The China Lover (7 page)

   10   

T
HERE WAS NOTHING
wrong with the first part of our trip to Tokyo. Ri, Meng Hua, Menchukuo’s second biggest star, and myself boarded the train at Shinkyo Station, where the Manchurian studio staff gave us a wonderful send-off. All the actors and actresses were there, as well as the technical staff, dressed in their uniforms, waving little Japanese and Manchukuo flags, shouting words of encouragement, as a brass band played songs of farewell. In the middle of the station hall Amakasu stepped onto a wooden podium, festooned with the Manchukuo colors, and gave a speech, in that hoarse voice of his, which was difficult to hear over the din of hissing steam and people singing songs of farewell. I remember that he mentioned his great personal pride in sending the finest flowers of Manchukuo to our imperial homeland as “the ambassadresses of friendship.”

Ri was so excited about the prospect of visiting her ancestral country for the first time that she could barely sit still all the way to Pusan. The train was not as comfortable as the silver-clad Asia Express, and considerably slower, but unless it had to stop for snowdrifts or bandit raids, at least it was always on time. I tried to catch some sleep after we passed Ando and crossed the frozen Yalu River into the Korean peninsula. It was dark outside. All we saw of Ando were a few flickering lights far in the distance. The train’s whistle sounded lonely, like a wandering ghost. But Ri was wide awake, her eyes shining with anticipation.
She couldn’t stop talking, about the Nichigeki Theater, where she would star in a gala performance celebrating Manchukuo-Japanese friendship, and the sights of Tokyo, and the various entertainments to be laid on by famous figures of the literary and cinematic worlds, whom she had met when they passed through Manchukuo. She asked me about the most fashionable restaurants and cafés, where the most stylish people were to be seen. A new word had entered her vocabulary: “knowable.” Whenever I mentioned some celebrated figure, her first question would be: “Is he knowable?” Even though she was a movie star herself, and knew many famous Japanese already, Ri was still like an overexcited child on the eve of her birthday. I had not been back to Tokyo for several years, and certainly didn’t know everyone who was “knowable.” I tried to answer her queries as best I could, but she wasn’t really listening. Her mind had already arrived at our destination before we even reached Pusan.

Amakasu, despite his rousing speech at Shinkyo Station, had not actually been in favor of this trip. He took a paternal view of his actresses and their personal lives were a constant worry to him. He regarded the artistic world in the metropolis as dangerously frivolous and bad for our morale. An added complication was that the Nichigeki gala concert was organized by the Oriental Peace Entertainment Company, and not by the Manchuria Motion Picture Association. Oriental Peace was backed by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which Amakasu despised as soft and buttery. But even the Kanto Army was powerless in this case. Amakasu warned me that I should be held responsible if anything should happen to the actresses that would reflect badly on the superior reputation of the Manchuria Motion Picture Association.

Sleep was impossible even on the second night of our voyage, aboard the ferry from Pusan to Shimonoseki. Meng Hua, a typical beauty of the north, tall and creamy, with a delightful beauty spot on
her left knee, shared a cabin with Ri. I wouldn’t have minded a little fun with her, but business was business. I couldn’t afford any trouble on this trip. Like Yoshiko, she had never been to Japan before, but the prospect put her in a state of apprehension more than excitement, and she retired to her cabin alone, while Ri talked and talked in a wild mixture of Japanese and Chinese, determined to be awake at the first sight of the Japanese isles. When dawn finally broke, we were wrapped in a thick fog. The ship’s horn moaned like a wounded animal. Ri pressed her face to the window, trying to see through the dense gray soup. Nothing. And yet, at 7:30 a.m. sharp a woman’s voice announced through the ship’s loudspeaker that we were approaching our “beloved imperial homeland.” The voice continued: “If you look to the starboard side you will see the port of Shimonoseki, renamed as such in 1904, before which time it was known as Akamagasaki, a place famous for its natural beauty and redolent of our glorious national history, the site of the famous battle between Heike and Genji in 1185 . . .” On and on it went in this vein, as all faces turned to starboard, where dense fog was still all there was to be seen. Our national anthem was played through the loudspeaker, and everyone, including the Chinese and Koreans, jumped to attention.

