The Bonsai Tree

by Meira Chand

  ‘But I have the woman now, I have this evidence, they will give me what I want.’ Tamura boasted.

  ‘But you do not have the woman. She escaped. If you had controlled yourself, if you had thought more clearly and not have aroused her fear, we would have her before us now. That might have been interesting.’ Sakamoto shrugged.

  He wished Tamura would go. Any moment now the leaders of a rival gang would arrive for discussions on the collaborated expansion of illegal operations in Hawaii and the States. Japan was too small for Sakamoto, it was now an age of internationalism. Japanese mobsters must not lag behind in the thrust the rest of the country was making into international markets. Time was getting on, he signalled to some henchmen engrossed at a mahjong table. Tamura saw his appointment was over.

  ‘Even without the woman, I have other evidence in my hands. I saw where she went. I can prove it. That will be enough. I have written to them already. They will have no choice but to give me what I want,’ Tamura said again.

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more. I am not interested. It’s your affair. I have visitors coming.’ Sakamoto waved him away impatiently.

  Tamura stood up reluctantly, ineffectual as always before Sakamoto. With battalions of minions to promote his criminal practices, Sakamoto seldom failed. He was king in a world of his choosing, not an outcast like Tamura knocking on the door of the mercantile aristocracy and hereditary wealth. It was easy for Sakamoto. Tamura turned disconsolately to the door. On the stairs he was forced to step aside for the passage of dubious dignitaries and a swarm of black-suited henchmen. They passed and Tamura continued on his way, unsure as always of his worth in the house of his brother-in-law. Wherever he looked in life, he seemed always reflected as a very small star on the periphery of brilliant constellations.

  21

  Much earlier Kate woke, and lay in the bed, watching the first glimmer of steel light brim into day. Then she closed her eyes again and slept. The warm bed was her only reality, like a raft in an unknown sea. All she remembered was that she was safe. Now the sun exposed the room about her, the bare hardboard walls and a blue tiled sink in a corner. A bulb hung naked on its wire, a calendar with scenes from Noh was pinned to the door. She wondered where she was.

  She sat up in the narrow bed, and found she was still dressed. Someone had removed her shoes and a pair of slippers waited by the bed. Kate sat up and slowly swung her legs out of bed, and pushed her feet into the waiting slippers. At the sink she saw a new paper wrapped soap, and a fresh towel had been placed over a rail. She washed her face and combed her hair. A metal desk stood under the window and shelves in the room were crammed with yellowing papers and a pile of labelled files.

  The sound of voices pulled her to the window. She looked down from an upper storey into a narrow road. A row of dilapidated houses was brightened by a weak sun. The tiled façade of a bathhouse occupied part of the road, and a dirty apartment block, in which all the windows had been blanked out, carried the sign “Hotel”. Before an open-fronted garage some assorted junk lay about. A queue of men, who appeared to be vagrants, did nothing to alleviate Kate anxiety about where she was. Strange flashes of memory returned to her from the night before, and were gone before she could pin them down. Outside the room was a steep ladder-like stair and Kate climbed down carefully. At the bottom of the stairs bundles of string-bound blankets and old clothes stood about. There were two doors on her left, she chose one and pushed it open.

  A plump, balding man wearing heavy spectacles and a white open necked shirt looked up from where he sat at a table. Several other men sat about the table with him, but they did not appear to be as young or as energetic as the balding man.

  ‘You’re awake. Do you feel better?’ the man asked, pushing back his chair and standing up. Kate touched the square of sticking plaster at her temple, nodding in affirmation. He walked over to where a kettle sat steaming upon an oil stove and made a cup of coffee.

  ‘There, come and sit down and drink that. Sugar?’ He put in two spoons and stirred it, placing the mug in her hands. ‘We can get something to eat if you want?’ She shook her head at the thought of food, but drank the coffee gratefully.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I can’t remember’ your name.’ ‘Father Ota,’ he replied. ‘Today we have our post to prepare.’

  He indicated a mound of envelopes and printed matter piled upon the table.

