The most important thing was to keep it secret. We must protect our name, her husband said. Otherwise, even when he does go back to normal, he will never recover face before everyone who knows. And so this became Hiromi’s task. She made the necessary excuses. She said he was away, he was taking a short course in Tokyo. He was unwell, he was working. Soon she was tired. Everything Hiromi said to others was a lie. People remembered her fictions better than she, and the worry of keeping up with her own stories was immense. Soon it was easier to retreat. She closed off from friendships, made her own excuses to absent herself from the world. She claimed to be sick so often that she began to believe it. The only times she saw people from the outside were when she went to the shops, the doctor, the hairdresser, or when she had to attend her husband’s work events. But even those people would ask questions; eventually even a shopkeeper knows too much about you. And so she retreated further and her world became confined. Hiromi did not work, she had not done so since Hikaru was born. Her work now was to conceal the family’s shame.
Hiromi receives a phone call from a man named J. He is the husband of Mai Takeda, and was given Hiromi’s name by Mai’s parents. They had no contact details for her, but he called directory assistance and was given her phone number.
‘I’m very sorry to call in such a way, out of the blue. I haven’t heard from my wife in over a month now. I understand that she recently had contact with you and your son. Have you heard from her recently?’
Hiromi considers telling him about the letters to Hikaru but decides against it. It is uncomfortable to talk to a stranger on the phone and tell them anything.
‘I’m sorry, sir. I have not spoken to Mai in over a month either. Do you think she has come to harm?’
J clears his throat. ‘I do not think so. She took a substantial number of clothes with her, and a large overnight bag. Three pairs of shoes …’ He trails off, as though he has said too much. ‘I just can’t imagine where she’s gone,’ he says, and then his voice turns gruff. ‘Some behaviour! I’m very sorry to have bothered you, Mrs Satō. I thank you for your time.’
‘She is a good person. I hope she is okay.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Satō. Again, please accept my apologies for all this fuss my wife has caused.’ He hangs up.
Hiromi Satō is partly comforted by this phone call. Three pairs of shoes, a substantial number of clothes.
Hiromi stands at the door of Hikaru’s room.
‘I have to go to your grandmother next week.’
Hikaru doesn’t answer. But Hiromi is used to speaking at the door and meeting the silence on the other side.
‘I won’t be here next week. I will leave food in the kitchen.’ Again there is no sound. Hiromi raises her voice a little. ‘Who will care for you when I’m gone for good? Who will make your meals?’ The question hits the wooden door and reverberates back to her.
Hiromi makes a phone call to a support group she has read about. They seem to have a different approach to the group at the dormitory where Hikaru failed to stay. Keeping her voice low, Hiromi explains the situation as best she can. She tells the support group counsellor, who says he is an expert on recluse cases, about Hikaru’s years inside and his recent failure to live in the group dormitory.
‘There are two ways to approach this,’ the expert says. He has a clipped, efficient voice. ‘The first is that you give him a choice to leave the house and live outside while getting better. From what you tell me, you have done this and it has not worked. He has relapsed. The second option is that you force him out. Here at our organisation we believe that the second option is the most effective. The sudden shock, while causing some distress at first, breaks the person out of their unhealthy lifestyle. They have forgotten how to be in the world, and so this force is a necessary shock, an uprooting as an initial measure.’
‘How is this done?’
‘We have a team. On an appointed day they will come to the house and bring the person out of their room. It’s very important that your son does not know the date this will occur, otherwise he will put up a stronger resistance or may try to run away. You must not tell him that you have spoken to us.’
‘I understand.’
‘It can be quite distressing for the parents, too. Shut-ins like your son usually put up a fight. But you must do your best to resist interfering. The temporary distress will have greater gains in the end, for everyone involved.’
‘I understand.’
They discuss a day for the extrication, the taking of her son. Hiromi asks if it can be quite soon. She needs to go to her mother. Her mother needs her. They appoint a day.
