A Tale for the Time Being (36 page)

December 10, 1943

Dear Mother,

Three months have passed since the Measures to Strengthen the Internal Situation were announced, terminating our student deferments and shutting down the Department of
Philosophy. I’m afraid Jurisprudence has suffered, too, along with Belles Lettres, Economics, and others, of course. So there you have it. Philosophy, Law, Literature, and the Economy,
all sacrificed to the glorious cause of War. How splendid is that?

Two months have passed since our great send-off at Meiji Shrine, that ceremony of sad puppets in the cold and bitter rain. Dear Mother, I fear Monsieur Ruskin was wrong. The sky does weep,
and there is nothing false about pathetic fallacy.

One week has passed since I bid goodbye to you and Suga-chan and Ema-chan, and entered the barracks at T—Navy Airbase. I will try to write more of my life here, but for now, suffice it
to say that you would not recognize me if you were to pass me on the street, I have changed that much.

January 2, 1944

Dear Mother,

When I learned our student exemptions were terminated, I knew I would die, and I was overcome with an emotion akin to relief upon hearing the news. Finally, after these
long months of waiting and not knowing, to be certain, even if it was the certainty of death, felt exhilarating! The way ahead was clear, and I could stop worrying about all the silly
metaphysical business of life—identity, society, individualism, totalitarianism, human will—that in university had so preoccupied and clouded my mind. In the face of certain death,
all those notions seemed trivial, indeed.

It was only when I saw your tears, dear Mother, that I realized the selfishness of my response, but sadly, I was too immature to correct myself. Instead, I grew impatient with you. Your
tears made me feel ashamed. If I’d been more of a man, I would have thrown myself onto the floor at your feet and thanked your for your tears and for the strength of your love for me.
Instead, your unworthy son asked you (somewhat coldly, I fear) to stop crying and to pull yourself together.

During the physical examination in October, the recruiting officer ordered us to “switch off our hearts and minds completely.” He instructed us to cut off our love and sever our
attachment with our family and blood relations because from now on we were soldiers and our loyalty must lie solely with our Emperor and our homeland of Japan. I remember listening to this and
thinking that I could never comply, but I was wrong. In trying to stop your tears, I was already obeying the officer’s command to the letter, not out of patriotic allegiance, but out of
cowardice, in order not to feel the pain of my own heart, breaking.

Since that time, on many occasions, I have realized that my exhilaration was preemptive and naïve, as well as selfish. It was a feeling born of ignorance, the kind of heady existential
euphoria that gives birth to mere heroics or to the unthinking patriotism of the kind that we see so often during war. These are dangerous consequences indeed, and I am filled with chagrin at
having been so misled. I am determined not to let this happen again.

As I have not much time left in life, I am determined not to be a coward. I will live as earnestly as I can and feel my feelings deeply. I will rigorously reflect upon my thoughts and
emotions, and try to improve myself as much as I can. I will continue to write and to study, so that when the time of my death comes, I will die beautifully, as a man in the midst of a supreme
and noble effort.

February 23, 1944

Dear Mother,

Our training is severe and our squadron received more special attention today. It is both personal and, at the same time, not. Our squadron leader is a noncommissioned
officer named F, and he and the other senior officers seem to favor us student recruits and single us out for special exercises. They see us as privileged and effete, and of course they are
right. They are doing us a favor, they say, turning us into military men, and I have to laugh at the brilliance of this! Oh, we are turning into fine soldiers, all right.

With my lack of physical stature and my clumsy ways, you can imagine I am quite a favorite, but the one I truly feel sorry for is K, who was senior to me in the Department of Philosophy. K
is a true philosopher. He is . . . how to express it? Not “of this world.” He has the unfortunate habit of losing himself in a train of thought, and when this happens, he stares
off into the distance and pays no attention to the commands of the officers, which does little to endear him to those in charge. F has nicknamed K “The Professor” (as you can
imagine, we all have our pet names, and mine do not bear repeating). K and I have decided that there is a kind of beauty in the ingenuity of F’s training methods, which are akin to those
of the brilliant French soldier the Marquis de Sade. Like the Marquis, he has an ingenious mind and an artist’s introspection that inspires him, driving him toward some kind of
unspeakable perfection. We have decided this shall be his nickname from now on.

February 26, 1944

Dearest Mother,

Our days pass, and I am pleased to tell you that I am making progress in my training and seem to be advancing in both rank and status, as well as in the estimation of my
superiors and peers.

Recently during one of our exercises, I became concerned about K’s health, so I stepped forward and volunteered to take his place. The Marquis was only too happy to oblige, and since
that time he has decided that I am a far more satisfying pupil than K, from whom he failed to elicit any significant reaction. Now, when he calls me out, it’s almost as if he is seeking
my collaboration in making each exercise more exquisite than the last. He refers to his training as an act of kindness, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes over our sessions in his
mind afterward, in order to hone his artistry. If his medium had been words instead of war, he would have been a poet.

April 14, 1944

Dear Mother,

I shall continue my tales of adventure where I last left off. After the evening meal and roll call, the Marquis often suggests silly games to improve the morale of the
squad. Since I have now advanced and become his favorite, he invites me to be the oni, while the others circle around and sing “Kagome Kagome.” Do you remember that song, Mother? It
is a pretty song about a trapped bird in a bamboo cage.

