Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People (31 page)

And he smiled in reminiscence, as he continued recounting the wonderful childhood he had had.

- Oh, yes, there was something else. It happened long before the orphanage but I remember it well, though I was only four or so.

After the money and land went to the new religion, Makiyo's mother had no resources left. Already sickly, she had tried hard but now there was no hope. (In fact, she had been too ill to nurse him as a baby, and he was weaned on goat's milk, that being the cheapest available. As he once said ruefully, he had never known his mother's breast.)

Worse still, she had discovered that her husband had another wife, another family, over in Shikoku. And here she had been selling her kimono in order to buy rice. So she gathered her children—four in all, an older brother and sister, Makiyo, his younger brother—and went back to the village where she was born.

There, however, she met with no relief. Her own family shouted at her, called her shameless for leaving her husband like that. And after a few days, worn down by the illness that would later incapacitate her—Parkinson's disease—she made up her mind.

Makiyo remembered that she called her children, all of them quite young, and said:
Kachan umi e iku
—Your mother's going to the sea. This pleased them, the prospect of a walk along the sand with her. So off they set.

In each hand she firmly held those of the two elder children. The youngest she carried on her back. She thus had no way to hold on to Makiyo, who walked along beside them.

He remembered enjoying the walk he was taking with his mother, particularly when it became apparent that they were really going into the sea, though they were all fully dressed. Shortly the water was splashing about Makiyo's ankles, then his knees, his thighs. Then pleasure turned to concern when he saw that his mother, clutching her children, was walking straight out into the ocean, looking only at the distant horizon.

- I didn't know what to do. She wasn't looking at us. She was looking straight ahead and the water was getting deeper with each step. I was still really little, you understand, so that when it was up to her knees, it was already near my chest.

As the water grew deeper, Makiyo decided that something was wrong. So he pulled away from his mother and ran back to the shore, while she continued onward with the other three.

He raced down the beach, found his uncle, explained as best he could, and together they ran back to the bay. Wading out into the sea, his uncle grabbed the children, then shouted at his sister that it was all right for her to kill herself but did she have to kill the kids as well?

- So it was exciting, said Makiyo with a smile.

This was said with no irony at all. The smile held only his pleasure at the memory. It had been a truly exciting time and this Makiyo was acknowledging. There was no resentment of the fact that he had nearly lost his life. And it wasn't simplemindedness that made him act like this. It was simple courage.

Still smiling, he turned to look out of the window again as our journey continued—a grove of trees, a culvert, a distant town hazy in the late afternoon sun.

- Yes, I had a good childhood. And now my father is back from Shikoku, staying with my mother—she's pretty ill now. And all those ten years of running, being a newspaper boy, that made my legs good and strong. So my childhood taught me a lot. I had a good one. I guess I was lucky.

And I looked at this brave twenty-four-year-old sitting there, the landscape unrolling behind him, and I envied him this ability to take an experience and accept it and see what was good in it.

And to refuse that need for a sense of being wronged which so many of us hide behind.

One Sunday I received a telephone call. In country Japanese, the woman said she was Ichiro's mother and wanted to see me.

We met by the bronze dog in Shibuya where everyone meets. I recognized her by her strong, square face—just like her son's. She bowed, saying she had long wanted to meet me to express her appreciation for everything I had done for him. And now she was going to be rude enough to ask for yet another favor. Seated opposite her in a coffee shop, I wondered what it could be, but all she said was that she would like me to visit her house.

In due course, I took the long train ride out to the suburbs of Musashi and was met by a stranger with a car, an uncle, and taken to a small three-room house in the midst of paddy fields. There I found Ichiro's mother dressed in kimono and haori, but no Ichiro.

- Oh, she said, did I forget to mention it? He's in Kyushu right now. At his father's grave. It's been twenty-one years since he died.

While Ichiro was placing flowers on his father's grave, I gave his mother the chrysanthemums I'd brought.

- I haven't seen Ichiro for ages, I said.

- Well, people grow apart, she observed: But I'll always be grateful for what you did for him. She looked at me, and something seemed to bother her: I can see that you're not comfortable, she said, looking me up and down, eyes stopping at my trousers. Tatami ruins pants, she said: You ought to be wearing a kimono. Stand up.

I did so and she took off my coat, then opened a wardrobe, removed a kimono, and held it out for me as though she were my wife. Telling me to take off my trousers, she helped me into it and tied the obi.

- There, she said, arranging the tassles on the haori, while the little white dog chained up in the yard stared at me and began to bark.

- Shut up, she said, then: The tabi. Wifelike, on her knees, she slipped them onto my feet and sat back, appraising me.

- There, she said, isn't that better?

After I said that it was, she announced that she needed my advice. And since I was sitting there dressed as her husband, it only seemed natural that I should listen.

- Again, I want to thank you for all that you did for Ichiro.

It appeared that owing to my influence he had not only stopped smoking and drinking, he had also stopped running after bad girls. She was grateful.

- You set him such a good example I was wondering if, as a mother, I could ask for one more thing. I know I shouldn't, but I will, anyway.

She put down her tea and looked me squarely in the face: My youngest son, Koichiro, is a problem. Oh, he goes to school, is graduating this month as a matter of fact—but he smokes and drinks and runs around with bad people. I was hoping you could maybe take an interest in him.

I looked at her, surprise probably showing.

- No, no. I managed to put him through school myself, so I don't mean money. Nothing like that. I just want him to benefit from your good influence.

