by David Peace
Ryūnosuke shook his head and said, ‘I don’t like goodbyes.’
‘Then why are we saying goodbye,’ asked Terugiku, leaning over to look up into his face, smile up into his eyes. ‘Is this goodbye?’
Ryūnosuke looked away, turned away, to his notebook, to tear out a page, to hand her a page, a page on which he’d written –
Kanzōmo saitabatten wakarekana …
‘The summer lily just bloomed, but now we say goodbye,’ read Terugiku, and then, her eyes downcast, she said, ‘So this is goodbye.’
Ryūnosuke stood up and walked towards the doors, Terugiku standing up and following him. Ryūnosuke opened the sliding doors, then turned back to Terugiku and said, ‘I hope not …’
‘Thank you,’ said Terugiku, kneeling down on the floor before him, placing one hand on the other on the mats. Then, bowing her head, she said, ‘My name is Waka Sugimoto. Next time we meet, please call me Waka.’
Ryūnosuke turned and walked out of the room, he did not turn or look back, he walked out of the house, through the garden, the rain now stopped, the rain now gone, a figure in the garden, the figure of a man, a Western man, his hands a spyglass, but Ryūnosuke did not stop, he did not look back, he walked through the gates and back down the hill, through Maruyama-chō, its lanterns no longer lit but its willows still weeping, under the willows and over the bridge, over the Matsugae Bridge he walked, looking never back, looking only up, the stars still in the sky, up through the Triangle of Prayers, up towards the Ōura Tenshudō, the stained windows of the Temple of the Holy Mother, the Passion of the Christ illuminated in the darkness, shining through the coming dawn, calling to Ryūnosuke, summoning Ryūnosuke, calling him to prayer, summoning him to his knees, in a pew, among the faithful, his hands together, his lips moving, ‘Lead us not into temptation …’
After the Mass, his prayers said, Ryūnosuke stayed in the pew, stayed in his seat, before the tomb of Father Petitjean and the statue of the Holy Mother and Child, his eyes moistening as he stared up at the cross on the altar.
And then with a deep intake of breath, now rubbing his face with both hands, Ryūnosuke got up from his seat, left the pew, and walked down the aisle, past the baptismal font, to a table standing before the doors, piles of prayer books and crosses on rosaries for sale on the table by the doors –
Ryūnosuke held up a rosary to a priest by the table. ‘How much?’
The priest took the rosary from Ryūnosuke, the cross from his hands, and said, ‘I’m sorry, sir. This is only for Christians, not for tourists …’
Ryūnosuke looked at the priest, this foreign priest on native soil, and said, ‘Excuse me, my mistake; I mistook you for a salesman, this place for a museum.’
The priest started to reply, but Ryūnosuke was walking through the doors of the Ōura Tenshudō, down its steps and down the hill, teardrops in his eyes, falling on his cheek, echoing in his heart, the chambers of his heart …
On the bridge again, standing on the bridge, on the Shianbashi bridge again, the Bridge of Hesitation, Ryūnosuke heard a sound from the water under the bridge, he looked down over the edge of the bridge into the water, and in the water he saw a face, a face staring back up at him, a face reflected in the water, the face of a Kappa staring back up at him, the face of a Kappa reflected in the water, reflected and staring back, smiling now, saying now, ‘Quack, quack! Pleased to meet you. I’m a Kappa; the name is Tock.’
*
I alight from the train onto the platform, go down the stairs, through the ticket gates, out of Tokyo station and into the path and the screams of a madman: ‘Humanity has become too proud, people become too arrogant! They laugh in the face of nature; they no longer respect the Heavens. But beware, and keep your pride in check. For do you think your duty to the gods is merely to wear beautiful kimonos, eat rich foods and live in gaudy palaces? Something dreadful will come of it, something terrible is on its way. This city will be destroyed in less than the span of a single day. And all will be ruin, and all will be corpses. For when the world is touched by Heaven’s anger, then the world will be turned upside down.’
After the Disaster, Before the Disaster
In an emergency such as this earthquake,
art is useless, to say the least.
Our recent experience only helped to expose
the ultimate futility of all artistic endeavours.
Ruminations on the Earthquake, Kan Kikuchi, 1923
After the disaster, Ryūnosuke would live for four more years.
Before the disaster, during that summer, Ryūnosuke and the artist Ryūichi Oana had been staying in Kamakura. They had returned to Tokyo on August 25, the heat in the capital still extreme, but then, just four days later, at twilight, Ryūnosuke had started to shiver, his temperature rising to 38.6. Dr Shimojima diagnosed influenza; Ryūnosuke’s mother, aunt, wife and children had all caught colds, too, to varying degrees.
