Writers In Kyoto

Page 21 of 65

Featured writing

Memoirs of a Japanese Nurse pt 2

November 24, 2021

The Memoirs of a Japanese Nurse on the Western Front (pt 2)

Hajimeko Takeda’s Notes by a Japanese Nurse Sent to France

Translated by Paul Carty & Eiko Araki, edited by Freddy Rottey & Dominiek Dendooven

In Stand To! 122 (April 2021), the introduction, context and postscript of Hajimeko Takeda’s memoirs as a Japanese nurse in France were published. This is the first part of the translation of her account, as originally published in the local newspaper Fukuoka Shimbun from May 25 to June 6, 1919.

[1]

     It was on November 3rd, 1914 when I received a summons: “Order of Dispatch to France as a relief nurse in the Japanese Red Cross (JRC) contingent”. As far as I remember, it was in the autumn evening when tinged maple leaves seemed to measure the loneliness of the passing season while people were talking about the chrysanthemums just beginning to bloom. I had become a member of JRC nurses hoping to contribute my life to humanitarian and philanthropic work and to the relief of suffering patients. I did not expect to receive this summons, and I was filled with a surprise and happiness which I had never experienced before. Strange emotions stole upon me, ruffling the blood flowing through my heart.

       I went to the Kumamoto Branch of JRC without delay, and was warned not to tell anyone about this mission, and these warnings were delivered in great detail. As the nurses were summoned to the Tokyo headquarters of JRC, I hurriedly packed my wicker trunks to travel to France. It is easy to say “packing wicker trunks”, but I was very anxious about traveling to Paris far away from Japan, crossing many miles of blue seas, and did not know how to begin packing. Members of Kumamoto Branch and my friends helped me pack, and on November 8th my heavy wicker trunks were sent from my house.

        I had already experienced relief work in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 as a member of Nisseki Relief Corps. My father told me that this new mission would be a great honour not only to myself but also to our family, the Takedas, for many generations to come. He also said that it would be gratifying to work behind the scenes of the Great War, an unprecedented event in history. Encouraged by his words, I took the first step toward France from Kumamoto Station at four o’clock in the late afternoon of that day.

　 　　The autumn sun, setting early, started to lean toward Mt. Hanaoka, and the treetops of colored leaves were brightened by the evening sun. Even the sight of a few mussels moved me with a sense of pathos. When I thought of leaving my beloved hometown Kumamoto for a strange foreign land, tears welled up in my eyes.

        At Kumamoto Railway Station, I was sent off with a shout of “banzai” [cheers] and blessings from people of Kumamoto Branch of JRC and its prefectural hospital. Encouraged by their words, I was filled with hope, but at the same time was overwhelmed with emotion when I heard the steam whistle of the train. All I could do was silently nod my head in assent.

        At eleven o’clock on the 10th of the same month I safely arrived at Tokyo Station, and visited the main branch of JRC to find the details of the dispatch. The JRC contingent to be dispatched to France consisted of one head doctor, two assistant doctors, and twenty nurses. We were to board the ship “Fushimimaru” from Yokohama Port on December 16th. Until December 15th, we prepared for departure and learned some French. At 8:00 a.m. on the 16 th seen off by many people including members of the nobility, we boarded our boat “Fushimimaru” due to depart at 10:00 a.m.

        That day as the howling north wind mixed with snow, we looked at the flag of the Rising Sun fluttering on the ship as if it were the only living thing. Mr. Torayoshi Irisawa (Irie?) was going to be the captain on the Fushimimaru’s maiden voyage. In fact, the ship just recently had its launching ceremony. The paint was so fresh that it seemed as if our fingers would stick to it if we touched it. It was really comfortable to be on board the ship. Captain Irisawa was very pleased to have this rare occasion, on the maiden voyage of the ship, to transport Japanese nurses to Europe where they were going to serve. 

        At last the whistle of departure blew in the snowy sky. The sound of the engine made us sad, and our team of maidens, with a twenty-one-year-old as the youngest, started on a long journey. We all felt the sorrow of leaving the mountains and rivers of our country, though our cheeks were hot with excitement.

[2]

        The ship began to sail slowly and smoothly. Closing my eyes, I remembered my father’s remonstrations, the image of my mother, and the warm-heartedness of my friends. These memories were inscribed indelibly on my mind at this solemn departure. On the other hand, when I imagined the big city of Paris and the background of the Great War, I was filled with hope, satisfaction and curiosity, and could not sleep soundly on the first day on board. The sound of the waves lapping against the side of the ship often broke our dreams. Other members seemed not to have slept either, and we sat up the first night talking, with bright eyes, about Paris, which none of us had seen yet.

        On board the ship we continued to study French. In our leisure time we enjoyed playing cards and karuta [Japanese card game]. When the sea was calm we almost forgot that we were out on the sea, but one time, struck by a strong wind, the ship rolled heavily. As we were not used to sailing, we grew pale and thought we were done for. To show our resolve we tied towels around our heads, but even then, we vomited. Despite our best efforts, we actually were a comical scene. When the sea was calm again, we forgot our recent suffering. We sang songs or like children romped about on the deck. When the ship was passing the Suez Canal, several nurses on the deck who had been singing ‘Hato Poppo’ [a song from school] rushed to the cabin. We asked them what had happened. They said they had heard the rumble of a cannon and seen an airplane in the sky. At this we all went on deck attracted by these fearful scenes. To be sure, we clearly saw the skillful piloting of planes and heard the distant roaring of guns. We all were hushed and the ship anchored temporarily in a bay out of harm’s way.

        Though shuddering at the rumbling sound of the cannon, we relied on the Red Cross flag hoisted high up at the bow. The ship endeavored to pass through the turmoil of war, and finally after fifty-one days of sailing we reached the port of Marseilles in the dawn of February 4 th, 1915. We were all eyes and ears at the exoticism of the city we saw for the first time. The Japanese Embassy, local officials and the people of Marseilles gave us a hearty welcome. The city prepared a special train for us to go to Paris. At eight o’clock on the morning of February 5 th, we arrived at Lyon Station, Paris.

       Here again we were greeted with a firm handshake by many people including the staff of Japanese Embassy and a baroness so-and-so. We departed in a long string of cars to Hotel Astoria[1] near the Arc de Triomphe, which was appointed as a Japanese Hospital. When we finally arrived after a long journey, all the members of the contingent were allocated to the rooms on the 6th and 7th floor of the main building. After a little rest, we began unpacking our wicker trunks.

        Feeling happy that we all arrived safe and sound, I renewed my firm resolution to do my duties of philanthropy in this unfamiliar country. I passed the first night in Paris, dreaming of my hometown and praying (to God) that we would fulfill our responsibilities.

[3]

        Hotel Astoria where we were stationed had been used by the British Red Cross for treatment before they went up to the front line. This hotel was situated on the left of la Place de l’Étoile where the uphill Champs-Élysées , starting from la Place de la Concorde in front of le Palais du Louvre, reached. The hotel, having eight stories, towered above the rest of the surrounding buildings, but was not equal to the height of the Tour Eiffel. As the hotel was on higher ground, we could have a good view, from our sitting room on the eighth floor, not only of the whole city of Paris but of the surrounding hazy mountains. This hotel was the subject of gossip among Parisians. The hotel, which had been run by Germans before the war, was rumored to install wireless telegraphy on the rooftop which was causing inconvenience to the French government. Another rumor was that the German Kaiser, after the defeat of Paris, planned to have a dinner party at this hotel, even arranging its date and menu.

        On February 14th in the 4th year of Taisho (1915), two poles were hoisted resolutely on the rooftop of the hotel; on one pole was fluttering the flag of the Rising Sun and that of the Red cross, and on the other the tricolor flag of France and the flag of the Red Cross. The four flags fluttering from these two poles could be seen from l’Arc de Triomphe and also as far as la Concorde. Our fellow countrymen looking at these flags must have felt overjoyed. These flags invoked in us compatriots some pleasant feelings which were hard to explain and they seemed to give good impression beyond description to French people.

        The opening ceremony of our hospital was held in the name of His Excellency Ambassador Ishii and our senior doctor, Dr. Shioda. Many important officials and people including Japanese residents came to the ceremony. Its grandeur reminded me of the annual celebration of the first Emperor Jinmu held in Nara on April 3rd.

         In wartime Paris banquets or dancing parties went out of fashion among society circles. Instead, those society ladies were keen on doing jobs related to the war, especially tending the honorably wounded. They prided themselves doing service for the country, which prompted every society lady to be engaged in such relief work as a voluntary nurse. To our hospital too many ladies applied for nursing. Dr. Shioda seemed to have a very hard time choosing as he did not know their ranks in society. As the reputation of our hospital was affected by that of the ladies working there, he asked so-and-so baroness who was well acquainted with the situation in Paris to select suitable persons. Among those ladies who wanted to extend a warm helping hand in relief work were those who had a long experience of working as a nurse and also those rich ladies who taught nursing as a retirement job because they enjoyed teaching. Nevertheless, almost all the rest were those who got a license only after doing a brief course lasting a few months.

       Observing these things every day we were deeply impressed by the fact that we shared the same feelings both in the East and the West. Is it not praiseworthy that all men should render devoted service to the country by going into battle while we women who are not permitted to be at the front devote ourselves to the relief of wounded soldiers?

[4]

        The four flags hoisted high on the building have been bathed in light from both the rising and setting sun. Time has passed; we have gradually settled down in our new circumstances. As I wrote before, it is praiseworthy how the French ladies who had volunteered were so enthusiastic about nursing. Even fifty- or sixty- year old ladies, who were as rich as Croesus and waited upon by many servants, came to our hospital early in the morning and went home when the stars were out, commuting to and from the hospital without the use of a vehicle. We were very worried, as some slipped down on the icy streets of a winter morning when the wind was piercing cold, and some lay down from exhaustion on a bench where many people were passing by. These were not rare events.

　　　　We finally made an arrangement like this: We, the Japanese trained nurses, would do the nursing work for the patients, while the society ladies would attend to their meals and comforts. As a result, it so happened that there were some graceful young ladies working in a dimly lit pantry and other ladies carrying a plain tray with many dishes; each dish had a piece of meat and a bit of salads. We were moved to tears when we saw those ladies taking every care to comfort solitary patients who had few to rely on, or to wash their feet, or help them put on the shoes.

       Another impressive thing is that the French Red Cross employees including the staff, doctors and nurses are all working unpaid. When they went as far as Africa or Greece, they were unpaid though provided with travelling expenses, bed and meals. It seemed that there were no rules about allowance or compensation if they were injured or died. Taking all this into consideration, these people engaged in relief work had not only a certain amount of property, but were filled with a philanthropic spirit of sacrificing themselves for the love of others to help the weak. This was always the topic of our conversation, and we Japanese all renewed our wish to have the same philanthropic spirit.

       By the way, there appeared a novel which had a Japanese woman called Madame Chrysanthème or Madame Kikuko as a heroine.[2] Entitled as “At a Japanese hospital on Champs-Élysées”, it explains in detail how our hospital impressed the author, admiring the cleanliness of our operation room, tidiness of our stock rooms of medical stuff. It also praises our senior surgeon’s adroitness at operations comparing it with cutting jewelry and polishing ivory. After this there are some comments on us nurses, so I will write a little about them in passing…

　　　　　　　　

[5]

       On May 25th, 1916, the newspaper Figaro published the following article:[3]

   When I entered the bandage preparation room, I saw a Japanese nurse. She was dressed in nursing clothes, wearing a big cap like Savoie confectionary and seemed to be preparing bandages. When I said “Hello”, she paid monotonous respect with a smile. She had a round face and very dark eyes. Whenever she smiled, her false teeth twinkled golden. She looked very young, but when I asked her if she had experienced aid work in the Russo-Japanese War, she said yes. This explains she must be more than thirty years old, though she really looked like a young girl.

