The China Lover (21 page)

   11   

Y
OSHIKO HAD NOT
kept her word. She did return to the movies. I can’t say I was surprised. The reason she gave was that she had to support her family. I’m sure this was true, but I suspect that she had caught the movie bug too badly to stay away from the camera for long. It was all very well singing to a hall full of horny American soldiers, but immortality could only be achieved on the silver screen. To be sure, our dreams are made of flammable material. I remember Kurosawa once saying: “Castles in the sand, Sidney-san, that’s all we’re doing, building castles in the sand. One single wave is all it takes to make everything disappear forever.” Nonetheless . . .

I went to see Yoshiko on the set of her latest film, this time without Murphy, which was a relief. “It’s very anti-war,” she assured me, “and very romantic. Lots of love scenes, Sid-san. In Japan we call them ‘wet scenes.’” This made us both laugh.
Escape at Dawn
was the title. Yoshiko played a prostitute, or as they called them in wartime Japan, a “comfort girl.” This had caused some commotion in our Information Bureau. We encouraged love stories, of course, but an admiring portrait of a prostitute came as rather a shock to the Christians in our office. The specter of “feudalism” also hovered dangerously over the project. Questions were asked whether a love story of a soldier and a prostitute really encouraged healthy relations between men and women. The Japanese argument that stories about prostitutes were
part of Japanese culture didn’t cut much ice with Murphy, whose respect for cultural tradition ran out when tradition clashed with the policies of his department—or indeed with the convictions that came with his upbringing in rural Idaho. But a compromise was found. The script was revised. The girl was no longer identified as a prostitute but as a “singer,” sent to comfort the soldiers on the battlefront. This way, everyone was satisfied.

The singer is in fact forced to comfort a sadistic officer, but falls madly in love with a soldier, played by the gorgeous Ryo Ikebe. The soldier disgraced himself by being captured alive by the Chinese. That he managed to escape made no difference at all. His first duty was to die. Being in love with his superior officer’s special girl only made things worse. So he becomes the sadistic officer’s whipping boy; every day another torment. Until, one day, he cannot stand it any longer, and the soldier and the singer decide to choose love rather than war—a sentiment that did much to mollify Murphy’s initial reservations— and plan their escape. The scene to be shot on the day of my visit, of the escapees falling to the machine gun of the sadistic officer, was the film’s concluding image.

“The role was written specially for me,” Yoshiko said, as the camera was being set up in a kind of sandpit, meant to represent the flat landscape of China’s central plains. The director, Taniguchi, told the soldiers to line up. “Everyone in position?” he shouted. “Prepare! Start!” The sadist, played by a brutally good-looking actor who went on to have a long career in yakuza pictures, ordered his men to shoot poor Ikebe. But they just couldn’t bring themselves to execute a fellow soldier. So the brute, quivering with rage, murders the hero himself with his machine gun. Yoshiko, wild with grief, screams the name of her lover and throws herself on his dying body. The sadist then shoots her, too. In the last close-up shot, which for some reason took ages to prepare, the twitching hands of the dying lovers come together in the sand.

It was not the greatest film ever made. But it was a success, not so much because of its anti-war message but more on account of the “wet scenes,” which were somewhat bolder than audiences were used to. There is a lot of kissing and thrashing about on army bunks, scenes, by the way, that would never have passed our own Hays Code back home, but with all the absurdities emanating from our office, we were at least spared the censorious eyes of Presbyterian busybodies in Tokyo. I saw
Escape at Dawn
several times in ordinary moviehouses, and was delighted to see that Yoshiko’s hot kisses were met with loud cheers and much applause. There were rumors that Ikebe’s passion for Yoshiko was not confined to the motion picture screen. If so, she never revealed anything of the kind to me.

Which was a good reason to doubt such rumors. For she did in fact confide much of her private life to me. It wasn’t long after my visit to the set of
Escape at Dawn
that she invited me for dinner at Iceland, a fancy French restaurant near the Imperial Palace, one of those dark, oak-paneled places with ancient white-gloved waiters and alarming violinists hovering around the tables. I never found out why it was called Iceland, but such linguistic mysteries abound in Japan. There cannot have been many instances of Japanese ladies paying for the dinners of young American men; but Yoshiko was a movie star, after all, and I was happy to be her adoring acolyte.

The conversation was somewhat stiff in the beginning. She toyed with her food, refused to drink wine, but insisted that I try the red Bordeaux. Perhaps she was self-conscious about the looks we invited. Most people recognized her instantly. Being Japanese, they were too polite to point, or whisper, or come over to ask for her autograph, but the quick glances, designed to go unremarked, made us feel conspicuous.

