these difficulties and not complain about them?—just go on and do it. It sounds like Getting in Touch with Your Inner Self—and in a way I suppose it is.

  She once told me that I was far too conciliatory, and too much concerned with the impression I was making. The urge to please—is this what is doing me in? Once in New York, she told me I was just too nice. Am I still Pleasing Papa?

  I know what she is saying. It is true. I know because I can compare this to how it feels when I am free. This is when I am describing something. Myself gets left out—only it is there: the object regarded, delineated, limned. All of my best writing is then. This is also what stops the memoirs. I don’t have the “software” to move me into position. I still care about appearance, about self, about the process.

  After the diced frogs (with ginger and chili) we decide against going back to view the whores. Annie gets up and pays the bill—she is getting a big per diem because of her show opening here. I tell her how I admire her recent portfolio of everyone involved in the Simpson court case, and ask how she is going to do all those official sports figures when she takes on the Atlanta Olympics, a new commission. “Same way,” she says.

  4 june 1995. On the train going to Kamakura I look out of the window—Shina­gawa, Kawasaki, Yokohama—and can still see the lineaments of fifty years ago. The present grows transparent, and I can see into my past.

  This often occurs on the train, leaving behind habit and the blindness it brings. I can suddenly see again, and even glimpse that invisible bridge that connects me to the person I was. I need only walk across it, and I will again be in the past.

  Then I return to my book, and after a time I begin to cry. Is it that I regret the past? Or, that I am going to Kamakura to attend Kazuko’s memorial anniversary? No, it is the perfection of what I am reading—Nagai Kafu, a story called “Kunsho.”

  Looking straight at his postwar present Kafu saw the past, just as I had. And he saw it passing—the sprawled limbs of the girls, the big smile on the face of the man who brought the girls’ lunches, the photograph never delivered, the past captured too late. It is so vulnerably beautiful, so helplessly true that tears come.

  At Eihoji all of Kazuko’s friends have gathered. We are now like a black-clad family. There is Oshima and his wife, Kawarabata the critic, Tomiyama in Issey Miyake black and Nike tennis shoes since she will climb the wet mountain (it is raining) to the Kawakita tomb, and the relatives, and the people from the Kawakita Foundation.

  After the service comes the mountain climbing. I do not go, nor does Oshima. He says he cannot go because of his heart. Since that is my excuse as well, we are shortly in discussion of our problems. I only have angina, but he has something much grander, a kind of general collapse. His wife, who usually inserts her comments from time to time, says nothing and so I gather it is serious.

  Nogami [Teruyo] stays behind too, though she says her heart is perfectly sound and she thus has no alibi. But, “I do not like the idea of climbing that hill in all this rain,” she says, “and I am sure that Kazuko will forgive me.” Later we are taken to a restaurant and eat Kamakura kaiseki—all sorts of dainties in bowls and boxes.

  We begin talking about Chinese film directors—Nogami, Okajima [Hisashi] from the Film Center, and Toda [Natsuko] the film title translator, and myself—about one named Wong and one named Wang. “Oh, I know him,” I say, “only he’s Chinese-American.” Then I tell them about the film he is considering making of Alan [Brown]’s novel, Audrey Hepburn’s Neck—which I translate as Odari Epuban no Kubi. “Oh, how horrid,” says Natsuko, “some kind of horror flick?” “No,” I say, baffled, “a comedy.” “A comedy!” marvels Non-chan, “What won’t they do next?”

  We finally get it straightened out. Kubi means a severed head, and not a neck as I had thought. “What you meant,” says Hisashi, “is unaji—that is the proper word.” So I say, “Oh, I got it, OK, Odari Epuban no Unagi (eel).” Cries, protestations, laughter.

  10 june 1995. At Ueno, by the steps going up to the plaza, stand two of the Aum girls. They are passing out a publication, which has photographs of their fat and bearded leader, and a message that says he is innocent and we must rally to his defense. No one does. Usually people take anything handed them on the street, but these crowds pass by the girls and their outstretched hands without even a glance. Everyone knows—except for the girls.

  In their Aum white suits they do not seem aware of what is happening. They were told to go out and distribute their papers and like good girls this is what they do. One older man stops in front of one of them and I can see that he is giving her a lecture—his finger is wagging. She simply stands and nods, waiting for him to go away, so that she can get on with her job. She must know, must realize what her leader has done and what the sect now means, but of this she gives no sign. She simply waits, a good girl, and finally the older man moves on and she goes back to her distributing.