Hiromi waits for her husband to get home in the late hours. She explains the procedure to him in a low murmur. He says, Do what you have to do. Hiromi knows he will not be home on the appointed day.
That night, Hiromi cannot sleep. She has sentenced her son, condemned him, and he has no idea of who approaches him from the outside.
Like a second birth, her son must be cut from her.
On the appointed day, the support team arrives at ten o’clock in the morning. Hiromi puts her son’s breakfast on the tray outside his door half an hour before. She wonders whether they will interrupt him while he is eating. Two men and one woman, all with serious expressions on their faces, walk through the door. Apart from Mai Takeda, nobody outside the family has walked through this door in some years.
She stays in the kitchen, standing and listening, while they drag her son from his room, down the hallway and to the front door. At first, his screams are wordless. Hiromi is reminded of the day her son was born, her relief at his first cries at the shock of the world. Bitch, bitch mother, he screams. And then he simply cries out for her, or at her, Mother! Mother! She stands where she had been told to stand, outside his line of vision, in the kitchen. It is important that he does not see her, that she doesn’t see him. She hears the sound of his feet dragging along the carpeted floor and then the rough scuffle on the wooden floor at the front door. She has packed a bag with clothes from the laundry, and shoes. They would not be able to put shoes on him, they had said. He would be carried to the car. Hiromi remains with her feet in the same place, as she had been told. Something heavy holds her down, as if the soles of her feet have been nailed to the floor.
The organisation had nominated the time, suggesting that fewer people were likely to be in the apartment building: people would be at work, children at school, housewives at the shops. Hiromi had agreed. She knew that it would be impossible for the building to be completely empty of strangers who would hear her son’s cries. He would be taken to a house, a rehabilitation centre, that remained locked at all times. The situation would be explained to him, including the fact that Hiromi had accepted the conditions. There would be support people available to monitor for escape attempts. They anticipated an initial period of adjustment, with some difficulty, but most recluses generally adapt and comply, she was assured. Many of the people brought there were now able to work for the organisation, helping to bring out more recluses. Some people disagreed with the approach, but Hiromi was told their methods had proven most effective. A soft approach did not work in these situations.
After the van drives Hikaru away, completing the severance of her son, Hiromi stands in the deep silence. She goes to Hikaru’s empty room. The door is open. One slipper is upside down on the floor, another lies out in the hallway. Hikaru’s breakfast tray has been upset, the miso soup spilling over the tray and onto the carpet, the half-eaten bowl of rice knocked on its side, the chopsticks askew like broken legs. His shelf of comics has been knocked over. It resembles a crime scene, a burglary. Hiromi goes to the bed and strips it of the sheets and pillowcase, picks up shirts and socks from the floor, and takes them to the washing machine. She then lifts the small bookcase upright and straightens the comics. At first, as she leaves the room, Hiromi closes the door. But as she busies herself with the housework, irons and packs clothes for her trip to Nagasaki, prepares food in c
ase her husband eats at home while she is away, she opens it.
The next morning, after a quiet, sleepless night, Hiromi takes a taxi to the airport for her flight to Nagasaki. Halfway to the airport, she considers turning back so that she can close the door to Hikaru’s room. But she decides that this is unnecessarily emotional behaviour, and she doesn’t have time.
Nagasaki is still warm, although the humidity has eased. Hiromi oversees the workmen as they finish setting down the new tatami. They assure her the new surface mat will last around ten years. The core mat is still in a fair condition but will need replacing in eight to ten years. Hiromi cannot imagine what her life will look like in ten years. She sees her life as a series of unending responsibilities. Hiromi attempts to rid her mind of her son at this moment.
Her mother is slowing down. She sits in a chair beside the window for most of the day. In the mornings they take a slow walk on the street. The neighbour comes for tea every few days. Her mother’s is a life stripped to its simplest moments. It does not reach for anything other than the passing of each day.
