Flight back cloudy—glad I had seen something the trip down. Met by the Embassy driver, thank goodness, letter from Miss Downing saying that I was to meet a group of J. writers invited to tea for me at the International House, if I had a photograph please to give, otherwise come to embassy to be snapped. Zippo, the routine started again. Also in the packet was a briefing on the various authors (which I shall keep but carry separately and not append here), and at last, C.’s journal.
I saw little of the long ride in from the airfield. Curiously, at first I felt farther away from C. than before. He was writing in London—but at the moment I was reading had already passed thru that experience, also Italy, and was at that moment in Teheran as far as I knew. My own transient state, coupled with his, almost too much to bear—no fixed point—and I am a person who craves same—though not necessarily a geographic one. Being at my desk wd be a help—the journal is at least a little—and I have not written here for the last two nights.
Mr. Boylan (not Black, as I have it earlier) came with me and Downing to International House—built with joint Rockefeller and Japanese funds, werry handsome, as are all their new buildings. One sardonic advantage of being bombed is that they have all these new ones. The writers—ah well. Mr. Hino (author of Faeces and Urine) was as one might expect, a bohemian type in long hair, dark blue shirt—they affect the past Parisian style, some of them, still. Perhaps only his vintage—most of these I met were born 1901 or thereabouts. Again the prestige deal: before our exchange was over he had shown me the prize watch won for something or other 28 yrs ago. (Sad reflection however, that he still wears his 28-yr.-old accomplishments as if they counted in America, last year’s book, prize, is no help for this year.) He also had a secretary, very handsome, pallid, and utterly silent young man—asked me one question—how many times I had had the O. Henry. So help me, I said five—what the hell—I had no prize watch!
Others were the ladies—Enji—delicate as the author of her lyrical titles should be, ditto Koyama, tho’ less so. Kirayabashi, the gal who’s been in prison, was plump, vigorous, smiling—a good proletarian dame. She and Enji had been to the States together recently—the standard tour from Wash to San F. Hino is to go next week. Thru an interpreter (Boylan said he thinks H. understands Eng. and can speak too), he made it clear he is interested only in the “back streets” of U.S.A. Doesn’t want to be corrupted, a vigorous bohemian pose. I said he should look up Algren in Chi. He met Steinbeck at P.E.N. conference here, expects to meet Mailer. Obviously puts me in the mandarin class but I warmed him a trifle and he is sending me his book. Komatsu, translator of Malraux and very au courant France, also there—embassy had given me the wrong info—there is another K. who is a music critic, so having learned my lesson v. well in the car on the way, promptly got off on the wrong musical foot with him at once.
Tuesday—the Autumnal Equinox Holiday,
Went to Nō theater with Mrs. Kobayashi, Bryn Mawr grad, husband a botany prof. Very sweet. Nō Plays extraordinary—one is supposed to be bored, since they are classical, followed by most people there with text—but I wasn’t bored, possibly because of interest in dancing. Mrs. K. told me “story” of each, and it wd have been tantalizing not to know—a baffled American came up in interim and craved info. Very slow, symbolic mixture of joruri declamation, (or some kind of) significant movement, exceptionally stylized. Old, old. Like the dust of the hills moving slowly, doing a turn and stopping again. Head actor wears mask sometimes. Also saw some dances, and a farce. I cd have watched for hrs.
Tantalizing, but had to leave for Ambassador’s cocktail party, and was sorry afterward I had. MacArthur very nice, also his wife—one would call her a “zippy” type—but why I was there was apparently known to no man. Maybe they mistook me for a visiting economist—everybody there seemed to be in that division. One nice woman just down from Seoul, who knows Kim Yong Ick, says he is teaching at U. of Pusan. Rest of time I was nougated down among the Faulty, I mean Faculty, I mean embassy wives. (First slip a typo?) Should have got to talk to Ambassador, but didn’t.
It is hard having a faculty or an official job as a woman—one always gets put with them. Was asked whether sack dress was still in, was crooned over—“ooh isn’t that a lovely trip you’re having!” etc. Many of them nice and not stupid—but they have learned the accepted social responses involved with their responsibility, and live conversationally within them. This kind of thing—the separation of the sexes even at an intimate party which this was, sadly American—not as likely to happen at a Fr. or Br. embassy. House handsome, called Hoover’s Folly originally, built in that era. Then I went home and-so-to, for tomorrow was to be a heavy day indeed.
