The Future Is Japanese (32 page)

31. Yuki-Onna looks up. Her eyes are darker than death. She closes them; Yuu’s words appear on the back of her neck.

32. Yuu is unhappy. He wants Sazae-Onna to love him. He wants Yuki-Onna to come back to visit him and not the Noble and Serene Electric Master. He wants to be the premier calligrapher in the unhuman half of Japan. He wants to be asked to join Namazu’s dice games. He wants to leave the House of Second-Hand Carnelian and visit the Emperor’s island or the crystal whale who lives off the coast of Shikoku. But if Yuu tries to leave his ink dries up and his wood cracks until he returns.

33. Someone wanted a good path between the human and the unhuman Japans. That much is clear.

34. Sazae-Onna does not like visitors one little bit. They splash in her pond. They poke her and try to get her to come out. Unfortunately, every day brings more folk to the House of Second-Hand Carnelian. First the Guardian Lions didn’t leave. Then Datsue-Ba came back with even more splendid clothes for them all, robes the color of maple leaves and jewels the color of snow and masks painted with liquid silver. Then the Kirin returned and asked Sazae-Onna to marry him. Yuu trembled. Sazae-Onna said nothing and pulled her shell down tighter and tighter until he went away. Nine-Tailed Kitsune and big-balled Tanuki are eating up all the peaches. Long-nosed Tengu overfish the river. No one goes home when the moon goes down. When the Blue Jade Cicadas arrive from Kamakura Sazae-Onna locks her kitchen and tells them all to shut up.

35. Yuu knocks after everyone has gone to sleep. Sazae-Onna lets him in. On the floor of her kitchen he writes a Kappa proverb: Dark clouds bring rain, the night brings stars, and everyone will try to spill the water out of your skull.

36. At the end of summer, the unhuman side of the house is crammed full, but Ko can only hear the occasional rustle. When Kawa-Uso the Otter Demon threw an ivory saddle onto the back of one of the bears and rode her around the peach grove like a horse, Ko only saw a poor she-bear having some sort of fit. Ko sleeps all the time now, though he is not really sleeping. He is being Yuu on the other side of the plum-colored screen. He never writes poetry on the tatami anymore.

37. The Night Parade occurs once every hundred years at the end of summer. Nobody plans it. They know to go to the door between the worlds the way a brown goose knows to go north in the spring.

38. One night the remaining peaches swell up into juicy golden lanterns. The river rushes become kotos with long spindly legs. The mushrooms become lacy, thick oyster drums. The Kitsune begin to dance; the Tengu flap their wings and spit mala beads toward the dark sky in fountains. A trio of small dragons the color of pearls in milk leap suddenly out of the Nothingness River. Cerulean fire curls out of their noses. The House of Second-Hand Carnelian empties. Namazu’s Lions carry him on a litter of silk fishing nets. The Jar of Lightning bounces after Hone-Onna and her gentleman caller, whose bones clatter and clap. When only Yuu and the snail-woman are left, Sazae-Onna lifts up her shell and steps out into the Parade, her pink hair falling like floss, her black eyes gleaming. Yuu feels as though he will crack when faced with her beauty.

39. The Parade steps over the Nothingness River and the Nobody River and enters the human Japan, dancing and singing and throwing light at the dark. They will wind down through the plains to Kyoto before the night is through, and flow like a single serpent into the sea where the Goldfish Emperor of the Yokai will greet them with his million children and his silver-fronded wives.

40. Yuu races after Sazae-Onna. The bears watch them go. In the midst of the procession Hoeru the Princess of All Bears, who is Queen now, comes bearing a miniature Agate Great Mammal Palace on her back. Her children fall in and nurse as though they were still cubs. For a night, they know their names.

41. Yuu does not make it across the river. It goes jet with his ink. His strong birch shaft cracks; Sazae-Onna does not turn back. When she dances she looks like a poem about loss. Yuu pushes forward through the water of the Nothingness River. His shaft bursts in a shower of birch splinters.

42. A man’s voice cries out from inside the ruined brush handle. Yuu startles and stops. The voice says: I never had any children. I have never been in love.

43. Yuu topples into the Nobody River. The kotos are distant now, the peach-lanterns dim. His badger bristles fall out.

44. Yuu pulls himself out of the river by dry grasses and berry vines. He is not Yuu on the other side. He is not Ko. He has Ko’s body, but his arms are calligraphy brushes sopping with ink. His feet are inkstones. He can still here the music of the Night Parade. He begins to dance. Not-Yuu and Not-Ko takes a breath.

45. There is only the House of Second-Hand Carnelian to write on. He writes on it. He breathes and swipes his brush, breathes, brushes. Man, brush. Brush, Man. He writes and does not copy. He writes psalms of being part man and part brush. He writes poems of his love for the snail-woman. He writes songs about perfect breath. The House slowly turns black.

