Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (56 page)

Before our meal, the doctor and I go downstairs to light incense punks at the small Tome Torihama shrine off the lobby. We are joined by another inn guest, Isshin Yoshida, a Buddhist monk who wears blue denim karate clothes and looks like a bald Leonard Nimoy. He informs us that he is currently on a tour of major Buddhist war memorials around the country. After his travels, he plans to leave his present cushy post at a temple in Aichi Prefecture and establish a small outpost memorial shrine in the sparsely populated Bōnin Islands, as close to Iwo Jima as he can get. Obviously intrigued with this ascetic seeker and moved by his pious earnestness, the ever-extraverted Doctor Hiroshima outlines the rest of our itinerary, then invites the monk to come along with us to Kagoshima.

After breakfast, we set out on the last leg of our pilgrimage – a modern-day Chaucerian traveling party of Veterinarian, Buddhist Monk and Long-nosed Japanologist headed north along the western shore of Kagoshima Bay in a white Nissan compact. Maybe it is still a little early in the morning for gab, or perhaps it is just that Brother Yoshida’s augustly introspective presence in the car has a contemplative effect, but the normally effervescent Doctor Hiroshima is uncharacteristically low key, and there is only sporadic conversation for most of the drive. 

Things pick up on the approach to Kagoshima when we make a turn in the road and the sudden looming presence of big brown Sakurajima brings on a flurry of comments about the scenery. Manmade features of the landscape are certainly an improvement over the sad vistas of yesterday’s pork-barrel skyway, but still, this is no French Riviera. Large areas of the city look like transplanted sections of Seventies Miami Beach, replete with palm-lined boulevards and pastel-themed condos facing the shoreline strip.

We leave the car in front of one of these highrises, and walk into a narrow park sandwiched between the strip and the water. Doctor Hiroshima leads us to the famous “Kisama to Ore” memorial for Kagoshima Campus Yokaren graduates killed in the war. “Kisama to Ore” (“You and I”) refers to
the refrain from the song “Dōki no Sakura,” which celebrated the comradeship of two naval aviators who are parted in death. There are several versions of the song with alternate verses, but the three best-known verses are carved on a granite block next to the monument:

You and I, blossoms of the same cherry tree

That bloomed in the naval academy’s garden

Blossoms know they must blow in the wind someday

Blossoms in the wind, fallen for their country

You and I, blossoms of the same cherry tree

That bloomed in the flight school garden

I wanted us to fall together, just as we had sworn to do

Oh, why did you have to die, and fall before me?

You and I, blossoms of the same cherry tree

Though we fall far away from one another

We will bloom again together in Yasukuni Shrine

Spring will find us again, blossoms of the same cherry tree
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The dominant motif of the cenotaph is a pair of upright granite slabs, squared off on their outer edges but irregularly shaped along their inner edges in the nature-imitative fashion of traditional Japanese memorial stonework. On closer inspection, it is evident that the five or six-meter-tall slabs are actually two uneven halves of a larger, fractured whole, and when I realize this the symbolism clicks into place: abrupt discontinuity; buds severed before they could fully flower.

On the front of one of the slab halves, there is a bronze bas-relief of a slumped, lifeless pilot, although unlike the protagonist of Chiran Peace Museum’s ceramic mural, this fallen airman is in an unassisted free ascent heavenward. The other, smaller slab features seven gold circles arranged vertically. A sign at the base of the memorial explains that these represent the famous seven-buttoned tunic fronts of the Yokaren dress uniform.

The slabs stand upon a stone altar flanked with snow lanterns and laden with fresh bouquets of colorful tropical flora native to the region. In front of the stone altar there is a brass plaque with a long list of names. The doctor points to Tadao’s name. We pray in silence before taking some snapshots in front of the monument.

Walking back to our car, the doctor points to an unremarkable white concrete municipal building nearby.

“That’s where the Kagoshima Yokaren barracks used to be,” he says, then points to a copse of tall old pine trees next to the building. “And that was where we met Tadao when we came down to visit from Fukuoka. Right under those very same trees. Of course, they’re a lot bigger now than the first time I saw them.”

