VOLUME TWO

21—
Article of Faith

In September 1945 I again took up residence in the second-class patients' ward at the hospital in Hongo^[*] . During the day I examined patients and at night I worked in the laboratory with my microscope. Late into the night, after everyone had gone to sleep, I read whatever literary works I could lay my hands on, Japanese or non-Japanese. My status at the hospital was that of an assistant at the Faculty of Medicine, an unsalaried position. On weekends I went back home to Meguro Ward's Miyamae-cho^[*] by catching a connection on a crowded train from Ochanomizu.

Father had converted a room in the small house we rented in Miyamae-cho into a medical office, but he had very few patients. To make matters worse, Mother was not in the best of health, though she could still manage the daily chores for our small family. Sister had gotten married before the war and was by then a mother of two. She was living with her in-laws and waiting for her husband to return from the Chinese front. No one in our family died as a result of the war, but we lost whatever meager possessions we once had. We were at the mercy of high inflationary prices, and life after the war was hard. In the summer, when the water level of the open sewer ditch in front of our house dropped, columns of swarming mosquitoes plagued us. On the other hand, a prolonged period of rain caused flooding below our floor. On rainy days, even if the ditch did not overflow, the road beside it would turn into a muddy mire that was impossible to walk through in a dark night without stepping into muddy puddles. Whenever I thought about our family's plight, I realized I had no one but myself to rely on if we were to escape from the kind of existence we led in our Miyamae-cho neighborhood.

Grandmother, my aunt, and her daughter, that is to say my cousin,

were living in a one-story house next door and were supporting themselves by selling off the property Grandfather had left. Grandfather, with his lifelong penchant for reckless extravagance, had squandered all the wealth accumulated by previous generations before he passed away during the war. Still, the remaining furniture, when sold to secondhand dealers, was enough to support the humble livelihood of the three women for a while. Mother lamented the fact that Grandmother, in order to survive, even had to resort to selling off Grandfather's personal belongings. But my aunt's oldest son, my elder cousin, was a research assistant at Tohoku^[*] University and had no remittance to send home.^[1] Other than Grandmother's old-age pension, their household had no income at all.

"I guess our family's decline has really hit rock bottom," I said.

"Well, I only wish Grandma realized that. But in any case, she's lived her life in luxury, and she doesn't even take care of housework herself."

The train from Hongo^[*] to Miyamae-cho^[*] took almost two hours one way, but the city buses converted from trucks discarded by the Occupation forces took less than an hour. While it only had uncomfortable plank seats, the bus dashed through the devastated city like a gust of wind. I was thrilled by the speedy ride, and I enjoyed looking at the street scenes through the window. In those days Tokyoites did not flaunt their social status or wealth at every opportunity. Men walking amid the ruins wore khaki-colored "national" clothes or military uniforms with the badges removed. Women wore monpe pantaloons or prewar-style "Western" clothes. Men who knew their way around were profiteering from black-market operations, and their idea of ultimate extravagance was having polished rice to eat and American cigarettes to smoke. Violent and thoughtless toward others, these men had no ideals or understanding of society as a whole. On the other hand, they were a lively crowd who had only themselves to rely on, and as such, they were far more honest than the arrogant and despicably obsequious men who hid behind the cloak of authority. Women who knew how to get around also knew how to make connections with the officers from the Occupation forces. When they boarded city buses wearing new clothes from the army PX, their happy faces always beamed with triumphant pride as if they were sitting on top of the world.

In the ruins of Tokyo, artificiality gave way to plain dealing, phony appearances to undisguised greed. Naked human desire, be it the passion

[1] Tohoku University is in Sendai in northeastern Honshu^[*] .

for food, material possessions, or sex, manifested itself with astonishing and unceremonious candidness. The Japanese government hit on the notion of ichioku sozange^[*] (wholesale repentance for the entire hundred million Japanese people) and tried to sell the idea to the public, but nobody was prepared to repent and no one felt such a need. Indeed, repentance was the last thing on their minds; they were only too busy finding ways to keep up a livelihood that the present government could not guarantee—food rations alone weren't enough to ward off malnutrition.

This was a time when some people spoke of sengo no kyodatsu jotai^[*] (the state of prostration after the war). But far from being perplexed by any "state of prostration," the Tokyoites I saw through the city bus window were filled with an indomitable vitality. Opinion leaders who once glorified the war might be in a state of prostration, but certainly not the black marketeers or the rice farmers who did well for themselves in the black market. The expression people came up with and loved to use was neither "repentance" (zange ) nor "prostration" (kyodatsu ) but rather suto —it means either "strike" or "strip tease." Zene-suto refers to the former, a workers' general strike, and zen-suto to the latter, stripping to the bare skin.^[2] The word suto neatly epitomizes this postwar epoch for it exemplifies the struggles and self-indulgence of the Japanese people, both in organizations and as individuals.

I liked to ride the city bus as it sped across the ruined city, but on the train I sometimes got to see something different. Injured or sick veterans in dirty white coats would board the train at a station somewhere, make a round through the compartments, and change to a different train at the next station on the other side of the platform. During the short interval before the train reached the next station, the other passengers would pretend not to notice them by looking out the windows or engrossing themselves in their newspapers. Hardly anyone bothered to put change into the boxes held out by the soldiers. The passengers appeared unwilling to be reminded of an old wound, as if it had been some kind of mistake instead of the "sacred war" they greeted with so much enthusiasm on the day of Pearl Harbor.

On the other hand, there were many friendly faces among the passengers. On weekends, there were fathers traveling with their children and husbands with their wives. I had no doubt that in their respective families these men were caring fathers and loving husbands. How then

[2] Zen-suto means "everything goes."

could one reconcile this thought with the probability that until yesterday these same men could have been killers on the Chinese continent? Had the character of the Japanese people changed? Or had only the immediate circumstances changed, making a repetition of the same behavior likely if the same conditions were to prevail again? Among the passengers, a middle-aged man was trying repeatedly to coax his unruly child, but in my eyes the face of this doting parent took on that inscrutable look of a hideous creature. The man who might have been yesterday's diabolical monster was today's good-natured human being and potentially tomorrow's diabolical monster all over again. Philosophers have expounded on the essential goodness or evil in human nature, but I cannot believe in either theory. Instead of debating the essential goodness or evil of man, I concluded that a more rewarding endeavor is to examine the history and structure of society as a whole that makes demons as well as angels out of a great many human beings. This was not an impulsive thought, for it determined the direction of my later thinking. Because no human being is evil, I am against the death penalty; and because war can turn any human being into a monster, I am against all wars.

On the train, most of the seated male passengers dozed with their knees spread wide apart. In order to get a seat, one literally had to shove others aside. That was why the seated passengers were all young men and not women or the elderly. One time a young soldier from the Occupation forces, noticing what was happening on the train, gestured to one of the men to give up his seat to a woman. The man grudgingly obeyed, but nobody was eager to occupy his seat. The soldier gestured to a woman to sit, but it took a while before she could understand what he meant. Even then, she looked first at the soldier and then at the man, and was still hesitant to make a move. Having already started his enterprise of switching passengers, the soldier could not very well throw up his hands and abandon it halfway. Finally, the woman looked blankly at the other passengers around her and mumbled, "I am so sorry," and sat down with a perplexed look on her face. The soldier, at last satisfied, got off at the next station.

The male passengers nearby, myself included on many occasions, started to reflect on what they had just witnessed. Their reactions ranged from irritation—"That troublemaker was poking his nose where he didn't belong!"—to somber realization—"We have no choice but to keep our mouth shut because we are a defeated nation." Meanwhile, the apparent look of embarrassment on the woman's face seemed to announce

her role as just that of an unwilling party to the officious attention of the American soldier. On the other hand, she was not about to give up the seat she now occupied. That was how the American occupation of Japan began. In fact, the Japanese side did not use the term "occupation" but referred to the American forces as "stationary troops," just as it called Japan's surrender "termination of hostilities." In those days the Occupation forces apparently had little understanding of the Japanese people, and this lack of understanding was perpetuated by the Japanese, who, on demand, would rise from their seats without uttering a word.

At the beginning of the Occupation, I felt that my earlier predictions had been gradually turning into reality. I had not anticipated the concrete form of Japan's surrender but had expected the defeat itself. My prediction was based, negatively speaking, on my belief that popular claims about Japan's strengths and America's weaknesses were fantasy pure and simple. Positively speaking, I believed that from the outset the war represented a contest between the forces of democracy and the forces of fascism. I viewed world history as a gradual but sure progression from the integration of church and state to their separation and to religious freedom, from irrational spiritualism to rationalism, from ineffectually integrated communities to highly efficient organizations, from feudal agrarian societies to industrialized capitalist societies, from subservience toward authority to autonomous individualism, and from an insistence on sex and class distinctions to an emphasis on equality among human beings. As I assessed it, Japanese fascism represented nothing more than a desperate attempt on Japan's part to reaffirm the backwardness of its own society. In a global confrontation between fascism and democracy, rooted as they were in the forces of backwardness and progression respectively, only history could predict the outcome. The wheel of history does not turn backwards. That was my article of faith. It informed my predictions, and when they turned out to be accurate, my conviction was strengthened.

Generally speaking, it goes without saying that the accuracy of one's prediction does not necessarily validate the premise of such a prediction. But the issue here was not the certitude of knowledge but a sense of moral purpose. There can be no escape from the scrupulous net of Heaven's justice.

The logical conclusion from this line of thinking was that the Occupation authorities would eradicate the forces of militarism and "impose" democracy on Japan. The Japanese people could be expected, for the first time, to enjoy human rights and freedom of speech. The development of

world history seemed to lend support to the prediction that a backward-looking society would henceforth evolve in a progressive direction. This projection appeared to be further substantiated by the rapid succession of announcements and directives that began to pour forth from the general headquarters of the Occupation forces. The anticipation that the Occupation forces would protect the people's rights as a means to achieve thorough democratization proved to be more accurate than the prediction by those who feared the worst possible rampage and plunder by the "British and American devils" after their armies had occupied Japan. The anticipation that American capitalism had little interest in destroying Japan as a potential market proved to be more realistic than the prediction that the foreigners would devastate the whole country and leave. The communiqués of the Occupation forces explained Japanese militarism in terms of Japan's feudalistic land ownership system with its high levies on the tenant farmers, giving rise to an impoverished agrarian sector and a cheap labor supply for the factories. They pointed to Japan's small domestic market, which subsequently encouraged its radical expansion into overseas markets. This in turn led to the resistance from countries with high labor costs and hence the rise of militarism within Japan to crush that resistance. I gathered that this was their line of argument, and I was surprised at how very closely it corresponded to ours.^[3] I myself believed that I had a fairly accurate understanding of the war and our adversary, that is to say, the Occupation forces. This belief consolidated my conviction in the theoretical framework of my understanding—though my understanding did not really have the kind of systematic or coherent constructs to deserve the name of theory. If one could call the nebulously formulated system in this belief "ideology," then I was far from being "skeptical of all ideologies"; in fact at no other time in my life have I been a firmer believer in the power of ideology.

There was more to it than that. During the war I could find numerous examples around me that exemplified Japan's "backwardness." Yet I had no knowledge about the realities of Western "progress"; all I knew were Western ideals that I had learned from books, and the rest was my imagination. I knew about the Bill of Rights but nothing about police actions in the West. I knew in essence the workings of a democracy, but almost nothing about the behavioral patterns of state authority toward domestic and foreign affairs. I knew the principle of sexual equality as

[3] Kato^[*] very likely refers to his close circle of friends.

stipulated in civil law, but I was totally ignorant of any concrete examples of real sexual discrimination. I could scarcely avoid thinking of Japanese society as the epitome of all "backwardness" or identifying "progress" with my imaginary West. And where, for example, would the other Asian countries fit into my scheme? The truth of the matter is that they did not even cross my mind!

Of course, my guiding principles were not only related to matters of war and the Occupation. What other principles did I cherish as I stood face to face with postwar society? And what other experiences did I have, or rather, not have?

I did not hold any religious faith. I did not find arguments for the existence of a god convincing, nor did I think it possible to prove the nonexistence of a god. Nevertheless, I had a persistent interest in the different ramifications of these two premises, on the individual level as well as on the societal and cultural levels as a whole.

Epistemologically, I was a skeptic but, for all practical purposes, not a faithful one. For example, unless I had a great deal of time at my disposal, I would not give any thought to whether the noodles in front of me actually existed, or how I was made aware of their existence through my sensory faculties. Just by thinking about them, I found it difficult to arrive at the objectivity of the noodles on the basis of my subjective consciousness and equally difficult to arrive at the transcendence of my epistemological subjectivity on the basis of the objectivity of the noodles. Hence I ventured to go no further than that. I concluded only, for example, that the opposing positions of historical materialism and subjectivism had exactly the same standing.

When it came to moral principles, I ultimately recognized none as absolute. One could perhaps compare moral codes to the eternity of the starry skies, but there discussion would turn on abstract canons of morality in general, not their substantive stipulations. Concrete moral values can only be relative, subject to the specificity of time, society, and the particular circumstances of the individual involved. This moral relativism often turned me into an iconoclast in my thinking, because I refused to acknowledge as absolute the values that society and tradition were trying to mold into precisely this. Yet the same relativism also turned me, in practice, into a conservative, because if new and old values were similarly relative to one another, I felt no absolute need to replace the old with the new. In real life, I was, generally speaking, a law-abiding person with no particular wish to inflict harm on either people or animals.

But then I was not much of a dispenser of good fortune. I suppose I could be considered a dutiful son to my parents, and I loved my sister dearly. I abided by all these conventions as long as they did not seriously conflict with my own interests. I applied myself reasonably hard to my chosen profession; I looked at world and national affairs with only detached interest; and I tried to live a calm and peaceful life.

Psychologically, I had always lacked self-confidence. Perhaps that was why I hoped I could at least become an independent thinker, serving no other master but myself. I was not like the brave soldier who could defy the perils of the battlefield, and I never tried to become one. I did not aspire to greatness, and I did not believe I had the talents necessary to contrive a master plan in pursuit of any great ambition. Of course I wanted to have a reasonable standard of living, but I had little desire for extravagance. I disliked being ordered around, and I had no desire to lead others by the nose. I could be disagreeable and stubborn, just as I was as a child, and to others I might often appear combative. While I was not entirely unaware of my own traits, I was not terribly bothered by what other people might think. Above all, I was full of curiosity, and I wished to know everything that was happening in the world. As a matter of fact, many things were happening or about to happen in the world where I lived.

While I had no chronic illnesses, occasional malnutrition had contributed to my skinny physique and slight build, a far cry from the all-muscle macho type. I consoled myself by thinking that no man, however strong, could be a match for a bull. To begin with, "he-man" or "masculine" attributes never interested me a great deal.

In both the psychological and physical senses, I had little experience with sex. I seldom had contacts with women other than Mother and Sister, and even when such contacts did take place, I was enormously shy. I had never stepped into a zen-suto joint or found any private pleasure in pornography, not because of lack of interest but, I suppose, because of inertia. Tokyo, despite its devastation, was filled with vibrant young women with cheerful laughter, sparkling eyes, and streaming black hair. Watching them gave me tremendous pleasure, but initiating a conversation was too much of a bother. And sleeping with them was not within my immediate thoughts.

Armed with a few ideas but totally "inexperienced," I began my journey into postwar Japanese society. And so, along the way, it seemed only natural to encounter worldly, "experienced" types and discover the infinite strengths and weaknesses of ideas.

22—
Hiroshima

Not a single living tree remained in Hiroshima. The wasteland extended as far as the eye could see, its flat surface crisscrossed by intersecting roads and waterways. A few stone buildings were still standing, but their windows were broken, their walls half-destroyed, and, as one approached, blue sky could be seen on the other side. None of the remaining houses was fit for human habitation. Yet in this scorched wilderness, there were always wandering souls haunting the landscape like shadows: disoriented men in national uniforms with faces covered with dirt; children whose scarred faces twitched with spasms of pain; hairless women walking under the sun like frightened animals, their faces covered with a furoshiki . Hospitals in the suburbs sufficiently far from the center of explosion to have escaped destruction were still packed with patients suffering from continuous high fever, swollen gums, and wounds oozing pus. Only two months ago, they had been citizens of Hiroshima, and now they were the survivors.

The city of Hiroshima had been there until the morning of August 6, 1945, a castle town still untouched by the bombings. Several tens of thousands of families lived there, each with its own share of joy and sorrow, hope and remorse. That morning, in an instant, the whole city vanished. More than half of the citizens living around the city center were either crushed under the collapsed houses or drowned in the waterways into which they threw themselves or instantly killed by the blast. Survivors tried to escape to the suburbs amidst the black smoke covering the sky and the flames scorching the earth, but some collapsed on the way and others died just as they had made their way to safety. Those who survived the ordeal and thought they had narrowly escaped the jaws of death

were celebrating their good fortune with relatives in the countryside, but within a mere three or four weeks their hair began to fall out and their noses and mouths began to bleed. Soon they developed a high fever and died before any medical attention could be administered. Two months later those who did manage to survive were numb from the shock of losing their close family members, and they themselves became fearful of the effects of radiation from the atomic explosion. Like unwanted animals, they wandered aimlessly in the scorched wilderness. These former citizens of Hiroshima were no longer the same human beings; their former identities had vanished as though they had never existed.

Those who had gone through such an experience were reluctant to talk about it. The only thing they were prepared to say was, "We got nuked, that's what we call it here.^[1] We just feel more dead than alive."

I had never before felt such an infinitely insurmountable distance separating me from another person. A huge, dark mass of experience was locked inside their hearts, and if they themselves could not articulate it, how could I possibly understand what it meant? It was something beyond comprehension—no sooner had some meaning been extracted from the experience than the substance of that meaning began to evaporate. And yet as long as one came face to face with it, the weight of the experience irresistibly defined the totality of one's being. This was an experience I had never had before. But I witnessed those who had. Whenever I heard people talk about Hiroshima, no matter how convincing their words might be, I always had a feeling of something not quite right. A voice inside me would say, What you said is true, but it's not the whole story. This applies even to the phrase "No More Hiroshima." When I saw Hiroshima, I was not thinking at all about the future of nuclear weapons. Later, I did think about nuclear weapons, but I was always reminded of the vast gulf between my own thoughts and the experience that inspired such a muted silence in the people of Hiroshima.

But the immediate silence between the patient and the doctor had to be broken. I had to turn their individual experiences into observable categories by extrapolating the significance of what they could articulate.

"Where were you at that time?" I asked.

"My sister's husband had already gone to the front, so I was at my sister's place . . . "

[1] The local people, especially children, used the expression pikadon: pika refers to the bright light and don the sound of the atomic explosion.

"Could you tell me where your sister's house was on this map? So it was about three kilometers from the center of the explosion. Now, it was a wooden house, wasn't it? And what direction were you facing inside the house?"

As far as the patient was concerned, it was obvious that these questions were at best inconsequential. Indeed, I felt that bombarding Hiroshima victims with these questions bordered on the barbaric. Whether the house was made of wood or anything else, the patient's life was forever changed as a result of the death of her sister's child and the blindness of her sister. On the one hand was a core of experience to which no verbal articulation could do justice, and on the other, a string of facts totally unrelated to the life of the person concerned. And yet in order to comprehend the world, it is necessary to translate into words not life's decisive experiences—these defy articulation—but bare facts. If Hiroshima taught me anything at all, it was the lesson of how vehemently incompatible and unbearably agonizing such a contrast could become for the observer. For me, it came down to a choice between quietly returning to Tokyo or remaining in Hiroshima to observe my "cases." What I saw before me were not "medical cases" but real human beings, and yet I could say or do nothing for them. Besides, I had no reason to prolong my stay there in the first place. But I stayed. By so doing, I could devote myself to my laboratory work, treating human beings as medical cases. The victim's distance from the center of the explosion, whether he or she was under any cover, the nature of the cover if any, the loss of hair and other symptoms deemed typical for victims of atomic radiation, particularly the findings in the victim's hemogram, and most importantly, the results from the bone marrow sample. My mind was so preoccupied with such matters that I scarcely gave any thought to the war, to its moral ramifications, or to the effects of nuclear weapons on human beings. Samples of bone marrow were relevant to my Hiroshima medical cases; the effects of nuclear weapons were relevant to the people of Hiroshima. During my two months in Hiroshima, I thought less about the atomic bomb than at any other time thereafter.

At that time I was a Japanese participant in the Joint Investigative Team on the Impact of the Atomic Bomb. The team had been sent to Hiroshima jointly by the medical faculty of Tokyo Imperial University and the American contingent of army doctors. Professor Tsuzuki from the Department of Surgery, the organizer of the Japanese team, consulted

Dr. Nakao, a hematologist.^[2] Even before that, samples of bone marrow had been sent from hospitals in Hiroshima to Dr. Nakao, and I too had examined those samples. Our findings were that they resembled the effects of aplastic anemia as cited to date, suggesting drastic changes in the victims' bone marrow. What had happened there? We had already discussed the matter, and we wanted very much to know more about those bone marrow samples. So when Dr. Nakao asked me if I wanted go to Hiroshima with him, I accepted his offer without the slightest hesitation.

Even before the joint investigative team left for Hiroshima, specialists from the American side showed up at our Internal Medicine Division to examine Dr. Nakao's medical cases. They came every day to make handwritten records of the patients' medical histories and to scrutinize with us the bone marrow samples under the microscope. Once they sat down in front of the microscope, Dr. Nakao's ability was immediately apparent. When young American doctors encountered difficulties in classifying cells they saw under the microscope, they sought Dr. Nakao's help. In expressing their appreciation for Dr. Nakao, their manners were invariably courteous and not the least impertinent. But communication between us was close to impossible.

"Hey! Go find out what they want!" Dr. Nakao turned to my desk and yelled. "Earlier on, they seemed to be asking me for something, but I had no idea what it was."

As I approached the Americans, they looked relieved at the arrival of opportune help and rapidly repeated their question. But I too could not understand what they were saying. Baffled, they looked at each other. Then one of them took great pains to repeat the same question slowly. When it finally dawned on me that they were in fact asking where the toilet was, we all burst out laughing.

"Why didn't they just ask in plain English?" Dr. Nakao said. "We can't understand them when they speak in this roundabout way."

This was my first encounter with foreigners since my high school days with our German teacher. This time, it took place when the Occupying forces were coming into contact with the occupied Japanese people, and our business revolved around technical problems in the highly specialized area of hematology. In other matters, Professor Tsuzuki was the one who negotiated with the American side. He explained to us that the goal

[2] Tsuzuki Masao (1892–1961), a specialist in thoracic surgery who taught at both Tokyo Imperial University and the Naval Training Hospital.

of the joint investigative team was purely academic, and he laid out our concrete itinerary to Hiroshima. Later, an American transport plane brought us and our medical equipment, food, and transport vehicles from Tachikawa to Hiroshima.

My first and last "contact" with the Occupation forces—perhaps "contact" is too strong a word here—surprised me at every turn. Inside the transport plane we took from Tachikawa was a huge nude picture of what the Americans called a pinup girl, and sitting in front of it were young baby-faced soldiers with rifles in hand. If it were the Japanese army, I don't suppose such a picture could be publicly displayed inside a military plane, though surely no soldier could be uninterested in naked women. The official stance of the Japanese army was one of stoic spiritualism, of great significance in combat situations.

Heading the American team was an army doctor, Colonel M, a professor at the University of Southern California who had many famous patients in his private practice in Beverly Hills. He spoke some French and from time to time would make wisecracks. Once he pointed to a formation of bombers over the sky of Hiroshima and said, "They destroyed the Nazis." I didn't know about Germany at that time, or how many tens of thousands of people had been killed during the blanket bombing of Dresden. I was just wondering if there had been pinup pictures inside the B-25 bombers at that time as well. Besides Colonel M, Lieutenant Colonel L, a very fine pathologist from Yale University, was likewise not originally an army doctor. They joined the army after the war began, were given their respective ranks, and were able to apply their abilities as specialists in their fields. I could not help remembering the time when Assistant Professor Okinaka, a scholar respected by the medical school as a whole, was drafted toward the end of the war as a soldier-nurse.^[3] "Well, a soldier-nurse is someone who does things like sweeping the hospital corridors," someone in the medical office said. "Don't tell me some army doctor trained by Mr. Okinaka could order him to do that!"

One fine autumn day Colonel M and I were traveling in his jeep from Hiroshima to the naval hospital in Iwakuni. It had been a long time since I smelled refreshing sea air instead of the drugs in my laboratory. Not far from the shore above the deep blue waters of the Inland Sea, the remains of a Japanese warship sunk during the bombing lay exposed to the sun. On the road, I saw soldiers from the Occupation forces

[3] See chapter 19, note 3.

trying to hitch rides from passing vehicles. All the vehicles on the road—automobiles, trucks, and jeeps—belonged to the U.S. Army, and I couldn't see even a cart that belonged to the local people. At one point, Colonel M stopped his jeep in front of two young soldiers and asked where they were heading. The soldiers stood up straight, raised their hands in salute, and answered, "The service club." "Well then, get into the back seats!" All along the way until the soldiers got off, the colonel, in high spirits, cracked jokes and engaged in idle conversation with a receptive audience. "I wonder how many Japanese girls there are in the service club?" And so the conversation went. I was wondering whether a Japanese colonel might not also have taken his soldiers in his own vehicle to a "service club" in some occupied territory. After our passengers got off, the colonel whistled a tune from Madama Butterfly . As I listened, I realized I couldn't bring myself to share in the cheerful mood.

"Prostitution isn't a cheerful business," I muttered. That was not necessarily all I had in mind.

"But, hey, that's life!" Colonel M replied in French, his voice cheerful as ever.

Lieutenant Colonel L was preoccupied with his pathological examinations and had little contact with us since our work was clinical diagnosis. The majority of the Japanese team members went out every day to the local hospitals to examine patients. Besides Lieutenant Colonel L and Dr. Ishii working in the pathology laboratories, the only people who stayed in the rural army hospital—which provided us with our examination room as well as our lodging—were Dr. Nakao and four or five clinical staff. Inside the hospital, hardly anyone from the Japanese team talked about the war. Scarcely anyone expressed his views on the subject of the Americans' dropping the atomic bomb, and only Colonel M on the American side and Professor Tsuzuki on the Japanese side occasionally talked about the war in general terms.

One day Colonel M went into the diagnostic room and, without saying a word, wrote in big letters on the blackboard, "People who live in houses made of paper and wood should not throw stones at others," and left. "So he's saying it was stupid of us to start the war, I suppose. The guy is making fools out of us," somebody mumbled. But the matter went no further than that. As always, Professor Tsuzuki chatted with the Americans in his fluent English, and one time he said, "The war's ended, you see, and now we're cooperating with you and our joint investigation team's going well. But, mind you, in the next war, we're going to win."

Clearly, Professor Tsuzuki meant that as a joke, but the Americans reacted rather strongly. First Lieutenant L, originally from Yale Medical School like Lieutenant Colonel L, was listening to Professor Tsuzuki with us. Because we worked in the same examination room every day, I was beginning to develop a friendship with this young American physician. No sooner had Professor Tsuzuki left the room than L said, with a somewhat agitated look on his face, "Did you hear what he just said? What kind of joke is that? And we're right in the middle of a tragedy in Hiroshima!" I had to agree that in October 1945, when cities throughout Japan had been burned to rubble and when the Japanese people could barely escape starvation on the supply of American food, the words "the next war" did have a strange ring to my ears as well.

Sometime later when I alone was with First Lieutenant L in a room in a mountain lodge, he said, "Do you think Professor Tsuzuki is a militarist?"

"Professor Tsuzuki was also a surgeon vice admiral in the navy. Do you think there was a military officer in the Japanese imperial forces who wasn't a militarist?" That conversation took place when the two of us were out on a trip all by ourselves.

As Dr. Nakao and I were studying blood and bone marrow samples in Hiroshima, we came to the conclusion that we should go beyond the examination of the breakdown of hematogenous tissues caused by radiation and also observe the recovery of those tissues. In order to do this, we had to follow up on our patients after their release. But once they left their hospitals near Hiroshima, patients in recuperation were scattered throughout the nearby villages. There seemed to be no other way to gather our data than to mark down on a map beforehand the known addresses of some of our former patients and then make a round of follow-up calls in a jeep with all the equipment on board. I discussed this idea with Dr. Nakao, and since I couldn't carry it out alone, I also talked with First Lieutenant L. He very much agreed with me and said he would explain our plans to Lieutenant Colonel L and request a jeep and a week's leave. We had been living almost exclusively in the examination room for more than a month now, and admittedly, we also wanted to breathe the air outside. When we received approval, First Lieutenant L said, "Lieutenant Colonel L is a workaholic. But I've been working very hard and I suppose that's why he gave us his approval this time."

"Dr. Nakao is also a workaholic," I said. "Although we're no match for him, we've been working hard too, and we definitely need some diversion."

The two of us prepared the equipment for the examinations, collected the maps, loaded up our spare fuel and food supply, and had a jeep ready in a great hurry. As we were about to depart, he brought a rifle along. While he was putting it under the rear seats, he said in a seeming effort to justify his action, "I know I don't need it, but the rules say we have to do this in an occupied territory."

During the journey we lost our way sometimes at night, got caught in heavy rain on a mountain road, or were forced to make detours around destroyed bridges. On a few occasions, with no place to stay overnight, we had to negotiate with the local police. Still, we enjoyed the journey while visiting our patients from one village to the next. Riding in a jeep from the Occupation forces, we never encountered antipathy or hostility anywhere. Instead, we were sometimes met with kindness and an occasional following, and in most instances people greeted us with curiosity. The war had not brought any destruction to the mountain villages, and the Occupation forces had not yet penetrated that far. During the journey, I was very keenly aware of myself as neither a local person nor a member of the Occupation forces, but as an observer of an encounter between the local people and a physician from the Occupation forces. Although I clearly realized that the local people regarded me sitting inside the jeep as someone from the Occupation forces, I realized even more acutely that I was not.

The journey brought L and me closer together, and our conversations often went beyond the technical areas of medicine. Though my English was as inadequate as before, little by little I felt more comfortable with it and I could more or less understand what L was saying. As we rode along he asked me questions about the local customs, and I offered my explanations, duly simplified according to my ability to articulate them.

"What's that large building over there?"

"That's a temple."

"Considering how poor Japanese villages are, why don't they build schools and factories instead of large temples?"

"Next to the temple, the school is the largest structure. Even if there had been factories, they would've been destroyed in the bombings."

But of course we also talked about democracy as a universal ideal. We agreed that it was essentially realized in the United States.

"Was the democratic ideal widely recognized in imperial Japan?"

"No, the idea was prohibited in imperial Japan, and only very few people believed in it."

"Were you one of those few people during the war?"

"Yes."

"If so, weren't you a traitor to the Japanese empire?"

All of a sudden, the word "traitor" struck like an arrow, piercing me, and I winced but recovered myself quickly.

"What is imperial Japan?" I remember myself saying. "It consisted of the government and the people. And if a government betrays its people, the only thing a person can do is oppose the government, or at least not support it, if he doesn't want to betray his own people. Now you just said the government of imperial Japan during the war was not democratic. An undemocratic government by definition betrays the basic and legitimate rights of the people. And so if a man is loyal to the government, he becomes a traitor to the people, and if he's loyal to the people, he's a traitor to the government. I was only trying to be loyal to the people of Japan."

"I see," L muttered. Then he remained silent as if trying to catch his own train of thought.

That was the last time I met L. I wonder if he would still agree with my arguments today. By now, I can perhaps articulate my thoughts a little more effectively. The issue itself, however, has nothing to do with the art of articulation.^[4]

Returning from Hiroshima, I felt exhausted. And for a long time afterwards I did not think about the city.

[4] Kato^[*] met L again for the first time since 1945 in Los Angeles in November 1991 during his trip to the United States as a commentator on a PBS Frontline program about the role of Japanese business in that country (see Kato's^[*] essay "Kokyu^[*] wasureubeki," in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 22:243–46).

23—
1946

Most of the young men who gathered in a drinking party in the blacked-out city of Kawaguchi toward the end of the war to send their friends off to the front did manage to survive and return to the gutted ruins of Tokyo. And by the time they themselves were drafted, no vessels were left to transport them to the battlefields in the South Pacific. They were expected to strap their bodies to gasoline bombs and throw themselves at the enemy's tanks in the "battle of Japan"—but in the end the battle never took place. These young men did not know war; they knew only how senseless life was in the army. They had no experience at killing Chinese; their only experience was their expectation of getting killed. They had not lived for the future, but they felt the need to define the present and the future for themselves.

When these young men gathered once again in occupied Tokyo, they founded a coterie magazine called Sedai (Generation). Among them were Hidaka Hiroshi, later to become an economist, and Nakamura Minoru, a poet and the author of an epochal book on Miyazawa Kenji. In the same magazine I serialized a number of essays later published in 1946: Bungakuteki kosatsu^[*] (1946: a literary inquiry), a book I coauthored with two novelists, Fukunaga Takehiko and Nakamura Shin'ichiro^[*] .^[1] In that book,

[1] Sedai (July 1946–December 1952, in 17 vols.) was one of the first significant postwar literary journals. • Hidaka Hiroshi (1923–) studied philosophy at Tokyo University, taught Marxist economics at Hosei^[*] University from 1954, and wrote on Das Kapital and on economic theories; under the pseudonym Hamada Shin'ichi, he wrote literary criticism, especially on Yoshiyuki Junnosuke. • Nakamura Minoru (1927–), whose 1955 study of Miyazawa Kenji (and its expanded editions) was a landmark in Japanese postwar scholarship and latertriggered a debate (the Ame ni mo makezu controversy) with the critic and philosopher Tanikawa Tetsuzo^[*] , also a Miyazawa scholar; he also wrote on the contemporary poet Nakahara Chuya^[*] (Kotobanaki uta—Nakahara Chuya^[*] ron [Songs without words: a study of Nakahara Chuya, 1973]). • 1946: Bungakuteki kosatsu^[*] , published in 1947, helped launch Kato's^[*] career within the Japanese literary world.

the two novelists contemplated the future of the novel. With what struck me as a skillful combination of two perspectives, Nakamura emphasized the idea that the novel as understood by the prewar Tokyo literary establishment was in fact nothing more than a peculiar representation of the form. If one assumes that The Tale of Genji and A la recherche du temps perdu represented the typical forms of the novel, the watakushi-shosetsu^[*] (the Japanese I-novel) since the advent of naturalism can scarcely be described as a novel at all. And if one traces the history of the novel in England and France since the eighteenth century, with its progressive development of techniques, the realm of the novel has obviously expanded. In this day and age, is it not an appalling anachronism, he argues, to adhere stubbornly to the naturalist style of depicting every minor detail about a third-person character? After pondering these issues, they began their inquiry into the newest techniques of the novel. For example, Fukunaga wrote about William Faulkner's artistic devices, and Nakamura spoke of the necessity for new narrative techniques and went on to explain how they worked. Now that I think about it, Nakamura Shin'ichiro^[*] was a literary specialist even before he was widely known as a writer, and Fukunaga Takehiko was a professional novelist before he began to make his living as one.

During the war I was more interested in reading the collections of the Shinkokinshu^[*] poets than contemporary novels. As far as I was concerned, literature, more than anything else, meant the Sankashu^[*] , Shui^[*] guso^[*] , and the Kinkaishu^[*] , works that transcend time and strike a chord in the depths of my soul.^[2] I wrote essays on Teika and Sanetomo, but what enabled

[2] An early Kamakura imperial anthology, the 20-vol. Shinkokinshu (New poetry collection of ancient and contemporary times) holds 1,978 waka poems from 101 poets compiled by Fujiwara Teika, Fujiwara Ariie, Minamoto Michitomo, and the priest Jakuren at the order of the retired emperor Gotoba, also himself a compiler. • Sankashu (The mountain hut collection) is a 3-vol. collection of unknown date of poems by Saigyo^[*] (1118–90), a late Heian and early Kamakura poet and priest. • Shui guso (Meager gleanings) (1216–33) is a collection of poems by Fujiwara Teika (1162–1241), an early Kamakura poet and critic and generally regarded as one of Japan's greatest poets. • Kinkaishu is a poetry anthology of Minamoto Sanetomo (1192–1219), the third shogun of the Kamakura bakufu , who was assassinated at the age of 27.

me to do so were the collapse of militarism and the recognition of freedom of the press. I also wrote about my experiences after gaining my freedom of expression. In other words, I was speaking my mind about the laudable postwar democratic ideal and the absolutely ludicrous war propaganda we had been fed during the war years.

What precisely was the similarity among the three of us? Perhaps it was our common resolve to bring our private and long-cherished thoughts out into the public forum. And for me, that public forum was represented by the scorched wasteland, the wasteland where philosophers of the Kyoto school, Japan romanticists, Takamura Kotaro^[*] , and Mushanokoji^[*] Saneatsu had all crumbled away in the wake of the bombings.^[3] The only literary figures who seemed to have survived intact were Nagai Kafu^[*] , the chronicler of Risai nichiroku (Diary of war sufferings), and Ishikawa Jun, the author of "Mujinto^[*] " (The everlasting light).^[4] It never

[3] Kato^[*] argues that the Kyoto school philosophers such as Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962) used such expedient constructs as "the philosophy of world history" to justify the war ("Senso^[*] to chishikijin" [1959], in Chishikijin no seisei to yakuwari, Kindai Nihon shisoshi^[*] koza^[*] [Chikuma shobo^[*] , 1972], 4:325–61, esp. 345–48). On the Japan romanticists, see chapter 14, note 22. • Takamura Kotaro (1883–1956), a sculptor and poet best known for his collection Dotei^[*] (Journey, 1914) and his love poems collected in Chieko sho^[*] (Selected works on Chieko, 1941; as ed. Kusano Shimpei, 1956) who was president of the Poets' Division of the Patriotic Literary Association in 1942 and, after the war, was charged by the critic Odagiri Hideo for his war responsibility; on Takamura during the war, see Yoshimoto Takaaki, Takamura Kotaro^[*] : Zoho^[*] ketteiban (Shunjusha^[*] , 1973), 95–140. • Mushanokoji Saneatsu (1885–1976), a leading novelist of the prewar Shirakaba-ha (white birch school) who allowed himself to align with Japan's war efforts (see his Dai Toa senso^[*] shikan [Personal views on the great East Asian war, 1942]) and later stated he was "deceived" (damasarete ita ) during the war, to which Kato replied: "Perhaps he was. But what that actually means is that he himself wanted to be deceived. Our question is not who was deceived, but why one wished to be deceived; not who was not deceived, but why one did not wish to be deceived" ("Senso to chishikijin," 327). Kato's^[*] essay remains an astute assessment of the role of Showa^[*] writers and intellectuals during the Pacific War.

[4] Kafu's^[*]Risai nichiroku was his diary for 1945 and part of his massive 42-year diary Danchotei^[*] nichijo^[*] (Chronicle from the house of heartrending grief) from September 16, 1917, to April 29, 1959; it records the Tokyo air raids and the destruction of his house, the Henkikan (house for the eccentric), along with "ten thousand volumes" of his beloved books on the night of March 10; he refused to read any Japanese books—he read only works in French—an act Kato interpreted as Kafu's resistance to fascism and to Japan: see Kato's "Senso to chishikijin," 352, 360, his more extensive discussion in "Kafu to iu gensho^[*] " (Kafu as a phenomenon, Sekai , June–August 1960), and Edward Seidensticker,Kafu^[*] the Scribbler (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965). • "Mujinto^[*] " (Bungei shunju^[*] [July 1946])—the everlasting and ever-expanding light of the Buddhist law—comes from a series of wartime and early postwar works suggesting Ishikawa's resistance to the militarist period and his desire to keep alive his inner sense of freedom and independence. Kato^[*] ranked Ishikawa and Nakano Shigeharu as the two finest writers of postwar Japan (see the memorial issue on Ishikawa, Subaru 4 [1988]: 58; and "Senso^[*] to chishikijin," 360–61 n.21).

even crossed my mind that somewhere else, some other people might also privately entertain ideas similar to ours. But though Tokyo lay in ruins, it was by no means a totally barren landscape.

As I mentioned earlier, I continued to live in the second-class patients' ward at Tokyo University Hospital and went back to my house in Meguro Ward only on weekends. One day a nurse came in to tell me the unusual news that I had a visitor. As I opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, still dark in the daytime, I saw a stoutly built stranger standing straight and looking at me without a word. After I invited him into my room and offered him the only chair, I climbed up and sat on my bunk. Then my taciturn visitor finally opened his mouth and quietly uttered a single word: "Kibachi."

"Kibachi?" If he was a salesman trying to peddle a new drug, he should visit me at the medical office instead of coming over here out of the blue and asking to see me by name. I wondered if "Kibachi" could be the name of some sort of secret organization. What on earth was the language he was speaking and what did the word mean?

"I came to see you about Kibachi." My visitor paid no attention whatsoever to my mounting suspicions and spoke with imperturbable composure. "I really want you to do something for it."

That was Noma Hiroshi.^[5] He went on to explain to me that kibachi , a Japanese word meaning "yellow wasp," was the name of a new literary journal, though the tone of his voice seemed to suggest that the name did not matter one way or the other. He said that the most compelling thing for writers to do then was to start new literary journals from the standpoint of pacifism and respect for human rights.

[5] Noma Hiroshi (1915–91), a prominent postwar writer, the author of youthful reminiscences of wartime student activities at Kyoto University (Kurai e [Dark painting, first published in Kibachi , 1946]), a massive 5-vol. social novel (Seinen no wa [The cycle of youth, 1947–50, 1962–71], on the leaders of the burakumin liberation movement), and a scathing study of the corruption and brutality of Japanese military life (Shinku^[*] chitai [The vacuum zone, 1952]).

In order to raise questions about a speaker's comments, one has to wait until he finishes talking. Meanwhile, the author of Shinku^[*] chitai (The vacuum zone) was speaking at a painfully slow speed. His talk seemed endless, and when it finally did come to an end I was almost under the illusion that I had become his convert.

At that point Noma Hiroshi remarked, "It's not going to do any good to keep on writing the same kind of novels as before!" Nakamura Shin'ichiro^[*] had said the same thing. To be sure, their messages were very different in substance; but I had an unmistakable feeling that what I was witnessing was none other than the dawn of the age of postwar literature.^[6]

In those days Hanada Kiyoteru was in charge of the journal Sogo^[*] bunka (Culture in synthesis), and all kinds of people would gather at his editorial office. Occasionally they would engage in high-spirited discussions that energized the atmosphere of the office. During the war Hanada wrote Fukkoki^[*] no seishin (The Renaissance spirit), in which he discusses Eastern and Western classics from all ages and along the way castigates Japanese militarism with admirable dexterity.^[7] I knew nothing about his work during the war, and when I read it for the first time after the war ended, I was greatly astounded by his talents. As we became more closely acquainted, I was all the more impressed by his awesome presence. With bright piercing eyes and long hair flowing like a stallion's mane to the nape of his neck, he would utter words loaded with

[6] At Noma's request, Kato^[*] wrote the essay "Hyumanizumu^[*] to shakaishugi" (Humanism and socialism), Kibachi 3 (October 1946). He was then twenty-seven.

[7] Hanada Kiyoteru (1909–74), a Marxist critic, novelist, playwright, member of the Kindai bungaku (modern literature) coterie, and editor of Shin Nihon bungaku (New Japanese literature) from 1952 to July 1954. His colleague and critic Sasaki Kiichi aptly summarizes Hanada's postwar leitmotiv as an attempt "to rescue the subjective praxis of art from the trap of formal logic and to unify dialectically the political avant-garde with the artistic avant-garde" (Nihon kindai bungaku daijiten [Kodansha^[*] , 1984], 1187). • Sogo bunka (July 1947–January 1949) was founded by the first generation of prominent postwar intellectuals (Kato, Hanada, Sasaki Kiichi, Noma Hiroshi, and the poet Sekine Hiroshi) to create "synthesized art" (sogo^[*] geijutsu ) by probing the relations between politics, science, and art. • Hanada's classic Fukkoki no seishin (1946), 21 essays written between 1941 and 1946, ostensibly address the European Renaissance but take up the universal question of an intellectual's role in society and during cultural transformation; his discussions of Dante, Machiavelli, da Vinci, and Luther to Cervantes, Swift, Goethe, and van Gogh employ an array of similes and metaphors, devices he describes as "the weapons of the suppressed."

such profound implications and insights that one could hardly fathom them, and indeed they often went beyond my comprehension. Meanwhile the poet Sekine Hiroshi was talking enthusiastically about "the energies of the masses," while the physicist Watanabe Satoshi was touting the "republican system" as if he had total faith in it. Miyagi Otoya astonished me by declaring that if only psychology, his specialty, became a little more sophisticated, literature would be reduced to a superfluity.^[8] I protested and challenged his views, and the arguments went back and forth. Since I was ignorant about psychology and Mr. Miyagi's knowledge about literature was almost nil, mutual communication was doomed from the start. Another psychologist, Minami Hiroshi, conducted himself with an air of detachment and seemed to enjoy directing witticisms at himself and the people around him.^[9] "The Japanese are so fond of ideologies! That's why they'll never get tired of debating on and on forever."