It rains heavily; the last of the summer downpours stretch into autumn. Hiromi hires a wheelchair so that her mother can go to the public baths. They take a taxi to a larger sento that has space for the wheelchair. The windows drip, blurring the crowded shopfronts and powerlines outside the entrance foyer. Hiromi grips her mother’s skeletal arms and lowers her carefully into the bath. Her mother closes her eyes in the hot water. Unbidden, Hiromi thinks of Hikaru’s infant baths, his pink legs kicking silently beneath the water. When they dragged him from his room, Hikaru’s cries were long, moaning and then screeching. The sounds will ring in her ears, she expects, for some time.
Back at the house, her mother lies down to rest and Hiromi takes the tram to the supermarket, balancing an umbrella and shopping bags. She stops at a fresh fish shop and buys several fillets. Hiromi savours the purpose in these visits to town, the calm of walking in the early autumn warmth. She returns home and her mother continues to sleep. They leave the futon unfolded now, so that her mother can rest when she needs to. Hiromi closes the door to her mother’s room and starts to prepare dinner. She can imagine that it is her son who is in the room behind the closed door. She cannot see another life for him. In her mind, Hiromi prepares the evening meal, just as she has for the decades of his life. She turns on the radio to break the strange quiet created by the unrelenting rain.
Note no. 4
Although Kurashiki, in Okayama Prefecture, was further north, away from the heat of the coast, the town was oppressively humid. I have tried to work out why I felt so alone in Japan, and why I grasped solitude at every opportunity. At the hostel in Kurashiki I saw a group of graduate students who had stayed at the same hostel as me in Tokyo. They remembered me and wanted to talk. I had been alone for so many days that to be suddenly recognised seemed like a crisis, a loss of anonymity and my precious silence. It’s as though I can only cope with introductions, with brief encounters, before the compulsion to flee takes over. I could not break out of the quiet, and when they invited me to a party that evening, I went feeling exposed. Their comfort around each other made me more displaced, and I left without saying goodbye to anyone.
Back in the hostel room, a few other women slept alone—women who had perhaps also spent a solitary day in Kurashiki. It was dark, the whir of the air conditioners at either end of the room the only signs of movement. I wondered where they were going, those sleeping women, whether they had somebody to meet.
M’s friend wrote that he had been thinking a lot about our last emails, about the ties of flesh that he had thought would be fatal to break, and about the limited ways to live differently in the society and family in which he grew up. It had both affirmed and disturbed his perception of the long new life he lived abroad. I thought, he wrote, that I had escaped the inevitability of a conventional life in Japan. In many ways I have and I am happy in many ways. And yet maybe that potential old life will haunt me eventually.
I wrote that I understood such feelings. I found it difficult to be tied to jobs or people or commitments for a long period of time, because I was often looking around for that other life, wondering what it might be like. And yet my circumstances made commitments necessary. To find secure work was necessary, to enter a relationship, with its ties both gentle and taut, was chosen. I wrote to him that the haunting was perhaps inevitable. We are only one life, after all.
For two days I walked the same old streets in Kurashiki, crossing the bridge over the river where the smiling young rickshaw drivers offered tours, where women posed in kimonos like a scene from a hundred years earlier. I felt utterly alone and yet wondered why, even when people open themselves to me, I refuse company and wish for the day to end just so that I can wake up again. I hoped I wouldn’t see any of the graduate students again. I wanted to be anonymous, always a new stranger. How such feelings would reckon in a meeting with M’s friend was unclear. He had told me, when I arrived in Kurashiki, that he had been to Okayama Prefecture before. There are many farms there, he wrote. He had gone there briefly seeking a job, he told me, but it hadn’t worked out. The prefecture was known for the pione grape, large and purple-skinned, for the muscat grape, the white peach, and for strawberries.
To my relief, I did not see the group of students from the hostel again.