Before the disaster, the day before, Ryūnosuke had gradually begun to feel better, reading Shibue Chūsai by the late Mori Ōgai in bed.
Before the disaster, during that morning, there had been brief showers and a strong wind. Ryūnosuke had finished reading the last chapter of Shibue Chūsai and had then flicked through the various newspaper reports on the formation of a new cabinet under Count Yamamoto, ignoring yet more articles on the love-suicide of Takeo Arishima and Akiko Hatano: the degenerate decadence and moral bankruptcy of the literati.
Before the disaster, just before noon, Ryūnosuke had had a piece of bread and a glass of milk, and was just about to drink some tea and smoke a cigarette when he felt a slight vibration. Moments later, the house was shaking to an extraordinary degree and he could hear tiles falling from the roof above him, his family screaming from the rooms about him. And the shaking did not subside, as was usual, the motion only becoming more intense, so Ryūnosuke led his mother out of the house and into the garden, while his wife rushed upstairs to rescue their second son, Takashi, who was sleeping on the second floor, his aunt gripping the feet of the steep ladder, trying to stay on her own feet, continuously calling their names. But then, after a short while, his aunt and wife emerged from the house holding Takashi, joining Ryūnosuke and his mother in the garden as the ground continued to tilt and to roll. Yet there was still no sign of his father or his first son, Hiroshi; their maid, Shizu, rushed back inside the house, then came back out with Hiroshi in her arms. And soon his father, too, appeared in the garden, and now the whole family stood together, holding and clinging and clutching each other as, monotonously, Ryūnosuke repeated, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay,’ while thinking, It’s not okay. It’s not okay. For still now the ground continued to rumble, continued to sway, heaving and tossing, the air filled with the thickening fog of a smothering dust, the choking stench of turning soil and the deafening screams of grinding timbers: Gii-ko, gii-ko, gii-ko, gii-ko …
After the disaster, the official record would state that the Great Kantō Earthquake had started at 11:58 a.m. on September 1, 1923, and had stopped after four minutes.
After those four minutes had passed, the biggest shakes seemed to stop, the waves of shocks seemed to lessen, and his wife, his aunt and their maids immediately began to bring essential provisions and the family’s most valued possessions from out of the house. They lined them up in the garden. His wife suggested Ryūnosuke should do the same with his most treasured books. Ryūnosuke went back inside the house to his study on the second floor. Many things had fallen or moved since he had last sat at his desk. He righted piles of books, he straightened sheets of paper. Then, for some time, Ryūnosuke stared around the room at his library, wondering which books to save and which to forsake: Baudelaire or Strindberg? Flaubert or Dostoevsky? But Ryūnosuke did not want to read poetry. He did not want to read drama. He did not want to read short stories or novels. Ryūnosuke picked up a volume by Voltaire. He put it back down. He picked up a volume by Rousseau. He put it back down. Finally, he chose the Bible and The Communist Manifesto. The
n Ryūnosuke wrapped up the calligraphy by Sōseki-sensei in a furoshiki, picked up the statue of the Maria Kannon he had acquired in Nagasaki, and took them all down the ladder, out into the garden. He pulled leaves off a bashō plant. He put the leaves on the dirt of the ground. Then he put the books, the furoshiki and the Maria Kannon on the green of the leaves. His wife and his aunt looked at him with contempt. Ryūnosuke could not tell if their disdain was directed at his choice of books, the Maria Kannon or his treatment of the plant. Or maybe it was not contempt, maybe it was fear –
‘Look! Look,’ shouted his eldest son, Hiroshi, pointing at the sky.
From the gate of their house on the hill in Tabata, Ryūnosuke and his family could see thick black clouds of smoke rising from the fires that were now raging across the lower parts of the city, and Ryūnosuke and his family knew they had been spared the worst of the quake and, so far, the ravages of the flames; a few loose tiles had slid off their roof and smashed on the ground; the stone lantern near the gate had toppled over and broken into pieces. Ryūnosuke gathered up the fragments of the tiles. He stacked them neatly in a pile. But then the ground shook again and the pile collapsed. Ryūnosuke stared at the fragments of the roof tiles and then at the four pieces of the stone lantern. He tried to right the base of the lantern, but it was too heavy to lift. He left the fragments and the pieces lying where they had fallen.