It was also around this time that I became acquainted with the Kindai Bungaku (modern literature) critics. Their magazine [Kindai bungaku ] often carried debates on the subject of "politics vis-à-vis literature," and the Kindai Bungaku members maintained that literature should not be turned into a handmaiden of political ideologies.^[10] I surmised that they

[8] Sekine Hiroshi (1920–94), a poet, critic, and chief editor of Sogo^[*] bunka . • Watanabe Satoshi (1910–93), a founder of the Nijisseiki kenkyujo^[*] (research institute for the twentieth century) in 1946 with Shimizu Ikutaro^[*] and the influential journal Shiso^[*] no kagaku (Scientific discourse), known for his liberal wartime stance and critique of Marxism in Genshito^[*] sengen (Declaration of an atomic physicist, 1946). • Miyagi Otoya (1908–), a prominent psychologist and son of a Protestant priest, was a Marxist during his days at Kyoto University who later used Freudian ideas to reinterpret Marxism after the purge of Stalin and also criticized Japanese Marxism's feudal character and passivity toward political authority ("Hokenteki^[*] Marukusushugi," Shisaku [1948]). He later taught at the Tokyo University of Technology (1949–68) and wrote Yume (Dreams, 1953), Seikaku (Personality, 1960), and Shinshinrigaku nyumon^[*] (Introduction to new psychology, 1981).

[9] Minami Hiroshi (1914–), a distinguished Cornell-educated social psychologist known for his study of the Japanese personality and his historical analysis of Nihonjinron , or discourse on the Japanese character; his major works include Nihonjin no shinri (1953; trans., Psychology of the Japanese People [Honolulu: East-West Center, 1970]) and Nihonjinron no keifu (The genealogy of the discourse on the Japanese character [1980]).

[10] The Kindai Bungaku coterie and its magazine of the same name (January 1946–August 1964) were highly significant in shaping postwar Japanese literature into the mid-1950s and beyond. The common war experience, sympathy with Marxism, and broad knowledge of Western literature helped itsfounding members—Honda Shugo^[*] , Hirano Ken, Ara Masahito, Sasaki Kiichi, Yamamuro Shizuka, Odagiri Hideo, and Haniya Yutaka (who published his monumental metaphysical novel Shirei [Departed souls] in its first issues)—redefine the relationship between politics and literary imagination, between the individual and organizational collectivism, and reassess major prewar writers and the modern Japanese novel. Kato^[*] became a Kindai Bungaku member in July 1947 along with Nakamura Shin'ichiro^[*] and Fukunaga Takehiko. • The postwar "politics vis-à-vis literature" debate revived attempts since mid-Meiji to define the political and aesthetic dimensions of modern Japanese literature and set writers and critics who believed in the sociopolitical imperatives of literature as defined by Communist political agenda against those who upheld its artistic autonomy against intrusive politics; for more details see chapter 34, note 3.

were opposed to treating literature as a tool for political revolution in the way left-wing literature had been treated in the past. It was only natural for those who had devoted themselves so selflessly to the proletarian literary movement in the 1930s and suffered repeated hardships as a result of thinking in those terms. Because I myself had not experienced such anguish, for me the word "politics" first conjured up images of the strategies of the Occupation forces and of the conservative Japanese government rather than the Japanese Communist Party, which was, after all, a minority opposition party. On hearing the words "politics vis-à-vis literature," I didn't have the thinking or rhetorical habit to associate them instantly with the idea of "the revolutionary movement and literature." Now when I reflect on it, I realize that the Kindai Bungaku critics treated me with great generosity and kindness. But we did have a problem in communication.^[11]

With the collapse of militarism, people began to emerge everywhere from the ruins of Tokyo, forming congenial groups and speaking out on issues they hadn't dared mention before. I most certainly didn't find myself in a "state of prostration"; what I saw was an age filled with great expectations. For the first time—and probably the last—I felt events

[11] The Matinée Poétique writers and the Kindai Bungaku critics were of roughly the same generation and agreed on the primacy of art over politics and the dignity of the individual over the collectivist impulse but not on all issues: Kato and Ara Masahito, for example, differed significantly in their ideas of the subjective self and their assessment of the Japanese literary tradition, as they did in personality and in war experiences. Nakamura Shin'ichiro in his memoirs Sengo bungaku no kaiso^[*] (Reminiscing about postwar literature) laments the failure to create a sense of solidarity with the Kindai Bungaku critics; see the summary on the subject in Matsubara Shin'ichi, Isoda Koichi^[*] , and Akiyama Shun, Zoho^[*] Kaitei Sengo Nihonbungakushi/nenpyo^[*] (History and chronology of postwar Japanese literature, rev. ed. [Kodansha^[*] , 1985]), 94–98.

were moving in my direction. I found many new friends, but at the same time I also discovered the difficulty of articulating ideas among ourselves. It was Japan in the immediate aftermath of the war, not Europe years later, that made me conscious of the problems involved in communication between those who speak different languages.

At the time when nameless young men like us were publishing coterie magazines and speaking our minds, a number of novelists living in Kamakura pooled their own resources and founded a publishing firm called Kamakura Bunko (Kamakura books). It published a literary monthly called Ningen (Humanity).^[12] Its chief editor, Kimura Tokuzo^[*] , had read 1946: A Literary Inquiry , and on one occasion he asked the three of us to contribute to his magazine. "Because this is your first time writing for us, I won't be able to pay you much," Mr. Kimura said. "As for subject matter, you're free to write anything you please." Before that time, I had never received manuscript fees. Thanks to Mr. Kimura's kindness and his magazine, I thus began my vocation as a writer.^[13] Mr. Kimura knew the marketplace we called the bundan (literary world) inside out. He knew exactly whether the mix of a certain editor and a particular writer would set up a seller's or a buyer's market. And he impressed me as an editor who hoped to infuse his journal with idealistic literary spirit. Usui Yoshimi, the chief editor of the magazine Tenbo^[*] (Perspective), and Yoshino Genzaburo^[*] , the chief editor of Sekai (The world), shared this idealism.^[14] This was a time when we were living on

[12] Kamakura Bunko began as a lending library and became a publisher after the war. Its founders were Kume Masao, Kawabata Yasunari, and Takami Jun. • Ningen was published from January 1946 to August 1951.

[13] Kato^[*] received his first manuscript fees for contributing the essay "Shinko^[*] no seiki to shichinin no senkusha" (The century of faith and seven precursors) to Ningen in July 1947.

[14] Usui Yoshimi (1905–87), a critic and novelist who wrote on Saito^[*] Mokichi, Nakano Shigeharu, Hori Tatsuo, Shiga Naoya, and Mishima Yukio in Ningen to bungaku (Man and literature, 1957) and modern literary debates in Kindai bungaku ronso^[*] (1956); his ambitious long novel Azumino (1965–74), set in his native Nagano Prefecture and Tokyo, won the Tenth Tanizaki Jun'ichiro^[*] Literary Prize. • Tenbo (January 1946–September 1951, and October 1964–August 1978 under Okayama Takeshi as chief editor), founded by Karaki Junzo^[*] , Nakamura Mitsuo, and Usui, was to be "a magazine we ourselves would like to read," and it serialized such major postwar works as Miyamoto Yuriko's Dohyo^[*] (Guideposts), Ooka^[*] Shohei's^[*]Nobi (Fires on the plain), and Shiina Rinzo's^[*]Shin'ya no shuen (Midnight feast). • Yoshino Genzaburo^[*] (1899–1981), a critic and translator, who created the Iwanami shinsho (Iwanami new book) series at Iwanami shoten in1938 and was chief editor of Sekai from 1946 to 1965; on his role as spokesman for postwar democratic thought see Suzuki Tadashi, Senchu^[*] to sengo seishin (Keiso^[*] shobo^[*] , 1983), 3–27. • Sekai (January 1946–) remains one of the most influential and widely read journals among the Japanese intelligentsia today.

meager rations of food and clothing; the black market was thriving, and the red flags of the "rice movement" fluttered along the streets. Yet an indomitable spirit of idealism flourished in Tokyo. In Ningen I began to serialize Aru hareta hi ni (One fine day), a novel based on my experience during the war.^[15]

While it was still an unsalaried position, I continued to work as a physician. In the first place, I had been working too long to get out of the habit; second, medicine itself was endlessly fascinating to me; and third, I thought I could still make a living practicing medicine should money become a problem in the future. The need for money, however, never arose. After I started to publish in Ningen , I could somehow make ends meet by accepting requests from newspapers and journals for manuscripts. And so I continued to live a life in which writing was my occupation and medicine my avocation, not the reverse.

In those days, I was often keenly aware of the conspicuous "backwardness" of Japan vis-à-vis the West. In my specialized area of hematology, Japan had made very little progress during the war, but meanwhile in the West pioneering work had been accomplished. We already knew about this through our contact with American scholars in Hiroshima. But the Western sources we had in our university library only went up to the late 1930s—giving us no way to learn about the details of Western progress. I discussed the matter with Dr. Nakao, and through the good offices of First Lieutenant L, we got a special pass to go inside Tsukiji's St. Luke's Hospital, at that time requisitioned by the Occupation forces.

At the hospital gate, we saw a posted bill that read "Those who enter without permission will be shot." After showing our pass to the armed guards, we were allowed to walk through the hospital corridor with the American doctors and nurses and into the library. There I avidly read the new American medical journals. Until the late 1930s, the field of hematology, developed primarily in Germany and Austria, had dealt with

[15] The novel, which began Kato's^[*] career as a novelist (serialized in Ningen [January–August 1949]), is set in Karuizawa and Tokyo during the air raids and its protagonist is a young physician, the author's alter ego.

the microscopic morphology of hemocyte and hematogenous tissues, an area we knew very well. But during the war, by focusing on the study of blood transfusion, researchers had made progress in figuring out the thitherto highly obscure mechanism of blood coagulation. The electrophoresis of blood plasma protein had come to be widely practiced. What had until then been nearly independent studies of areas such as morphology, serology (the observation of antigens and the reaction of antibodies inside a test tube), and the chemical analysis of blood constituents had now become mutually relevant. To us, this meant the discovery of new methodologies and, for all practical purposes, the emergence of a new area of study. When we saw the specialized journals on hematology from America in the St. Luke's Hospital library, we became keenly aware of our ignorance about what had happened outside Japan, how the world had changed as a consequence, and how serious our "backwardness" was. It almost reminded me of the bygone days of Rangaku kotohajime (The beginning of Dutch learning).^[16] If my work in hematology had any significance to speak of, it was perhaps in my assistance of Nakao Kiku and Miyoshi Kazuo, the two scholars who, after the war in their poorly equipped study, devoted their energies so totally to redeeming Japan's backwardness. Late one winter night in his makeshift study built in the corridor of the university hospital, Dr. Miyoshi rubbed his freezing hands over a small electric heater under his table as he put together perhaps one of Japan's first devices for the electrophoresis of blood plasma protein. "Until we have the equipment, I'm afraid we can't have any clinical study," said Dr. Miyoshi. "But this freezing temperature is unbearable." The only warm place in winter was the library at St. Luke's Hospital.

I felt that Japan's backwardness was not limited only to the field of hematology. During the war, while many Japanese writers ingratiated themselves with the militarist authorities, sang praises of fascism, and allowed literature to degenerate into a total wasteland, many French poets were waging their resistance against Germany's national socialism, denouncing fascism, and breathing new life into literature by champi-

[16] Rangaku kotohajime , completed in 1815 and published in 1869, was a 2-vol. memoir by the physician and scholar Sugita Gempaku (1733–1817) on the development of Rangaku (Dutch learning) from mid-Edo translations and interpretations that marked a systematic Japanese effort to learn Western medicine, astronomy, geography, physics, chemistry, and the military sciences.

oning the cause of human freedom and dignity. I learned from the book exhibition at the l'Institut franco-japonais about how poets who fell silent before the war quickly returned to their vibrant selves and how new writers, unknown before the war, were now competing with one another. That was an unprecedented and inspiring development. No one could deny the spiritual backwardness among Japanese literary intellectuals. The fact that Japanese writers could not produce a literature of resistance against fascism was, of course, due to the absence of any popular antifascist feelings around them, just as the complete reverse was true in France. The differences between our writers and their French counterparts, I thought, must ultimately mean the difference between the premodern and the modern mentality—between the idea of the Japanese people as "subjects" and the French people as "citizens," between the Japanese Imperial Rescript on Education and the French Déclaration des droits de l'homme, and between the Japanese notion of the way of the Shinto^[*] gods and Descartes's spirit of rationalism.^[17] But my way of thinking oversimplified the facts: the Pétain government was a puppet regime created by a foreign power, while the Tojo^[*] government was not. And insofar as my thinking was premised on the French national sentiment, something I knew practically nothing about, my thinking was also inaccurate.

One time Nakamura Shin'ichiro^[*] and I visited Professor Takeyama Michio in Kamakura.^[18] Every now and then when our conversation turned to the backwardness of the Japanese masses, Professor Takeyama with his keen insight immediately saw through such flaws in my argument. Outside the window of the Takeyama residence, the pine forest rustled in the ocean breeze. Clad in his informal kimono, Professor Takeyama would calmly puff away on his cigarette as he listened to what I, in my youthful rashness, had to say on the subject. Then he said, "But the

[17] From 1890 to its annulment by the Diet in June 1948, the conservative Meiji Imperial Rescript on Education established the absolute standards of national morality and defined the fundamental principles of education. Occasional later efforts by conservative politicians and intellectuals to "reevaluate" it testify to its resilient spirit.

[18] Takeyama Michio (1903–84), a critic, scholar of German literature, and novelist (Biruma no tategoto [Harp of Burma, 1947–48; Eng. trans. by Howard Hibbett, 1966], a novel about Japanese wartime experience in Burma), also wrote studies on the origins of ideology in Japan and Germany, the role of modernity in war, ancient Japanese art, and the political situations in Nazi Germany and the Communist-bloc countries in Europe.

masses are the same everywhere! They are all stupid enough to be duped by stupid propaganda. I have seen enough of that in Germany. It was by no means true only in Japan. . . . " Until that time, I had never seen Europe, and I had never spoken any of their languages. I had read a few books, but Professor Takeyama must have read and known at least ten times as much as I did. I was by no means convinced by his ideas, but I could not refute his arguments. Are the masses the same everywhere? Later, after living in Europe myself, I came to agree substantially with the professor. But at the same time, I was also able to see through the flaws in his argument. I wasn't mistaken about Japan's backwardness; I exaggerated it.

My reading of French Résistance literature not only strengthened my conviction about Japan's backwardness, it also forced me to realize how immature my understanding of French literature had been. For instance, I had read through the bulk of François Mauriac's writings, but my understanding in no way prepared me to imagine that one day this Catholic writer would join hands with the Communists and throw himself into the network of Résistance writers. And even though I was not entirely ignorant of the works of Louis Aragon and Drieu La Rochelle, the images I formed of these writers put me at a loss to explain the source of Aragon's movingly beautiful poetry written during the occupation of France, or the motives for Drieu La Rochelle's collaboration with the Germans and his suicide at the time of France's liberation. In other words, it was obvious that something was missing either from my reading or from my perception of French writers. Also, while Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus had taken the world by storm with their dramatic emergence after the war, it was difficult to grasp the core of their writings without altering the way one normally perceived and read literature. I realized how backward Japan was in terms of its intellectual discipline. The question went beyond novelistic techniques. It was necessary to make a fresh start on more fundamental issues. I was young; I felt that there was nothing I couldn't do, and I thought I had all the time in the world to assemble my tools before I started to work. Instead of justifying Japan's backwardness and more so my own backwardness, I thought the new age for our recovery was opened infinitely into the future. The only person who questioned whether Japan and the Japanese had really changed was my teacher Watanabe Kazuo. As a few of us gathered and talked about new currents of thought overseas and our reform ideals—come to think of it, these two things had been inseparably intertwined

since Meiji, or rather, since the days of the Japanese missions to the capital of T'ang China—Professor Watanabe said, "Shall we listen to some music?"^[19] The song that poured forth from the gramophone blared, "We'll return with our victories, you'll see! / After we have pledged this heroic vow and gone to the battlefield overseas."

"Isn't it a good idea to listen to this kind of song from time to time, just to help us remember the past . . . "

And sure enough, throughout the twenty years after the war, that song kept on reverberating inside my ears. But there were also times when we needed to let our angry screams drown out its noise.

[19] From 630 to 894, Japanese envoys made sixteen overseas missions to Chang-an, the capital of the T'ang dynasty; the Buddhist monks and students who accompanied them were instrumental in introducing continental culture to Japan.

24—
Gardens in Kyoto

Because of her , I often went to Kyoto. I thought I was in love. Perhaps I was thinking that being in love and thinking I was in love were, ultimately, one and the same thing. And if the phrase "to be in love" means anything at all, I thought it meant the degree to which I could act in the interest of the person I loved.

She spoke the Kyoto dialect with a soft, delicate voice as if she were singing a song. Even the most mundane words came out of her lips with an indescribable charm. For a Tokyoite like me, there was an exotic air to her speech, and yet at the same time I felt the reassurance of a familiar intimacy. It was not that I thought the Kyoto dialect was particularly beautiful; I just knew how incomparably beautiful it could be. I told her I had never heard a more tender language. Her bright, clear eyes smiling, she said she could be hopelessly stubborn all the same. Perhaps she was only stubborn toward those who believed women were not supposed to be stubborn. It was only fair to say that it was virtually impossible to convince her of anything without first starting a debate. Though born and raised in Kyoto, she seldom went into the city. Her late husband, a Buddhist scholar who seemed to have immersed himself in the study of consciousness, had died when he was still young. She herself did not really have any serious interest in Buddhism. She led a quiet life taking care of their only child, an elementary school student who attended a neighborhood school. In her dimly lit house the whiteness of her face seemed to glow in the shadowy darkness.

Before I knew it, I had formed a habit of strolling the streets of Kyoto alone or paying solitary visits to old temples whenever an occasion presented itself. In those days, complete tranquillity could always be

found in any of the old temple gardens in Kyoto. In early winter, the stones in Ryoanji's^[*] rock garden cast long shadows under the afternoon sun. In the spring, the moss at Saihoji^[*] , moistened by the rain, appeared radiant here and there under rays of sun filtering through the trees for nobody else but me to see.^[1] This was the same Kyoto that had existed in the Muromachi period, a city free of tourists and the noise of automobiles. This was also a city whose many temples and their gardens were completely forgotten by contemporary Japan. In those days, Tokyo was so busy translating, interpreting, and discussing Western ideas that almost no one seemed to be interested in looking back on the ancient civilizations of East Asia. In Kanda's secondhand bookstores, classical Chinese works were dirt cheap, and the tables of contents of magazines or the titles of new books seldom made mention of ancient Japanese art. You might say that I took advantage of this period to purchase classical Chinese works with what little money I had, to visit old temples, and to enjoy the designs of the remaining medieval gardens.

And then one autumn afternoon in the garden of a Zen temple, I had quite an extraordinary experience. Its design was nothing unusual—just a small garden unpretentiously taking advantage of Kyoto's Eastern Hills as its distant background and with a "dry landscape garden" layout in the foreground.^[2] But the garden's complexion never stopped changing with every passing moment. No sooner had the afternoon sun cast bright rays on the fall colors of the Eastern Hills than clouds suddenly veiled it, instantaneously turning the dry garden an ashy gray. Just a hint of the sun reemerging quickly gave way to droplets of silvery rain coming down noiselessly on the white sands, rejuvenating the moss-covered rocks on the stone pavement with a lustrous luminescence. I was gazing at one garden and more than one garden. Expressions of joy and sadness, gaiety and grief flashed one after the other across the landscape,

[1] The famed rock garden of the Zen temple Ryoanji^[*] , said to have been designed by the late Muromachi painter and renga (linked-verse) poet Soami^[*] (Shinso^[*] [?]–1525), consists only of white sand, stones, and pebbles and creates impressions described as islands on an ocean, or tigers crossing a river. • Saihoji's^[*] garden, known for the beauty of its moss, was designed in the early Muromachi period.

[2] Kyoto's Higashiyama with its graceful contour is often regarded as representative of the natural beauty of the city. • The karesansui design typically uses pebbles, sand, and rocks to represent mountains and rivers; its greatest popularity was in the Muromachi period.

each changing movement merging exquisitely into what could only be described as a restrained stylistic unity that transcended the garden's particular appearance at any one moment. To be sure, I was just a beginner when it came to Japanese gardens, and what I was experiencing must have been something akin to curiosity. Nonetheless, at that moment and quite without any presentiment, I could feel with incredible certitude a world more intimate than anything I had previously thought possible. It must have been due to my unequivocal understanding of that world and to the unmistakable fact that something in me was a part of that world. By being away from my native Tokyo, I encountered an authentic entity, an authentic relationship linking my external and internal selves. Kyoto is the other hometown I discovered when I was away from my own. Could I have been reading in Kyoto every imaginable movement and expression of a single woman? No, I don't suppose that was the case; what I was looking at was probably the reflection of that world within a woman.

From that time, I developed an interest, beyond Japanese gardens, in Buddhist sculptures and painting. I also wrote many essays, not only on Japanese art, but also on matters that bore no direct relationship at all to Japanese art. I began by writing "Nihon no niwa" (Japanese gardens), and fifteen years later, I wrote "Shisendo^[*] shi" (Account of the Hall of Poetry Immortals).^[3] I did not learn about the value of Japanese art from what I saw in the West. On the contrary, it was only after I saw in an autumn afternoon the effects of the setting sun on the slopes of Kyoto's Eastern Hills and the rain falling on the white sands in the dry landscape garden that I began to develop an interest in observing the West.

During the screening test for my application to study abroad, my interviewer asked me in French, "What sort of French writers are you especially fond of?" My struggles to provide an appropriate answer to that question came from the fact that I had not gotten used to speaking French. My astonishment at the question, however, had nothing to do with the language. It was true that I had read some French writers, but until then I had never asked myself that question before. Or rather, I had not read any writers in such a way that would allow me to give a

[3] "Nihon no niwa," in Showa^[*] bungaku zenshu^[*] , 28:584–97. • "Shisendo shi," in ibid., 28:541–53. See its English version in J. Thomas Rimer, Jonathan Chaves, et al., Shisendo^[*] : Hall of the Poetry Immortals (New York: Weatherhill, 1991).

prompt and confident answer to that question. And surely, to decide whom I was "especially fond of" was not a point one could address properly on the spot. And before I contemplated the issue at all, first there must be an unwavering commitment of love and attachment to the subject matter—like the kind of authentic relationship between the object and me as I stood face to face with the garden in Kyoto. To articulate that relationship, I had to return to Japanese poetry from the days of the Kokinshu^[*] , to the flowing accent in the speech of the one woman I knew, and to the evening sky over Dogenzaka^[*] from my window on the second floor of my Shibuya home during my childhood—endless thoughts that flowed from memories going back half my life. When it came to Western literature, it was true that my appreciation of certain aspects of it was sufficiently solid that I did not find my grasp of it to be elusive. But I had never felt that my understanding was as authentic as the experience I had when I stood before the garden in Kyoto. It was only after I saw the garden that I became aware of this. Western culture and classical Japanese culture—how were they different to me? I felt at that time that it would be dishonest of me to go any further without answering that question. I was not thinking that I could find the answer by going to the West. But then there was no reason to postpone my trip either.

I mentioned earlier that Mother was not in the best of health. She had a heart disease, and occasionally she also exhibited the complex symptoms of autonomic ataxia. These conditions had continued for a long time, and in the end she developed stomach cancer. Her operation at the Tokyo University Hospital went well despite her heart condition. But at that time, it was impossible to tell whether metastasis had taken place. If it had not, and because Mother was still young, she could live a long life; otherwise, she had only several months to live and there was nothing medicine could do for her. After discussing the matter with Father, we decided to tell her that her operation revealed no cancer. For a physician, that was just a matter of conventional wisdom.^[4] After she returned home to our rental house in Meguro Ward on her discharge from

[4] For Japanese physicians, the issue of giving cancer patients the facts about their medical history remains controversial: only 29.5 percent of Japanese physicians in a 1995 study told their cancer patients about their diagnosis, and over 80 percent in northern Europe and the United States did (Kawahoku shimpo^[*] , September 10, 1995). A 1993 survey by the Ministry of Public Welfare reported that only 18 percent of patients who died of cancer had learned about their illness (Yomiuri Shimbun , September 7, 1993).

the hospital, her postoperative recovery went better than we had expected. But talking face to face with her about her illness was an agonizing experience for me.

"There were signs of stomach ulcer. Because that might turn into stomach cancer, they removed it just to be on the safe side," I said.

"If that's all there is to it, it looks like I'll recover soon."

"Oh, sure. You'll recover."

As I was speaking to Mother, I thought about the possibility of metastasis. I was the only person who knew she might have only a short time to live.

On her sickbed, Mother composed Japanese poems in her notebook, saying it was like writing a diary. One poem said that she would have no regrets even if she were to die, now that her children were all grown. Another said she had no worries about her daughter because everybody liked her amiable character. On the other hand, other poems revealed her anxiety over her son's future because of his fiery temperament. Mother loved to travel, but she had seldom had an opportunity to do so. She loved to socialize, but we seldom had guests. She was fond of good food, but now her only nourishment came from a liquid diet and injections. Even in her condition, she still chatted with my aunt who lived next door and with my sister, who came to visit every day. Her optimism and cheerfulness never left her until the very end.

I told jokes to entertain the people in Mother's sickroom, and mean-while I was reminded of Hiroshima. Just as the victims had rejoiced over their survival, a few weeks later symptoms of atomic radiation began to appear. At the height of their jubilation for having so narrowly escaped the clutch of death, the effects of atomic radiation struck them down like a second bomb when they least suspected it. I wanted to do everything I could for Mother as long as she was alive. But by that time all I could do was pray.

But Mother's condition began to deteriorate even before she had fully recovered from her operation. It was no longer possible to hold out any hope for her. There had been a metastasis and its symptoms had appeared. The patient was beyond help. When she told me her pain was getting worse, I could find no words to say. I tried to do as much as possible to alleviate Mother's sufferings and at the same time to prolong her life, totally exhausted by the impossible task of reconciling these inherently conflicting goals. Witnessing the agony I could not bear to witness, my mind was confused. In consultation with Father, I could only barely de-

cide on the immediate course of action, but I could not bring myself to think about anything else.

Many weeks like that went by, and when Mother died after suffering the worst, I felt that everything inside me had turned into a void.^[5] I registered neither joy nor grief; my only sensation was profound fatigue. For a while I was totally stupefied. That the funeral left virtually no impression on me must reflect the fact that I had lost interest in all the things around me. It was true that after a short while I returned to my work at the university hospital, but I cannot remember how I felt or what I did with any clarity either. My only clear recollections were images of Mother's face and words that surfaced erratically in my memory whenever I was alone at night. Then came the truly unbearable feeling of losing them all forever. The source of infinite love had vanished from my world, and I could no longer concern myself with what would become of it. In the brightness of day, the ordinary everyday scene around the open ditch near our house would suddenly lose its color and turn into an unfamiliar and totally alien scene. My past was buried inside of me, and it alone had the feel of reality. Outside, there was nothing but a dream.

With the passage of time, I was able to reflect more calmly on Mother's death. For the first time, I was assailed by an intense feeling of remorse. I wished I could have done this or that, and the list was endless. Even though some of the things would have been impossible for me to do, I thought repeatedly that at least I could have accomplished some of the others if only I had summoned my will to do so. I came to hate and loathe myself. But that was not all. Meanwhile, I also began to think of my own life in terms of an early and a later half, with Mother's death as the line of demarcation. When I realized that the center of gravity, if you will, of my world in these two phases had shifted, the thought surprised me, because until then I had not been dependent on Mother; rather it was she who had been dependent on me. But after I lost her, I soon became acutely aware of the fact that I was drifting away from a world in which I had been blessed with unconditional trust and love, to another in which I could hardly expect to enjoy the same again. I realized that I had to seek and create for myself another source of trust and love. The woman in Kyoto did not change this fact in the least.

A Catholic priest had been called to Mother's deathbed, and he ad-

[5] She died on May 30, 1949.

ministered the appropriate rites. I thought Mother might have believed in Catholicism. As a matter of fact, that was why I, a non-Catholic, also agreed to the idea of summoning a priest. But there was a reason why I said Mother "might" have been a convert instead of simply saying she "was" one. First of all, I suppose the substance of "religious belief" itself is difficult to understand in isolation from one's religious experience. And besides, even though Mother might think she believed in God, it seemed to me the nature of this god had turned into something very different from the god she had been taught about at her Catholic school when she was young.

"I only wish you two would become converts," she once said jokingly. "So when we die, we can meet in Heaven."

"But we don't know if we can go to Heaven or not," Sister replied.

"I think anyone with a good heart will go to Heaven," Mother said.

What she said seemed not to be very different from the idea that anyone kind in heart and righteous in deed can go to Heaven, regardless of whether he or she was a convert. In fact, when it became apparent that both Sister and I would not become Catholic converts, Mother became more inclined to think in those terms. Because she firmly believed in the good nature of children—and as far as she herself was concerned, it was not unreasonable that she should have felt that way—she seemed unable to bring herself to believe that a righteous god would impose punishment on one's good intentions. She once said, "I think there's something strange in what the priest preaches. If everything on earth is explained away as God's will, then the death of children would also be His will. . . . " Then she went on to say, "There are many types of priests, and there are some who don't think very deeply." Unless there was some special occasion, she did not visit her church, and only rarely did she go on Sunday. "More than these perfunctory conventions, I think it's what you feel inside that really matters."

One might say Father had succeeded in convincing Mother to act this way, but he failed to convince her of atheism. I myself did not see any need for the latter, and I found it unfortunate that I could not share Mother's faith. Even many years after Mother's death, when I sometimes thought about my own death, I would imagine, for no reason at all, that I would die of cancer. Moreover, I even thought that if there was such a thing as Heaven, that was where Mother would certainly be, and perhaps I could see her there once again.

Mother was not pleased about my trips to Kyoto, though marriage

was on my mind. Yet my desire to see the West also intensified after Mother's death. This was a time when the medical school at the university was beginning to send students to study in the United States. If I had been given the opportunity to go at that time, I would probably have ended up becoming a natural scientist, devoting myself to research in a laboratory at some American university and playing a hard game of tennis in my spare time. I had already obtained my degree in Tokyo and I was sufficiently interested in my specialized field to want to work at some well-equipped research facility.^[6] But I myself did not seek after such an opportunity, and it, on its part, never knocked at my door. What I had longed for was a chance to go and live for a while in France, the country whose literature I had been reading, even if I were to do no medical research there.

Such an opportunity was not easy to come by while Japan was under the Occupation. The first postwar recruitment for French government-sponsored students was not open to the public; applicants were nominated. One of the people selected to go was Assistant Professor Mori Arimasa of the Department of French Literature, and his experience in France changed his life thereafter. The second round of recruitment was open to the public. I took the examination but was not selected as a scholarship recipient, though I passed as a "half-scholarship student." What this meant was that if I could afford my own two-way transportation and living expenses, the French government would waive my tuition and offer other conveniences like giving me a visa to stay in France. In those days the Japanese government did not even have the authority to issue passports, and leaving the country was next to impossible for ordinary Japanese citizens even if they could support themselves. In this respect, the status of a "half-scholarship student" was crucial because it eliminated that difficulty. My problem was whether or not I could come up with the necessary funds. I worked around the clock doing translations to earn my travel expenses, and I planned to live on my manuscript fees as a correspondent in France for some local newspapers in Japan.

If the woman in Kyoto had at that time strongly objected to my plans of going abroad, I probably would not have left. If so, my life thereafter would most certainly have been very different. But she raised no objections. Not only did she make no attempt to stop me; she did not even

[6] Kato^[*] received his M.D. from Tokyo University in February 1950 at the age of thirty-one.

utter a single word of protest about my trip. I was left with a sort of unfulfilled expectation, but on the other hand my heart was even more deeply moved. I told her that my trip would only be for a year, and I promised to write regularly. I also told her that anytime she needed me, I would always be prepared to return.

"Let's think about getting married after I come back."

"Yes, when you do. . . . " she replied.

In Tokyo, I had just begun my career as a writer. And in Kyoto, little by little, I was also beginning to see the delicate relationship between my long-beloved Japanese poetry on the one hand, and the Japanese cultural landscape on the other. It was true that I hoped to see the West with my own eyes, but I most certainly did not want to leave Japan behind. I did not have the slightest intention of disrupting my life and work for more than a year, and I seriously meant every word I said to her at the time. I never dreamed that I would live in Europe for any substantial length of time, let alone that those years of my sojourn would change me so fundamentally.

I returned to the gardens in Kyoto many years later. But I did not return to the woman whom I had thought I loved so much.

25—
The Second Beginning

In the fall of 1945 I started my journey into postwar Japanese society, and in the fall of 1951, I departed for the West as an observer. That turned out to be the second beginning of my life. My intent then was to find out for myself as much as possible what "the West"—as we knew it in Japanese society, and hence "the West" in me—was all about in its authentic context. But of course things did not always turn out the way I planned, and "the West" turned out to be something more than just an object of observation.

The trip from Tokyo by air did not take long. When I saw the city lights of Paris for the first time through the car window after leaving Orly airport, I was reminded of the street lights I saw as our car was heading toward Haneda. It was not easy to convince myself that I had in fact traveled this far. "That's the Seine," said one of my friends who had been good enough to pick me up at the airport. They were Mori Arimasa, who had come a year earlier, and Miyake Noriyoshi, who had arrived just a month before I did. But instead of thinking about the Seine, I was meditating vaguely about the enormous distance I had traveled.

Of course I had not forgotten my two-day trip as the plane went through the southern route. The noise of mah-jongg tiles showering down from the windows on both sides of Hong Kong's narrow streets, the dense rain forests of Southeast Asia extending into the infinite distance, the Karachi airport in the middle of the night, the white deserts of Syria, the Dead Sea, the unfamiliar mannerisms of men and women with sunglasses at Beirut airport in the morning, the gemlike Prussian blue waters of the Mediterranean, the rosy peaks of the Matterhorn under the evening sun. . . . These distinct but mutually exclusive images

filled my mind. I knew there had to be some significance in each and every one of these images. But when exposed to them all at once, it was plainly impossible to reflect on what they might mean as a whole.

Instead, I was thinking more about the one single consistent experience I had had from the time I boarded my plane at Haneda until my arrival in Paris, the experience of being in a world in which the Japanese language could no longer serve to convey intent. It is true that in Hiroshima I spoke English with the American doctors. But that was simply an exercise of periodically translating my ideas into English in an otherwise authentic Japanese setting; the totality of my milieu was not sustained through the medium of the English language. On the plane, I had already begun to feel that if I had to express every thought I had in a foreign language, it would inevitably affect the substance of my thinking as well. I knew I could get by if I simply translated my thoughts from Japanese whenever the need arose, but surely that would not allow me to achieve any understanding of the world around me from within. To interpret the world in which I had become a willing participant meant that in the process I myself would have to change, or that world would cease to be comprehensible. In this sense, the new world I was entering was fundamentally different from the one I had known. As I was looking at the distant lights from the plane's tiny window when it began its takeoff from the runway of Haneda airport, I could feel a rift separating the worlds inside and outside the airplane. At that time, and all at once, the distance separating me from Tokyo grew so enormous that even when I arrived in Paris, finished the entry formalities, and left by car, I did not feel that the discrepancy had grown any greater.

In Paris, I first lived in the university area in the fourteenth arrondissement. Many countries had built dormitories here for their own students, one of which was Japan House, in one of whose rooms I took up residence. In those days, the number of Japanese students in Paris was still small, and two-thirds of the students in Japan House were not Japanese. We had to walk quite a distance to the central cafeteria for our three meals, and since this was the place where foreign students from the other dormitories also congregated, I soon had friends among students outside Japan House as well. But those were only superficial friendships. The language barrier was part of the reason. Besides, there was also a feeling that something was lacking between us. With Miyake, a fellow resident of Japan House, and Mori, who boarded in the downtown area, we could speak Japanese. Even if my French had been completely pro-

ficient, it would have been hard to expect the same degree of intellectual stimulation from foreign students in their late teens or early twenties.

But of course there were exceptions. Soon after I took up residence at Japan House, I got to know a philosophy student from Brittany. He was fond of the old buildings on the île St-Louis and the prose of Saint-Simon. He listened to Debussy and read Nietzsche, and despite his youth he already seemed to have acquired an air of solitary dignity.

"I think there's an aristocratic element in the character of French culture," he once said.

"At the same time it also had a popular tradition, exemplified by the storming of the Bastille," I remarked then.

Our debate continued like this well into the night. Each room in our dormitory had only a bed, a table, and a chair, with neither sheets on the bed nor a single painting on the walls. On the table there was nothing but a pile of books, a bottle of wine, and an ashtray filled with stubs of Gauloises.

At that time, I did not intentionally provoke him into an argument. I was interested in his way of thinking, and I was only trying to make him clarify his position by playing the devil's advocate. And in order to do that, I had to defend the position I had taken. As a result, I ended up speaking in French the whole night long, trying to adapt to the rhetoric my opponent used so effectively and apply it to my own arguments by manipulating a still unfamiliar language. At the beginning, it was an exceedingly painstaking exercise. But once I grew accustomed to it, the task was less strenuous. I didn't learn to speak French before I got into debates; it was rather because I already found myself embroiled in debates that I somehow learned to express my ideas, however terribly clumsy my French was. I was myself conscious of that, and I also knew what it meant. The distance between me and my outside world very quickly diminished.

What I acquired from my friendship with the young man from Brittany was not just the habit of getting into debates. As soon as I began to speak French, I found out that I had never properly read French writings. My friend was good enough to read carefully to me Valéry's Eupalinos et l'architecte , a work written in the form of a dialogue. Why did the author use this particular expression and not another in this particular context, and why did he choose to say something in this particular way and not in another? For questions like these, a French-Japanese dictionary was just about useless. In Tokyo I had read Valéry's work with

considerable care with the aid of French-Japanese dictionaries and its English translation, and I thought I understood it well. But what I had in fact understood was just the plot. In Tokyo, I thought that I could read and understand Valéry and that speaking French was hard. In the university district of Paris, I began to realize that speaking French was not that hard, but reading Valéry was no easy task.

My friend repeatedly asked me the following question about Japan: "In Japanese writings, is there such a thing that could properly be called style in the French sense of the word?"

"Perhaps not in exactly the same sense. But there is something equivalent to it."

But my answer did not satisfy him. At that point, we had to take up the intricate question of how to define the idea of style in Japanese.^[1] One of his young friends had started to write a novel, but he said that he had no desire to experiment with any ungainly works until he himself could be fully satisfied with his own writing style. That attitude often reminded me of my own experience when I was about twenty. My knowledge of Russian novelists, French poets, and German philosophers was probably much broader than his, but my ties with the Japanese language and the Japanese classics were apparently not as deep-seated as those that connected this French youth to his mother tongue and its national classics. My own literary cultivation was broadly international but shallow; his ran deeply into the fabric of his own national history. Our contrast left a strong impression in me. Many years later, when I wrote about Japan's "hybrid culture" and emphasized the possibilities latent in the Japanese cultural environment, I was reminded of the experience I had had in the Parisian university district. I described a broadly based, cosmopolitan literacy as "hybrid," and a profound, depth-oriented literacy as "authentic." I argued that it was no longer possible for contemporary Japanese to choose freely between these two categories and that accordingly their only option was to seek out the positive qualities in the "hybrid" form.

In the university district, I was also acquainted with a black American painter. She was taller than I was and had a well-proportioned and

[1] More than three decades later, Kato^[*] and the literary critic Maeda Ai coedited Buntai (Literary style), vol. 16 in Iwanami shoten's Nihon kindai shiso^[*] taikei series ; see Kato's^[*] accompanying essay ("Meiji shoki no buntai," 16:449–81) on the literary style of the early Meiji period.

really attractive figure. She was working in oils at an art school, and one time she showed me one of her works and asked me to give her my honest opinion about it and about her future prospects as a painter.

"I don't know about the future," I replied. "But as far as this painting is concerned, it's not an accomplished work yet, only an amateur's."

"I can tell this myself," she said frankly.

"But I like your works."

It was true that I liked the painting she showed me, but more than that I was fond of her. In our excitement after visiting an art exhibition, we would sit down in a nearby café and have long talks about paintings, painters, America, and France. As we were watching the busy stream of pedestrians at the place d'Alma, she said, "I don't want to go back to America." Another time, she said, "In Paris, since everybody speaks English, I can never learn to speak French."

"You must be joking. In their tenacity for their mother tongue, the French have few equals, don't you think?"

"But aren't we speaking English right now?" At this, we laughed together for no particular reason.

She also introduced me to a young black man she called her cousin. And she sometimes brought along a German painter who was making his living as a guide for foreigners at the Louvre. Once they dropped in on me at Japan House with another young American. "I brought him along because he said he has something to ask you," she said. The American's question was so utterly out of the ordinary that at first I wondered if he was joking. But he was dead serious.

"Do you think that religion, or faith if you will, is absolutely necessary in life?"

"Generally speaking, I'd say no," I replied.

"But for me. . . . " he went on.

"Well, I suppose it depends on the individual," I repeated myself. There was little else I could say.

"What kind of people do you think need it?"

"Now just a second. The very question about need may be immaterial," I said. "Even if someone answers yes, it doesn't mean he's got a religious faith. And even if someone answers no, I suppose those who choose to have faith will."

The American, a mechanical engineer I was told, listened intently without saying a word. I decided to change the subject.

"Religious faith is like love. You don't fall in love because it's necessary. Even if there is no such need, you fall in love when the moment comes."

"Now I'm thinking about what love is," he answered.

With a grin, the German painter muttered as if talking to himself, "In this time and age, I suppose only Americans are capable of asking what love is!"

The American engineer then proceeded to explain that there were three types of love—spiritual love, physical love, and a blend of the two. The first type was more easily said than practiced, the second was unseemly, and therefore it was the third type . . . Americans in Paris, and this engineer in particular, seemed to have descended to earth from a distant star somewhere. They were incredibly good-natured, they told jokes at the most incredible moments, and they were incredibly block-headed in appreciating jokes. And they became my friends. Years later when I met them again in America, one of them cursed social injustice in America, another felt contented for having found common bonds between Paris and New York City, yet another had managed to fit in so well with his surroundings that he no longer betrayed even the slightest trace of his former incredible self. And all of them extended to me their warm friendship and went out of their way to make a foreign traveler like me feel at home.

In those days, only a few Japanese lived in Paris. The embassy had not yet been established, but Mr. Hagiwara, later the Japanese ambassador, was already at the office which served as the forerunner to the embassy. A tall man of slender build, Ambassador Hagiwara was fluent in both English and French, was fond of the theater, and when at leisure he conversed very perceptively about literary matters.^[2] And then there was the sculptor Takata Hiroatsu, who had left Japan at a young age and made his home in France even during the war years. I was greatly indebted to him, a subject I would surely return to later. Paris also provided me with the opportunity to meet Asabuki Tomiko.^[3] A resident in Paris before

[2] Hagiwara Toru^[*] (1906–79). A graduate of Tokyo University, Hagiwara was head of the Japan Liaison Office in Paris in 1950 and Japanese minister to France in 1952. Before serving as ambassador to France in 1961, he had been Japanese ambassador to Switzerland and Canada.

[3] On Asabuki Tomiko see chapter 26, note 6; and on Takata Hiroatsu, chapter 12, note 5.

the war, she returned earlier than anyone else after it ended and took up residence at the house of the poet René Arcos. After I left Japan House, I too began to live in the Arcos residence.

During the time when I was living in Japan House, I attended the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris.^[4] The faculty chair, an old man with a head of white hair, made his rounds along with his attending staff, just as we had done at the university hospital in Tokyo. In more than a few instances, the conversation at the patients' ward turned to national or international issues. One day he suddenly turned to me and asked, "Do you think the American army in Korea is using germ warfare?" The Korean War was at its height at that time, and when I replied that I didn't know, the professor asserted, "I think they might just be doing that." One time when a young female outpatient appeared naked before him, he said something like, "Wow! What a spectacular pair of breasts!" This kind of wisecrack would be difficult to imagine in Tokyo. But as far as the practice of medicine was concerned, one would not expect to find fundamental differences between Tokyo and Paris, and in fact I could safely say there weren't any. To be sure, the manner of discourse at conferences was not the same; the composition of the research staff was different; and perhaps there was a certain peculiarly French proclivity in choosing research topics. But these were not fundamental issues.

The fundamental differences between Tokyo and Paris, I felt, lay outside the hospital and the research laboratory. The massive, solid stone buildings on both sides of the streets gave the impression that the whole city of Paris was a piece of elaborate sculpture. The stone structures accentuated the green of the trees lining both sides of the streets. To me, even the thin slice of gray sky squeezed in between buildings had a different appeal, and indeed a stronger appeal, than the wide open sky of Tokyo. During the days when I was living at Japan House, I loved to walk the streets of Paris. There I found a space completely different from what I had known before, and its spatial order never for a moment ceased to fascinate me. Why, for no practical reason, was I so fond of strolling along the streets of Paris? Reflecting on it now, I find it hard to explain. Certainly it was not from any interest on my part in city planning, nor was it the result of curiosity about celebrated spots or places of historic interest. I didn't even bother to see the tomb of Napoleon. Whether Victor Hugo had lived in the place des Vosges or Delacroix

[4] Kato^[*] studied at the Institut Curie within the Institut Pasteur.

in Furstenberg did not change the significance of those squares as far as I was concerned.

