by Masuji Ibuse
Animal protein other than fish was almost unobtainable. Instead of tea, we used cherry blossom buds pickled in salt.
Charcoal and charcoal balls were hard to come by too, so in our house we kept warm in winter by roasting flat stones or tiles in the stove when we were cooking, then wrapping them in old newspapers, doing them up in cloth, and putting them down our backs. When we were sitting Japanese style we would keep them between our legs, and when we were sitting on the sofa we would put them under our feet to keep them warm. As the stone gradually cooled off, we would take off the newspaper one layer at a time to get at the remaining warmth, then when every bit of warmth had gone we would put it back in the oven and use it again in the same way.
For soap, we would use the stuff we were given, made with rice bran and caustic soda, or buy emulsion on the black market.
Sometimes, even, we used to put out the fire under the stove after we had finished cooking and collect the half-burnt embers. When we had enough, we would powder them, mix the powder with a trace of clay and paste to bind it, and shape it into balls which we used for fuel once they were dry.
When tooth powder became unavailable, we used salt.
Oh, yes—and when there was a ration of onions we used not to eat them but planted them in the ground instead, and picked the leaves as they grew to use in soup.
That ends my sketch of the food situation in Hiroshima during wartime. I imagine you could call our family’s diet “lower middle grade” as far as ordinary white-collar workers’ families went. Before the war, Hiroshima was known as a place with plenty of produce both from the sea and the country, and although it was so big, there were no slums. But living in Hiroshima I realized, as they say, that in a long drawn out war it’s a case of the larger the town, the shorter its inhabitants go of food. And I realized, too, that war’s a sadistic killer of human beings, young and old, men and women alike.
By Shigeko Shizuma
Shigematsu fastened this account away as an appendix to his “Journal of the Bombing.” Then, at Shigeko’s request, he set off for Kōtarō’s place with rice dumplings for the Mass for Dead Insects. The lacquer box containing the dumplings was inside the metal wash-bowl in which Kōtarō had brought the loach, and the whole was encased in a wrapping-cloth.
The Mass for Dead Insects was a rite performed on the day after the festival, when farmers would make rice dumplings as an offering to the souls of the deceased insects they had inadvertently trodden on as they worked in the fields. On the same day, custom also demanded that they should return any articles that they had on loan from their neighbors.
* * *
1. One gō equals 0.381 U.S. pints.
CHAPTER 5
Kōtarō’s home stood by the side of the slope leading up the hill. As Shigematsu approached, he caught sight of a gleaming new, medium-sized automobile parked at the foot of the slope. This was something he had not bargained for. The car was empty, and a middle-aged man who seemed to be the driver, with a peaked cap pushed back on his head, was peering into the great jar into which water flowed from the bamboo pipe. It was clear that Kōtarō had some rather special visitor.
Shigematsu’s heart had begun to pound at his first sight of the intruder. “Lovely weather we’re having,” he said, affecting an air of vagueness, as he approached the jar. “That’s the car belonging to the Fujita Clinic in Fukuyama, isn’t it?” he went on disingenuously. “Has your passenger come from Fukuyama?”
“No, this is a hired car,” the man in the peaked cap replied. “I’m just the driver. I’ve brought a lady over from Yamano.”
“You mean a lady doctor? Of course, if it’s something sudden, one has to send a car for the doctor, I suppose. What’s up with old Kōtarō, then?”
“No, that’s not it—the lady’s here to make inquiries about some marriage prospect or other. At least, that’s the impression I got from what she said. I’ve been waiting here for more than an hour.”
If she had come from the village of Yamano to inquire about a marriage, it could only be about Yasuko. The village was too small for it to mean anything else.
Again Shigematsu’s heart started to beat faster. But he peered into the jar with feigned unconcern.
“All these loach are black, aren’t they?” he said. “When I was a kid, there used to be a brown kind with black spots called sunahami.”
