The Bonsai Tree

by Meira Chand

  ‘They come by many different routes. Some come to disappear for one personal reason or another. As you know, Japan is a hard place to live in if you don’t conform, or lose your place, or suffer shame. Perhaps some have been confined in institutions. Here you need not be ill to be institutionalised, you need only be a nuisance. Many though are poor farmers and fishermen from distant parts, forced to seek work away from home due to our rapid economic growth. They come here thinking they’ll take temporary work, to send money home quickly until they find stable jobs. They think they’ll soon send for their families. It never happens. The work they do is the worst there is, the money low, life insecure. They return to dreadful living conditions, loneliness, exhaustion and bad nourishment. At first they do send money home, but less and less. Soon they’re ill or on the bottle, soon they lose contact with their families. They stay here until they die, and that doesn’t take too long. I’ve some rounds to do this morning. Do you want to come with me? It’ll give you some idea of things?’

  They walked down the street, which now appeared deserted.

  ‘Except for the old and the sick, you don’t see many men at this time. The buses come early and clear the area.’ Father Ota explained.

  ‘First I have to go in here, I’ve been told that someone is sick.’ He nodded towards a dilapidated building that displayed a sign that said “hotel”. They entered through a glass door into a tiled foyer. There was a strong smell of urine, disinfectant and despair.

  Beyond the bare entrance and a reception window in a wall, they faced graffiti, damp cement and metal railings on the stairs. On some dark landings a communal sink with many taps was placed along a wall. At one an old man, bent and bearded, naked to the waist, hawked and spat as he cleaned his teeth. Water ran from his beard like rain from coarse straw. There were many doors along each corridor, stacked like the half-doors of horse-boxes, one upon another, a ladder reached to upper halves. Some were open and Kate saw inside each a rush matted shelf, little bigger than a man. The boxes appeared without light or ventilation.

  ‘This is one of the cheaper doya, or flophouses. A man rents a shelf for the night,’ Father Ota told her.

  Reaching forward, he pulled back a lower door, put in a hand and switched on a light in an odour-filled space. ‘There’s a light bulb in here, he’s lucky.’

  The man stirred on his bed and drew himself up on an elbow, his sweaty face hammered by years of drink. His voice rasped like drying glue.

  ‘I’m not a corpse yet, Father Ota, that you must come looking for me. But it’s the child here that worries me.’ Beside him then Kate saw a bundle under the quilt. A child of three or four with dark and unkempt hair sat up, and slowly rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Is she sick too?’ Father Ota asked. The man shook his head.

  ‘No, not sick, but she’s not eaten for a couple of days. I don’t know how long I’ve laid here sick. Someone gave her some biscuits last night.’ He lay back as Father Ota knelt beside in the tiny cell, examining him and asking further questions.

  ‘I’m taking the child with me; we’ll look after her. And I’m calling an ambulance for you. I’ll come by and see you again tomorrow in the hospital.’ Father Ota lifted the child up in his arms, and stepped back into the corridor beside Kate. The man murmured his thanks and closed his eyes again.

  ‘Her name is Tomoko,’ Father Ota said, ruffling the child’s mated hair affectionately, producing a sweet from his pocket and giving it to her to eat. They walked back down the dank stairs, Father Ota carrying the docile child.

  ‘We’ve someone who will take care of her,’ Father Ota said over his shoulder.

  ‘How does that man have a child like this? I thought you said they were all single?’ Kate asked hurrying to catch up.

  ‘Some strike up with the casual women about, mostly prostitutes, sometimes they try and live as a family. Usually it breaks down, most of the women walk out and leave the man if there’s a child. We’ve had it before. There are many children like this here, left alone on the roads or in those cupboards all day. We do what we can at our children’s centre.’

  The child gazed at Kate, her dark eyes impenetrable as she bumped along upon Father’s Ota’s shoulder.

  The road was broad and passed a cavernous building open to the road. Father Ota jerked his head towards it.

  ‘That’s the depot where the trucks and buses come each morning to pick up the men.’