I suppose the only explanation I can give is that in Paris I was looking at the externalized core of a culture, an entity that had become objectified to allow appreciation through our sensory perception. That cultural core has remained essentially intact from perhaps around the twelfth century until this day, linking the past to the present with its strong, unmistakable bonds. This does not only mean that the buildings dating back to the twelfth century are still standing in the center of Paris along with the representative structures of the succeeding eras. What it also means is that the impression I got from the church designs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was not totally divorced from my impression of Paris on the banks of the Seine. In both instances, I perceived the strong will that had externalized an impulse from within the framework of a sensory order. This was something I had never experienced in Tokyo. As I walked along the streets of Paris, I felt as if I were being drawn into a world of unfathomable depths. What was happening to me? I could not help thinking that, more than my work at the laboratory, my more urgent and immediate task was to delve to the bottom of this mystery.

I did not travel all the way to Paris in order to meet other Japanese. But once I was there, meeting fellow countrymen whom I probably never would have met in Tokyo turned out to be a pleasurable experience. Among the residents in Japan House in particular were many people who were quite accomplished in their professions. I went to concerts with a composer, and I learned about the "splendor" of the mathematical system from a mathematician. But perhaps what we all had in common was our habit of comparing Tokyo and Paris at every turn. It was because we didn't know any country other than France when we made comparisons with Japan. But surely it was also because we didn't have the kind of concrete examples that would have kept us from making easy generalizations about France. Economically, we all depended one way or another on our connections with Japan. Physiologically, I suppose every one of us craved female companionship. I was no exception. Soon I felt the need to leave Japan House.

26—
The Poet's House

Around the time of the First World War, a group of young men under the influence of Romain Rolland rented a building in an old monastery and set up a commune for artists. Known as the Abbaye de Créteil group, its central figures appear to have been the novelist Georges Duhamel, the dramatist Charles Vildrac, and the poet René Arcos. Duhamel was later elected to the Académie française, and Vildrac's plays were later included in the repertory of the national theaters. Arcos produced several modest volumes of poetry and ran his own small publication firm.^[1] After the Second World War, he lived quietly on the rue de l'amiral Mouchez in the thirteenth arrondissement. He was married and had one son, in whose future he apparently placed great expectations. But soon after his son's marriage, Arcos's beautiful wife—I had seen her photograph on the desk—died of cancer, only to be followed by his son's death as a result of a brain tumor. Thereafter all that was left of the family were the aged Arcos and Michèle, his son's young widow. It was during this time that I went to Paris.

His house, a rare two-story wooden structure in the city, was built a small distance from the street. The first floor consisted of a large study, a dining room, and an adjoining living room. A narrow staircase led up to the three bedrooms on the second floor. The walls of the study were lined with leather-bound works of French writers from all ages, with a

[1] Among René Arcos's publications were Le sang des autres: poèmes, 1914–1917 (Geneva: A. Kundig, 1919); Autrui (Paris: F. Rieder, 1926); Le bien commun, récits , with woodcuts by Frans Masereel (Geneva: Editions du Sablier, 1919); and Romain Rolland (Paris: Mercure de France, 1950).

few French translations of modern foreign writers among them. On the walls of the living room were paintings by Vlaminck, Modigliani, and the young Marie Laurencin, as well as sketches and woodcuts by Jean Cocteau and Frans Masereel; the rest of the space was filled with ceramics, bronzes, and old furniture. The family's history over the years spoke from every nook and corner of the room. The study was as unlike an efficiently managed office as one could possibly imagine, but here Arcos would sink his body into the armchair in front of a large table and read the manuscripts and documents related to his publication business. Working in the living room at a typewriter on a small table, Michèle, young and agile, would assist him in writing letters, answering the phone, and the like. Their work also included copyright negotiations regarding the writings of Romain Rolland, and it appeared that they had to communicate all over the world with the publishers of his translations. "I have yet to receive any copyright fees from Japanese publishers," Arcos once grumbled. The letters from abroad were written mostly in English or French, and in rare cases I would translate letters in German for them. Michèle called Arcos by his pet name of petit père . When she hummed some melody while preparing food in the kitchen, Arcos would say something like, "Listen! A thrush is singing in the house!"

The poet, already in his late sixties, was no longer argumentative, but the two of them were constantly engaged in debates.

"A white woman walking together with a black guy, now that's not a pretty sight."

"What's wrong with a black man?"

"I didn't say there was anything wrong with him."

"Then why did you object?"

"On the street they just appear unsightly."

"But that's preposterous, petit père! There are many good-looking blacks, you know."

"Ha!"

"And racial discrimination doesn't fit Romain Rolland's disciple!"

"You impudent little devil!"

Despite his words, Arcos evidently enjoyed the arguments. The lack of a bitter aftertaste at the end of a long, impassioned altercation probably came from the fact that the center of the controversy did not impinge on matters of personal interest. But as soon as the conversation shifted to another topic, Michèle's machine-gun barrage would quickly

change into amiable and compassionate chitchat with petit père . From my standpoint, I could only marvel at their exchanges. The habit of deriving pleasure from an argument without hurting each other's feelings was not something I had ever experienced in Tokyo. And other than in Paris, I don't recall ever having experienced anything like it in any foreign city later in my life, at least not to the same degree. Uttering the literal translations of "Pas du tout! Ce que tu as dit n'est pas du tout vrai!" in other languages would upset not only the Japanese but a lot of other people as well. Under similar circumstances, an Englishman would probably say something like, "Oh well, perhaps we don't quite see eye to eye," and a Japanese would probably say, "You certainly have a point there. You are quite right in saying so, but. . . "

After I left Japan House at the students' colony, I moved into one of the bedrooms on the second floor of Arcos's house. There was a bed, a table, some chairs, and a small bookshelf. When I opened the window facing the courtyard, I could see a piece of gray sky squeezed between the roofs of surrounding buildings. Down below was a thick growth of lilac, and when May arrived the fragrance of the flowers would reach all the way to the window.

I prepared my own meals in the room, by which I don't mean doing my own cooking but rather simply filling my stomach with ready-made food and washing it down with wine and coffee. Normally, I went out once a day to some cheap restaurant, and in the early fifties you could get a rather substantial meal in such a place for 200 to 300 francs, and the food was splendid. When a Japanese traveler asked me whether I missed miso soup after living abroad for so long, I knew what his implications were. Accordingly, my tacit agreement to his question was prompted not by any actual yearning on my part for miso soup, but by my reluctance to subject my Japanese identity to any skeptical scrutiny. I was reminded of Kobori Enshu's^[*] design of ponds and streams when I looked at Le Nôtre's garden constructions;^[2] but drinking a nameless red wine in a cheap Parisian restaurant never brought back memories of the taste of sake at a Tsukiji sushi joint, nor did having a breakfast of café

[2] Kobori Enshu^[*] (1579–1647), one of the most accomplished garden designers of the early Edo period and the founder of the Enshu school of tea ceremony. • André Le Nôtre (1613–1700), French landscape architect during the reign of Louis XIV.

au lait and tartine (buttered bread) remind me of miso soup. As far as food was concerned, I was satisfied from the outset with even the most modest meal the French had at the time.

On the other hand, mending holes in my socks was quite a feat. Because I liked to walk around the city, my socks would be worn out in no time. Yet my way of mending a hole would only end up shortening the sock somewhat. Should another hole develop, my sock would become even shorter after the new repair. I would get a new pair only if my socks had become ridiculously short. That was how tight my money was.

I frequently spent my dinner hours chatting with Arcos downstairs. At that time of the day, Michèle was often out somewhere, but the old man very seldom went out. The cease-fire negotiations in Korea had been dragging on for a long time and the Cold War was at its height. During that time Arcos had a habit of saying, "The Americans are such fools." One time I said, "The Americans are not fools; they just started off from a wrong premise." And we had an argument.

"What premise might that be?"

"The premise that Communists are evil monsters."

"Well, that very premise proves the Americans are fools."

"A wrong premise is not necessarily based on stupidity."

"If that is so, what then is it based on?"

"I think it's based on the fact that most Americans have never even seen the face of a live Communist."

"Even Dulles?"

"He doesn't question the accuracy of his premise. He accepts a given premise, and as long as he believes it, his policy is a rational one. The rationality of his policy is not evidence of foolishness but of intelligence."

"There is a town called Arcos de la Frontera in Spain. I know Spain quite well, and for some reason the Spanish bulls are like the Americans in a way. Once you show them a piece of red cloth, they instantly get excited and lose their senses. . . . "

At that time, the colonial war was still going on between France and Indochina, and for Arcos that was a "dirty war." He would refer to Foreign Minister Georges Bidault as "Bidaultche," a name worthy only of contempt. Already close to his seventies, the poet had a habit of talking about contemporary world affairs rather than reminiscing about his good old days. And of course current affairs were not the only thing he talked about.

"You believe in God?" he once asked a woman who came to his house every now and then. "Where is God anyway? In Heaven? That would be down under from the standpoint of the folks in Tokyo." Another time he remarked, "I'd rather celebrate the sin of nonpregnancy than the virtue of virgin birth." And when he handed me a specially ordered leather-bound volume of poems, he said, "Go on, touch it! Feels like the softness of a woman's thighs, doesn't it?"

Romain Rolland had most certainly left his mark on this man. If Rolland could be regarded as a humanitarian, an internationalist, and a progressive irrespective of his interest in music, glass pyrography, and mysticism, the poet Arcos was more unambiguously a humanitarian, an internationalist, and a progressive without embracing any serious contradictions, if you will, within himself.^[3] Though his world was by far more circumscribed, his genuine sincerity left no place in it for any falsehood or hypocrisy. Even in his old age, it truly pained his heart to see how nationalists were being killed in faraway Asia—something I am afraid only a true poet could feel. A poet can also be a newspaper reporter or a political scientist (and of course Arcos was neither). Yet no newspaper reporter's knowledge or political scientist's methodology can turn them into poets.

I had developed a casual habit of exchanging jokes with Arcos, but linguistically that was not always easy. Before dinner, Arcos would go to Café Coupole in Montparnasse to have a drink of Pernod, and at dinner he would have wine, only to be followed by cognac or calvados. In the evening hours, his speech was no longer clear. Gradually I began to develop a strong affection for this old poet who no longer wrote any poems. I was fond of his jokes, and even though his arguments might be flawed or too simplistic, his motives would almost always strike a responsive chord in me.

Every now and then I would invite Michèle out for the evening. We would have dinner somewhere, go to a concert or watch a play. Young and full of curiosity, Michèle seemed interested in everything that was happening in Paris and around the world. I, on my part, was extraordinarily curious to see what might happen if I turned my world thitherto based on the linguistic "propositions" of Japanese (to borrow Wittgenstein's terminology) to one based on those of French.^[4] Michèle

[3] In a private communication, Kato^[*] explained that he was contrasting Rolland's sociopolitical commitments and his aesthetic and religious interests.

[4] In Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1921), the Austrian-British philosopherLudwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) maintains that meaning in language is possible only through "propositions" defined as depictable facts or "pictures" of "atomic facts" that make up the world.

and I never ran out of topics in our conversation; indeed we could never finish our discussion on any single topic to our satisfaction. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that I never tried to interpret Japan for her and she never tried to explain France to me. You could say that we both tried earnestly to articulate not mutually exclusive but shared experiences—the play we just saw, the conduct of petit père that particular morning, John Foster Dulles's announcement as reported in the papers, or the lighted tower of St-Germain-des-Près visible from where we sat at an open-air café. Michèle was reading a wide range of contemporary literature in French and Italian. She was deeply impressed by García Lorca, the productions by the junior Pitoëff of Chekhov, and the plays at the T.N.P. led by Jean Vilar.^[5] She preferred Bach and Mozart to the romantics, the frescoes of Giotto and Uccello to the works completed at the height of the Italian Renaissance, and Romanesque churches to Gothic architecture and sculpture.

Later in this book I will have an occasion to talk about my own interest in French medieval art in those days. But speaking of plays, I was beginning to revive my old theater-going habit from my days at the no^[*] theater during the war. During this period I saw so many Western plays from Pirandello on that I was beginning to get a little tired of going to the theater. Sometimes I went alone, of course, but most of the time I went with Michèle or her good friend Asabuki Tomiko.^[6] My recollections of the theater cannot be dissociated from my memories of these two lovely ladies. Once we stepped out of the playhouse, one of them would rattle away her comments like a machine gun, while the other

[5] Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), eminent Spanish poet and dramatist known for his dramatic Gypsy Ballads (1928), his association with the theater of La Barraca, and his premature death at the hands of an armed Fascist group at the outbreak of the Spanish civil war. • Pitoëff was the son of actors Ludmilla and Georges Pitoëff; during the 1930s the senior Pitoëff was a prominent director in the French theater, along with Louis Jouvet, Charles Dullin, and Gaston Baty. • The Théâtre national populaire was founded by Jean Vilar in 1951.

[6] Asabuki Tomiko (1917–), a noted translator of French literature including Françoise Sagan's Bonjour tristesse and Simone de Beauvoir's 4-vol. autobiography beginning with Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée ; her other work includes essays (Pari no otokotachi [Men of Paris, 1965]) and an autobiographical novel (Ai no mukogawa^[*] [The other side of love, 1977]).

would refer to her deep impressions in Japanese, providing in turn the excitement of brisk, clear-cut analysis and the delight of experiencing an emotional realm beyond what words could convey.

I think contemporary plays in Paris appealed to me for several reasons. First, I had reached a point where I felt virtually no linguistic barrier watching a foreign play in French translation (for instance, those by Chekhov). Though I still encountered a great many linguistic obstacles with contemporary French plays, they weren't serious enough to frustrate my enjoyment of their substance. But when it came to classical plays with dialogues uttered in verse, I could hardly understand them. Michèle was excited after watching Gérard Philipe's interpretation of Le Cid . "How fabulous!" But I found myself unable to follow his extraordinarily rapid speech. For the time being, I realized that if I were to enjoy a French play, I could go only to a contemporary one. But that was not the only reason.

The second reason was that the Parisian theaters represented, I felt, a merging of the prewar Tsukiji Little Theater and the wartime no^[*] theater. A modern play addresses the modern times on the stage with its own style; its appeal consists of the substance of its material as well as the manner in which the actors deliver their lines. Takizawa Osamu, for example, could with exquisite skill execute his lines in subtle alignment with what was happening on the stage, and although one could not tell exactly what Umewaka Manzaburo^[*] was uttering, the intonation of his speech alone held an indescribably magical appeal.^[7] However, Takizawa's exquisite skill and Umewaka's magical appeal belonged to two completely different worlds. But in Paris, I was able to observe the fusing of these two elements within a single world.

Third, this was the time when Anouilh wrote L'Alouette , when some of Giraudoux's works were posthumously staged for the first time, and when Sartre wrote Le Diable et le bon dieu and Kean ; Bertolt Brecht was at the height of his popularity, and Samuel Beckett was beginning to

[7] Takizawa Osamu (1906–), one of the most accomplished actors in the Shingeki theater. Among his highly praised prewar roles were the tragic protagonist Aoyama Hanzo^[*] in Shimazaki Toson's^[*]Yoake mae (Before the dawn) and the hero Amemiya in Kubo Sakae's Kazanbai chi (Land of volcanic ash); in the postwar era he founded several major troupes and took the leading roles in such plays as Death of a Salesman . • On Umewaka Manzaburo see chapter 12, note 14, as well as chapter 18.

make a name for himself. Truly many things were happening at the theater in Paris.

Yet when I wrote earlier of getting "a little tired of going to the theater," it wasn't just a figure of speech. Having watched contemporary plays in Paris for two years, I began to feel I had seen all the really interesting ones. More accurately put, the novelty in the new plays did little more than embellish their superficial appearance, and in the final analysis, I felt that the structure of their dramatic tension was essentially the same. And then for the first time , I began to develop a greater interest in classical than in contemporary plays. I am not suggesting that I knew a great many classical plays, since my subsequent stay in Paris was not an extended one. But when I saw Jean Vilar's production of Dom Juan , I was totally mesmerized by the performance, and I thought that it epitomized the pinnacle of fulfillment a play could afford its audience. My own inadequacy delayed my discovery of Molière's appeal for over two years since I started going to the theater! And it was only after I saw Gérard Philipe playing Richard II that I realized for the first time that Shakespeare was a great playwright! (I decided then to go to England, and, as a matter of fact, I soon put my resolution into practice.)

My thinking about the theater continued to evolve. No longer was I interested in the modern versions of Greek drama adapted by Giraudoux and adorned with Cocteau's brilliant dialogues; I became interested in the classical plays themselves. Men like Sophocles and Euripides invented the dramatic situation itself, and their successors merely provided footnotes of psychological depiction, interpretation, and the background of the time, all of which are not beyond our imagination without these appendages. It seemed difficult for the modern playwrights to create new dramatic situations to rival those of the Greek tragedians. When I was in Tokyo, I was impressed with Anouilh's Antigone , but Sophocles' original, even in a translated version, was by far a more magnificent and a more humanistic work, and it easily overshadowed Anouilh's efforts. But these differences were not only limited to plays. I would say that this was also the time when I first began to appreciate the substantive significance of "Greek civilization."

Spending an evening a week with Michèle had enlarged my social circle. I met several of her friends, including a young technician from Tunisia, an American scholar of French literature, and a young member

of the French Communist party. But I did not develop a close friendship with any one of them. Perhaps the young Communist party member might have turned out to be an interesting person if we had been able to continue our friendship. But he never spoke clearly and I could not understand most of what he was saying. Michèle was also a close friend of the famous sociologist Georges Friedman. At a cocktail party Michèle held, I heard Friedman talk about Chaplin's Limelight .

"What do you think? A masterpiece, isn't it? Certainly one of the greatest artists alive today." But the institution of the cocktail party hardly made it possible for me to find out his reasons for saying so, just as it was impossible to know why someone might oppose or be in favor of nuclear weapons.

During the spring and autumn seasons, Michèle sometimes took solitary trips to Italy and Spain. She always remembered to write me a postcard at her destination. The postcards were carefully chosen, and for a while I never got tired of looking at them as they sat on my desk. She would scribble only a few almost unintelligible lines as if she were sending off a telegram, but they did vividly convey what impressed her at the time. "Córdoba. Wonderful city with a relentless sun. Stone pavements with medieval fountains everywhere."

While I was setting out to discover Europe, one might say that Michèle was continuing with her own discoveries. Before she had married Arcos's son, not only was she unfamiliar with Europe, but she didn't even seem to know Paris well. I was told that her father—the owner of a factory with several hundred workers in Lille during the prewar days—forbade his children to talk with the family chauffeur and declared that children of good upbringing should not set foot on the places de la République and Bastille. But the war smashed the anachronistic attitudes of the upper bourgeoisie. And in that sense, Arcos's thinking was not bourgeois. When I first met Michèle, she felt herself liberal enough to laugh at the middle-class prejudices of her late father and her sister who had emigrated to the United States. She knew there was a larger world and she wanted to know more. That impulse defined a phase of her life, and I suppose she realized it herself at that time. Flamboyant and cheerful, she was also strikingly beautiful. Her movements and expressions were as lively as one could imagine, but at the same time she also possessed a delicate sensitivity. Until then I had never met a more free-spirited young woman in terms of her interest toward general human affairs not immediate to her own. I found her absolutely enchanting. I also

admired her femininity for not flaunting it through the pretentiousness of her speech.

Soon afterwards, Michèle left Paris to marry a young Italian who, I was told, was working for a trade union in Rome. In her place, Michèle's mother, a widow who lived alone, became a regular visitor to Arcos's house. When she came, she would water the garden plants, tell the cleaning woman what to do, prepare meals for herself and Arcos, and have long conversations by the window with the neighbor's cat. I heard that she had once been a singer, and occasionally she would sing fragments of opera arias in the kitchen. As for me, I continued to live in the second-floor bedroom as before. I got up late in the morning, went to the hospital, had a simple lunch outside, and sometimes returned late at night and sometimes not at all. Whenever I came back, I continued my habit of chatting with Arcos downstairs. But since Michèle was no longer there, Arcos was consuming more Pernod, and so my conversation with him at night was a rather strenuous business. When he said to me, "Good night! I'll go upstairs to rest. See you tomorrow," the part "See you tomorrow" was uttered in Italian. Perhaps old memories of his visit to Italy and his thoughts of Michèle now living there combined to produce that effect.

Many years later, after I had left France, Michèle moved to the suburbs of Paris with her husband and two children. She was very enthusiastic about her children's education (I came back to visit Paris every now and then, and each time I would call on her). Her husband was a busy marketing agent for Italian products in France, and on the side he was trying to learn Chinese. His motivation came from his strong empathy with the history of the Chinese Communist party, and together we talked about the Chinese revolution.

"Our thinking as parents is too radically different from the conventional norm," Michèle once remarked. "Perhaps it's unfortunate for children to be raised with such ideas. But I also don't think it's right to squeeze them into the conformist mold. What do you think?"

I replied at that time that it probably depended on the intellect and fortitude of the child. If he was an average child, it might be advisable for him to learn to compromise. However, if the child had the capacity to persevere in his minority position, the sooner he learned about the truth the better.

Some years later Michèle's family moved from the suburbs into the city, and they settled into a place not far from the rue de l'amiral

Mouchez. And since the children had already grown up, Michèle began working again at a publishing firm as she had been doing at the time I first met her. When she left Paris for Rome to get married, Arcos told me repeatedly, "Michèle is going to come back soon."

"Why?"

"You asked why? Because those who grew up and have lived in Paris cannot live anywhere else!"

Arcos was right. But when she actually returned to Paris, the old poet was no longer there.

27—
Southern France

The old poet no longer liked to take solitary trips. But if I would go along with him, he said he would leave Paris early in the summer to attend an International PEN Club conference to be held in Nice in southern France. I had never visited that part of the country, nor had I attended any international conference before. So we took off on an express train from the Gare de Lyon.

The relentless southern sun gave the Mediterranean Sea beyond the promenade des Anglais a dazzling glitter.^[1] A few Japanese writers had already arrived for the conference, affording me the rare pleasure of speaking with them in my native tongue. The stoutly built Tamura Taijiro^[*] , constantly wiping off his perspiration, grumbled and wondered why the waiter always brought him something other than the shaved ice he had repeatedly ordered. I came to the rescue of this best-selling writer of Gate of the Flesh and placed the order for him.^[2] And he, on his part, seemed to truly enjoy what I had ordered. The kimono-clad Hirabayashi Taiko told me that she was amazed at what was actually going on

[1] The promenade des Anglais, the four-mile-long embankment along the Mediterranean, was constructed between 1822 and 1824.

[2] Nikutai no mon (1947), a midlength novel by Tamura Taijiro (1911–83) about young prostitutes struggling to live amidst the turmoil of postwar Tokyo; with his previous work Nikutai no akuma (Evil of the flesh, 1946), a love story between a Chinese Communist intellectual and a Japanese army officer, it brought Tamura popular success as a nikutai sakka (writer of the flesh). His other major works include Shunfuden (Biography of a prostitute, 1947), Senjo^[*] no kao (Face in the battlefield, 1958), and Inago (Locust, 1965).

at the conference.^[3] Meetings were held in the mornings, and the afternoons were mostly for touring or going to the mountains. Hirabayashi had expected the participants to engage a little more seriously in discussion, and she was disappointed. Furthermore, she couldn't tolerate the sight of a fellow guest, a representative from a certain country who brought a woman into his hotel room and had no apparent intention of coming out to attend the conference. I was impressed by her sharp observations.

At the conference, French writers were having a good time making eloquent speeches. This was especially true of Jules Romains, a member of the Académie française and a latecomer to the conference, a man who exhibited unparalleled skill and talent in delivering absolutely vacuous speeches in splendid French. I could only describe his performance as quite a spectacle. Even at the end of his speech, when he was surrounded by a large crowd of men and women, he continued to indulge in his brilliant act as the master novelist with all the pomp of theatricality.

"Let me introduce you to him. He is an old friend of mine," my companion Arcos said.

More accurately, perhaps Arcos should have said, "He was a friend." A friend, I would think, is not somebody you have to approach just to shake his hand; he himself would leave the crowd to come to greet you on his own initiative. Writers, writers-to-be, and other literary aspirants filled the same room, each babbling away about whatever was on his or her mind. It was a boisterous scene, and the air was thick with the odors of tobacco, perfume, and people.

But in Nice I also met Frans Masereel. The Flemish artist did not look a bit old and, like a character in his own woodcut prints, seemed to transcend his age and possibly his time as well. His tall frame clad in plain

[3] As a young girl, Hirabayashi Taiko (1905–72) avidly read Russian literature, Zola's Germinal , and early Japanese proletarian literature. She and her anarchist lover were forced into exile in Manchuria and Korea before she published her first major story, Azakeru (Mockery, 1926), a gloomy account of the parasitic life of an anarchist. "Seryoshitsu^[*] nite" (In the treatment room, 1927), a powerful semiautobiographical story about an anarchist's wife and the death of her newborn baby in a colonial Manchurian hospital, established Hirabayashi's fame as a rising proletarian writer, and a series of autobiographical works ("Hitori yuku" [Walking alone, 1946], "Ko^[*] iu onna" [This kind of woman, 1946], and "Watashi wa ikiru" [I will live, 1947]) continued it. Around the time of the Korean War, Hirabayashi changed to an anti-Communist position, producing such works as Sabaku no hana (Flower in a desert, 1955–57).

clothes and his white hair streaming in the sea breeze, he walked buoyantly by himself in the springy, long strides of an athlete. The international conference, the plush buildings on the boulevard des Anglais, the gaudily dressed women equally eager to show off their skin, the writers babbling away for lack of anything substantive to say—all these seemed to evaporate into thin air around him. Only one white path lay straight ahead of him. "What a nice breeze! I like to walk with the wind blowing in my face," he said in a low, deep voice.

Masereel himself lived high up in a building overlooking Nice's vieux port , its old harbor. The building had no elevator, and the staircase squeaked under one's feet. Every wall in his small apartment was covered with bookshelves, and a few of his unfinished oil paintings rested on easels. Leaning out of an open window, one could see the old harbor with the masts of its many fishing boats and, beyond the breakwater, the glistening Mediterranean. Aged buildings with yellow walls lined the old harbor's waterfront, and their narrow sidewalk was busy with streams of laborers and women carrying shopping baskets. It was here that the town came alive. "I almost never go to the promenade des Anglais," he said. "I went this time only because of you."

At the old harbor, some fishermen and laborers still in their working clothes were drinking in the tavern. They all knew Masereel, and when he came in, they greeted him with their eyes or with a hello. He shook hands with some of them, patted an old man on the shoulder, exchanged a few words, and made them laugh with his jokes. There he was no longer alone. I loved everything about this small harbor town—the sun-weathered faces of the men, the deep wrinkles across the old women's foreheads, the taste of salt and the odor of petroleum that hung in the air, the tables and crudely made chairs at the tavern.

"Well then, I'll see you tomorrow," Masereel said.

He was doing a landscape, in oils. "Abstract paintings are such a waste of time. Don't you think it's a beautiful world we live in?"

And Paris had nothing that interested him. "The city has become harder and harder to live in. It's all so shallow and superficial."

He told me that occasionally he would go to Germany for an exhibition; otherwise he had no desire to go anywhere. But he was by no means "retired." Not only did he continue with his work, he also had a strong interest in world affairs. And he was far from being a misanthrope. He was fond of the town and its people, and the words he uttered were filled with genuine warmth.

"How's Katayama doing?" he suddenly asked as we were taking a walk in town. He was referring to the young Katayama Toshihiko he had met twenty years earlier.^[4] Back then, Masereel was a close friend of Romain Rolland's. What in fact had transpired in those days among Rolland and his circle of friends? Years later, the poet Katayama would describe their association as one of "spiritual communion," "a gathering of stars in the sky." But I didn't quite know what to make of it when I heard such an explanation, expressed as it was in those terms, and I doubt if anybody would. But if what Katayama said was just a figure of speech, surely Masereel would not, twenty years later, suddenly remember this young man from Japan, someone who could barely even speak French.

"In all these years, Katayama never wrote to me, not even once," Masereel said.

I imagine the explanation was that, for Katayama, their encounter two decades earlier was not just an ordinary meeting but an event of extraordinary significance, something that had exerted a decisive impact on him. His silence could not have been the result of his forgetfulness. On the contrary, he had so much respect for his friends that he must have searched in vain for a topic in the world around him worthy of writing about. I remembered how even during the war years the poet would open up Masereel's woodcut collections, how he would curse Japanese militarism and criticize the ultranationalist excesses of his country, and how proudly he always reminisced about his meeting with Romain Rolland and Mahatma Gandhi in the distant Swiss mountains on that bygone day. It was his friends in France who had given him the strength to spend a life in solitude for twenty long years in Tokyo. And because of this, he was unable to bring himself to communicate with them in writing or come to visit them in France after the war ended. I knew only too well why Masereel's friend never wrote, and consequently I could not articulate the reason to him. After returning to Japan I, too, never wrote him.

I do not mean to suggest, however, that I did not enjoy the gathering at the International PEN Club. On one occasion, the mayor of Nice invited us to a garden party on a small hill with a panoramic view of the sea and the city. The many flower beds, the fountains, and the landscaped footpaths were all gracefully illuminated; on the tables in the open air

[4] For Katayama and his relationship with Romain Rolland and his circle of writers and poets, see chapter 12 and its note 4.

were wines and all sorts of delicacies to suit every taste. I was impressed with the extravagant display and bored by the conversation around the table. Part of it was that, as a passive participant listening to their conversation, it was hard to understand the exchanges between the foreign guests as the wine began to take effect on them. Even if I had understood what they were saying, as someone who lived outside their circle, I wouldn't have been interested in their gossip about their colleagues or inside talk about their publishers. And so after a little while, I left Arcos behind with his wineglass and his French friends and took a walk in the garden. At that time, standing by himself on the balcony and gazing at the city lights was a British novelist who later became a friend of mine.

"What a pretty sight!" I said.

"Prettier than the faces of our fellow writers, to be sure."

His words reminded me of a line by Morgenstern, which I repeated: "Denn er denkt die Alpen sich als einen Würfel aus Touristen, Kühen und Steinen."^[5]

"What was he referring to?"

"Switzerland."

"Do you like it?"

"It's a beautiful country," I repeated Arcos's words in French. "But unfortunately, it's inhabited by the Swiss!"

"I think Switzerland is not beautiful but clean," he remarked. "I'd gladly trade all of Switzerland for a small Italian town."

He said that he often visited Italy, spoke the language easily, and had many Italian friends.

"But southern France is also pretty."

"Except the resort cities on the coast, that is."

"No, except the promenade des Anglais, you should say!"

He burst into loud laughter and then suggested that we talk a little about Japan.

Meanwhile a young woman approached us.

"What are you gentlemen doing here," she said abruptly in English, "hiding in a place like this?"

"We're doing nothing of the sort."

"Oh, excuse me. But what were you talking about? The West or the East?"

[5] From Christian Morgenstern's "Alpinismus I" in Alle Galgenlieder (The gallows songs, 1905).

"About neither, really," the British novelist responded, "We were just talking about sightseeing."

"Oh, I got so tired," she muttered.

"Of what?"

Without first answering the question, she let out a peal of laughter, then stopped abruptly, and began in a provocative tone, "Writers, of course! It's totally ludicrous. And they call this a conference? Nobody has said anything on any subject! What a sham! Nothing's on display except vanity! But so many of these writers have the cheek to show up in gatherings like this, from morning to night."

"Well, did you expect anything else? If you don't like it, you shouldn't have come in the first place."

"You're right. Perhaps I shouldn't have come at all," she repeated those words in an unexpectedly low and almost subdued voice as if she were talking to herself. But she did not stop there.

"This country is now fighting a war in Indochina. People die every day. Under these circumstances, how can people hold a conference like this? Nobody spoke a word about the war. All we heard were lofty and empty words. If that's literature, then I'd say literature is deception and a bunch of lies. This is why the Anglo-Saxons are so insufferable."

"But it's the French who are fighting the war, not the Anglo-Saxons," I said.

"Oh, they're just the same," she asserted. Her big eyes sparkled in the night as she made almost incoherent statements. On the other hand, what she said was not entirely untrue. Meanwhile, somebody walking by called out to the British novelist, and he took the opportunity to leave the scene. Suddenly I was reminded of what had happened that afternoon.

It was at a casino on the beach at Juan-les-Pins. I was on the deck, watching the performance of water-skiers with well-groomed middle-aged men and women. The other end of the deck appeared to be built in such a way that one could practically go into the water from there. A young woman who had just got out of the water walked right by me. Her face looked vaguely familiar, but I could not remember exactly where I had met her. So that was it. The wet swimming suit clung tightly to her body, showing every curve of her figure. Droplets of water on her taut thighs were glistening in the sun.

She was Irish and was living in London. She seemed to be connected

with the British PEN Club through her work, but it didn't matter to me one way or the other, at least not as much as her wet thighs.

"You're Japanese, aren't you?" she said. "I cannot understand your people. Why don't they resist the occupation by the United States?"

And then all of a sudden she asked me what my profession was, whether I was a novelist or a poet.

"If you're healthy, I'm a writer. But if you're feeling under the weather, I'm a doctor," I answered.

"I like the way you put it," she said.

"Would you like to come by my room tonight?" I asked her.

"Because I am a patient?"

"No, because you're healthy."

"Well, we'll see," she said, again letting out a loud laugh.

We left the garden party, went down the hill, and picked up a taxi in town. Meanwhile, she repeatedly said in her strongly accented French, "This is a sad country. I don't know what I'm doing." When the taxi stopped in front of my hotel, I once again invited her in. But nothing would convince her to get out of the cab.

I have never again seen this Irish woman since our fortuitous encounter. When I left Nice at the end of the conference, everything faded into the remote past. She became no more than a faint shadow amidst the intense and cluttered realities hovering in the world around me, even though her shadow had for a while held me captive. I repeated to myself a Provençal proverb I read on the wall of a Nice restaurant: L'amour fa passa lou tem, Lou tem fa passa l'amour . But we didn't even have love.

I parted with Arcos at Nice's train station and took a trip by myself around southern France. The eloquent speeches and extravagant banquets in Nice soon gave way to van Gogh's sun and the wide open sky, to hills covered with vineyards and white walls surrounding towns on hilltops. Resting under a shady tree, I could feel an invigorating breeze running through my entire body. This was a world luxuriantly radiant with bright colors and well-defined forms. Red rooftops, yellow walls, green thickets, white stones, paths in the fields running straight into the distance, and hills whose contours cut sharply into the deep blue sky. The gray skies of northern France were nowhere to be seen; there were no subtle plays of light or images of thickets appearing and disappearing amid drifting mists. Nowhere could one experience the refined neutral color tone or the elusive images levitating ever so enigmatically along

the Yamatoji in my faraway homeland.^[6] Everything down to the finest detail was clearly defined and relentlessly delineated; a world made up of primary colors resolutely resistant to the most minuscule intrusion of alien hues. I could hardly imagine anything in this milieu that would resonate with the feelings of bitterness, anxiety, hope, or remorse buried deeply within my breast.

Stretching out my tired legs on the grass under the shady tree, I looked at the Pont du Gard aqueduct built by the ancient Romans. The magnificent structure cut across a deep valley, its multilayered arcades soaring into the sky. Come to think of it, few spectacles could possibly have been more incongruous with the scene painted since the Shinkokinshu^[*] —or should I say since the Kokinshu^[*] —where images of "spring night dreams" and "trailing clouds parted by a mountain peak" have become so imperceptibly fused into our consciousness.^[7]

Irrespective of what an onlooker might think, the waterway built by the Romans had been there for more than two millennia. Its existence was that of an external form totally independent of my internal thoughts and feelings. Furthermore, I would venture to say that it was independent of whatever sentiments its builders might have cherished, and that it forms a part of the sensory order of the external world—for the external world, in the final analysis, is a datum of our senses. Under the bright, clear sky of southern France, even art had ceased to be expressions of "innermost sentiments" or "feelings," let alone manifestations of "personality" or confessions of "personal experiences." It became none other than a sense of order actualized in the realm of the external world, from the multilayered arcade to the structure of polyphony, from Pont du Gard to the ceramic plates of the painter of Vallauris.^[8] If Picasso had indeed indulged in toying with chance as he painted his pictures on ceramic plates, surely he was not dallying with his own capricious mood but with the unpredictable elements that invariably intrude into the process of pottery making. I wonder if the artist's own caprice has ever

[6] Yamatoji is an ancient and poetic name for the road between Kyoto and today's Nara Prefecture through Fushimi and Kizu.

[7] The original poem by Fujiwara Teika in the Shinkokinshu reads as follows: "The floating bridge of / my spring night dreams / has collapsed. / The sky with trailing clouds / parted by a mountain peak" (quoted in Kato's^[*]History of Japanese Literature ); Kato^[*] comments, "The 'floating bridge of dreams' is taken from the Genji monogatari and the image of the clouds drifting apart is a subtle expression of the sweet sorrow of lovers parting" (1:244).

[8] A reference to Picasso.

been accorded its rightful place in the world of art since the construction of Pont du Gard. For a long time, I vaguely entertained such thoughts in solitude. Later, these contemplations led to a sort of chain reaction in me and inspired many other ideas.

While traveling alone, I very rarely spoke with anyone, and I felt quite contented with the situation. In Nice, I had been talking for an entire week from dawn to dusk and I became more fed up with my own chattering than with that of others. All day long, I roamed about wherever I happened to be, and at night I rested my totally exhausted body in cheap lodging places. I must have looked rather sullen during the day, for I was quietly draining away my energy in meeting the dire challenges from a sensory world so diametrically different from the one in which I grew up.

28—
Medieval Europe

From the very first day they landed at a European port, Japanese travelers to the West in the late 1920s and early 1930s were most surely overwhelmed by the enormous differences between Europe and Japan—differences in their cities' appearance, in clothes, food, and accommodation as well as in everyday customs and manners. Buildings in Tokyo in those days were low structures mostly made of wood; most of the roads were unpaved, and the city streetcars moved slowly within the bounds of the metropolitan loop line. A woman dressed in Western clothing was a rare sight, and the men, after returning home from work at their companies or government offices, would change into their dotera , sit cross-legged, and drink sake served by their wives. Indoor heating left much to be desired, and in the winter the room temperature would approach freezing. Differences between the sexes were institutionalized through inequalities in educational opportunities and voting rights, in salary scales and civil law status. And the state did not even bother to pretend that national sovereignty belonged to the people.

When a man born and raised in such a society was thrown all of a sudden into the middle of Paris, he would naturally find it difficult to escape the impression that everything there was different from Tokyo. Everyone's first thoughts were not about the similarities between these two cultures but about their differences. Despite the great changes that had taken place in Japan during their absence, poets returning to Japan from Paris would compare Japanese society with the France they remembered during the interwar years and continue to rediscover fundamental and insurmountable differences. On the other hand, artists who stayed on in France would keep comparing Tokyo as they remembered

it from the days after World War I with the Parisian society around them, only to reinforce their first impressions about the miseries they found in one and the greatness of the other.

During the first half of the 1950s, however, a Tokyoite residing in Paris would not have experienced any serious discrepancies between the two cities, at least in daily life. It was not in France that I first saw the subway; only the system in Paris was a little more convenient than the one I used to take in Tokyo. I was not surprised by any fundamental institutional differences; all I noticed were certain variations in the way similar systems worked. Coffee was no exotic drink, and sleeping in a bunk was something I had gotten used to from my days at the Tokyo University Hospital. My first impressions were not about the differences between Japan and France but their similarities.

Furthermore, at that time I was working every day in a laboratory for the natural sciences, a discipline whose methodology and empirical findings are universal and transcend national boundaries. I was not examining any intricate and profound questions such as whether the emperor-system was circulating in the blood of the Japanese people, or whether the spirit of rationalism was flowing in the veins of the French. My research was about the effects of a specific serological environment on the behavior of human white blood cells in general. First impressions about everyday life can surely be reaffirmed, even on the intellectual level, through a habit of scientific thinking. I started off with the premise that things in both countries essentially worked the same way and concluded that any fundamental differences lay first in their language and, in the final analysis, in their history dating as far back as the medieval period.

I mentioned language just now. By the time I was quite comfortable using French in everyday situations, I became even more acutely aware of the differences between French and Japanese. These differences were so fundamental that if French were to become an integral part of my daily living, I felt it would inevitably draw me deeper and deeper into a mental construct intricately different from the world of Japanese. It often made me shudder to think of the possibility of entering deeply into that world.

The medieval presence in Paris astonished me. That was the only thing I had not anticipated while I was in Tokyo. I had expected the Eiffel Tower to rise above the clouds, and surely it did. But until I saw Paris with my own eyes, I could never have imagined that Notre-Dame and the significance of the medieval style would loom in such prominence over

the city as a whole. Moreover, it was not just a matter of architecture. I soon came to realize the similarities between the continuity in French culture from the medieval age to the present day and its Japanese parallel from the Kamakura period. By that I do not mean similarities in their feudal systems. To discern the aesthetic sensibilities of the Heian aristocracy, imagination alone would not suffice; knowledge derived from scholarship was also indispensable. There is no way of knowing what sort of melody the heroes in The Tale of Genji were playing on their flutes. There is a discontinuity between Heian aristocratic culture and contemporary Japan. But the same kind of discontinuity does not exist after the Kamakura period. The flute on the no^[*] stage presumably produces the same notes today as it did during the Muromachi period, and their effects on us are presumably the same as those felt by the people of that period. We can imagine what their sensibilities were because medieval culture has continued to develop into the present time.

As far as contemporary Europe is concerned, Greco-Roman civilization was rediscovered after it had ceased to exist. Medieval civilization, on the other hand, has continued to survive in cities and is alive within the people. We have no way of knowing the tunes to which Sappho sang her poems. But inside the churches dating back to the Middle Ages, we can still hear medieval music, from Gregorian chant to the works of Palestrina. But no one around us believes in the Greek gods anymore. While the Parthenon appeals to us aesthetically, I seriously doubt that the temple as it stands today would similarly appeal to the ancient Greeks who decorated their marble structures with rich, brilliant colors. Yet the religious faith of those who built the medieval churches is still alive today, and if its architecture, sculptures and the luminous stained glass are beautiful to us, they must have been equally beautiful to the people who created them. People's thinking changed with time, and so, presumably, did their sensibilities. But these changes took place in an evolving continuum and their transformation is not interrupted by any discontinuity. If we were to trace the origin of contemporary Western civilization, I felt, we would invariably arrive at the Middle Ages. That was an enormously overpowering impression, but I remember no one ever talked about it in Tokyo.

At that time the sculptor Takata Hiroatsu had already spent half his life in France, and whenever we met—and we always met at a café in Montparnasse or in Quartier Latin—he would say, "Every time I look at a twelfth-century sculpture, I feel devastated." A white-haired man

with a boyish face, Takata would talk on and on for hours, sometimes contentiously and sometimes modestly, using his unique Japanese studded with literal translations from French. "You know, he is a good man. But his work? Zéro . Japanese intellectuals are . . . "^[1] Whether his views were about France or Japan, politics or art, they represented a blend of his broad knowledge, wild generalizations, and really sharp intuition; he drew his unfettered inspirations from between the superficial and the deep-seated strata of his experience. Today, I cannot remember anything he said. But there is something about the artist that I will never forget, something that poured forth with overwhelming vitality from his diminutive frame.

I believe that Mr. Takata, in his total being as man and artist, was consistently making one quintessential statement—that culture is a "construct," that a "construct" represents the manifestation of a spirit, and that a spirit can achieve self-realization through, and only through, self-manifestation. My indebtedness to Takata Hiroatsu was not a matter of his telling me where I could find such and such a masterpiece of medieval architecture or sculpture. For that, a travel guide like the Guide bleu could provide more detailed information than Takata's recollections. Rather, I came to my own conclusive understanding about the inseparable relationship between the world of the formative arts and culture as a whole, and Takata bore witness to that understanding in his flesh, so to speak. What the Japanese sculptor Takata Hiroatsu discovered during his long years working in Paris was not the least different, for example, from what the central European poet Rilke discovered while working as the sculptor Rodin's secretary.^[2] Rilke discovered his "thing." I wonder if a discovery like his can be made anywhere. Even if the answer is yes, it's not important. Takata loved France. Love breeds endless misconceptions, but it also leads to understanding that would otherwise be impossible to achieve.

I discovered medieval art in France, or, more precisely, I discovered what art itself meant to me through medieval art. Since then, the world

[1] The word Takata used is chiseijin , or homo sapiens , rather than the conventional term for an intellectual, chishikijin , though presumably he was referring to the latter.

[2] Rilke came to appreciate Rodin's comparison of an artist's work to "the only satisfactory mode of religious activity." See Victor Lange's entry on Rilke in Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature , 667; and Rilke's August Rodin (1903).

of the formative arts has become an indispensable part of my overall universe. Why did this happen in France and not in Japan? Surely, one reason was that I had the good fortune of not having much money to spend while I was traveling in the West. Otherwise, like many other travelers, I would probably have been interested only in the things money could buy—famous hotels, sumptuous food, demimondaines, souvenirs, oil paintings in art galleries. But having barely enough money for a roof over my head and food to fill my stomach, I could direct my interest to things I didn't have to pay for—social and political conditions, the French language, love, art museums, and churches. Beyond that, I saw in France a society in which art in its various historical forms was intimately integrated as a significant part of its overall intellectual makeup.

