Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People (6 page)

Sometimes we had strayed into the literary marshes surrounding our subject: his lifelong admiration for Huysmans; his monograph on Saint Sebastian and his translation of the drama about him by D'Annunzio; his favorite modern novel,
Hadrians Memoirs
; and of course his own
Confessions of a Mask
, a work I thought his best, indeed—though I never told him this—his only successful work.

Today, however, he talked about Hemingway. This rather surprised me. He was a writer whom Mishima had disliked to a marked degree, either because of, or in spite of, similarities: both of them conscious stylists, both romantics given to
macho
posturings, both subscribers to obsolete codes. As it turned out, however, it was the American's suicide that interested the Japanese. He might still dislike him as a writer, he said, but he had come to admire the man. He now found him consistent, he said, "all of a piece"—and this he found admirable.

As indeed he might. Mishima himself, ever since I had known him, had been engaged in creating a person called Mishima who would be all of a piece. This new person was to be predicated on everything that the old person was not. The stutterer would become fluent in languages; the introverted adolescent, a Kendo champ; the ninety-seven-pound weakling, a body-builder and father of two children. It was a most impressive achievement. But death was needed, finally, to make a man all of a piece.

And this was what we were talking of, though at the time I did not know it. From Hemingway he moved the conversation to Takamori Saigo, the nineteenth-century military hero who had sought to reestablish ancient virtues by reinstating the emperor, who saw the new government handed over to accommodating bureaucrats, and who had come to understand that, for him, the revolution had failed. He spoke of his admiration for Saigo, of his final act, ritual suicide, of the faithful friend who dispatched him before committing suicide himself. He spoke of the beauty of Saigo's act, of that one superb gesture.

Lest I miss the point—one I was to comprehend only several months hence—he then spoke of how he, like Saigo, hated the rationalizing, pragmatic, conciliatory ways that had become those of Japan in our time.

- Japan, he said, has gone, vanished, disappeared.

- But, surely, the real Japan must still be around if you look for it?

He shook his head sternly.

- Is there no way to save it then? I asked, probably smiling.

He looked past me into the mirror: No, there is nothing more to save.

Then, like the playwright who artfully anticipates the climax in the first, casual-seeming allusion, like the novelist who skillfully introduces an oblique reference to the revelation to come, he said: He was the last true samurai.

I was to consider this only in the most literal sense: Saigo was the last samurai. Later, however, I was to realize with much fuller comprehension that this had been told me by the last true samurai himself.

With another person, even another writer, one would not be so certain of this. One might have called this early reference unconscious or something of that kind. Not with Mishima. Just as he chose the cast in the drama of his life according to his wishes, he also arranged its form according to his liking. I was to be astonished on that coming day in November—in fact, my exclamation of surprise was to be the final line of my role in his life.

Later, friends of Mishima's gathered and spoke of the noted suicide. We had all, it transpired, been given similar hints. The earliest dated from two years before the event. Together we comprised the chorus—flabbergasted, as at the denouement of a Euripidean tragedy.

But, back then in the Hilton bar, I was not supposed to guess and so I didn't. Rather, somewhat mistrustful of the stern turn our talk had taken, certain that he would next begin on "purity," a subject I had heard enough about from him to want to avoid, I attempted to introduce some levity into the conversation and told him that I quite envied him his toy army.

This was a mistake. He glared at his reflection. I was absolutely wrong, I was told. Nothing of the sort at all and I could keep my suspicions to myself because I was completely in error.

So I was, and ought to have known it. Given the final role of the toy army and its members, Mishima, so careful a casting director, would certainly not have confused parts to the extent I was suggesting. Its role was to be deadly serious.

Then, smiling his humorless smile, Mishima himself attempted to lighten our talk. He had been reading a book about Elagabulus, whom he rather admired—or, frankly, envied. Leaning toward me he told me some of the more salacious gossip recorded in the book. He was going to write about the ruler, as Camus had written about Caligula, as he himself had written about Sade and Hitler. Astonishing, he said, the power that man had had.

Later, when it was all over, when the coup de théâtre had had its desired effect and the curtain been rung down, I was at one of the memorial services, and up came the young literary student.

It was
sensei'
s last wish that we be friends, I was told.

- I know, I said: But sometimes last wishes can't be granted.

I did not say that the only parts we had really played were those of stage properties in
sensei'
s last housecleaning.

- Nevertheless, he added (
keredomo
, a non sequitur quite built into the Japanese language itself):
Sensei
was a truly extraordinary man.

And I couldn't but agree.

After the war, released from prison, she got herself a job in Inari-cho, in downtown Tokyo: at the Hoshi-Kiku-Sui—the Star-Chrysanthemum-Water—a pub.

There, every night, workers of the neighborhood—for it was a
taishusakaba,
a workingman's pub—would gather to drink saké and
shochu
and nibble grilled squid and pickled radish. And every night around ten, Sada Abé would make her entrance.

It was grand. She descended the staircase—itself a large affair which ended right in the middle of the customers. Always in bright kimono, one redolent of the time of her crime, early Showa, 1936, Sada Abé would appear at the head of the stairs, stop, survey the crowd below, and then slowly descend.

From where, one never knew. Some said that her lair was up there on the second floor, full of old photographs and overstuffed furniture. Others said that the staircase went nowhere at all, that she had to clamber up it from the back before she could arrive in public. In any event, the descent was dramatic, with many pauses as she stared at her guests below, turning a brief gaze on this one and that. And as she did so, progressing slowly, indignation was expressed.