       “She is very different!” said Mr. Girard, an aviation officer, who was hospitalized here five times due to a variety of wounds. I also asked him what feelings these women had when they left home: Did they feel compassion common to women all over the world or did they have patriotic feelings and self-confidence? Do they want to share with French people the advancement of Japanese medicine as an intelligent nation, or did they want to satisfy their curiosity for academic reasons? He guessed they had some of all these feelings anyway. He continued as follows: “What we should not forget about these women is that they are professional nurses paid about six hundred francs (two hundred yen) a month. They are delegated from the Japanese Red Cross as the most valuable medical workers representing Japan. They also had a firm belief in their mission as well as duty and patriotic feelings. The fact that they did not even have a look around the city of Paris even after living here for one year explains their sincerity and lack of any frivolous curiosity.”

       The only pleasure they had, I have heard, is that in the evening after they are off duty they change from European nursing uniforms they don’t like into Japanese kimono and play with dolls they brought from Japan. These things, however, cannot possibly be enough to judge Japanese women. Those child-like women are very intelligent, know their duties as nurses, and are strict, devoted and faithful. They are always kind and gentle to patients.

   Sometimes, however, they are not suited to those bearded soldiers cracking jokes, because they do not understand innocent jokes. If patients should make flattering jokes, those ‘musume’ [young women] did not pay any attention, which took away all the fun. They had the character of young girls reared in the countryside.”

        “Patients’ fiancées and sweethearts living in France must be worried about their lovers being tended by beautiful nurses in a Paris hospital, but those fears are utterly ungrounded when the patients are under the care of Japanese nurses. Japanese women seem to despise those who cannot tolerate pain. Those wounded, who scream and wail seeking the mother’s fond love must be unhappy indeed. Japanese women respect those patients who quietly tolerate pains ‘like a man,’ while they struggle to manage their own mental strain. One such nurse, I have heard, wrote to her mother quoting an old saying ‘It is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country.’”

[6]

       Thousands of miles from the skies of hometown we have been sleeping, thinking it good to die or perish for our country. We were called together by our Emperor to the war front, just as dewdrops on leaf tips; sadly we were not as tough as stones. As is usual with war it is not rare to find bodies growing cold in an instant or disabled with wounds, but I have heard that in this war there were a greater number of more seriously wounded than before.

As I wrote before, I was dispatched to the Russo-Japanese War to engage in relief work. Comparing the wounds of the casualties of these two wars, in this war we found more evidence of atrocities. We felt a shudder come over us when we thought of the ferocity of the Germans, and this happened to us countless times.

The French Red Cross used dogs to search for the wounded soldiers at the front: those dogs were far cleverer than Japanese police dogs. Once the dogs were unleashed at the site of the battlefield, they found the wounded wherever they lay hidden, and came back to their masters to lead them back by the sleeves to the wounded. The intelligence of the dogs always amazed people who were watching them. All the wounded from Russia, Italy, Britain or France were sent to Paris thanks to the contribution of these dogs.

At the Paris station, there were army surgeons who sent the wounded soldiers, according to their conditions, to various relief corps delegated from various countries. The French army surgeons sent the most seriously wounded to the Japanese relief corps. I want to share with our readers our happiness that they had such confidence in our group. At first the president of the JRC ordered us to ask for the presence of French doctors when operating on any patient, but they came only for the first two or three times and never came afterwards. This is after they witnessed Dr. Shiota, our chief surgeon, performing an operation and the nurses tending the wounded. All of us, not only Dr. Shiota but our distinguished nurses from the Japanese medical world, felt very proud that the progress of medicine in our country was thus highly appreciated in the West, the greatest authority in the medical world.

Many wounded soldiers arriving at the Paris station want to be accommodated by the relief corps of their own country, which is quite understandable human nature, but they are obliged to be divided into that of every country. One of those patients confessed that he was greatly disappointed to find he would be sent to the Japanese relief corps. He said he complained about his unhappiness to be hospitalized into the Red Cross of a strange foreign country, even though the Red Cross advocates philanthropy. As he got used to our nursing, he felt very happy to find that our Relief Corps was kind. This is what every patient in our hospital says. When we addressed a patient as Monsieur, he said, “Japanese nurses are mothers. Call me ‘my son’.” So I said, “You are my son,” and he rejoiced, clapping his hand like a small child.

We accommodated patients from every country, and they each boasted about the place they had come from. When the topic shifted to the war, they got excited with their faces flushed with anger. Sometimes they tried to stand up with their maimed legs and attempted to throw anything at hand or began to fight about childish things, which amused us.

Another amusing thing is that patients from every country burst into tears when they feel pain at the time of operation or while their dressing was being changed. “You are a man and a soldier. What a weakling you are, weeping with such a small pain! Japanese soldiers bite their lips and never cry in a case like this”, I often chided them about this. At this they defied me saying, “We are soldiers. On the battlefields we never flinch no matter what happens. To tolerate pains on the battlefields is our duty. There is no loss of honour and we are no less courageous if we cry on the operating table.” It seems that they are making an excuse for their lack of toughness.

[7]

        What perplexed us most was the language. We learned the French language for the first time in a classroom in the JRC Hospital soon after we were summoned, and practiced it a bit on board the ship. Our teacher praised our remarkable progress and hoped we would go on improving.

        After we arrived in Paris, we could somewhat understand what the patients were saying, perhaps better than mothers who had to guess their babies’ talk, it seems. What was difficult was to make ourselves understood in French. Some of us could speak English, but there were not many.

        We wanted to continue practicing French, but we were too busy to find time to do so. In the meantime, we got used to speaking French, and patients began to guess what we wanted to say. Patients from big cities in France, Parisians especially, could guess our feelings and promptly understood us, which we greatly appreciated. On the other hand, newly hospitalized patients, particularly from the countryside, were hard to understand, because they had broad accents and dialects. Senior patients, accustomed to us, who shared a sickroom with the new patients took the trouble to translate for us what they wanted to say.

        Our French conversation was also very poor to the extent that our maid at the hospital was chided by her mother at home because her way of speaking French had become very strange. There can be no wonder why. When she thought about this, she realized that she had become used to articulating her thought word by word instead of speaking sentences.

        The inability to communicate is troublesome to medical people who should understand the subtleties of their patients’ minds. We can tolerate the inconvenience as long as we get what we need in time, but to patients it is a pity indeed that they cannot make themselves understood. To the slightly wounded, our strange language may have become a topic of conversation or even a charm, but to the seriously wounded, who have to put up with intense pain, it must be another burden to communicate to us what they want. We really felt sorry for them.

        The lack of language which pained us most is when we encountered mentally deranged patients or heavily wounded and exhausted patients. We thought it all the more necessary to practice the language especially when taking care of mentally deranged patients. To those who were noticeably deranged, the lack of language on our part was not a big problem, but when it came to those whose mental disorder was not so severe, we had to understand what they were saying and if they were speaking normally or deliriously. This was the most difficult problem we encountered in attending to patients.

        For this difficulty, French volunteer nurses gave a generous helping hand, which encouraged us all. Those ladies gave patients many comforting words which were far more effective than ours, and relieved the patients’ tedium by chatting and reading to them. They also wrote letters for the patients who had difficulty in writing. Dr. Shioda said that without the help of those volunteer ladies our hospital life would have been insipid. Our spoken French is largely single words instead of sentences, but it is enough for daily life.

The chief doctor and other people have said that our nursing skills are excellent and that we could work perfectly anywhere in the world as JRC nurses. They explained that even though we have poor physiques, our conduct is orderly and meticulous. It has also been said of our Japanese nursing group that we value cleanliness and are kind, which are all virtues necessary for nurses. In this manner we continued for seventeen months, working for fourteen hours a day, and we were able to complete our active military service. The praises given by our chief doctor and other people were a great satisfaction and joy to us all. 　　　

To be continued …

**********************

1 Hotel Astoria, on the corner of the Champs-Elysées and the rue de Presbourg, housed the Japanese hospital

2 The entrance to the Japanese hospital (Albums Valois, La Contemporaine, Paris)

3 The storage room of the Japanese hospital (Albums Valois, La Contemporaine, Paris)

4 Japanese nurses preparing bandages, 3 September 1915 (Albums Valois, La Contemporaine, Paris)

5 The operation theatre of the Japanese hospital, 3 September 1915 (Albums Valois, La Contemporaine, Paris)

6 A ward in the Japanese hospital (Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris)

7 A group of Japanese nurses and their French assistants on the balcony of Hotel Astoria (Musée Carnavalet, Paris)

8 Decorative plate with the flags of the Allied countries: the United Kingdom, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Japan, Serbia and France. (IFFM)

IFFF000106

Japanese officers visiting the Belgian front, 1916 (IFFM)

67_Sgt Marine JAPAN

Eugène Burnand : A Japanese sailor (from: Les Alliés dans la Guerre des Nations. Paris, 1922)

[1] Located at 133, Avenue des Champs Elysée the building later became the famous Publicis Drugstore. Gutted by fire in 1972, it was replaced by a modern structure.

[2] We were not able to trace this book. Obviously, it is not the eponymous novel by Pierre Loti, published in 1887 which is said to have inspired Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly.

[3] There is indeed an article on the Japanese hospital in this issue in Figaro, but it does not have the content quoted by nurse Takeda.

Writers in Kyoto Present the Seventh Annual Kyoto Writing Competition

November 23, 2021

◆ THEME: Kyoto (English language submissions only)
◆ DEADLINE: March 31st, 2022 (23:59 JST)
◆ GENRE: Short Shorts (unpublished material only)
◆ WORD LIMIT: 300 Words (to fit on a single page)
◆ FORM: Short poems, character studies, essays, travel tips, whimsy, haiku sequence, haibun, wordplays, dialogue, experimental verse, etc. In short, anything that helps show the spirit of place in a fresh light. A clear connection to Kyoto is essential.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

● Limited to one submission per person
● You do not need to be located in Kyoto to participate. We accept submissions
from anywhere in the world.
● Must be submitted by Microsoft Word attachment file. Submissions by PDF
attachment and submissions within the body of the email will not be accepted.
● At the top of the Microsoft Word attachment (not in the body of the email),
please include the following personal information: Full Name, E-mail Contact,
Nationality, Current Residence (Town, Country).
● Do not provide any special formatting to your piece. We request your personal
information at the top with the text directly below. Submissions in [Times New
Roman, 12pt] are preferred.
● Please send your Microsoft Word attachment file to: 
kyotowritingcompetition2022@gmail.com

TOP PRIZES

Kyoto City Mayoral Prize
¥50,000 cash prize, Structures of Kyoto (Writers in Kyoto Anthology 4), Kyoto Craft (generously provided by the Kyoto Convention and Visitors Bureau), One-year complimentary WiK membership (April 2022-March 2023), publication on the WiK website, and inclusion in a future WiK Anthology

Yamabuki* Prize (awarded to the national of a country in which English is an official language)
Kyoto Craft (generously provided by the Kyoto Convention and Visitors Bureau), Structures of Kyoto (Writers in Kyoto Anthology 4), publication on the WiK website, and inclusion in a future WiK Anthology

Unohana* Prize (awarded to the national of a country in which English is not an official language)
Kyoto Craft (generously provided by the Kyoto Convention and Visitors Bureau), Structures of Kyoto (Writers in Kyoto Anthology 4), publication on the WiK website, and inclusion in a future WiK Anthology

* Yamabuki (Japanese yellow rose) and Unohana (Deutzia) are flowers appearing in haiku.