I had noticed earlier that the image of Japanese gardens in Kyoto could hardly be separated from the world of lyric poetry after the Shinkokinshu^[*] . But whatever subject in contemporary culture I might contemplate, I didn't have the habit of constantly going back to the Horyuji^[*] , the emaki scrolls, or to Sotatsu^[*] and Korin^[*] .^[3] When I heard how very often the French make references to "the angel's smile at the cathedral of Reims" or the "spirituality" of Avignon's pietà , I couldn't help feeling that the relationship between their culture and their formative

[3] The Horyuji temple in Nara Prefecture is one of Japan's most celebrated architectural showpieces and holds invaluable Buddhist sculptures and other national treasures; one theory dates it from 607, making some of its Asuka-style wooden structures the oldest in the world. • The illustrated emaki scrolls often use kotobagaki , or calligraphic narratives, to elucidate scenes from classical literature, Buddhist tales, or biographical accounts of famous monks; the tradition began in eighth-century China and developed in Heian Japan through the Kamakura, Muromachi, and into the premodern era. • Tawaraya Sotatsu (dates unknown), early Edo period painter whose bold colors, vibrant imagination, and versatile lines rejuvenated the tradition of yamato-e painting. One of his most famous works is Fujin-raijin-zu^[*] byobu^[*] , with impressive images of the wind god and the thunder god against the gold-leafed background of a wide folding screen; another masterpiece, Matsushima-zu (Waves of Matsushima), is in Washington, D.C.'s Freer Gallery. • Ogata Korin (1658–1716), a successor of Sotatsu's^[*] style and one of the most celebrated Edo painters; his influence reached European artists overseas. His best-known painting of natural objects is perhaps Kohakubai-zu^[*] byobu (Red and white plum trees) on folding screens, in the Atami MOA Art Museum. In chapter 37 Kato^[*] mentions Terada Toru's^[*] reaction to the painting; see note 11 there, and see also Harold P. Stern, Rimpa: Masterworks of the Japanese Decorative School (New York: Japan Society, 1971).

arts was different from ours. It didn't necessarily mean that Japanese art was skimpy whereas the reverse was true in France but rather that historical art occupied a different position—in terms of its prominence and role—within their respective intellectual milieus as a whole. Once the world of art came to assume a special meaning for me, it was only natural that the object of my future interest would not necessarily be French art alone. In fact, I was interested above all in thinking about the intimate and indeed, inseparable, relationship between the history of Japanese art and the spiritual history of Japan—going beyond mere contemplation of the natural surroundings of Japanese gardens or the background of lyric poetry into much broader and much more fundamental issues. But these reflections took place almost a decade after my first stay in France.

When contemplating French art before I came to the West, my immediate association was with nineteenth-century paintings (if I'd been born, say, in Chicago instead of Tokyo, I suppose it would not have made any difference). But after living in France, I came to appreciate the far greater impact of twelfth- and thirteenth-century architecture, sculpture, and stained glass designs. That was nothing unusual, just common knowledge. The Gothic style that developed in northern France spread throughout Europe and became the dominant form for several centuries. If Italy is the country that best represents the Renaissance, France is the country that epitomizes the medieval Gothic style.

My initial interest in medieval art was not based on any such considerations in art history. Rather, it was because I could see medieval architecture right before my eyes, and it caught my fancy. I liked the old stones and the colors on their rough surfaces. They were sometimes light and sometimes dark, or gray, or yellow, or roseate. I also liked the kaleidoscopic variations in which the heavy stones come to terms with the soft, vertical lines ascending to the sky. At times the weightiness of the stones deemphasizes the impact of form, at times the exquisite delicacy of form diffuses the gravity of the material, and yet in other instances, the perfect equilibrium of form and material produces a perfect harmony.

I also loved to watch the interplay of light and shadow created by the tall towers and the flying buttresses. A tower sometimes appears like a narrow auger rising above the distant horizon against the evening twilight. Sometimes, it soars dauntlessly into the sky amid a snowstorm;

and yet at other times it appears to be sprinkling soft musical notes from the church bells into the clear blue sky. On the outside of churches there are stone statues of the saints and on the inside, stained glass. The expressions on the saints' faces betray the intensity of their inner spirituality. With the exception of the sculptured heads of Buddhist deities from the Northern Wei period, I know of no other works in sculpture that could delineate with such flawless precision what might well be described as spiritual profundity.^[4] The faces of the angels often radiate an indescribable tenderness. I had never before seen such an enrapturing sweetness that transcends the realm of the senses.

And of course the stained glass provides the only colors in the monochrome world of the church and produces a direct, sensual elegance. From the windows set in the churches' high ceilings, they seem to shine like a myriad of jewels. From the windows nearby, dramatic scenes in all sorts of human postures depicted in strong pulsating lines come alive. All of these images enchanted me, and before long I became enormously fascinated by the astonishing diversity of character among the churches built in the same Gothic style.

Medieval art spreads all over Europe. And if one looks beyond the Gothic structures to include Romanesque architecture and sculpture, its magnitude becomes even more formidable. To satisfy my curiosity, I traveled widely in France. I also realized that if circumstances allowed, I should go beyond its borders. I hoped to give my observations a degree of coherence by limiting them to medieval art. But I doubt very much if I succeeded. I felt that the area to cover was infinite and my fascination boundless, and if I were to become really serious about my enterprise, I could easily ruin what I had been working for so far in my life. I told myself that I must seize the right opportunity and get out of it.

Beyond the strong impressions individual art objects left on me, my reasonably judicious observations of medieval art left me with a propensity for tracing the historical development of specific styles in art. During the process, I noticed the imprecise use of language in narratives

[4] Strong Buddhist influences in the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534), despite massive Sinification efforts, especially during the reign of Hsiao Wen Ti (471–99), contributed to making this period one of the great ages of Chinese Buddhist sculpture, exemplified by the famous shrines and colossal Buddhist figure sculptures at Yünkang along with the images at Lungmen (see Michael Sullivan, The Arts of China [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984], 104–14).

about styles in sculpture and grew skeptical about whether stylistic changes in medieval sculpture could be delineated as a linear development at all, even with more precise language. I had no time then to meticulously examine these questions and consider every significant piece of work in medieval sculpture. Later on, I was able to reexamine these same questions with regard to almost all the major works of Japanese Buddhist sculpture from the Asuka to the early Kamakura period.^[5] I might not have been able to accomplish this task if I hadn't roamed about the French countryside, waiting for buses, traveling on foot under the blazing sun, or making my rounds visiting solitary churches until sunset.

I liked traveling alone, hopping from one cheap lodging place to another. One time I missed the bus that came only once a day, and I had to wait until the next day to visit the only other church not too far away from where I was. Another time I lost my way and wandered into a desolate place late at night with no one to greet me except a suspicious policeman. On my return from a long trip, the first scenes of Paris coming into view through my train window invariably evoked in me the same emotions I had experienced when I first saw the area around Ueno on the Shin'etsu line on my return to Tokyo from Shinano Oiwake at summer's end. It was a nostalgic emotion of homecoming, a sense of relief for having returned to the good old city, a feeling of going back to a regular routine. I had never felt more strongly that I was a resident of Paris and not just a temporary visitor. There is no place like home. Yet living represents the interplay of accumulated experiences, sometimes with past experiences reinforcing those in the present, and sometimes with the present reviving memories of a long-forgotten past; and to live is to be able to sense this entire process as a tangible continuity. But is there a reality beyond this perception of continuity? When I thought of "last year," its substance no longer had any bearing on events in Japan. And with the passage of time, "last year" soon turns into "the year before last," and then "the year before the year before last." In the can-

[5] The Asuka period in Japanese art history, roughly 593–645 [or 671, or 710]; the Kamakura period, 1185 [or 1192]–1333. Kato's^[*] study on this subject is best represented by his major essay "Butsuzo^[*] no yoshiki^[*] " (Styles of Buddhist sculpture), in Showa^[*] bungaku zenshu^[*] , 28:598–621; in it he attempts a redefinition of "realism" as it relates to narratives on the history of sculpture. See also his essays on the same and related subjects in Form, Style, Tradition , trans. John Bester (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).

vas of my past, my experiences in Paris came to assume a greater immediacy just as those in Tokyo were relegated further and further into the background.

I got off the train easily, not having lots of baggage to worry about. I would buy some cigarettes at the stand in front of the train station, have some coffee, read about the change of cabinet in the paper, or give a friend a call. And when I felt it was time, I would get up from my seat and catch the right bus home.

29—
Communication from Home

Correspondence was not the only form of communication from home. An endless stream of travelers from Japan descended on Paris—distant relatives, middle-school classmates, friends of a friend—all of them wanting me to "show them around." "Are there any interesting places to go?" my uncle, a vice president of a large company, asked me the same question. In those days, despite strict control over access to foreign currency, Japanese travelers seemed to have more money than they could spend. I had never been to any first-class restaurants in Tokyo, and thanks to them, I became familiar with a number of such places in Paris.

Besides acting as a tourist guide, I also agreed on occasions to work as an interpreter at week-long conferences. For instance, when a French labor union held a reception for Japanese officials from Sohyo^[*] , they had to recruit a Japanese interpreter in Paris.^[1] The hourly pay was not that good, but I was interested in the French labor movement. And the work itself was quite interesting.

C.G.T. officials gave a systematic presentation of their organization and their thinking.^[2] "All medical and other expenses resulting from

[1] Sohyo (Nihon rodo^[*] kumiai sohyo^[*] gikai ), at the time Japan's largest national organization of labor unions, began in July 1950 with an official membership of 3.77 million. It took a more radical leftist position after 1951, against the background of the Korean War and changing U.S.-Japan relations under the security treaty. From the mid-1950s it had a close, though controversial, relationship with the Japanese Socialist Party and in 1989 became part of the Japan Trade Union Confederation (Nihon rodo kumiai sorengokai^[*] ).

[2] C.G.T., the Confédération générale du travail (general confederation of labor), formed in 1895, is the largest labor union and has close ties to the French Communist party.

injuries incurred during working hours have to be paid in full by the company."

"Does that include accidents caused by the carelessness of the worker himself?" one of the Japanese visitors asked.

"Absolutely."

"But what happens if a train operator dozes off at work and suffers an injury?"

"Of course that too is the responsibility of the company."

At that, a commotion overtook the Japanese side.

"I'm not sure how that argument holds up. Now we are talking about someone who clearly dozed off and hurt himself. If you include a case like that . . . ?"

A debate ensued among the Japanese themselves. The French, anxious to know what was going on, looked at me with inquisitive eyes. I had to say something.

"The Japanese are now deliberating the reasons why the company should bear the responsibility for accidents when they are caused by their employees dozing off," I told them.

The French response came as swiftly as an arrow. "Who wants to doze off at work? It's the company that creates the kind of working conditions that make people doze off. And for that reason, all responsibilities for all such accidents have to be borne by the company."

"Well, I'm not so sure. . . . " the Japanese side muttered.

"I'd say if you can get people to accept that kind of logic, then there's no problem."

"That's why. . . . "

"What a surprise this is!"

It was not that I did not understand how they felt, but to translate such sentiments into French was beyond my skill as an interpreter.

Among the French labor union officials, one of them was a middle-aged man with a scar on his forehead. When we asked him how he got it, he said nonchalantly that it resulted from torture by the SS. He told us that he had been arrested in occupied France and that he had "smashed up the heads of two guards" and escaped.

"I don't like Moscow. It's too different from Paris," he told us. "When I came to Vienna, I felt so relieved. Perhaps because it resembled Paris." He was a Communist, to be sure, but I thought he was first and foremost a Frenchman.

I also worked as an interpreter for the Japanese delegation to an in-

ternational conference held in Switzerland for government representatives. Consisting of about a dozen Japanese Diet members, the group met with the speaker of the Parliament and the president and toured the mountains by mountain trolley. The group bought several dozen watches per person and surprised the salesgirls by declaring that they would buy up all the postcards in the shop. Some of them did attend the conference itself, if only erratically. In their less enthusiastic moments, only two attended, and one dozed off during the conference. When he opened his eyes and tried to adjust his earphone, I asked, "Do you want me to interpret?" From the earphone, only the English and French versions could be heard.

"Nope, no need for that," he said. "Everyone is just talking about things like freedom or democracy. Basically everything I know."

But even in a social gathering like this conference, representatives from postcolonial countries raised sharp criticisms against imperialism. In contrast to their often denunciatory tone, representatives from Western Europe were put on the defensive, and their arguments sounded almost vindicatory. This sharp contrast very tellingly reflected the international atmosphere and tendencies for a time during the postwar period. And I doubt if those were "just things he already knew."

Mr. H, an upper-house member of the Fourth Republic, requested a meeting with two representatives from the Japanese Socialist Party and asked them a series of questions on Japanese foreign policy. They had to do with Japanese policy toward China, Japan's relationship with Taiwan, the division of Korea, nuclear weapons, and the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty.

"Of course the Japanese Socialist Party is opposed to the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. We are also engaged in the struggle against military bases. Please tell him that."

"What are the reasons for your opposition?" H asked.

"The Japanese Constitution stipulates that we relinquish our military weapons. So they're against the Constitution."

"That's your legal basis. What then is your political basis?"

"We don't want to get involved in wars. We wish only for peace."

"By that, do you mean that military alliances in general are dangerous, or the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in particular is dangerous?"

"What a finicky question! I don't know what answer to give to that." The two Japanese looked at each other and then said, "In any case, the decision is based on the principle of our party. We cannot answer every

single question about why we do this or that. When we said that we are opposed to nuclear weapons, why, he immediately demanded the reason. Why don't you just tell him that it's Hiroshima's earnest prayer. He'll understand that!"

"I wonder if the guy is really against nuclear weapons," said the other Japanese.

"Why don't you ask him that?" I suggested.

H gave a logical and coherent answer. According to him, if France were to develop its own nuclear weapons, it would cost too much economically. Socially, it would only aggravate the lack of highly skilled technicians in other areas. Militarily, it was difficult to retaliate with nuclear weapons. Politically, it would only exacerbate the Cold War and give rise to the vicious cycle of more military expansion and greater tension. . . . By now I cannot remember everything H said. What I do remember is the extraordinary gap between the Frenchman's discourse and the Japanese notion of "earnest prayer." Not only did that gap perplex me as an interpreter, it also compelled me, as a Japanese, to reflect on many things.

Through my work as an interpreter, I got to meet many people in Paris, and I also learned about certain facets of the Japanese people unbeknownst to me when I was in Tokyo. But these were not necessarily the result of my work as an interpreter alone. Although I was engaged in medical research in Paris, I was not a physician by profession. Occasionally, however, when my countrymen fell ill in this foreign land and wanted to consult a Japanese doctor through the introduction of a mutual acquaintance, I would usually comply with their wishes as long as no great obstacles stood in my way.

One time, I learned from a telephone call from Takata Hiroatsu that Shiga Naoya and Umehara Ryuzaburo^[*] had been involved in a traffic accident in the suburbs of Paris.^[3] It happened the day following their arrival in Paris after their trip through Italy. Fortunately, they did not suf-

[3] Shiga Naoya (1883–1917), an accomplished short-story writer, leading member of the influential literary group Shirakaba-ha (white birch school) in the 1910s and the early 1920s, and prewar I-novelist whose only long and still much discussed novel An'ya koro^[*] (Dark night's passing, 1921–37; Eng. trans. Edwin McClellan, 1976) depicts a young artist's quest for inner peace and a place in the world beyond. • Umehara Ryuzaburo (1888–1986), a distinguished painter of Western-style works closely associated in his early career with Shiga Naoya and the journal Shirakaba ; he incorporated the techniques and traditional expressions of yamato-e with the styles of nanga and Ogata Korin^[*] .

fer any serious injuries. Mr. Umehara said that he had just a few scratches on his forehead, and he looked fine. Mr. Shiga did appear to be exhausted, but from a medical point of view, he had nothing to worry about. Mr. Takata and I visited them at their hotel. I explained their situation to them and suggested that they get some rest. I also told them that I would be happy to help in whatever way I could and left them with my telephone number.

That was the first time I had met Mr. Umehara. As for Shiga Naoya, though it was the first time I had ever spoken with him, I had seen him many times at the No^[*] Theater at Suidobashi^[*] during the war. He always carried himself with an air of transcendental grace. His countenance, his white hair, and his poise had not changed in the slightest after all these years. Only a few days after the accident, we found ourselves talking together as we took a stroll down the Champs-Elysées under the strong afternoon sun.

"Mantegna was really interesting," Shiga said. "You know about his painting of Christ? I was thinking of writing about it in my story."

After leaving Japan, he first went to Greece and Egypt before traveling from northern Italy down to the south (Mantegna's painting of Christ can be found in a gallery in Milan).^[4] By the time he arrived in Rome, he was physically exhausted. On top of that, he had been looking at so many paintings "skyward" that his eyes were "turbid with tears," and he no longer seemed to have "much interest in looking at the works by men like Raphael." That reaction coincided exactly with my long-held image of Shiga Naoya based on his bearing and his works—a man of keen sensibility, a literary solipsist with a precise sense of language and a thorough self-centeredness. His mild manners had no trace of arrogance or pretentiousness, and with his dignified presence, he merged splendidly with the surroundings of the Champs-Elysées. I suppose a man whose presence of mind could not be swayed even by the weight of the Italian Renaissance surely would not have been struck with wonderment by a place like the Champs-Elysées. Taking no notice of his surroundings, Shiga continued his leisurely talk. "I feel fine now. Seems just a matter of exhaustion. But the most interesting thing I saw was Mantegna's image of Christ."

Once I was also asked by the Paris bureau chief of the Japan Broad-

[4] Mantegna's painting The Dead Christ (1506) is in Milan's Brera Art Gallery.

casting Corporation to go to a hotel near the place de la Concorde to pay a visit to an announcer who had fallen ill during his trip. He had gone all the way to Helsinki for a live broadcast of the Olympics and had fallen ill there. Even before his departure, it seemed that he had not felt well, but he forced himself to go anyway. After the conclusion of the Olympic games, he came to Paris with his friends from the media, only to find himself too sick to move. When I went to see him, he looked better than I had expected and he was overjoyed to see a Japanese physician. That alone, I thought, was worth my trip.

"She has really been taking good care of me," he gestured toward a young nurse with his eyes while trying to get up from his bed, "but after all we can't communicate in words. It makes me so happy to be able to ask for your help in Japanese."

He told me that ever since leaving Japan, all he had thought about was how to return home at the earliest possible moment. "Don't you think it's funny? If only I could sleep on a tatami mat one more time, I wouldn't mind dying for it."

When he finished talking, I checked his blood pressure and concluded that it was totally out of the question to send him back to Japan. I suggested that he be immediately given the best possible medical attention at a well-equipped hospital, and even with that I was not sure his life could be saved. "If only I could sleep on a tatami mat one more time, I wouldn't mind dying for it." Beyond bringing myself to give short responses, it became almost unbearable for me to continue our conversation. After promising to come the next day, I rose from my seat and asked the nurse to come outside with me. In a soft voice, she anxiously inquired after his condition. I briefly explained what his situation was.

"We have to take him to the hospital as soon as possible. I'll talk with the bureau chief and make the necessary arrangements. But a coma brought on by uremia could occur at any time. It may happen tonight. I want you to be prepared for it."

"Because I don't understand what he says, I'm afraid there are many things I can't do," she said at that time. "Although I'm not very experienced, I'll follow your instructions and try to do my best."

Only three days later and soon after the ill-fated announcer had been transferred to a hospital, he fell into a coma and died without ever regaining consciousness.

There was little I could do in his room before his transfer to the hospital. To give the kind, conscientious nurse a little break, I sometimes in-

vited her out for coffee nearby. In those hectic hours, we quickly became good friends. Perhaps it was because we were both foreigners in France and because we both developed a bond with the same patient, however briefly it might be. She was from Denmark, and while she wasn't accustomed to speaking French, her English was fluent.

"What will you do after this patient?" I asked her.

"Well, I suppose I'll take care of another patient."

"Where?"

"Most likely in Paris, but I don't know for sure."

Somewhere in my heart, I wished that she would be working in Paris. And then one day, when she suddenly asked me, "What do you think of Dr. Schweitzer?" I was somewhat stunned. "I think he is a modernday saint," she said.

"I don't believe anybody is a saint," I responded.

"It's strange that a person like you would say that."

"A person like me? But you don't know me."

"Oh yes, I do," she said with a smile.

"Hmm, I wonder about that." I was trying to tease her, but I had something else on my mind.

"I think somebody has to help the doctor with his work," she said.

His hospital in the African jungle was recruiting nurses, and she had applied. It looked like Dr. Schweitzer himself would come to Paris to take her back with him to his hospital. It would be a two-year contract, and she felt that nothing would give her more emotional satisfaction than working at his hospital. As she was telling me all this with shining eyes, she looked vibrant and beautiful. That beauty almost perplexed me. I could not even begin to tell how much more precious this young woman before me was over any African hospital or any "saint." I was impressed with her beauty and I felt affectionate toward her. My only regret was that she would be leaving, for whatever reason, for a land far away. "What an unlucky fellow you are," I thought to myself. "When it comes to someone who matters, I have to compete with Dr. Schweitzer of all people!" But at that point, it was obvious that nobody could have prevented her from going.

However, a few months after she left for Africa, she sent me a long letter. From it, I could well surmise why she had not written right after her arrival, what had happened in the last several months, how her thoughts and mood had changed during the time, and why she had come to write this long letter. It began with "I remember our long conversa-

tion in Paris and that's why I am writing this letter. You are the one who can best understand what I mean." The old Dr. Schweitzer she had met in Paris was like a kind grandfatherly figure. But after arriving at the hospital in the jungle, she hardly had any chance of seeing him anymore. The doctor was so busy that he seldom had the time even to show up at the patients' ward. He had an endless stream of visitors, and in fact a group of Americans was just then making a film, to which the doctor was devoting all of his time and energy. Because of Dr. Schweitzer's opposition, the hospital had not yet acquired any X-ray equipment, and the other doctors working there were not necessarily happy about the situation. But by then she had gotten used to the tropical climate and the day-to-day routine of her hospital work. There was no mention of the word "disappointment" anywhere in her letter. But the reason she had gone to Africa with all her burning passion was to help a saint in his noble enterprise, surely not "to get used to the day-to-day work routine."

And finally an unfortunate incident had occurred. "He was really a nice young man, and if you had met him, I'm sure you would have liked him as well," she wrote. The young man, full of idealism, was working without pay in the construction of a hospital extension. But for whatever reason, in the middle of his work, the young man was driven out by Dr. Schweitzer. He had no other place to go. "I tried to comfort him, but he had already lost all hope. My best efforts proved useless, and he ended up committing suicide. I can't believe such a tragedy could happen."

I mentioned earlier that from the outset I myself professed no faith in any "saint," although I had faith in the young woman who had put her faith in "the saint." I respected her inner beauty. It was many years later that I wrote about this event in a short story called "The Great Humanitarian."^[5] Perhaps my words failed to adequately convey my intent, and an immediate reaction came from a totally unexpected source. I learned from someone, an old and trusted friend, that one of my former teachers was furious after reading my work. I do not, however, have the habit of responding to secondhand criticism. With the death of my former teacher, my opportunity to respond to him directly was forever lost.

But if I had had the opportunity, how would I have pleaded my case? I don't suppose I would have. Instead, I probably would have said that if we were to discuss a hospital in Africa, we would first need to inquire

[5] "Jindo^[*] no eiyu^[*] ," first published in Bungei (September 1955), is in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 13:219–55.

about the opinions of the Africans themselves, and in fact I had met and spoken to a number of them regarding this matter. I probably would also have said that before a citizen of a colonial empire could be transmuted into a "saint" for managing a hospital in its colony, we would need to know exactly what he thought about colonial imperialism itself. And because colonial imperialism by its very nature is founded on a system of hypocrisy, I probably would also have asked how it is possible to separate individual acts of goodwill from that system without challenging the system itself.

Back then in Paris, I was not incapable of raising such arguments. Yet I did not mention them to the young woman about to leave for Africa, for I did not feel it was necessary. I absolutely refused to hurt the heart of a woman I probably loved in exchange for the reputation and authority of a legendary figure.

30—
Two Women

In those days, there was virtually no mention of Japan in the French press. Nor was there much chance for me to talk about Japan with the French. Our everyday conversation was not about the kabuki theater or about the Yoshida cabinet; it was, or, rather, it could only be, about the Théâtre national populaire or Mendès-France.^[1] Perhaps the only exception was Robert Guillain, who, as Le Monde' s special correspondent to the Far East, had been traveling back and forth between Tokyo and Paris since the prewar days. This was what he told me: "You ask me what the French public know about Japan? All right, let me tell you. Before I left for Japan, my mother always asked me: 'Can you eat fish in Japan?' I told her over and over again that she had to be kidding, that Japan has ten times as many varieties of fish as France. And then two or three years later when I was about to depart for Japan again, she asked me the same question. It's just hopeless."

That was the time when the French army was still fighting a war in Indochina, when cease-fire negotiations in Korea had dragged on at Panmunjom, and some years before Japan's economic recovery was to become the center of international attention.^[2] Among my friends, the left-

[1] Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru (1878–1967) organized five separate cabinets from 1946 to 1954. • Pierre Mendès-France (1907–82) was prime minister of France from June 1954 to February 1955.

[2] The Vietnamese struggle for independence continued until 1954, with the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The country was divided at the 17th parallel into North and South Vietnam at the conference in Geneva. • Negotiations at Panmunjom began in July 1951 but dragged on for two years until an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.

ists were perhaps the only people besides the veteran Guillain who had some interest in postwar Japan, even though they might not have any concrete knowledge about the country. From the left wing's point of view, it was a matter of great concern to know where and what kind of resistance John Foster Dulles's anti-Communist crusaders were facing in the world, and I suppose in that specific context, the conditions in Japan also warranted their attention. This was especially true after May 1, 1952.^[3] On that day the Japanese masses burned American cars in the square in front of the Imperial Palace, and for the first time after the war they ascended to the world stage. "How would the Japanese people express their will next time? What opportunities would native Japanese capitalists seize to regain the Chinese market?" Intellectuals of the French left seemed to have no doubt about their premise that the Japanese people were against the U.S. remilitarization policy for Japan and that Japanese capitalism could not possibly be satisfied to trade with Taiwan alone.

One time, I tried to explain to a Communist friend of mine that Japan's internal affairs were not that simple. She could not be easily persuaded and said that to pressure Japan into remilitarization less than ten years after demilitarizing the country was tantamount to making a mockery of the Japanese people.

"There's no way they can be satisfied with the situation," she said.

"But on the other hand, the Japanese economy did improve as a result of Korea's special procurement demands."

"I think the ones who've profited from the war were the capitalists and not the people."

"But by keeping businesses from going under, the workers too will be saved."

"That's only a secondary phenomenon. I don't think it changes the essence of the matter."

"But the masses don't concern themselves with the essence of things.

[3] On May Day 1952 in the square before the Imperial Palace, protesters (variously reported as 6,000 up to 30,000) against the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and the San Francisco Peace Treaty (1951) gathered—despite government obstruction of the square against a district court's order granting permission for such use—and clashed with armed Japanese police. The incident resulted in 2 deaths, more than 1,000 casualties, and the arrest of over 1,200 people. After 20 years of litigation, in November 1972 the Tokyo Supreme Court found 16 protesters guilty but threw out the primary charge of trying to instigate a riot. See Okamoto Mitsuo, Meedee jiken (The May-day incident [Shiraishi shoten, 1977]).

Even if in fact it's a secondary phenomenon, they'd only react to direct consequences, whether favorably or unfavorably."

"Well, psychological reactions are just a variable," she said. "The essence of the matter determines the latent discontent of the people. Whether or not the discontent manifests itself depends on the situation at the time."

"That's why I say the situation at the time isn't as simple as you think."

"Perhaps you're right. But the interests of American imperialism can never coincide with those of the Japanese people."

As a matter of fact, there was no reason to expect that they would even coincide with those of Japanese native capitalism in the first place, and so I supposed the Japanese government would someday consider expanding trade with China against American pressure.

"Japan has to import raw materials and export manufactured products. As a market for Japanese products, China is more important than the industrialized countries in the West. The Japanese economy cannot continue to prosper without China," she remarked.

I, too, agreed that this might be true in the long run. But in the short run, again one could not make this simplistic assertion because there were other factors to consider. And we talked about this matter as well.

She was a Jew with Romanian roots. Small-framed and slim with a darkish complexion, she had eyes that always shone with a glowing vitality. There was a nonchalant air about her; the color of her clothes, their rough texture, and even their cut matched and so suited her small frame, her black hair, and her expressive gestures that the impression she gave could almost be described as one of refinement. She was married, but I had no idea what her husband did for a living.

"Now, this doesn't concern you, does it?"

"I am surprised that you can come out so often on Sundays!" I said.

"I come out because I can. No need for you to worry about it."

She herself was a schoolteacher. And a passionate admirer of Stalin.

"What do you think of Picasso's portrait?"

This was the time when the French Communist Party was fiercely criticizing Picasso's portrait for desecrating Stalin's aura of authority. I was reminded of the words of Picasso himself: "Whether a society is capitalist or socialist, there is no difference in the way the shoemaker hammers in his nails."^[4]

[4] When Stalin died in 1953, Louis Aragon, editor of Les Lettres françaises ,asked a somewhat reluctant Picasso to do a portrait of him. The plain, rather lifeless, and unflattering image Picasso sketched from an early photograph triggered the fury of the French Communist Party, by whom Stalin was still revered; one English critic (Timothy Hilton, Picasso [London: Thames and Hudson, 1975], 265) calls the work "surprisingly clumsy, even amateurish." See also Patrick O'Brian, Pablo Ruiz Picasso: A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976), 412–13.

"If it makes no difference to him whose portrait he paints, there was no need for him to do Stalin's. To us, Stalin has a special significance. And to deliberately desecrate that significance . . . "

But our opinions on Stalin and at least on the nature of Soviet power were not as radically different as our opinions about Picasso. In those days, if one were to believe western European "Soviet specialists," Stalin would have become critically ill once every year—in fact they said he had, on various occasions, been on the verge of death. If the dictator died, confusion and disintegration would inevitably follow within the Soviet system. However, year after year Stalin did not die, and the Soviet system. of course did not disintegrate even after Stalin's death. I had no faith in the opinions of "Soviet specialists" in the Western press. With regard to their writings about the concentration camps and the secret police, she asserted without reservation that "those are merely propaganda from reactionary newspapers." I thought they might or might not be so, and the reason I stated was that I had yet to see the Soviet Union with my own eyes, and I had no firsthand information myself.

"The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was just a means of self-defense by the socialist regime in response to its betrayal at the Munich Agreement. What do you think the Soviet Union should have done if they hadn't made the non-aggression pact with Germany?" she asked.

What should it have done? I, naturally, did not have the answer.

"Finland? If the Soviets had waited, the German army would have gone into it first.^[5] The war had already begun, you know—the war Stalin didn't start."

I had to agree with her point that since 1917 it was western European imperialism that had sent its army into Soviet territory, and that the Soviet Union had never started a war.

[5] After the Finnish government refused Stalin's demands in October 1939 for a strategic area of the Karelian Isthmus and the lease of the Hanko Peninsula, the Soviet Union invaded Finland on November 30, 1939 and set up a puppet government two days later.

"Remember, the Soviet declaration of war on Japan was after , not before, the declaration of war on the Soviet Union by Japan's ally," she said emphatically. Perhaps our difference was just that she took a very clear-cut, definitive stand on issues, whereas I was skeptical and would not unequivocally agree with any position.

I probably looked younger than my age. There was in fact almost no age difference between us, but she seemed to think I was ten years younger. This sort of thing did not happen to me alone; many Japanese men had the same experience with Westerners. Be that as it may, I had never been denied entry to a movie theater because of being mistaken for a minor. And yet even a decade later, when I was lecturing at a university abroad, I was mistaken for a student quite a few times.

I also noticed that I could very well pass as a Chinese, an Indochinese, or a member of the "yellow race" from central Asia. It was not just the Westerners; even the Asian peoples themselves seemed to think of me that way. To jump a little ahead in the sequence of events, many years later when I went to the central Asian city of Tashkent, somebody asked me the way in the local Uzbek language. At that time I knew how to say "I can't speak Russian" in Russian, but I didn't know how to say "I can't speak Uzbek" in the Uzbek language.

Still more so in the West, Asians are very often lumped together and known collectively as Chinese. In the back streets of Rome, children would gather around me shouting "Chinese! Chinese!" scrutinizing me as I scrutinized their city. In Paris I was an Indochinese, because at that time Paris had many foreign students from French-controlled Indochina. Once I was accosted by a middle-aged man at a subway station.

"What are you doing in Paris?"

"I'm studying medicine." I gave him a short answer.

"When do you plan to go back home?" the man was a little drunk. I didn't pay attention to him.

"So you don't want to go back at a time when your people are suffering, is that it? Don't you know they're the true patriots? Don't you feel ashamed to be living in France?"

Meanwhile, the man's speech became more and more eloquent. "Your people are fighting a war, but Bao Dai is having a good time in southern France.^[6] He is nothing but a tool of colonialism. What are you doing in

[6] Bao Dai (Nguyen Vinh Thuy, 1913–97), the last emperor of Vietnam's Nguyen dynasty, until 1945, when he abdicated as Ho Chi Minh rose to power;in 1949 the French restored him as a puppet emperor. After a referendum in 1955 abolished the monarchy, he lived in exile on the French Riviera, earning a reputation as a playboy.

France when your country is fighting for its independence?" And quite naturally, the man's compelling lecture came to an end when I called his attention to the fact that I was a Japanese.

Racial prejudice did not cause me any unpleasant experiences, at least not in my daily life. But the Romanian Jew often talked about racial discrimination.

"Why do you think they dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima? I tell you, it was because the people living there were Asians."

"The fact that they were Asians might have had something to do with it," I corrected her statement.

"You said racial prejudice is not prevalent in Paris? How can you say that? Don't you think that few places could be worse in terms of racial discrimination?" she said.

Racial prejudice, she maintained, did not take the form of Asians being refused housing. It became apparent when, say, a man and a woman got a little more intimate. She made it sound as if it was only because of her that we were still friends, whereas other women would probably not have bothered. The impression I got from her was not a pleasant one. I do not get down on my knees to beg for anyone's friendship—at least that was something I did not want to do.

My friendship with her did not last long. One day she told me that she wanted to talk in a quiet place such as in my room. At that time I was staying at a small place in the city. I showed her in, leaving the door half open, and helped her take off her raincoat. Outside, there was a misty drizzle. She sat down in an armchair and surveyed the room with her eyes. "Hmm, nice and clean," she muttered meaninglessly. Then she got up, closed the door, and locked it. I was silent.

"You're a doctor, aren't you?" she said, and without waiting for my answer, she asked me to examine her, saying that she was not feeling well.

I explained to her that I could not do that because I was not a practicing physician and that I also did not have the necessary equipment with me. But I added that I would be happy to hear her out and offer some advice.

"You don't need the tools to find out," she said. To be sure, she looked pale and tired.

"Let me be the judge of that after I get all the details. Now, please tell me what's wrong."

All she gave me, however, was a discursive and ambiguous account about her stomach and intestines not feeling well, and she had no specific symptoms that might suggest an illness. When I asked her for more details, she repeated peevishly, "Aren't you going to examine me?" Then she suddenly rose from the chair, took off her blouse, and lay on the bed. Under her black undergarment was her slender upper body, her chest moving quietly up and down with her breathing. In order to begin my examination, I would have to lean over her. I realized that my "examination" was not going to end there. In the small room, the distance separating the bed and my chair was just three steps. Should I maintain that distance or should I cross it? For a moment I could not make up my mind.

Then I said, "I don't think you need to be examined."

"You are a strange man!" she said in a voice calmer than I had expected. "So what should I do? Please tell me what treatment I'll need."

But she herself must have realized that there was no longer any point in talking about it. She turned up the collar of her raincoat, and as she was about to step out onto the sidewalk into the misty rain, she said, "Au revoir!" as if nothing had happened. But both of us clearly knew that it was going to be our last good-bye.

Chicago in North America has a "black belt," an exclusively black community. The northern part of Paris, on the other hand, has a "red belt" where a majority of the residents vote for the Communist Party. One Sunday morning, I visited the town of St-Denis in that area, not with the female Stalinist but with a bourgeois woman, the proprietor of an art gallery in Paris. Our plan was to go to Chantilly in her Buick and stop by the Romanesque church in St-Denis on our way. We would then go through Senlis to look at some Gothic structures on our way back.

It might be an exaggeration to say that I had always been dumbfounded by her Buick; but its enormous size did strike me as being rather ludicrous. Moreover, in those days American cars were like birds incapable of flight despite their wings.^[7] As her car entered the town of St-Denis,

[7] In this literary allusion Kato^[*] paraphrases from a famous envoi (hanka ) to the long poem (choka^[*] ) "Hinkyu^[*] mondo^[*] ka" (Dialogue on poverty) by Yamanoue no Okura, a major Man'yo^[*] poet known for his concern about life's hard-ships: Tobitachikanetsu tori ni shi araneba (But I cannot take flight, not being a bird with wings).

we saw the graffiti U.S. GO HOME painted in white on the pavements and on walls.

"Do you think the Communists did that?" Looking at her beautiful profile, I tried to get her to talk about what was on my mind.

"I suppose they're the ones who painted it, but the sentiment goes beyond the Communists," she gave me an unexpected answer as she was looking for a place to park. But surely, many of the business clients at her gallery were Americans.

"I heard that somebody wrote on the door of a wine shop in the Champs-Elysées. . . . " I said. It was something I had just read some where. Anticipating what I was going to say, she laughed. "Saying U.S. DON'T GO HOME right? Well, there are certainly people who feel that way as well. But, you know, there are things money can't buy."

The workers there were standing and talking to one another on the church pavement or basking in the sun. When we got out of the car, I felt all at once that their eyes were riveted on us. What hotshots were going to get out from that ridiculously huge car? Instead of American tourists, out came a French woman and a mean-looking Oriental man. Now what sort of relationship could they possibly have . . .

Undisturbed, she went on looking at the church. The workers were looking at her looking at something that did not interest them, while I was looking at the workers themselves, realizing that there was a big gap between us. It reminded me of the days when children had followed me like phantoms along the village paths in Saitama Prefecture.^[8] As a child, I felt at the time the insurmountable distance separating us. Had I not changed in all these years? Was I always the third party, always the observer no matter where I might be?

The gap between me and her circle of friends in Paris was also quite considerable. I was bored after spending hours with formally behaved, overbearing, unfeeling, and frivolous men and women who never seemed to run out of conversation topics, and I became irritated at myself for having wasted my time. When she was with these people, she had no interest in me. With them she was on her home turf, as it were, always energetic, chatty, and cheerful. Before whatever friend she was speaking with could finish what he or she was saying, she was already

[8] See chapter 2.

seeking out the next person to socialize with. She was friendly to everyone, but there was also no question that she was only half-heartedly interested in what anyone had to say.

"Oh, I'm so tired! I guess that's part of my job."

I thought she had to be joking. If that was a necessary part of her business, why did she always have to involve me in it? But when I was with her alone, she was almost like a different person—quiet, sensitive, and considerate. She had gotten married young and had separated from her husband, and she said she hardly ever thought of him. I was never bored when I was alone with her. But I was not sure why she kept on seeing me, and this uncertainty constantly perplexed me. In her house in Passy, she had a remarkable collection of Paul Klee. In fact, I had first gotten to know her when I went to see her collection through the introduction of a third party. During my subsequent visits to her house, however, I was never able to feel at home. Her house was too large, and there were too many things commemorating a life in which I had played no part.

"It has nothing to do with the fact that you are Japanese. I never feel bored when I am talking to you," she remarked.

"You're not going to say that the majority of crimes in Paris are committed by Algerians, are you?"

"But according to the statistics . . . "

"You French are no different from us," I continued. "No different from the Japanese who compiled the crime statistics for Korean residents in Japan. It was not because Koreans had committed crimes that such statistics existed; it was because such statistics had to be compiled that the crimes were committed."

"You're being a little harsh today, aren't you?" she said quietly.

"What is harsh is not me but the reality of the situation," I replied.

For her, the "dirty war" in Indochina served only to exacerbate corruption and decadence within France. On the other hand, she was no fan of Mendès-France's.^[9] She found it "surprising that a wonderful actor like Gérard Philipe could be a Communist," though she did recognize the Communists' role during the French resistance. "In fact, it's important not to forget that the French resistance movement did not really take place until after the landing in Normandy," she said. "Until then,

[9] Mendès-France, a longtime harsh critic of French policy toward Indochina and North Africa, ended French involvement in Indochina during his administration.

there were many who admired the Germans. Not all those who claimed to be resistance fighters while pillaging the countryside deserve to be called heroes, don't you agree?" At times like these, she possessed an air of transcendental objectivity. Perhaps that kind of objectivity is a luxury the privileged class alone could afford to dispense once in a while.

That day in the forest in Chantilly, the yellowing leaves glowed in the golden rays of the afternoon sun. As we strolled in the woods, I saw in her eyes a reflection of the high autumn sky and the quiet movement of the white clouds. I was completely entranced, body and mind, except for one thought: a time like this could not last. As a matter of fact, not only did this turn out as I expected, she made absolutely no attempt to repeat the experience with me. The night I spent in her bedroom in Passy, the taste of the calvados we had that evening, along with the image of the forest in Chantilly, lived on in me for a long time as if it had happened only yesterday. But it did not happen a second time. Did the fact that she had satisfied her curiosity make her act in such a way? Or was it because she had too many other diversions? Or could it be the result of some sort of self-imposed discipline in order to preserve our friendship into the future? My doubts lingered on. And the more wearisome I became over my doubts, the more I would try to explain everything away to suit my own convenience. After our visit to Chantilly, she said, "I envy your work as a doctor. At least you seem to have a goal in your life."

We were good friends. How could it have turned out otherwise, as long as two human beings were as fond as we were of Paul Klee's wit and humor, his delicate movement of lines, his delightful changes of tonality, and the feel of his works to the senses? To become true lovers, however, I suppose we were neither sufficiently blind nor sufficiently dreamy about our future.

31—
Winter Journey

From my window seat on the Orient Express, I looked out into the distance at the snowy mountains of Switzerland as they began to sparkle in the rays of the morning sun. The heating in the compartment was working all too efficiently, and after my departure from Paris the afternoon before I had not been able to get a good night's sleep. Thoughts about the past and the future meandered through my mind. What an endless journey—this line from a song reverberated in my thoughts. The train was heading toward central Europe and would eventually take me to Vienna under the quadripartite Allied occupation. A young woman I met in Florence was there, waiting for me.

I was overwhelmed by the Italian Renaissance. Its impact on me hardly approximated anything a "sightseeing tour" might suggest. I could never have imagined the scale of its coloration or the allure of the marbles, nor dreamed of the extraordinary energy and talents they brought together to fully and richly realize the potential of the human senses. It is said that modern Europe began with the Italian Renaissance. Until one sees Venice and Florence with one's own eyes, that is just an empty statement. Even the collection of Italian paintings in the Louvre fails to do justice to the Renaissance in the profundity of its significance and the depth of its experience. Although Italy certainly did not alter my thinking, every observation I made about European culture helped define, directly or indirectly, the substance of my essential vocabulary. My own taste did not change because of that; I still preferred the fifteenth century to the height of the Renaissance in the sixteenth century, and more than the fifteenth century I cherished the age of Giotto. But my experience in Italy had absolutely no relevance to my personal preferences. Once he visited Flor-

ence, the American Bernard Berenson became so captivated that he spent the rest of his life there.^[1]

From an art museum to a church, from a church to another art museum, from a room filled with the works of Fra Angelico to the next with the paintings of Lorenzo Lotto, I kept on walking as if I had been possessed. And there I saw a young woman who was walking on the same road and at the same pace as I was—a living, breathing woman among all the numerous others carved in marble. At that moment I was seized by a strong impulse to escape from the past capsulated within the art museums and into the bustling present under the sun on the streets filled with the aroma of coffee. I invited her to go up the hillside of the Boboli Gardens, which afforded a panoramic view of Florence from the top. The dark brown tower of the Palazzo Vecchio and the green dome of Santa Maria del Fiore soared skyward above layers of roofs, and the Arno River flowed below us.

"How long will you be staying in Florence?"

"Until tomorrow," she replied.

"Where will you go from here?"

"Venice."

"Would you like to go to Rome with me?" I said.

"I've just been to Rome."

"What about staying one more day and going to Siena?"

"Siena isn't on my itinerary."

"But I bet it'd be interesting. You won't regret it."

Petite and with the appearance of a student, she had with her a small camera, one that was certainly cheaper than those carried so proudly by Japanese tourists. On the hilltop, the chestnut-colored hair on her forehead fluttered in the wind.

"Do you like Strauss?" she asked suddenly.

We were both speaking in awkward English. She couldn't speak French, and I couldn't speak German.

"Well, I've listened to waltzes."

She laughed and said, "I meant Richard Strauss."

I could remember the tunes from Italian operas Grandfather had

[1] Bernard Berenson (1865–1959), a scholar and art critic of Italian Renaissance art who studied languages and literatures at Harvard, shifting to art history after his visit to Italy. He became a foremost authority on Italian Renaissance artists and bequeathed I Tatti, his eighteenth-century villa outside Florence, to Harvard; it became the Center for Italian Renaissance Culture.

hummed when I was a child, and in the Parisian opéra comique I had heard what Nagai Kafu^[*] once called "Carmen's famous melodies." But in the long interim, I had not attended any opera performance. She said that whenever she came across art that moved her, she would recall her experience with Strauss's operas.