Forget to say that in the morning I received expense check. Think how many lunches I have skipped this week. And after all, one must build up an “estate.” Etcetera. Upshot, went down to Uyeda’s (recommended by Downing) and bought pearls. Cd have had better lustre with small ones but look silly on me, so bought bigger of adequate lustre but baroque. Came upstairs consumed with guilt. Still me. Maybe feel better when see pearls (being strung). Will have to wear all the time in Persia. Very sexy bead, pearls, so don’t mind, and C. shouldn’t. But these thoughts n.g. for now. Even communication is difficult. Asked at embassy whether a “ms” cd go in pouch, but only dip. stuff can. Secretary advised me not to mail any mss. of which I had no copy to Persia, since “they pilfer.” Even registered and insured stuff. So shall mail this to A.P.O. number. Goodby little ms, perhaps forever. What will Azerbajani make of youz? (Persian sp?)
And so to bed last night. Heaviest day yet today. Morning talked at Tsuda, an hour out of Tokyo—went with driver and Mrs. Kobayashi, who is an alumna. The same blue-stocking girls college atmosphere I wd recognize at ends of earth—very like Barnard when I went there. Miss Kusiya, President (Bryn Mawr also) not unlike the deans of that generation, but softened by Japanese manners, much easier to take than a Gildersleeve. Two others of a similar type, the spinster of good Anglo-Saxon ancestry and educ, teaching in a far land—Miss Chappell, a Canadian, Miss Sechole(?) American. Both of certain age. Had lunch with them in their residence, rather like Eliz. Ames’s house at Yaddo. Mrs. Takano, Henry James expert, also there, but spoke little in deference to older ones. Food fine, American taste but J. elegance. Tomatoes always peeled here for salad—barbarians we. Cashmere Bouquet soap in John—far from home little squeak of nostalgia. Questions went well—I am beginning to repeat jokes and ideas like a seasoned academic—feel rather like an actress doing a two-a-day. But this was the last but one.
In the afternoon went to Keio U. in Tokyo. Prof Kiooka had sent me his trans. of the autobiography of his grandfather, the famous Fukuzawa (Yukichi) who founded the place—one of the first J.’s to visit U.S. in the sixties. Nepotism rampant in the Univ.’s, as everywhere in J. life. On the other hand, they make go-between marriages with selected stock and thus probably usually continue the talents (Sly reference at Tsuda, by Miss Kusiya, that Mishima’s marriage with the daughter of Sugiyama [?] famous painter, had been a go-between one—young wife is still at school. Makes me think M. is probably a homosexual—he is so westernized in other ways—he is building a Colonial[!] house, he told me—that he wd have made a Western marriage, I fancy, had it been more than “duty.” Apparently comes from rich family—peers school, open to all, but takes money, ace. to Mrs. Kobayashi.)
Faculty room at Keio, built by Noguchi is extraordinarily handsome, and the furniture—a long wooden table shaped like an ellipse, beautiful curved divan subtly curved to match, ve-ery long, rattan and reed, exquisitely shaped. I have seen nothing like, and wd rather have this furniture than anything I have ever seen. Lecture O.K.—they warmed up at end. Kiooka no help—Downing told me his subject is Eng. Lit, and she suspects he has never read any Amer.—there is no course in it at Keio. Have a noted medical school, engineering and business schools—many of students there in economics, one doing grad thesis in Faulkner, an intelligent girl—immediately told tha
t she was daughter of the J. translator of Baudelaire. Etc.
Made grand exit by falling down one of their unexpected flights of steps and skinning knee. Picked myself up, veddy British. Home to hotel, and there just as I entered was call from Radio USIS station, for “interview” which I had forgotten all about. So recorded on tape for half an hour—nice note: the girl assistant so enthralled by my eloquence that she stared at me, forgot to insert the tape, and we had to do part of a roll over. Then Mr. Hiroo Mukai called—critic, knows Stegner—I shall try to see him tomorrow, between last-minute errand and maybe a Kabuki—Oh God—I want to, and yet. Day after tomorrow, off to Manila. Downing doubts they will send me out of M. during my time there. I hope not. Am already wincing at the thought of the heat to come. Understand they have a workshop set up for me for first day. George Saito of embassy called to say N. V. M. Gonzalez is returning to M. from Tokyo tomorrow and hopes to meet me there.