Earlier, in Osaka, I wrote: I have this hesitation when I see Westerners, as if they’re going to talk to me. There’s often a look of recognition. Always, I ran to solitude and then turned around and wondered where everybody had gone. I also wrote: Went to Osaka Castle today, the moat of stone was so impressive. A ninety-year-old woman came up to talk to me in Japanese, and we somehow had a conversation. I said I was thirty, from Australia. She said she was walking around and up to the castle. She kept gesturing to my cheeks—was it because they were red or because she liked them? I was approached a few times. Would I like to have dinner? in Hiroshima. Could he take photos of my hair? in Harajuku. I said no and no and could never walk away fast enough.
One morning in Kurashiki I walked into a bamboo forest, a bank of wild at the edge of town. Kurashiki is an ancient city gripped by the new; the modern town encircles it like a cage. One step, one street over, and you’re a thousand years in the past or future. The bamboo forest was full of mosquitoes. My skin was soon covered in small, itching welts. Back at the hostel, I sat at the bar, waited for night so I could sleep and rush out again, do it all again, always fleeing something, nothing. I was attached to my phone as though it were a connection to something real that would make me not lonely. I wrote: Each day drains me, and I flee from place to place.
On my final night in Kurashiki, I ate by myself in the hostel restaurant. They had plum wine at the bar, and served a good meal of salmon, omelette, rice and salad.
That night I received a definitive message from M’s friend. He suggested a time and a place for us to meet in Tokyo in two days’ time. He asked if it was convenient for me. I had never heard of the suburb he mentioned. I reread the message several times. It was not clear whether we were to meet at an apartment or a cafe or a hotel. He suggested midday.
In Tokyo I would be staying in Asakusa again, at the same hostel I had stayed in when I first arrived. It would be a relief to return to somewhere I knew. I was not sure if it would be a relief to take the train back to the airport and, from there, the flight back to Melbourne. At the end of travelling I often felt that I had missed what I had gone there for, or was nostalgic for the moments soon after arrival. I wondered whether M’s friend and I would get along well. I thought perhaps I should extend my stay in Tokyo, but I wasn’t sure what reasons would account for this. The momentum of my days was tied to the meeting with M’s friend. I wasn’t sure I wanted to end the conversations by meeting him. He was both a kind of company and a way to stay in solitude.
The old poets sought solitude. They fled the world to isolated places, drove their bodies along winter roads, hid under temple eaves in the
rains of early summer, walked through the night to see a moonrise. Japan was not full of monstrous cities or snaking bullet trains then. Matsuo Bashō gave up his low-rank samurai status and embraced the road. He started writing poetry, returned home, achieved a degree of fame and material wealth. Surrounded by admirers, he was lonely and decided to leave again. He started practising meditation with a Zen priest. In the winter of 1682, his house burned down in a fire that swept through the neighbourhood. Months later, he heard that his mother had died. He now had no home or parents. Someone once wrote that, for Bashō, probably the idea that man is eternally homeless began haunting his mind more and more frequently. Perhaps Bashō’s spirit was always homeless but, for reasons connected only to his body, he had been tied down to property and things and people. The road kept calling Bashō, especially now that he had been robbed of the things that attach most of us to places. He was tempted by the cloud-shifting winds. He wanted to see a moonrise over a lake.
Bashō left his home determined to become a weather-exposed skeleton. He seemed to mean that he wanted to get rid of the self—as in, the self that is constructed by where one lives, the people one interacts with, the clothes one wears every day, the food one usually eats. We are comforted by habit but we are also frozen by it. Bashō wanted to take the narrow road to the deep north. It was a place in his mind. Perhaps it was achiragawa, the other side. He had to go somewhere by foot, to get to that place. This side and the other side overlap in this way. One thing that Bashō was unable to leave behind was his physical body. He refers again and again to my old complaint, his bad stomach, his pain. These constant reminders of the self he could not get rid of must have hammered away at his thoughts. No matter how far he walked and how tired he was, even with every measure of energy burned, always his mere human body stayed with him.
The Shut Ins Page 13