That afternoon, their neighbour, Kurasuke Watanabe, a student, came to check on Ryūnosuke and his family. Even though he still felt rather weak, Ryūnosuke agreed to accompany Kurasuke on a tour of their neighbourhood.
People had escaped into the streets, yet were chatting amiably with a newfound cordiality, offering each other cigarettes and slices of nashi pears, and looking after each other’s children in a scene of unprecedented kindness. But further on, on the slopes of Shinmei-chō, there were houses that had been destroyed, and when Ryūnosuke and Kurasuke stood on the bridge of Tsukimi, for as far as they could see the sky over Tokyo had turned to mud, towers of flame and columns of smoke flashing and rising up.
Kurasuke decided to continue his tour, to find out what news he could, while Ryūnosuke would return to the house and his family. But when he arrived back home, Ryūnosuke discovered the lights and the gas no longer worked, and his family fretting about shortages of food.
And so off Ryūnosuke set again, back around the neighbourhood, buying candles and rice, canned goods and vegetables. But back on the Tsukimi Bridge at twilight, staring back out over Tokyo, Ryūnosuke felt as though he was looking into the blast of a furnace, the sky so very, very red, the fires getting only stronger, not weaker, a never-ending river of people now flooding through Tabata and Nippori, the streets all lined and blocked with chairs and mats, no one sleeping indoors tonight.
That evening, Kurasuke called back in on Ryūnosuke and his family with the reports from his tour, with the news he had heard – Honjo-ku, all burnt; Hongō-ku, all burnt; Shitaya-ku, all burnt; Kōjimachi-ku, the palace and the block south of Hibiya Park safe; the Imperial Hotel and the district south, safe; Koishikawa-ku, the River Edo side, burnt; Kyōbashi-ku, all burnt; Shiba-ku, mostly burnt; Azabu-ku, partly burnt; Ushigome-ku, safe; Yotsuya-ku, mostly safe; Asakusa-ku, all burnt; Nihonbashi-ku, all burnt; Akasaka-ku, the half towards the city centre, burnt; Fukagawa-ku, all burnt; Yokohama and the Shōnan areas all lost, too – and Ryūnosuke feared the houses of his sister and half-brother in Shiba and Honjo must have been completely burnt out, worried how they and their families could possibly have survived. Before moving to Tabata, Ryūnosuke and his family had lived in Honjo. Had we not moved, thought Ryūnosuke, then surely we would all be dead by now. And Ryūnosuke feared for his friends who had stayed on in Kamakura, too, only praying they had somehow, somehow survived.
A little later, Dr Shimojima also called on them, to check on their health, offering them medicine if needed. For luckily his supplies had been saved by his wife. During the quake, she had gone back into their dispensary and held all the cabinets, shelves and drawers of medicines in place, all by herself, so they had had no need to worry about any sudden fires inside. How brave she was, thought Ryūnosuke. He knew he could never have done what she did; surely she was the reincarnation of Shibue Chūsai’s wife!
But the ground continued to shake, their nerves continued to fray, smoke still filling the air, ash falling from the skies on the house and garden, and more visitors continued to call, now to borrow their money, to eat their food, to drink their water, now to share their reports of destruction and fire, their rumours of insurrection and invasion, their accusations of arson and looting, their whispers of rape and murder, their words of death and words of fear.
Finally that evening, the head of the Neighbourhood Association also called on Ryūnosuke and his family; the head of the Neighbourhood Association asked Ryūnosuke if he and his family were all healthy and well, their house habitable and safe; then the head of the Neighbourhood Association told Ryūnosuke that martial law had been proclaimed, that all troops in Tokyo had been mobilised, and that anyone refusing to comply with requisition orders would be subject to three years’ imprisonment or a three-thousand-yen fine. Now the head of the Neighbourhood Association asked Ryūnosuke if he, as a Good Citizen, would join their newly formed local Committee of Vigilance, so he, as a Good Citizen, could help safeguard their neighbourhood during this period of uncertainty and upheaval. Ryūnosuke, as a Good Citizen, nodded. Now the head of the Neighbourhood Association handed Ryūnosuke a helmet. And Ryūnosuke, as a Good Citizen, put it on.
After the head of the Neighbourhood Association had left, Ryūnosuke dashed round to see Kurasuke; he explained his fever had returned and he had a headache, a headache so terrible he could barely stand, so would Kurasuke kindly take his turn on watch for the Committee of Vigilance that night? Kurasuke readily agreed, laying out a small dagger, putting on a wooden sword and looking every inch the Good and Vigilant Citizen.