“I expect that’s the kind we call sunamuguri. You used to find it in mountain streams. By now, though, they’ve all been killed off by agricultural chemicals.”
“In our village here it’s not only the sunahami. All the gigichō have been killed off too.”
“That would be what we call gigi, I suppose. A pale reddish fish, with fins on its back and belly that stick into you? Yes, they’ve all disappeared from the stream in our village too.”
Peering through the foliage, Shigematsu could see that the papered sliding screens facing the veranda of Kōtarō’s house were shut, and those inside the entrance too. He wondered what kind of things Kōtarō and the woman were saying about Yasuko. It occurred to him, though, that by now she might well be winding up her business. She might even be getting up to go at this very moment.
“Well, I mustn’t keep you talking,” he said, suddenly fearful of getting caught. “I just hoped it might be the doctor’s car, as there’s someone sick near us. Good-day to you.”
He walked up a path that led into a grove of oak trees and seated himself on a flat rock that lay there. Very well—he told himself—he would be patient and wait here until the woman went home. He could hardly leave without giving Kōtarō the dumplings. If he took them back home, the womenfolk would want explanations, and he didn’t want Yasuko to find out that a woman had come from Yamano especially to make inquiries about her.
The rock on which he sat was about the size of two tatami mats. In the old days, the trunk of a great red pine all of 180 feet high had towered by its side, but the pine had gone for the national effort during the war, and so had the gingko tree at Kōtarō’s, which people said had been the same height. On sunny mornings in late autumn and on into the winter, the shadows of the pine and the gingko tree would reach out all the way to the foot of the hill on which Shigematsu’s house stood.
As a boy, Shigematsu had seldom come to the flat rock to play, but he had often been to play under the gingko tree at Kōtarō’s place. When the frosts came and the gingko tree began to shed its leaves, the roof of Kōtarō’s house would be transformed into a yellow roof, smothered with dead leaves. Whenever a breeze sprang up, they would pour down from the eaves in a yellow waterfall, and when it eddied they would swirl up into the air—up and up to twice, three times the height of the roof—then descend in yellow whirlpools onto the road up the slope and onto the oak grove.
This always delighted the children. As the wind dropped and the leaves came dancing down, the boys would stretch up their hands to clutch at them, and the girls would catch them in their outspread aprons. Then they would total the number of leaves they had caught. “One-for-me, two-for-me, gingko yellow,” they would chant, throwing away a leaf at a time—that made four leaves. “Flittery, slippery, gingko fellow”—that made another four. Over and over again they would sing the same refrain, until only one child had any leaves left, and he became the winner.
At such times, old Ruigorō from Kōtarō’s place would often appear from the house with a broom to sweep the road up the hill, since it worried him to think the children might slip on the piled-up gingko leaves on the slope.
The old man had still been working as a mail carrier for the Kobatake post office in those days. Every day for more than twenty years, come rain, come shine, he had gone to and fro with the mail on his back between the Kobatake and Takafuta post offices. He had even been given an award by the Minister of Communications for his services. He wore a round wicker hat and a loose, dark blue cotton jacket with the words “Kobatake Post Office” picked out in white around the collar, with puttees on his legs and straw
sandals on his feet, and the pouch containing the mail slung on the end of a pole over his shoulder. When the road was blocked by children at play, or if there was a cart or a horse-wagon in the way, he would clear a path for himself by crying: “Way for the mail! Here comes the mail! Official business! Make way there!” The children would gather by the side of the road and chorus after him as he went: “Way for the mail! Here comes the mail! Official business! Huff, puff, huff, puff, huff….”
A car door slammed, and there came the sound of an engine starting up. The sun was beginning to set. Shigematsu came out of the grove and went over to Kōtarō’s house. The sliding doors on the veranda were still shut, but those inside the entrance were open now. He went in, and found Kōtarō sitting on the step up from the hall with his arms folded, staring down at the floor. He must have been sitting there, quite still, ever since seeing his visitor out.
