by Meira Chand
‘Cormorants,’ Jun explained, ‘they use them for fishing at night. We’ll see. I’ve hired us a boat.’ She was delighted with the surprise.
But it was still too early. They climbed a hill to a monkey shrine but saw not a single creature. There were only the giant cedars trees full of insect musicians, and a telescope on a viewing platform. Below them the river was like a mirror, fiery now, catching the sunset and dying light, the sky bruised and fading quickly. Soon the boats at the towpath began to fill with guests in summer kimono. Globe lantern lamps were lit by the hundred each side of the river. The lighted interiors of the inns were illuminated on the darkening sky as mysterious worlds of picturesque activity, their flimsy structures like some larger form of glowing paper lantern. Kate drew a breath at the scene below her. It was like a painted tapestry of the past.
Jun aimed the telescope at an opposite hill and through it Kate saw a stream of small figures preparing the fires that would later be lit in the huge form of a torii, the entrance to a Shinto shrine.
‘There are five great fires lit tonight on the five hills surrounding Kyoto. From here we can see the torii, and to the east the biggest of the fires, daimonji, laid out in the shape of the Chinese character “dai”, which is usually translated as “big, but in Buddhism means a “human body”. The fires, like the lantern boats guide the visiting spirits back to the other world.’ Now on the river the fire had died and darkness thickened beneath the surface. Beyond the valley the peaks of hills rolled away into mist and the night.
‘It is time, we must go down to the punts,’ Jun told her.
Already the small crafts were pushing out onto the dark river, alight with frail, swaying strings of paper lamps. There was only the night and the reflection now of a world of lights upon the water.
In the punt she set the child’s lantern boat carefully beside her on the matted floor.
‘It must be launched with the others, while the sutras are chanted,’ Jun instructed.
Out on the river it seemed they had entered another world. The noise of insects and crowds was far away from their rocking, silent island. There was just the lap of water and the knock of the boatman’s pole against the boat. They ate a cold meal laid out for them, of fish, pickles and rice, washed down with beer. As they ate other lantern-lit punts slid past them. Noises drifted faintly across the water. From time to time waterborne shops drew up before them, gaudy with commodities.
The boatmen began to call to each other, manoeuvring the punts into a long line against the staves of a weir, until they were wedged stern to bow like a string. There was the smell of beer and grilled squid and the rich, thick river scent. The cormorant boats swung slowly down before them then, reflective with the blaze of burning logs hanging in a cradle from their bows, drawing the fish to the surface of the water. Flames cut away in the breeze, sparks spitting as the fish swarmed up. Released into the water the cormorants called out in strange, bleak cries, diving for the fish, their long necks collared by metal rings and leads held by the fisherman. As their necks swelled above the rings they were pulled back to the boats to regurgitate the fish.
The fierce glow of the fire passed before them then turned away, the cries of the birds growing fainter. The punts began to break up again, pushing free of the weir and out once more onto the open water. At the same moment on the far side of the river the great armada of sacred lantern boats were being lit and launched one by one, pushed out into the current. The flotilla thickened, the lights bobbing and shivering, moving slowly forward, drawn out into the river upon their journey. Across the silent water came the faint sound of sutras chanted by the priests. The lanterns filled the black road of the river, each small boat bearing its candle and dead identity, jostled together in eerie procession.
‘Now,’ said Jun, ‘now. Put it into the river.’
He bent and lit the small, white candle and the lantern came alive. Kate lifted it carefully over the side, and placed it upon the water. Jun leaned out and gave it a push. It floated slowly away into the dark, a more poignant and solitary sight than anything Kate had ever seen. She put out a hand but the lantern was gone, already drifting away on its lonely path. Other punts had launched lanterns and they too sailed silently behind the child’s, pulled on by the dark river’s current to their ghostly destinations.