Once the train crossed the Austrian border, an officer from the British Occupation Army came on board to check our passports and baggage. That was quickly accomplished. Outside the window, the magnificent Swiss mountains began to give way to a subtly different landscape. The steep mountain slope was closing in on the railroad tracks. Scenes of snow-covered coniferous forests, brooks, bridges, and scattered farmhouses flashed outside the window and immediately receded into the background—images of remote, rustic mountain villages that would attract neither mountaineers nor tourists. Enchanted by the scenery, I drew my face toward the window with inquisitive eyes. Several passengers had gotten off the train in Switzerland, and the only people remaining in the eight-person compartment were a young couple clasped in an embrace in the seats opposite, and me .

Siena was wonderful. We had a late lunch on a balcony where we could see the Piazza del Campo's stone-paved streets and fountain as well as the surrounding medieval architecture. (We looked for the cheapest item on the menu to order, but the high cover charge, together with the tax and the tips, ran our bill to twice the price on the menu. Moreover, there was not enough food. Fortunately, she had brought along some dried sausage, which we sliced and ate with a small knife.)

Time stood still for us as we strolled through the old city. At the outskirts of town, a solitary church stood in the evening dusk. Deep inside the dark interior of its spacious main structure, a woman in black was kneeling in prayer alone with her child. A priest who happened to be passing by said in Italian, "This is a place for prayers, not for pleasure"—or so we thought. (She said in perfectly fluent Italian, "Excuse me, but could you tell me where the train station is?" But we couldn't really figure out his reply. I always had a feeling that I understood Italian when it was spoken to me, but afterwards I realized that I had absolutely no idea about what had been said.)

The autumn days were short, and by the time we got on the train to go back to Florence, the hills and plains of Tuscany were already enveloped in darkness. We could hear some Italians singing in chorus from another compartment, and the sound of their voices blended with the

sound of the train's wheels. I ran my fingers through her soft, silky hair as I thought how we might never see each other again once our train arrived at its destination. The past we had shared—the afternoon on the hills of Florence and the day in Siena—was enough to convince us that we would not want to say farewell just like that, but not long enough to make us want to give up Rome or Venice on our itineraries. I was not thinking about the future then; I was simply totally immersed in the sensual realm of the present. The faint sensation on my fingertips permeated my entire body, and the only way I could describe that experience was to say that our hearts were one.

The extraordinarily long train of the Orient Express began its run on the plain, and the powdery snow drew oblique lines as it fell on the surface of the window. Now in the seats opposite mine, a man was explaining to a woman in French, "Now we're entering the Russian sector. The British are easy to deal with. Not so the Russians. You can never tell how long you have to wait at the border." His manner of speech suggested that he was quite familiar with the territory. His somewhat blunt statements, I suppose, might be attributed to the fact that he was from an occupying country. The woman was listening in silence. "The Russian officers speak only Russian," the man added .

After returning to Paris, I sent a postcard to the young woman I had met in Italy. When she wrote back and asked if I wanted to see Vienna, my curiosity was aroused—both about her and about the city. I was reminded of a motion picture Towa^[*] Company imported into Japan in the 1930s. In it, townswomen were dancing to waltz music with their skirts whirling like circles. A young maiden was singing "Das ist nur einmal, das kommt nicht wieder" (it comes only once and never again)^[2] —the song became a hit in Tokyo—as she rode alone in a carriage speeding through the town late at night. I wanted to see the city with my own eyes.

I was also somewhat interested in comparing the occupation of Berlin with that of Vienna. At that time, tension had arisen in Berlin, while in Vienna the Russian and the Western occupation forces were able to coexist with few reports of conflicts. But getting there was certainly not easy. The whole country was divided up and occupied by four nations with only the capital, Vienna, under their joint administration. I applied for visas in Paris, but since the British, American, French, and Russian

[2] From the theme song of Erik Charell's film Der Kongress tanzt . See chapter 9, note 4.

occupation authorities all issued visas separately, the application procedure was not only tedious, the time it took was totally unpredictable. By the time I finally received all the necessary papers, it was already toward the end of the year. But since I had no serious obligations in Paris, I made a reservation on the Orient Express and, with a small amount of baggage, boarded the train at the Gare du Nord shortly before Christmas. December was a busy month in Paris; the vitality of the city could be felt in the air. In my heart, I bade farewell to Paris, but when the train started to move, my thoughts were no longer with it.

Just when I thought the train had been traveling for quite a while through the British sector, it suddenly came to a halt. There was neither a train station nor a town nearby. The conductor came around and pulled down the window shades. "There are soldiers holding automatic rifles on both sides," the man sitting opposite me said in an explanatory tone, half for the benefit of his female companion and half for me. A little later two Russian soldiers came into the compartment. That was my first time face to face with soldiers from the Red Army. Both of them were young with plain rustic features, and neither allowed any expression to show on his face. Without uttering a word, they took the passports from the man and woman sitting opposite me, looked over the pages, and returned them, again in silence. Their manners were by no means rude, but one could not quite describe them as just being businesslike—though they undoubtedly meant to conduct themselves that way. There was something strangely awkward about their demeanor.

When I handed them my passport, they examined its pages but did not return it to me right away, as they had done with the couple. Meanwhile, there was a long pause with nobody speaking a word, and then a longer pause. I told myself that there could not be anything wrong with my passport. Then, quite suddenly, one of the soldiers looked up from the passport and began to say something in Russian.

"He's asking about your nationality," the man sitting across from me explained in French.

"I'm Japanese," I said in French, but the soldiers did not understand.

Then I remembered that the local language was German, and so I repeated myself in that language. Yet the soldier holding my passport and the other one standing silently next to him showed absolutely no reaction on their faces. "Japanese," the Frenchman said in Russian, and the soldiers began to thumb through the pages of my passport again.

I felt a little anxious, but more than that I was also beginning to get

irritated by the absurdity of the whole thing. A passport is not an encyclopedia. There was not much written in it, and if one could not figure it out in three minutes, one certainly couldn't do so in three hours. Five minutes passed, then ten minutes. Finally the soldier handed back my passport in silence and walked out of the compartment. I felt relieved, but I had already broken into a sweat.

The French couple got off the train at the next stop. In their place, an elderly officer from the Red Army came in and took the window seat facing me. Suddenly I felt hungry, so I bought a hot sausage at the station, added some mustard, and ate it. Then I took out a Gauloise, taking my time smoking it as I opened the German grammar book I had bought in Paris. Even after all these years, German grammar still reminded me of the days when I had first started learning German at the First Higher School in Komaba and the dormitory life there. Part of the melody of its popular dormitory song revived in my mind, but I had forgotten almost all of its lyrics.

Sitting motionless like an Egyptian statue, the officer opposite me kept looking out the window at the incessant snowfall—that was all one could see. The train was approaching Vienna. There I was, a total stranger; the only person I knew was one young woman. The country's language was alien to my ears, and I could not even begin to imagine what its customs were like. I even found it difficult to believe that a large metropolis was soon to emerge from this endless stretch of snow. Ikyo^[*] , dépaysement, ikusanka, au bout du monde  . . .^[3] I was trying to approximate a psychological state of mind suggested by a mixture of all these Japanese and French expressions. When I found myself in an environment alien to my familiar daily routines, that would be a time for self-discovery. What lay in the depths of my emotional life? What, ultimately, were my aspirations? What would I be willing to sacrifice? And what could I expect to accomplish?

She met me at the station and, now that she was in a city she knew so well, she appeared to be even more self-confident than she had been in Italy. She had arranged for a place for me to stay in a convenient part of the old city, and on our way there from the Westbahnhof, she gave me a brief description of the city's geography. She mentioned many unfamiliar proper names I didn't quite grasp, but I can still remember the

[3] Ikyo is a somewhat poetic term for "a foreign land"; ikusanka means roughly "far, far away from home."

names of places such as Stalin Square and the Brücke der Roten Armee (Red Army bridge). Later, I noticed that while these names did appear on city trams or on maps, no Viennese referred to them as such, preferring their old names of Schwarzenbergplatz and Reichsbrücke. (Still later, when the occupation ended, these artificially imposed names disappeared the day after the foreign troops left Vienna and were openly replaced by their original names, just as one would expect.) The structural damage to the city caused by the bombings was not as severe as I had imagined. To be sure, many buildings, most notably the Vienna State Opera House, could no longer be used, but not many places had been reduced to rubble.^[4] The supply of goods was plentiful in the stores, and the city finally seemed to be on its way to recovery from the war devastation. Armed Red Army soldiers standing in pairs appeared like shadows amid the blowing storm, only to disappear the next moment in the drifting snow.

Since its regular house could no longer be used, the national opera company performed at the Theater an der Wien instead. It was there that we listened to Wagner and Alban Berg. The makeshift theater was nothing elaborate, but it had good music and a passionately enthusiastic audience. Perhaps one could even go so far as to say that music gave the Viennese something to live for. To be sure, life was hard. But precisely because of that, rather than in spite of it, opera music was not just a source of pleasure but something central to their emotional life. That evening before our excitement subsided, we came out of the theater and found that darkness had taken over the streets. Only the words "Soviet Intelligence Headquarters" shone brightly in red against the dark night sky.

During my stay in Vienna, we took a stroll around the city, visited an art museum to see Brueghel, and then walked into a large, old-fashioned café to warm our frozen hands and feet. There were only a few other customers; everything was quiet, with only an elderly waiter sitting idly in a corner staring in our direction. Afterwards, we took the city tram, passed in front of the working-class quarters of Karl Marx Hof—its name, in commemoration of so-called Austro-Marxism after World War I, survived the annexation by Germany and the war—and arrived at the

[4] The Vienna State Opera House was rebuilt and reopened in 1955 after its near destruction during an Allied bombing. Vienna suffered fifty-three Allied bombings as well as shelling from the Germans and Russians, with several thousand fatalities, more than a quarter of a million people homeless, and the destruction of a reported 20 percent of all houses.

wine-producing town of Grinzig. Buildings there had low roofs, and the windows were scraped out from the thick walls at a level just above the accumulated snow on the pavement. The clouded-up double-pane windows, the yellowish glow of lights, the clamor and the melody of the violin just faintly audible from the outside . . . Under the street lamp's cone-shaped light, glistening powdery snow from an unremitting snowfall streamed along with the wind in an uninterrupted dance. I had never before seen—and never saw again—a more lovely town in the snow. A glass of white wine and a young woman had turned my world into a realm of infinite beauty.

I took her home late every night. Even after the key turned in the lock, the large, heavy door of her house needed a hard push before it would yield with a little squeak. Again we kissed, made plans for the next day, and said good-bye.

I stayed in Vienna for a week, and then I extended my visit for another week. But I knew I could not stay there forever. I went back to the Westbahnhof and took the Orient Express back to Paris. She did not say a word when she came to see me off; she just stood under the train window, her big eyes moistened with tears. As the train started to glide quietly away, she turned and walked away in the opposite direction, never stopping or looking back. As I leaned out at the window and saw her walk away, I realized for the first time that I was in love with her.

That for me was a new experience. I thought about her day and night—the shine in her eyes, the touch of her hair, the delicate variation in the intonation of her speech, the sun in Tuscany, the snowstorm by the Danube. Remembrance now brought back memories that seemed endless. While the past was interrupted at Vienna's Westbahnhof, by no means was it to end there, because it was to be connected with everything in the future that the power of my imagination could summon. I was myself taken by surprise that one young woman—an outsider—had come into the center of my world, a development that inevitably would lead to a change in its order. This had never before happened in my life. Now I could understand very clearly that I had not been in love with the woman in Kyoto; I had merely thought I was in love with her, or perhaps I had just wished I could love her. Where would this new experience lead me? In any case, my only thought then was how to seize the next opportunity to go to Vienna again.

The opportunity came with the arrival of spring. In Paris, representatives from Japan to an international conference to be convened in Vi-

enna were looking for an interpreter to go with them. The official languages at the conference were English and French, and the itinerary included a tour of West German cities. Since by then I also knew some German, I took the job and this time arrived in Vienna from Berlin on a passenger plane.

Stadtpark in May came alive with a profusion of flowering plants, and the Vienna woods were putting on fresh green colors. In front of the baroque Schönbrunn palace, Mozart's songs and orchestral music filled the evening sky with an air of elegant optimism. We were in the midst of happiness, and we were resolved that our happiness was not to end there. Yet we had no concrete plans, just a vague notion about a future that was sure to visit us. For this reason, I was not worried about any real difficulties or impending obstacles coming our way.

At that time I was staying at Vienna's Hotel Sacher where remnants of the extravagance of a fallen empire were still evident—thick carpets, antique furniture, old paintings, gilding on the ceilings, window frames, and doors. In the restaurant on the lower floor, an elderly woman was sipping coffee all by herself, a touring American couple was examining a spread-out map, and a distinguished-looking elderly man was reading his newspaper with a magnifying glass in hand.

One morning I ordered my breakfast there, picked up a newspaper furnished for its patrons, and learned for the first time about riots in Berlin.^[5] It was reported that citizens on both sides of the city had pulled down and torn up a red flag in the eastern sector. As for the number of participants in this "anti-Communist" riot, the figure reported in the European edition of the Herald Tribune turned out to be several times higher than that in the Times of London.

[5] On June 17, 1953, Soviet tanks suppressed a general strike by the citizens of East Berlin and imposed martial law that lasted until July 12.

32—
Music

One night in a snowstorm I was listening to Tristan und Isolde at the Theater an der Wien and was so totally entranced by it that I became oblivious of myself. For me, that was a completely new experience.

I had imagined that opera, as a form of entertainment, comprised two elements: a lifeless, mundane melodrama accompanied by good singing. The relationship between the two, I thought, could not be nearly as close as that between a kabuki play and samisen music. That night, for the first time, I realized how utterly ignorant I had been. I discovered Wagner. There I found expressions of tumultuous emotions that almost defied description, expressions charged with such intensity that they had no conceivable equal in music or, indeed, in any other form of art. It struck me that their musical representation of irrationality, destructiveness, and coerciveness not only precisely and quintessentially defines Wagner; it also characterizes German romanticism as a whole, recapitulated as it is in his music. It represents the core of Strindberg's plays or the dark, uncanny passions (or tenacity of purpose) in Munch's paintings, along with their curious sense of raw immediacy and internal tumult.

Up to that time, my attention to German culture had been drawn not to the subtlety of its sensibilities or to the pragmatism in its way of thinking, but to the precision and rationality in its systems of thought. When I was working as a specialist in internal medicine, there was no other contemporary textbook in the world as systematic and comprehensive as Müller's Handbuch .^[1] And in terms of the massive extermination of

[1] Johannes Peter Müller (1801–58), a German physician, comparative anatomist, pioneer of experimental physiology, and author of Handbuch derPhysiologie des Menschen (1833–40); according to George W. Corner, it was "a standard textbook for two generations" (Encyclopedia Americana [1976], 19:556).

human beings outside the battlefield, perhaps few examples in history can parallel the systematic and highly organized act at Auschwitz. But beyond this highly organized, systematic, and rational aspect of German culture, it has another facet that manifests itself with such extraordinary vibrancy, so pregnant with tempestuous passions, that one cannot help but be lured into a state of Rausch , to use an indigenous German word.^[2] After listening to Wagner, I realized for the first time the utter irresistibility that is its intoxicating appeal. If such a cultural duality exists in Germany, how are the two aspects interrelated? For a long time, incoherent thoughts about this errant question would continue to stir in my mind.

Tristan und Isolde did not simply provoke my half-whimsical thoughts about northern European culture. More significantly, by adding a new element of "rapture" to my experience, it changed the internal order of my world. Until then, I had never gotten drunk. At least I had never experienced self-oblivion in a state of euphoria, nor had I ever wanted to. Whether wine elicits tears or grief, it simply brings about the kind of psychological and physiological state that no voluntary action can induce.^[3] In a crowd, it's relatively easy to get a feeling of intoxicated elation by embracing strangers, synchronizing footsteps, and singing or howling together. Yet I never appreciated that kind of instantaneous intoxication. When I looked at the pictures of Hitler and his gang in the mass gatherings they organized in the 1930s, I thought that I too might have become euphoric had I joined their ranks wearing their uniform, but the thought nauseated me. In the fifties when I saw men and women in a southern German beer hall drinking, singing, and swaying their bodies arm in arm, it gave me the shivers just to imagine the stupidity of participating in their activity. If I didn't want to join in, my only other alternative was to leave. Outside the beer hall, there was a town near the Alpine mountains and the night air carried with it a faint scent of flowers. I needed the liberty to think as my will dictated—that much was essential for me.

[2] Rausch means intoxication, delirium, or frenzy.

[3] Here Kato^[*] cites the title of a Koga Masao song, "Sake wa namida ka tameiki ka," popular in Japan in the early 1930s. See chapter 4, note 1 for more details.

The psychological state I called "rapture" does not mean, of course, simply "lack of consciousness of self." To reach that state no special circumstances are necessary. I can achieve it, for example, by simply trying to overtake the car ahead while driving. I am conscious only of the speeds and the positions of the cars and the conditions necessary to overtake the car ahead—certainly not the subject, myself, who's doing the overtaking. Or say I'm concentrating on solving a problem in my elementary geometry examination. What's in my consciousness is the triangle and not "I." Lack of consciousness of self is not an exceptional condition at all; it is the most commonplace state of our daily life.

But when I am in a state of rapture, as happens sometimes, I am oblivious not merely of myself but of everything except the agent of my rapture. Moreover, as long as the state of rapture continues, I wish I could remain in that state forever. In such moments, I am both passive (in terms of emotion) and active (in terms of value orientation). But when I try to overtake a car or solve a problem in an examination, all I am doing is directing my active attention to the object, lest it be unsafe to pass or impossible to solve the problem within the allotted time. In a state of rapture, no real action or precise thinking is possible. And yet it is only in such a condition that values become absolute and totally internalized. While I myself did not actively seek after such a condition, something from the outside seized me and enticed me into that experience. What then were those agents? Surely, they were not grandiose ideals about humanity, or religion, or even literature. In the sense I described, I think only the woman I love and music could have such a power to captivate me. They both came into my life at about the same time, taking me unawares and seizing me by force. At that time, there was nothing more valuable in the world to me. Not only was I oblivious of myself, I was oblivious of the whole world. That was how Wagner's music struck me at one time.

Until then, music had never affected me like that. When I was a child, I listened to Mother playing the melancholy and monotonous tunes of "Rokudan" on her koto, notes that filled our large, dim house in Shibuya's Konno-cho^[*] like a perfumed mist in the air.^[4] But instead of making me forget everything, they only reminded me of everything and

[4] "Rokudan" is a representative solo koto piece composed by Yatsuhashi Kengyo^[*] (1614–85), the father of popular koto music and the pioneer of the Yatsuhashi school.

evoked all sorts of fantasies. I was moved by Yamada Kosaku's^[*] "Karatachi no hana" (Wild orange blossoms) and "Kono michi" (This trail), and I also very much enjoyed the so-called kayokyoku^[*] , popular songs such as "Akagi no komori-uta" (Lullaby of Akagi) and "Kare susuki" (Withered eulalia).^[5] Once, while practicing on his shakuhachi , Father said he couldn't understand the mentality of those who enjoyed such silly songs, but Mother responded by saying that preference in music had nothing to do with the mind. At that time, I couldn't quite figure out what the lyrics of the popular songs really meant, but the melodies impressed me beyond words.

Nevertheless, this state of contentment did not last long. Once I realized what the lyrics meant, I got tired of them. Far from being evocative, their sentimental melodies now turned into a source of irritation. Songs I once loved so much now gave me the shivers. Perhaps one reason was that just when I was trying to cultivate some peace of mind—and unfortunately I needed to try that quite often—all too often such songs forced themselves on me. On my return voyage to Japan after my long stay in Europe, I heard such popular songs for the first time in several years. The ship was a Japanese freighter, and Japanese food, Japanese conversation—indeed everything Japanese—brought a sense of nostalgia. But I just could not stand the songs. There was a loudspeaker in my cabin, and when the central control was turned on, these popular songs, with their characteristic nasal crooning, automatically filled every room on the ship. I asked that the loudspeaker in my room be turned off, only to be told that they did not have individual controls. I then implored them to at least turn down the volume, but to no avail. The songs invaded my room throughout the day, and there were two more weeks to go before the ship arrived at a Japanese port. So I smashed the loudspeaker and spent my time reading Ronsard's poetry instead. The reading was boring, but it was not as unpleasant as the popular songs. Even today when I hear such songs on the streets of Tokyo, I recall my cabin with the broken loudspeaker, the undulating horizon of the South China

[5] On Yamada Kosaku's "Karatachi no hana" (1924) see chapter 4, note 1; the trifoliate orange plant's white flowers bloom in late spring. • For "Kono michi," also with lyrics by Kitahara Hakushu^[*] , Kato^[*] cites its first line, "Kono michi wa itsuka kita michi" (This trail we once trod). • The lullaby (1934), by Takeoka Nobuyuki, was made popular by the singer Shoji^[*] Taro^[*] (1898–1972). • On "Kare susuki" see chapter 4, note 1.

Sea outside my circular window, and a few lines of poetry by a sixteenth-century poet from a foreign land.

A melody or a piece of music often evokes memories of the specific time and place I heard it. For instance, the flute on the no^[*] stage would remind me of Suidobashi's^[*] No^[*] Theater during the war, César Franck's Variations symphoniques of the second-class patients' ward at the Tokyo University Hospital, Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier of Hongo's^[*] Nishikatamachi, and Chopin's ballads of the summer in Shinano Oiwake. Among the works of Stravinsky, The Soldier's Tale would always bring back memories of the Redoutensaal in Vienna, and Oedipus Rex of the Palais de Chaillot and the place de Trocadéro in Paris, or the composer Bekku Sadao.^[6] Figaro and Vienna, Così fan tutte and Salzburg . . . To be sure, all of these connections were coincidental. Yet I often felt there was a certain correlation between the land and the music. I have seen Der Rosenkavalier many times in Vienna, an opera so beautiful that no words can do it justice, and every time I saw it I was convinced that it was impossible to talk about the beauty of the female voice without bringing Richard Strauss into the picture.

Even so, when I saw the same opera in London, it was a little different. During the intermission at Covent Garden, a distinguished-looking man turned to me and asked, "What do you think of that?" By "that," I wondered whether he meant the music itself or the orchestra's performance. If he meant the former, the subject struck me as a little too grandiloquent to raise during the intermission of the opera. But the orchestra's performance was not so exceptional that one would be inspired to start a conversation with the next man. "Well, I thought it was quite good, but . . . ," I stammered out something. But without waiting for me to finish, he snapped, "I've never seen anything so obscene! Absolutely outrageous!"

Later, when Der Rosenkavalier was performed in Tokyo, I was totally amazed to learn that it was sponsored or recommended by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Even if one does not go so far as to describe the play as "obscene," surely one can't regard it as something beneficial to

[6] Bekku Sadao (1922–), a graduate of Tokyo University in aesthetics, studied music in Paris from 1950 to 1954 and later taught at Chuo^[*] University; he composed symphonies (Kangengaku no tame no futatsu no inori [Two prayers for orchestral music]) and an opera based on three kyogen^[*] plays called Sannin no onnatachi no monogatari (The story of three women, 1964, revised in 1986).

the moral education of the Japanese empire's young men and women. If the Ministry of Education had indeed opened up as far as that, I thought, it would not be long before Lady Chatterley's Lover could serve as an English textbook in our schools.^[7]

But when I saw the performance, it was as healthy as an athletic meet—cheerful, innocent, and full of youthful vigor. Nothing in it offered even the slightest hint about the dark shadow lurking behind the love affair of a middle-aged woman with her young lover, or the pathetic predicament of an old man out to get a young girl with his mind running wild with erotic fantasies. Of course that was not Richard Strauss, and perhaps it could not even be called music. I could only marvel how a place like Tokyo, with its youthfulness and vitality, finally succeeded in transforming even an opera like dear old Der Rosenkavalier , the last glory of the fallen central European empire with its perverted world mixed with irony and cynicism, into a vivacious and morally correct play. Outside the theater, crowds of young people were walking on the street and saying, "Hey, man, you know . . . " Automobiles raced frantically in all directions as if they had all gone mad, and the words "Great Divine Prosperity to Japan" floated across the air polluted with exhaust fumes.^[8]

I never got into the habit of comparing Japan and Europe at every turn, because I think such comparisons are not very rewarding either in the practical or in the theoretical sense. But when Der Rosenkavalier was performed in Tokyo, it inevitably reminded me of a baroque city in a faraway land. According to the dictionary, the word "baroque" was originally a Portuguese word referring to pearls of irregular shape. During the prosperous days in the past, people in this old city seemed to prefer somewhat irregular-shaped pearls to the perfectly rounded ones, thinking that the former afforded greater sophistication. Tristan und Isolde

[7] In a notorious postwar censorship case in 1950, the government prosecuted the distinguished critic and novelist Ito^[*] Sei (1905–69) for his translation of an "obscene" work, Lady Chatterley's Lover (Koyama shoten, 1950). Ito lost his case in 1957, despite the support of other prominent writers and psychologists. In 1980 the Supreme Court reversed the verdict, more than a decade after Ito's^[*] death.

[8] The setting of Der Rosenkavalier is aristocratic Vienna around 1740, during the early reign of Empress Maria Theresa. • Apparently for sarcastic effect, Kato's^[*] words call on the phrase Jimmu keiki , literally "the greatest prosperity since the time of the Jimmu emperor" (Japan's first emperor, who ascended the throne in 660 B.C. [Nihon shoki , 720]).

is a love song. Der Rosenkavalier , on the other hand, is a song reminiscing about a bygone love and a parody of a love song. How fitting it was to hear it in a large metropolis of a small country so full of recollections about the old empire and so cynical and ambivalent about its own present.

It might be an exaggeration to say that I grew up watching Japanese puppet plays and listening to the gidayu^[*] narrators, but since my student days I have been fond of the harmony produced between the gidayu recitations and the sound of the samisen. The Western equivalent of gidayu is what the French call a chanson . If one listens only to the melody without the lyrics, it is not particularly interesting. But the lyrics are often quite clever, and the music often goes well with the words. It is almost like a narrative. In the case of Die Winterreise , knowing the words certainly makes it more interesting, but even without them the music itself can be enjoyable. Yet without the words, Juliette Gréco's narrative is meaningless. The only difference is that the Western version of gidayu is more abstract and addresses more universal themes than those in Japanese puppet plays. "Je hais le dimanche!" All those "Sundays" she refers to can surely be found in any city in the world.

I was fond of music, at least of some of the pieces I happened to hear. Not only did I enjoy it, but music has come to occupy a special position in the body of my collective experience, one I could not easily replace. The significance of its position contrasted markedly with my lack of training and knowledge about the subject. Nevertheless, I did become acquainted with a number of composers and learned about their thoughts on music. Their ideas were not incomprehensible to me—at least that was how I felt most of the time. Ogura Ro^[*] would talk only about ideas he had thoroughly considered, and when he spoke he was marvelously articulate.^[9] Few people I know either inside or outside of Japan can approach his lucidity, precision, and single-mindedness—for only a single-minded artist can do his work—in addressing the artist's creative process and the gist of the complex questions involved. "It won't do you much good to aim at effect, don't you think?" Zeami also said the same thing in the old days. Ogura said it not because he had read Zeami but because

[9] Ogura Ro (1916–), a prize-winning composer and the author of Gendai ongaku o kataru (On contemporary music [Iwanami shinsho, 1970]). Kato's^[*] essay on Ogura, "Ogura Ro mata wa ongaku no gendai" (Ogura Ro or contemporary music) is in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 11:339–60.

he had contemplated his art in the same way Zeami had contemplated his. If one were to elaborate fully on the significance of his words, it could easily take more than a hundred pages.

Yoshida Hidekazu has also become a long-time friend of mine.^[10] A generous man with broad erudition and precise knowledge about music, he would gently correct my mistakes when I made naive remarks, make up for my inadequacies, and turn my inconsequential ideas into something that makes sense. And he was good enough to talk to me about a subject he knew so thoroughly that he must have felt wearied in the process. He also knows much about art other than music, and he can freely talk about all kinds of issues at various levels of abstraction, in Japanese, German, or English. I can scarcely think of a better person with whom to have an enjoyable and a uniquely witty conversation.

Another person who enjoyed a good conversation was Mrs. I, a professor at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris and a violin teacher in Tokyo. Politics, society, customs, and people—whatever the subject might be she would talk volubly, like a rapid-fire machine gun. Her views were explicit and emphatic, revealing distinct traits of her personality. I greatly enjoyed her way of coming up with quick and clear-cut answers to complex issues. But when our conversation turned occasionally to music, her manners would undergo a complete change regardless of how trivial the issue might be. Suddenly her voice softened; she became contemplative as she sought the right words, which she would then utter slowly and prudently. I respected her attitude. At that moment, the artist was no longer articulating her personal views but the facts and the truths alone. Any observer could tell how totally serious and engaged she was.

I am not fond of sentimental music. Chikamatsu's michiyuki is not sentimental; it is suffused only with the love the man and woman have for each other in their hearts. The only experience in my life comparable to the euphoric rapture a certain kind of music evoked in me is having a woman I love in my arms. Whether the embrace is long or short is just a relative matter; that it must end at some point in time is just a reality of the human condition. Music has a beginning and an end. An individual life, social institutions, and history itself also have their be-

[10] Yoshida Hidekazu (1913–), a celebrated music critic, founder and director of Nijisseiki ongaku kenkyujo^[*] (Research institute for twentieth-century music) and head of the Mito Art Tower (see his 10-vol. collected work Yoshida Hidekazu zenshu^[*] [Hakusuisha, 1975–76]).

ginnings and their ends. If there is a meaning somewhere to it at all, that meaning must be appreciated in the present. No amount of treasure equals a moment of togetherness with one's love. Within the world of art, I found its equivalent in music. Did my experience in music teach me that, or did that turn music into such an experience for me? I cannot tell.

33—
The Other Side of the Channel

It was sunset on a windy day. I still cannot forget the moment when I first saw across the rough foamy sea the white cliffs of Dover tinged with a rosy flush. The ship's rolling motion had turned some passengers pale, forcing them to double over. As I gazed at the white cliffs gradually coming my way, I was excited about the fact that I was finally able to see that island country with my own eyes. For over twenty years, I had heard and read about and envisioned in my own mind its history and culture, and I had never believed that I would one day set foot on its soil.

England reminded me of Tokyo in my childhood days. Paris or, I should say, any city in continental Europe, bore little resemblance to Tokyo. But the brick structures in some parts of London seemed indistinguishable from the Mitsubishi Building in Tokyo's Marunouchi district. At the counters of cafeterias everywhere they sold doughnuts like the ones I used to crave as a child. The area around Paddington Station, with its littered streets, soot and smoke, prostitutes, vagabonds, and hustle and bustle, reminded me of the neighborhood around Ueno Station. And in the many secondhand bookstores along Charing Cross Road, everything from the proprietors' facial expressions to the habit of stand-up reading brought back memories of the Kanda district. Large leather armchairs that I saw inside office buildings reminded me of the one in the Western-style room in Grandfather's house, and the hot-water bottle my friend kept for each of his family members was the same kind we used when we were still living in Shibuya. An unheated bedroom in the winter was something I had practically forgotten while living in France. And then there were the things that might not be exclusively British but were a part of my childhood, like afternoon tea and a game of bridge.

The custom of afternoon tea must have been something Mother learned from the English nuns at her girls' school, and the game of bridge was most probably something my uncle, a naval officer, brought back from his studies in England and then popularized among our relatives. The headmaster at our Shibuya middle school loved to quote "the British prime minister Gladstone" whenever he lectured to his students at the assembly hall. Although practically anybody anywhere could have thought of those ideas, his quotations were never from a Japanese prime minister, a French poet, or a German philosopher.

My knowledge of continental European culture was acquired through reading German and French literary works and medical books over a long period of time. Iwanami Books, Maruzen, and Nankodo^[*] , the Imperial University's French literature department and the Medical School Library.^[1] I learned the names of different human body parts and every illness in German, but I had no idea, for example, what to call an ordinary piece of tableware in that language. I read Mallarmé and the poets around him, but I never imagined what the social institution known as the café was really like.

"England," on the other hand—even though it might have been just a faded shadow of the Victorian era—was always floating in the air of my childhood as far back as I could remember, long before I could read or study. Fragments of things British in no coherent order surrounded me, so to speak, and during that time I never found any systematic way of dealing with them—things ranging from Grandfather's breakfast and furniture to Mother's "afternoon tea," from my uncle's "bridge" to my headmaster's Gladstone. But as soon as I stepped on British soil, I became keenly aware of the fact that these things together formed a tightly knit whole. I also came to realize very clearly that customs I had not previously associated with Britain had actually been imported from that

[1] In 1927 Iwanami Shigeo began Iwanami bunko's pocket-sized paperbacks of Japanese and international classics in literature, philosophy, and social and natural sciences that still educate and enlighten Japanese readers; other major publishers such as Kodansha^[*] , Kadokawa shoten, Shinchosha^[*] , and Chikuma shobo^[*] now have comparable series. • Maruzen is a Tokyo bookseller and office-goods supplier (founded 1869) noted for its import of foreign publications for Japan's serious reading public; members of "the Maruzen generations" included prominent writers and critics (Uchida Roan and Tayama Katai in the Meiji era to Akutagawa Ryunosuke^[*] in the Taisho^[*] and early Showa^[*] periods). • Nankodo (founded 1879) publishes books and journals in the medical sciences.

country. The only exception was perhaps the English language we learned at our middle school. Contrary to our long-held belief that it was the native tongue of the British, it was in fact mostly a Japanese product. While the British could understand what I was saying, much of what they said was incomprehensible to me. I am afraid the responsibility did not rest entirely with the school; I too was responsible in no small degree. But this state of affairs arose at least in part from the way our English textbooks were compiled, with extraordinary emphasis on the technicalities of the language but almost total disregard for practical usage or the essence of English literature.

I learned to enjoy English literature not through my Tokyo middle school but from Herbert Norman, the Canadian diplomat who committed suicide in Cairo after the military intervention over the Suez Canal. A historian known for his works such as Japan's Emergence as a Modern State and "Ando^[*] Shoeki^[*] and the Anatomy of Japanese Feudalism," Norman was born in Japan and educated in Britain, read Japanese and Latin, was well versed in Roman history and widely read in English literature.^[2] He once said, "I think classical Chinese is a good language for translating Latin prose and poetry. It is succinct and semantically condensed."

[2] Egerton Herbert Norman (1909–57), born in Karuizawa of Canadian missionary parents, studied European history at the University of Toronto and at Cambridge, and East Asian history at Harvard and Columbia; he joined the Canadian diplomatic service in 1939, served as a language officer in Japan until 1942, and died in Cairo on April 4, 1957. On his life and his suicide (attributed partly to investigations into alleged left-wing connections and his criticism of Occupation policy) see Cyril H. Powles's entry on Norman in Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan ; Roger Bowen, Innocence Is Not Enough: The Life and Death of Herbert Norman (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1986); and Roger Bowen, ed., E. H. Norman: His Life and Scholarship (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984). Kato's^[*] essay "E. H. Noman^[*] —sono ichimen" (E. H. Norman—one aspect of him, Shiso^[*] , special ed., Habato^[*] Noman^[*] shigo nijunen^[*] [Twenty years after Herbert Norman's death] [April 1977]) is in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 15: 271–77 . • The British, French, and Israeli intervention in October 1956, precipitated by Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal Company in July, ended in December at the direction of the United Nations. • On Norman's works, Japan's Emergence (1940) was a pioneering and influential study of the dynamics of the Meiji Restoration and its aftermath (reprinted in John W. Dower, ed., Origins of the Modern Japanese State [New York: Pantheon, 1975]); "Anatomy of Japanese Feudalism" (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan , 3d s., 2 [1949]: 1–321) presented a detailed study of Ando Shoeki (1703?–62), an innovative mid-Edo thinker-physician.

I met Norman frequently when he was representing Canada at a UNESCO conference in Paris. That was before he went to Cairo as the Canadian ambassador. Perhaps his job as a UNESCO representative afforded some free time, or rather I suppose he could afford to create some free time for himself in his position. I had the general impression that a large part of a diplomat's work, or at least his major concern, consisted of attending cocktail parties. But one day Norman said nonchalantly, "Today I've nothing more than a cocktail party, so I don't need to be in Paris."

And on that autumn day we went to the private residence of a secretary at the British Embassy. I have completely forgotten by now where in the suburbs of Paris it was located or whether another diplomat, a classmate of Norman's at the university in Britain, was from New Zealand or Australia. All I can remember is how amazed I was to learn that, of the three diplomats gathered there, one was a specialist in Japanese history, another was translating thirteenth-century Persian poetry, and the third was editing the collected works of a nineteenth-century Russian playwright to be published by Oxford University Press. That left me with a strong impression. They were certainly exceptional even among diplomats from the Commonwealth countries. Years later when I was traveling in Hong Kong with my friend the sociologist R. P. Dore, I was reminded of these three men I had met in the suburbs of Paris.^[3] In Hong Kong an acquaintance I had met in London, a young British diplomat named H, was living by himself. When we went to visit him, we saw in his small room a volume of Lao Tzu lying open on the table, and a book of Bartók's music left opened at the piano. After we talked for a while in his room, he took us to a Chinese restaurant. There was not a single foreign patron, and H chatted away cheerfully in Cantonese with the Chinese waiter and other patrons as if he were speaking his mother tongue. Since I already knew back in London that his Japanese and French had absolutely no foreign accent, I could only marvel at his fluency in Cantonese. But something else was in store for me. "My Cantonese is not that good," H said with a smile. "The language I feel most comfort-

[3] Ronald P. Dore, a prominent British sociologist on Japan, wrote City Life in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958) and Land Reform in Japan (London: Oxford University Press, 1959) and edited Aspects of Social Change in Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).

able speaking is probably Malay." He told me that he had visited old villagers in the Malay hinterland to gather materials on local folklore.

"I was there for a long time," he said.

"If I'm not mistaken, you also speak Arabic, don't you?" Dore asked.

"Oh well, just enough to get by in ordinary daily conversation," that amazing Englishman answered.

At that time it again occurred to me that the extraordinary dilettantism of the men produced by the old colonial empire characteristically went beyond mere avocation into areas that nobody could imagine.

Norman's Japanese and French were not fluent, and my English was rudimentary. However, we could communicate in any one of these three languages.

"It would be a good idea if you'd read Abinger Harvest . I'm sure you'd like it."

And sure enough, I did like it. Afterwards, I started to read as many of E. M. Forster's works as I could get hold of.^[4] I also learned from Norman the alluring charm in the prose of the so-called Bloomsbury Group and John Aubrey. Indeed, unfolding before me was a world different from that of French literature. It was a world difficult to define and still is. But if there is a certain affection within me for English culture, it certainly has something to do with—how should I put it?—perhaps an intellectual form of wabi in their prose. The essence of wabi , in works like Namboroku^[*] , eschews the ostentatious extravagance of the stately mansion in favor of the simplicity of the thatched hut by the seashore as the highest form of beauty.^[5] And a certain type of modern English writer, when naming their works, would not bother with grandiose titles and pick names such as Abinger Harvest or The Common Reader .^[6] I like that frame of mind. As a matter of fact, Norman shared it to some degree. In

[4] Essays in Forster's Abinger Harvest (1936), written over three decades, include "Notes on the English Character," "The Birth of an Empire," "The Early Novels of Virginia Woolf," and "Adrift in India" (Abinger is the name of a village in Surrey). See also Kato's^[*] essay "E. M. Fosuta^[*] to humanizumu^[*] " (E. M. Forster and humanism), Sekai (February 1959).

[5] Namboroku , a 7-vol. work (1593) by the Momoyama-period Zen monk Nambo^[*] Sokei^[*] (dates unknown) on the art of tea he learned from his teacher Sen no Rikyu^[*] (1522–91) and on Rikyu's^[*] life, though one theory ascribes it to the elder councillor of Fukuoka han Tachibana Jitsuzan, whose text is the source of current editions.

[6] Virginia Woolf's first Common Reader appeared in 1925, the second in 1932.

addition to his subtle intellectual refinement, he was extraordinarily sensitive to the feelings of others with whom he was conversing.

The last meeting I had with Norman was a totally accidental encounter on a street corner in Paris. We stood and talked for a long time in the middle of the night. Our conversation included Senator McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee, then running amok in the United States. At that time, for reasons I still do not quite understand to this day, Norman began to talk about the sensitive relationship he found himself in within the Canadian Foreign Ministry, going so far as naming names. And he added, half-jokingly, something to the effect that he wished he could resign from the Foreign Ministry at an opportune time and go to a university on the Canadian Pacific coast where he could devote himself to the study of Japanese history. In an encounter between the two of us for the first time after quite a while, or as a piece of conversation on the street in the dead of night, I couldn't help having the impression that his remarks were rather odd. This mystifying impression remained with me for a long time. Nevertheless, Norman did not take his retreat into the university and continued with his diplomat's work until his death in Cairo. At that time, I could not even dream that one day I would myself find refuge at that university on the Pacific coast and spend some leisurely days there.^[7]

Since I had very little money to spend after I landed in England, I had a hard time finding a cheap rooming house. Finally I found one in Earl's Court. Rent was to be paid on a weekly basis, and breakfast and dinner were provided. The eating hours were fixed, and even if one was late for just a minute, the door to the dining hall was closed and no one got in. The room was small, and with the addition of a chair, a desk, and an iron-frame bed, there was not much space left. The bed had a unique design, the kind that could scarcely be found in any cheap hotels in Paris. It stood high off the floor and was so small that one could hardly turn over. Moreover, thanks to its meticulous design, the middle of the bed rose in a semicylindrical shape. Even if one could actually fall asleep on the thing, it would surely be a miracle if one did not tumble out of it.

[7] Kato^[*] taught at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver from September 1960 to August 1969, before becoming professor and director of the East Asian Institute at the Free University of Berlin in September 1969 at the age of 50. During his tenure at UBC he wrote A Sheep's Song , first serialized between 1966 and 1967.

There was a small gas heater in the room. Primed with a shilling, it gave off heat—but only for a fixed time. When the time ran out, it shut itself off automatically. If that happened in the middle of the night and if one was out of shillings, the only thing one could do was to endure the severe cold. Sixpence would not buy half the time. It was then that I discovered that the British shilling and the French franc, while different in weight, had exactly the same size and thickness (since one shilling was worth five yen and one franc only eighty sen , it also served as an economic solution).^[8] And so I carried a lot of francs in my pocket.

People from various countries gathered at the rooming house, turning it into something of a racial exposition. The owner was from central Europe, and the room maid was Irish. Among the residents were a young worker from India, a jobless man from Ceylon, a black man from some African country, a couple from Germany, a female student from France, a middle-aged English working woman, and another young man with refined features who might have come from India. Nobody had any idea what he was doing for a living, but that was only because he did not understand any English.

The man from Ceylon had with him many ivory elephants in various sizes, and he made his living by peddling them to any willing buyer. He caught me one time and, with a very earnest look on his face, said he had something interesting to tell me. "If it's about your elephants, I can't afford it," I responded. Oh no, he explained, he wasn't going to ask me to buy his elephants. With excitement in his voice, he whispered to me that he had just discovered he could spend a night with a dancer from such and such cabaret for the price of just one of his small elephants.

"Oh, is that right? Good for you. But I'm not going to buy your elephants just so you can have your dancer."

"That's okay. The owner of this place already bought one. But can you imagine how cheap it is . . . " And on he talked with unabating enthusiasm.

The female student from France was not there pursuing her studies but looking for a job—at least that was what she said. She would always get a call in the morning, and very often she would be out for the entire day.

[8] There were 100 sen in a yen.

As long as the rent was paid, the owner would not even make a fuss about night visitors. Every weekend, a pretty woman would come to visit the Indian, the one with a job. I had talked with the Indian at the dining room, and I knew a little bit about the woman as well. As a matter of fact, when I first decided to come to England, it was not only because I wanted to see the country I had heard so much about since my childhood. The real reason was that I could not forget the young woman from Vienna. She had found a job in London, working in an office in the City. The pretty blond woman who came to visit the Indian was also an Austrian and a good friend of hers. In time I learned that the Indian did not have much money but did have a wife back home, and that his female friend had been working as a live-in maid for a wealthy English family since she left her country. Her job was demanding and she could not get out of the house often, but until she could speak better English it was difficult for her to change her job. Living in a big city in a foreign country, she had few friends, and she apparently thought it was difficult for her to sever her relationship with the Indian.

One night after dinner, the Indian told me that he wanted my advice on certain things. The young woman had demanded that he give her a straight answer whether he had any intention of marrying her, and he asked me what he should do. When I said, "I don't think you can do that," all at once he looked relieved.

"I don't even know her that well. I can't make that kind of commitment."

"If that's the case, you should tell her that," I said. "Even if it means that you two are through, perhaps it's better to end the relationship now before you have a baby on your hands."

The last sentence seemed to have quite an effect on him. He soon disappeared from the rooming house and went somewhere else.