OTHER PRIZES

Japan Local Prize
A selected ceramic piece from the Robert Yellin Yakimono Gallery

USA Prize
Phila-Nipponica: An Historic Guide to Philadelphia & Japan and a one-year complimentary membership to the Japan-America Society of Greater Philadelphia

Australia Prize
A one-year complimentary membership to the Australia-Japan Society of Victoria

PUBLISHING RIGHTS/COPYRIGHT

Writers in Kyoto reserve the right to publish entries on the group’s website. Top
winners will be eligible for publication in a future WiK Anthology. All authors retain the copyright of their own work.

SUPPORTERS

In addition to the aforementioned entities, the Writers in Kyoto Seventh Annual Writing Competition is supported by the Kyoto City Cultural Office, Kyoto City International Foundation (kokoka), and Kyoto Journal.

The WiK Competition logo was designed by Rebecca Otowa, author of At Home in Japan (Tuttle 2010), My Awesome Japan Adventure (2013), and The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper (2019).

STAY CONNECTED WITH WRITERS IN KYOTO

Please save our website link to your Favorites and follow us on Facebook, Twitter (@KyotoWriters), and Instagram (writersinkyoto). There is also a private Facebook group for paid-up members.

WiK ANTHOLOGIES

Writers in Kyoto anthologies available in Amazon marketplaces in paperback and Kindle editions:

Echoes: WiK Anthology 2 (2017)
ed. John Dougill, Amy Chavez, and Mark Richardson

Encounters with Kyoto: WiK Anthology 3 (2019)
ed. Jann Williams and Ian Josh Yates

Structures of Kyoto: WiK Anthology 4 (2021)
ed. Rebecca Otowa and Karen Lee Tawarayama







Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Foxes of Kyoto

November 22, 2021

by Stephen Benfey

“Last night,” he said, “was fun.”

“It was spooky,” she said. “How do you know such spooky places?”

“Serendipity. Just walking around and there it was.”

“What does ‘serendipity’ mean?”

He cocked his head. “Like how we met. Serendipity is when something good happens by chance.”

She frowned. “We call that en.”

“En is serendipity?”

“Fate, not chance.” Her eyes locked onto his, innocent yet knowing, daring him to disagree. “I don’t gamble.”

Was she angry, or playing with him? In Kyoto, you learned to listen to what wasn’t said. Circumlocution was an art to be refined daily, like sado, the tea ceremony. Any idiot could whisk up a bowl of frothy matcha in minutes, but only a yabanjin, a barbarian, would skip the painstaking detail that transmuted ritual into sacrament.

Reading between the lines, he decided she was testing him.

He looked to the east, to the horizon. “Fate means I don’t have free will.”

She touched the back of her fingers to his cheek, running them slowly across the stubble. “You’re funny. And you need a shave.”

He felt like a little boy. He wanted to lock eyes with her again, but he looked down and away.

Her scent floated on the cool night air. Earthy, spinning into ethereal, it reeled in the smells of Bangkok, Mumbai, Catalan.… all the aromas and spices rare in Japanese food.

His guard down, intoxicated by her redolence, he forgot his mantra: love is trouble. She pickpocketed it, secreted it. Would he notice?

She furrowed her brow, her face innocent. “Why do you like such spooky stuff?”

“Lafcadio Hearn. ‘Kwaidan,’ ‘Ghostly Japan’.”

“You mean Koizumi Yakumo?”

“That sounds right.”

“The place last night wasn’t a temple, you know. It was a jinja. Kamisama, not Hotokesama.”

“It was the gods, not the Buddha? A shrine to the rat gods?”

“Rats have a god. And rats can be gods, too. I like foxes better. I’ll show you a fox shrine.”

“Do all animals have shrines?”

“Mostly foxes. We’ll visit O-inari-san and see many kitsune.”

“I like your name,” he said, hoping she would remind him what it was.

“Reiko? Well, I like the sound of your name too,” she said. “Haru means spring and … you.” “How do you write Reiko?” Hal asked.

“There are many ways to write it, as many as there are girls named Reiko.”

“But how do you write your name?”

“My Reiko is rare. So I write it in hiragana. You know, syllabary.”

“You can at least show me.”

“When you are ready,” she said, “I will show you everything.”

‘Everything,’ the way she said it, straightened his spine. Like fresh wasabi, a twist of sudachi, a pinch of sansho or shichimi, it tantalized his tongue. The way she said it, ‘everything’ anticipated perfect pitch, shared. Upper harmonics mirroring the fundamental—the lowest resonance frequency—born of compliance and mass, coupled. A heavier or looser string sounds lower. A lighter or tauter string sounds higher. Compliance and mass. The beginning and the end. Yin and yang. Alpha and omega. 阿吽の呼吸. ॐ, ओम्, Aum.

“I’m so happy we met, he said. But why were you out?”

“That’s my neighborhood, where I live with my mother. You’re the one who was out of bounds, not me!”

“Did you tell your mother about last night?”

 “Too spooky.” She shivered. “She’d only worry. Then press me to marry some guy I’ve never met.”

 “Arranged marriage?”

 “Her head is stuck in the Showa era.”

“I bet my mother’s worse.”

She smiled.

“What is it with you and foxes,” he said.

“Kitsune wa bakeru.”

“Foxes are shapeshifters. I know that. And your Reiko is rare because it’s written with the kanji for spirit fox.”

She raised an eyebrow. “If it’s going to be you or me,” she said, locking eyes with him again, “You’re the one who is shapeshifting. You are a foreigner who understands Japanese. But no gaijin can speak fluent Kyoto dialect. You are the fox.”

“Nice try!” he said. “And who was wearing a white yukata at the shrine of the rat last night?”

“Funny boy!” she said. “I always wear white at night for safety. Taxi drivers are crazy here.”

“Sure,” he said. “You are a fox, a kitsune. Foxes wear white when they seduce humans.”

“Cute!” she said. “See you tomorrow at the train station. We’ll go to Fushimi Inari Shrine and you’ll find out what’s what and who’s who.”

No clever retort came to mind. He shrugged and mumbled, “OK.”

 They got off the train and walked to the shrine. Red torii gates framed red torii gates like nested Russian dolls.

“We’ll each get our fortune told and learn the truth,” she said.

In front of the main shrine he reached into his pocket for change. “I don’t have any coins,” he said.

“Hold on,” she said, “stay right here.”

He followed her with his eyes.

She wandered, aimlessly, among the worshippers, then, in front of a sharply dressed man, she bent over as if she had dropped something, exposing her chest to the man’s eyes. The man very slowly sank into a hunched stance to help her, at which point she lost her balance and plunged her head into his midriff. She grabbed his body to regain her balance, giving the man a look of apology and thanks, certain to make him think more of himself and forget what happened.

When she returned, she gave Hal a fistful of bills and coins. “Take these,” she said, “and keep a few steps away from me.”

They tossed coins into the slatted box, bowed, clapped twice, and prayed to the fox gods to fulfill their dreams.

He looked at her, then out at the crowd. “I saw that,” he said.

“So you know.”

“As if it were ever a secret.”

She looked at him. “We are both foxes; now I know. So let’s go back to my den.”

“But you said …”

“Oh, that?” she said, “about my mother? It’s something I say to guard against hen na gaijin. Weirdos. Don’t worry. I don’t live with my mother. It’s OK.”

“Oh, you know you said we would …”

“Have our fortunes read?”

He gave her a quizzical smile.”

“But we know already. We’re foxes. And I don’t gamble.”

As they walked away from the shrine, one of the stone foxes at the gate said to the other, “Pretty clever for a human.”

The other stone fox said, “She fooled you, too?”

******************

* Spirit fox,  霊狐, is read “Reiko.” It could also mean ghost fox.
* Hen na gaijin, 変な外人, weird foreigner , is a cliche, today considered socially incorrect. Many people are also careful to say gaikokujin, foreign country person,” for “foreigner” instead of gaijin, which means the same but is considered rude.

******************

Stephen Benfey’s homepage with examples of his short stories can be found here.

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Afternoon Tea in Teramachi

November 18, 2021

by Nicholas Teele

The last two or three years, I’ve been experiencing what I call visual flashes. They come on without warning, first with an intensity that nearly blocks everything else out, then stay a few minutes, or a day, or a week, but eventually fade away. These are not hallucinations in the sense that they appear to be something with a hard sense of reality outside of my mind. They are more like an attack of tinnitus, where the sound can be deafening but is clearly within one’s own brain, or like a live double exposure, where one image is overlaid on the other and both must be looked at at the same time.

This one came when I was cleaning up after lunch: an image appeared of an elderly woman sitting at the back of a small, cramped used bookstore. It was overlaid on what I saw before me so that I had to see through it to continue washing the dishes.

I stopped what I was doing and watched, knowing that there was no reason to be afraid. My wife asked if I was ok, and I said “Yes, just need to sit down for a bit.” Relaxing in the easy chair, I closed my eyes and let the scene unfold, as both observer and participant, in two places at the same time.

The image was clear and sharp – the kimono the woman was wearing was a country weave, perhaps yūki tsumugi, with subdued shades of grey, brown, and violet. She had salt and pepper hair done up in a neat bun and sat by a hibachi that had an old pot steaming on it. The store was small, with room for no more than two or three people at the same time. On the left were shelves of mostly pre-Meiji Japanese style books (wasōbon); the right side was for prints, scrolls, and larger art books, with one shelf wider, a space for spreading scrolls out to view them. As I watched, I remembered, or thought I remembered.

It is the early 1970’s. I have come down from my cabin in the hills northeast of Tokyo for a few days in Kyoto, and have spent several hours walking leisurely along Teramachi-dōri. (The name which dates from the late sixteenth century refers to the street that runs down the part of Kyoto where temples were “relocated” by Toyotomi Hideyoshi at that time. It became known not only for its temples, such as Gangyōji, but also for its interesting variety of shops, many of which specialized in areas such as fine arts, crafts, religion . . . and bookstores. In the 1970’s there were at least half a dozen second-hand bookstores on that street, some before the prefecture offices, several in the arcade section up from Shijō and a few on past that street, nestled in among electrical appliance and computer parts stores.)

I have been walking on down Teramachi from Shijō, and am tired and ready to stop when I see another small second-hand bookstore. I go inside. After a few minutes, the woman starts talking to me. Perhaps there have only been a few customers and she is bored, or maybe she just sees I’m tired and want to sit down.

“Please have a cup of tea.” She motions for me to sit on the stool across from her and pours me a cup of roasted green tea (hōji cha). “You’re interested in Classical literature?” she asks.

 “Yes,” I say. “I love to look at old books printed in Japanese style, and to hold them and to read them, or rather, try to read them. But I don’t have much money.”

“That’s fine,” she says, “the books like to be touched, too.”

We smile, and drink tea.

I notice several black and white photographs on the wall behind her. One is of a young man in a fighter pilot’s uniform. Another shows a beautiful Western style home nestled among well-manicured trees and a garden. A third picture is of an older man, also in military uniform. I assume they date from the 1940’s.

“The books are beautiful,” I say. They are indeed in excellent condition, with prices way beyond my tiny budget.

“My father and mother had a wonderful collection; they formed the base for what my mother and I have been selling for the last twenty years.”

After a moment, I ask, “Is that your father in the picture?”

She turns and points, this one?” I nod. Then, pointing to the other, “and this is my younger brother. Both died in the war.” She smiles, as though my asking had been a release.

Looking at the picture of the house, my mind flashes images of the opulent estates of Ashiya that I had sometimes visited as a child. There is something familiar about the atmosphere in the picture. “You’re from Ashiya?” She nods. We are silent for a while again; she pours me some more tea. 