The doctor gives the site one last, lingering look before we head back to the car. There is yet one more stop on today’s itinerary, and we will take the Tarumizu car ferry across Kagoshima Bay to get there. We leave the car in the bowels of the ferry and climb up to the fantail deck, braving a chilly breeze off the water to enjoy the view. Brother Yoshida soon begs leave on account of the cold sea air, seeking refuge within the warmth of the enclosed passenger deck.

I stay behind on the fantail bench of the ferry with a pensive Doctor Hiroshima. Though the sky has become overcast, the scenery is still awe-inspiring, especially when the ferry passes closest to Sakurajima. The volcano is even more spectacular than it was this morning, and seen in this much eye-filling detail, its brooding brown bulk exudes an aura of immeasurable mass and coiled, pent-up potential energy. The thin plume of yellow, sulfurish smoke puffing from its craggy summit suggests a lit fuse – like the whole thing is ready to blow and take most of Kagoshima Bay with it in a gigantic mushroom cloud of steam and pulverized basalt.

I comment on the strength and beauty of the mountain, but the doctor’s reaction is subdued. The mountain is too raw and savage to be called beautiful, he says. This being a matter of taste, I opt not to defend my position. I change the topic by asking the doctor if he knows that the geography of the bay bears a close resemblance to Pearl Harbor, and that the IJN used the area to practice for the raid. He answers that he does, but he lets the thread of conversation taper off without further comment. He is staring at something in the distance. I follow his line of sight and get a sudden fifth wheel sensation, mentally kicking myself for not joining Brother Yoshida a few minutes earlier. Maybe the monk really had not been cold after all, but had just been sensitive enough to pick up on Doctor Hiroshima’s need to be alone where I had not.

Mumbling something about going inside to buy more film at the snack bar, I leave the doctor gazing at a nondescript concrete building and a copse of old pine trees by the shore sinking away into the wake of the Tarumizu ferry.

A
five minute walk down Kudan Slope from the east gate of Yasukuni Shrine, there is a six-story brick and stone building incongruously tucked between glass cliffs of typical downtown Tokyo office space. Originally named Gunjin Kaikan (Professional Soldier Hall), the architecturally eclectic structure was built in 1934 as a swanky entertainment facility and hotel for members of the National Association of Army Officers. While the building’s history is long, its brightest moment in the spotlight of notoriety came while the mortar between its bricks was still drying, when it was used as the command center for martial law authorities suppressing an attempted military coup d’etat in the capital.

In what would later be remembered as the “2-2-6 Incident,” death squads of young ultranationalist army officers made a whirlwind series of daring predawn raids around Tokyo on the snowy morning of February 26, 1936. After butchering a Who’s Who list of civilian and military bureaucrats and cabinet ministers in their beds, they holed up in prearranged defensive positions at the nearby Imperial Military Academy campus in Ichigaya
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. As a stunned nation watched, the rebels then presented their manifesto for the establishment of an absolute monarchy free of civilian “corruption.” Meanwhile, the Imperial Household Guard and other troops loyal to the authorities moved swiftly to quarantine the mutineers as a flotilla of battleships under Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto sailed up from Yokosuka to train their guns on the IMA campus from Tokyo Bay.

Although the mutiny was put down quickly and relatively bloodlessly (not counting the initial round of assassinations, of course), its repercussions were lasting and disastrous. The coup attempt’s exposure of civilian authority weakness and the precedent it established for blatant military intervention in Japanese politics – by armed force in the streets of Tokyo if necessary – effectively put a gun to the heads of the last policymakers who could have had any chance to rein in army adventurism on the Asian continent and avoid the devastating clash with the West that was sure to follow. With critics of radical militarism now cowed into submission for the duration, the nation’s march toward total war advanced at the quick step.

While many in politics and the media openly praised the rebels’ “patriotic” motives during and after the event, the punishment for the coup’s ringleaders was swift and severe: those who did not fall on their own swords were summarily executed by firing squad.