  ‘Twice a year we send out a report on this area. Do you remember much of last night?’ He sat down and slipped a folded sheet into an envelope and reached for another.

  ‘Where am I?’ Kate asked, the coffee mug warm between her palms. The room held the smell of its cheap hardboard walls and fumes of the oil stove.

  ‘This is Kamagasaki,’ Father Ota told her. ‘Have you not heard of Kamagasaki?’ Kate shook her head.

  ‘Literally translated “Kamagaskai” means “Rice Pan Point”,’ Father Ota explained. ‘Some time ago the government tried to change its name, they called it “Airin Chiku”, “The Town of Neighbourly Love”. But no-one calls it that, it’s still “Kamagasaki”. You can’t change reality simply by changing a name.’

  An old man beside Kate nodded in agreement as Father Ota sealed shut another envelope

  ‘And this building we’re in,’ Father Ota continued, ‘We call this, “The House of Hope”.’

  Behind thick glasses, his eyes were kindly and observant. There was a gentleness about him that encouraged Kate’s trust; his smile was quiet and tranquil. Around the table the other three men were elderly, their skin weathered and creased like hide.

  Kate remembered then the faces of the men around the fire the night before. She remembered their split-toed footwear, like black hooves. She did not recall them carrying her here. It had been Father Ota’s face she saw, concerned and bending over her when she opened her eyes. The men had stood in a huddle to one side of him, and she had started up when she saw them.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Father Ota had placed a hand on her shoulder, pushing her gently back in a chair.

  ‘You’re safe, this is a Christian Mission. The men are harmless, only poor. They carried you here when you passed out, they didn’t know what to do with you.’

  He spoke in good English. She stared at the men, trying to remember, then the one of them stepped forward, and asked politely if she was now all right. In his rough hands he held a woollen knitted hat that she remembered him wearing the night before. Kate nodded, but turning again to Father Ota, she knew, whatever the night had held, he was a man she could trust.

  He asked no questions. Thinking of it now, she found it strange, that he had accepted her arrival so easily. He had dressed the cut on her temple, shown her the room upstairs, and placed clean sheets on his own bed; where he had slept she did not know, for she knew no more until this morning. Now as she drank the coffee, her mind was still numb.

  ‘Don’t you want to go home?’ Father Ota reached out for another envelope from the pile on the table. She stared at him for a moment, and looked down into the coffee cup, confused.

  ‘Or you could stay here a little longer of course, if you want to.’ He looked at the top of Kate’s head, bowed despondently above the mug.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, sinking back into silence.

  This makeshift room with its smells of paper, wood and dirty old clothes seemed suddenly preferable to the home she must eventually return to. She suddenly remembered that she had phoned Paula the night before, when she regained consciousness. There seemed no need to phone again this morning, for what did it matter, they had heard from her, they knew she was safe. She let the thought slip from her mind, grateful to be free of obligation. Nobody knew where she was. Even she herself was not yet clear about that. But she was safe, in some unknown place that neither offered anything nor asked of her.

  ‘This doesn’t look like anywhere I’ve seen before,’ Kate responded at last.

  ‘It isn’t,’ Father Ota replied. He repeated what Kate had sai
d in Japanese to the other men, around the table, and they looked at her and laughed in a good natured way.

  ‘Where did you learn your English?’ she asked Father Ota.

  ‘In the United States with our Mission,’ he replied. ‘I was there several years. I have been once to England too. I can tell from your accent you’re from there. Have you never heard of Kamagasaki?’ Kate shook her head again.

  ‘Few foreigners have,’ Father Ota continued. ‘We’re a well-kept secret, or a kind of open secret if you like, even to the Japanese. It’s not polite to know about us. We exist without existence.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Kate said, bewildered.

  ‘Come.’ Father Ota beckoned and stood up.