“Before the end, things got very bad. Ashiya was bombed several times, but the areas damaged were along the coast, so we were safe. It was terribly frightening. After that, the servants left and my mother and I were all alone. By the last year of the war the transportation system was so disrupted that it was often impossible to get fresh food. I was trained in naginata to fight the enemy with if they invaded.” She laughs. “The training was useless for growing food.” She closes her eyes, as though remembering. “As the war continued, transportation became even more difficult and food scarcer yet. We would go into the hills to hunt for something to eat – grass, roots, wild fruit, grain, even field mice and sparrows. Anything.”

“At the end we had almost nothing.” She closes her eyes again. “Oh, we had my father and mother’s collection of books and scrolls, a few tea bowls, other antiques, but who had money to spare for luxuries? When the Occupation came, the US military sequestered our home. My mother and I moved the collection to the storehouse and went to Nishinomiya to stay with her sister. We took only what we could carry. People shared what they had, but there wasn’t enough,” she laughs, quietly. It is a laugh of exhaustion and sadness. “Of course, as bad as the situation was for us, it was worse for others, especially those who lived in areas that were carpet bombed. Thousands of innocent women and children died. An atrocity.”

I listen silently, and nod; then tell her I grew up on the campus of Kwansei Gakuin University, in Nishinomiya, and had heard stories of the suffering from people living around there and in Kobe where I went to school. I remember but don’t mention finding discarded military paraphernalia on my walks in the woods. She nods. I go on.

“The bus we rode on to the elementary school in Kobe followed a river up a valley. We passed caves that had been cut out of the cliffs along the river and turned into one-room homes, with cardboard or plywood for a front door. And there were clusters of makeshift shanties on the mountain side of Nishinomiya.”

“When was that,” she asks.

“Early 1950s,” I answer.

“Things were a lot better by then,” she sighs, then speaks slowly, as though remembering many things and speaking only of one, “My brother was in the Shinpū Tokubetsu Kōgekitai ((神風特別攻撃隊). He trained to be one of those young pilots who sacrifices his life for his nation.” There is neither bitterness nor pride in her voice, only loss. I recognize the name of the so-called “kamikaze” pilots. (Kamikaze and shimpū are different readings of the same two characters.)

I tell her that as a child exploring the university campus I had found an unmarked entrance to what was some kind of underground military complex under one of the sports grounds, and had entered it several times, always a bit afraid I might get lost in the maze of tunnels and rooms that I felt must be there. “Of course by then the place was completely empty,” I say, adding that much later I had learned it was one of the training sites for pilots who took off never to return.

“Who told you?”

“Someone who had trained there. The war ended before he was sent to the field.” I spoke quietly, remembering a talk with an elderly man in a snack bar in Hitachi, where I had gone with students after our English Conversation class finished. Some of the younger factory workers had started singing war songs and he had stopped them by saying that only people who have never experienced war sing such songs, and then began telling me about his own past.

“He was lucky.” She pauses. “Nishinomiya was where my brother did his training.”

Her eyes have the gleam of tears. We are quiet again.

“Friends told us we should take my parent’s collection, move to Kyoto, and open a store” she begins, “because a lot of foreigners came there and they might buy old scrolls, and also because there are lots of universities in Kyoto with students and scholars that might buy old books.” She laughs. “Once my father’s estate was settled, we sold the house and with my mother’s share bought this little place. It was good advice.”

“It’s a nice shop,” I say, feeling perhaps I should change the subject.

“Really? Thank you. The location is terrible; not many people come down this far unless they know about the store. Most people are just looking for some kind of electrical appliance. Still, my mother built up the collection and we have lasted this long.” She laughs again, brews fresh tea for us and offers me a couple of rice crackers (senbei.), some some Gliko caramels, and a mikan.

“Everyone I knew suffered in the war,” she says.

“Yes,” I agree, and tell her that when I was growing up nearly all my teachers, and my classmates’ parents, shared their wartime experiences at one time or another, no matter what country they were from. I tell her my father and three of his brothers had served in the war, and sometimes talked about it, too.

There is another pause; perhaps we are both remembering. Images and experiences fill my mind, images of both my own experiences and those of people I knew, or had read about, or seen in newsreels or documentaries. In the silence I feel her pain and loss; it is as though they have not been diminished by the years.

“Please, look at the books some more, they will enjoy it” she says, finally, getting up slowly and going through the narrow door behind her. I realize our afternoon tea is almost over.

There is a cardboard box of much less expensive books by the entrance to the shop. I find a little one with illustrations that I thought I might paint copies of.

“Ah, you found one you like,” she says when she comes back. 

I hand her the little book – Chikuden Gafu (竹田画譜) – a collection of illustrations of the painter Tanomura Chikuden (田野村竹田, 1777-1835) published in 1880.  She smiles. “You paint?”

“Sometimes,” I confess, “but I don’t have any talent”.

She laughs warmly, “The illustrations are nice just to look at, too.”

Agreeing, I pay, and thank her for the tea and conversation. She nods and smiles. As I leave, she sits down and goes back to staring into the glowing charcoal of the hibachi.

The image of this woman and its story remained with me for several weeks, hovering upon the screen of my mind. Sometimes it was a pale image, sometimes much stronger. Sometimes I only saw her sitting there. Sometimes I saw all parts of the memory at once, placed in a circle around her like in a mandala such as the Taema mandara (当麻曼荼羅). When the image was strong, often I would sit and watch it, as though meditating. Sometimes one of the smaller scenes around her would take over the center, act out what it represented, and then recede, to be replaced by another of the smaller scenes. Over time, I remembered other stories, experiences, things I had heard, read, seen, such as tying to help a friend who came back from Vietnam so traumatized that he was unable to return to a normal life and eventually killed himself. He had come to me asking for help because he knew I was a veteran, too, and might understand. I understood but I could do nothing because he was too trapped by his own experiences.

The image of a woman seated at the rear of a small secondhand bookstore thus became a kind of portal by which my mind revisited the ravages, the suffering, and the lasting pain of war.

***********************

For an interview with Nicholas Teele about his unusual past, see here. You can also view his writing about Emperor Sutoku in Kyoto, or the 13 Temple Kyoto Pilgrimage, or a ‘reborn’ Kyoto Pilgrimage. For a list of his publications, see here.

.

Writers in focus

The Poetry of Pain

November 16, 2021

The Poetry of Pain and Its Meaning in the Age of COVID-19 

by Michael Freiling and Shelley Baker-Gard 

(This article first appeared in Frogpond, official journal of the Haiku Society of America, issue 44-3, Autumn 2021.)

In late 2017, Shelley Baker-Gard was presented with a manuscript of poems, all in Japanese. They were brought to her by Duane Watari, a sansei (third-generation) Japanese American. Mr. Watari had discovered them among his mother’s keepsakes and believed the poems were written by his grandfather, Masaki Kinoshita, who wrote under the pen name of Jonan. Shelley brought the manuscript to Michael Freiling and together we examined its contents. 

As we opened the manuscript and began to study it, we were surprised to discover that these poems had been written in an unexpected context: the Wartime Civilian Control Administration’s (WCCA) North Portland Assembly Center, where Japanese Americans were incarcerated in the months after Pearl Harbor while they waited for their transport to camps farther inland, such as Heart Mountain in Wyoming and Minidoka in Idaho. The manuscript was, in fact, a journal of senryu poems composed by multiple senryu poets at the Assembly Center in August 1942. 

Senryu poems are different from haiku. Although both Japanese poetic forms follow the traditional 5-7-5 structure, their focuses of attention are different. Haiku tend to be meditative observations springing from the contemplation of nature. Senryu, by contrast, tend to be earthier, occasionally acerbic commentaries on human life, relationships, and behavior (including misbehavior). Life in the WCCA Assembly Center, with its attendant uncertainties and anxieties, was naturally the focus of attention for the senryu recorded in this journal.  

The poems were composed at a series of senryu-kai held regularly at the Assembly Center. Senryu-kai and haiku-kai are social gatherings where the members each contribute their own poems. The poems are sometimes composed independently and sometimes in a sequence. Quite often, contests are held where winning haiku or senryu are selected by a designated master or judge, or sometimes by a vote of the present attendees. 

Gatherings at the WCCA Assembly Center were organized by the internees themselves. Their purpose appears to have been twofold: (1) to maintain morale by holding social events that would provide both enjoyment and shared experience, and (2) to give the internees an outlet for expressing their feelings. 

Jonan, who was already an experienced poet in 1942, served as one of the key organizers, as well as the secretary who recorded the poems in the journal. This must have entailed a certain amount of risk because the possession of documents written in Japanese was generally forbidden. One internee was not even allowed to bring with her a copy of the Man’yoshu, a classic anthology of poems from the earliest period in Japanese literature. 

Many of the poems in this clandestine manuscript were written by Jonan himself. We have also been able to identify several other prominent poets who had published independently or organized local Japanese-language poetry groups in the decades prior to WWII and after. Poets we identified include: Shinjiru Honda, Kaoru Kurokawa, Kyokuo Iko (Yakima, WA), Toyoko Tamura (Powell Valley, OR), Katsuhiko Shimizu (Yakima, WA), and Hisako Saito (Portland, OR). 

The poignancy of uncertainty and anxiety was quite palpable, even in the very first poem we looked at, which turned out to be one of Kurokawa’s: 

汽車が出る迄を淋しく笑ひ合ひ 
kisha ga deru made wo sabishiku warai ai 

melancholy laughter helps us pass the time until the train departs 

We were touched by these poems from our very first encounter. The writers of these poems are ordinary people trying to make the best of the unbearable. Instead of the delicate themes typically associated with Japanese haiku, feelings are often expressed directly in senryu, with a raw and sometimes caustic intensity. But this very intensity is what makes them so relevant today and presents the opportunity for us to share deeply in the emotions experienced by those Japanese Americans nearly 80 years ago. 

Our experience working with these poems evolved against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emotions expressed in these poems take on a new urgency during this unprecedented time in history. The most apparent parallel with 1942 and today has been the unfortunate tendency to blame ordinary Asian Americans for the catastrophes caused by COVID-19. 

Beyond this sad parallel, however, the poems also highlight some of the shared, universal human experiences, though it is important to note that last spring’s pandemic lockdown in no way compares with the injustices and discomforts experienced by the incarcerated Japanese Americans during WWII. We offer the following brief excerpts from the journal in hopes of better understanding the life that Japanese Americans led during their incarceration, as well offering us guidance on how to navigate our own set of challenging circumstances as we battle the pandemic—be it in the form of isolation, confinement, or even outright prejudice. 

Looking Back 

In this collection of senryu poems, there is a sense of loss and nostalgia for what the poets were forced to leave behind during their incarceration. Occasionally, this nostalgia relates to specific places, as when two internees from the same hometown in Japan encounter each other: 

your neighborhood?
from the same hometown – memories 
–Hisataro 

Even sight of the world beyond the Assembly Center is enough to produce nostalgia for their former freedom: 

beyond the barbed wire a glow of neon lights – tears in my eyes 
–Jonan 

More often, however, the nostalgia relates to friends and family whom the internees fear they will never see again, often with good reason: 

no longer heard
their so happy sounds – dad’s drunken songs 
–Jonan 

Nearly all Japanese Americans treasured photographs of loved ones as a way of keeping their memories alive. Some would express their heartbreak through reference to these photos: 

my husband left
and now I talk to him in his picture 
–Jonan, quoting another resident 

Perhaps most poignant is the loss of contact with children and grandchildren: 

only this photo can hold the child we talk about – until peacetime comes 
– Goichi 

Life in the Center 

Life in the Wartime Civilian Control Administration’s North Portland Assembly Center was unpleasant. The Center itself was a re-purposed livestock exhibition facility, and internees were herded into small stalls originally designed for horses and livestock—not for human beings. 

Preparation of the facility by the military was a haphazard affair at best, which compounded the discomfort. In one infamous episode, the residents were forced to endure an infestation of flies attracted to the manure-laced dirt under the Center’s hastily-assembled plywood floor. 