It always appeared. It was part of the show, the entrance. Ostensibly it was provoked by the actions of the men below. They invariably placed their hands over their privates. Fingers squeezed tight, they would then turn and snicker. Above, the descending Sada Abé would mime fury, casting burning glances at those below who squeezed and giggled the more. She slapped the banister in her wrath, and merriment rippled.

This pantomime was occasioned by the nature of Sada Abé's crime. Twenty years before, she had cut off her lover's penis. This was after he was dead, of course. And he was dead because the two had discovered that if she squeezed his neck hard enough his weary member achieved new life, but one day she squeezed too hard and killed him.

It was these events to which her customers now, two decades later, referred by hiding their own penises and snickering. And it was these that she also acknowledged by pretending wrath.

At the bottom of the stairs she would stop and rake the room with her blazing gaze. There, in the growing hush, she would stand and glare.

The giggling stopped. Some of the men hunched lower, as though truly frightened. Perhaps they were, for this woman was a creature already legendary. She was a murderess. She had served a prison sentence. She had written a book about her exploits. And she might, they perhaps thought, be capable of doing the whole thing all over again.

Like a basilisk she stood. The last snicker died away. Silence, utter. Then, and only then, as though she had received the homage she desired, did Sada Abé smile. It was a cordial, welcoming smile and it accompanied her as she went about pouring drinks and slapping backs.

Like many a pub woman she became manly, just one of the boys. Unlike many, however, she had actually choked a man to death and then cut off his member. There was a consequent frisson when Sada Abé slapped your back.

- Hello there, you back again? You like this place here, eh? she asked, looking down at me and adding: Nothing but the best here, boys. Let's all drink up now.

She then moved off to another table, glancing back at me from time to time. It was an interested glance. She seemed to be thinking about something, perhaps wondering if I too knew her story.

I did, and I also wondered about her and the turn her story had taken. To have unintentionally killed a lover in a moment of passion, to have rescued from the catastrophe, in a moment of panic, an object which one, childlike, had loved—that was one thing. It was quite another, however, to connive with the crowd, to present oneself as a figure of vulgar terror and then as one of common fun.

She had certainly damaged the man initially but now she seemed to wound him doubly. And she was mutilating herself as well, making a travesty of an event of such importance to her, one that had so shaped her life. She was, I felt, precisely, faithless.

The laughter had now started up again. A few of the more daring yelled out that they were afraid to go and pee. Others shouted to hide the knives while she was around. She smiled, patted, poured, moving about in her striped Showa kimono like a teacher among unruly pupils.

Occasionally, however, the big smile faded. She seemed to be thinking. She stood there, saké bottle in one hand, abstracted. Of what, oh, of what was she thinking, I wondered, now half-drunk myself. It could have been that night twenty years before or it could have been present unpaid bills.

Whatever it was, she soon collected herself and went about among the tables grinning. Only for a time, however. Her nightly visits never lasted long. After an hour she was suddenly no longer there. No one saw her go back upstairs and no one in the drunken throng below missed her.

Perhaps she could no longer stand the travesty that her life had become. Or perhaps she had gone up to do the day's accounts.

- Oh, no, I really much prefer Europe, she said, dark in the summer heat, turning to watch the sun slide behind Saint Peter's.

I did not have to guess why. Many Japanese find freedom abroad but few had her reasons.

- It's so interesting. And, of course, I have friends here.

Originally an actress in Shuji Terayama's troupe, she was discovered by Nagisa Oshima and appeared in
The Realm of the Senses
, playing Sada Abé, strangling Tatsuya Fuji, cutting off his penis. Even though this scene, and many others, was missing when the film was shown in Japan, there was enough visible for newspapers and magazines to criticize.

It was shameless. It wasn't the way for a true actress to behave. And-perhaps the main motivation for the criticism—she seemed to be doing it all for foreigners, since it was they alone who were permitted fully to view the act. And yet it was a purely Japanese story. It was about, no matter what she might have done, one of our own. Why then was this cheap so-called actress exhibiting our shame abroad?

Why was
she
behaving this way, was the question. The man was never criticized. He, Tatsuya Fuji, then a minor actor, found his career enormously assisted locally by the film. Thanks to it he went on to be a star, to appear in cigarette commercials, and he never again had to appear nude.

Not so, however, in her case. She was a good actress, as she had proved, but no starring roles came her way. Only porno parts. She was also offered nude-dancer contracts. And more was suggested, amounts of money that would allow Japan to experience in the full flesh what had been denied it on the screen.

- Oh, no, that's not the reason at all, she said, her skin brown in the failing light, Saint Peter, black: I don't care what the press writes. If I did, well, I wouldn't last very long. No, really. I like Europe. I have this little place of my own in Paris now. And I do like coming to Rome.

She sat there in the twilight—black dress cut low in the back, necklace of ebony and amber, good black leather shoes, good black leather bag. And I knew what was under all this elegance. For I too had seen the film and so her naked flesh was more real to me than the poised elegance now sitting beside me on a Roman balcony.

- It certainly wasn't because of what they wrote. Actually, many women who've done less have had it worse. There were even some compliments—
Nippon Sports
called me brave. Did you know that? Well, they did.

She was very different from Sada Abé in the film. There, a housemaid, open, innocent, earthy, playing childlike games with the master. Now, black and elegant, chilled martini held between lacquer-nailed fingers, turning to speak in French to someone else, turning back to me to answer an earlier question.