  The huge vaulted interior was empty but for an abandoned bus or two. A few cars were parked about the periphery with labels on their windscreens indicating the place and hours of work and the payment for each day. Knots of men stood about, several of the cars held sullen, waiting passengers. Some men were arguing before a brown station wagon. Inside the car two passengers pressed their faces to the window. The quarrelling grew louder until, kicking and yelling, one of the man was picked up by the others and thrust into the waiting car like a squawking bird. The door was shut firmly upon him, and the car with its captives drove off. Father Ota shook his head sadly. ‘Sometimes they press gang them like that. But we can’t interfere, we can’t meddle with the gangs, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Our work is with the basic life these men go out from and come back to.’ Father Ota watched the car drive away; he had seen such things before.

  Soon they reached the childcare centre and left Tomoko there, in a cramped room with a kindly woman, and ten other children.

  ‘I’ve work to do the other side of the ward, if you’re not up to the walk, I’ll take you back first,’ Father Ota said, but Kate shook her head, and they walked on.

  They passed a small patch of wasteland hemmed in by a low wall and a few limp trees. Dirty flophouses ringed the square. Father Ota walked by a few old tyres half buried in the ground, and protruding like the humps of a serpent, waiting for children to come and play. Underfoot the ground was a mess of litter, broken bottles and drink cans. The charred pits of dead fires spotted the place, ash blew up into the air. Some filthy quilts were piled in a corner against a wall and Father Ota marched across to poke amongst them, disturbing a sleeping man who shouted incoherently when prodded by the priest.

  ‘He’s just drunk,’ Father Ota said straightening up in relief. ‘I thought he might be ill. I found a man dead in this square just the other day.’

  A few elderly residents huddled together. All were swaddled in several layers of clothes belted together with string. Father Ota observed them and sighed.

  ‘In the year we reckon to pick up off the streets several hundred dead. It’s the winter that kills them. We go round the streets then each night with blankets, medicine and food.’

  Kate looked at him aghast, ‘Why doesn’t anyone do anything?’ Father Ota shrugged and seemed disinclined to talk.

  Soon they entered a shopping arcade, that Kate recognised from the night before. She hurried along by Father Ota’s side and in the daylight saw that the arcade was indistinguishable in character and content from any other: the butcher, the baker, the chemist, a fish shop and some mundane boutiques. A few bars, a supermarket and a pachinko parlour. Some fruit looked dubious in quality, but that was all to note. Father Ota read her thoughts.

  ‘Kamagasaki is rough and grimy, but in parts like this you wouldn’t know this area was different from others. You couldn’t tell by appearances where you were. And as with everything in Japan, it’s appearances that count.’ Kate again noticed the elderly women, as she had the night before, standing vacantly about the arcade.

  ‘You always find them here. They’re old ex-prostitutes and now they pimp for other women,’ Father Ota said in answer to her question, and then drew her attention to the number of leather shops.

  ‘Many people come here to buy cheap leather. This arcade runs through the Burakumin area. They’re Japan’s answer to India’s untouchables, they are our invisible race. They’ve always dealt in hide. Traditionally they were considered unworthy of the words ‘human being’, because they lived by blood and death and dirt
, things that Shintoism and Buddhism would have no part of. Every defiling trade was theirs, and still is. They did anything no one else would do and paid a price in human rights. They live nowadays by many other trades, and they appear no different from any other modern Japanese. But they are still Burakumin, an unsolved social problem. They have no place in society and live in separate ghettoes. Here they have their own school, they’re discriminated against in normal schools. It is impossible for them to marry outside their community or to hold jobs in reputable firms.’

  ‘Who’s to know where they come from or who they are. Surely there are ways they could infiltrate society?’ Kate asked surprised, looking down the narrow lanes off the arcade at a huddle of little wooden houses, washing lines and open gutters. These were the streets she had run through unknowingly the night before. Father Ota stopped at a fruit shop and bought some oranges.