Of course, life for Japanese Americans did not stop simply because it was uncontrollable. Babies continued to be born. Mangers, which were still present in several of the stalls, were used by some families as cribs in a painful parallel with the events of two thousand years ago that was not lost on the internees themselves: 

grandmother too
awaits the baby’s first cry all on edge
– Jonan 

As normal, there were the usual conflicts between parents and their teenagers. These tensions were two-sided, as the younger members of the Assembly Center were forced to adjust to the expectations of their more traditional parents in such close quarters: 

my mother says
things are not so simple – duty beckons 
– Jonan, quoting another resident 

There is even time for a game or two. Tennis matches and baseball games were popular: 

hot summer day
the pitcher wipes sweat off his face 
– Jonan 

Fears and Anxieties 

Uncertainties are often harder to bear than clearly defined hardships. And the Japanese Americans interned at the Assembly Center were faced with countless uncertainties. The greatest uncertainty, of course, was that they did not know when the war would be over or when they would be able to return to their homes. 

More immediately, they did not even know where they would be shipped off to for the remainder of the war. And for some who were considering repatriation to Japan, decisions like this were just too difficult to make: 

stay forever or return home
the day of decision never comes – just too much to bear 
– Roshyou 

Heightening all the internees’ already-pervasive anxiety, one of the military police on guard shot and killed one of their own cooks, mistaking him for a thief. This incident may very well have been the impetus for the below poem: 

my daughter –
I watch more closely now since it happened 
– Jonan, quoting another resident 

Friendships made in the Assembly Center might not even survive the next few weeks: 

accepting that
we may not meet again –
I squeeze your hand so tight 
– Choubou 

The accumulated anxieties caused some Japanese Americans to express their readiness even for worst-case scenarios: 

ten thousand miles I’ve come – to be with you, ready
to die with you 
– Shousui 


And some of the older residents began to despair that they would never see the light of freedom again: 

it doesn’t matter –
father has already written his final wishes 
– Mokugyo 

Reactions to Their Situation 

Internees found many different ways to cope with the conditions in which they found themselves. Some found distraction in everyday activities: 

now I know why
she snuggles with baby – troubles vanish 
–Jonan 

Some attempted to express their feelings with humorous irony: 

even autumn
comes on command here at the assembly
– Jonan 

While others resorted to more cutting and sarcastic commentary: 

their free movie such generosity escapes me 
– Jonan 

Some envied childhood when methods for coping with stress were more intuitive: 

for the toddler
security from a thumb — a peace I need 
– Jonan 

Some sought consolation in looking beyond the internment to a time when even the internment itself would yield memories: 

someday after –
Center name cards just might become nostalgic 
– Jonan 

It is quite common in senryu-kai for different personalities to take completely different approaches when considering a question. Two poets here offer different opinions on the question of why they were ordered to leave their homes in the first place. The first appears to more or less take the U.S. military’s stated reasons for incarceration, looking forward to exoneration: 

cleared of suspicion
for the sake of this country a new life for me 
– Jonan 

The second, not without good reason, takes a more cynical view of the entire affair. Unstated, but implicit in the poem, is the distinct possibility that ulterior motives were at work in the decision to round them up in internment camps: 

they never asked suspicious or not – just put us away 
– Sen Taro 

Resolution and Peace 

Several of the most uplifting poems in this manuscript illustrate the ways in which the Japanese Americans came to terms with their circumstances and achieved a certain peace and optimism: 

have come to this point – accepting what will be but still holding on to hope 
– Hikari 

In some cases, we even see signs of what might be termed an interior transformation in the face of great obstacles: 

peace overtakes my heart – allowing events to follow the course that was ordained 
– Goichi 

In Summary 

Many of these poems display cultural values that are often attributed to the Japanese people: perseverance, patient endurance, and doing what duty requires. But what also clearly stands out in the variety of individual expressions is a kaleidoscope of basic humanity. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all of us around the world. Our reactions to these new circumstances have become similar in many ways—we have good days and bad days, positive and not so positive feelings, and yet somehow, life continues. In that light, these poems represent a tribute to the human spirit in its near infinite adaptability and its willingness to find a way to nurture and sustain life, even during the worst of circumstances. 

*******************

Michael Freiling was born in San Francisco and earned his PhD in artificial intelligence at MIT. He studied poetry under David Ferry at Wellesley and was co-founder and contributor to the first issue of Rune, which eventually became MIT’s official literary magazine. In 1977, Michael was named a Luce Scholar with an appointment to Kyoto University, where he studied Japanese and produced a translation of the Hyaku Nin Isshu, a well-known anthology of Heian Period tanka. Michael returned to Japan in 2014 for the first time in 25 years. 

The translations in this essay are excerpted from a forthcoming book, which will be They Never Asked: WWII Senryu Poetry by Japanese Americans at the Portland Assembly Center, an anthology of WWII Japanese American senryu poetry written at the North Portland WCCA Assembly Center. It will include a wider selection of poems from the Assembly Center, as well as many notes on the historical background and translation details required for understanding some of the poems. (The authors wish to thank Ms. Satsuki Takikawa, who assisted in producing the initial translations of these poems. Mike would especially like to thank the late William Morlock, his high school teacher, who first brought this tragedy of the treatment of Japanese Americans to his attention.)

Short Story Collective

November 15, 2021

THE SHORT STORY COLLECTIVE: 13 TALES FROM JAPAN

by Andrew Innes

Available from Amazon in paperback and ebook formats

Review by Rebecca Otowa

This collection of 13 short stories invites the reader to join the author in a challenging navigation of the seas of reality and fantasy. There are twists, turns and illusions galore, and the stories have many different settings and memorable characters.

Hopefully without spoiling things for anyone, the title story, “The Short Story Collective” (which appeared in Best Asian Short Stories 2021), and the final story, “Anger Management”, are connected by a river which is regularly turned into a drunken festival for the resident giant salamanders when a temperamental sake maker throws out a subpar batch. Between these, we are given a tour of many diverse facets of modern Japanese culture, such as the digitally-driven society, for example in “Miss Representation”, in which a hapless English teacher at a liberal university becomes a victim of “cancel culture” for correcting a student’s grammar; “Veritas”, in which a nefarious secret organization, controlling social media, is responsible for ups and downs in the careers of artists; “Digital Opium”, in which a game creator suffers from terrifying illusions; and “Generation C”, in which a teacher resorts to the latest technology to augment a disguise he has assumed in order to get a job.

Andrew Innes says that some of the stories, such as “The Rotten Mikan”, about an English school that suffers under the wrong boss, and “The Gaijin Parade”, about a small-town International Festival, originate from personal experiences. Others are simply the result of his imagination, and an amazing imagination it is. The fantastic daydreams of some of the characters before they are jolted back to reality are captivating.

My own favorite story was “Pattern Separation”, about an ice-cream company whose routine is so soul-crushingly boring that the workers start experiencing fractures in time. The gradual accretion of time-related disorientations on the part of the workers leads to one of them resorting to a novel action in order to save her own sanity and that of her colleagues. Pandemonium ensues, and we don’t know what really happened until the last line, which reveals the secret of her plan.

As a person who clearly remembers what life used to be like before IT crept into every corner, I liked the description of the farmer who looks to clean up by offering superficial foreign tourists a romp in Nature in “Digital Detox”. And as a person who (like most of us) clearly remembers the problems caused by “overtourism” in Kyoto before Covid, I was carried back to some vicariously embarrassing moments as I read the wince-inducing “When in Rome”, about some YouTuber good-time-Charlies who wreak havoc in the old capital.

One of the most difficult stories for me was “The Koan”, a story of how very unspiritual spiritual pursuits can sometimes be. It wove a web of cynicism that will not soon be forgotten, and ironically, raised the question of how (and whether) a temple-organized, centuries-old ritual ordeal, intended to produce enlightenment, changes the nature of reality for the participant. I guess a story called “The Koan” would understandably be one in which mental contortions are required.

Reading these stories, I was intrigued at how much Andrew Innes expects of the reader, in his rapid alternations between fantasy and reality, and in his subtle foreshadowing technique, which, in many stories, produces an incrementally increasing sense of desperation. These are challenging stories, no doubt about it. They would perhaps fall into a new genre, “Atama no Taiso” (“Mental Exercise”). When you read them, be sure your mental equipment is in good condition.

Also, be ready to be entertained. The large margin by which an arrogant “eco-tourist” misses his own points in “Digital Detox”; the neat way in which an unassuming office worker and her colleagues get the better of an unpleasant boss in “Hole-in-One”; and the broad, happy description of a jovial Australian introducing his culture to rural guests at a small-town “International Festival” by teaching them to say “Where’s me stubby cooler ya dirty drongo?”, as well as other moments, tickle the funny bone.

 The Short Story Collective, in short, is quite a ride. Fasten your seat belt.

******************

Andrew Innes came to Himeji in 2002 when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and the Hanami parties were in full swing. He now works at three universities in Hyōgo and edits the online journal, The Font, where extracts from his book can be found. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and traveling. 

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

An Unveiling

November 7, 2021

by Malcolm Ledger

A ’phone call brings the unexpected and sad news of the death of a long-time friend … “— melanoma – in the right armpit. By the time it was removed it was already seven millimetres deep. They tried chemotherapy, but it began to spread over the right side of his chest…and after a while, the medicine didn’t work anymore. He died just before his seventy-seventh birthday, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.”

Cancer – a malignancy growing uncontrollably in the body, relentless, implacable foe – from which, Good Lord, deliver us. And another friend gone, never to be seen again.

Shoichi spoke matter-of-factly about Zack, his Jewish-American lover. They had been together more than forty years, and I had known them for thirty-five -– kindred spirits in an anti-gay world. But in Japan, life in a big city meant that no one bothered or cared. Gay bashing was unheard of. For the ordinary person gay people simply didn’t exist, though there was in fact a thriving underworld. No priest gave sermons about “perversion” or corrupting the young, and there were no tabloid headlines screaming that some well-known Japanese celebrity or other was gay. Professionally, discretion meant acceptance.

Shoichi already seemed to have come to terms with Zack’s death. He spoke calmly, and there were no sobs or hysterics. The demands of everyday life had already re-asserted themselves.

“Because Zack was an Orthodox Jew, he can’t be cremated or buried in a coffin. His body will be taken to the synagogue and members of the congregation will wash it clean there. Then it will be sewn into a shroud and lowered into the grave, where the Rabbi will be waiting to receive it. Sometime after that, when his headstone is ready, it will be ‘unveiled’.  Would you like to attend the unveiling?”

I accepted, and on a hot, sunny May 5th, Children’s Day, (a national holiday), made my way to the small synagogue high up on a hill, discreetly out of the way. One of their Japanese friends was already waiting outside, holding a bunch of lilies. We were early. Shoichi arrived soon afterwards wearing a suit. There was a large gold signet ring tightly squeezing the ring finger on his left hand. It had obviously been there a long time. Going in, I noticed, just inside the right of the doorway and nailed at an angle, an oblong container, the mezuzah, containing passages of scripture from Deuteronomy.

It seems that the angle at which it was fixed was something of a compromise between two Rabbis, one who thought that is should be fixed horizontally, in accord with the way scrolls were placed in cracks by a doorway, and another, who thought that it should be vertical, pointing to the Almighty. One of the scriptural passages took me back to my own Anglican church-going days, when the vicar would open the service by intoning the words: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” Comforting words, indeed.

 Inside, there was a spacious hall with tables and chairs for receptions, with an adjoining kitchen and bar. A large photo of an elderly, white-bearded Rabbi looked down from one wall. There were photos or pictures of other esteemed teachers posted elsewhere.