46. Bringing up the rear of the Parade hours later, Yuki-Onna comes silent through the forest. Snow flows before her like a carpet. She has brought her sisters the Flower-and-Joy Kami and the Cherry-Blossom-Mount-Fuji Kami. The crown of the Fuji-Kami’s head has frozen. The Flower-and-Joy Kami is dressed in chrysanthemums and lemon blossoms. They pause at the House of Second-Hand Carnelian. Not-Yuu and Not-Ko shakes and shivers; he is sick, he has received both the pain in his femurs and the pain in his brush handles. The Kami shine so bright the fish in both rivers are blinded. The Flower-and-Joy Kami looks at the poem on one side of the door. It reads: In white peonies I see the exhalations of my kanji blossoming. The Cherry-Blossom-Mount-Fuji Kami looks at the poem on the other side of the door. It reads: It is enough to sit at the foot of a mountain and breathe the pine mist. Only a proud man must climb it. The Kami close their eyes as they pass by. The words appear on the backs of their necks as they disappear into the night.

47. Ko dies in mid-stroke, describing the sensation of lungs filled up like the windbag of heaven. Yuu dies before he can complete his final verse concerning the exquisiteness of crustaceans who will never love you back.

48. Slowly, with a buzz like breath, the Giant Hornet flies out of her nest and through the peach grove denuded by hungry Tanuki. She is a heavy, furry emerald bobbing on the wind. The souls of Ko and Yuu quail before her. As she picks them up with her weedy legs and puts them back into their bodies she tells them a Giant Hornet poem: Everything is venom, even sweetness. Everything is sweet, even venom. Death is illiterate and a hayseed bum. No excuse to leave the nest unguarded. What are you, some silly jade lion?

49. The sea currents bring the skeleton-woman back, and Namazu who has caused two tsunamis, though only one made the news. The Jar of Lightning floats up the river. Finally the snail-woman returns to the pond in her kitchen. They find Yuu making tea for them. His bristles are dry. On the other side of the plum-colored screen, Ko is sweeping out the leaves.

50. Yuu has written on the teacups. It reads: It takes a calligrapher one hundred years to draw one breath.

Ever since I was six, I believed that a divorce necessitated transatlantic travel—ever since my mom bundled me into my warmest coat and took me to the US, while dad was left behind, small and sad. He saw me off at the Sapporo Airport; Mom and he never talked to each other, and in my memory, my father is always like this—forever receding behind me. I’m an adult now, so I can visit him whenever I want. Still I always end up leaving, and he seems to get smaller every time as if my guilt eats away at him.

My guilt is a complex thing; the fact that I usually stop in Tokyo rather than flying directly to Hokkaido is a contributing factor. I could be spending more time with my dad, but Tokyo is where I earn a good chunk of my living, and so I go, because without it I would probably have to get a regular job rather than waking up at noon and typing chai-fueled nonsense in my PJs.

All the clothing companies are in Tokyo, BabyStar and Luxe and a million others. I guess they are running out of aging
gosuroris
and forest girls to peddle their clothing to and are desperate for the US markets.

So in exchange for ad space and articles and product placement on DISPARASIAN, my blog, they ply me with their outfits, which are pretty enough; I would be tempted if any of them ever fit over my size 6 thighs. “You’re built like an American,” their tiny reps tell me. I’m actually thin in the US, but not here.

I thank them politely in my first-grader’s Japanese (I stopped talking Japanese at home when I went to school) and gather armfuls of petticoats and capes, jumper dresses, pleated skirts, lace-sleeved blouses and silk sashes. All of them will be worn by someone who isn’t me, styled and photographed and given away or auctioned off on my blog. I have no problem with shilling—it gives me the ability to write about serious stuff, like identity and guilt and politics and environmental protection.

But before I can return home to New Jersey (I lie that I’m in New York for blogging glamour purposes), I have to visit my father in Sapporo. When he sees me at the gate, he manages a two-second stoic smile before his face crumples and he cries, like he cries every time—eyes suddenly hot and face twitching, and I hold him and wish him not to grow old. And then I cry too.

After all the emotion at the airport, he leads me to his undersized old Toyota and drives toward Soseigawa Dori. This two-hour trip north is usually what it takes for me to get used to everyone driving on the wrong side, until my heart stops swooping in my chest as he pulls to the left side of the road.

This time, however, we go west.

He explains on the way. There is a new assignment, he says, and he will be traveling out of the country—to the Kurils, to be exact. Well, Sakhalin. “You never get proper news in the US,” he tells me. “There was a fisherman from Hokkaido killed in the waters by Sakhalin. Russians let us fish there—well, that’s the treaty anyway. But there were a few … a few cases in the past ten years. I will go and investigate this last one.”

My father is a prefect, and as far as I understand Japanese law enforcement (not very), he really is not in the position to travel abroad and investigate anything. I mumble something to that effect.