  ‘Those are Burakumin lanes, they seem normal, until you go into the houses and hear the stories. They cannot infiltrate society because, as you know in Japan, it’s impossible to hide a background. Everyone has a detailed family register kept at the Ward Office, that is the mark of being a Japanese. To be struck off the family register is the worst thing that can happen to you. No kind of business hires anybody without a detailed check on backgrounds, no marriage happens without the same thorough check. Pedigree is everything here, sooner or later things come out.

  But slowly, very slowly, things are changing I suppose, even here. We’re becoming more aware. A lot of idealistic young people now take more interest in these issues.

  Now, there is a road here we shall have to cross. But you need not worry, you’re safe with me. There’s no danger just walking through here. And there is no other way.’

  She saw then that it the same road of seedy brothels she had been trapped in the night before, the doors of the small houses were still open, slippers still waiting. The entrances were devoid now of the old women, waiting to welcome customers. In the morning light everything appeared different and subdued. The street was empty with nobody in sight.

  ‘You’re quite safe with me. I am known everywhere here,’ Father Ota assured her. ‘You must forget about last night. Besides, the area is asleep, no one is about at this time.’

  And when Kate looked she found she could not even determine now which was the house she had run into. Today it was a different place, sterile in the sun.

  ‘This area is called Tobita, it was the equivalent of the old Yoshiwara in Tokyo,’ explained Father Ota, ‘and its history is as old, it’s been here hundreds of years. Do you know the poor girls in those houses are rarely allowed out, they can sit in the porch or at a window, but that’s usually as far as they get. Those girls are different from the bar hostesses or other prostitutes, who although victimised by the gangs have a different status. These girls are the last rung of the prostitution ladder, and the gangs control it all.’

  Nobody would ever guess thought Kate looking about, that this was a street of brothels. The houses were poor but neatly kept, with traditional tiled roofs and pretty potted plants before the entrance. The narrow alley had been hosed down and was still wet in the morning sun.

  ‘You must eat, you’ve had nothing yet. Do you like sushi, shall we go in here?’ He pointed to a tiny place and entered when she nodded. They sat on stools before a circular counter, behind which stood a cook with his chopping board, seaweed, fish and cold rice. A conveyor belt of little dishes rattled like a miniature train round the counter. Each dish contained a small cake or two of cold rice wrapped in seaweed or crowned with raw fish. ‘I must admit that I knew little of Kamagasaki until I was sent here by my mission. As a Japanese I was almost ashamed to say where my parish was, but as a Christian my indignation at the poverty and inhumanity was as great as yours. Now my work and life is here.

  ‘Some time ago there was a song about Sanya, which is the Kamagasaki of Tokyo. It was called “The Sanya Blues” and had a line in it which went something like, if there were no men in Sanya, no buildings would be built in Tokyo, and we would not be economically where we are today.’ Father Ota sighed.

  They left the sushi restaurant and continued on under a railway bridge, passing makeshift homes fashioned from cardboard boxes, large crates and old sofas, and soon entered yet another narrow street. At one corner was a large three-storeyed building. The ground floor was open to the road and its entrance filled with a massive slab of superbly grained wood, mounted on a stand. Behind this screen stood incongruously, a black and gleaming Rolls Royce. Opposite the building was a parking place in which waited several large imported cars.

  ‘This road cuts through the gangsters’ area, and that building is the headquarters of one of the gangs,’ Father Ota nodded to the Rolls Royce. They walked on and were soon free of the road.

  They crossed a further beaten looking square, where more heaps of filthy quilts could be seen, and where a man slept in a disused pipe, and another in a large rusty pram. A tramp searched for lunch in a garbage bin, and Father Ota stopped to direct him to the mission’s soup kitchen.

  ‘Some of the men here come from decent backgrounds, you know, they’re not all lower class. Many come here to escape some personal disaster. I’ve known disgraced businessmen and others who were alcoholics and so disowned in shame by their families. Everyone has a story.’ Father Ota sighed.