It was only just before the ship berthed that we could make out the outlines of the city, an ugly jumble of godowns, cranes, and warehouses, hardly the glamorous introduction that Ri had been hoping for. The maritime police boarded our ship with an air of immense importance. A thick black rope was strung across the main lounge next to the gangway, and a plump little man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache sat down behind a desk, with an attendant behind his chair whose duty it was to breathe on the stamps before handing them to the mustachioed official, who pressed them onto our documents after careful and lengthy examination. How I loathed the officiousness of my fellow
countrymen! Japanese nationals were ordered to line up in front of the rope and foreigners to stay behind. Ri was the first to rush into line. I could see a look of bewilderment on Meng Hua’s face. It was the first time she realized that Ri was a Japanese national, and not simply a half-breed, as was widely suspected among the native staff of the Manchurian studios.

Ri’s passport was duly stamped. She turned to Meng Hua and told her in Chinese that she would wait for her in the Customs hall. But the official had second thoughts and ordered her back. Inspecting her with a look of disgust, he barked: “Aren’t you a Japanese?” Ri nodded and cast her eyes at the floor. “So what are you doing in that ridiculous Chinese garb? You should be ashamed of yourself, gibbering in that Chink language. Don’t you realize that we are a first-class people!”

I tried to intervene by telling the officer, as discreetly as I could, that she was a famous film star, on her way to Tokyo to celebrate Manchukuo-Japanese friendship. He was not in the least impressed and told me to mind my own business. Discretion clearly was not working, so I informed him of my affiliation with the Kanto Army and mentioned the name of Amakasu. The wretched fellow instantly straightened up and his fleshy lips curled in a hideous grin. “Please,” he said, “I didn’t realize . . . Welcome home, welcome home.”

There was nothing I could do to speed up procedures for Meng Hua, however, and it was many hours later that we sat in the cramped compartment of our eastbound train. The fog had lifted but the sky was still smudged with dark clouds, like wet gray rags, casting a gloomy atmosphere over our homecoming journey. The air smelled of damp clothes and pickled horseradish. Few words were spoken in our compartment. Meng Hua was still put out by the hours of questioning she had had to endure, and puzzled by Ri’s status. But she was too discreet to probe. So we looked out the window in heavy silence at a succession
of provincial towns, filled with small, shabby wooden houses, densely built as though huddled together in fear of the outside world. The clammy oppressiveness that had prompted me to leave for the Chinese continent came back to me instantly. I was already longing for the wide-open spaces of my beloved China and Manchuria. This was no country for a man who prized his freedom.

   11   

I
HAVE A
favorite walk in Tokyo, in a district I have frequented ever since I came to the capital as a student. It is an area quite without modern glamour. In fact, it has little to recommend itself at all. Most Japanese shun the place, because of its unwholesome reputation. People say that it is haunted by ghosts. My nocturnal wandering usually starts at the old execution ground in Senju, guarded by a statue of Jizo, the holy patron of souls suffering in hell. Here he is known as “Chopped-neck Jizo,” for this is where thousands of people literally lost their heads. Old bones are still found in this dark, forgotten corner of the city. Nezumi Kozo, the legendary burglar, was buried here. And so was Yoshida Shoin, the samurai scholar and revolutionary, who believed that we could only stop the Western barbarians from invading Japan by studying their ways. Imprisoned in a cage by the Shogun’s men after he attempted to board an American ship in 1854, Master Shoin wrote the immortal lines: “When a hero fails in his purpose, his acts are then regarded as those of a villain and robber.” He was beheaded in 1859 for his loyalty to the Emperor in opposition to the Shogun. Of all our historic figures, I admired him the most.

After paying my respects to Master Shoin, and others, now long forgotten by our fickle countrymen, I walk along the Sanya Canal toward Yoshiwara, the old Edo pleasure district. It is now a sadly neglected place with ugly Western-style buildings, which look as flimsy and provisional
as sets in a movie studio. Gone is the refined style of Edo men of pleasure who knew how to woo the great courtesans with their cleverness and wit. Gone, too, is the more plebeian but still spirited revelry of the 1920s.

In the winter of 1940, many of the dance reviews of Asakusa had already been closed down, and so had most houses of pleasure in Yoshiwara. The few that were still open looked so forlorn that they might as well have been closed. Still, I found, much to my surprise, that one establishment I used to visit in my student days, a brothel that featured a popular girl made up to look like Clara Bow (the owner, a gruff man with the face of a bloodhound, was a movie fan), was still there. Since Hollywood films were now officially frowned upon as decadent, the place had changed its decor into something more Oriental, with a stucco facade made up to resemble a Chinese mansion. One of the pimps, a thin young lad with a bad case of acne, tugged my arm and whispered in my ear: “Master, you’ll like it here. We have a girl who’s the spitting image of Ri Koran.” My first instinct was to smash his face. I thought better of it, but walked away with a feeling of utter revulsion.