We raised our glasses and drank to that.
Peach Boy turned to One Inch Boy. “What about you?”
Issun-Boshi smiled. “I had a dream last night,” he said, “of a monster rising from the waters. I think it would make a fine movie but I need to find a writer for it.”
“Why don’t you write it yourself?” I asked.
“I tried,” he said.
And?”
“And,” he said, “I think I’m better at being in stories than I am at writing them.”
We all laughed, we all raised our glasses again, and we fell into silence for a while. Then, one by one my friends stood and filed out. I stayed because I didn’t want to tell them I was going back to Dr. Hampton’s in an hour.
The old ronin slipped in across from me as soon as they had gone. He was sober now and there was steel in his eyes. “It’s not too late,” he told me. “You can start over.”
I stared at him blankly. His Gaijin clothing was gone now and he was dressed simply in black. His face was shaved, his hair combed. “What happened to Kintaro?” I asked him.
“It was never for Kintaro,” he said. “But he asked. I should have kept silent. I should have found you.”
I blinked. “What was never for Kintaro?”
He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and pushed it into my hands, then he folded his fingers over my hands and clenched them tightly. “Amanonuhoko,” the ronin said and I remembered it.
It was called the Halberd of the Heavenly Marsh. It had made the world, or at least the beginnings of it. The memory jarred me after so long without recollection. A sea churned, an island formed. Creation.
The old ronin was speaking rapidly now. “I found it,” he said. “My work. I’ve done terrible things.” His eyes darted to the left and right. “They pay well for our artifacts,” he said, “and I took their money like a whore and drank it away.”
He withdrew his hands from mine and I looked down at the writing on the paper. It was a name and address in the United States, in a place called Michigan.
“I tried to tell Kintaro but he wouldn’t listen. It had already been shipped. And even if it hadn’t, he couldn’t have used it. It wasn’t for him.”
Then he stood and turned to leave. My mouth opened and closed but I couldn’t find the words. I had questions, but there were too many and I could not find the right one to ask.
Standing before me, he bowed deeply. “I beg your forgiveness, lord,” he said. “I did not recognize you at first.”
Then he left as quickly as he arrived.
When I tapped lightly on Dr. Hampton’s office door, she opened it and ushered me inside quickly, looking up and down the street, her eyes moving with practiced precision.
She wore a shorter dress and silk stockings. Her bustline was tighter than the other dresses I had seen. It revealed the downward slope of her breasts, the secret shadow of her cleavage. Her brown hair was down now, covering her ears, and she did not smile at me.
Instead, taking my hand, she led me up a narrow flight of stairs and took me into her bedroom. She closed the door and turned down the lights.
I stood still, not knowing what to do. After two years of imagination and fantasy, the moment was upon me and I felt shame. A match flared and I saw her face in the glow of it. It bore resolve, not desire.
“I’ve watched you watching me,” she said as she touched the match to the stub of a candle.
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”
She turned around, pulling her hair up off her neck. “Unzip me?”
My hands shook as I worked the small zipper down. She waited there, the white horizontal line of her bra’s back strap stark against her pale skin. When I saw that she wasn’t moving, I reached up with my hands and parted her dress, pushing it over her shoulders as she released her hair and dropped her arms to her sides. The sleek fabric slid over her; I heard the sound of it rustling her skin before it fell crumpled to the floor.
Slowly, she turned and pressed herself against me. “Do you think this will help you?” Her right hand moved to the zipper of my trousers.
I swallowed and nodded.
“Do you want to know why I’m doing this?”
I nodded again.
She leaned forward and kissed me on the corner of my mouth. “All of your friends know who they are. In the midst of this death, they are alive.” She kissed me again. “Maybe,” she said, “if you feel alive you will know who you are.”
I gasped at her hand’s movement and another memory gripped me. Another beautiful woman in another time.
I felt something stirring but I did not know if it was life. She tugged at my clothing as she pulled me into her narrow bed and I let my mouth and hands wander her until we were both naked. Then, in the moment when I rolled onto her, fear seized me and I lunged out of the bed to extinguish the candle.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
But how could I tell her that suddenly I remembered another time, another lover, and knew that I dare not see her for who she truly was in this underworld we occupied? How did I tell her that if I saw her, like that lover long ago, she might haunt me all my days in the wrath of her own lifelessness?
Instead, I took her silently and in the dark.
When we finished, we lay close together and smoked American cigarettes. “I want to tell you the truth,” she said.
“Yes?”
“It may hurt you.”
I shrugged and smiled. “I’ve been hurt before.”
“I think I am carrying Kintaro’s baby,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Oh,” I said. I wasn’t angry. I don’t think I was even hurt by it. I may have even felt proud for my friend in that moment of revelation.
She continued. “I wasn’t sure. I’m still not. But it could be his.” She crushed out her cigarette. “I’ve decided I’m not a very good psychiatrist after all. I will go home and have my baby.”