 Shoichi gave me a skullcap to wear and took me to see the sanctuary. Two huge chandeliers with multi-coloured light bulbs hung from the ceiling. It reminded me for a moment of the incongruous chandeliers in Westminster Abbey in London which made the nave look like the lobby of a posh hotel. Comfortable chairs in red velvet stood on either side of an elevated lectern facing an ornate, embroidered hanging. Behind this were concealed the scrolls of the Torah (the law of God, as revealed to Moses, and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures). There was a separate, segregated section at the back for women, who also had their own entrance.

Shoichi explained that the right to carry the Torah around would be “auctioned”. It struck me that since the rich could always outbid the poor, a rota system would certainly be fairer, no matter the need for funds.

He also said that the Rabbi had only recently returned from abroad and it had taken time to assemble the requisite numbers for the ceremony, a quorum of ten adult male Jews, a minyan. For some time, the congregation had been without a Rabbi, but now with his return they could go ahead with Zack’s unveiling.

The Rabbi himself was a great bear of a man, probably in his forties, in a dark suit and wearing a black trilby, and with thick black luxuriant eyebrows that met in the middle. (In Japan, beetle brows are something almost never seen. A barber will shave not only between the eyebrows, but also the eyelids.) The Rabbi’s voluminous beard might have been wire wool. He embraced Shoichi warmly, in a true bear hug. From Israel, he spoke English with a thick, Middle-Eastern accent. Despite his formidable appearance, there was a kindly twinkle in his eye. Obviously, a dedicated man with a vocation.

“When Zack died, it is the Jewish custom to light a candle in remembrance of him for a year”, said the Rabbi. “I buy large candles and when one is nearly finished, light a new one.” An excellent and sensitive custom, it seemed to me. He then switched on the air conditioning and left.

An elderly, retired American, Robert, from New York and his wife, Jacinta, arrived. Dressed in an open-necked shirt, Panama hat and baggy trousers, he was a professor of comparative literature and classical Greek. I noticed that he had lost the tip of his right index finger, but didn’t want to hear the details of how, and didn’t ask. Jacinta wore many rings, painted eyebrows, and a floaty, blue summer frock.

“Are you English?” she asked me, in cut-glass tones that placed her immediately on the European side of the Atlantic.

“Well – British. I don’t think there are any English left, are there? Even the Royal Family isn’t English.”

“You’re probably right. My father was from Scotland, and my mother from Ireland, although my grandfather was Jewish from Latvia.” Then, after a pause, she asked,

 “Do you think I should take this off?” and she lifted up a silver crucifix around her neck. “Robert bought it for me at Notre Dame last year.”

“Why don’t you just cover it up with your shawl?” I suggested. “I’m sure no one would notice or mind.”

She swirled her thin, blue diaphanous shawl around her neck and religious sensitivities were assuaged. Then she said,

“I’ve never understood why James Joyce is regarded as part of the canon of English literature, you know. I don’t think he would have approved.”

“For better or worse, Ireland is part of the British Isles”, I said. “And he did write in English, not Gaelic, though Beckett wrote in French, too.”

“I suppose you’re right” she said.

“How long had you known Zack?” Robert asked.

“About thirty-five years, I think”, I said.

“Do speak up, Bob”, said Jacinta, interrupting. And in an aside to me, “He mumbles so, you know.”

“I inherited it from my mother”, mumbled poor Bob, who obviously had no problems with his hearing.

“Where did you meet?” I asked.

“At a conference somewhere”, he replied, vaguely. “It could have been JALT”, (the Japan Association for Language Teaching). “I was giving a paper on something or other and we became acquainted that way.”

“And now?”

“I’m retired.”

Jacinta said, “I remember when I first came here and ‘phoned a university looking for a position. They said they didn’t have one, when I knew jolly well they did.” Jacinta was still miffed at having been lied to all those years ago.

“It was because she was a woman, you see”, Robert explained. “They thought she would have kids and leave.”

“But when I contacted them again much later, they took me on. How things change, even in this feudal country!”

Gradually, others drifted in.

First, there was Larry, a Charles I look-alike, with goatee, moustache, trilby, and florid, gold-patterned waistcoat. His liquid brown eyes were slightly prominent. His manner was warm, friendly, and welcoming. He went off to make everyone a cup of tea, while his small daughter rode around the hall on a tricycle.

Then came Isaac, a thin, bald man wearing a skullcap and a beige T-shirt and blue slacks.

I was beginning to feel overdressed in a dark suit and tie.

“His Hebrew is better than anyone else’s”, said Larry, bringing back the mugs of tea.

Then Joe came, probably in his fifties, from Michigan, hatted and with a silver beard clipped short. He went off to find something a little stronger than tea, and came back with a bottle of red wine from Israel, and some paper cups.

“There’s Scotch, too, if anyone wants anything stronger”, he said, and began pouring. No one did.

“Zack loved a drink and would have wanted us to celebrate”, said Joe. It was a good excuse.

We toasted Zack.

“Jolly good wine”, said Jacinta. “I suppose it’s kosher.”

“How can wine be kosher?” I asked.

“God knows”, said Joe. “I suppose it’s been blessed or something.”

It was time to leave for the foreigners’ cemetery and we all piled into several cars. Robert, Jacinta, Joe and I sat together. Someone I hadn’t met, drove.

The one-way system meant a considerable detour, but soon we were in the country, driving through forests of deep green maple, higher and higher.

“How long has the graveyard been there?” I asked no one in particular.

“It used to be in a different place”, said Robert, who was sitting next to me.  He seemed to be a long-time resident with considerable local knowledge.

“But then the bodies were disinterred and moved to the present site. I suppose it was too inconvenient to leave them where they were. Land is scarce, you know. It’s said that one man’s grave even contained a gin bottle, and that that was replaced exactly as it was in the new grave.”

“I hope it was empty”, I said, venturing a joke that raised a few laughs.

“Why is this ceremony called an “unveiling” ? Jacinta asked Joe.

“Don’t you call it that?” he asked, surprised. “That’s the only word I know. I’ve been to quite a few, and that’s what we always call it.”

On the way, we were joined by Paul, who began to follow us in a very expensive-looking two-seater red sports car.

“Do they always make that roar?” asked Jacinta, as Paul sped off ahead.

“Yes”, I said. “It’s part of the built-in Envy Index. The louder the one, the greater the other.”

“How much do you suppose one would cost?” she asked.

“About thirty million yen, I should think.”

“Gracious! You could buy a house for that much.”

“Yes, in England you could probably buy two.”

As we approached the cemetery gates, two keepers appeared and opened them. A notice asked all visitors to report via intercom first, but we were expected, and swung up the road to where Paul was already getting out of his enviable red sports car.

He wore a peaked baseball cap, a blue sweater, ripped white jeans, and comfortable, fur-lined carpet slippers, with the confidence that only money can buy.

And lit a cigarette.

No one knew what he did for a living, and were probably afraid to ask. Not surprisingly, he was President of the Jewish Community, though he was probably only in his late thirties. I could imagine who it was that carried around the Torah at services after the “auctions”. He wore a ring on the little finger of each hand. The clipped beard fitted in perfectly with everyone else’s.

The view was paradise itself. Pines, maples, and azaleas in riotous bloom covered the terraced slopes with nothing between the dead and the sunny blue sky above. Carefully maintained paths led from one section to another. Unless you lived in the prefecture, burial here for foreigners was impossible, someone said. Zack had lived elsewhere, but had trusted his friends to get him in, and somehow they had.

His grave, far from being “veiled”, was completely open. A large headstone was engraved with a Star of David and a Hebrew inscription. Below that, Zack’s name, dates, and the year of his death according to the Jewish calendar – 5,775. He was described as Honorary President of the Jewish Community, and a short phrase summarized his character, if that were possible.

All gathered around, and Isaac, not the Rabbi, led the reciting of the Hebrew psalms and the Kaddish, the prayer to sanctify God’s name. Some rocked back and forth as they spoke the words or said “Amen”, as if still in lamentation for the destruction of the Temple by the Roman Emperor Titus in 70.A.D.

Though I understood nothing of what was being said, I was deeply overcome with emotion to think of Zack lying there, stone-cold dead beneath the pebbles, in such a magnificent setting, and on such a glorious spring day, with the birds singing all around him, and to have the devotion and remembrance of such true friends. But I took comfort in thinking that he, too, must have known such days of ungraspable, vivid beauty, in his seventy-six years on this earth.

And I was reminded of another friend, who, when his lover lay unconscious in hospital, dying of an Aids-related illness, on the last dawn of his lover’s life, in a gesture of great sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and compassion, opened the windows around the bed, so that the dying man could hear the birds for the last time, for the sense of hearing is said to be the last to go.

So the quiet recitation went on in the idyllic cemetery, with Isaac matching the psalms with the Hebrew letters in Zack’s name. A stone’s throw away, I could see the Muslim cemetery, with its green crescent moons on the gates, and its rows of identical-looking headstones, and I thought…

“Separate in life, still separate in death. Kings, popes, geniuses, rich, and poor – all equal in death, the one great leveller, but still unable to relinquish the bonds of life, of who and what they were, and what they stood for. As if it mattered any more.”

I was reminded of some Zen monks who once asked their teacher what they should do with his body when he died.

“Just leave it under a hedgerow and get on with your lives”, he replied.

When the recitation was over, and people began to wander back, I took a little time to look at some of the other Jewish graves. The earliest one I could find was dated 1848, twenty years before the Meiji Restoration, one of a family of three. The middle headstone had been cracked sometime in an earthquake and then repaired, though not very well.

There was also a small, pathetic little grave on its own, inscribed, “Died at birth, December 30th, 1965.” I thought of the terrible heartache the parents must have gone through that day, just before the start of the New Year. But on the little grave flourished two large and beautiful pink azalea bushes in full bloom – life eternally renewing itself.

On the way back, we met a late arrival at the cemetery gates. He said he would walk up on foot and join us later. The journey back was much shorter, and we arrived to find the table already set with food and wine, courtesy of the Rabbi’s wife. While we stood around, she busied herself feeding one of her three daughters.

A young Westerner and his young, female, Japanese companion were standing inside, and I spoke to him.

“Are you waiting for the Rabbi?”

“Yes”, he said, in an unexpected German accent that threw me for a moment. “I have an appointment at 4 o’clock.”

“He should be here soon.”

Hearing German in a Jewish synagogue was slightly unnerving, and momentarily I thought of Kristallnacht, November 1938, the night of broken glass, when the Nazis attacked and set fire to synagogues throughout Germany in a frenzy for the death of one of their own. Perhaps it was because I was English – or British, anyway. Or perhaps it was because I was still wearing my skullcap and was beginning to feel a little bit Jewish myself. A friend used to remark to me how people change when they put something to wear on their head, especially a funny hat – not that a yarmulka is a funny hat.

“Are you teaching German?” I asked.

“Yes, and European culture. That’s what I want to see the Rabbi about. I should like him to explain Jewish culture for the benefit of my Japanese students, and to let me videotape him. I also want to explain to them about Chiune Sugihara.”

I recommended a video about the man who, as Vice-Consul in Lithuania during World War II, had saved thousands of Jews by issuing them transit visas, (against the policy of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, it must be said). He already knew about that particular video, however, as well as several others.

I also told him that as a child I used to live in Germany and loved it, especially Christmas and Advent, when every day I would open a different little window on the Advent calendar.  Memories of whipped cream and the pungent aroma of coffee and cigar smoke flooded back. He himself was from Dusseldorf.

“So you speak German?” he asked.

“Used to, fluently, but now have mostly forgotten it. But it’s still in there, rattling around somewhere.”

The Rabbi appeared, but declined to be interviewed, citing his lack of English ability. He suggested Isaac, instead. I sympathized with the difficulties on both sides. The young German man and his silent Japanese lady friend left.