That night, back home, Ryūnosuke lay on the futon between his wife and two sons. He tried to read the Bible. But he could not concentrate. He tried to read The Communist Manifesto. But, again, he could not concentrate. For under the ground he could feel the earth continue to grind and scream, a gigantic mechanical worm burrowing through caverns and tunnels, pushing the ground up, then pulling it back down in its wake. Ryūnosuke imagined the turning gears and spinning cogwheels deep within the metallic body of the beast. And he could hear again and again those accusations and whispers, of rape and murder, of death and fear. He put his fingers in his ears, he put his fingers in his eyes, and Ryūnosuke waited for the dawn.
*
I am a Good Citizen. But in my opinion, Kan Kikuchi is lacking in this respect.
After martial law was imposed, I was conversing with Kan Kikuchi, a cigarette dangling from my mouth. Though I say conversing, we spoke of nothing but the earthquake. As we were talking, I said that I had heard the cause of the fires was XXXXXXXXX. Upon hearing this, Kikuchi raised his eyebrows and exclaimed, ‘What a lie!’ When put to me this way, I could do nothing but agree, ‘Hmm, so it’s not true.’ But I still said again that it seemed that the XXXX were the fingers of the Bolsheviks. Kikuchi again raised his eyebrows and scolded, ‘It’s not true, you know, what they say.’ Again I said, ‘Oh, so that’s not true either,’ and immediately withdrew my explanation.
Nevertheless, in my opinion, a good citizen believes in the existence of conspiracies between Bolsheviks and XXXX. If, by chance, one could not believe, one should at least put on a show of believing. But that barbaric Kan Kikuchi didn’t even make a show of believing, let alone actually believe. This should be seen as a complete renunciation of the qualifications of being a good citizen. I – the good citizen and courageous member of a self-protection group that I am – could not help but feel pity for Kikuchi.
But then, becoming a good citizen requires a lot of hard work.
*
After the disaster, the next morning, Ryūnosuke was overcome with worry
for his friend Yasunari. Yasunari lived in Asakusa and, throughout the long night, all the rumours and whispers Ryūnosuke had heard filled him with dread for the fate of his young friend; he saw the delicate, refined face of Yasunari broken and crushed beneath the weight of a building, pale and bloodless, or his thin, hollow frame burnt and charred on a mountain of corpses, black and anonymous. And so with a great sense of foreboding and some degree of duplicity, for fear of worrying his wife and family, Ryūnosuke left the relative calm and safety of Tabata – his little bunshi mura, this ‘village of the literati’ on the outskirts – and set off for the Asakusa area.
The journey from Tabata was not an easy one for there were no streetcars and the roads were clogged with survivors, children strapped to their backs, shouldering enormous bundles or pushing handcarts piled high with their belongings, all heading out of Tokyo, in the opposite direction to Ryūnosuke. A military law had already been passed that allowed people to leave Tokyo but forbade others from entering, and so there were soldiers and police on every corner. There were Committees of Vigilance, too, formed by Good and Upright Citizens, all carrying clubs or pipes, sticks or swords, and often wearing helmets similar to the one Ryūnosuke now sported. And as he walked towards Asakusa, Ryūnosuke watched as these committees dragged men from the columns of survivors to accuse them of being non-Japanese, either in blood or spirit, and up to no good. Without fail, these accusations were punctuated by blows from the clubs or pipes, sticks or swords of the Committees of Vigilance. Ryūnosuke was certain that had he not been wearing his new helmet, then he, too, would have been subjected to such accusations and blows. Or worse, much worse.
Finally, Ryūnosuke reached Asakusa. Or the place where Asakusa once had stood. For here the destruction was total; mile after mile of completely charred and still-smoking ruin, from the river in the east in every direction, and everywhere corpses: charred-black corpses, half-burnt corpses, corpses sprawling in gutters, corpses floating in rivers, corpses piled up on bridges, corpses blocking off whole streets at intersections. Every manner of death possible to a human being was on display. And everywhere, the stench of death; an odour of rotting apricots which, even through the handkerchief Ryūnosuke pressed against his face, burnt his nose and scalded his eyes with horror and with grief. For now, at last, tears came, tears flowed as Ryūnosuke remembered the people and the place Asakusa once had been, the little pleasure stalls, all now cinders, the pots of morning glories, all now withered, all now harrowed –