I wanted to tell her that I could come with her, that I could be a father to Kintaro’s child—if it were indeed Kintaro’s son—and raise him as my own. But when I opened my mouth to say the words, I felt a fist close over my heart.
“It was never for Kintaro,” the old ronin said. I thought about the scrap of paper in my pocket and the address in Michigan where the Heavenly Halberd of the Marsh had been shipped.
I closed my mouth.
A match popped and she lit another cigarette, offering it to me. I took it and dragged on it, feeling the smoke fill my lungs.
“What are you thinking?” she asked me.
I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I am thinking that you are a very good psychiatrist.”
After she fell asleep, I dressed and slipped out into the night.
I felt differently, I realized, and it took me a moment to place the feeling. When it hit me, I smiled and wept at the same time because I knew it suddenly for what it was.
I felt alive.
Later that night, I went back to the bar but discovered it was closed. Military Police moved in and out of the building, barking orders, and I slipped back into the shadows and walked down to the waterfront.
I stood there for a long while, watching the water and wondering about Kintaro the Golden Boy, and Dr. Amanda Fullbright Hampton, and my other friends. I thought about the memories, just out of reach, that teased me now. Especially the memory of blinding heat and light, a wind of heaven that blasted down buildings and left only shadows to mark what had once been men.
The power of it forced me to sit.
I did not hear the man approach until he spoke to me.
“Good evening,” he said in bad Japanese.
I looked up. Dirty light from the streetlamps painted a tall, slender American—middle-aged and wearing a trenchcoat and hat. “Good evening,” I said in careful English as I stood.
He nodded towards bar down the street. “Bad business, that,” he said. Soldiers were carrying a stretcher out drape
d in a bloodstained, white sheet.
“What happened?”
He pursed his lips. “An old man in the bar killed himself with a sword.”
I was not surprised. “It is called seppuku,” I told him. “I think you know it as hara-kiri.”
The American nodded. “I think he recited a poem first. But I couldn’t understand it.”
Yes, I thought, he would do that. “It is the ritual to restore honor for a fallen or failed warrior.”
“There are already too many deaths,” he said. The man extended his hand to me and I took it. “My name is Ed Deming.”
We shook hands. “I do not know my name or I would tell you.”
He smiled and I saw sympathy in it. “These are hard times,” he said.
“Yes.”
“May I sit with you?”
I nodded and sat back down. He joined me. After a minute, I spoke. “You are not a soldier,” I said.
Deming shook his head. “No. A statistician.” My blank look conveyed my lack understanding. “I work with numbers,” he said. “Probabilities and such.”
“Ah. I see.”
“I’m here to help with the census.” Then as an afterthought, he added, “I’m from Iowa.”
I looked at him. “Iowa?”
“It’s part of the United States. Near the middle.”
I pondered this for a moment. “Do you know of a place called Michigan?”
Deming smiled. “I know it. It’s not far from Iowa. What about you? Are you from Tokyo?”
I shrugged. “I’m here now. I think I’m from Nagasaki. I’m—” I paused, trying to find the word “—I am hibakusha.” It was a new word. Explosion-affected person.
A sadness washed the American’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said.
I shrugged again. “Nothing can be done for it.”
“But you’re okay? You’re healthy?”
I nodded. “And my memory is coming back.”
“Well, that’s a blessing.”
Perhaps, I thought. “So what do you think of our country?”
He smiled. “I think it’s beautiful.” And when he said it, I was reminded of the beauty in Dr. Hampton’s tears when we first told her Kintaro had been killed, when she had joined us in our pain. Of course, I didn’t know then that it had been her pain, too, because some part of her had loved Kintaro. “And,” he continued, “I’m impressed with the resolve of your people to come back from this terrible, tragic war.”
I snorted. “You think we will come back from this?”
“I really do.”
I studied him now. There was confidence in his jaw line and the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes spoke of wisdom and humor. “What makes you think such a thing?”
“Because everything you’ve done so far, you’ve done all the way.” His face lit up. “Think about it. If that tenacity were applied to being the best you could be, to providing the best quality of goods and services, you could have the world’s wealth without firing a shot.” His hands moved now as he talked and I felt something like hope growing inside of me. “If you have superior quality—both in your product and producers, your workforce and your managers—your productivity will climb and your expenses will fall. I really believe it.”
“And you’re a statistician?”
He nodded. “I am.”
But in my heart, I knew he was a wizard, a sorcerer from old whose words were full of power and whose eyes were full of the future. I found myself wanting to believe him.
“How would we do such a thing?” I asked him.
He raised one finger, pointing it towards heaven as he extended it towards me. “First,” he said, “transform the individual. That transformed individual will see himself differently, see the world in a new way. He will see the interdependency of it all and will bring about change.” And in his next words, I saw the interdependency as he echoed the ronin’s words. “It’s never too late,” Ed Deming said. “You can start over here.”
We sat in silence for five minutes. Then I looked up at him. “I think you are a very wise man who will help my country very much,” I told him.
