Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People (4 page)

Even her being an "eternal virgin" (never marrying, never having children in a country where fertile wedlock is almost mandatory) was never held against her. She was not, after all, an old maid. No, she was that positive thing, an eternal virgin.

And then this sudden retirement. And the way she did it. She simply announced it. This was no way for an Ozu character to behave.

Great was the outcry. Her studio, for which she was the major box-office attraction, tried every blandishment. She stood firm against them all. The critics, who had formerly adored her, were hurt, insulted—there was talk of her being
orina rashikunai
, un-womanlike. Them she ignored.

And then there was what she said, the reasons she gave. She implied that she had never enjoyed making films, that she had done so merely to make enough money to support her large family, that she hadn't thought well of anything she had done in the films, and now that the family was provided for she saw no reason to continue in something she didn't care for.

This was conveyed in the Setsuko Hara style, to be sure, with some show of hesitation, sudden smiles shining through the doubt, but this was one Hara performance, the only one, that was not appreciated.

For the first time since her 1935 debut she was severely criticized, not so much for wanting to retire as for the manner in which this desire was presented. There was no polite fiction about the cares of age—she was only forty-three—or about bad health or about a burning desire to take up charitable work, or a spiritual imperative that she enter a nunnery. Nothing of the sort—only a statement that sounded like the blunt truth.

She was never forgiven. But press and public were allowed no further opportunity to display their disappointment, for she never again appeared.

Where had she gone? It was as though she had walked from that final press conference straight into oblivion. But of course there is no such thing as oblivion in Japan. She was shortly discovered living by herself, under her own name—not the stage one chosen by studio officials--in a small house in Kamakura, where many of her films had been set. And there she remains, remote but still the most publicized of recluses, with readers of the daily or weekly press knowing what she buys when she shops, how often her laundry is visible each week, and which of her old school friends she sees.

Occasionally a photo is attempted, but her past experience has made her quick to sense intruders, and the picture is always taken from so far away and the high-speed film is so grainy that it could be one of any elderly woman airing the bedding or hanging out the wash.

Over the years since her retirement, public anger, pique, and disappointment have all faded. Only a hard-core curiosity has remained. This, and a new admiration.

It now seems, particularly to younger women, that this actress truly reconciled her life. Truly, in that though she played all the social roles-daughter, wife, and mother—she only played them in her films. They were inventions, these roles. They did not eclipse that individual self, our Setsuko. And in this way she exposed them for the fictions that they are.

She did not allow them to define her; rather, she defined herself. And she did this by setting up her own limitations, not those of her fictitious roles. Her real limitations are the self-determined ones of the little Kamakura house, the daily round, the visits with her women friends. Only within such chosen limits is the concept of any real self at all relevant.

And so Setsuko Hara/Masaé Aida continues as legend—to those of her own time and to the young women who came later. And a legend exerts a compulsive attraction for others, whether it wants to or not.

Thus, many times have photos been sought, many times have parts on screen or tube been offered, and only too often has the little house in Kamakura been approached. The answer is always the same—the door of the little house has been slammed in the intruders' faces.

Even when a group of former friends and co-workers appeared. A documentary was being made about the life and films of Yasujiro Ozu, Hara's mentor and the director who perhaps best captured, or created, this persona. Wouldn't she please appear in it? For the sake of her dead
sensei?
No door was slammed this time. It was politely closed. But the answer was still no.

We were in Ueno, in a small
nomiya
, a traditional place serving saké and
shochu,
run by an old woman originally from the country, years in the city. Drinking places like hers were now rare.

- And how much longer? she wondered: Land prices what they are nowadays. It's all tall buildings and cocktail bars and, what do they call them, "snacks"?

Fumio nodded, agreeing. Though he was only twenty he liked old things—did not read
manga
comic books or play
pachinko
pinball; rather, read historical romances and could play
shogi
chess. I had once taken him to the No, which wasn't a success; but
Seven Samurai
was.

He was, I thought, much like the dissidents of the Meiji era, over a hundred years ago. They had seen the destruction of their civilization. They attempted to keep at least some old things. They saw what was happening.

I was well into my fourth bottle of saké. Blinking, I turned to look at him, his profile as clean against the
shoji
as the face on a Meiji medal: young, lean, innocent—yes, noble, a newly civilized savage. And here we were, drinking in Ueno but still part of Meiji, and it was all so beautiful that—I upset the saké bottle.

- Ma, ma,
said the old woman, mopping. She then refilled my cup and his glass—straight
shochu
—and recalled a story, as she often did, remembering that I liked tales from the past.

- Did I tell you about this man? Well, he had no religion or anything. And one night on his way home from Ueno he took the path across Shinobazu Pond, and he stopped because he had to take a leak, you see. Well, he'd been drinking and he didn't watch what he's doing and he pissed straight onto a big stone, the one that's shaped like a priest, hood and all, when you look at it from the front. Well, that stone is right off to the side of the island that Benten protects and you know what a powerful goddess she is. And this stone, why, it belongs to Bishamon, or one of them at any rate. So he was emptying his bladder like that, and he suddenly felt funny. And then all at once it was bright morning, and he was miles away in Ikebukuro standing there in front of everyone with this thing in his hand. Well, he was truly shocked, he was. But he got back home on the Yamanote Line and everybody marveled. And after that he stopped drinking and turned religious.