I looked hard at her but could detect nothing other than a mother's concern. Still, I decided to refuse, despite the fact that I was sitting there like a packaged parent, dressed up in the bad lad's father's kimono, with his mother pressing in such a wifelike manner. I didn't want to be some young tough's father and was already shaking my head, with every intention of then getting out of her kimono, her house, her life, when she turned and said: Oh, here he is now.

The open shoji held the dark outline of someone haloed by a rim of sunlight. Koichiro—a big, square eighteen, showing the big, scarred knuckles of a karate jock as he bowed on the tatami; raising his head, his thick eyebrows straight, his eyes appraising; then sitting up, solid, Kyushu, serious as a samurai, his mouth a firm line.

Those direct eyes, his mother's, stared at the pale-skinned stranger in his father's clothes. Had his mother told him that his new parent would be calling, I wondered. He regarded me with polite suspicion.

As though we were meeting for a more common form of engagement, Koichiro's mother discreetly went out to make some tea, leaving the young people together to get to know each other.

- Do I look like your father? I asked.

- No,
you're American.

- I'm a friend of your brother's.

- I know.

- Your mother wants me to be your new father.

- She does? Then: How about you? He gave me his first smile, the sunlight bright behind him. Square white teeth, creases around his young eyes. Shifting, getting off his knees into an easier position, muscles apparent.

I stared, then swallowed and asked: Would you like me to be that?

- Well, he said, giving that crooked smile I was to know so well: It would be one way out of this place.

His mother came back with the tea.

- Making friends? she asked with that hopeful cheerfulness which go-betweens display. All of a sudden, she was in full obeisance on the mats in front of me:
Yoroshiku onegai ittashimasu
, she said, a phrase used only when making the most serious request.

Feeling embarrassed, I looked at Koichiro and was greeted with the grin of a youngster taking the side of one parent against the other.

His mother soon sat up, self-conscious, pleased, and, turning to the boy, said: It suits him, doesn't it?—Father's kimono. This was followed by a little nod which meant: there, that's fixed now. She then called in the uncle, who took a snapshot or two while the puzzled dog barked.

Koichiro came to call. He had the air of someone appearing on the first day of a new job. I, on my side, felt like a person having his first date. Perhaps out of concern that we might not have enough to talk about, he had brought with him a number of snapshots, all of himself. These he laid out on the table as though playing patience.

There he was at school. School was Takushoku, an institution specializing in traditional sports and right-wing student activities. Here he was in kimono, high geta on his feet, student cap set belligerently on top. Here he was in karate gear, taking a proper stand, fist thrust out. And here, fists again doubled to indicate determination, on the rugby field, knees scabbed, shorts bunched at the crotch.

Having thus modestly displayed himself, he started talking about his future. Koichiro, unlike his older brother, was talkative. He wanted to be a professional sportsman. He was pretty good, he told me, maybe he could coach eventually. Good money in professional sports. Also—perhaps in deference to me—he wanted to learn English.

I said I could help with the latter but I thought his mother probably wanted him to get some steadier profession—maybe an office job with a big company.

- No, no way, said Koichiro. Then: You aren't Japanese so you don't know what it's like.

- What is it like?

- Smiling when you don't want to, agreeing when you disagree, being nice to people you don't like, spending your life in some dumb business.

Maybe he expected me to point out the advantages of a secure salary, to say that you had to find a way somehow to live in society. But I didn't — this really wasn't the life for him. So I said: You're right.

Koichiro turned to me with that bright, inquiring look he had when he was really interested. I felt, absurdly, as though I had made a good impression on my first day at school.

Then, smiling from under those straight eyebrows, he stood up and said: I'm all sweaty from practice. Could I have a bath?

How much did he know, I wondered. His eyes told me nothing. His brother ... his mother ...? No, it was simple: he was a boy in need of a bath. And a bath was in fact ready, just in case I saw an opportunity to suggest one myself. But Koichiro, as I was soon to discover, was ahead of me in most things.

He moved about my room as though he had always lived there, shedding his clothes, finally standing before me with nothing but a slash of sun across him.

- Got a towel?

I obediently went and got one. Then he looked at me and said: Aren't you going to come in too? I'll scrub your back.

He then turned and walked toward the bathroom, the floor shaking slightly under his feet, and I followed.

Little by little Koichiro moved in. His geta were now in my shoe cupboard, his karate gear hung by its strap next to my good gray suit.

He went to practice every day and came back home, as though from a job, knuckles red, to sit on the tatami, do zazen, then after dinner gravely make us a cup of macha, his version of the tea ceremony.

Sometimes he went to Yasukuni Shrine, where the war dead were. He liked it there, he said. It was holy. He thought the Emperor was holy, too. We talked, though we didn't often agree, and slowly areas we didn't talk about spread like mildew.

One such subject was his unwillingness to find a job. Every interview he went to gave him some reason to find the position unattractive. It was like those arranged meetings where the boy always turns the girl down. In addition, he still smoked and drank and, I suspected, continued to frequent the people his mother disapproved of. My influence was not being as beneficial as she had hoped.

- Are these people gangsters? I asked.

- Not really, was all he would say.

Though I learned little about them, I wondered if they weren't learning something about me. There was the matter of money, for example: his allowance, it was called, established to fit the parental role I had unwisely assumed. He would kneel politely in front of me to ask for it.

- But you just got it a few days ago.