The Changeling (33 page)

LEADER: The peace treaty has already been signed and sealed, and it’ll go into effect this April twenty-eighth [1952] at 10:30
PM
. So what does that mean? It means that during the entire period of Allied occupation there hasn’t been a single incident of armed resistance by Japanese directed at American camps, and time is running out for us to take a stand. There is one famous photograph that will endure forever as a symbol of the entire period of military occupation since Japan lost the war, and as a foreshadowing of the future relationship between America and Japan. It was taken on September twenty-seventh, 1945, at the American embassy. The emperor of Japan stands perfectly erect, wearing Western-style
civilian clothes (formal black suit, white shirt, narrow tie); beside him is Field Marshal Douglas MacArthur, dressed in his casual-duty uniform of khaki-colored shirt and trousers, no necktie, both hands on his hips. That photograph’s subliminal message is stamped on the collective psyche of the Japanese people, as strong and clear as the maker’s mark on a samurai sword:
The emperor will never again be restored to godly status
.

Kogito, too, had a lucid memory of Daio giving this erudite burst of political analysis in the midst of a party. Just as Goro suggested in the character sketch of the Leader in his screenplay, the real-life Daio’s behavior was a mixture of seriousness and frivolity. You could never let down your guard around him, and whenever he spoke, no sooner had the words left his mouth than the listener would begin to doubt their sincerity or veracity. This unsettling ambiguity was in evidence as the tipsy Daio irreverently imitated the pose in the photograph, showing them exactly how the emperor was standing and what sort of expression was on his face. Kogito’s amusement was mixed with abhorrence, but Goro just laughed uproariously. Of course, he, too, was already drunk on
doburoku
and feeling no pain.

Naturally Daio, as the heir to Choko Sensei’s ideological mantle, couldn’t be expected to stand by quietly while this ignominious situation—the Occupation—came to an end. During the three weeks that remained before the peace treaty took effect, Daio and his cohorts started gearing up for their armed attack on the American military base, perhaps hoping to rewrite the last page of the history of the occupied era, with what they
saw as its shameful theme of passivity and defeatism. What they needed was to get close to the American camp without being stopped by the Japanese police, so they organized an attack party from among the most outstanding disciples, who would be disguised as innocuous members of the local populace. But the soldiers who were stationed at the main gate of the American army base would immediately fight back, and in order to ensure that a violent street fight would break out the minute the attackers showed up, Daio and his ragtag band would charge the gate, brandishing their authentic-looking weapons. To make the MPs perceive them as seriously armed, it would be ideal if Daio’s group could attack with the same kind of armaments that the American soldiers were carrying. So what they needed, the screenplay showed, was to get their hands on ten rifles from the military base’s armory for the ten members of the attack party to use.

PETER: Even if we’re just talking hypothetically, there’s no way you’re going to be able to steal ten automatic rifles from the camp.

LEADER: But weren’t you saying that there were piles of old, broken weapons that were used in the Korean War, just lying around out in the open?

PETER: Yes, there are, but an amateur wouldn’t be able to repair rifles that were damaged in combat.

LEADER: But Peter, that’s the whole point—there wouldn’t be any need to repair them. They don’t need to be in working order; they just need to look like American army rifles. If
the soldiers in the camp see ten Japanese warriors charging at them with those rifles, they’re going to think it’s a genuine enemy attack, and that’s good enough for us.

PETER: But if that’s how it looks to the guards at the gate, you’ll all be mowed down in a matter of seconds.

LEADER: Well, why not? I mean, if we didn’t know that was going to happen, why would we charge into battle against an army camp filled with thousands of soldiers in the first place? Anyway, from the moment we came up with this strategy, we knew it was doomed. Like it says in the anthem of the Imperial Japanese Navy—you know, the song the kamikaze pilots used to sing before they took off on their one-way missions?—“I will not die peacefully at home.”

PETER: What if people realize you aren’t serious—that you’re just a bunch of suicidal wankers playing at war games?

LEADER: (suddenly taking off his
yukata
and standing there in an Etchu
fundoshi
, a traditional style of loincloth underwear wrapped in such a way that it ends up with a rectangular panel hanging down in front): In that case, we’ll strip down to our loincloths and back away, doing a colorful folk dance!