The young woman from Vienna was working in a small investment firm for a small salary. We would meet in town, but finding a place for dinner was just as hard as in Paris or Vienna in those days. Restaurants that seemed to serve good food were too expensive, and in a cheap one we did not mind the food as much as its boisterous atmosphere, which did not really permit any relaxed conversation. The room she rented was small, and mine was even smaller. She did have a distant relative she called an "aunt," who for a long time had been working as a cook and a housekeeper at a rich man's house in Chelsea. When the owner was away, the aunt would often entertain her own acquaintances, including my-

self, through the back door. She practically worshiped the master of the house and, speaking in a strange language mixed with English and German expressions, would tell us in great detail about his daily activities in a tone ranging from praise to marvel. During his absence, she would treat us to a sumptuous dinner. The house was not that large, but the furniture was all antique. There were silver tableware and candelabra, a Renaissance marble statue and medieval wood sculpture. In the library, old editions of classical and English literature, history, and travelogues filled the shelves. Through the French windows in the living room, one could see in between the trees on the riverbank the masts of sailboats going up and down the Thames. I heard that every year the owner of the house would go hunting for chamois in places as far away as the Pyrenees or the mountains of Turkey.

Without ever meeting the owner, I had lavish meals at his house, took leisurely baths, and occasionally spent a night there and left the next morning. Waiting for the bus at Chelsea's riverbank, I would often hum the tune of the thief's song in The Three-Penny Opera . But of course, I am sure the owner must have known very well what his cook did while he was away. Like Japanese companies giving their employees "bonuses" equivalent to as much as several months' pay instead of a routine salary raise, I suppose the owner, having weighed the situation, decided that her habit of entertaining guests was a safety device working to his advantage.

My accommodation at Earl's Court was not always satisfactory. I began thinking that instead of living in a small room with board, it probably would not cost me much more to rent a slightly larger room without board. But I was not successful in finding such a place, though the experience taught me about another aspect of English society. First, I looked through the ads for room rentals posted in front of shops. If the cost, the location, and the other conditions seemed agreeable, I would call them up from a nearby public telephone. But roughly a quarter of these ads carried a provision saying "For Whites Only" or "People of Colour Need Not Apply." Even when I called places without such provisions, they would ask for my nationality once they heard my accent. When I told them I was Japanese, they would immediately hang up or sometimes say that their room had been rented just a moment ago. When I was living in Paris, I was naturally conscious most of the time of the fact that I was a foreigner. But seldom was I conscious of myself as a "person of colour," or of the Japanese as former enemies in the eyes of

the French. However, room hunting in London made me think of myself as nonwhite, and the drunks in England reminded me that the Japanese were once their "enemy."

"Are you Japanese?" a drunk asked me.

"That's right."

"The Japanese gave me a terrible time in Malaya."

"I'm sorry to hear that." That was all I could say by way of carrying on a conversation.

This sort of experience was not exactly pleasant for me. Nevertheless, as far as this notion of "people of colour" is concerned, I have never once felt angry at the prejudice exhibited by the other party. Perhaps the anachronism of that attitude is too ludicrous to evoke any anger in me. For it seems to me that to emphasize the distinction between whites and nonwhites and, furthermore, to underscore their confrontation, is far less damaging to nonwhites than to whites. They are the minority of the world's population, and on the stage of world history there is nothing more foolish than to emphasize confrontation with the majority.

Yet racial prejudice cannot always be gotten rid of with this kind of reasoning alone. As a matter of fact, when I returned to Japan from Europe and saw for the first time how mannequins in department stores were made to look like Westerners, I was shocked. It was not just limited to the ones wearing Western clothes; even those in kimono no longer had black hair or black eyes like those of Japanese women! Was this not evidence of the fact that the patrons of department stores, in other words the overwhelming majority of Japanese women, felt that Western women were more beautiful than they were? I have never thought that Western women in general are prettier than their Japanese counterparts. It is true that the physique of Western males is better, but I myself have little interest in this matter. Since childhood, I've known that many of my countrymen have better looks and physique than I do. Neither my body nor my appearance can be improved anyway, so instead of concerning myself with them and developing an inferiority complex, I decided that good mental health meant not bothering myself with these matters. For a long time, this attitude has been second nature to me. Whether somebody has long or short legs does not affect me emotionally, and as far as I am concerned, skin color doesn't matter either. If I cared about the way I looked and believed it was outstanding for a Japanese but not for a Westerner, I too might end up either rejecting West-

ern aesthetic values (or standards) or idolizing the Westerners and dyeing my hair another color. But on this matter I've always been a bystander, someone who doesn't have the time to get all worked up to begin with. As for other matters, almost all arguments about the superiority or inferiority of races essentially exhibit nothing but the ignorance of their advocates. And unfortunately, ignorance has often been the force that drives the wheel of history.

34—
Hypocrisy

The art historian S lived just outside Oxford in a farmhouse he was remodeling and commuted to work at the university art museum in his own small automobile of indeterminate age. That car did not inspire much confidence that it could move but, once the engine got going, generated an incredible array of complex noises from every part of its body and put-putted along the country roads between the fields and the woods. The two-story home was being not only remodeled but enlarged, with S himself laying the bricks. Once every two years he writes a book on Chinese or Japanese art; once every four to five years he builds a new house with his own hands. Years later when I met him in North America, he was telling me his fourth house was about to be completed. The farmhouse he was remodeling in Oxford's suburbs was probably his second one. The walls in the add-on room had not yet been painted, and plain wood panels were fitted into the windows to prevent the cold air from coming in. The fire was blazing vigorously in the large fireplace, and the flames cast quivering shadows over objects in the dimly lit room. The outside was very quiet, but the chill grew more and more severe as the night dragged on. I was seated facing the fireplace, but my back felt the cold all down the spine.

"It seems to me the British value the psychological effects of heating over its physical effectiveness," I said.

"Are you cold?"

"No. I never get tired of watching a fire burning. We Japanese are used to sitting in airy houses made of wood and paper, even in the middle of winter. We watch the red-hot charcoal fire as we savor its psychological

and poetic effects—from The Pillow Book to the Seven Collections of the Basho^[*] school."^[1]

We then began to talk about the earl of Rochester's sensuous poetry, Bartók's music, and the musical traditions of central Europe. Mrs. S had played a string instrument in a chamber orchestra, but now with a small child to take care of, she said it was close to impossible for her to reconcile a musician's life with the demands of her family.

S was talking about parliamentary democracy in Japan. "On one hand, you have a radical left wing, and on the other you have a right wing, which, I'm afraid, is no different from what it used to be in prewar days. Wouldn't parliamentary democracy be crushed by forces from both sides?" I remember replying at the time that if democracy were to be crushed, it wouldn't be from both sides. Where would Japan's "reverse course" beginning with the onset of the Korean War lead us? To be sure, the left wing was now stronger than in prewar days, but in many ways it was even weaker in comparison with German democracy under the Weimar Republic. And the force that crushed German democracy didn't come from both the left and the right; it came from the right organized by Hitler.

I also visited a novelist I had met at the conference in southern France at his country home. There were quite a few bedrooms on the second floor of his large house, and the living room, the dining room, and the study were on the ground level. Still, the novelist had built a small shed among the fruit trees in his garden as his workplace. "No matter what my family does, they won't bother me here." But there were only three people in his family, including himself. His wife, an instructor in Italian at a university in London, was even taller than her husband and was also around forty. She spoke with coherence and consistency, and in her presence even the novelist appeared somehow like an adolescent student. Their young son was studying classical languages, had impeccable manners, and was very courteous to their family guest.

[1] Makura no soshi^[*] (Pillow book), a collection of private reflections, reminiscences, and diary-like entries by Sei Shonagon^[*] (written ca. 1000 A.D.), like the contemporary Tale of Genji , has long been cherished as a paragon of classical Japanese aesthetic sensibilities. • The Basho school's Shichibushu^[*] (compiled ca. 1733) are haikai poetry collections: Fuyu no hi (Winter day, 1684), Haru no hi (Spring day, 1686), Arano (The wild fields, 1689), Hisago (The gourd, 1690), Sarumino (The monkey's straw raincoat, 1691), Sumidawara (Sack of charcoal, 1694), and Zoku Sarumino (Sequel to the monkey's straw raincoat, 1698).

"Next year, he'll probably go to public school," his mother said. That's the kind of school to which only the rich send their children.

"In theory, everybody can go," the novelist remarked. "But in reality you won't find kids from working-class families because it costs too much."

"It's not just a matter of money. It also depends on the kind of education parents expect their children to have," his wife said. "In any case, as far as education in the classical languages is concerned, that's the only course to take."

Outside the large window in the living room was a meadow with white birch trees planted on its slope. From the dense fog drifting across the meadow, a grazing horse appeared like a shadow and came close to the window. "We're good friends. Other horses never come near the window," the novelist said. It was a young, white horse. Suddenly, I was reminded of my grandfather who went to Australia to procure military horses during World War I, and the pictures of horses hanging over the fireplace in his house. Though I had had no association with horses in any way since that time, the novelist's words "We're good friends" were filled with genuine affection, and for some reason I was moved.

While living in England and during subsequent visits there, I developed a number of close friendships, not just with the art historian and the novelist, but also with a neurologist, a historian, a sociologist, and an actor. I noticed that most of them preferred living in the countryside. This choice, it occurred to me, had something in common with that of the Edo poets and scholars who aspired to a leisurely life in the fields and mountains after they resigned from their official posts. Such was the ideal of seiko^[*] udoku —work in the fields when the sun shines, read at home when it rains. But unlike the Edo Confucian scholars, the English also read their newspapers. Beyond differences in their professions and specializations, every one of my close friends in England shared an interest in domestic and international affairs, each person holding to his or her own views. This was something not often seen in Tokyo, at least not to the same degree. The literati after Edo didn't bother themselves with national or international affairs, preferring instead to engage in the elegant tradition of chitchat about abstract matters of artistic taste.^[2] Any

[2] The literati's tradition of "elegant chitchat" (qing-tan; seidan in Japanese) began after the Later Han dynasty, in the early third century, and reached the height of its popularity in the Six Dynasties (222–589). A sense of alienationand personal vulnerability in an often treacherous political climate inspired the escapist impulse central to the qing-tan mentality; its ostensible unworldliness, heightened by wine, music, and Taoist and Buddhist discourse, often masked its more pragmatic design as a precarious art of political survival.

discussion of mundane affairs was anathema. Even if they touched on worldly matters from time to time or talked about the subtleties of a woman's sensibilities, any attempt to analyze international affairs was unbearably bad taste. The traditional dichotomy was one between elegance and worldliness, with politics belonging to the latter category. If one has to come up with a close Western equivalent, I suppose it would be the duality of spiritual culture and material civilization the Germans speak about. In that formulation, politics belongs to the realm of "civilization" and not "culture." Realpolitik refers to the arena in which the concerns of spirituality or idealism are irrelevant. But in the British view, the lack of direct links between politics and spirituality or between reality and ideal did not imply a total disjunction.

It was true that I had had many occasions in Tokyo to learn about the political views of the left. Seiji to bungaku (politics vis-à-vis literature).^[3] But the notion of "politics" here was not what the British meant by the term. Rather, it appeared to refer to political ideology or, more specifically, to Marxism. I would argue that in Tokyo, it was not because we were interested in politics that we discussed the relationship between politics and literature. It was because we had so little interest in political matters that, instead of talking about politics and literature, we debated on the relationship between political ideology and literature. Calling political ideology "politics" was just a bad rhetorical habit. That was something I often thought about when I was in England. To live in England meant that I had to think in English, and thinking in English made it

[3] The postwar seiji to bungaku debate set the Kindai bungaku (modern literature) critics, most notably Ara Masahito and Hirano Ken, against the orthodox leftist Shin Nihon bungakukai (new Japanese literature association) group represented by Nakano Shigeharu (on Nakano, see postscript, note 11). The radical leftist critics and their more "liberal" counterparts disagreed about the relation between artistic imagination or the self's "subjectivity" and literature's political imperatives as set out by the Japanese Communist Party; the controversy later included issues ranging from writers' war responsibility to prewar ideological conversion. For at least a decade after 1945, no other literary controversy so defined the character and dynamics of postwar Japanese literature. See Victor Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

imperative to translate into English long-familiar Japanese concepts. And naturally, translations also helped to clarify the semantics of the Japanese language.

In some ways, the conversations I had in Paris were not unlike those in Tokyo. We talked about man the rebel, the organization and the individual, revolution and reformism, mass movements and ideology, communism and humanity, and so on.^[4] Ultimately, we were generally concerned with what was right and, consequently, what we thought was desirable. But it seemed to me that the British did not have a habit of thinking in terms of what was desirable but rather what they could accomplish within a given situation. "About the only thing the Japanese government could do was delay Japan's remilitarization," they would say. "Isn't that what the Yoshida cabinet has been trying to do all along?" But when I witnessed how the former invader of the Chinese continent was entering into a military alliance against the government that represented the Chinese people instead of concluding a peace treaty with them, I thought the whole business was an outrageous moral disgrace.

What I learned in England was not to treat morality and politics as separate categories, but to see how they were interrelated. Around that time, I already harbored some doubts myself about tackling political issues from a purely moral perspective. From my point of view Japanese militarism was injustice itself. Yet given our hindsight about the course of the Cold War, it was no longer possible to see the Pacific War only in terms of a struggle between democracy and fascism. On the other hand, if we think of all wars simply as manifestations of power politics, the injustice perpetuated by Japanese imperialism would appear to be at worst just a matter of degree. My question was also connected with the issue Albert Camus tried to address in L'Homme révolté . A human being who aspires to freedom always rebels against authority. Since authority represents an organized entity, the rebellion against it, too, has to be organized in order to become effective. But Camus was saying that once it becomes organized, the organization of the rebels itself would end up crushing the freedom of the individual, and he went on to discuss complex issues ranging from artistic freedom to the organization of the Com-

[4] Kyosanshugiteki^[*] ningen , the Japanese title (1952) of Louis Aragon's Homme communiste (1946), is also the title of two books by the cultural critic Hayashi Tatsuo (1896–1984) and the Kindai bungaku critic Odagiri Hideo (1916–), both dated 1951.

munist party and its relationship to social justice.^[5] And so one could say that the crux of his argument has to do with the correlation between moral values and power politics.

Because these issues were close to my heart, I was practically stunned when I read in a weekly magazine a review of Camus's book by Richard Crossman of the Labour Party.^[6] Crossman wrote that he had no idea what had driven Camus to paint such a gloomy picture in his political discourse in L'Homme révolté . Demands for social justice—the organization of a Communist party—the suppression of individual freedom—injustice—that was Camus's line of argument and it showed nothing but the author's ignorance of European political history. Look at the history of the Fabian Society and the British Labour Party. Look at the social policies of the Scandinavian countries. Crossman went on to argue that there were many other ways to rise up to the call for social justice besides organizing a Communist party and bringing about a Communist revolution.

When I was reading his critical remarks, I could not help recalling what Dr. Miyoshi Kazuo had told me in the research laboratory at Tokyo University's Medical School. He said, "One cannot accomplish much if one does not ask the right questions. And when no solution is possible, then one has to scrutinize the questions themselves." When the subject was politics, I came to realize that perhaps the questions Crossman raised were more pertinent than Camus's. Instead of asking how absolute moral values could be reconciled with the entrenched realities of power politics, one should instead ask what concrete avenues were available to realize relative values in a political reality not dictated by power relationships alone. To the question, Are you in favor of communism? I would

[5] In L'Homme révolté (The rebel, 1951)—a subject Kato^[*] refers to in his Parisian conversations—Albert Camus rejected both Christianity and communism, causing an open break with Sartre in 1952, as he set out an allegory of revolution within a new Promethean fable: "Proclaiming his hatred of the gods and his love of man, [Prometheus] turns disdainfully away from Zeus toward the mortals to lead them in an assault against the sky . . . [and] Prometheus, alone, has become god and reigns over the solitude of men. . . . [But] he is no longer Prometheus, he is Caesar" (L'Homme révolté , quoted in Germaine Brée, Camus [New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964], 218–19).

[6] Richard Howard Stafford Crossman (1907–74), a fellow and tutor in philosophy at Oxford (1930–37) and editor (1970–72) of the New Statesman , a leading socialist weekly; in Harold Wilson's Labour cabinet he served as Minister of Housing (1964–66) and leader of the Commons (1966–68).

answer in the negative if I were an Englishman, but in the positive if I were a Chinese. To the question, Are you in favor of social democracy? I would say yes if I were a Swede, but no if I were a Cuban. I came to realize the futility of arriving at an answer without qualifications and to appreciate the fact that answers are meaningful only when they come with reservations. This way of thinking has since determined my attitude toward political issues. My subsequent involvement with politics was extremely limited. All I did was simply follow other political pundits and proclaim why I felt policy A was more desirable than policy B. Most of my ideas have not been realized, but that never made me feel the need to alter my views or to become disillusioned with politics.

I suppose what I acquired in England was not any specific way of thinking about politics but, rather, an attitude toward it, one that would not directly associate moral sentiments with political contemplations. It seemed to me that this attitude was indispensable if the fundamental alliance between political and moral considerations was to be maintained. Needless to say, the British differ greatly among themselves in their way of thinking. But there seemed to be a unique style in their manner of discourse, a delicate balance between a sense of intellectual objectivity and a tendency toward moral self-restraint. It was highly questionable whether British foreign policy was more "hypocritical" than those of other countries. Even if it were, I think one could hardly expect more from a nation's foreign policy. Without the recognition of "virtue," surely there is also no need for "hypocrisy." Hitler's political actions were not hypocritical. And if one is totally convinced of one's own righteousness and the other side's evil, there is also no place for hypocrisy. One could argue that Dulles the anti-Communist crusader might be blind, but he was not a hypocrite.

After several months in England, my financial circumstances were increasingly desperate. But in London, I could think of no immediate means of coming up with the money I needed. I thought about returning to Paris, realizing that there I might be able to support myself, though not two of us. At the time she and I bid farewell in Florence, I also thought it would be the end for us. As I had when I saw her walking away from my train window at Vienna's Westbahnhof. I could not allow the same thing to go on endlessly. Before leaving England, I had to make up my mind what to do. Either we were going to work out a suitable plan to live together in the future or, if that proved impossible, we had to accept our last chance together as what it really was. The woman waiting for

my return in Kyoto had not uttered a word of protest when I was about to leave for Europe. If she had done so emphatically, I probably would not have gone at all. I had no desire to exploit another person's kindness by turning it against her, still more so when she was too far away to defend her own position. And so I decided that before leaving England, I would travel to Edinburgh, touring medieval churches along the way, and make the trip my last chance together with the woman I loved.

It was our first long journey in Britain. The owner of every inn we went to would look at us suspiciously and declare, "No unmarried couple can stay in one room."

"We aren't asking for one room. We're asking you if you have two," I responded angrily. "What a hypocritical custom!" I muttered.

"But this sort of thing could happen elsewhere, not just in Britain," she noted.

It would not happen in Japan. All one does is write "Additional person" in the hotel register and that's the end of it. Moreover, for example on the subject of abortion, one does not have to pay a ridiculously large sum of money and put oneself at risk with a quack; if necessary it can be performed at a well-equipped hospital at a low cost. And divorce also can be accomplished at any time as long as there is agreement between the couple. That even matters like those cannot easily be done in many European countries results from excessive interference by church authorities into people's private life. "I want to go and see Japan," she remarked.

On reflection, I think that for a long time Christianity to me had been part of the history of a distant land associated with Aristotelian theology and the spirit of capitalism. To be sure, when Dulles talked about punitive expeditions against "Godless countries," he reminded me of the Crusades and the burning of heretics at the stake in the old days; but these thoughts, too, had nothing directly to do with my everyday life. In Japan, I had never found myself in any trouble because of a church. Japan's Christian converts are a powerless group, and they are in the minority. They do not meddle in elections or infiltrate the upper echelons of political power, and they do not interfere in any way with the manners and customs of the Japanese people or with their private life. Ever since the Edo period and under militarist Japan, the party that has initiated regulatory controls over public morality has not been the church, not even the Buddhist temple, but always state authority itself.

If Christianity and the Christian church were evaluated not on the ba-

sis of their relationship with Aristotle's heritage or with the capitalist spirit but on their impact on how people fill in their hotel register and on matters of pregnancy and divorce, one would naturally come to a different conclusion. It was not just in the past that the Western church killed Galileo. Even today with its enormous influence, there is no telling how many unfortunate young women have been driven to suicide or how many couples have been chained to their hell of mutual hatred. I remember one time in Paris talking to a small child next door. Still walking in uncertain steps, he was just beginning to talk.

"You shouldn't do such a naughty thing," I said.

Looking a little scared, the child stared at me with wide-open eyes and nodded.

"You shouldn't do naughty things even if your mother isn't looking."

"I won't even if she doesn't see me," the child said.

"Why?"

"Because the good God is watching me!"

"Even outside your house?"

"Inside, outside, all the time."

"Where is God when he is watching you?"

Without the slightest hesitation, the child raised his little arm above his head and said with a serious look on his face, "High up there."

I smiled. The child, too, broke into a smile, his face filled with a joy no words could possibly describe.

"And do you believe in God?" she asked me once.

"No, I don't. But I have nothing against others who do."

"What if a convert asked you to believe as he does?"

"I'd tell him to leave me alone. That's all."

"Just what I thought you'd say," she said.

In Edinburgh many people gathered for the music festival. The illuminated old castle town on the hill formed a sharp profile against the night sky. In the distance we could hear bagpipes from a Scottish military band. We couldn't get tickets for the opera, but we walked around the city, went to a concert and a play, and looked at a Cézanne exhibition with works selected from British and American collections. In terms of its quantity and quality, the chronological categorization, and the lighting effects, it was a superb exhibition. I thought I understood for the first time the significance of Cézanne as a phenomenon, and I was excited by my new discovery. In the history of modern Western painting, first there was Giotto and then, I learned, Cézanne.

"It makes me sad to think our trip's coming to an end," she remarked.

London, the tube, the City's gray walls, the cockney accent, the old charwomen going to work in the offices early in the morning, the Sundays on the banks of Chelsea, "the aunt's" neuralgia and her "Oh I bin alt , you know . . . "

"Remember to write when you get to Paris," she said.

"Of course," I said.

"Once a week."

"Of course," I repeated. But what was running through my mind was that once I crossed the Channel, it was a different world. Could "I" possibly exist at all independent of my surroundings? What exactly was this "I" anyway? Was there a greater hypocrisy than to imagine I would never change? And since I had left Japan, wasn't it true that even the part in me I believed to be the least susceptible to change had changed? If I really intended never to see her again, I knew I should not write.

I left England soon after my return from Scotland. On the train I heard French spoken for the first time after a long while, and through the train window my eyes caught the changing scenery of Normandy. In the limpid air each leaf on the trees glistened under the rays of the early autumn sun like a crisply pronounced syllable. France had not changed. The young woman from whom I had parted was never away from my mind. But my letter to London remained unwritten for a long time.

35—
Farewell

After returning from England, I obtained the foreigner's work permit I had applied for a year earlier. I had just about forgotten the whole thing. With the permit, I should be able to solve all my economic problems at one stroke. At the time of my application, I already held a position at a national research institute. And if I went back to work there, I had every reason to believe that I could support myself in France.

Until then, I had been earning my living by sending manuscripts to Japanese newspapers and, if necessary, working as an interpreter to tide me over any emergency needs. As my stay in Europe stretched on, I grew less interested in writing short articles about everyday experiences. Similarly, witnessing again and again the same phenomenon of how extraordinarily difficult communication was between the Japanese and Westerners, I lost all curiosity about the job of interpretation. But that was only part of the story. I also realized that whether I worked for the newspapers or for the travelers, as long as my business dealings were with the Japanese, my exposure to life in the West could only be onesided. If my economic infrastructure was so entwined with the fabric of Japanese society, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to understand the superstructure of a foreign society from within. As long as I was living in France, I wanted a local job commensurate with my professional credentials.

My professional training was in internal medicine, especially clinical care and research in hematology. This specialized work could only be found in large hospitals or research institutes, and such establishments in Paris were all state-operated. Working for a private enterprise, in certain circumstances I might have been able to arrange an advance on an

unofficial monthly salary—but this was not possible in a national institute. That was why I had to apply for an official permit at the Labor Bureau for Foreigners as soon as I got the job.

In France in those days, a Japanese applying for something as simple as a one-year student visa had to go through a rather arduous application process. When it came to the application for a work permit, the process was even more complicated. I had to appear at the government office many times, and it took a long time to obtain the certification from the research institute and prepare the documents for the police. After keeping me waiting for some time, a policeman took out a thick file of documents and began to turn them over in front of me.

"I see, looks like you've been to southern France last year," he said.

"Yes, I have."

He then enunciated my exact travel dates (which I myself had forgotten), and when he said, "You also stayed in Avignon," I was amazed. "And then you went to Aix-en-Provence."

"Was there anything wrong with that?"

"No, as long as you haven't done anything improper," the man muttered haughtily.

That reminded me of the time when a plainclothes policeman stopped me on a street. I was walking alone on a boulevard near the Arc de Triomphe holding two or three newspapers I had bought at a subway exit.

"Monsieur!" somebody behind me suddenly called out. As I turned around, I saw a stranger walking quickly in my direction. He simply flashed his policeman's I.D.—I suppose that's what it was—and said only one word, "Identification." With a contemptuous demeanor, he practically snatched my residence papers and passport away from me and examined them for a while before thrusting them back at me all without even the courtesy of uttering a single cordial remark. I suppose when government bureaucrats like him play with their young children at home, they, too, can be good fathers. And whenever I had to deal with the police, I always thought that perhaps my less than distinguished looks were to blame.

The trouble with the application process went beyond the ridiculously long hours I spent with the police. To begin with, the regulations clearly stated that foreigners were permitted to work only in jobs for which replacement by French workers was deemed difficult. With the exception of manual labor, roadwork, housework and the like, jobs for which France at long last was beginning to feel the pinch, I could not imagine such positions even existed. In fact, as rumor went, among the few hundred Japa-

nese residents in France at that time, those who had work permits and were officially employed at French enterprises or organizations were the exceptions among exceptions. To be sure, these people did have unusual skills difficult for the French to replace. One such individual was a highranking judo expert working as an instructor for the police. Another was the singer Ishii Yoshiko, who sang Japanese songs at a Montmartre vaudeville.^[1] Another person made his living at a chicken farm by instantly identifying the sex of the chickens to be hatched simply by holding freshly laid eggs in his palm.

And here was I, with a weak constitution and no liking for physical combat. I inclined toward effeminate intellectual pursuits and never managed to acquire any rank in the martial arts. Furthermore, I was not endowed with a beautiful voice and cannot even imagine myself singing songs from any country in front of an audience. As for telling the sex of an egg, even if I had a whole day to examine it in my hands, I still wouldn't have even the foggiest idea, to say nothing of making instant and accurate identification. The only special skill I had, if one could call it that was at accurately identifying the type of human blood cells after briefly examining them under an oil-immersion microscope. This, of course, was something French specialists could do as well. About the only thing I could say was that because there were not many such specialists around, immediate replacement of my services by a French national could, in certain situations, be deemed "difficult." So even though I took the trouble to go through with the application, I could by no means be optimistic about the outcome.

Before permission was finally granted—before I knew what my prospects of making a living in France were—I continued to live my life without thinking about it. As long as I had gone through all the necessary steps, worrying about the same thing over and over again would only be a waste of time. Furthermore, I had not yet made up my mind whether to live in France for any substantial period of time. If I should decide to stay, I hoped circumstances would permit me to do so. But deciding on how long to stay was a completely different matter.

When I saw Paris for the first time, I thought big cities everywhere were

[1] Ishii Yoshiko (1922–), a graduate of Tokyo Music School, first sang pop American songs and switched to chansons after she went to Paris in 1952. In 1961 she began a music agency to train singers such as Kishi Yoko^[*] and Kato^[*] Tokiko; she returned to her singing career in August 1975.

essentially the same and after a year's stay I'd simply return to Tokyo. After a while, I came to appreciate a sense of depth in French culture, and I realized that a year's stay was just a preparatory phase before I could even begin to fathom it. Without the slightest hesitation I extended my sojourn. Toward the end of my second year, I began to feel that the depth of French culture was infinite and, once I ventured into it, I'd fall into an abyss so deep that finally there'd be no way out. The thought threw me into a dizzy spell almost like a frightful shiver. A culture permeates all one's senses. Encountering a different culture and simply observing it, one can always return to one's old nest with all senses intact. Malinowski's experience with the Trobriand Islands is one such example.^[2]

But if the second culture ceases to be merely an object of observation and affects the observer himself to the extent that it changes his basic makeup, the process is irreversible and gives rise to a situation where there can be no turning back. Koizumi Yakumo, a long-time resident in Matsue, is one such example.^[3] Lafcadio Hearn at that time was not merely observing Japanese society as an object; he immersed himself in Japanese culture and became Koizumi Yakumo. Genuine immersion in the new culture banishes, at least in part, the culture indigenously acquired. I wonder if the process did not send shivers of apprehension through Koizumi Yakumo too. I often felt that an extension of my sojourn in France was, quite naturally, tantamount to an extension of my absence from Japan, and if I had any desire to pack up and go at all, I should do so before I found myself too deeply involved in the whole affair.

By then, the French language, my relationship with the French people, their customs, their manners, and the seasons of the land had al-

[2] Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski (1884–1942), an eminent Polish-born British social anthropologist whose analysis of four years of fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands and northwest Melanesia (1914–18) set new standards in field research. He was the first professor of social anthropology at the London School of Economics and also taught at Yale. Among his major works were Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927), A Scientific Theory of Culture (1944), and Freedom and Civilization (1960).

[3] Koizumi Yakumo, the Japanese name of Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), the best-known early interpreter of Japanese culture and folklore for Western readers, who went to Japan in 1890 as a correspondent for Harper's New Monthly (including fifteen months in the ancient provincial city of Matsue on the Sea of Japan coast), became a naturalized Japanese subject in 1896, and taught English literature at Tokyo Imperial University (1896 to 1903). His works include Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), A Japanese Miscellany (1901), and Japan: An Attempt at an Interpretation (1904).

ready permeated into my inner self, forming layers of interacting experiences, and were about to create a new part of me. When I said, "This winter is really cold," the statement no longer evoked memories of the winter in Tokyo last year or the one the year before that; I was thinking about the winter in Paris. It was different from a traveler's impression of a cold Parisian winter. Past experiences determine the significance of those of the present: the kind of winter in which gray skies stretched across the space between the stone walls, when unremitting rain mixed with ice dampened the pavements, when the warm glow filtering through the café's clouded windows in an early evening enticed the hearts of the passers-by. After several months with almost no sun, suddenly spring arrived with its blue skies and young leaves on the tree-lined streets, dazzling the eye with their infinite brilliance and freshness. In order to savor "the warm breezes on the first day of spring," one needs to entertain vivid memories of "the frozen waters once soaking through the sleeves."^[4] The coming of early spring can only be appreciated in the same place one has spent the winter. And that is not all.

At first, my vocabulary in French was nowhere near my vocabulary in Japanese. But increasingly I learned the names of things in French before I knew how to say them in Japanese: vegetables I had never eaten in Japan, systems and institutions I had never come across, philosophical concepts I had never utilized. Each and every one of these items was closely connected with my everyday life and thoughts. Of course, with the aid of a dictionary, I could translate these expressions into Japanese. I could say something like, "I took a stroll along 'a thoroughfare lined with a kind of chestnut tree,' ate 'a kind of shrimp' and 'a variety of pear grown in the West,' went to see a play in a 'theater supported by government subsidies,' and thought about 'a dominant idea running through the entirety of the play.' " But I could not think like that! And if the topic moved from chestnut trees or pears to democracy and existence, surely I could not say something like "a type of democracy" or "a Western kind of existence." Translation does not solve the real problems. To think in two different languages inevitably means to think, to a larger or lesser

[4] A famous "spring" poem by Ki no Tsurayuki (ca. 872–945) in Kokinshu^[*] : "On this first spring day / might warm breezes be melting / the frozen waters / I scooped up, cupping my hands / and letting my sleeves soak through?" (Kokin Wakashu^[*] , trans. Helen Craig McCullough [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985], 14).

degree, about two different things. If the same person has to think about two different things at the same time, I am afraid his mind may not last very long. I was just beginning to try to think in French. If I were to take this route, I felt I still had a long way to go, and, inevitably, the more committed I became, the further I would be from the Japanese way of thinking. It would take considerable resolve to take the plunge.

And I also remembered the saying "Long absent, soon forgotten." Nothing could hurt the good fellowship I had with my Japanese friends more than staying away from Japan. Besides my friends, there was also my sense of bonding with certain parts of Japanese society over the last thirty years of my life. That bonding had nothing to do with race or nationality; it came from the fact that we had lived through the same age together. To say we would still be living in the same age if they were in Tokyo and I remained in Paris was accurate only in a highly abstract sense. No tangible historical time can be severed from a specific cultural space. Be it a research institute in Paris, a drainage ditch in the Tokyo suburbs, an investment firm's office in London, or a tent in the Syrian desert, each of these places exists in its own temporal sequence. The material distinction between two experiences surely must lie in the distance within their temporal space and not in the time that transcends space or in the distance that transcends time. To live in a specific place implies the choice of a specific time sequence in which and in which alone all concrete experiences take place. I became more keenly aware of this than ever. I did not want to leave Europe, but I wanted very much to live in Japan. This had absolutely nothing to do with any sentimental nostalgia. Should I return or should I not? If I should, I kept reminding myself that I had to return soon.

On the other hand, I did not like to give things up half way. So far as I had become an interested observer of France, I also wanted very much to see with my own eyes what had inspired my curiosity in the first place. One could visit Paris in the winter just once and have all kinds of impressions about it, saying things like "The winter in Paris is really cold." Such impressions cannot be the starting point for any proper assessment of the situation. There are two preconditions. First, statistics on winter temperatures for the last several decades, the kind of information that can be obtained in Tokyo. Second, past winter experiences, the kind that have been internalized to form a part of one's own makeup, the kind one achieves only by living in the place. What then is the relationship between these two preconditions? Without experiencing the latter to the

fullest extent, I couldn't possibly answer the question. Perhaps parallel lines will always be parallel lines, but yet they might intersect at some point. If they do, the question of where I happen to live perhaps no longer makes any fundamental difference to me. But that was not what I expected, nor did I have any presentiment about it. And it was impossible to predict how much time it would take to reach into the depths of layers on layers of experience. Thinking of returning to Japan only served to defeat my purpose. There was not much I could do other than continue to live in Paris as if I might spend the rest of my life there.

While I deliberated, new developments in my personal relationship somehow made the decision for me. I was mulling over an end to the relationship with the young woman in London, and for a time I did not send her any letters. Thinking it was odd, she took a leave from work and suddenly appeared at my Paris residence. I was reading in bed and went to the door, still in my pajamas, opened the door a crack, and there she was quietly standing in the corridor in an overcoat with turned-up collar and a small bag.

"I didn't think you'd leave my letters unanswered, so I thought you might have left Paris already," she said.

The moment I heard her voice and touched her soft hair, I changed the decision I had made in England or, rather, realized I hadn't really made up my mind in the first place. All other considerations no longer meant anything compared to the time we spent together.

"I don't think you can live with that Japanese woman," she said. And sure enough, I could not even imagine it.

"In that case, rather than give up the idea of you and me together and make three people miserable, shouldn't we at least try to make two people happy together?"

Her reckoning did not entirely convince me, but I had already decided not to leave her again. I had already started thinking ahead and realized it was unfair to keep the woman in faraway Kyoto waiting forever for my return. To tell her about my change of heart in the form of a letter would hardly be respectful. I had to meet her and explain before I could say good-bye, and to do that I had to return to Japan. The foreigner's work permit came too late for me. I decided to leave early.

It occurred to me, after I made the decision, it might be a good idea to take her along to revisit southern France before I left this country where I'd been living so long. When we'd gone to Scotland, I thought it would be our last trip. Now I thought, in a sense, this would be our first

trip together. It was just a matter of time before she would come to Japan one day, and we would most certainly be doing some traveling there as well. And in all probability, we would return to Europe via places like Hong Kong and India. My head was filled with all these thoughts, and I kept talking about them endlessly.

The express train to Marseilles was terribly crowded, but that did not have the slightest effect on my high spirits. Someone said that rain comes only three days a year on the coast with the perpetually azure sky, but when we got there a late autumn rain was pouring, and waves were raging in the ashen gray sea. Even that failed to dampen our spirits at all. To young lovers and elderly people, every day is precious regardless of the weather and the surroundings. For the former the future seems endlessly long, and for the latter the future is all too short. When we went out to the coast of St-Raphaël, we were the only people there besides the elderly. During intervals between the rain, we went swimming or rowing. The room by the seaside was decorated with old-fashioned furniture, with the windows on one side facing the sea and on the other opening onto a small Italian-style garden. There we spent our time late into the night listening to the sound of the waves.

"I've wanted to go see Japan ever since I was just a child," she said, "and I didn't even have a reason."

She did not seem to know anything about Japan. I was moved by her courage, or perhaps I should say by the way she came to that decision and the manner in which she took responsibility for her own life. She had not been encouraged by her parents to go, nor did she discuss her plans with her friends. On the contrary, should she decide to go, she surely would go alone despite opposition from her parents and misgivings from her friends.

At the end of the trip, we no longer had any doubts that we would spend our lives together. She left for London and would wait for my letters there. I remained in Paris and made preparations to return to Japan. Because I had already spent all my traveling expenses, those preparations were not as smooth as one might think. But more than that, my heart was confused. I could imagine what the meeting in Kyoto would be like, knowing I had scarcely anything to say in defense of my selfishness. But those thoughts did not change my mind. I knew I was not leaving Europe for good but was simply interrupting my stay because of an urgent need to be in Japan for a time. She later became my wife, and after that I often lived in Europe.

36—
Japan as Seen from the Outside

I had not set foot on Japanese soil in three years. When the full view of the northern Kyushu coast came into sight from the ship's deck as it passed through the Kammon Straits, I saw Japan from the outside for the first time, and probably the last.^[1] (Later on, I left Japan on many occasions, but on my subsequent returns, the distinction between Japan from the outside and the inside no longer held the decisive impact it once had on me.)

It took over six weeks for the freighter to travel from Marseilles to the Kammon Straits. The journey was analogous to a process in which European forms—languages, architectural styles, manners, and customs—gradually gave way to the growing intensity and distinctiveness with which the natural and cultural diversities of a different world manifested themselves, a world called, for lack of a better term, "Asia." In Cairo, one could still communicate in English and French and read the street signs and even the newspapers in these two languages. The air was dry, and off southern France or northern Africa, the Mediterranean Sea glittered with the same deep blue color.

As soon as the ship crossed the Indian Ocean and entered into the Strait of Malacca, however, everything began to change. The air turned humid, and even the color of the sea appeared to be different. At the coastal areas, thick tropical forests encroached on the water's edge. At the harbor, while the ship was loading and unloading, I went ashore to

[1] The Kammon Straits (also known as the Shimonoseki Straits) separates the western tip of Honshu at the city of Shimonoseki and the northeastern tip of Kyushu at Moji harbor in the city of Kitakyushu^[*] .

look at the dense forests, the Chinese settlement, and the indigenous villages. I also saw the port of Singapore, the cranes, and the skyscrapers. The scene was not any different from any Western port, but here alone it stood out from its surroundings like a totally alien entity, as if it had nothing at all to do with the local climate or people. Here, English was nothing more than a tool for commerce. In Hong Kong, numerous Chinese were working at the port loading and unloading cargoes, and in the city's bookstores people were standing in front of the bookshelves reading Chinese books imported from the mainland. In Manila, the authorities allowed the ship to enter port, but Japanese passengers were not permitted to go ashore. In Pusan, not only did the authorities prohibit Japanese passengers from going ashore, but the ship was stuck at the port for as long as a week because of an ongoing longshoremen's strike.

"We lose about one million yen every day we are stuck here," lamented the captain.

"Is this some form of anti-Japanese harassment?"

"No, I guess the delay will also prevent the American ship from unloading."

That American ship had entered the harbor with a full load and could now be seen departing with its red belly exposed above the water. When it came to this part of the world, not even a shadow of Europe remained. What reigned supreme here was the United States, or, more precisely, the U.S. military itself along with jeeps, prostitutes, and cigarettes sold in the black market.

"Look! Half the city is in darkness," the captain said. "Each half takes a turn getting electricity from the generators on the American ships pulled alongside the pier."

The wintry South China Sea was rough, and waves raged high on the Genkai Sea.^[2] But the Kammon Straits remained unruffled, and a whitish morning mist hovered over the distant sea. The northern Kyushu coast appeared through the openings in the morning haze like a print in light ink. Soon, columns of smoke from the factories became visible from the coast, and the oil storage facilities glistened in a silvery radiance in the morning sun. As the ship passed by a small island, one could even see the crooked pine trees and the tile-roofed houses.

[2] On the traditional route from northern Kyushu to continental Asia, the Genkainada (sometimes known as Kyushunada^[*] ) is north of Fukuoka and Saga Prefectures and is known for its high waves during the winter.

This was the Japan I had not seen in three years, a world delineated not in the colors of an oil painting but in shades of ink from a brush painting, not from a geometric perspective but from a depth perception created by the morning mist. Surely, Watsuji Tetsuro^[*] likewise must have seen the same scene.^[3] However, his ideas about fudo^[*] (cultural physiography), the conclusion he drew from it, were a mistaken view. If the seas or the mountains had never been veiled in a haze, perhaps the genre of monochrome ink painting would not have existed. But Watsuji's idea that fudo and the haze had given birth to the monochrome ink painting was most certainly incorrect. What created it, I thought, was the inhabitants' order of life as it evolved on the Japanese archipelago over many centuries—the tile-roofed houses, the shades of ink in a monochrome painting, and the harmony between its lines, the subtleties and complexities of its lifestyle and its internal consistency. Regardless of what it might actually be, Japan first appeared before my eyes not as a natural environment but as a manifestation of the history of its inhabitants, not in the form of deserts or dense forests or rocky hills, but, most assuredly and above anything else, as a tangible social entity. I saw Japan as a phenomenon. My perception of Japan had come with such thoroughness that I doubt if I would ever waver from it (and from that standpoint, I have produced a number of essays).

The six-week journey by sea was enough to highlight for me Japan's position within Asia. Nowhere else in Asia could I find scenes similar to the northern Kyushu coast or the Kobe harbor. Whether they might be

[3] Watsuji Tetsuro (1889–1960), whose travels to and from Germany (1927–28) inspired his still controversial Fudo^[*] –Ningengakuteki kosatsu^[*] (1935; Eng. trans. A Climate [1961]), which divided societies into three physiographic categories (monsoon, desert, and pastoral), arguing that each environment gave rise to distinct behavioral and cultural patterns among its inhabitants—for example, the receptiveness (juyosei^[*] ) and submissiveness (ninjusei^[*] ) supposedly inherent in the Japanese character reflected monsoon-type society; after studying philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University, Watsuji turned from literature to study Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Buddhism, as well as ancient Japanese cultural history. • One student of traditional Chinese painters' treatment of perspective suggests that they deliberately avoided it: "Scientific perspective involves a view from a determined position, and includes only what can be seen from that single point. While this satisfies the logical Western mind, it is not enough for the Chinese painter. . . . [What he] records is not a single visual confrontation, but an accumulation of experience touched off perhaps by one moment's exaltation before the beauty of nature" (Michael Sullivan, The Arts of China , rev. ed. [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979], 163–64).

factories, cranes, or hospitals, "modern" facilities built not by foreigners for their own benefit but by local people for their own purposes appeared for the first time in Japan after I left Marseilles. In that sense, Kobe was a lot like Marseilles and completely different from Singapore or Hong Kong. I suppose that's why, superficially, the city lights of Singapore or Hong Kong, when viewed from a ship's deck after dark, reminded me much more of Marseilles than of Kobe. I needed to reexamine this nebulous idea of "Asia," and the thought kept running through my mind even while I was going through customs after landing at Kobe.

I left my belongings in Kobe and went immediately to Kyoto. The woman who had been waiting for me had said she could not come to meet me in Kobe due to her child's illness. I explained the reason for my return and told her repeatedly that the only thing left for us to do was to say good-bye. But she could hardly believe my words.

"How can you say such a thing after I waited for you for so long?"

I was disgusted with myself for having to repeat the same thing again. I realized that I was destroying the emotional life of another human being.

"You're such a fool! The same thing will only happen again."

She was probably right, but whether the same thing would happen in the future did not matter to me at all.

"If you're displeased with me, just tell me what it is!" she demanded.

But that was not the issue. For a long time I had thought that I loved her, but when I really fell deeply in love with another woman, I realized that her relationship with me was something different.

"I'm not the least displeased with you or anything like that. If there are any flaws between us, I'm the only one who more than deserves the blame," I said.

That was the way I truly felt. When I acted, or rather had to act—in the full knowledge that I was making her life miserable because of something she had no responsibility for—naturally there was nothing I could possibly say to her. I kept talking, though I realized how meaningless my words were and I felt totally exhausted. I left her while I was in an abstracted state of mind. We would never see each other again, and I no longer had the energy to even think about her. I was totally preoccupied with my own feelings. But at the same time, I was also looking at myself as if I were a third person. What was this "I"? What was the makeup of a man who left a woman only to head toward another? If my relationship with these two women were to be obliterated, I

couldn't help feeling, there'd be nothing left in me but a pervasive feeling of emptiness.