He laughs. “The Russians won’t extradite. And I go … as a private citizen. I have relatives there—not very close ones, but plausibly close. I’ll go, see what I can find. Undercover, like in a Hollywood movie!”

I laugh. “Oh Dad.” It must be so hard for him, to have an American child. “Can I come with you? For plausibility?”

“Your Japanese passport still valid?”

I nod and feel a bit peeved that he anticipated my saying it. That he really left me no choice—either go with him or head back to the US a week early. “When are we leaving?”

“In two days,” he says. “I figured we can spend time in Sapporo, maybe go shopping? All the fashions that you like so much?”

“My suitcase is pretty full,” I say. “But sure, we can spend time here. And I’ll probably need some cold weather clothes.”

“You can put some of your stuff in my suitcase. Then we take a train and a boat,” he says. “It’ll be an adventure!”

I don’t particularly care, but I’m glad to see him so happy. Things we do for our parents, especially the ones who read our blogs. The ones we feel we ought to have been nicer to.

I don’t know what to expect from Sakhalin, and just in case I buy an extra sweater and a windbreaker, even though my father reassures me that Septembers there are balmy. He really tries hard—I started going to Japan when I turned eighteen, and there’s that void of twelve years when all I knew of him was an occasional letter and a parcel. My mom was not a bitter person, but as far as she was concerned, my father was over—done and in the past and no reason to Skype or email or keep in any meaningful touch with. After these twelve years—most of my childhood—we’ll never catch up. But he tries anyway.

“What are your friends like, back in the States?” he asks when we’re back to the hotel after a day of awkward silences and shopping for sweaters and parkas. I get clothes from the men’s department, and my father is cool with that. “Do they ever ask you about going to Japan? What do you tell them?”

I shrug. “Mostly that it’s not all about businessmen eating sushi and buying panties from the vending machines.” Only after I wish him good night do I realize that he wanted to know if I ever mention him.

Sakhalin turns out to be fairly cold but surprisingly beautiful. We are staying in a small town, mostly Japanese still, although the language they speak is so peppered with Russian I imagine myself trapped in some weird
Clockwork Orange
production. It’s located on the shore, like any good fishing town ought to be, and there are hills—
sopki
the locals call them—round and blue, dressed in steam escaping from some dormant but dangerous-seeming volcano underground. There are trees there too: they look like firs of some sort, except they’re bright yellow. “Larches,” Dad says to me in English.

The sea there is gray, and there’s a cold wind blowing from it. I’m glad for my sweaters and leggings and parkas, as I throw a cape over them for good measure and go to explore all by myself. I want some nature and quiet for a change, and the talk in our hosts’ home is depressing and alienating; they and my father seem to want nothing more than to complain about Kurils being Russian, and Russians deporting Japanese families, and how everyone is worried. I suspect that no one remembers that this town even exists.

I stand by the shore and watch the dirty lace of the surf flow over the rocks, lingering for moments in creases between them and flowing back, until my attention is distracted by some people a few dozen yards from me. They seem to be tugging on a net of some sort and yelling at each other. I wander in their direction, hopeful that this place is too small for any egregious crimes. Then I remember the fisherman.

The men with the net are all Russian—I’m guessing from their blond beards and cable-knit sweaters under their canvas hoodies. When I approach them, they all look at me without any particular hostility, but not friendly either.

“Hi,” I say. “I’m just visiting here. Any of you speak English?”

One of them nods—he seems to be in his thirties, wispy-bearded, with a face windburned to an intense brick color. “I speak English,” he tells me. “Where are you from?”

“The United States.”

He perks up. “Santa Barbara?”

“New York … well, New Jersey.”

“Oh.” He tries to hide his disappointment.

“Fishing?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Dead whale,” he says. “Fresh, Japanese were hunting here yesterday—they take blubber, whale’s mustache … its teeth, yes? Leave everything else behind. All the meat. Have you ever tried whale?”

I shake my head.

“Come to the shop tomorrow,” he says, just as his fellows heave the net and I finally see: black and red, torn raw, revolting. They wade into the chilled water, and I see then that they all carry knives strapped to their legs in cracked wooden sheaths. They take out the wide, flat blades and hack at the mound of flesh, which doesn’t even look like anything that used to be sentient. And I cannot get mad at them because they didn’t kill it—they were merely salvaging what they could from someone else’s crime.

The next day, our hosts take my father and me grocery shopping. The whale meat is there already, labeled in Russian and Japanese, and it is cheaper than anything else in the store. My yesterday’s acquaintance is working behind the fish counter, and the variety of fish really is impressive—or would be, if I could only look away from the bright red mammal flesh that doesn’t belong with the fish. Whales are seafood though, I suppose.

“I want to try whale,” I tell our hosts. “May we?”