  11 june 1995. At Karel van Wolferen’s for dinner. Ed [Seidensticker] is late. He was at the Jesuits for lunch. “Why?” asks Karel. “Why not?” counters Ed. I asked after their ethnic cuisine. He says it was American and that I should watch my tone—Ed is Catholic, though not, I believe, Jesuitical. He then suddenly observes that
the Church in Japan is as full of bishops as a Chinese bed is of bedbugs. Why so many bishops, he wonders, why, why, why, and I understand that the Jesuits have been drinking as well as eating.

  Then the Pope is brought up. Ian [Buruma] says the bishop of Nagasaki told him that the peace movement is really a big business. Karel says that is unlikely, that the Pope would never allow such a thing. Then the Pope is dismissed and an argument, surprisingly heated, begins as to the relative merits of Mozart and Beethoven. Ed is on the side of Wolfgang Amadeus and Karel on the side of Ludwig van.

  “Admit, admit,” cries Karel, “that the flute quartets are very minor.” “Well,” says Ed, drawing himself up, “as for that, just consider ‘Für Elise,’ sir.” At which point the stew appears and more bottles are uncorked. Ian tells about students being lined up and made to shout: “Remember Nagasaki! No More War!” He imitates their Germanic stance and their strained voices. “It is just like the Hitler Jugend movement,” he says.

  Ed can usually be counted to bash away, but he is quiet this evening—perhaps too much competition. Why is it, I wonder, that when expatriates in Japan get together they always do this—find fault. Do they do this in other countries? Oh, these Luxembourgians, these people! Now, Karel takes on the nation. “These people,” he says, banging his bottle, “They cannot even have a debate!” It grows late, Ed is tired (he has also been to the Noh) and so am I (I have a cold), and so we give our thanks and creep out.

  27 june 1995. Lunch with Ed [Seidensticker]. We talk about the kind of foreigner who takes to Japan. When expatriates get together they always talk about this, something not invariable in other places. Here, the country takes the place of the weather. Why, we wonder, should this residence so consume the foreign inhabitant? I mention the three classical stages: euphoria, disappointment, and indifference—the latter corresponding to the ordinary marriage.

  Perhaps that is it, we decide. The hapless foreigner falls in love, and then falls out. “And you, Edward,” I say, “never progressed past Stage Two.” “And you, Donald,” he says, “are stagnating in Stage Three. But then, why fall in love?”

  We cast about for various reasons why. The difference? The “Orient”? The original imperialistic opportunity? I note that this initial flush of enthusiasm for the country is often accompanied by affection but not approval. It is more like a crush than true love. “Ah,” says Ed sagely, “that would account for the fact that it does not last.”

  I then mention a puzzling fact—it seems that many of the foreign Japan specialists living here are homosexual. Ed looks out of the window at this—he does not really like to talk about the subject, though he makes a show of open tolerance. I bring it up because I see here a parallel—falling in love with Japan (Stage One) must be a danger for those of a deprived emotional background. Growing up in the U.S.A. of the 1930s and 1940s, romance denied, the early visitor to Japan found a beautiful, permissive folk.

  “All very well,” says Ed, “but in that case why didn’t the Paris expatriates fall in love with France?” This question neither of us can answer.

  28 june 1995. To the American Embassy Residence—the Mondales are giving a reception for Martin and Mildred Friedman, good Wisconsans all. Had not been there since they have redecorated. The residence looked like something in old Saigon before. Now it looks like new Hong Kong—a bank.

  Against this meretricious display, the sincerity of the Mondales stands out. He makes a charmingly self-deprecatory speech about having lost a lot of time in trying to get to be president; she talks about art, and believes in it. Later she and I talk about modern Japanese art. She thinks that the artist must have the last say—we are talking about a Japanese artist, Yanagi Yukinori, whose recent creations include national flags executed in colored sand, which are carefully invested with ant tunnels so that these industrious insects can deconstruct the symbols and thus create one world.

  6 july 1995. Since the Aum-inspired catastrophes, Tokyo people are much more friendly to us foreigners. They will often go where we go and will, I notice, try to sit next to us in the train. This is because not being able to trust each other (anyone could be Aum), they trust us (no foreign members in any local Aum organizations). Since there were two more attempted “subway gas attacks” today (Kayabacho and Shinjuku), I notice coming home in the subway that there is some vying to get near me. One girl was successful, giving suspicious glances to fellow Japanese the while.

  From Ueno I hailed a cab and got a hysterical driver. He had been driving around all day brooding about the gas attacks. “What is happening to us?” he wondered, rhetorically. “I just don’t get it. No place is safe from these people anymore. And who are these people? They don’t come from outside. They are us. And they are smart folks too—scientists, even doctors. What is happening?”

  It is mappo, I say, referring to the final age of Buddhist belief when the laws are dead. He turns briefly to stare and then says, “You know, I think you’re right.”