Somewhere between their arrests and their untimely ends, many of the mutineers were no doubt interrogated – perhaps even tortured – within the brick walls of Gunjin Kaikan, and visually, the structure certainly seems a fitting venue for the ghosts of wild-eyed young xenophobes in khaki and jackboots. The building’s design employs Asian and industrial motifs that combine to create less of an identifiably nativist Japanese feeling than something that could be described as Tibetan Art Deco – a cross between a Tudor manor, a Central Park West doorman building and Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Its upper floors are capped with a handsome green oxidized copper roof, accented with wrought iron moon windows and ringed with a limestone frieze of geometrically stylized
boutonnieres
. On lower floors, tall windows offer glimpses from the street of chandeliers hanging over what could have once been a grand ballroom. At street level, a covered driveway flanked with rows of brown-tiled columns borders a parking lot on the northern side of the building. Overlooked by a terra cotta colored Florentine watch tower, the driveway – which once hopped with sleek black limousines and Kempeitai staff cars – is now host mainly to guided tour busloads of elderly visitors from the provinces.

Since the building’s postwar “rehabilitation” it has been known as Kudan Kaikan, now a very modestly priced hotel with fairly extensive conference and wedding reception facilities conveniently located in midtown Tokyo. Kudan Kaikan is not, however, your run-of-the-mill Tokyo hotel. This is evident not only from its bargain basement room rates and eccentric architecture, but also from the large war map of East Asia and the Pacific on permanent display in the front lobby. The map, showing the distribution, in thousands, of Japanese military and civilian casualties in World War II, is flanked with photos of far-flung memorial cenotaphs in various forbidding island landscapes from the Solomons to the Aleutians. Suggested reading available in the lobby gift shoppe is displayed in a nearby glass case, the selections including the usual array of veterans’ memoirs, Chicken Little warnings about the impending fall of Japanese civilization, and the ubiquitous ultranationalist comic books of baby boom right-winger Yoshinori Kobayashi.

Given the reading material advertised, a visitor could be forgiven for suspecting that the lobby wall map is here for the benefit of Japanese strategic planners trying to make sure they do things right next time, but it is more likely here as a somber if not particularly subtle reminder of Kudan Kaikan’s main
raisons d’etre
. Primarily, this is a lodging facility for Yasukuni pilgrims. It is also a symbolically and logistically well-situated base of operations for the building’s owners, the
Nippon Izoku Kai
(National Association of War Bereaved), perennial Yasukuni champions and one of the most powerful conservative lobbying groups in Japanese politics. Kudan Kaikan is also, for similarly symbolic and logistical reasons, my preferred base of operations when on business in Tokyo. 

On the steamy morning of June 19, 2002, I am sitting in a quiet corner of the hotel lobby waiting for the day’s interview subjects to arrive. The concierge has been kind enough to grant me use of the lobby for my interview, and I have staked out a nice big table for the task at hand. I have time to kill, which I spend thumbing through the day’s newspapers and peoplewatching. The lobby is surprisingly empty for a large Tokyo hotel on a workday morning, and in half an hour, I have only seen a dozen or so people enter the building, mostly
wholesome-looking teenagers with harsh flat-top Johnny Unitas buzzcuts. Their mashed noses and cauliflower ears leave little doubt that the boys are connected with the judo tournament being held a stone’s throw across the Imperial Moat from here at Budōkan, which some readers may remember as the Tokyo venue of the Beatles’ ’66 Japan tour, and Kiss and Cheap Trick glory a decade later.

A few minutes before ten AM, I look over the top of my newspaper just in time to catch the profil
e of a serenely elegant, bronze-complexioned elderly gentleman with ramrod-straight posture entering the lobby. I soon recognize him as one of my interview subjects, Toshiharu Konada (INA ’43). But Konada-san does not notice me at first, and before I have a chance to say anything, he walks right by me to approach an old man with a shock of white pompadour sitting on the far side of the room. The men exchange curt but formal bows. I watch their somewhat stiff interaction for a few seconds before realizing that the second man is my other subject, Harumi Kawasaki, who has been sitting here all of this time without my realizing it. Feeling slightly embarrassed at my faux pas, I greet my guests and thank them by apologizing – as required by Japanese etiquette – for the time and effort I have caused them to expend in coming to see me this morning.