The first half of this true-to-life exchange actually took place at the party Kogito and Goro attended at Daio’s inn at Dogo Hot Springs, after the record concert. The latter half transpired at a subsequent party, which took place at that same inn on the following evening (Kogito had forgotten all about it), after
Daio had run into Peter somewhere and had invited him to join the festivities. Kogito was surprised by the powers of observation that Goro had possessed as a teenager, but he was equally amazed that, as an adult, Goro was able to combine these disparate conversations into a single scene—especially since (as Kogito recalled) Goro had been busy drinking himself more or less senseless on
doburoku
and had appeared to be nothing more than a thoughtless, innocent young boy, awash in merriment.

Anyway, after the three-day sequence of soirees, and after Daio and his gang had returned to their camp, Kogito had started to feel intensely guilty about all the time he and Goro had wasted in the company of the paramilitary madmen. So Kogito, not wanting to backslide into the habit of staying out late and partying with Goro, very quickly reverted to his previous pattern of going to the CIE library every day after school with a group of his more studious friends, who, like him, were madly cramming for their college entrance exams.

One day, toward the end of library hours, the Japanese CIE employee who had shown Kogito and Goro the book of Blake’s illustrations at the record concert made a special trip to the reading corner. Calling Kogito aside, he told him that Peter was waiting for him down at the basketball practice area. This functionary was haughty and unapproachable at the best of times, and Kogito could tell that he was extra-miffed at being asked to run an errand for an American. The fact that the object of the errand was a lowly Japanese high-school student only intensified his obvious displeasure.

When Kogito arrived, Peter was standing under the basketball backboard, hanging his head and looking rather down
in the dumps. The American was holding the ball in front of his chest, with his right arm bent, and the cherry blossoms, which had just begun to fall, were floating down and landing on the ball. Kogito could see the line made by the border between the fair skin at the nape of Peter’s neck and the red, sunburned part above it. As Kogito came closer Peter raised his head and looked at him with a quizzical expression.

Kogito sensed right away that Peter had been hoping Goro would show up, too. That intuition was confirmed when Peter asked, point-blank: “So your friend Goro isn’t with you today?”

Kogito didn’t reply, and Peter, undaunted, forged ahead alone. “Speaking of Goro,” he said, “he was telling me that after you’re finished studying, you Matsuyama high-school students like to jump in the Dogo Hot Springs baths all together to refresh yourselves. Is that true?”

“Dogo may be a hot springs, technically, but the bathhouse is public, so apparently there’s some question about the hygiene ... In any case, I’ve heard that it’s off-limits for GIs,” Kogito replied.

“Oh, is that so? I hadn’t heard. Okay, here’s another idea. At the end of this week—Saturday or Sunday are both good for me—I’ll be able to borrow a car. Would you like to go for a drive? Just you and me and Goro ... Mister Daio was saying at the inn the other night that he’d like us to come and take a look at his martial-arts camp, or whatever he calls it.”

Peter lapsed into silence, but his blue eyes were glittering like those of some evil bird, and Kogito couldn’t help wondering why his cheeks suddenly looked so flushed. He answered Peter’s question with the same careful choice of words he had employed earlier.

“I’m sure Goro would be delighted to go for a drive,” he said formally. “Daio also invited us to visit his training camp, and he asked me to repeat his invitation to you if I had a chance. I’ll let you know either today or the day after—you’re here on alternate days, right? Anyway, I’ll talk it over with Goro and get back to you with an answer.”

“Actually, I’ll be here every day this week,” Peter said. “So when you see Goro, tell him he can stop by and visit me, okay?”

Just then a mixed group of Japanese employees and American women came up to the basketball court, making a big, noisy show of catching the falling cherry blossoms that were wafting about on the breeze. Holding the ball straight out in front of his chest with both hands, Peter stepped forward to face them. Turning briefly back to Kogito, he said dismissively, “If I’m not around the day after tomorrow or whenever, leave your answer on the secretary’s desk. You can write the letter in Japanese, if you like.”