Joe produced another bottle of wine and we fell to toasting Zack again. When the latecomer from the cemetery arrived, another bear of a man, we all sat down to eat: salad, tahini, some green beans, fried potatoes, chicken curry, and good fresh white bread. And, of course, kosher red wine.

“What brought you to Japan?” I asked Joe, who was sitting on my right.

“Buddhism and meditation”, he said, unexpectedly.

“Zen?”

“That’s right. Every morning I chant scripture and meditate.”

Joe was a free spirit, and Judaism was not going to stop him doing what he thought was spiritually beneficial.

“Been here long?” I asked.

“Thirty years or so.”

“Fancy a drop of whiskey?” I tempted.  He looked as if he might appreciate it.

“No, thanks. I’m off it now.”

Why, I didn’t ask.

We were seated at the far end of the table to the Hebrew-speaking group, which had grown by several members, none of them known to me. As everyone tucked in with gusto, conversation was lively.

“I hear that the Spanish government has offered Spanish nationality to anyone whose ancestors were expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492”, said Harry. “They want them to come back.”

“So soon?” I asked. “It’s been only – let me see – five-hundred and twenty-three years”, I said, performing a quick mental calculation. It was a glacial pace of change worthy of the Vatican, which had taken only three-hundred and fifty-nine years to apologize for mistakenly convicting Galileo of heresy in 1633.

“And now they want them back?”

“Well, I know my grandfather was Sephardic”, said Jacinta, “but I don’t know if my ancestors were from Spain. It could have been Portugal. I lived in Spain for several years, you know, and sometimes used to talk Spanish with Zack. He could also read Ladino, too, though he couldn’t speak it, of course.

“Were your family conversos?” she asked Harry, as if it had been only yesterday she was talking about and not 15th century Spain.

“Yes”, said Harry.

“What’s your surname?” she asked.

“Cruz.”

“It means ‘Cross’”, said Joe, translating for the non-Spanish speakers.

Conversos were Jews who had converted to Christianity in order to escape persecution. If they relapsed, they were handed over to the Inquisition, for “special treatment”, that is, burning alive. For me, conversos was a word found only in history books. Here, it was something that might appear in everyday conversation, as part of a collective memory stretching back centuries.

“Are you going to take up the offer?” asked Jacinta.

“Yes”, said Harry, though no one asked why.

Eventually one of the men at the far end of the table stood up and asked for silence. He wanted to say a few words about Zack.

“We all knew and loved Zack. He wasn’t always easy to understand”, (he had a slight speech impediment), “but I would visit him in hospital, and he was always optimistic. So imagine my shock when I received a call on the eve of Rosh Hashana saying that he had passed away. I have so many memories of him. It was one of his proud boasts that he had hitchhiked across America seventeen times. He told me that the longest he had ever had to wait for a lift was in Alaska, and that was eight hours. It turned out, unfortunately, that the man who picked him up was driving a stolen car, and he was arrested.” (Laughter) “No charges were brought, though, and he was later released. One of the last things he said to me was never to take advantage of the weak, and I shall carry that with me always.”

We drank to Zack again. Sometime after that, the man who had arrived late at the cemetery stood up to speak, but was quickly overcome with emotion and sat down after saying only a few words. One would never have thought to see such a tough-looking man with tears running down his cheeks. I was quite moved by the sincerity of his emotion, and empathized.

Presently, the meal came to an end, and everyone filed into the synagogue again for parting prayers. Isaac presided authoritatively, facing the embroidered curtain, and the Rabbi sat contentedly to one side.

I don’t know if the service was representative of what normally happens in a Jewish synagogue, but here, people recited the psalms, walked to and fro, looked at their phones, and children ran about as if it were a school playground. Perhaps the Rabbi was a renegade. Isaac surged on, regardless. No one batted an eyelid. I thought it was wonderful to sit so easily to the Almighty, not that I doubted their devotion or commitment. It was simply such a marvellous contrast to the normal, regimented, Christian service, where everyone stands and sits at the same time, and everyone seems so po-faced. I loved it. If this was Orthodoxy, what must Liberal or Reform Judaism be like?

From listening carefully, I also concluded that God is not addressed directly in the liturgy, but referred to as “Hashem” (‘the Name’). I already knew that “El Shaddai”, ”Adonai”, and “Elohim” were epithets expressing different aspects of the Deity, such as Justice or Mercy, but “Hashem” was new to me.

As we left, I noticed Tough Guy go up to the embroidered curtain and embrace it, almost in an act of passion.  Appearances to the contrary, he was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. I was most impressed by his obvious level of devotion to, and love for, his religion.

At the door, a departing Frenchman said, in a friendly, but backhanded way, “I hope never to see you here again!”

“Amen” to that, I thought.

And so the day finally came to a close, having ranged from 15th century Spain, through Nazi Germany, to 21st century Japan, reflecting something of the long and tortuous history of the Jewish people.

Central to all was their devotion to God, to each other, and to the community. I envied Zack that he should have had friends like these, who so genuinely cared about him in both life and death, and couldn’t help thinking, “We should all be so lucky.”

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Rocks, Moss and Waterfalls

November 3, 2021

From Japan’s Kumano mountains to Luxembourg’s Mullerthal forests

by Robert Weis

Reminiscent of Japan? Photos of the Mullerthal region in Luxembourg (All photos by Robert Weis)


“I got lost even though I know where I am” – these words, from Rebecca Solnit’s intriguing memoir, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, echoed in my head as I continued my solitary walk through the deep forests of the Kumano Mountains. The Kohechi Trail I followed is not uncharted territory; countless hikers and pilgrims have walked these steep slopes over the centuries. But still, I had left behind an entire emotional backpack, and my inner compass had lost its north. In this mental void I certainly felt lost, but it also meant being present, focusing on every step, every tree, every vista on endless ridges of dark green hills and mountains.

The landscape I entered with every step, its deep geography, its intimate essence – the rocks, the mossy ground, the little waterfalls of the mountain streams, all these details seemed to be part of a picture I had seen before. I got lost in these thought trails and knew where I was: suddenly I was walking in my homeland, in shady beech forests, dotted with mossy rocks and small waterfalls. Forest spirits could hide anywhere, under the roots of trees, in dark caves with evocative names like “Hell”, “Robber’s Den”, “The Owl’s Castle”. Legends of the devil, of women dressed in white appearing in moonlight, of goblins digging for fool’s gold, of robber knights waiting for the unwary wanderer, of a weeping cave – these all became a substitute for kami, Shinto forest spirits, cunning fox goddesses, drunken raccoon dogs, and spirits of the unborn that I had encountered in my wanderings through Japanese forests.

The landscape, its genius loci, breathed the same air, the rocks had the same aesthetic quality, the damp, mossy forests the same smell and feel, the little waterfalls the same singing sounds of Nature’s unwritten sutra. Everything flows, and instead of the immense mountains of Kumano, I was now walking on the narrow paths of the forests of the Mullerthal, in Luxembourg, and I had never felt so close to what I loved in the mountains of Japan. The words of a famous fellow traveler came to mind: “Lose the whole world, lose yourself in it, and find your soul.” And I knew where it would always be, in this place that is home, surrounded by rocks, moss and the whisper of water.

************************

For other outings by Robert Weis, see Mind Games in Arashiyama, or 71 Lessons on Eternity. For more, see his account of a walk from Ohara to Kurama here, or his spiritual journey to Kyoto here. His account of Nicolas Bouvier in Kyoto in the mid-1950s can be read here.

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

88 Seconds

November 1, 2021

by Simon Rowe

Matthew Gordon (WikiCommons)

The biggest robbery in Japanese history occurred on March 5, 2004, in Tokyo’s wealthy Ginza ward. It was carried out by a gang belonging to a loosely-knit criminal group of eastern Europeans who have come to be known as the ‘Pink Panther gang’. The loot — the Comtesse de Vendome — has never been recovered. This is a fictionalized reconstruction of the robbery.

Milo Simović brushed back the sleeve of his Armani suit and glanced at his Omega Speedmaster.

11:45 a.m.

The streets of Ginza were already filling with lunchtime crowds. He stepped to the curb and gazed across the street. The Serb was seated at a cafe window counter. She wore a red leather jacket and dark sunglasses and did not acknowledge him.

            Simović looked beyond the skyscrapers of Tokyo’s luxury shopping precinct and into the cloudless March sky. He wondered what the weather was like in Cetinje at that very moment, 4.45 a.m. Montenegro time. His mother would be milking their goats, or stoking the fire to bake ražani for the long day ahead. He felt a pang of homesickness strike at his gut.

            Something hit him on the shoulder.

            ‘Let’s go,’ came a smooth, unhurried voice behind him. It belonged to Dusko Popović, sharp in his Henry Bailey pinstripe and a half-smile softening his lantern jaw.

            ‘The wig looks stupid,’ Simović said.

            ‘Yours too, budalashe.’

No one ever knew who he would be working with. But it was a sure bet there’d be a Cetinje man in the crew; the best jewel thieves came from there. Popović had gone to the same high school but the two men were not close.

            The brief for the Tokyo job had come in late January; the target, logistics, the forged passports, and the Israeli stone cutter — all coordinated by hands higher up. The snatch team consisted of the Montenegrins, Simović and Popović. The Scot, having arrived two weeks earlier, had arranged hotel rooms, acquired four phones and two Russian-made Marakov pistols from a local contact. The Serb, a tall, fair-skinned woman with striking blue eyes, flew in from Paris soon after.

            It was her gaze which now trained on Simović and Popović as they applied their paper hay fever masks and made their way along the teeming sidewalk to the double glass doors of Le Supre-Diamant Coutre de Mamiko.

            At the precise moment Popović tugged on the chrome handle, the Serb’s manicured finger pressed ‘start’ on her Chopard timepiece.

0 seconds

            Inside, Popović moved towards the marble stairway leading to the showroom, acknowledging with a nod the two female attendants dressed in black who stood behind the counter on his left. He pulled a small camera from his pocket and pointed it at the only male employee standing at the foot of the stairs. A flash of light filled the room. ‘Nice, fantastic,’ he said, smiling broadly.

16 seconds

            Momentarily blinded, the attendant returned a weak smile. Simović slipped past him and made his way up the stairs.

25 seconds

At the rear of the showroom, enclosed in a large glass case, the Comtesse de Vendome blazed one hundred candle-strength beneath its display lighting. A week earlier, Simović and the Serb had entered the shop posing as husband and wife, asking to see it — a necklace of the most outrageous beauty, strung with 116 of the world’s purest diamonds and valued at US$31 million. Simović slipped from his belt a five-dollar rock hound’s hammer and with one deft movement smashed the case.

48 seconds

            The attendant uttered a cry and rushed forward. He ran right into the butt of Popović’s Marakov pistol. Again and again. The Montenegrin pulled a canister from his pocket and quickly sprayed the stunned clerk, pushing him coughing and gasping into a small bathroom reserved for customers’ use at the back of the showroom. Simović, meanwhile, lifted the necklace from the smashed glass and slipped it into his left pocket. From his right, he pulled out his Marakov.

73 seconds

            The two men descended the stairway at neither a run nor an amble, but were met at the bottom by the two female staff, alarmed by the commotion upstairs. At the sight of the pistols, both women froze. Fish in a barrel, Popović thought, filling the air with pepper spray. To the sound of their whimpers and cries, the two men pushed through the doors and out into lunch-hour of Tokyo’s busiest shopping precinct.

            The Serb straightened.

She watched the two foreigners, sartorial in their expensive suits, walk briskly off in opposite directions, melting into the throngs of office workers and masked hay fever sufferers. Her slender finger pushed the ‘stop’.

88 Seconds.

******************

This story originally appeared in the anthology Noir Nation: International Crime Fiction No. 3. More from Simon Rowe on Writers in Kyoto here or here.