“Mama and Papa are well,” she replied, when I asked after Mr. and Mrs. Kawamura, “but it is time for me to move on.” She had found an apartment in Asagaya. And what about Ikebe-san, I enquired, trying
not to seem prurient, and perhaps not entirely succeeding, since she gave me a funny look and said, with the hint of a smile, “Ikebe-san, marvelous actor.”

I probed no further. We talked about the weather, which had been quite chilly for this time of year, and about films we had seen, or rather, I had seen, for she never had time to see movies. “I wish I did, but it’s just work, work, work.”

It was, I think, only when we got to the dessert, a baked French custard, that she looked at me intently with those large, luminous, irresistible eyes, and said: “Sid-san, I want to ask you something.”

“Of course, anything.”

“I feel that I can trust you.”

“Thank you,” I said, trying not to look too eager.

“Promise you won’t tell.”

Of course I wouldn’t.

“Sid-san, I want to go to America. Do you think that sounds crazy?”

“No, no, but why? Can’t you go on holiday in Japan?”

“I can’t take a holiday. I have to work.”

“All the more reason not to go to America.”

She shook her head impatiently. “You don’t understand. I want to work in the USA. You see, there is so much good I can still do in this crazy world. I was deceived once by the militarists, so when Ri Koran died, I made a promise to myself that I would never let something like that happen again. Never again would I lend myself to making propaganda for war. It is my duty to work for peace, and for friendship between our countries.” She looked very serious when she said this, like a child concentrating hard on a drawing.

“But, honey,” I said, “your public is here.”

Yes, she said, “but Japan is very small. You know what we Japanese say: to know only your own little world is like being a frog in a well.”

I nodded. I had heard the expression before. Since Nobu first told me about it, I kept on hearing it. “Perhaps I can help with some of my Hollywood contacts.”

“Oh,” she purred, “I was hoping you would say that. I knew I could depend on you.” She bowed her head to the crisp white linen tablecloth, almost upsetting the empty crystal wine glass. “
Yoroshiku o-negai shimasu
,” she said, her eyes cast on her plate, meaning something like “I’m humbly asking for your kind help.”

A mere two years ago I had been kicking my heels in Ohio, hoping to find some adventure at the Luxor, and here I was, in the best French restaurant in Tokyo, boasting of my Hollywood contacts to a world-famous movie star. I was bluffing, of course, careless of the consequences. But I was young, which, I guess, is a lousy excuse.

“I was thinking,” Yoshiko continued, “perhaps you could go back to America as well, to study Japanese, isn’t that what you wanted? And then you could be my guide.”

I was so astonished that I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing, and just stared at her with my mouth open, no doubt looking rather stupid.

“Think about it, Sidney-san. There is no need to say yes now.”

I promised that I would, of course, think about it.

“What an adventure it would be for both of us,” she said, her face lit up by a happy smile. “You know why I really want to go to the States?” she said, beckoning with her hand for me to come closer.

“No, why?”

Lowering her voice like a conspirator, she said: “To learn how to kiss.” She showed her pretty white teeth and giggled. I noticed that she never covered her mouth when she laughed, unlike most Japanese women.

   12   

M
OVING BACK TO
the dreaded United States was of course the last thing I had in mind. It is true that I had thought of studying Japanese properly at a university. I could get a scholarship. Uncle Sam was generous in that way. But I wasn’t ready to go just yet. I was having too good a time in Tokyo. Rules against fraternization with indigenous personnel had been relaxed. We no longer had uniformed martinets going around the Mimatsu Nightclub with rulers to make sure there were always six inches of space between Japanese and American dancing partners. Japanese cinemas were no longer out of bounds. We could receive Japanese in our rooms, if we wanted. And oh, how I wanted. I fraternized, and fraternized, and fraternized. I adored Japanese boys, and the great thing was, they were so available: on building sites, in subway trains, in public parks and coffee shops, railway stations and moviehouses, just anywhere, really, where people gathered for work or pleasure. All the straight young men were crazy for sex and didn’t much mind where they got it. And they loved Americans back then. Before that inevitable moment that has to come for every Japanese, of marriage and the conventional life, I would service their needs with the greatest of pleasure. I kept a diary in those days, and would mark every new conquest with a little flag. With every new flag, I felt I reached a little deeper into the soul of Japan.