Good-by dear C. I hope this gets to you. Next installment I hope, from Manila.
Love,
H.
Saturday—I did not write after all. Fell asleep.
Hotel Filipinos—Pearl of Orient Hotels—Dewey Blvd., Manila—Sunday—Sept. 28, ’58.
Now it is 7:30 of a bright morning. Outside it will already be hot and moist, but inside here in the room, the air conditioner is roaring on, I have just had a shower, and the combination of physical coolness—I slept with a blanket—and bright sun outside, makes me think speciously of fall, of fall in America, the first fine feel of wool, intensely blue mid-afternoon sky and the crisp, windy tinge that comes with evening. Best days in the world, fall, I think, and my heart lifts at the hope of spending some clear cold days with Curt—although perhaps it will be quite cold already when I arrive.
I have just had an international breakfast on my own here. Powdered coffee, made with tap water, which, never more than lukewarm, is a shock after the burning excellence of J. baths—then some of the tiny sour-sweet Phil, limes, then a roll I had previously saved from the NWA largesse on the plane, day before yesterday. The matches with which I have just lit my cigarette are from Schrafft’s, probably the one near Josh Cahn’s. En avant.
After the suave elegance of the Imperial—how elegant I only now realize—this room, though not uncomfortable and much larger, makes me laugh when I look at it. The hotel was built after the war, but just recently; outside is very tropical-postcard-swimming pool, some attempt at smartness. But the temperament here does not do this sort of thing well, in fact the decor is exactly Hotel Earle. Terrible dirty browns, bleeded-out tans, the overstuffed furniture a very sick, slightly iridescent green, the backs of the chairs showing the pomade of past heads. The coffee table, long, glassy, and bound in dreadful wood, the rug a faded straw mat that might just have well been a handsome beige but is a dirtied rose, that clings to the legs of things, so that nothing can be shifted for ease. Two daybeds that have to be made up daily. Grisly 1930—“modern” lamps hooping out at iniquitous angles. In the bath (no tub) the shower head has merely been pushed thru the wall, the hole in the plaster left jagged around it. In toto one feels that these objects were all chosen by someone who did not understand why Westerners liked this kind of thing but manfully have supplied it because we must have it.
My coffee cup is actually the little teacup for travel—blue and white, in a little wicker and cotton bag for safe carrying, that was the parting gift of the innkeeper of the Kaneiwaro Dekkan in Kyoto. Cost a few yen. A remembrance of that almost sinister elegance of everything in J.—one remembers that the trains always ran in Nazi Germany, or was it Mussolini’s Italy?—why is it that new democracies cloth themselves like this room, and the authoritarian country has the Ph.D. in plumbing? But already, after yesterday and last night, I begin to get some sense of what the SD people call “Southeast Asia.”
My last day in Tokyo I went to see Kabuki, moved more by duty than inclination. (Shopped first for yakatas at Takashimaya’s but did not buy—decided was silly—now regret. The usual pattern.) Kabuki-za theater—large one was somewhat of a disappointment—had heard the staging was better than anything we have in West—this not true—although I did not see the famous production Kinjancho. Went to the 4:30 performance, and only stuck it out for an hr. and half. Acting superb, audience brought out picnic boxes—girl next to me eating, with chopsticks, things that—for all the world looked like Peter Paul coconut rolls with a thin outer coating of chocolate—actually rice rolls in a skin of fish. (Fish and perfume again.)
I much prefer the slow, hieratic music dance of the Nō Plays—in this, I was told, I have the classic, intellectual taste—most intellectual J. feel that this is what they should feel, and at the Nō Plays there is something of the same conscious, superior duty that one might sense at an audience in the Village seeing a fine production of Massinger. Once again I discover with wonder, as I have at intervals thru my life—that I have been speaking prose without knowing it. I seem to have the proper intellectual tastes—only some—but not always for the right “intellectual” reasons.