“Good evening,” Shigematsu said.
Kōtarō looked up as though startled. “Oh, good evening.” Seeing Shigematsu, he returned the greeting, but immediately dropped his eyes again. He seemed ashamed of himself: this much at least Shigematsu could tell, despite the gloom inside the entrance hall. Obviously Kōtarō had been pressed to answer all kinds of questions about Yasuko, had been made to say things against his will, and was feeling worn out as a result. Sensing how things were, Shigematsu thanked him for the loach he brought for them, got him to transfer the dumplings into a bowl, and went home without further ado.
The incident had left him with an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He felt an intolerable pity for Yasuko at being exposed, as it were, to the public gaze like this. There was only one thing for him to do: he must finish copying out his journal of the bombing as soon as possible. He must show it to those concerned, and let them compare it with Yasuko’s diary. It was a matter of normal self-respect. By now, he realized, he had been driven into feeling it as his own personal problem.
For dinner, he had a simple bowl of rice mixed with green tea and pickles, then got down to his transcription again.
—
Skirting the edge of the throng, I managed somehow to get through to the East Parade Ground. The road from the street to the ground was filled with a continuous stream of refugees. Most of them had only the clothes they stood up in, but one family had its household belongings piled on a wheelbarrow, with a child on top of them. They were arguing noisily among themselves, unable to make any progress through the dense stream of humanity but equally unable, it seemed, to bring themselves to abandon their belongings. There were a husband and wife carrying several large bundles in wrapping-cloths, together with a suitcase and Gladstone bag which were threaded on a pole slung over their shoulders. There was a group of about twenty schoolboys walking in single file, all holding onto a rope in case they got separated.
I looked back. The road from the street to the parade ground entrance was a broad, continuous belt of humanity.
When I reached Hiroshima Station, the trains in the marshaling yards backing onto the East Parade Ground were all, freight and passenger trains alike, jammed with refugees. On one passenger train near the station itself, people were hanging onto the roof in clusters shouting “Get going! Get going!” No station official was in sight, and there seemed little chance of the train starting, but still the refugees pressed on toward the station. The windows, window frames, and doors of the station building had disappeared, and here and there the outer walls gaped in holes. As I passed by the building, I saw that a large chunk of wall on a level with the second-floor windows had been blasted out and was hanging in the air, suspended from a thick strand of the metal reinforcement. I ran as I passed beneath it.
When I reached the place where the switches were, I saw a young station official not much over twenty busily clanking levers up and down. “Not one of them that works!” he suddenly declared to himself, and set off running in the opposite direction from the station.
The streets in front of the station were on fire and unapproachable, so I set off round the back of Hiji hill. Gobenden Shrine no longer stood in its accustomed place on the hill, but I did not doubt the road I had taken: Hiji hill was Hiji hill, even without a shrine on it.
Matoba Bridge was on fire and impassable. I crossed Taishō Bridge, passed the southern side of Hiji hill, and came out by the side of the Women’s Commercial College. This was a residential district, but all the houses I passed seemed to be empty, and few people were in the streets. The place felt empty and deserted, and a dog was howling in the distance. A small group of housewives stood by the roadside, talking. There was no water in the taps, I heard them saying; you couldn’t even wash your hands.
At the word “water,” I suddenly felt thirsty again, and my throat began to hurt. I looked up at the sky, and saw that part of the head of the jellyfish cloud, whose color was fading by now, was reaching out over the western extremity of Hiji hill. It looked as though it might come after me, over to the north of the hill. Whenever the wind blew from the east, the jellyfish was obscured by smoke from the fires, but as soon as the wind changed it reappeared again.