  He led her through a short corridor, past the stairs she had come down, and the bundles of clothes. He opened another door into a large room filled with men. They queued in a docile file, before a pair of massive pots, whose appetising smell warmed the room. The men shuffled slowly forward, a line of ragged dejected looking men whose age was indeterminable. The food was ladled out by a couple of younger men, and two helpers whose work appeared to be weeding trouble-makers from the queue. Loud arguments erupted at times before the cauldrons, whose steam rose to opaque the spectacles of the man behind the soup.

  ‘Only those not on welfare and really in need get a bowl. It’s not easy to convince them, as you can see.’ Father Ota laughed. ‘These are our day labourers, and this is their soup kitchen. We supply them with the rice and everything else, but they do the cooking.’ Father Ota stepped forward into the room, offering greetings and went to speak with the men who wielded the ladles. Kate felt suddenly conspicuous standing in the doorway, a lone foreign woman, as many turned to look at her. A man nearby slurped loudly, chopsticks shovelling rice and gruel between bristly unkempt jaws. Like so many of the men in the room, he appeared prematurely aged.

  ‘Who are they?’ she asked.

  ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘day labourers. Kamagasaki is a town of day labourers, forty-two thousand of them living on half a square kilometre. That at least is the number registered, but what the figure really is, nobody knows. Most don’t register, you see, they prefer to disappear. And this is the place to disappear. There are two other areas like this in Japan, one is Sanya in Tokyo and the other Kotobuki in Yokohama, but Kamagasaki is by far the largest. These men are the exploited workforce behind the whole of Japanese industry.’ Father Ota spoke brusquely, opening the door back into the room of envelopes.

  ‘Look,’ he said and took her to a map on the wall, pointing out an area cut up and bounded by main roads and railway lines.

  ‘This is Nishinari Ward, Kamagasaki is this corner of it here, although you won’t find the name on this map. It’s thought better to ignore us. Once the whole area went under the name Kamagasaki, and that’s the way we still think of it. I’m afraid we Japanese are given to selective vision, we see only what we want to. We have an inherent sense of beauty, but prefer not to see ugliness. This area is notorious. Its history goes back more than four hundred years. Originally it was a graveyard and place where criminals were executed. In 1615 the Tokugawa Shogunate gave permission to build cheap lodging houses. That was the beginning of the Kamagasaki slums. It’s always been a crime infested area of destitutes. The modern Kamagasaki with its exploited day labourers took its present shape with the Korean war.’ Father Ota pointed to another corner of the map.

  ‘Nishinari is divided into several areas, it’s all very poor. In this part live many dropouts, people who can’t fit into society for one reason or another. This block here belongs to the rag pickers. Then this is the gangsters division, nobody goes there, nor the quarter next to it, Tobita, a red light area of prostitution controlled by the gangsters.’ Father Ota drew his finger over the map, prodding here and there to define a place.

  ‘Here again is Kamagasaki with its day labourers, and this is the Burakumin quarter. You must know about the Burakumin. They’re Japan’s untouchables. Even in this day and age they’re bitterly discriminated against. Originally, they were tanners of hide and grave-diggers, and lived on the outskirts of all towns. Nobody knows how long their area dates back. Then just over here, beyond Kamagasaki, that’s where the Koreans are congregated. They are also a hated non-class here. As you can see, this is the dustbin of society. I don’t know how you found us here. Few people come looking for us, and few can find us when they do. Although as you can see, we’re situated in the very middle of Osaka, bounded by respectability on all sides. I suppose we’re something like a black hole. A sudden step into nothingness.’

  ‘Where is Namba?’ Kate stared at the map.

  ‘Namba? It would be just about here; see, that is Namba station.’

  Kate followed the roads on the map trying to determine where she might have jumped from Tamura’s car. The narrow alleys through which she had run the night before stretched out on the wall before her, now in an innocuous design. She remembered the little curtained doorways and the rows of waiting slippers and shuddered now again.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Father Ota observed, with his gentle smile,

  Kate nodded but knew she owed him some explanation. This was a place without deceit and where the concentration of most lives was far more bitterly distilled than hers. She might for a time wish to disappear, but there was little she needed to hide, she should tell Father Ota about herself.