For Jun the moment had already passed, he pointed excitedly into the sky. Far away on the bowl of the night the great shape of the dai burst into flames, each part lighted separately, zipping to meet the other until the massive figure glowed, several hundred feet across, astride the far hillside. They watched in silence while it blazed above the town, its red aura lighting the sky and the crest of a slope. As the great dai faded the torii burst into fiery life upon the dark hill behind them. The lanterns drifted silently on the river beneath the flaming signs upon the hillsides. The child’s light was lost to Kate, swallowed up in the dark. She took Jun’s hand then and prayed silently for the future and another child.
But the night, spread before her like a picture book of fantasy and curiosity, soon died and would never come again. Months later, she remembered the child’s lone lantern floating away across the water, and knew that her life and all it held had ended at that moment. From that day on, Japan showed her another face.
11
Jun stared out of the window, nothing would convince him that he was not right. Only last week he had published an article highly praised for its far-sighted views. Itsuko had given it little attention. From the window Jun stared dully at the dusty roofs of the mill sheds, two girls in overalls walked by beneath the window pushing a trolley of boxes, he felt weary and diminished. Behind him in the conference room they shifted restlessly. Beneath the table Yamamura drummed his feet on the floor, from Itsuko came a small, tight clearing of the throat, and the creak of wood as she fidgeted on her chair. Jun turned again to face them.
‘I still say our wage structure must begin to change. It cannot take the strain of continual economic growth. Rising costs and increasing competition will force us to it in the end. Many firms already see this and are changing. We should start now and prepare ourselves.’
‘We are a traditional culture, certainly,’ Itsuko replied. ‘But I see our wage structure as a highly sophisticated industrial relations system. All these Westerners who observe us and criticise pay far too much attention to institutional arrangements without examining functional outcomes. There is no need for any change,’ She thrust up her small chin, determined. It was fatal to cross her so openly.
Impatience filled him again. He did not wish, as his mother liked to think, to overturn a whole establishment. He valued the strengths and coherence of their system. Was not the whole world now examining it as some wondrous curiosity. But there were problems no one but an insider could see, that a new age of technology had brought upon them. In the lifetime employment system wages were determined by length of service, age and education, they were not job related. The wage increase followed roughly the thickening shape of a man’s life as he moved from bachelorhood to family responsibilities. But old crafts had given way to massive technological change and highly skilled industries. The young unskilled workers were often quicker than older and more highly paid workers to acquire and retain new skills. To use technology efficiently more and more young workers must be assigned to jobs appropriate to their abilities and a shortage of these workers compelled their proper use. And these young men were often of a different mind from their fathers. As Japan changed from a production to a consumer-oriented society they wanted their money now to cash in on the good life that the mass media described. The permanent employment system and the old wage structure did not always sit well with them.
‘Our system,’ Itsuko said, ‘brings the industrial world into line with the rest of Japanese society, where age is highly valued.’
‘Maybe he is right,’ Yamamura said, ‘he is young and can see the future clearer than us. We belong to a different era. Look at the changes
we’ve seen since the war. Probably our industrial structures should also be flexible.’ He scratched his head with a nicotine-stained nail. Itsuko turned upon him in displeasure and he fell silent again.
Jun looked at him without interest. He had felt Yamamura’s support growing since his return from London, not he knew from any respect for his views, but simply because Yamamura now saw Jun as his future employer, and so found this stand expedient.
Itsuko began to tidy a heap of papers on the table before her. A young girl appeared with a tray of green tea. Itsuko nodded and accepted a bowl, sipping from it daintily. ‘We employ a predominantly female labour force, who are paid quite differently. Many are even temporary labour, I can’t see any of this applying as yet to us. Your views might be applicable in heavy industries, but the old way is still best for us.
‘We employ women predominantly, not exclusively. We have a large male work force too. Why should we lag behind in management practices? In grandfather’s day we were known as a most progressive firm, he was one of the first in the industry to institute modern welfare measures.’ Jun argued.