I did not return to Tokyo at once. Instead, I wandered around Kyoto visiting old temples and gardens. I realized that once I began to work as a physician in Tokyo, I would simply become too preoccupied to think about myself. What I needed was self-rediscovery, not self-obliteration, and for that purpose, I needed some time for myself alone. I did feel like having someone to talk to but couldn't think of anything to talk about. Alone in the evening, I took a walk around the busy amusement quarters. There were only Japanese around me, all with the same black hair, forming an endless wave streaming along the sidewalk to unknown destinations—an extraordinary and incredible scene. Even compared with the situation three years ago, they were now much better dressed, and the many young people in the crowd looked healthy, with bright, cheerful faces. What relationship did these people have with the wars that had just ended in Korea and in Indochina, I thought, and Pusan and Paris came back to mind. In Japan, they might or might not have reacted to the conflicts, and that was a Japan I did not know.

But the old Kyoto was always there. Into Shisendo's^[*] frigid interior came the crisp and high-pitched sound of bamboo pipes hitting against the rocks to chase away the deer. The curved eaves atop the temple gate of the Daitokuji, the morning frost columns on the grounds of the Yasaka Shrine, the white walls and the setting sun at Ninnaji. Nowhere did I encounter any tourists. Although some men and women gathered at the Rokuharamitsuji, they were Buddhist worshipers, not sightseers.^[4] Everything in the ancient capital quietly permeated every part of my

[4] Shisendo^[*] , built in 1641 by the poet Ishikawa Jozan^[*] (1583–1672) as his secluded residence, is noted for its garden and the display of Jozan's^[*] calligraphy with poetry and images of thirty-six shisen , or "poet-geniuses," such as Li Po and Tu Fu (see Kato's^[*] essay "Shisendo shi" [Account of the hall of poetry immortals, in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 13:261–92] and chapter 24, note 3). And in "Gendai Nihon bungaku no jokyo^[*] —seikatsu no geijutsuka to geijutsu no seikatsuka" (The state of contemporary Japanese literature: the artification of life and the domestication of art, in ibid., 6: 21–40), Kato^[*] underscores the dramatic contrast in attitudes toward art and life between Jozan and the modern I novelists. • The Daitokuji's original structure was founded in 1324 and soon became the greatest temple in northern Kyoto; the head temple of the Rinzai sect's Daitokuji branch, it is known for its architectural grandeur and medieval art, as well as the Zen garden (designed by Soami^[*] ) in Daisen-in, a subordinate temple. • The famous vermilion Yasaka main shrine was built in 1654 and hosts the Gion Festival every July and the Okera Festival on New Year's Day. • Ninnaji,built in 888, is the head temple of the Shingon sect's Omuro branch. • Rokuharamitsuji was founded in 963 as Saikoji^[*] and noted for its many works of Heian and Kamakura sculpture.

body along with the severe chill of winter. Until then, there had been one place I would always visit after taking a solitary stroll in Kyoto and its suburbs, one place where I could always enjoy a relaxed, light-hearted chat over a cup of tea. The very presence of one single woman born and bred in this city had summed up my entire experience of the day, giving it a focus and embodying it in her diminutive frame, her unaffected movements, and the expressions in her eyes. I used to have that feeling even when I was standing by myself looking at the Buddhist statues. But now, that inkling had gone. The only living person who represented the essence of everything I knew about Kyoto was no longer there for me, and Kyoto itself was no longer the city I once knew so intimately. I followed the paths and the stepping-stones I had walked on countless times, but I was looking at a city I had never seen. What lay before my eyes was only a culture and its forms, that was all. Kyoto now appeared before me in just the same way Florence once had.

Not a soul could be seen on Jingoji's extensive grounds. Assailed by piercing northerly winds, I could feel the numbing pain at my finger-tips and my ears as I stood for a long time face to face with the five images of the Akasagarbha^[*] bodhisattva.^[5] In the dim light, the gilded wooden statues sat erect in a motionless posture, eyes shining with penetrating intensity. They did not simply represent the bodhisattva's manifestation into this world or an evocation of his infinite compassion; there was something about their heightened sensual impact that completely captivated the onlooker. Buddhist statues in the Tempyo^[*] era were nothing of the sort.^[6] Just as great changes took place in north-

[5] Jingoji is a special head temple of the Shingon sect's Toji^[*] branch and dates from 824; Kukai^[*] (774–835), founder of the Shingon sect, turned the Jingoji into a seminary, and the temple enjoyed a period of prosperity under his disciple Shinzei as abbot. • The bodhisattva's five images, the statues of the Godai kokuzo^[*] (void store) bosatsu—a national treasure and a masterpiece of early Heian Buddhist sculpture—were created by Shinzei around 847 (Sandai jitsuroku and Jingoji ryakuki , cited in Kurata Bunsaku, Mikkyo^[*] jiin to Jogan^[*] chokoku^[*] , Genshoku Nihon no bijutsu 5 [Shogakukan^[*] , 1976], 75–76, and Mikkyo jiten: zen [Kyoto: Hozokan^[*] , 1975], 217).

[6] With reference to Japanese art history, the Tempyo era (729–749, during the reign of Emperor Shomu^[*] ) also refers broadly to some eighty years during the late Nara period (710–94).

ern France from the end of the eleventh to the beginning of the twelfth century, surely something happened in Japan in the ninth century.^[7] Not that early Heian Buddhist statues bear a certain resemblance to early Gothic sculpture: they certainly do not. But both transformations, once begun, gave rise to artistic forms that inevitably dominate and have lasting effects on the subsequent development in their respective cultures. A comparison between Japan and Europe on that subject would make an enormously fascinating study. At that moment, I was literally breathless with excitement as I gazed transfixed at the statues of the bodhisattva.

Nothing can be more foolish than to suggest that someone with a connoisseur's eye for Western art would, on reexamination, dismiss ancient Japanese art as trivial and inferior. What strikes one as trivial is the Toshogu^[*] , not the Katsura Detached Palace.^[8] Far from being trivial, in terms of the parity between spirituality and sensuality, the harmony between form and material, and the coordination between imposing splendor and the sense of movement, Japanese Buddhist sculpture magnificently rivals its Gothic counterpart. The issue here is not one of style but of quality, and the questions involved are so inexhaustible that they cannot fail to inspire interest. Later on, I began to write about Japanese art, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with patriotism. To this day, my profound admiration for the Yakushiji trinity has been inspired by the same affection I cherish for the Buddhist

[7] In Kato's^[*] discussion of the ninth century (Nihon bungakushi josetsu : Jo^[*] , in History of Japanese Literature , 1:91), he identifies it as "a period in which imported Chinese civilization was gradually digested and submitted to a native transformation. . . . Of the patterns and tendencies which emerged in the ninth century in such fields as politics, economics, society, language and aesthetics, some were preserved to the end of the Heian period, others survived to the beginning or end of the Tokugawa period and some, particularly in the nature of politics and the written and spoken Japanese language, are still making their presence felt today."

[8] Toshogu, built in 1617 as a mausoleum for Tokugawa leyasu in Nikko^[*] , exhibits flamboyant and ostentatious embellishment: "the buildings remain an almost complete antithesis of the simplicity and taste that are usually counted among the characteristics of Japanese architecture" (Charles S. Terry, in Encyclopaedia Britannica [1972], 12:951). For Kato's assessment of its artworks see "Nikko Toshogu," in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 12:221–37; his more recent essay describes its structures as "an artistic Disneyland" that elaborately but incoherently reproduced architectural or design motifs from various periods (see "Toshogu saiken," in Gendai Nihon shichu^[*] [Heibonsha, 1987], 244–49). • On the Katsura Detached Palace see chapter 12, note 17.

images of the Northern Wei period and the figures of angels at the cathedral of Reims.^[9]

Shortly after returning to Tokyo, I went back to work at the Tokyo University Hospital in Hongo^[*] . Once I went for a few drinks with my colleague Dr. Miyoshi in a sukiyaki restaurant and heard him sing "Otomi-san" when he was drunk.^[10] The song had swept the country while I was gone. "I wonder if there's any Japanese man who hasn't heard it," Mr. Miyoshi said. I also met my old friends Nakamura Shin'ichiro and Harada Yoshito, and through them, I learned about the popularity of the serialized television drama Kimi no na wa (And what's your name?).^[11] "Essentially what you have is a story line about romances breaking up in various places over Japan, so the play can continue forever. Not what you'd call a drama," Nakamura said. "But, this aside, if you don't know about it, you might become something of a moron for having lived too long in the West." Harada once taught Japanese as a lecturer in a university in Hamburg. I had met him there as well as in Paris. He returned to Tokyo earlier than I did and was then teaching German at the Komaba campus of Tokyo University. "I suppose you can call them reactions to the postwar reforms. But I think such retrogressive tendencies are emerging in various facets of life," he remarked. This was something we had also talked about in Europe.

I rented a room in my sister's house in Setagaya's Kaminoge and commuted from there to the hospital in Hongo. Work at the hospital was practically nonexistent, and soon I accepted a position working alternate afternoons at the medical office of a mining company at its Nihonbashi headquarters. From the medical standpoint, the job was not an interesting one, but the monthly salary was sufficient to support me.

I also went to lecture once a week in the faculty of literature at a private university. Ostensibly, my lectures were on French literature.

[9] The three principal Buddhist deities worshiped at Nara's Yakushiji, the head temple of the Hosso^[*] sect, are the Yakushi Nyorai (Bhaisajyaguru), the Nikko^[*] Bosatsu (Suryaprabha^[*] ) on his left, and the Gakko^[*] Bosatsu (Candraprabha) on his right. • On the Northern Wei period see chapter 28, note 4.

[10] "Otomi-san" (1954) by Watakuchi Masanobu, with lyrics by Yamazaki Tadashi hinting at a wounded past and a self-abandoning present.

[11] A serial melodrama by Kikuta Kazuo (1908–73) for NHK television and radio broadcast from 1952 to 1954 that began with the famous romantic encounter on Tokyo's Sukiyabashi during the great air raid in early 1945; it became a successful motion picture, directed by Oba Hideo, in 1953. For a critical review, see Uriu Tadao, Nihon no eiga (Iwanami shinsho, 1956), 87–92.

But when I tried to give my students instruction in French, they rather preferred the illusion of studying French literature than learning something substantive. My income was barely enough to cover my traveling expenses. I began to think that although Japanese and French societies appeared to be similar, there were also significant differences. "Oh, that's only natural!" Professor Watanabe Kazuo said. "Everybody here has worked awfully hard for no good reason. Now this is what makes Japan such a marvelous country!"

The company was mining coal in Kyushu. But business had fallen on hard times. At the company's social club, the personnel chief who oversaw the medical office at the company's headquarters boasted that it had every kind of wine in the world.

"I wish someone would just do us a favor and start a war somewhere," he went on. "You know, our business had the best time ever during the Korean War. Oh, those were the good old days."

"You mean the company can't make a profit without a war?"

"That's right."

"Now, that sounds just like the official line from the left," I said.

But the quip eluded the personnel chief.

"Trade unions are here for no good. The whole idea was forced down our throats by the Americans and is so incompatible with the reality in Japan. Let me tell you, it's because of them that we're in such bad shape. Hey, how about another drink?"

I decided to go to the mountains of Kyushu to have a look for myself. The company made the necessary arrangements for me. Since the young staff at the labor affairs section knew the trade union officials well, they gave me a letter of recommendation to take along. I thought that in order to get a good personal perspective on what happened there, I had to listen to both sides and assess the situation from both angles. Once I got there, the company arranged for me to see the mountain during the day, but at night we had banquets continuing into the late hours. I could not help feeling that the company was trying to prevent me from getting to know the trade union people.

"You just can't talk with these people, you know," the on-site personnel section chief said as he put his arm around a geisha. "I've tried many times to negotiate with them. But you know what? I really wanted to spill their guts even if we had to go down together."

If that was his attitude, no wonder he couldn't communicate with the union. But I didn't need him to tell me whether I could or couldn't talk

with them. When I declined to attend the second banquet, his response was "Now, doctor, don't tell me you only fool around in secret!" I told him I had not come all the way to Kyushu just to look at geishas. The union, on the other hand, treated me cordially.

The two sides disputed over everything. Take the conveyor belt controversy. From the company's point of view, the facility made the operation much easier for the workers. The union regarded it as a device to speed up operation and drive the miners to work nonstop. The replacement of wooden mine posts by steel structures was, according to the company, a measure to prevent cave-ins and to drastically improve safety. But the union said that it did little to guarantee safety in the mines, where the greatest danger came from gas explosions. As to why the workers lived under such impoverished conditions, the company's explanation was that the workers themselves allowed drinking to wear down their bodies and they relied on loan sharks after squandering their money. The union, on the other hand, argued that the company's indifference to the workers' safety put them in imminent danger every day and made drinking their only solace in life.

Each side presented more and more witnesses, and it seemed that the more detailed their arguments got, the more fundamentally unbridgeable their respective positions became. Which side was right? It struck me that it was impossible for any third party to offer an objective assessment as long as he had no on-site experience himself. The problem here was not lack of information, as it was when the question of whether planes had been flying outside the Berlin air corridors arose: there was no information other than the opposing views from the governments concerned, thus making any judgment from a third party impossible. In contrast, there is an avalanche of information on the French Revolution. And yet the choice to curse or praise the revolution ultimately depends on what one's own position is. Taking the middle ground between two extremes, needless to say, is not terribly meaningful. In fact, an objective judgment by a third party is impossible. One cannot simply argue that an event like the French Revolution was neither good nor bad or shrug off its consequences as being neither harmful nor desirable. There was no question that the conveyor belt had radically changed the nature of work in the mines, and the workers could not possibly have been totally neutral about it.

During the Pacific War, by distancing myself intellectually from the conflict, I came away with the experience that one's objective judgment

could turn out to be quite accurate. But in the coal mines in Kyushu, I encountered a situation where making objective decisions became virtually impossible. Under such circumstances, I suppose one could abstain from judgment. In Kyushu, I was neither arbitrator nor judge. But what is one to do if abstention becomes impossible? What will I do if I am required to decide on an issue on which any objective—that is to say, scientific—evaluation proves impossible?

Thinking about the matter in Kyushu, I concluded that my basis for judgment had to be my own experience inside the mine shaft, however brief a time I spent there. I remember the tiny slice of blue sky I saw beyond the exit every time I made my way out of the dark, dangerous shaft. And the people who, seeing just such a tiny slice of blue sky every day, had nothing else to summon forth all the joys buried deep within their hearts. That was the only kind of life they had, the only way they could feel. Whether or not they were drunk, whether or not their arguments made any sense, who were we living every day under the blue sky to repudiate their words? I thought at the time that until we could explain objectively that they were wrong, everything they said was right. It is not always possible for a bystander to pass judgment. And for this reason, there is always a time when a bystander should cease to be one.

37—
Enlightenment through Empirical Experience

I wrote a novel called Unmei (Destiny) based partly on my experience in the West and partly on my imagination, and another called Jinkosai^[*] (Festival of the gods), an embellished account of what I saw in northern Kyushu.^[1] While I was writing the second novel, I also became interested in the local dialect, which I started to learn from a friend native to the area. After I finished writing the dialogue in dialect, my friend corrected it. I had long thought that Tokyo's spoken language was rather lively, but its inconsistency of form was problematic and so I came up with the idea of writing the dialogue in the local dialect in hopes of remedying the situation somewhat. But perhaps it only makes the novel more difficult to read.

During that time, I wrote many essays for journals and newspapers, primarily on ways of interpreting Japanese culture. Living in the West altered the way I looked at Western culture, which in turn compelled me to change the ways I had looked at Japanese culture. One idea I mulled over was that since modern Japanese culture represents a mixture of long-cherished indigenous traditions and Western learning, arts, and technology, it cannot be transformed into a purely Japanese or a purely Western product, nor is there such a need. There was nothing new in thinking that modern Japanese culture was in this sense a "hybrid culture." But in terms of its potential, a hybrid isn't necessarily inferior to its purely authentic counterparts, and we need to just roll up our sleeves and do the best we can with what we already have. At least for me, this

[1] Unmei was published in May 1956 and Jinkosai in March 1959, both by Kodansha^[*] .

state of mind was something nobody else had talked about.^[2] To develop it into a coherent body of ideas, beyond the specificity of time and space, I had to identify examples that brought together the ability to assimilate alien cultures and the capacity for cultural creativity. Then I had to explore the general dynamics behind such cases. I was not at a total loss as to where such examples could be found, but I did not have the luxury of time to investigate and examine foreign cases to my own satisfaction. I simply wrote short essays in a hurry and published broad outlines of my ideas in journals.

My other thought was related to modern Japanese history. According to a popular theory, Japanese culture after the Meiji Restoration represented a "discontinuity" with its earlier traditions; I too had once accepted this view without really thinking through the issue. After my experience in the West, I could no longer think of the cultural relationship between the pre-and post-Meiji periods in any area of endeavor in terms of a "discontinuity." Besides oil paintings we also had Japanese-style paintings; besides Western-style orchestral music, traditional musical instruments, scales, and techniques of vocalization were widely practiced. And in the world of post-Meiji lyric poetry, the tradition of classical Japanese poetry still played a significant role; and the contemporary novel and zuihitsu most certainly cannot be considered as having been uprooted from the Edo yomihon, kibyoshi^[*] , and haibun traditions and the like.^[3]

[2] See his essays, "Nihon bunka no zasshusei" (The hybrid nature of Japanese culture, Shiso^[*] , June 1955) and "Zasshuteki Nihon bunka no kadai" (Question about Japan's hybrid culture, Chuo^[*] koron^[*] , July 1955), in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 7:5–46.

[3] The zuihitsu (random essay, lit. "following the brush") dates from Sei Shonagon's^[*]Makura no soshi^[*] in the late tenth century; distinguished modern and contemporary writers of zuihitsu include Shimazaki Toson^[*] , Nagai Kafu^[*] , Terada Torahiko, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro^[*] , Nakano Shigeharu, Yasuoka Shotaro^[*] , and Kushida Magoichi (and other political/literary figures such as Nakae Chomin^[*] and Sakai Toshihiko). • Edo yomihon fiction began in mid-eighteenth-century Osaka and was strongly influenced by traditional Chinese fiction, meant to be read as a text, and with relatively few illustrations; its representative writers include Ueda Akinari, Santo^[*] Kyoden^[*] , and Takizawa Bakin. • Kibyoshi^[*] (lit. yellow covers) was late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century popular illustrated fiction meant for mature audiences—sarcastic, frivolous, and later even didactic; its major writers include Santo Kyoden and Koikawa Harumachi. • Haibun were prose writings by haiku poets whose best-known examples include Matsuo Basho's^[*]Oku no hosomichi (The narrow road through the provinces, 1702), Yokoi Yayu's^[*]Uzuragoromo (Patchwork cloak, 1787–1823), and Kobayashi Issa's Ora ga haru (The year of my life, 1819).

Though I had written about these ideas, I was unable to examine specific writers and their works in detail to substantiate my views. I do not think that my ideas were incorrect. However, my writings were like skeletons without the flesh. The more I wrote at the request of journals and magazines, the less time I had to adequately examine the facts, leaving me no choice but to merely describe my impressions and opinions before I could complete my preparatory work. Working full-time as a physician, I was in the hospital and could not be reached at home during the day. Telephone calls from my editors would come to my residence even at night, and I had to interrupt my meal or dash out in the middle of my bath to answer them. There were times when an editor would come over on a weekend and wait in a room until I finished writing the manuscript he requested. Sometimes, I was up all night trying to meet the deadlines; at other times I would write short manuscripts on the commuter train to and from the hospital. While I still managed to continue my work as a physician, so many things required my immediate attention that I could no longer even think of reading a book. In Paris not only did I have time for reading, the theater, and art museums; I even had the luxury of admiring the trees on the riverbanks and the rows of houses glowing in the setting sun.

My hectic life as a literary journeyman, however, had given me the opportunity to get to know people in the same trade. The language they spoke differed strikingly from the familiar everyday conversation among ordinary people. Perhaps one could describe theirs as a sort of telepathic communication, for merely a few words could instantaneously convey with dramatic effectiveness their subtle "feelings." They shared a unique lexicon framed within a specific context. Consequently, if one could not fully appreciate what its implications were, at times it would be totally impossible to surmise what they were actually talking about. Somebody might say, "There is no bigger fool than that fellow. See what a splendid thing he's done!" and everyone would understand and join in a hearty laugh. I could not help remembering the time when I found myself in a Parisian vaudeville theater listening to an anecdote, conscious of myself as a foreigner, a man out of place. On one occasion, the editor of a literary journal went so far as to ask me, "Could you address the aspect of Soseki^[*] as a moralist from the standpoint of an actualized problem consciousness?"^[4] Though I responded in all plausible seriousness,

[4] The Japanese reads "Soseki no morarisuto to shite no men o akuchuaruna mondai ishiki kara toriagete . . . " On Natsume Soseki^[*] see chapter 12, note 1.

in fact I didn't really understand what he was saying. On those occasions I felt somewhat irritated and also lonely for being left out in the cold. Nothing hurts what sociologists call one's sense of belonging more than the inability to communicate within the group.

On the other hand, these problems in communication also helped arouse my curiosity. "Oh my! What you gentlemen are talking about is really beyond me!" a bar hostess remarked. While I felt the same way, I enjoyed socializing with novelists, literary critics, and editors. "I'll tell you," one of them said. "Science is not going to help you appreciate literature." What he really meant was, "You're a physician, a practitioner of the medical sciences. Therefore, literature isn't something you can understand." But he and others like him had very little idea of what science was all about. And there was another fellow, an admirer of "science," who merrily proclaimed, "According to quantum theory, an elementary particle is a particle in wave motion. With that, the validity of dialectics is scientifically proven." But why should I spoil the occasion when somebody was having such a good time? And so their conversation, be it on "science" or on "literature," ran on smoothly.

Small though my social circle was, it held many charismatic personalities. I don't believe I have encountered as many people with such refinement of character and sensitivity in any other society than in Tokyo's so-called bundan , our "literary world." The late Takami Jun was such an individual.^[5] Moreover, what could only be described as an inner warmth animated his personality. The reason I enjoyed our friendship had absolutely nothing to do with my curiosity. It came from my respect for his extraordinary character.

Takami-san—that was what I called him—and some of us once held

[5] Dominating the prewar career of Takami Jun (1907–65) was a series of attempts to come to terms with his "abandonment" of Marxism in 1933 under official pressure. In his classic Kokyu^[*] wasureubeki (Auld lang syne, 1935–36) he describes the suicidal decadence and political impotence of a generation of former left-wing intellectuals; in Ikanaru hoshi no moto ni (Under what star? 1939–40) he depicts wartime dancers and entertainers in Tokyo's popular Asakusa district, a work so successful that Nakajima Kenzo^[*] spoke of "the Takami Jun era." His major postwar works include Iya na kanji (Feelings of disgust, 1960–63), an ambitious historical novel about an anarchist active in Japan, Korea, and China, and Showa^[*] bungaku seisuishi (The rise and fall of Showa^[*] literature, 1952–57), an informative literary history.

a reception at a Shinjuku bar for a guest from afar. Among those present were Matsuoka Yoko^[*] , then the executive director of the Japan PEN Club, and Asabuki Tomiko, who was known for her translations of female French writers.^[6] In her introduction of Takami-san, Ms. Matsuoka remarked that he was one of the most celebrated contemporary novelists. No sooner had she finished than our attentive guest from France turned to Takami-san and asked, "What kind of novels do you write? What are your themes and how do you treat them?" Considering the circumstances, it was a natural question for a Frenchman to raise but an altogether awkward thing to ask in a gathering of Japanese writers.

"Ha! You really put me on the spot here," Takami-san said. "It's not easy to explain one's own works."

And so I took the liberty of speaking for him. Takami-san might have thought I had misinterpreted his works in my impromptu commentary. In fact, I think he must have. But when I finished, he was in a very cheerful mood and said, "Come on, let's have another drink. Now, I seem to know what I have been writing all along," a comment that made everybody laugh. And there was not the slightest hint of sarcasm in what he said.

In addition to the charismatic personalities among my circle of friends, the precision of their knowledge often struck me with awe. Among my old friends were the French linguist Miyake Noriyoshi and the music critic Yoshida Hidekazu.^[7] They could answer almost any question about French linguistics, or Eastern and Western music of all ages, including the background. In those days I frequently went to the Mitsukoshi Theater, where members of the Nomura family gave bimonthly kyogen^[*] performances. There I would always meet my old friends Kubota Kaizo^[*] and Koyama Hiroshi.^[8] After the performance we would have

[6] Matsuoka Yoko (1916–79), journalist and executive director of the Japan PEN Club in 1956 and most noted for her social commentaries and her active role in the women's movement. • On Asabuki Tomiko see chapter 26, note 6.

[7] See chapter 17 for Kato's^[*] reminiscences of Miyake while they were fellow students at Tokyo University. • On Yoshida Hidekazu see chapter 32, note 10.

[8] Kubota Kaizo is the pen name of Kubota Keisaku (1920–), short-story writer, literary critic, and translator of contemporary French literature; see chapter 18 on his association with Kato^[*] dating from the days of Matinée Poétique. • Koyama Hiroshi (1921–), a distinguished scholar of no^[*] and kyogen; among his edited works are two volumes apiece on kyogen in the Nihon koten bungaku taikei series (1960–61) and on yokyoku^[*] in Nihon koten bungaku zenshu^[*] (1973–75); he taught at Tokyo University from 1959–81 and was head of the National Institute of Japanese Literature (Kokubungaku kenkyu^[*] shiryokan^[*] ) in Tokyo.

dinner somewhere nearby and talk about kyogen^[*] , or to put it more accurately, Koyama would answer our questions on the subject. As far as kyogen was concerned, the only questions Koyama could not immediately answer were precisely those nobody in the academic world of the time could elucidate.

My association with these friends amply heightened my awareness of my own shallow knowledge on literature and matters of literary taste, as well as on any subject within the broad spectrum of the humanistic sciences. The same thing could be said of my later friendship with novelists and literary critics. Each and every one of them took long years to cultivate the truly solid foundation of his erudition. For example, Kobayashi Hideo would not speak about Mozart's music without scrupulously listening to his compositions, or comment on Tessai's scroll paintings without meticulously observing the master's art.^[9] Ishikawa Jun is thoroughly familiar with nanga and has absorbed Edo literature into his own flesh and blood.^[10] His ability, with a sake cup in hand, to impress and awe every one of the listeners around him with the sophistication and eloquence of his delivery came from the extraordinary insights he had accumulated. Once I also heard Terada Toru^[*] speak in a symposium about Korin's^[*] painting Red and White Plum Trees . "Every time I look

[9] Kobayashi Hideo (1902–83) wrote a 1946 work on Mozart and one on the master painter Tomioka Tessai (1836–1924) in 1948; he was an editor of Tessai (1957). See also chapter 17, note 8.

[10] Ishikawa Jun (1899–1987), one of the most prominent contemporary Japanese novelists known for his polished neoclassicist style and extraordinary erudition in both modern French literature (esp. Gide, Claudel, and France) and the classical Chinese and Japanese traditions. In Kato's^[*] view, Ishikawa more profoundly epitomized the literary tradition of the Edo intelligentsia (bunjin ) and their literary sensibilities than any other writer of his generation after Mori Ogai^[*] and Nagai Kafu^[*] (Subaru 4 [1988]: 58); among his best-known and acclaimed works are Fugen (1936; The Bodhisattva: A Novel , trans. William J. Tyler [New York: Columbia University Press, 1990]), "Marusu no uta" (The song of Mars, 1938), Shion monogatari (The story of asters, 1956), and Shifuku sennen (Thousand years of consummate bliss, 1965–66). On his story "Mujinto^[*] " see chapter 23, note 4. • Nanga (southern paintings), inspired by China's Southern-school style of literati painting (wen-ren painting; in Japanese bunjinga ), flourished after the mid-Edo period with artists like Ike-no-Taiga (1723–76), Yosa Buson (1716–83), and Uragami Gyokudo^[*] (1745–1820) in contemplative and poetic landscapes in ink or light colors with soft brushes. See Kato's essay "Nanga daitai ni tsuite" (On Ishikawa's General principles of nanga, Asahi Janaru^[*] , April 5, 1959); and Ishikawa Jun's Nanga daitai (General principles of nanga , 1959), which praises Buson's work in particular.

at it, the roots seem to be floating in the river."^[11] In this symposium sponsored by a journal, we were supposed to talk about "the traditions of Japanese culture." But unless a commentator is able to scrutinize Korin's^[*] folding screens as Terada did, any words he utters on cultural traditions only ring hollow.

Listening to Terada reminded me of Dr. Miyoshi of the Tokyo University Hospital. I once told him that I thought an infection had occurred because there was an elevated white-blood-cell count. "Who did the blood count?" was his immediate response. "You'd better do the counting again yourself to make sure before jumping to conclusions." Dr. Miyoshi would never make any deductions based on information about which he had the slightest doubt, not even for something as rudimentary to a physician's trade as a white-blood-cell count. How then could one seriously talk about the Rimpa school or ink paintings without even having properly examined the works themselves? When it comes to Dogen^[*] or Hakuseki, how reliable could one's casual thoughts be without reading through their entire collected works?^[12] And if one excludes the

[11] Terada Toru^[*] (1915–95), an erudite literary critic who took up Stendhal, Balzac, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Valéry, and Camus, as well as The Tale of Genji , Izumi Shikibu, and Dogen, Japanese medieval painting, philosophy, and major modern Japanese writers—the critic Kanno Akimasa compares Terada's critical commentaries to spiritual dialogues; among his major works are Terada Toru^[*] bungaku ronshu^[*] [Collection of the literary commentaries of Terada Toru, 1951], Gendai Nihon sakka kenkyu^[*] [Study of contemporary Japanese writers, 1954], and Waga chusei^[*] [My medieval period, 1967]. • Korin's painting of plum trees, on a pair of two-panel folding screens with gold-leaf background, is dominated by the almost menacing image of a river in black and gold that swirls and dramatically expands across the scene in bold contrast to the poetic elegance of the red and white plum blossoms. See Yamane Yuzo^[*] , "Korin^[*] no shogai^[*] to geijutsu," in Korin^[*] to Sotatsu^[*] , Genshoku Nihon no bijutsu (Shogakukan^[*] , 1976), 14:237–39; and the commentary in Rimpa Bijutsukan: Korin to Kamigata Rimpa (Shueisha^[*] , 1993), 2:55.

[12] Dogen (1200–53), the founder of Soto^[*] Zen Buddhism and one of the greatest religious minds in Japan, wrote Fukan zazengi (General views on the rites of zazen, 1227) and Shobo^[*] genzo^[*] (The eye treasury of the true dharma, 95 vols., 1811), which holds his teachings from 1231–53 and koans^[*] and anecdotes from daily life (see Kato's^[*] comments in the next note). • Arai Hakuseki (1657–1725), mid-Edo historian, renowned kanshi poet, linguist, political adviser to the shoguns Tokugawa Ienobu and Ietsugu, and one of the most celebrated intellectual figures of his age whose Seiyo^[*] kibun (News about the West, 1715) demonstrates his interest in the world outside Japan, while his historical writings (Koshitsu^[*] [Comprehensive survey of ancient history, 1716] and Dokushi yoron [Random comments on history, 1712]) exhibit extraordinary intellectualindependence and objectivity. His work most widely known in the West is his autobiography Oritaku shiba no ki (Told round a brushwood fire, 1716; Eng. trans. 1979), "the first Japanese autobiography in the prose terms known in the West" (Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature , 142). See Kato's^[*] long article "Arai Hakuseki no sekai," in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 3:225–94; and Kate Wildman Nakai, Shogunal Politics: Arai Hakuseki and the Premises of Tokugawa Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).

Rimpa school and ink paintings or dismisses Dogen^[*] and Hakuseki, how substantive can one's notion of traditional culture be? Acquiring critical intelligence through empirical learning became something of a habit to me in the course of my medical research. And if I were to apply it thoroughly in the realm of literature and aesthetics, the only way was to take my time savoring paintings and books. I could never have this luxury if I continued to work at the hospital and stay up all night writing my manuscripts. It was not despite but precisely because of the long years I had spent in medical research that I began to think about leaving the profession.

Yet being overburdened with work was not the only factor that prompted me to abandon medicine. Medical research had also entered into a period of extreme specialization. After immersing myself in work, at the end of the year I frequently felt I had accomplished nothing. I had no recollection of how the seasons had changed or how things had happened around me. During that time, I did not know life outside my research laboratory. My memory drew a total blank on those years, and all I had to show for them was a research paper in my name. Was that a fair exchange? A year's time constituted a part of my life; an article constituted a part of the total structure of universal knowledge. For two things that belonged to two entirely different schemes of things, comparison was impossible. Nevertheless, I was not satisfied with the bargain. Perhaps the fact that my research work was in the natural sciences had nothing to do with it. But in a field that had become so exceedingly specialized, it was simply impossible for me to bridge the gap between my personal life and the substance of my research. Being totally committed to writing poetry, I suppose, is different from being totally committed to scholarly research; the poetry of Li Po and Tu Fu must have been the very substance of their lives. Perhaps what I needed was poetry in my life.

And that was not all. I also wanted to know what was happening in

society around me. During the Pacific War, Japanese government propaganda failed to cast its spell on me even though I was living in Japan. This was not because I knew what was in fact taking place, but because the propaganda itself was so filled with contradictions that one could easily see through its folly even without specific knowledge. My assessment of the general course of the war had turned out to be fairly accurate, not because I knew what the real situation was, but because I believed, from the course of modern history, that those who tried to turn back the clock of history would only end up destroying themselves. Heaven's vengeance is slow but sure. But in the final analysis, my belief was a value judgment, not a deduction from facts. While the premise on which I based my value judgment did not conflict with the facts as I knew them, my knowledge of the facts was extremely limited. Reflecting on the matter, I couldn't but feel there was just an equal chance that my predictions could have turned out to be incorrect. I did not want the same thing to happen again. There will always be a limit to the information accessible to an ordinary citizen about important national or international issues. In spite of that, in order to assess current situations and their future development as a whole, one can only establish a premise of thinking that, to a greater or lesser extent, correlates with one's value judgment. But I wanted to work on a more meticulous premise based on more facts than I had had during the last war. In order to do that, I desperately needed more time, even if it meant that I had to draw myself away from my literary interests.

I was fortunate to survive the Pacific War. But I witnessed how my native city was reduced to ashes overnight, how devastated people were, how communication broke down even between former colleagues, and how the resentful voices from starving people filled the streets. Many young people died every day, and among them were two of my close friends. All these events had a determining impact on my life. Furthermore, they did not come about because of any natural calamity or any twist of fate, but precisely because of a series of political decisions. One of my old friends who used to share many thoughts with me during the war was sent to the Chinese front, became sick, and returned home. When we met in Tokyo after the war, he said, "Let's not talk any more about politics. I just want to be left alone in my corner and live my life quietly."

"But what dragged you out from your corner was the war, and a war is a political phenomenon," I remarked.

"But the war has ended."

"Political phenomena will never end."

"But there is nothing I can do."

"Even if there is nothing we can do," I said at the time, "I want to scrutinize a phenomenon that had or may again have a decisive influence on my life. It's the same as a man's desire to know who committed adultery with his wife even if there is nothing he can do about it."

"I just don't want to know about it," he said.

"Well, I don't suppose that's because you feel helpless to do anything. You first started out not wanting to know, and then you rationalize yourself by saying there's nothing you can do."

"You may be right. Shall we just leave it at that?"

"But that's a curious logic. You said you wanted to live a quiet life. But the condition for living a quiet life, more than your wife's behavior, depends on the policies our government adopts. And you said you don't want to know about it."

"The happiest man is somebody who doesn't know anything," he muttered.

I could appreciate his feelings. The scars of war must run deeper than anything I could ever imagine. I suppose that was because I could not even begin to imagine the kind of experience he had gone through. At this point, there was nothing else to say. As for me, however, I was determined to find out the conditions defining my being as long as it was not physically impossible to do so. History, culture, politics . . . the only way for me to impart any personal relevance to these categories was for me to acquaint myself with them.

I did not turn away from being a specialist in hematology to being a specialist in literature. I did not change the field of my specialization; I obliterated the very idea. Privately, I aspired to becoming a specialist without a specialization. Since then I have written about Takeuchi Yoshimi, about the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty as well as The Tale of Genji picture scrolls; I have also written on modern Japanese intellectual history and modern European thought; and in universities I have talked about Shobo^[*] genzo^[*] and Kyounshu^[*] .^[13] These topics were not requests

[13] Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910–77), an influential cultural critic noted particularly for his study and translation of Lu Xun (1881–1936) and cultural comparison of the modern Chinese experience to what he perceived to be Japan's illusory modernity and slave mentality vis-à-vis the West; see his "Chugoku^[*] no kindai to Nihon no kindai" (The modernity of China and Japan, 1948); Kato's^[*]article "Takeuchi Yoshimi no hihyo^[*] sochi^[*] " (The critical apparatus of Takeuchi Yoshimi) is in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 7:268–87; and his more recent assessment in English is "Mechanisms of Ideas: Society, Intellectuals, and Literature in the Postwar Period in Japan," in Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and Culture in West Germany and Japan , ed. Ernestine Schlant and J. Thomas Rimer (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1991), 256–58. Takeuchi resigned his professorship at Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1960 to protest the forced ratification of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, saying that "the only point of contention is a choice between democracy and dictatorship." • On the security treaty see the discussion in chapter 40. • On the Genji scrolls see Kato's^[*] essays "Nihon no bigaku" and "Genji monogatari emaki ni tsuite," in Kato Shuichi chosakushu , 12:5–33 and 179–88, respectively. • On Shobo^[*] genzo^[*] , a vast theoretical tract in Japanese by Dogen^[*] that is the fundamental scripture of the Soto^[*] sect, see Kato's assessment: "one of the prose masterpieces of thirteenth-century Japan" because Dogen "[opens] up a whole new world through his polished use of the possibilities of the Japanese language" (History of Japanese Literature , 1:233–34). • Kyounshu^[*] (Collection of the wild clouds, date unknown; Eng. trans. Sonja Arntzen, 1973) holds 1,060 poems attributed to the fiercely independent-minded mid-Muromachi poet and Zen priest Ikkyu^[*] Sojun^[*] (1394–1481); Kato^[*] divides them into three categories: ones on Rinzai Zen doctrine, others on the era's faults, and love poems; he writes, "In the Kyounshu Zen and love are one and the same thing. . . . In the age of the secularization of Zen, only Ikkyu created a unique and original poetic world by giving flesh to a foreign ideology" (History of Japanese Literature , 1:290 and 293). See also his engaging article, "Ikkyu to iu gensho^[*] ," in Showa^[*] bungaku zenshu^[*] , 28:622–42.

from outside sources but my own choices for various occasions, and for me they are not unrelated issues. Their relationship with one another was not apparent to me at first, and I only gradually came to appreciate it later on.

It was not easy for me to leave the medical profession. But the opportunity presented itself when I decided to go to a writers' conference to be held in central Asia. The mining company that employed me allowed me a maximum of one month's leave by entrusting my work at the medical office to another doctor. What I needed was three months. I resigned from my position and departed on my trip, and never again did I return to the medical profession.

38—
The Asian-African Writers' Conference

The Second Asian-African Writers' Conference was held in October 1958 in Tashkent in Central Asia. The first conference in New Delhi was attended by Hotta Yoshie on behalf of Japan.^[1] At the second conference Ito^[*] Sei led the Japanese team made up of a few "representative" Japanese writers.^[2] I joined its International Planning Committee one month before the conference convened.

Beyond my official business at the conference, I had hoped to see Central Asia and the Soviet Union for myself. For this reason, the opportunity to stay for some time alone in Tashkent suited my purpose much better than participating as a group member. With my personal belongings in a small bag and two or three books, I departed from Haneda on an Air India flight. I was scheduled to change planes at Calcutta to go on to New Delhi, where I would change planes again to go on to Tashkent. My travel agency in Tokyo told me that because I was just passing through India, in all probability I would not need an entry visa. On my arrival in Calcutta, however, an airport official examined my passport and announced in his strongly accented English that I could not get into India.

[1] Appearing in the many memorable novels by Hotta Yoshie (1918–98), who attended the first conference in 1956, are portraits of a Japanese reporter drawn into the Korean War and its ugly political consequences in Hiroba no kotoku (Loneliness in the square, 1951; Akutagawa Prize, 1952), a Chinese intellectual in wartime China before the Nanjing Massacre in Jikan (Time , 1953), and the Shimabara Uprising in the early Edo period in his historical novel Uminari no soko kara (From beneath the roaring sea, 1960–61); more recent works include Wakaki hi no shijintachi no shozo^[*] (Portraits of poets as young men, 1966–68) and a renowned biography of Goya (1973–76).

[2] Critic, novelist, and poet, Ito Sei (1905–69) caricatured the modern Japaneseliterary intellectual, a man who "does not commit suicide nor become a revolutionary" in his innovative novel of style, Narumi Senkichi (1946–48), and analyzed the narrative dynamics of the watakushi-shosetsu^[*] vis-à-vis the modern European novel in his classic and controversial Shosetsu^[*] no hoho^[*] (The technique of the novel, 1948). He also traced Meiji literary history in Nihon bundanshi (The history of the Japanese literary world, 1952–69; 18 vols.) and translated Joyce's Ulysses and Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover (see chapter 32, note 7).

"I don't want to get into India. I'm just a transit passenger."

"Being a transit passenger means you are going into India."

Around that time I got a feeling I had finally embarked on my journey into "Asia." Officials in full uniform, half-naked men standing or sitting everywhere, curious American tourists looking over their surroundings, the killing heat, the languid ceiling fans, and the questioning that went on for over an hour with frequent interruptions. Essentially, what the officials seemed to be saying was this: my Tokyo-Calcutta and New Delhi-Tashkent routes were international flights while the Calcutta-New Delhi segment was domestic. To change planes for a domestic flight, a passenger was required to go through the country's entry formalities. Without a visa it was impossible to do so.

"We'll keep your passport until you leave India. You are not permitted to go out of the airport."

In any case, I managed to change to a domestic flight and arrived in New Delhi in the evening. A few hours of questioning followed before I could obtain a permit to go into town and find a place to stay for the night until my flight's departure for Tashkent the next day. When I finally managed to reach a hotel, it was already very late at night. The receptionist said, almost triumphantly, that I could not stay there. The room charge had to be paid in advance and, without my passport, he said, he could not accept my traveler's checks.

"Is there a money exchange shop around here?"

"It's closed at this hour."

"Can I pay you when the shop opens tomorrow?"

"We don't accept guests without advance payment."

Totally exhausted and not knowing what to do, I found myself cursing "Asia-Africa" and myself. My wretchedness must have been written all over my face. When a group of high-spirited, young Indonesian officers marched into the hotel, one of them approached me and asked

sympathetically, "What's the matter?" I briefly explained to him my circumstances, and he was kind enough to pay for my room for the night in Indian currency, saying, "We should help one another in times of trouble." That was how I was rescued from my helpless predicament by an officer of Sukarno's army.

When I went into my room, I found that the large air conditioner was not functioning at all even though the control was pointing to the "on" position. It was unbearably hot inside. I opened the window, only to discover that the midnight air coming into the room was even warmer than that in the room itself. I randomly turned the control of the air conditioner, but nothing worked. Ready to give up, I switched it to the "off" position. Amazingly, the machine made a noise and started to work, quickly cooling off the room. What a country! And what a paradoxical machine!

On the plane to Tashkent the next morning, a sense of emancipation overtook me as I watched the green fields of Punjab recede farther and farther into the distance. The sky was clear, and the large plane with only a few passengers was comfort itself. Soon it passed over northern Pakistan's mountain ranges before the landscape merged into the rocky hills of Afghanistan. As the plane flew past the mountain-tops and went farther into the continental interior, there were fewer and fewer signs of water or trees, and human habitation became more sporadic. Nothing but overlapping layers of rocks stretched as far as the eye could see.

And at the fringe of this unforgiving Central Asian landscape where nomads roamed in antiquity, and indeed at this very extremity of history itself, the modern city of Tashkent suddenly loomed before my eyes. The airport was lined with passenger jets (in the autumn of 1958, the only country in the world scheduling regular flights with jet planes was the Soviet Union). Tashkent had compulsory education, hospitals, telephone service, and journalism—essentially everything Tokyo had. My first impression of a socialist country, after coming from India, was how similar everything was to Europe.

Of course it did not take me long to realize that Tashkent was not Moscow, and that Central Asia was just the borderland of the Soviet Union. I soon gave up my unduly ambitious plan of traveling around the Soviet Union. Instead, I decided as much as possible to get a close look at its peripheral region, namely the Republic of Uzbekistan, and at a later date to visit Yugoslavia (Croatia) on the periphery of the social-

ist sphere of influence. If things worked out, I also wanted to see the realities of the local Communist administration in a nonsocialist country such as in the state of Kerala in India.^[3]

I am not fond of experiences drawn at random. If I considered the Soviet Union on the basis of my travel experiences, it would be just coincidence that set me down primarily in Tashkent and not Moscow. But if the purpose of my trip was to compare the peripheral regions of socialist countries, Tashkent was the only natural choice. At any rate, I later translated my thought into action, and I wrote Travels in Uzbekistan, Croatia, and Kerala after I returned to Japan.^[4] Though it was not widely read, among my other works, this compact little volume contains relatively more information and more leads to my thinking. When I thought about socialist societies later on, I always started with the experiences it described.