Not a good time to move, then. I was sharing an adorable little
wooden house near the Ebisu subway station with Carl, whose taste for boys was as voracious as mine. Still, one can’t be at it
all
the time. When we weren’t fraternizing, we went to the Kabuki, and the Noh. I loved opera, so I preferred the showiness of the former, while Carl favored the austerity of Noh. We also spent many hours exploring the old neighborhoods of Tokyo. The absence of historical remnants added a peculiar poignancy to the few bits and pieces that we did manage to find: a charred Tokugawa shrine, a neglected graveyard of Yoshiwara courtesans, the crumbling gate of an aristocratic mansion, the ruins of an old garden whose weeds didn’t entirely disguise the formal design of more elegant times. Their sad state left so much to one’s imagination. In time, of course, the city was rebuilt. This was all to the good. I admired the cheerful way the Japanese put themselves to the task of reconstructing their country. And yet—perhaps I shouldn’t say this— I sometimes miss the wreckage of Tokyo, just as it was when I first arrived. I miss the romance, I guess. I now live in one of the most exciting, most vibrant, most cutting-edge cities in the world. A man who hasn’t lived in Tokyo hasn’t lived in the modern world. And yet, and yet . . . the city of my imagination is no more.

We would talk, Carl and I, on our long walks through the low city to the east, about history, the Japanese, the Americans, art, theater, boys, and books, but also about our luck to be living in a place where we were treated with deference, but more often with indifference. Indifference is a much-underrated quality. If only the Jews in Europe had been treated with indifference. Because we were not judged, we could be whoever we wanted to be, and that, paradoxically, is to be most oneself. But what I wanted to be, to pile one paradox onto another, was more Japanese. I felt comfortable with Japanese in a way I never had with Americans. I was figuring out the codes of conduct that made me feel trusted and accepted by them, and this made me feel strangely at home.

To claim that General MacArthur felt the same way would be an absurdity. He never saw any Japanese below the ranks of emperor or prime minister, which didn’t make for a varied social life. For all his pontification about the Oriental mind, I’m not sure he ever knew much about Japan, or anywhere Asian, but he had an instinctive feel for it. He didn’t have to know the place intellectually; books were of no use to him. He knew it in his bones.

It was enough to see him go in and out of his office in the Daiichi Life Insurance Building every day, an operation that was staged with the stylized ceremony of a Noh play. When we were in the area with nothing else to do, Carl and I would go and watch, just to amuse ourselves. It was pure theater. The crowd was held back by MPs, as the limousine pulled up to the front of the building at precisely the same time every morning. A whistle was blown, the ceremonial guards presented arms, the door of the limo was opened, always by the same soldier, always in the same way, facing the back of the car, and SCAP emerged from his black coach, wearing his famous crushed cap. He turned his hawkish profile to the right, then to the left, without ever acknowledging the hushed crowd, even with a brief wave or a half salute, made a quick turn, and walked briskly, though never too fast, to the front door. This fascinating spectacle was repeated every day, except Sundays. “Susan” had acquired the solemn gravitas of a Shogun, every movement of his body an illustration of his lofty aloofness from the people he ruled with the imperious air of a strict but benevolent father.

I was but a cog in the giant wheel of the SCAP’s Department of Civil Information. And I would have been quite content to continue in that humble position for a while longer. However, the best plans in life have a way of being disrupted by unforeseen events. I should have sensed trouble when Murphy and I were summoned one day to Willoughby’s office, for this was very irregular. Even Murphy never saw
Willoughby, except on official business. Without Mr. Capra’s introduction I would never have been able to meet him the first time. It was only after I had joined his staff that I realized what an unusual privilege this had been.

Murphy didn’t smell a rat either, even though he, a true-blue New Dealer, detested Willoughby’s reputation as a Republican to the right—as Willoughby himself often put it—of Genghis Khan. Ever the optimist, Murphy speculated that we might be singled out for special praise, or, one never knew, perhaps even a promotion. He looked oddly cheerful as he bounded up the stairs in his big black boots and freshly clipped hair, every inch the good soldier. I followed him, with amusement more than apprehension. I was curious to hear what the old monster had to say to us. We were ordered to wait in a separate room. When a young officer told us to proceed, we had been waiting for more than half an hour.

Still entertained, I looked over the familiar objects in Willoughby’s office that had struck me the last time I was there: the Kaiser’s bust, the porcelain figurines dancing in the glass cabinet by the wall. I noted a new addition to the pictures on the wall; perhaps I just hadn’t noticed it before: a small silver-framed photograph of General Franco of Spain, signed with a message of some kind written in neat little letters. I couldn’t read what it said, but could make out the name Willoughby quite clearly. “Gentlemen,” he said with his elaborate Old World courtesy, “won’t you sit down.” Murphy looked very pleased to be in this exalted place, this antechamber, as it were, of SCAP’s inner sanctum.