  ‘I was there last night.’ She pointed to the red light area. ‘I think I had a narrow escape.’

  Father Ota shifted his weight in concern, and Kate hurried to reassure him, explaining then, as simply as she could, all he might need to know. But she mentioned nothing of her marriage, and as she expected he asked no questions.

  ‘Well, I don’t think I’ve had a runaway of quite your sort before. I don’t even know if I should keep you,’ he said, his wide face puckered in anxiety.

  ‘I phoned my friends last night, as you know. It’s all right. I can’t face going back just yet for many reasons. Maybe tomorrow. Please let me stay, I could help you; there must be work you could give me to do. Those envelopes for instance.’ She pleaded like a child, sitting down before the stack of paper, determined. Father Ota shook his head, perplexed, but gave her a pile of printed matter and showed her how to fold them the sheet of paper.

  ‘But I can’t take responsibility for you beyond tomorrow. It will be my duty then to contact your people. I can see you’ve got more trouble than you’re telling me,’ he said shrewdly. ‘But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt if it helps you, until tomorrow.’

  She picked up an envelope in relief. She had not known she wanted to stay, until the words collected and left her. Her thoughts were slow and without the comfort of a plan. Her real life seemed far away, as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. An old man coughed at the table, another slurped his tea. Father Ota’s balding head reflected the sun that pushed through the dusty pane of a window. From the other room came the clank of a ladle and the voices of the men. She did not know what destiny had brought her to this depressing place, nor what made her shape the words that asked to remain. She was surprised but accepting of the space that stretched before her now. And tomorrow she would think again.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘more about this area. How long have you been here?’

  ‘About ten years. We are several different religious groups here now, working together in an ecumenical way. But we need more volunteers, as we need more of everything here. It’s difficult to get outside help or interest, so we try and rehabilitate those we can from the community and train them to help the others, like the men you saw in the soup kitchen, or around this table. On the physical level our main problems here are alcoholism and T.B.. In this day and age there is little T.B. in the rest of Japan, but in Kamagasaki there is hardly a man untouched. And alcoholism, well, this is a town of alcoholics.’ The man beside Kate sucked his bowl of tea and asked where to find more envelopes. His voice was hoarse as a wir
e scourer.

  ‘Now he,’ said Father Ota, ‘has a story. Once he was a gangster of some responsibility, who fell into disrepute with his gang. He came to us here for help in a desperate state, he too was an alcoholic. You can hear how liquor has ruined his voice. He stayed, was cured of the bottle, and is now very active for us here. A kind of story we don’t get very often.’

  ‘Didn’t the gang try and get him back?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Yes indeed, very few escape as he did. He has now lived peacefully here with us some years, and is one of our main supports.’

  ‘But I don’t understand, who are these men, how do they get here, why can’t they leave? Why doesn’t anyone do anything? Kate asked, bewildered still by the place. ‘Why is it a secret?’

  Father Ota scratched his head, wondering where he should begin. ‘Unlike the rest of unskilled labour in Japan, these men work without contracts, by the day. They work in the most dangerous situations with no security in case of accidents. They’re employed on very low wages, the lowest in the hierarchy of labouring classes.

  Each morning, hundreds of buses and trucks come into Kamagasaki, organised by the gangs, to pick up the men and take them off, often to far away places. Most of the big construction companies are owned by the gangs. Then there are the loan sharks, who come in cars to pick up the left over men, at lower wages still. Sometimes they are forced to work and are never even paid.

  The men live in flophouses or they sleep on the streets. This is a town of single men without families, without women. They have no normal human relationships; they live in loneliness and fear. Once they come here they never get out. Nobody leaves Kamagasaki, except by way of death. And that goes for the whole of this area. You’re marked for the rest of society, once it’s known you have lived here. You are an outcast for life; no decent job is open to you. Many have tried to leave. Few can ever do it. Sooner or later they all come back.’

  ‘But how do the men get here in the first place, they must have had families at some time?’ Kate asked.