Then, evidently losing interest in Kogito, Peter began to dribble energetically around the court, all by himself. He took a shot at the basket from a goodly distance away and missed. Undaunted, he grabbed the rebound off the backboard, and then, twisting his body, he tossed a high-arching ball into the center of the little crowd of Japanese and Americans, and everybody cheered as if he had done something heroic.

Wearing a sour scowl, Kogito went back to the library. But despite his bad mood, before returning to the reading corner, he peered through the plate-glass wall that separated the library from the office to make sure he knew exactly where to find the secretary’s desk.

CHAPTER SIX
The Peeping Toms

1

The following day Kogito discussed Peter’s invitation with Goro on their high-school lunch break, and then he returned to the CIE and delivered the answer: YES. The thirty-something secretary took the envelope while coolly looking Kogito up and down, but she didn’t say a word. All she did was to snort, with vague disdain: “Uh-huh.” (She was the first Japanese person he had ever met who responded with American-style informality ... or rudeness.)

But not long after Kogito had taken out his textbooks to begin studying for the university entrance exams, Peter came to the reading corner to fetch him. The American led the way to his own office, paying no attention to the snippy, stuck-up secretary, and told Kogito he could use the telephone there to call Daio at the training camp. Like Peter, Daio was in fine spirits; he even said that if they were really serious about paying a visit, he would come to the CIE to discuss the particulars. (That wasn’t necessary, as it turned out.)

Goro’s screenplay, with the attached storyboards, paints a detailed picture of that weekend jaunt. They set out early Saturday afternoon in a pale green, banged-up Cadillac with Peter at the wheel, Goro riding shotgun, and Kogito ensconced in the back seat. In the first scene, the Cadillac is pulling out of the parking area behind the library building. Goro was a car buff even as a high-school student, and he seems to have remembered this drive as an extraordinary outing during a time in Japan, just before the peace treaty took effect, when a glamorous American automobile was a very unusual sight.

Matsuyama still bore the fresh scars of the Allied air raids, but before long they found themselves on the streets of a neighboring town that hadn’t been burned at all. The Cadillac was so wide that it seemed to take up the entire two-lane road, and the old-fashioned houses appeared to be crowding in from both sides. Of course, it would have been impossible to re-create the entire scene of devastation around Matsuyama exactly as it was before the postwar restoration, but even now there were places along the highway that would be suitable as period-movie locations. The storyboards were drawn with an obvious passion for that sort of tableau: the medieval-looking towns, the charred ruins, the incongruous green Cadillac hogging the narrow road.

After passing through the densely populated areas with their rows of old-style houses jammed together along the street, the road began a long ascent through a pastoral landscape of fields and rice paddies dotted with houses, temples, and shrines. On the storyboard, the blossoms of the Yoshino cherry trees are already falling, but the double-flowered cherries are still in full bloom, and they line the route in glorious profusion. Gradually the Cadillac wends its way through hillside villages surrounded
by deep green, bushy-treed tangerine groves (with none of the present-day vinyl greenhouses or other such blots on the landscape). At last the Caddy comes upon the entrance to a deep tunnel, near the summit of a low ridge of mountains. Just beyond the tunnel, Daio and his young followers are parked in a small truck, waiting. Following the truck’s lead, the gigantic American car (which is so broad that it brushes against the grass on both sides of the road) plunges ahead, oblivious to the clatter as its low-hanging undercarriage jounces along the rough, bumpy road. After briefly climbing a gentle slope, with a large, deep valley on the right side and a thick forest on the left, the road begins its descent.

Looking at the screenplay and the storyboards, Kogito found it odd that Goro had lavished so much detail on his portrayal of the poorly maintained washboard road the Cadillac had traveled, while not providing so much as a sketch of the plants that grew alongside, but Kogito was able to supply those details from memory as he looked at the illustrations. Not only had he grown up in a deeply wooded valley, but he was the type of person who liked to spend time wandering about in the forest, botany books in hand. Because of that, he not only remembered what an unusual experience that drive had been; he also had a clear recollection of the trees and shrubs, thick and leafy with new growth, and the cherry trees that hadn’t yet shed their blossoms.