I had one hundred and twenty yen and some small change in my purse. If somebody had been selling water, I would have given him the lot. I’d heard that at such times it helped to chew tea leaves; I would gladly have chewed leaves off the bush in the state I was then. As it was, I walked on, hugging my thirst to myself, till I found a bucket left standing by a communal tap. It was about seven-tenths full of water. I leaned over the bucket, putting my hands on the wash-place, and, thrusting my face in as a dog does, drank ecstatically till I had had my fill. By now I had forgotten that one should take three separate mouthfuls first: I just drank. It was very good. I felt cooler immediately. Quite suddenly, though, all the strength drained out of my body, and my two outstretched arms threatened to give way, so I pressed down on the rim of the bucket and, putting all my strength into my legs, stood up. A wet cloth was hanging down over my chest. It was the triangular bandage; somehow, without my noticing, it had slipped off my head and become a neckerchief.
When I started walking, the sweat began to pour off me, and my whole body was soon drenched from head to foot. My spectacles steamed over. Time and again, I stopped and wiped them, or wiped them as I walked. When I got near the front gate of the Army Clothing Branch Depot, the jellyfish cloud had swollen up to five or six times the size it had been when I saw it at Yokogawa. All the color had faded out of it by now, though, and it was only a misty mass blurred at the edges. Once so terrifying, it was now no more than a shadow of its former self, and seemed to have little power left to do anything. As I watched it, human voices came drifting out of the Branch Depot—“Hey—how much longer? Have you contacted the chief of the Defense Section?” “Yes sir, I’ve been to contact him”—and there were signs of two or three people moving busily to and fro. I felt a great deal reassured.
One thing I worried about was fire. I did not know where was burning, or how, or to which areas the fires were spreading. I had no idea what had happened to my own house. If Senda-machi was on fire, my wife Shigeko should have taken refuge in the university sports ground; we had long ago agreed on this in case of emergency. There was no need to worry about Yasuko, since she had gone to Furue with the women from the neighborhood association.
I was walking on, looking for somewhere to take a short rest, when my ears caught the sound of a cat miaowing. I turned, and saw a tortoiseshell cat walking along at the feet of a man in boots. “Hey, tortoiseshell!” I ventured. The cat would have walked on past me, completely indifferent, but the man in boots stopped, whereupon the cat, too, stopped and went up to the boots.
The man in the boots spoke. “If it isn’t Mr. Shizuma!” he said. “Well, Mr. Shizuma!”
“Why, if it isn’t Mr. Miyaji!” The coincidence was almost unbelievable, but there was no mistaking Miyaji, of our neighborhood association. During the past two months or so, he had taken to going around in boots of the kind worn by army personnel, and
to wearing, despite the heat, a khaki polo shirt. This was his dress for doing the rounds of firms and government offices, taking orders in connection with his business. Today, he was wearing his army breeches as usual, but above the waist he was naked, and he had no hat.
“How are you? You’re not hurt?” I asked.
“Awful! I caught it, all right.” He turned around to show me. The skin of his back had come clean away from his shoulders, and was hanging limply, like a piece of wet newspaper. The skin on the back of his hands had peeled off and was hanging in the same way. His face was ashen but unscathed.
I assumed he had been caught in a fire and got his back burned by the flames, but I was wrong. Early that morning, he had gone to call on an acquaintance who lived somewhere within sight of the keep of Hiroshima Castle, and had been taking off his polo shirt before going inside. (I suspect he had gone to see a special woman friend; rumor always said that he had a woman somewhere.) He had been hurrying, he told me, and was soaked in sweat. But just as he got the shirt over his head there was a terrifying roar and flash. His head and face were muffled in the shirt, but he could tell the brightness of the flash right through the material and his closed eyelids.
He did not know what had happened after that. The first thing he knew, he was running in the direction of the inner moat of the castle on the other side.
“I didn’t know or care what I was up to,” he said, staggering along by my side. “I only knew that I ought to go in the direction of the hills. So I went to Yokogawa Bridge, then past the front of the Second General Army Headquarters. That was when this cat started following me. Do you think it means good luck or bad luck? I keep wondering.”