He chuckled. “I don’t know about that.” He stood slowly and I heard his bones and joints creak. “But I do know it’s late and I should be getting back.” I stood, too, and when he bowed to me slightly, I returned the bow. Then we shook hands.
“I hope you remember who you are,” Deming said.
“Thank you,” I said. “I hope you enjoy your time in our country.”
With a smile and a tip of his hat, the American Ed Deming turned and strolled away to leave me with my thoughts.
After he’d gone, I walked out onto the pier and found a place to sit in the deeper shadows. At some point, I fell asleep and I dreamed.
My people’s automobiles were on every highway in the world. Japanese radios were in every home. Our goods went out from our tiny island and the wealth of the world came back to us. There were no more ronin riding their solitary wave, no more hibakusha with their souls burned to ash, and Nomi, that shadowy land of death, was a distant memory. Its gates were sundered and its captives free and alive again.
And I saw Ed Deming in my dream, speaking to my country’s leaders, offering a new way to conquer and build our empire.
When I woke up, I knew who I was and I knew what I must do. I would go to America, to Michigan. I would take back what had been given to me so very long ago and I would climb once more to that bridge between heaven and earth, thrust the blade of Amanonuhoko deep into the sea and shake out its droplets over my land. I would recreate what I had created once before and the re-creation would drive out the shadows and spirits that had kept my people hungry and without hope.
I would do these things. But how?
“First,” Deming’s voice echoed inside of me, “transform the individual.”
A declaration formed within me and I said the words to myself, silently. Then I spoke the words aloud to the empty night. “I am Izanagi,” I said. “I will find a way.”
And when I said it, I heard splashing in the water below and I opened my eyes. The moon had come out from behind the clouds and in its silver light, I saw my friend Urashima Taro on the back of an enormous, ancient turtle. He had two beautiful women with him and he grinned up at me.
“Have you decided yet what you will do?” he shouted.
“Yes,” I told him. “Will your friend carry me to California?”
Urashima Taro bent in close to the turtle’s great head and whispered something in its ear. He listened for a moment, winking at one of the pretty girls who giggled and blushed. “He says that he will carry you anywhere, Lord Izanagi, until you remember how to fly.”
I bowed deeply to the old turtle and to my friend and his female companions. I stepped out of my broken shoes and peeled off my tattered socks. I removed my shirt and trousers, folded them, left them neatly on the pier.
Then laughing with joy and shaking with hope, I leaped into the cold waters of Tokyo Bay.
Lady Blade
Jenn Reese
When Lady Kagami finally awoke, the first memory to brush her mind was that of her own death. She felt the blade slide into her flesh, remembered her surprise that with so little effort, her life had been ended. She saw the other women sitting in a circle around her, a similar wide-eyed look on their painted faces. She felt the braided cord crisscrossed around the hilt dig into the soft flesh of her hand, yet her fingers had maintained their grip long after the other muscles in her body had grown slack. She had fallen, softly and slowly—like a willow severed at its trunk—onto a pile of brocaded silk.
After that, only a deep sleep of bloody dreams strung together like pearls.
But now, as her sight became adjusted to the lantern light, she saw a man before her. Or perhaps he was simply a boy. He wore his hair in one long ponytail, slick and dark. The cut of his quilted coat and fitted pants seemed odd to her, and she didn’t recognize the strange fabric with which they were made
. She felt the man’s hands wriggle underneath her, and they were warm. With little effort, he lifted her.
Stop, she said. I do not know you.
The man stumbled back, clearly surprised, but he did not drop her.
“My Lady,” he breathed. “You… you speak.”
Of course I speak, boy, she said. Now release me before I call for my husband. She had a husband? The awareness felt true, but brought little comfort for some reason. She hoped he was a kind man. Kindness was far more rare than goodness or honor, especially among men of war.
The man put her down gently. The stone upon which she was resting felt so cold compared to his arms.
“My Lady,” the man said again, “I am sorry to tell you this, but your husband died long ago, in battle. He died a hero.”
Yes, she thought. I knew this. And I was at his side? she asked the man.
The man nodded. “To the very end, Lady. And many legend-weavers and historians say it was you, not he, who won his battles.”
Kagami laughed. Ridiculous, she said. What am I, but a woman and a wife? I served my husband as I could, and did my best to honor him, but I am no warrior. You are mistaken.
The man looked shocked again, and then thoughtful. “Lady, may I tell you a story? I haven’t much time before I am discovered here, but the tale is important.”
She could think of nowhere else she needed to be; nor, indeed, did she even know where she was. You may, she said, but first, you must tell me your name and whether or not you mean me harm.
He nodded once and said, “I am called Ryo, and I mean only to restore you to glory.”
His answer confused her. What did she know of glory? But deep inside of her, something stirred. Something craved. Something remembered.
Tell your tale, she said, and waited.
The man—for she was seeing more man than boy now—sat on the dirt floor and leaned his back against the smooth wooden curve of the wall. He placed his lantern by his side. When he spoke, his voice was low and intimate, like a blanket of velvet on a starless night.
Japanese Dreams Page 10