I felt that there was something less esoteric, broader, about Kabuki—almost “West End” or “B’way” abt this production—if within the scope of the mind that can still be applied to a play in which a man commits hara-kiri belly-forward to the audience, in about the same length of time it takes Tristan to expire, and at about the same pace. Meanwhile wife makes exquisite moan, in a ritualized, infinitely varied weeping, no gestures any larger than the radius in which one might swing a spoon. The key to all this, my hopeful profundity told me, is in savagery done with delicacy. And in the audience, which, whether in its gray kid shoes, half of them, or in its traditional kimono, still was rapt and approving at the sight of the honorable act of the hero, the stylized anguish of the father who, emoting grandly, sits by while his son kills himself because he has offended HIM. Are these people, the audience, the same who deliver lectures on H. James, who entertain me in offices as smart as anything on Madison Ave.—indeed smarter—whose plumbing slides on slippered ease, whose imitated du Pont glue works as well or better than the original? Yes.
That evening spent with Hiroo Mukai, works at International House. Born in England, left and returned there, perfect English, many times in America; knows Angus W. etc. We talked “Flankly”—as much as one can. He said it was regrettable J. thought one had to be all black or white on subject of Americans—I gather his countrymen think he is too pro-us. Downing said later, “He does not like us.” I was probably too “flank”—but the hell with it—we discussed the lacks in Amer. culture, the lack of individual judgment that I had noted in J. students, etc., etc.,—it was probably healthier than the usual clichés. I felt M. to be a weary man in some ways—it must be infinitely tiring to live in his position. Yet a tireless man also—his ideal and hope, he told me is to be a J. journalist in Hong-Kong, writing back for newspapers here. We exchanged agreement that one cannot write for one’s country without returning to it often—he had done it once, and found he no longer knew what the J.’s wanted. Etc. So to bed and up at dawn for the plane, which left late.
While in terminal with Downing, met a John Morgan, here in Orient for some months past, for Nat’l City Bank of N.Y., lives in Westfield, N.J.—had spent much time at Amer. Club in Tokyo etc. Routine businessman of the hearty-pleasant type one thought at first, except for the earphone he wears on one side for deafness. Carried my typewriter to plane, sat with me as far as Taipeh, and was very helpful. Scolded myself for typing people; this one does of course have all the marks of the businessman in Orient—but a younger, smarter breed, with manners. Majored in philosophy—we talked of Russell and Josiah Royce—both of us, I suspect, leaning on college backgrounds long since dim. He told me of a cormorant-fishing trip he’d been taken on, in Nagano or Hakone or somewhere. An excursion in the J. manner, on river barges, fishing boats, etc. The boats have the cormorants, which in turn catch the fish. Much business with lighted lanterns, etc. Ultimate end to catch the to
urist, he said, but still a sight he would not have missed—(especially the geisha girls) and I was sorry I had.
Flying into Okinawa was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever had from the air. Trip to then had been excessively bumpy, white clouds and up-drafts—we were apparently flying out of the typhoon that was on its way to Tokyo—little Ida of the vicious small “eye.” (It had bn explained to me that typhoons are the more dangerous the smaller the “eye” and the slower the pace—this one was crawling at 12 mi. per hr. and was expected to attain the strength of the historic one of 1934.) But finally we opened up to beautiful brilliant weather, and Okinawa which had always been a grim, long gray word in the war dispatches, first in the aura of death on the beaches, later, in the news dispatches post-war, a picture of quonset huts—peace-time soldier boredom turned out to be a long-craggy jewel set in a jade-patched purple sea very much like the sea that the Carmel painters attempted but never attained—a thin creaming line of white, where the reefs are, bordering the whole. Morgan had been there, said swimming was wonderful, barring moray-eels, groupers (bloody-mouthed fish, with retractable mouths, that I had seen in Bermuda) and poisonous jellyfish. The whole island, he told me, was crammed with their peculiar kind of cenotaph or gravestone—they having no separate yards but burying anywhere, and we had hoped to see some from the plane, but cdn’t.
The place is of course restricted—our passports were taken from us and not returned until we were again aloft—we cd see little from the barbed-wire enclosure around the terminal. Queer things these terminals set in various seas. Little limbos, equipped with postcards and a tired array of goods to take into the “other” world—and not the world of the living perhaps. Tin’s of Van Houtens Cocoa, American cigarettes in fly-blown cellophane, jewelry that might be hung on a tree but rarely by any mortal woman on herself. Odd to see automobiles, mostly service, with the license marked “Ryukyu.” Usual feeling that it cannot be me who is here.
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