"Representative" members of the planning committee and executive officials of the conference stayed in a house with an old-fashioned gate in the middle of an orchard surrounded by fields in the suburbs of Tashkent. My large room on the second floor had a high ceiling and came with a bed, a desk, some chairs, and a large heating fixture in one corner. Whenever I opened the window, the chirping of tiny birds gathering around a thicket in the garden would fill the room. Every morning when I went downstairs to the washroom to shave, I would meet some of my fellow guests. There I learned how to say "Good morning! Did you sleep well last night?" in Russian.

I suppose the building must have once been a villa belonging to a big landlord or an aristocrat. Sometime after the revolution, it assumed the name "Village Home" and had been used by the Union of Soviet Writers as a workplace for novelists or as a guest house for foreigners. On its large premises were several other buildings, one of which was used as our dining hall.

At the time of my arrival the planning committee's representatives consisted of two people each from India and China, one person each from Mongolia, Thailand, and Burma. Later we were joined by a young writer

[3] Kerala is on the extreme southwestern coast of India and borders on the Arabian Sea. Its residents are among the most highly educated in India and elected a Communist ministry in 1957 (an anti-Communist administration followed in 1960, and another Communist ministry in 1967).

[4] Published in August 1959 by Iwanami shoten. A related article, "Ajia Afurika sakka kaigi kara kaette," was published in Bungaku (April 1959).

from Cameroon and somebody who apparently was the Algerian representative. The executive officers of the conference consisted of a secretary from Moscow's Union of Soviet Writers along with three interpreters. Among the interpreters, the more elderly woman spoke English, and of the two other young women, the one with a small build, named M, spoke English, and the other one, nicknamed "the frog," spoke French. The interpreter for the Chinese participants was a Chinese student studying at the University of Moscow, an intelligent and cheerful young man who immediately became everybody's favorite.

Our daily routine was to ride in separate cars sent round to pick us up in the morning to go from Village Home to the conference hall in the city. Our meeting lasted for about three hours. Then we returned to Village Home for lunch. In the afternoon, sometimes we went back to the conference hall for more deliberations, but sometimes we took a break from our business to visit collective farms or small factories in the vicinity. The leisurely one month at Village Home was the most peaceful rural life I ever had the pleasure of spending.

The work of the planning committee consisted of such bureaucratic trivia as making room assignments and special food arrangements and so on. I was asked—first in Russian, then in English, and finally in French—whether there ought to be any special considerations in preparing the food for the Japanese participants. I said no. The translations involved several languages, but the matter was settled in no time. However, for the Indian participants, the answer would depend on which writers were coming and on the specific time and circumstances for each and every participant. A foreigner might be struck by the sheer strangeness of it all, but the matter was quite complex. In order to understand the significance of food choices, one has to trace back their historical roots and to appreciate the regional and climatic factors involved. And so, the representative from India spoke endlessly, first about his own experience and then about his analysis of Indian culture. The issue was just what food to serve, but his lecture in English had to be translated first into Russian and then into French, and before he could continue he had to wait for his interpreters to finish. The young man from Cameroon sitting next to me grew impatient and said, "This is why I can't stand Asians! There's not a trace of esprit cartésien in them!"

It was agreed that the details of the conference's daily schedules and programs were to be determined among the leading members after the arrival of the representatives from various countries. When it came to

which countries and who to invite, the question became a little more complicated. Clearly, Israel was part of the Asian-African region, and it would seem odd not to invite them. But the presence of even one Israeli writer in a conference, we heard, would preclude the participation of representatives from the Arab countries. What were we to do? On most of the issues involved, I myself had no particular opinion one way or the other.

But controversies unrelated to the planning of the conference had also arisen. At that time, a provisional government of Algeria had formed in Cairo, and somebody suggested that an announcement be made in the name of the Planning Committee of the Asian-African Writers' Conference in full support of that government.^[5] Our views were divided, and I opposed the idea. My reason was that the planning committee was charged only with the responsibility of making logistic preparations for the conference. As for supporting the provisional Algerian government, I argued that if necessary a resolution could be adopted at the conference. In the end, no announcement was made.

Meanwhile, China was shelling the island of Quemoy near the mainland coast in the Taiwan Strait. The two Chinese representatives on the planning committee might have a detached air about them, but they were in fact very courteous and serious-minded. Through an English interpreter, I talked with these two writers about the Taiwan situation.

"To which country do you think Taiwan belongs?" they asked me.

"It is a part of China, of course."

"You are right. And now it's under American occupation."

"In principle, I think the American troops should withdraw from Taiwan."

"I cannot agree with you more."

"But I don't think the Americans are going to withdraw," I said.

"You're wrong in thinking that," they remarked.

I turned to my interpreter and said, "Please ask them why they think I'm wrong."

The interpreter spoke in Chinese with the two writers for a while before he turned to me and said, "It's because you haven't gone into the people yet."

"But I was talking about the future prospect of an international situation."

"Have you ever worked among laborers and peasants?"

[5] It was formed in September 1958.

"No, I haven't."

"That's why there are things you don't understand."

I could not judge the extent to which the interpreter's English had adequately conveyed the nuances of the original. Yet as far as the English translation was concerned, he almost never used such expressions as "in my opinion" or "my personal view is." The language was terse and the tone unequivocally definitive.

The Chinese representatives proposed that the planning committee make an announcement demanding the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Taiwan. I opposed the motion. My first reason was that such an action was beyond the responsibility of the planning committee, as it had been in the case of supporting the provisional government of Algeria. Second, regardless of what my capacity as the Japanese representative might mean or what my own personal views might be on the matter, I could not "represent" Tokyo's writers in signing an announcement when it was apparent that an overwhelming majority of them would not endorse it. And third, speaking from my personal view, as a matter of principle (and as an ultimate objective), I would like to see the withdrawal of American troops from Taiwan, but it was not my desire to demand an immediate withdrawal at that moment in 1958 (it would have been totally futile to do so). My opposition received the support of some influential people, and the announcement was dropped.

I wanted to find out as much as I could about the situation in the Uzbekistan Republic. The people had been establishing farms and creating industries out of the wilderness of Central Asia; they had conquered illiteracy, epidemics, and hunger—great achievements that could almost be described as miraculous. I wanted to know how these great enterprises came about and particularly what effects the new policies had on this land after the campaign to denounce Stalin. But it was not always easy to find out. We were invited as guests to an elaborate banquet at a collective farm, but a banquet is not always the appropriate place to ask direct questions and get straight answers. It took me a long time consulting my dictionary just to read the headings of Russian economic statistics. When my stay became more protracted, I also wanted to know something about what was happening in other parts of the world. Because we could not read Russian newspapers, the young man from Cameroon and I expressed our desire to get newspapers in English and French—the daily Le Monde and the weekly New Statesman . We were told that our wish would be relayed to Moscow, and so we waited. When

papers did arrive, they were only the official publications of the British and French Communist parties. In the end, I had no way of knowing whether, for example, China was still shelling its offshore island, and if so, to what extent.

I do not mean to suggest that my life in this rural community was boring. We had meetings in the morning and local field trips in the afternoon. We had things to read, people to talk with, and occasionally interviews by local newspaper reporters and a special correspondent from a Moscow broadcasting station. Also, the playwright Simonov was staying in Tashkent, and from time to time he would come to visit the Village Home. In the evenings, we had movies in the hall on the ground floor, and there I watched And Quiet Flows the Don and The Idiot .^[6] M was good enough to sit next to me and whisper the gist of the dialogue in English into my ear.

"What do you think of these films?"

"I think they're wonderful!"

"I think so too. If only you knew how long it has taken us to make them!" she muttered.

I wanted to learn Russian, but I was too busy to have the time for it. Or perhaps I should say that life there in the countryside had too many distractions.

In front of Village Home a road lined with poplar trees extended all the way into the fields beyond, its treetops reaching high into the dark blue evening sky. After dinner I enjoyed taking a walk there with M and Frog.

"Ah, there goes another day!" M said.

"But the day is still young." Frog was a tall and robust young woman, smartly dressed and cheerful.

"Now that's a foolish thing to say," M replied in French. And then she continued in English, "There's an end to everything. To these wonderful and peaceful days too. Some day life here in this village home will come

[6] Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov (1915–79) wrote war plays (Paren iz nashego goroda [Lad from our town, 1941] and Tak i budet [So be it, 1944]), on the defense of Stalingrad (1945), autobiographical war poems, and other plays (Russkiy vopros [The Russian question, 1946]). • And Quiet Flows the Don , based on Mikhail A. Sholokhov's classic novel of the Soviet revolution, Tikhiy Don (4 vols., 1928–40), hailed as "the supreme portrayal of Cossack life" (Jean-Albert Bédé and William B. Edgerton, eds., Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature [New York: Columbia University Press, 1980], 739); and The Idiot , based on Dostoyevsky's 1869 novel.

to an end, and we will return to Moscow. I wonder if you've felt this way. Whenever you see something really beautiful, you always get a feeling it's going to end very soon. Perhaps it's odd for me to feel like this."

From the tree-lined road we turned into a small path in the fields. There was a stream, and where we least expected it we found a little bridge, some shrubbery, a lawn, and an orchard with crumbling hedges. Above us was the wide, crystal-clear sky.

"This is the place I like," M said.

The gentle breeze gliding across the field brought back memories of the summer evenings in Shinshu's^[*] Asama foothills. Like M, I was very fond of this place, but I could not explain why in particular. Perhaps there was something of a communion of minds between us. She was not only sensitive but smart, so there was no need for me to lie. Even if I had, she would have seen through me in no time. Meanwhile, Frog was cheerfully humming some melody. Together we talked about all kinds of things—war, ancient Egyptian sculpture, the heart of the Japanese, the never-ending conference, the bureaucrats, and socialism. We had more than enough topics to engage our conversation every day for a month. During this time none of the things M said, not a single word, was difficult for me to understand. And of course I learned a great deal from her about Soviet society. But this aside, it must be a truly extraordinary experience anywhere and any time during one's life to meet another human being and be able to share the other's feelings and thoughts to this extent. And, I keenly felt, the beginning of the writer's conference would mark the end of my life at Village Home and I would probably never again have the opportunity to take another delightful evening stroll with her. For a conference is merely a place for the exchange of proclamations, not for the meeting of souls. I had never heard her sing. But every time she helped me pronounce "What do you call this?" in Russian, her voice was imbued with a sweet tenderness no words could possibly describe.

Then came the conference. Many people were gathered in a newly constructed residence; a great many words were exchanged and a great many speeches were made. And behind the stage long discussions went on regarding the conference proceedings. And then the conference came to an end and people started going their separate ways. M's husband S had come to the conference while it was still in session, and together we visited the old capital of Tbilisi in the Caucasus; from there we flew to Moscow and traveled to Leningrad and back. It was at the beginning

of November, and Leningrad and the banks of the Neva were enveloped in a snowstorm.

The blue sky and the poplar-lined streets of Tashkent now seemed to have receded into infinity like a distant dream. Did I spend a few years or just a few days at Village Home? It was no longer possible to measure the time that had drifted away.

I did not return to Tokyo at the end of the year but instead spent Christmas in Vienna. From there I visited Yugoslavia and went on to India via Greece. When I went through India on my way to Tashkent, my only contact was with officials there. On my return trip, I visited an Indian friend I met at the Asian-African Writers' Conference, and I was able to catch a glimpse of the country, as it were, from the inside.

India left me with an exceptionally strong impression. It added a third dimension of experience totally different from my perception of the world based so far on Europe and Japan (it was not until later that I saw for myself the realities in North America). Nearly every issue facing the underdeveloped regions reached dramatic intensity in India, and I suppose nearly every question facing India also applied to other underdeveloped regions in general. Explosive population growth, sluggish agricultural production, widespread poverty and illiteracy, estrangement of the educated minority from the rest of the population, economic dependence on the developed countries, cultural dependence on its own past, separatist regionalism, absence of a common language, a parliamentary democracy existing only in name . . . Later on, whenever I heard such phrases as "underdeveloped countries," "the Third World," or "Asia, Africa, and Latin America," what invariably came to mind first was the overwhelming sight of massive starvation and pervasive poverty among people everywhere—at the roadside of bustling amusement quarters, inside the entrances to government buildings, and in villages in faraway mountains. While the Indians I saw might be just skin and bones, their facial features radiated a dignified elegance. It is foolish to preach the abstract idea of freedom to someone with an empty stomach. But it is even more foolish to think one can make a hungry man happy simply by throwing crumbs of bread at his feet.

39—
Death

A friend of mine died. Shortly after that, I began to lose my grip on what people around him might be thinking about his death. People came together, tears were shed, funeral arrangements were discussed, gossip was exchanged, and then a stubborn silence took over. His mother said, "Ever since my son got married, I seemed to have lost him completely." His mother-in-law remarked, "He never gave any thought to money. If only he could have been a little more concerned about his family." And a close friend of his muttered to no one in particular, "I am so very angry with him because he chose to suffer alone without ever sharing his anguish with us." Another friend declared that under the circumstances someone was needed to head a funeral committee and then went on to argue fervently about who would or would not be a good candidate for the job. I had a feeling that I was being dragged onto the stage in the middle of a play whose plot I did not know, trying in vain to search for my role among strangers. Yet the people around me at the time were all old friends or else friends of my friends. I could not expect to find a more congenial group.

The man who died—I wonder if I really knew him. When I heard he was not feeling well, I wanted to find out over the telephone what his real condition was. For one thing, we had not met for quite some time, and besides, I had not visited him for years. In those days, the many commitments I had with various journals and magazines always kept me pre-occupied. I almost felt that being busy with work was proof of my being alive.

When I asked him how he felt, he replied casually, "Oh, it's nothing," and then a little nervously, he asked, "Who told you about my condition?"

"That's not the issue," I said. "Never mind that and tell me how you feel. What is bothering you?"

"Oh, just a little stomachache, as usual. Nothing to worry about. I've had it before once in a while."

"Can I see you tomorrow at your place?"

"There is no need for that. I'll be all right."

"Why don't you let me talk to you about it?"

"It's nothing, really."

"Why don't you let me make sure everything is all right?"

"I know you're busy, and besides . . . "

"No, I'm not," I replied. "Not to the extent that I can't visit an old friend and talk about things at our leisure." I said I would come over to see him at his house the following afternoon and hung up before he could respond.

The square in front of the Central Line station seemed a little different every time I went there after varying intervals of time. New shops were now opened, construction work for large buildings had been making some headway, and the location of the bus stops had also been changed from the right to the left of the square. I stood there for a while to gather my vague recollections of the geography of the area. Walking through a narrow shopping arcade where pedestrians moved along literally shoulder to shoulder, I headed toward the residential area with rows of single-story houses, all with a similar appearance. One of them was his residence. His wife came out to greet me at the vestibule, saying, "Thank you for always being so kind to us." Come to think of it, I was ten times more indebted for what he had done for me than the other way round. But I didn't say anything.

He was wearing a dotera and his complexion was a little pale. What hadn't changed was his long hair and his characteristic smile. He didn't really want to talk about his illness, but at my insistence he started to tell me about it in a disinterested tone, as if he were talking about someone else. Just by listening to him, I could tell things were quite serious.

"No matter what I say, he just refuses to go to a doctor," his wife said as she looked at me.

"Would you get some tea for us please?" he said to her.

"A really stubborn man," she said as she rose and went to another room.

"How about it? Shall we take a look?" I tried a nonchalant tone, realizing that I was coming to the important business.

He was not the kind of man to be taken in by the tone of what people said. With a clear voice and without changing his expression, he said, "I don't think that's necessary. Let's talk about something else. After all, we haven't seen each other for quite a while." But I persisted. I told him since I already knew what he had to say about his illness, it was a good idea for me to examine him. After that, we'd decide what to do next. Otherwise, it'd just amount to making a superficial diagnosis. Meanwhile, I thought that his condition might already have deteriorated beyond treatment. After I examined him, I became all the more suspicious that this might indeed be the case.

"I don't think you need to worry," I said, "but you need to be examined at a good hospital to confirm the diagnosis. The examination isn't going to take long, so I think it's better if you check into a hospital. You can't have that kind of examination as an outpatient."

He seemed a little stunned by my obstinacy and agreed to be hospitalized. But for the moment he had a mountain of work to do; besides, he also had teaching commitments at the university. He promised me that after he had taken care of these things, by next weekend, he would do everything I said.

"No, I think the earlier you have it done the better."

"But I am not a child either, you know!" he spoke sharply as if he wanted to cut short our conversation.

"Let me decide what's good for your health!" I yelled back at him. "I'm a doctor."

"But this is my body."

"When I said the earlier the better, I'm not telling you to forget about your work and your responsibilities. What I mean is after you have given it some thought, the earlier you do that the better. If possible, tomorrow." He checked into a hospital the next day.

When I met several of his friends in the hospital corridor, one of them, a Catholic convert, suggested that should his illness prove incurable, it might be better to tell him the truth. Everybody else there opposed the idea, but I didn't have a particular opinion one way or the other. What is a friend if one cannot even trust his words unless one sees the proof? It was difficult for me to lie to his face when I knew he trusted me completely—even though the lie was in his own best interest. Moreover, we knew at that time that nothing could possibly save him. There was no reason to doubt the accuracy of the diagnosis, which meant no one could reasonably hold out any hope for him. In the patient's room,

he said, "Look how skinny I've become." His voice was weak, but as always he was more concerned about other people around him than his own well-being. "Thank you all for taking the trouble to come. I know you're all so busy. If I get better, there's work waiting to be done." I simply could not bring myself to tell him that there was no hope that he would ever get better again.

Soon after he passed away, a thought kept recurring in my mind that he himself might have wished to die. That does not mean that he wanted to commit suicide. After discussing the matter with his attending physician at the hospital, we had decided not to reveal to him what he had, a decision we kept, I believe, until the end. I thought that he, on his part, was rather high-spirited about returning to work again. But perhaps he was only saying it out of consideration for us, his friends who would like to see him live. I had a lingering suspicion that he had earlier already sensed that his illness would eventually kill him, and that he had waited quietly until his condition deteriorated beyond repair. Maybe he was not prepared to die each time the illness had assaulted his body. Maybe he was torn between his fear and his wish for death at the same time. Earlier, he had told me, "I may not have the right to do other things, but even a man like me should at least be given the right to die if I wish to." His voice struck me not so much as subdued as unrestrainedly impassioned. I wondered what he meant by doing "other things," and I did not venture to ask. If he could tell me, he would do so without my inquiring. But he didn't say another word. I had known him for twenty years, but at that time I felt that a very substantial part of him still eluded my understanding.

What does it mean when two human beings "understand" each other? I suppose it means that they can sometimes appreciate each other's "feelings." But no one can predict something as volatile as one's own "feelings." Ultimately, I wonder how much I did really understand the man beyond his persona as it is manifested in his works.

In a sense, we had traveled along the same path for twenty years. Both of us had always tried to reach a higher standard for ourselves and to understand the world and other people around us. As we broadened our perspectives, we both endeavored to explore the correlation between independent facts and experiences. Along the way, I scribbled down my thoughts, while he, for the most part, gathered his experiences and internalized them. But our differences were not significant. He had not done any work worthy of its name, and I, on my part, had not accom-

plished any either. And yet meanwhile, I must say I had an inkling within me that I was about to come to a turning point in my journey. I had begun to detect a certain correlation between a great many things, and this discovery went hand in hand with my awareness of my own position on various issues. I was coming to see that wherever I might be and whatever I might be doing, I would always be my own self. I felt that the time had come for me to start my real work. It was true for me, and I believed it was true for him as well. What could be more cruel than to succumb to illness at this juncture? I did not know what kind of work he could have accomplished in the future, but in any case, I had great faith in its quality. Here we are not talking about the death of someone who had not done any preliminary work, nor about the death of a man of accomplishment of some sort. Here was a man who had died before he could begin his work after he had finally completed all his preparations.

Once a female friend of mine remarked that he was an oddball, a very strange man. She did not elaborate, and I had not heard anything about him from her since. But on one occasion, for some reason I mentioned her to him. It was during one afternoon at a coffeeshop in Nihonbashi. Around us men and women taking a break from the office talked and laughed merrily among themselves. I had just returned from Europe, and he also must have come back recently to Japan. We talked about many things, and naturally, Europe was one of them. He remembered the time he met her there, and I suppose that was why I mentioned her. His reaction surprised me. "Let's drop the topic." His voice, almost shouting with anger, had an intensity I had never experienced. Since then, we had never talked about her. My imagination, however, helped to concoct what might have happened.

He met her in Europe and fell in love with her (if a man had never been deeply infatuated with a woman, surely he would not suddenly get so agitated at the mere mention of her name). However, he had no intention of leaving his family in Tokyo (I cannot tell why, but I would guess it was due primarily to his strong sense of responsibility). Not knowing what to do—if such were not the case, few men would act like "an oddball" and be "very strange"—he must have thought of a last resort. He would look after his family in Tokyo, and she would live alone. What happens when a man and a woman in love decide on their own to give up their hopes of living together and bear the pain of separation? The bonds between their hearts would only grow stronger with time until a consummate friendship developed between them. This friendship

would no doubt help both of them in their work and enrich each other's humanity. This must have been his impossible dream.

Perhaps the story I imagined was not what really happened. But after his death, I came close to believing that he had once loved passionately, that the love agonized him and made him concoct impossible dreams, and that the discrepancy between his dreams and reality caused him profound torment. His short life was not spent in lukewarm indifference. There was no question in my mind that he, in his own special way, lived every minute of it with all the enthusiasm and energy he could muster.

Once, after visiting him at the hospital, I headed for Hongo^[*] on some business. Overcome by the thought of death and a wretched sense of powerlessness, I walked mechanically on the quiet Hongo-dori^[*] without taking any interest in the things around me. When I reached the main entrance to the university, I suddenly encountered a group of students coming out of the main gate carrying signboards saying "Opposition to the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty!" As their loose formation quietly passed the university gate, they began to walk toward the Hongo 3-chome^[*] area. I knew where they were heading from there. However strange it might seem, they reminded me of the scene toward the end of the war during the student mobilizations. With rifles on their shoulders, they walked out the same university gate on their way to the front—young men who were about to lose their lives at sea or in some dense forests far away from home, from their lovers, and from their families. As I watched students pass the main gate, I could not bring myself to leave the scene. Perhaps a number of them—who knows how many?—were about to be butchered by the police of the Kishi government and would never return.^[1] Yet I could not join their ranks or prevent the sacrifice of their blood. What powerlessness! And what wretchedness! All I could do was to speak in a weak voice. Just as I was helpless against cancer, I was completely powerless in the past against the authority that had sent students to the battlefield and was now grinding students under the boot of brute force. Was I destined to end up a bystander just as I had grown up one? That was the gloomy feeling I had deep in my heart.^[2]

[1] Chapter 40 takes up the demonstrations against the treaty's ratification in 1960.

[2] Kato's^[*] reminiscence about this particular episode in 1960 resonates with a literary ghost of the not-so-distant past: Nagai Kafu's^[*] short piece "Hanabi"(Fireworks, 1919), in which he confesses to a debilitating powerlessness at the sight of political prisoners accused of conspiring to assassinate the Meiji emperor in the Kotoku^[*] Shusui^[*] Incident (1910–11). Beyond the superficial similarities of their reactions lie more fundamental questions about the modern Japanese literary intellectual's role in broad social and political discourse. On Kafu's^[*] piece see Moriyama Shigeo, Taigyaku jiken: Bungaku sakka ron (San'ichi shobo^[*] , 1980), 113–30, esp. 113–15; and, in English, Jay Rubin, Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984), 190–93; and Kato^[*] , "Japanese Writers and Modernization," in Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization , ed. Marius B. Jansen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 425–45, esp. 430–31.

He was truly a hard worker. While teaching at a national university, he also served as a lecturer at a private university. While working as a literary critic for journals and newspapers, he also produced remarkably precise translations of difficult works. Moreover, he also read widely and meticulously on Japanese and foreign literatures. To do all that, a man would have to work ceaselessly day and night. He himself must have felt the drive to accomplish all that. But another important factor was that he was simply not the kind of man to turn down other people's requests easily. A lot of his work was done for the benefit of others, and I only wished he had lived long enough to do his work for himself. Whenever I put down my thoughts in writing, I knew I could always count on him to appreciate their worth. While others might misunderstand what I wrote, I felt certain I had at least one reader who never would. Once, for instance, I introduced the poet Gottfried Benn to Japanese readers and talked about the significance of his intellectual drama to us.^[3] A year later, he produced a scrupulous translation of Benn's Doppelleben entitled Niju^[*] seikatsu . I could not begin to imagine the amount of preparation and effort he put into that translation. Nor could I begin to articulate what a great loss his death was to me.

One time, after visiting him at the hospital, I rode in a car with two other old friends who had come to visit, a man and a woman.

"Is there any hope he could be cured?" the man asked.

"I don't think so," I replied at that time.

[3] A reference to his "Gottofurito^[*] Ben to gendai Doitsu no seishin" (Gottfried Benn and the contemporary German spirit, Sekai , July 1957), in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 2:198–225. For English versions of Benn's works, known for their resistance to translations, see J. M. Ritchie, Gottfried Benn: The Unreconstructed Expressionist (1972) and E. B. Aston, ed., Primal Vision: Selected Writings of Gottfried Benn (1958). Doppelleben (Double life, 1950) is the title of his autobiography.

"How long will he live? I think we also need to think about what's going to happen next."

"I don't know, but probably not more than a month," I said—but couldn't bring myself to talk about "what's going to happen next."

The woman, whom I had not seen for many long years, was still every bit her old self. As I listened quietly, I was struck with the impression that her short exchanges with my other friend were filled with an undertone of utter helplessness over the imminent and irreclaimable loss of a friend. She had known him since his younger days when the world was opening up before his eyes with all kinds of possibilities, a time when he, on his part, was prepared to greet each and every one of them with ardent enthusiasm. There were no tears in her eyes, but her reminiscence of him—so I thought—brought a beautiful twinkle into them.

After his return from Europe, he must have tried as much as possible to commit himself to his wife and children. Yet his love and hate must also have been directed elsewhere. I suppose the farther away the object of his passions had moved, the more intensely personal his own internal drama became, and the more difficult it was for him to justify his own agony.

"Do you think it's good to be alive under any circumstances, no matter how much sacrifice one has to make?" he once asked me. "Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not speaking about myself, but just as a general question." But of course, I knew it was not a general question. Yet I could not come up with an answer.

I did not understand him then, and perhaps I still do not. The only thing I do understand is the bond that existed between us. This became increasingly apparent to me after his death. Our bond was as authentic and tangible as a piece of rock. What more can one expect from life? I sit writing this piece now, in a country he barely knew. My quiet little room is bright and warm, and there on the table lies a book he wrote. Outside the window is a melancholy autumn and a gray sky. How I wish he could suddenly knock at the door and come into the room, saying, "Hey! It's been a long time! Looks like you're doing all right here!" But I knew it was an impossible illusion; I could never see him again. I am deeply chagrined by the thought. I do not want to talk with him—I only want to see his long hair and his pale complexion once more. Can anything be more absurd than not being able to do even that or something as simple as give him a call? But this anything, however absurd, is possible. Not only is it possible, it is now a reality, an irrevocable, unfathomable, and totally incomprehensible reality.

Shortly after he died, I left Tokyo again. It was true that I was encouraged by the popular movement against the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty that summer. But his death had changed something in me. Until then I had been very particular about where I lived and worked, but after he died this became a secondary concern only. I realized that wherever I went, I could do whatever I was capable of doing. When a new position became available on the other side of the Pacific, I accepted it and departed from Haneda Airport alone. From the window of my plane, I looked at the lights of Tokyo as they quickly receded into the distance and soon disappeared into the deep darkness of the ocean. I wasn't the least sentimental, or the least regretful.

40—
Unfinished Judgment

Negotiations for the revision of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty had begun as early as 1959. For a long time their substance was not accessible to the Japanese people. In the autumn of the same year, as the public grew more or less aware of what was going on, an opposition movement developed at the grass-roots level. In January 1960 representatives of the Japanese government went to the United States for the formal signing of the new security treaty. With the public disclosure of its terms, active discussions in Japan over its pros and cons added new momentum to the opposition movement. In the spring of the same year, unanimous newspapers' public opinion polls showed more people in Japan against the ratification of the new treaty than those in favor.

The first major difference between the old and the new treaties had to do with the circumstances surrounding the formal signing of the treaty. The old treaty, the brainchild of the United States, was part of a package with the peace treaty, and it was signed by Japanese representatives at a time when the country was still under occupation.^[1] At that time Japan in effect had no other choice. Moreover, the Korean War had just ended and U.S.-Soviet relations were exceptionally tense. The new security treaty, negotiated at a time when there were finally some visible signs of "thawing" in U.S.-Soviet relations after top-level talks in the autumn of 1959, was a military alliance pursued by the independent Japanese government on its own initiative.

The second major difference had to do with the terms of the treaty

[1] The first Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and the Treaty of Peace with Japan were signed in San Francisco on September 8, 1951.

themselves. The new treaty revised the unlimited term of the old treaty to ten years, formally stipulated the United States' obligation in the defense of Japan, and had an additional provision that any movement of American troops stationed in Japan required "prior consultation" with the Japanese government. And Japan promised to further strengthen its "self-defense capabilities."

The third difference involved the "administrative agreement" about U.S. military bases. The new administrative agreement recognized greater Japanese authority in an attempt to bring it up to par with the convention established by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The Japanese government primarily emphasized the second and third points and maintained that the new treaty was more advantageous to Japan than the old. The opposition, on the other hand, regarded the first point as being the fundamental issue and insisted that it was undesirable for Japan to take the initiative in plunging the country into a military alliance. One could come up with four main reasons why they held such a position. First, entering into a military alliance was unconstitutional (or at least counter to the spirit of Article 9 of the constitution).^[2] Second, such an act would increase tension in the Far East (leading to the vicious cycle of generating tension, then military expansion, yet further tension, and further military expansion). Third, Japan might be embroiled in a military conflict because it involved the United States. Fourth, strengthening the military held a potential threat to the future of Japanese democracy.

I personally hoped to see the abolition rather than the revision of the security treaty. Therefore I followed the lead of likeminded senior colleagues and friends and, along with several experts, took part in a symposium to voice our criticism of the government's policy. The result was published in the journal Sekai under the title "Futatabi Anpo kaitei ni tsuite" (Once again on the security treaty's revision).^[3] After that, I also

[2] Article 9 of the 1947 constitution reads, "[Japan will] forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or the use of force as means of settling international disputes"; it stipulates that Japan will not maintain land, sea, or air forces and other forms of military capabilities.

[3] Sekai , February 1960. Kato^[*] and twenty-one others looked at hypothetical scenarios of international threats to Japan's security and stated that in the world context of the time, the best national defense for Japan was "demilitarized neutrality" (hibuso^[*] churitsu^[*] ), a position that liberal intellectuals and the Japan Socialist Party had taken as far back as 1950; see Sekai , March 1950, for the declaration by the Peace Discussion Group (Heiwa mondai danwakai).

met and debated with those who favored its revision. My conversation with Foreign Minister Fujiyama Aiichiro^[*] was published in Chuo^[*] Koron^[*] , and another conversation with Hayashi Kentaro^[*] at the Conference on the Freedom of Cultural Expression appeared in the Asahi Shimbun .^[4]

I also took part in a televised symposium to express my views. But the proponents of treaty revision had not bothered to read the published essay from the first symposium carefully enough to dispute its main arguments. Consequently, during the public discussion there was not much we could do except restate the same ideas, in less polished terms. Putting together cogent arguments to sustain a political opinion not only involves lengthy explications, but the discourse cannot always be as captivating as a crude allegory. Few bother to follow it. And yet oversimplification often leads to imprecise arguments. An effective presentation in front of a general audience requires the proper division of labor among like-minded people. It occurred to me at the time that I had to find a suitable role to play.

I am not suggesting there was unanimous opposition to the government from the spring to the early summer of 1960. Public opinion in Japan was divided over the pros and cons of the security treaty. The majority of the Japanese people who opposed the government did so not because of the treaty's terms but because of the way it had been ratified. The treaty had to do with Japan's foreign relations; the way it was ratified had to do with the workings of democracy within the country. The unprecedented mass mobilization into a struggle against the security treaty (Anpo toso^[*] ) was a domestic phenomenon. Since Japanese public opinion was divided over the ratification of the new security treaty, the Japanese people and the opposition parties demanded that the Kishi cabinet dissolve the Diet and let the voices of the Japanese people be heard. As everybody knew at that time, the ruling party had an absolute majority of seats in the Lower House. Yet during the general election that decided the apportionment of seats, the controversy over the security

[4] Fujiyama Aiichiro (1897–1985), president of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Nissho^[*] ) in 1941 and a wartime director of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, who became foreign minister in Kishi Nobusuke's first (1957–58) and second (1958–60) cabinets. • Hayashi Kentaro (1913–), a historian of modern Germany and former president of Tokyo University (1973–77), who set up the Japan Culture Forum with Takeyama Michio and Kosaka^[*] Masaaki (1958) and then became director of the Japan Foundation (1980) and a Liberal Democratic member of the Upper House (1983–89).

treaty had not been a contentious issue. Moreover, as the substance of the new security treaty became common knowledge, it was increasingly apparent that the distribution of Diet seats did not reflect the realities of public opinion on the matter. The decision to ratify the treaty, once made, would not be easy to modify and would bind the Japanese people for at least the next ten years. And to make such a decision without due respect for the will of the majority of the Japanese people could only be described as an act against democratic principle. The demand for the dissolution of the Diet largely followed this reasoning. But on May 19, 1960, the government and the ruling party ordered the police to come into the Lower House and remove opposition Diet members who were staging a sit-in protest. The government and the ruling party then prolonged the Diet's session and passed the new security treaty in the middle of the night without the presence of the opposition Diet members. This action in turn provoked a popular protest movement that developed into the largest of its kind in modern Japanese history.

The U.S. president, who was visiting America's satellite countries around Asia, had to cancel his plans to visit Japan. The Kishi cabinet was toppled and had to be replaced by the Ikeda cabinet.^[5] Nonetheless, the new security treaty was ratified and the conservative party that had unilaterally forced its passage again won an overwhelming majority of votes in the general election in the fall.

The president's cancellation of his visit to Japan surely convinced at least some quarters in the United States that a considerable discrepancy might exist between the pronouncements of the Japanese government and the feelings of the Japanese people. Yet newspapers in the United States went on declaring that Tokyo's disturbances were simply the result of "the instigation of a number of Communists." As the Americans were still ardent believers in the almighty and omnipresent Communists, they seemed to imagine that a mere handful of "Communists" could, at the snap of their fingers, mobilize millions of people anywhere in the world to demonstrate on the streets.

European newspapers, and the British and French ones in particular,

[5] Massive student demonstrations in Tokyo forced President Dwight D. Eisenhower to cancel his visit to Japan, and Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke resigned in July 1960 (his cabinets had lasted from February 1957 to July 1960). Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato (1899–1965) formed a new cabinet. See George R. Packard III, Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty Crisis of 1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).

were not as pharisaic as their American counterparts. They read the popular movement in Japan, an event that managed to turn away the president of the United States, as a reflection of "the will of the Japanese people not to submit tamely to their nation's satellite status" since the Occupation. Perhaps this interpretation represented an inference from their own feelings about the United States.

I had a dialogue with Maruyama Masao for the Mainichi Gurafu as we looked back on the struggles against the security treaty.^[6] At that time, Maruyama said something to the effect that, first, the people, whether they were ordinary citizens, laborers, or students, had not been mobilized under the direction of any organization; rather, they spontaneously rose up in protest, and the organizers subsequently followed their lead. Second, their behavior was not due to their anti-American feelings or even to their opposition to the establishment that had presented them with a new security treaty. It was due primarily to their opposition to the way the government had rammed the treaty through the Diet. Third, this very fact marked the transition of Japanese democracy from its inception as a postwar institution to a political movement. It signified, according to him, a stage in the development of democracy into a truly functioning institution. I agreed with Maruyama's views.

While I was opposed to the ratification of the security treaty, I did not feel frustrated when it was passed despite the massive opposition movement. Many who later confessed their frustrations were those who had worked actively within political organizations. Perhaps it was only natural that I should feel the way I did, since I had taken no action except to make my opposing views public. But beyond that, it was my assessment from the very beginning that even an optimistic projection would give the popular movement only a fifty-fifty chance of blocking the ratification of the treaty itself. My interpretation of the event was that

[6] Maruyama Masao (1914–96), a prominent scholar of Japanese intellectual history and professor of political thought at Tokyo University from 1940–71, was actively involved in the political turmoil of 1960 with such figures as Takeuchi Yoshimi. Among Maruyama's best-known works in the West are Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1963) and Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); he and Kato^[*] coedited Honyaku no shiso^[*] (The ideology of translation), vol. 15 of Kindai Nihon shiso taikei (Iwanami shoten, 1991). See Rikki Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan: Maruyama Masao and the Search for Autonomy (London: Routledge, 1996).

it had already achieved a not insignificant two-fold objective. Even though it might have failed to block the treaty's ratification, the movement clearly demonstrated to the rest of the world that a great many Japanese citizens in no way welcomed the presence of Occupation troops in Japan. Domestically, the movement served as a warning to the government and to the ruling party about how the people could react if the former did not respect basic democratic principles.

In retrospect, it was not the opposition parties and citizens' organizations but those in power who had learned many a good lesson from the experience during the early summer of 1960. The Ikeda cabinet adopted a "low profile," meaning that the government avoided provocative actions and paid very careful attention to the reactions of public opinion while gingerly implementing specific policies in small, incremental steps. This posture went hand in hand with its talk about "doubling the income level," meaning that in ten years' time, discounting the effects of inflation, personal income among the Japanese people would statistically double its current level.

Meanwhile, it went about expanding the police force that was deemed effective in suppressing student demonstrations on the streets or sit-in protests. In order to control opposition views against the military alliance with the United States, the government proceeded, short of taking any overtly atrocious tactics, to keep left-wing intellectuals from gaining access to public broadcasting facilities. These government policies, based on the valuable lessons its officials had learned, did not all became evident in the fall of 1960. But when the general election in the fall did not produce any significant change in the number of conservative seats in the Diet, there was little doubt about what the future course of Japanese politics would be in the next few years.

The year of the revision of the security treaty had allowed me to develop some new friendships. But at the same time, although it might be an exaggeration for me to say that it had also taken some friends away from me, it had at least caused us to drift further apart. Communication with some had become even easier than before, while with others it became even more difficult. And this was not necessarily the result of our agreement with or opposition to the treaty alone.

I frequently recalled the conversations I had had during the Pacific War. Still a student in those days, I had never stated my views in a public forum. Even in our private conversations, the proponents of the war, backed by the political authority, were free to speak their minds with-

out any apprehension as to who might be listening in around them. On the other hand, those who opposed the war, fearful of the authorities, had to avoid using so many taboo expressions that they were rendered half-paralyzed in their attempt to substantiate their ideas. It was not a debate on an equal footing. To be sure, in 1960 we were broadly guaranteed freedom of speech to an extent inconceivable during the war years. But in open debates, I don't think the defenders and the opponents of government policies were standing on equal ground. The party that wanted to have the treaty ratified was the political establishment of the Japanese state itself, and, if that wasn't enough, it had the backing of the most powerful political establishment in the world. To espouse the cause of the security treaty in Tokyo—or to condemn it in Beijing—was the easy and safe course of action to take and certainly the expedient thing to do to secure the future of one's career. I don't mean to suggest, of course, that everyone in favor of the security treaty in Tokyo necessarily made such calculations. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that a debater who identifies with the interests of the power establishment runs a greater risk of intellectual corruption. Fairness goes out the window in a discourse when one party has the backing of an awesome power establishment while the other side has only reason as its champion. Ignorance of this fact constitutes intellectual depravation; knowing the fact without being sensitive to it constitutes moral decadence.

"The students are no good, and the policemen who beat them up are also no good. Violence is wrong."

"The Socialist Party staging their sit-in is no good, and the Liberal-Democratic Party bringing in the police is also no good. Politics is dirty."

Decadence in discourse typically manifests itself when proper discussions about the specificities of politics, war, peace, and violence insidiously hide within proclamations of broad generalizations.

I wonder what karma might have driven me, while being a Japanese citizen, to so persistently oppose the policies of the Japanese government as far back as I can remember. Already in 1941, I could not bring myself to support the war of the Tojo^[*] cabinet. When one of his cabinet ministers reemerged twenty years later and tried to forge a new military alliance, I again could not support his policy.^[7] I doubt if my opposition

[7] Kato^[*] refers to Kishi Nobusuke (1896–1987), who was minister of commerce and industry (1941) and minister of internal affairs (1943) under the Tojo cabinet, arrested after the war as a suspected class-A war criminal but releasedin 1948, reemerging as a hawkish pro-American conservative to become president of the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955 and prime minister in 1957. See Kishi Nobusuke kaikoroku (The memoirs of Kishi Nobusuke [Kosaido^[*] shuppan, 1983]).

comes from any fanatical predisposition on my part or to any defiant spirit raging in my bones. On self-reflection, I would venture to say that my temperament was as gentle as that of a sheep, and indeed that was the year in which I was born. I do not even like to raise my voice or shout during a conversation. While I might resign myself to the blame of being old-fashioned and temporizing, I don't think I could fairly be criticized for being stubbornly uncompromising or unduly radical. Nor did any moral position compel me to entertain any unsuppressible patriotic passion. From the outset, I held no absolute values on moral issues, to say nothing of political matters. Rather than create a new security treaty, my view was that a better policy would be to work toward its nullification. And yet I didn't think that the latter course was absolutely correct or feel that the world would come to an end with the conclusion of the new security treaty. When freedom of speech did not exist, I remained silent; when it did exist, I made my views known. I never had enough faith in political morality to plunge myself into any political movement at the risk of my own life. But I place even less faith in the value of personal advancement, fortune, or glory. That was all.

I wonder how much more satisfaction I would have felt if my books had sold a little more, or if I had become a little richer or a little more famous. Surely, it couldn't even begin to compare to a sense of moral gratification or intellectual fulfillment, however relative the former and however incomplete the latter may be. In the final analysis, my continued opposition to government policy at any one time was based on my own moral sense. This moral sense was certainly not something derived from any unequivocal conviction, but it was the best justifiable position I could arrive at on the basis of all the evidence available to me. Perhaps it also had something to do with the fact that I had lost some of my friends during the war. The value of their lives was immeasurable, and their deaths irrevocable. But war is a political act, and the significance of any political act can only be relative. My mind is always haunted by the impropriety of employing irrevocable and absolute means to coerce others into making inestimable sacrifices for a goal that can only be relative.

One could never exhaust one's means to avoid a war. To determine the most effective means to accomplish this goal is not a question of morality but of judgment and reasoning. Perhaps there is no definitive answer to that question. And yet when the time comes, with what little information to rely on and what meager abilities I possess, I myself have to give a tentative answer . . .

The signing of the new security treaty reminded me of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.^[8] Look for the big tree when you seek shelter, as the saying goes (at the time of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the British navy ruled the seven seas). Japan quietly cultivated its strength and managed to stand alone, but later it picked a wrong path. Now that Japan had achieved economic prosperity while relying on the military power of the United States, what future course would it take? In any event, with the new security treaty, the Japanese government made its choice. With that, a postwar epoch came to an end. That was something I keenly felt. At the same time I also had a strong feeling that this point in postwar society also marked a watershed in my own life.

When I think about it, I realize that I spent my earlier years largely within the confines of my own world rather than out exploring my surroundings. This tendency became all the more pronounced during the war. But in the fifteen years that followed, I did very much the opposite. Nevertheless, the experiences I acquired and the many observations I made over those years seemed mutually independent of each other, and the correlation between them was not always clear to me. As I began to perceive, little by little, what they meant to each other, I felt the need to probe more deeply into the matter, to discover the mutual links between experiences, and to incorporate independent observations into the totality of my world. Increasingly this desire grew stronger in me. To think rather than to observe, to read rather than to write, and to at least learn something about my own self. As I looked back on my past, I also thought about my future. The prospect of leaving Tokyo for a while to live in seclusion in the mountains was alluring, but given the economic situation of my family this aspiration could hardly be fulfilled.^[9] The only al-

[8] The Anglo-Japanese Alliance was formed in January 1902 in preparation for a probable Russo-Japanese confrontation in Manchuria, twice revised, in August 1905 and July 1911, with changing political objectives, and abrogated at the Washington Conference of 1921–22.

[9] "Random thoughts of a mountain recluse" became Kato's^[*] syndicatedliterary column in the evening edition of Asahi Shimbun (July 1980–May 1984); some forty essays for the column are in Sanchujin^[*] kanwa: zoho^[*] (Random thoughts of a mountain recluse, enlarged ed. [Asahi shimbunsha, 1987]).

ternative for me was to seek employment in a far-off location. I did not necessarily wish to live abroad then, but from time to time positions were available for me outside Japan.

In the year 1960, my life in postwar Tokyo came to a conclusion; 1960 was also the starting point of my life ahead. But of course that conclusion was only tentative. As far as my work was concerned, I had completed certain preliminary preparations and was about to get down to the real work. As for my life, I no longer sought after something new in a different lifestyle; I was thinking only of getting the most out of what I already had. The months and years linking 1960 to the present have come and gone. Perhaps one day the time will come for me to reminisce about those passing years. But it is not now. My judgment on myself is still pending.