  The oranges were eventually deposited with an ancient, palsied woman who slept alone in a filthy room on the second floor of a disused warehouse occupied by twenty families. A smell of drains and urine oozed from the place. The woman lay lethargically on a mat. From old sepia photographs on the walls of the room, men in army uniforms and women in kimono stared down at her. Kate placed the fruit upon a dish, and immediately the room had new life, and the woman turned her head to smile at them.

  Father Ota stopped at a community house for the elderly, the object of his excursion, to discuss a matter of importance. Kate waited by a window absorbed by the sight outside of a makeshift place of worship before a blackened wall. Three white chrysanthemums had been placed in a whisky bottle, and some incense sticks pushed into a plastic cup of ash. Kate stared at the sight and could not explain the tears that came suddenly to her eyes.

  ‘One more stop,’ said Father Ota, ‘and then we will return.’ He unlocked a green door in a shed-like building and entered a deserted office to collect two files from a drawer.

  ‘Have a look in here,’ he said. Kate followed him into the room beyond the office.

  It was as if the debris of a jumble sale had been piled into the room, shelves crammed with a bric-a-brac of discarded objects. Everything from children’s toys and knitting needles to egg cups and glass marbles filled the shelves, and everything was small in scale. Tiny plastic dolls, building blocks, teacups from a toy house, scissors, knives, photo frames, plastic flowers and stuffed birds. The room was dark and windowless, illuminated only by a bar of fluorescent light on the ceiling

  ‘This is our play therapy room. I’ve no need to explain the degree of emotional disturbance here amongst residents. One way or another we do a lot of counselling. A certain type of case benefits from this kind of therapy. We have several qualified volunteers working with us here,’ Father Ota walked into the middle of the room and pointed to a row of shallow troughs standing on small tables.

  ‘Each one of these trays represents a person’s emotional landscape, you know.’

  Kate came and stood beside him, staring down at the strange arrangements. The trays were filled with sand in which was planted a haphazard world, constructed with bits and pieces taken from the brimming shelves. These landscapes of the mind stared up at Kate from their narrow containers, Garish naked dolls, glass light bulbs, silk flowers, cars, toy houses and ladders, plastic spiders and broken bottles formed bizarre and muddled worlds.

  ‘The landscapes get more orderly as they improve, if they improve. These are very troubled people.’ Father Ota said, turning back towards the door.

 
Kate followed, but then stopped before another of the boxes. There was no sand in this tray. It was bare and empty to its blue painted bottom, swept clean with such care that not a grain of sand remained. There was nothing in the tray except a ring of grey pebbles placed carefully at the centre. Upon this rested a small metal bowl filled with water, like a pond. An intricately patterned green rock had been placed in the middle of the water, and upon it rested a single fresh daisy. Kate stood before the stark purity of this image, and it held her with strange force. Tears filled her eyes.

  ‘Come,’ Father Ota said quietly. ‘It is time to go back.’

  She nodded, her throat constricted with emotion. Looking up she saw in his expression an understanding of everything she had not told him. His eyes, behind their bottle thick lenses, viewed the world without accusation. He held the door open and she passed him quickly, wiping her tears away.

  22

  The envelopes now filled the table in untidy piles, addressed to a shadowy mass of names who might care to read them or might not. Father Ota came into the room from the outer office.

  ‘There’s someone to see you.’

  Kate put down an envelope looking up in alarm. Father Ota nodded and smiled encouragement. Following him into the other room, she was sure she would find her husband waiting there. Instead of Jun, Pete stood in Father Ota’s office, and relief flooded through her. Father Ota left them together, shutting the door behind him.

  ‘I never thought I’d find you. I’ve been wandering round this place for hours, trying to trace you,’ Pete said in a conversational way. Kate stared blankly at him.

  ‘I always thought foreigners were so conspicuous here, but nobody seems to have seen you, except for a fruit shop in an arcade. They said you stopped there with that missionary. Finally, it was an old tramp I did not think worth asking who brought me here. God, what a place.’

  He did not tell her of his queries at the houses with the slippers, but waited before her with his quiet smile. She looked down silently at her hands as she sat on a chair.