Willoughby carefully removed the gold-embossed wrapper from an expensive-looking cigar, and took his time clipping it with an instrument that closely resembled a miniature guillotine. “From Havana,” he commented, “best in the world. Have you noticed, gentlemen, the general decline in the quality of cigars? This is no trivial matter. The
decline of our civilization is reflected in the steady decline of the good cigar, I always say.” He passed the cigar under his nose, lightly brushing the Ronald Colman mustache. I wondered where this was leading. His manner of speaking combined silkiness and pomposity in equal measure, a disconcerting mixture.

“However,” he continued, after lighting the cigar, “this is not why I requested the pleasure of your company. Gentlemen, what I wish to discuss with you today is the nature of our mission in Japan, a most delicate mission, to be sure. Winning the war, I believe, was but one necessary step toward a higher goal. As the General observed on the deck of the
Missouri
under the standard born to Japan in 1853 by Commodore Matthew Perry, as the General observed on that great day in our history, we are here to create ‘a better world founded on faith and understanding.’ We shall ‘liberate the Japanese from a condition of slavery’ and bring peace for all time. Do you remember those sacred words, gentlemen?”

Murphy, who could not have put it better himself, and was perhaps pleasantly surprised that a crusty old leatherneck like Willoughby would have shared these noble sentiments, confirmed with great enthusiasm: “Yes sir, we surely do!”

“Good,” said Willoughby, “good. And we are all agreed that our great mission to bring liberation and peace can only meet with success if we treat our erstwhile foes with the utmost civility. There can be no room for prejudice on the grounds of race or creed. We will show the highest regard for what is best in the tradition of this brave and honorable island race, is that not so, gentlemen?”

“Yes sir, of course, sir!” said Murphy, his voice raised almost to a shout.

“We will not blindly impose our own habits, some of which might be less than admirable, on an alien race. While creating a world of
freedom, we will respect our differences in culture and history, will we not? We cannot just act as if the whole world were just another state of America, can we? After all, Japan is not Kansas or Nebraska.”

“No sir, it surely isn’t,” shouted Murphy.

At this point Willoughby paused, peering through the smoke that swirled in the milky beam of the morning sun. “Well, then, if we all agree on these principles, laid out for us with such noble force by the General, would you be so kind as to explain to me how the hell you could have passed a subversive, arrogant, prejudiced, disgusting piece of Red propaganda”—here he spat out a string of tobacco and drew a deep breath, trying to control his mounting rage—“an affront, an affront not just to the fine people of Japan but to the very enterprise we are embarked upon at great expense in blood and treasure. Am I making myself clear, gentlemen?”

Neither Murphy nor I had a clue what he was talking about. Surely there had to be some mistake. Murphy was about to protest, but Willoughby stopped him before he could speak. Willoughby was now hitting his stride, as though he were in a lecture hall, or a church: “I have experienced awkward moments during my time in Japan. How could it be otherwise? This is a strange country. They have their own ways of thinking and doing things. But I have never experienced anything, anything at all, to compare to the mortification I felt after watching that piece of Commie propaganda at the residence of the Japanese prime minister, who is a fine gentleman. When Prime Minister Yoshida objected most vigorously to this frontal attack on our policies, and the gross disrespect shown to the Emperor of Japan, who is worshipped by all Japanese as a deity, what could I say to the prime minister? You tell me, gentlemen. What the hell could I say to him?”

“But . . .” Murphy began.

“No buts,” said Willoughby, sounding like a headmaster who has
seen discipline go to the dogs. “Don’t you know what we’re up against? Don’t you realize how dearly that bunch of New York Reds would like to sabotage our mission?”

Maybe I was wrong, but I felt as if he were looking straight at me. I had a shrewd notion who “that bunch” might be. Instead of opening that can of worms, however, I asked Willoughby very politely which film he had seen at Prime Minister Yoshida’s residence.

This made things worse. By now Willoughby had worked himself into a frenzy, spraying his immaculate desk with drops of spittle. “You dunderheads! You duffers! Don’t you feign ignorance! You not only passed this execrable picture, by the title of
Dark Times
, or something of that sort, but from what I hear you even had an active hand in it. What is it you want? A revolution in Japan? A civil war? An insurrection? Is that your idea of peace and progress? Well, it will not pass! It will not pass! The film will be withdrawn from all cinemas and banned forthwith! Murphy, you will be moved at once to another department, where you can do no more damage. I believe they still need men in our postal services. And as for you, young man, I am deeply disappointed. Worse yet, I feel you have abused my goodwill, coming to me with a recommendation from Mr. Capra, then letting your country down in this way. Capra is a fine patriot. Wait until he hears of this. There will be no more place for you in our administration. That will be all, gentlemen.”