Itsuko rested the bowl of tea in the palm of her hand with a small exclamation of impatience. ‘Can we not end this fruitless argument?’ she said in exasperation. It was not that she did not see things looming on the horizon, a whole army of frightening shadows that threatened her security. Change must come, but gradually. What she feared most was a rupture and diminishment of her authority.
Jun belonged to a new generation, he had no memory of the world before the war, a world that was handed to Itsuko undiluted from the past. The old values were solid as the flesh upon her. She was a pre-war woman brought up in a time when militaristic growth in Japan dominated education. It stressed a pathway of patriotism and self-sacrifice to high ideals. Itsuko still remembered the picture placed in every girls’ school during her growing up years. Five pictures of a mother and her son from babyhood to military age, when the mother prayed for his glory as he went to battle and received with grateful tears, the news of his death for the honour of the nation. Such ideals were not easily destroyed, but defeat in the war stained them badly and left the old traditions in limbo. Yet, where other women and lesser men had muddled through, fragmented and disoriented, unable to find a postwar pathway as compelling as the old, Itsuko remained intact. She merely transferred her will from aesthetic and cultural values to the concrete world of the mill.
It was true in her father’s time they had been known for progressive management. Her father had instituted all the welfare measures they accepted so easily today. Since her grandfather’s time in the Meiji era, the industrial system had never ceased dramatic evolution. Through strikes and rice riots and experimental adaptations it grew, borrowing generously from abroad, rejecting, inventing, improvising, while still cherishing a feudal continuity. It evolved into a wholly indigenous industrial system filled with concepts ancient and modern, peculiar only to Japan. Itsuko took it as a single packet, placed reverentially in her hands. She did not question her role or place nor that of those who worked beneath her. She was part of a system where all things were preordained and the rules excluded rearrangement. What functioned had always functioned and produced all they saw today; she was unwilling to take a young man’s risk in directions she considered unnecessary. She stood up and nodded to the two men and turned briskly to the door.
Jun drank down the cooled remains of his tea and followed her despondently, Yamamura hurrying apologetically on his heels. In the office downstairs an exercise break progressed as they walked through. Men in beige overalls and girls in navy smocks swung themselves about. Yamamura stepped forward beside him.
‘Your mother is also right, I understand her views. We were brought up together, we are from the same time. But you youngsters have a sharp nose for change.’ His voice lacked conviction, his main aim was to ingratiate himself with both his present and his future employer. Jun quickened his pace, and walked towards the shed where they were testing again the air-spinning machine.
As he turned in at the door, the odour of grease and cotton surrounded him. The hum of the new machines filled the shed, it had been working all day. There were no disruptions, it was running well now at the anticipated speed. A row of spindles spun before him, their shapes liquid with speed, the men bowed to him cheerfully from the machine. Sun shone through high windows down upon the spindles, flying like the hundred feet of some great centipede. It was unbearably hot, his overalls stuck to his back, but the discomfort seemed trivial to all that was happening here in this shed. Before him the stream of yarn rushed on, unstoppable now, possessed of its own mad energy.
He made a sign and the machine gave out a tearing groan, and relaxed like a dancer released from an endless pirouette. In metamorphosis it was dull, a heavy bank of metal, obstinate to touch. He brought his hand down and the dance began again, the spindles turning like a chorus line.
To his mother, a machine was a machine, of no more interest than the product it produced, but to Jun, each machine fulfilling its task was as absorbing in character and peculiarities as any group of human statuary. The slow, chewing jaws of the carding machines, lazily turning their rolls of waste cotton, could never be hurried. The quick, slick click of the combers moved in precise regimentation, the threads running from them like gauze rivers, and the bobbins and twisters and cheevers madly winding and spinning, raced like artillery in battle. Jun found excitement and a pulse in this mechanical activity that made it almost human.
He congratulated the men and had established an easy camaraderie with them; they sensed an energy from him quite different from his mother. ‘We shall have a celebration and think what we’ll turn our talents to next. We can develop this part of ourselves. We can make Nagai famous for its prototypes.’ They cheered, then bowed to him and each other.