I laughed loudly at the story but Fumio marveled, shaking his head, turning to smile, enjoying himself, finishing his
shochu
—strong as vodka—and holding up his glass for more.

Just as I was beginning what must have been my sixth bottle, and was trying to tell the patient old woman why she reminded me of my mother, I noticed that the stool next to mine was empty, that Fumio was gone. Must have gone to the toilet, I remember thinking. But when I went to look he wasn't there. He had vanished.

I became worried—drunk and worried, a terrible combination. Where could my friend have gone? Having paid the old woman I wandered out into the street, all neon and chrome and traffic.

Then I climbed the stairs to the park. Where could he be? He had vanished as suddenly, as completely, as had the man in the story. I gazed hopelessly down the deserted avenues, lined with trees, disappearing into darkness.

A temple loomed. This was where the Ueno War had been fought, where many young Meiji men had been shot. Bullets were still in the temple gates. Their blood was still part of the soil over which I was now walking—staggering. And where was Fumio with his smile, his profile, his respect for the past?

A long flight of stairs down which I carefully picked my way, then, before me, a larger expanse of darkness, Shinobazu Pond. The withered lotus stalks whispered in the light breeze. In the distance a clock was striking midnight.

I was lost, alone, would never find him, would wander the dark park forever. Dead drunk, near tears, wondering at the hopelessness of life, I staggered to the shrine.

There he was, illuminated by a distant streetlight, legs apart, pissing on a large rock.

I stood, watching, unwilling to interrupt.

He finished, seemed to be waiting.

Then, slowly, his shoulders slumped.

I called his name.

We stood there in front of the Benten shrine, clinging to each other. Then he began to cry and so, therefore, did I.

- I just wanted to know, he said between sobs: I just wanted to find out. I just wanted there to be something.

I held him, patted his back, felt like a father.

- I wanted there to be something. Anything. Just anything.

Again I patted his back. Then the back heaved and Fumio squatted and was very sick.

I stood and looked at the stars over the black roof of the shrine and thought of many things: of gods and goddesses and sacred rocks, of young men with no fathers, of the consuming thirst for authenticity, and of being lost in a world in which only the body seems to have any reality.

Slowly, as the summer light faded, they came, singly, in pairs, in groups, the young men of Fuchu. They came from the lanes and country roads leading into town, joined others at streets and avenues, then marched abreast, past the high school and the town hall. Like rivulets trickling into creeks, then merging to form a river, the young men of Fuchu streamed into the center of the town, where the shrine was.

The setting sun cast their shadows far ahead. The men were barefoot, wore only loincloths and sometimes a towel twisted around the head to keep the sweat from falling in their eyes. For this was a Shinto ritual toward which they were moving, a ritual that purified, and here one must be naked.

This was the famous Yami Matsuri of Fuchu, the Festival of Darkness, and it occurred once a year late in the summer. All the young men from this town outside Tokyo and the surrounding countryside came walking through the dying light, making for the central shrine where the great
kami,
deity of darkness, waited.

I too had wanted to join in, curious—had read about it, asked around, and now, having parked the jeep just outside town, was following the naked men, their numbers growing as street turned into avenue. Soon we were too many for the sidewalks, were walking down the middle of the asphalt toward the shrine, somewhere ahead of us.

The shops, the homes were already lit and people stood and stared at all these men and me, the only one in clothes, while we paraded past. As our numbers swelled, they retreated to watch from open doorways, windows. And I, among the crowd, became aware of the odor of those around me: a clean smell—of rice, and skin.

They in turn were aware of me, a foreign object in their midst. But they were also busy, intent upon the coming rite, and so a glance or two was all I received—no words at all, no questions as to what I was doing there.

I was there because I wanted to see, to experience, for myself. This was why I had driven far into the countryside and found the place, and why I was now one of them, walking through the dusk as though I knew where I was going.

But I did not need to know. The press was now so great that I was going wherever it went. There was no stepping aside, much less turning back. I was caught in this flowing river, surrounded by men who knew where they were going. Our shoulders touched as we walked, our hands collided as we swung our arms.

The sky had deepened, and all at once it was completely dark. Nine o'clock, and someone had pulled the main switch at the power station. This was the signal, the ritual had begun.

Even with eyes closed I would have known. With the instant black there was a sudden tension, like the stopped-short intake of a breath. No sooner had this jolted, body to body, throughout these hundreds than the march became a jostle.

Pushed, I lurched to one side, then the other. Those behind pressed with their hands to move me faster, and I found my palms against the bare flesh of those in front. The walk turned into a ragged trot and from blindness I returned to sight—a partial night sight, with the white of loincloths in front and, farther off, glimpsed through black trotting bodies, others as though phosphorescent in the night, and above and beyond them the summer stars.

All else was sound and smell. I saw nothing of the sudden hand that struck my side, the bare foot that heedless trod on mine. I felt flesh now close, and smelled it and heard its slap as all of us ran forward, blind, into the night. My shod foot came down, hard if innocent, and I heard the jerk of breath, the exclamation choked, cut off.

There was then a sudden tightening of all these limbs, as torsos crushed together like cattle roaring through a gorge, and I looked up and saw against the sky the great black beam passing overhead. It was a
torii
, a shrine gateway we were passing through. Then, a blacker darkness, overhanging on either side like cliffs—perhaps rows of cypress, cedar, the outskirts of the shrine.