  8 july 1995. Walking back through Ueno I am stopped time and again by young people who stand in my way and hold up solemn hands. These, I learn, are the Kannon folk. They want to pray for me. The Aum business has all the religious crazies crawling out. One bouncing young person had memorized his spiel in English. When he finished I told him in deadly accurate Japanese that it was impolite of him to approach a stranger in this manner, that religion was a private matter, that he was intruding and it was rude. That stopped him—his jaw dropped and I politely passed on, confident that I had ruined his proselytizing day.

  Only a few minutes later a young woman stopped me. Palms already up, blessing begun. “Kids of Kannon I suppose,” I said. She nodded confidently and so I started my spiel, the same one I had given the stunned young man. But she just said, “No, I don’t think so,” and continued blessing me. Irritated, I said, “Such intrusion as this into a private part of a person is like a rape.” Such politically correct complaints would stop her, I thought. Not at all. “I don’t think so,” she said, continuing, and so I had to leave the field to her.

  9 july 1995. I read in the newspaper that the Aum Shinrikyo people, funding cut off, have opened stores and are selling tee-shirts with his fat holiness on them, and that these stores are filled with the frivolous young, giggling and buying. I remember too that the thin-lipped young Aum spokesman is found “sexy” by a polled gaggle of girls, and one is quoted as saying that she might join if she could be sure of getting him.

  Pondering this dangerous inanity, I suddenly see that the grotesque Aum cult is very much like the prewar Japanese government. One must join, one cannot resign, you will be killed if you do, also Armageddon is approaching and so we must prepare for it and, in fact, create it in order to show that it is upon us. And the majority in 1940 behaved just as does this frivolous minority in 1995. This tells nothing about the Japanese, of course, but it sure tells something about people.

  15 july 1995. I go and stand by the underground entrance at Ueno, near the Okura theater, and watch the people. Two girls, both blondined and smoking cigarettes in flashy fashion, and laughing loud, horse-laughs. These are the young, out on the town, and flaunting it. Let one man make a pass, however, and it is weeping home to mother. Then there is the little punch-permed guy in the Ricci summer sweater who spends his time looking tough. And there is an elderly couple, she in a cotton dress, he in suspenders—country people in town for Saturday night. I look more closely. They could be the couple from Tokyo Story, lost in Ueno.

  People-watching—when I was seven or so, my father and I would sit in the car on the public square in Lima, Ohio, and watch them walk past. I was excited by the variety, the shapes and sizes, the import of the walk, or the lack of it. From the open car window I looked wonderingly at the world—as I still do.

  18 july 1995. I see in the papers that Stephen Spender has died—he was eighty-six. And I remember him still middle-aged, wild blue eyes, what we would now call big hair, very like Shelley. Like the earlier poet, too, his m
oral concern. Once he took offense at my frivolity. I forget what the charge was but I remember the words: “No, Donald, this is very serious. You are not to make light of serious things.” Yes, I remember—it had to do with one of [Tokunaga] Osamu’s sulks and my saying that this boyfriend of his was impossible. It was Osamu who later tried suicide in order to get Stephen’s attention. Serious, indeed, except of course, Osamu failed, both in suicide and in getting attention. “Oh, dear,” said Stephen after the fact, “I wonder if I did the right thing; I so often don’t, you see.” I can see him before the Great Gate of Heaven right now, wringing his hands and searching his motivations. This is somehow admirable.

  19 july 1995. A farewell party for John Howes. Before it he wants to show me movies he took in 1946, on the boat that carried the both of us to Japan. There is the sea of half a century ago. And there is John himself, looking young and earnest—now he looks old and earnest. I was promised, but I did not appear. Maybe his brother had not sent that reel, he said.

  Then pictures of Japan itself in 1947—bad lens, short attention span, Tokyo Central Station looking like some village whistle stop. A young girl in a cotton dress, smiling. A group of students in their beat-up caps. They wear an expression I had almost forgotten but which people used to have: fresh, hopeful, and (yes) innocent. And suddenly, a shrine, and as John’s unskillful hands manipulate the machine, for a second, there in the corner stands Herschel [Webb] alive and well again, smiling after all these years dead.

  At the party lots of important people, since John likes important people. And we all had to give speeches. I talked about the boat trip. Ed [Seidensticker] gave a droll two minutes recounting how he had forgotten John’s wife’s maiden name. Afterward, since Ed doesn’t like much to walk and since I had eaten too much and all the blood had drained to the stomach, we took a taxi all the way home. I told him my favorite limerick:

  There was a young lady named Tuck,Who had the most terrible luck.She went out in a punt,Fell over the front,And was bit in the leg by a duck.