Jun left the mill separately from Itsuko, who had returned to the Osaka office some time before. He drove straight home, he was early. Usually, when he returned, the house was in shadow, but now an upper window seemed to flame in the setting sun. He let himself in and the house was dim and silent, Kate was not yet back from Paula’s. He should have phoned her there, he did not like a lonely homecoming, nobody to greet him, even the maid had gone. This annoyed him suddenly, it was part of the function of a maid to be there to greet the returning. It was only etiquette that a man be welcomed home by the women of the house; Kate was too casual with these formalities.
He went about resentfully, switching on lights in the darkening house, and his annoyance spread. He had not been to Chieko for days; for weeks he had only a few visits. It was not right for him to grow to know the child. His whole relationship with Yukio he had decided, must be reduced to the thin rustle of the bank draft. He could see now this was best, for both himself and the boy. Their lives could flourish then, parallel but not impeded by emotion, the link of blood established but unembroidered. Once the decision was made, he began to try to dampen Chieko’s expectations. This was not easy considering her threats, he could not just cut things off, the procedure would be slow and stressful. He must slowly reduce his visits, like an addicted medicine. In the end he hoped he need only face her once in a while. This was what he must work towards.
It was all for Kate, but the anxiety and manoeuvring exhausted him. Her effect upon his life was like the derailment of a train. Because of Kate there was now no ordered sphere for Chieko, her shadow jerked uncomfortably behind him. Had he not married out of context, his life might easily have contained her. Kate and her Western ethics gave Chieko, as a mistress, an importance she did not have in traditional Asian society. He was tired, angry again at Kate’s absence, at the closed stuffy house and the need to see about turning on lights and opening windows. Why should he feel such guilt about Chieko, he was doing no more than expected of a man in his position? And however hard he tried, Chieko stayed rooted in his mind and body. He knew he would never be rid of her.
He went upstairs to shower and change into
a cool, summer yukata. The house was like an oven, full of trapped heat. The carpet Kate had ordered laid everywhere gave off a new smell, he felt suffocated. He tore off his clothes, flinging them down on the floor about him angrily and strode into the bathroom and the shower. When he came down again into the lounge, a last glow of sun surrounded him. He slid back the veranda doors, opening the room to the garden and took a deep breath of the still dusk. A moth settled on the mosquito netting that filled the open window, its wings drumming rhythmically. He poured a whiskey, walking barefooted into the kitchen for ice, swearing that neither Kate nor the maid had emptied the frozen cubes into a larger container, as he liked. He took out the tray and ran it under the hot tap, all the cubes fell out together with a crash into the sink. He swore again, taking them in a bowl back to the lounge to sit down with his drink.
The saw of crickets carved into the silent evening beyond the open windows. In the distance he heard the waterfall, a windbell moved in a tree. He sat on the sofa, resting his feet on the coffee table, restless and depressed, the day repeating on him like stale food. Yamamura’s ingratiating ways, and his mother’s stubborn thrust of chin seemed to sum up for him all the months since he returned to Japan. His mother’s voice rattled through his life like marbles in a can. The tension of it all was unbearable, and putting down his glass, he placed his hands over his ears, as if he could shut out the world. Everywhere he turned he faced an obstacle of some kind, he seemed to live against the grain.
He threw back his drink and stood up to pour another. ‘You should not,’ Kate had told him before, ‘you’re drinking too much.’ She had put out a hand to restrain him, but nothing else helped him. He sat down again with a fresh whiskey and looked at his watch. In the room the fleshy chairs were awkward to his eyes. It was a delicate Japanese room, matted traditionally, with a tokonoma, a raised alcove for art and flowers. Kate had insisted she furnish in a way that was familiar to her. All the weeks spent with Itsuko she told him had destroyed her morale, he was happy to indulge her. The bare, sanded walls had been papered, the natural woods covered with white, shiny paint and the matting with a thick carpet, upon which was placed a recumbent mass of furniture.