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Kodokushi (A Solitary Death)

October 12, 2021

A Short Story by Rebecca Otowa (October 2021)

Keiko opened the metal front door with her key and almost fell inside. Her shadow, cast by the streetlight, lurched, and her white shoes seemed to tangle together. She recovered her balance, hauled her big carrier bag and a smaller one inside, and closed the door. She stood there in the dark entranceway, panting, for a full minute before she found the strength to slide off her shoes and raise her arm to the light switch.

The overhead light revealed a small unremarkable room, with a narrow kitchen behind half-open sliding screens to the right and a large window of pebbled glass in the wall directly opposite. The floor was straw matting, with haphazardly folded bedding in the corner. On top of the bedding cowered a small white cat, who when it recognized her came forward,

“It’s all right, Shiro, I’m home, and you’re right, it’s your dinnertime.” Keiko walked slowly toward the kitchen. As she entered it, she kicked aside a couple of plastic boxes that had once held food from a convenience store. The sink was full of dirty dishes. She cleared a space on the countertop, picked a dish from the dirty stack, and removed a purple KalKan pouch of cat food from the smaller plastic bag she had brought in, emptying it into the dish. She placed the dish on the floor in front of the cat’s nose and verified that he was indeed eating before once again rooting in the bag for her own dinner.

Holding a plastic box containing rice and chicken and a bottle of tea, she slumped down on the floor, legs stretched out straight, and wolfed the food in five minutes flat. Her eyes were closing from weariness before she was done. Keiko looked into the corner of the room at a glass door, slightly ajar, the entrance to a small bathroom. Take a bath? But the bath would be reeking from the cat box she kept in there, and she was so tired, so tired… Tomorrow night maybe. Or a shower in the morning. She tossed the empty plastic box and bottle toward the kitchen and crawled over to the bed. In a moment she was asleep, forgetting to turn off the light.

Keiko Matsunaga was a nurse in a big-city hospital. Lately, with the virus that was causing havoc all over the world, she found herself busier than ever, working every spare minute, with hardly time to turn around, much less think whether this was the life she had intended to have when she graduated from nursing school a generation ago. No matter how hard she worked, she never seemed to manage to make a dent in all the things that had to be done in the hospital. She sometimes thought she was little more than a glorified maid, changing sheets and disinfecting floors around the beds of terminally ill patients that overflowed into the hallways, trying not to disturb the machines and the plastic pipes inserted here and there into their bodies under the sheets.

Keiko couldn’t remember when she had last had a vacation. Overtime was the order of the day in the hospital, especially among the nuts-and-bolts nurses like her. Every day she was there, and regular holidays came and went unnoticed. Even the larger sets of holidays, one per season, were not important to Keiko, who had no family to visit (she was an only child, and her parents were dead), or friends to share a trip to a hot spring or the beach (she had only the businesslike relationships that resulted from working shoulder to shoulder all day long). She worked, came home, slept, and went back to work the next day. Her only companion was her old cat Shiro.

But lately exhaustion was taking its toll. Keiko was almost fifty. She was slowing down, and the repetitive movements that made up her day were getting harder to perform. Perhaps even more worrisome was her mind, which was getting sludgy with tiredness and lack of stimulation. Keiko never did anything for herself. Her paycheck just barely covered her expenses, and she dreaded to think what would happen – not to her, but to Shiro – if she were no longer able to work and buy the purple packets he loved.

Daylight crept into the small cluttered room, insinuating itself under Keiko’s closed eyelids. She sighed and turned over, her leg kicking out at Shiro, who got up from his accustomed place on the bed and walked off in a dudgeon. A minute later the alarm of her old-fashioned clock shrilled, and she flailed with her arm, knocking it flying. It blatted a second or two longer, then was silent. Keiko tiredly flung the bedcovers aside and stripped off her crumpled nurse’s uniform, which she had slept in. One of the most pressing issues of her life was going to work looking presentable every day, and the morning routine that ensured this had been painstakingly honed till it was second nature.

The nurse’s uniform went into a plastic bucket into which Keiko ran hot water and added a squirt of detergent. While it soaked, she plugged in an iron which she stood upon a towel spread out on the floor, took from a hanger on a nail the previous day’s uniform (she had only two), and with quick practiced movements ironed the uniform, spraying it with spray starch from a can, and hung it back up again. Then she squeezed out the other uniform and hung it up too, to dry until the following morning when she would do it all again.

This was the extent of the housework that Keiko felt able to do, and she only did that because she wanted to hide the squalid truth about her life from the people at work. A slovenly nurse was unheard of, and to appear less than spick and span would probably result in her being fired. The only indulgence she permitted herself was a good cup of coffee each morning before she left for the hospital. All her coffee cups had been dirtied long ago, so these days she used paper cups. She set up the coffee maker with a pod of her favorite Blue Mountain coffee, and while it did its magic, she checked her bag and changed into the freshly ironed uniform.

Keiko drank her coffee, sighing, and noticed that during the night, Shiro had licked clean the lunch box from the convenience store. She gave his head a pat, added the plastic box and her coffee cup to the growing pile on the kitchen floor, and left the apartment, remembering this time to switch off the light.

Every day, every night, was like this. The year and the pandemic wore on, with no end in sight. Every time people thought that the disease was slackening off, there would be another surge and back to overtime all the hospital staff would go. Keiko was getting so tired she couldn’t even think straight, but she couldn’t ask for time off to recuperate when no one else was getting any.

She continued her cheerless lifestyle. Work all day, then retrieve her tote bag from her locker. Home on the subway, popping into the convenience store next to the station where she bought dinner for herself and Shiro, and occasionally topped up her supply of coffee pods and paper cups. Back to her one-room flat on the ground floor of a large boxlike building, giving thanks every evening that getting into her room didn’t involve climbing the stairs that wound upwards at one end of the building. The stairs in the subway station were bad enough. She sometimes used to wonder how many people living in the big city were just too exhausted or ill to face going out, where long walks and staircases ensured that only the healthiest people would be part of ordinary, mobile society.

Each night she fed Shiro, ate her dinner, threw the plastic boxes in the direction of the kitchen, and collapsed on the futon. Each morning she drank her coffee, laundered her uniforms, and stepped out for another day of work. There was nothing else to do – she just had to keep going, like so many who did this kind of important work in the disease-ridden city. More and more patients just kept coming and coming, the equipment was scarce and overworked, places had to be found for deceased patients and grieving relations. Providing hospital facilities like cleaning, laundry and food was made more complicated by the insistences from superiors that everything be disinfected.

Cleaning was starting to go by the board in the hospital – there just wasn’t time to keep everything as spick and span as usual. Cobwebs appeared in the corners of the ceiling, and areas not frequented grew dusty. And, as Keiko knew but usually tried to put out of her mind, her apartment was rapidly becoming unliveable. The trash from the convenience store, originally confined to the kitchen floor and countertops, had started to invade the main room. Shiro finally disdained the cat box in the bathroom, full and unchanged as it was, and would do his business among the paper and plastic. The unmade futon now formed a small island in a sea of junk. Keiko fell into her front door every night and breathed in the new, gamey scent of her home. It was a rich, deep funk that somehow made her sleep better. Anyway, there was nothing to be done. She simply didn’t have the energy to begin cleaning it up. It was beyond her.

One evening Keiko felt even more tired than usual. She staggered from the subway station to her apartment without even stopping at the convenience store. Coughing, she lay down on her futon in the dark. Shiro crept close to her, for a wonder not meowing for dinner, which was just as well because there wasn’t any. Keiko lay there, watching headlights intermittently illuminate the pebbled surface of the window. She felt hot and uncomfortable. The night passed slowly. Keiko wished she had something to drink. The tap in the kitchen still worked, but it seemed so far away. At last the morning light came in through the window as usual, but there would be no work for Keiko that day. She lay on the futon gasping like a landed fish. Her whole being was focused on the next breath, and the one after that.

At the hospital that day, amid the flurry of the morning tasks, one of the nurses noticed that Keiko wasn’t there. She mentioned it to her supervisor, who decided to call Keiko on the cell phone she had been issued by the hospital. She sat in her cluttered office and dialed the number. It rang and rang.

In the basement of the hospital, in the deserted locker room, a small but insistent ringing pierced the silence. Keiko had forgotten her phone in her locker.

The supervisor tried to call a couple more times that day, when she remembered. But there was never any answer. She decided that Keiko had just taken the day off, and had not bothered to ask permission, knowing it would not be given. Herself overworked, with emergencies erupting every few minutes, and a head full of plans for getting through the evening’s demands with a family to care for, the supervisor eventually forgot all about Keiko.

In a fog of pain and exhaustion, Keiko lay on her futon. When she opened her eyes, she saw the daylight shining on the vast pile of trash that seemed just a few inches from her eyes. Sometimes she was aware of Shiro rooting among the paper and plastic, sometimes he came and lay down beside her. She couldn’t even lift a hand to pat him, her one companion in the world. “I’m not going to make it, Shiro-kun,” she croaked. His green eyes looking at her were the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes.

Keiko died alone after being sick for three days. Her neighbors were alerted by the meowing of the cat, and called the police. The neighbors stood behind the officer who came and forced open the lock. The smell of the apartment hit them like a wall, and they fell back, staring at the huge mound of trash in the doorway. The two officers – they always did things in pairs – waded through the trash and found Keiko lying on her futon, and Shiro crouched in the corner next to the trash-filled kitchen.

The neighbors looked at each other knowingly, and muttered, “Gomi yashiki” (Garbage castle). They didn’t know her, had never spoken to her, but obviously the woman who lived alone here was a slovenly, dirty woman who didn’t care what her apartment looked like. No wonder she had gotten ill and come to such a bad end. They went back to their apartments, shaking their heads.

The cleanup crew came later the same day, after Keiko’s body had been removed and someone had seen her nurse’s uniform and phoned up the hospital. One of the crew, a young girl who didn’t look strong enough to brave such awful scenes as the one that met her eyes upon stepping into the trash-filled apartment, was sorry for Shiro and took him home with her. Unfortunately Shiro died himself a couple of days later. He couldn’t be persuaded to eat or drink, but sat motionless with eyes half-closed, seeming to wait passively for the end. Yet another casualty of the dreaded virus had moved on to the next world.

**********************

(This story was inspired by the book Toki ga Tomatta Heya (Rooms where Time has Stopped), written by a young woman called Kojima Mu who works on a cleanup crew putting apartments in order after someone has died alone. One of the most common types of these deaths is the overworked person, usually a woman, who has given up the struggle to keep her apartment clean and lives in a pile of trash. More often than not such a woman is some kind of professional who has no relatives and keeps up appearances so that no one knows that the squalor of her residence has reached critical mass. The accumulation of trash elicits judgmental comments, but most people (like me) aren’t aware of the truth about these poor people.)

**********************

Rebecca Otowa has published three books, At Home in Japan (essays, Tuttle 2010), My Awesome Japan Adventure (children’s book, Tuttle 2013) and The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper (short stories, Tuttle 2019). All are illustrated by the author. She has also painted over 50 pictures of various genres, and held 2 shows (2015 and 2019).

To learn about the artwork of Rebecca, see this page.
For the report of a lunch talk by Rebecca, click here.
For her self-introduction, see this page.

« Older posts Newer posts »

About Writers in Kyoto

Writers in Kyoto (WiK) is a group of English-language authors working or living in the city, or admiring it from afar. It is run on a membership basis and its purpose is for writers to help each other by creating opportunities for promotion, book launches, readings, the exchange of information, and social events. Read more

Recent Comments

    Questions, Feedback?

    Contact us

    WiK on Facebook


    © 2025 Writers In Kyoto

    Based on a theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