Another game he likes is “bush warbler crossing the valley,” which entails hopping over every bed and stopping now and then to chirp the bush warbler’s song,
ho-ho-ke-kyo!
Sometimes, too, we play the train game, or the heavy bomber game. His games don’t finish until the final bugle sounds, signaling lights out.

The other members of my squadron sometimes laugh and enjoy themselves, but K never laughs. He stands there, watching, committed to bearing witness to the smallest details, but there is
nothing he can do. When he tries to step forward and take my place, the Marquis just brushes him away like a mosquito. In my eagerness to protect K, I fear I have caused him an even greater
suffering.

June 16, 1944

Dearest Mother,

I will not write at length, because you will be coming soon for your visit, and this thought fills me with a joy I can hardly contain or express. But I felt I needed to
write, briefly, to prepare you.

K disappeared three days ago. At first we didn’t know what happened. The Marquis questioned us, but none of us knew anything, although I feared the worst. And indeed, the following day
we received news that he had died. I don’t know how, although I have my suspicions. All I know for certain is that I feel such grief for the suffering of my friend, and I fervently hope
that he will be reborn in a far better world than this one.

August 3, 1944

Dear Mother,

The memories of your visit linger, and I can call to mind every detail of your strong, beautiful face, of Suga’s charming shyness and Ema’s sweet smiles. These
images comfort me every night as I lie down to sleep, and I try not to think of my dear sisters weeping and waving as the train pulled away. Thank you for the juzu. It is such a comfort, and I
will carry it under my uniform, next to my heart.

I will also not forget the shocked expression on your face when you first laid eyes upon me. Has your dear son changed so much? I can still feel the touch of your gentle fingertip caressing
the bruise on my cheek and the cut on my jaw. You would not believe me when I said that the injuries were minor, and in that moment I felt such shame for failing to prepare you for what are, in
truth, merely the routine banalities of military life. I was not thinking how extremely you would suffer on my behalf. How selfish and indulgent I’ve been! My only excuse is that
sometimes I forget you cannot read my mind. We are so close, you and I, the same flesh and blood, and you have always known my heart.

Your reports of the situation in Tokyo frighten me, and I beg you to be careful. I fear for your safety and the safety of my sisters. I wish you would consider evacuating to the countryside.
Meanwhile, here, it seems this phase of our training is complete, so you may now cease your worrying. The Marquis has been assigned a squadron of new recruits, and we have graduated and are now
learning to fly.

December 1944

Dear Mother,

Yesterday we were called together to hear a rousing speech and fiery appeal to our patriotic spirit, culminating in a call for volunteers to receive accelerated training as
Special Attack Force pilots. Dear Mother, please forgive me. Death is inevitable, no matter what choice I make. I see that and understand it in ways that I could never have before. Please dry
your eyes, and let me explain.

Choosing this death has various benefits associated with it. First, and most important, it guarantees a posthumous promotion of two ranks, which of course is meaningless, but it comes with a
substantial increase in the pension paid to you upon my death. I can hear you protesting, wringing your hands and insisting that you don’t need the money, and the thought makes me smile.
You would rather starve to death than benefit from my dying. I understand this. But for my sake and my sisters’ sake, I beg you to accept my decision. Choosing this death gives me
tremendous consolation. It gives meaning to my life and profound satisfaction to my filial heart. If the extra compensation helps feed you and my sisters, and helps them find good husbands,
that will be enough for me.

So that is one benefit, and it is practical. The other benefit is perhaps more philosophical. By volunteering to sortie, I have now regained a modicum of agency over the time remaining in my
life. Death in a ground offensive or bombing attack seems random and imprecise. This death is not. It is pure, clean, and purposeful. I will be able to control and therefore appreciate,
intimately and exactly, the moments leading up to my death. I will be able to choose where and how, precisely, my dying will occur, and therefore what the consequences might be. If you dry your
tears and think about this, Mother, I am sure you will understand what I am saying.

Spinoza writes, “A free man, that is to say, a man who lives according to the dictates of reason alone, is not led by fear of death, but directly desires the good, that is to say,
desires to act, and to preserve his being in accordance with the principle of seeking his own profit. He thinks, therefore, of nothing less than death, and his wisdom is a meditation upon
life.”

The point being that my death in this war is inevitable, and so how I die is academic. Since there is no possibility of preserving my being or seeking my own profit in this life, I have
chosen the death that will bring most benefit to the ones I love, and that will cause me the least grief in the next life to come. I will die a free man. Please console yourself with thoughts
like these.

March 27, 1945

Dear Mother,

You will be happy to know that as I wait to die, I have been reading poetry and novels again. Old favorites by Soseki and Kawabata, as well as the books you sent me by your
dear women writer friends, Enchi Fumiko-san’s
Words Like the Wind
and the poems by Yosano-san in
Tangled Hair
.

Reading these women writers makes me feel closer to you. Did you share their racy past, my dear Mother? If so, I applaud you, and will ask nothing further, knowing it’s unbecoming of a
son to tease a mother so.

I find myself drawn to literature more now than in the past; not the individual works as much as the
idea
of literature—the heroic effort and nobility of
our human desire to make beauty of our minds—which moves me to tears, and I have to brush them away, quickly, before anyone notices. Such tears are not becoming in a Yamato
danshi.
¹³⁹

Are you still writing? Nothing would make me happier than to know that you are writing poems or working on a novel, but I imagine you have little time for that.

Today during a test flight, I remembered Miyazawa Kenji’s wonderful tale about the Crow Wars. People think of it as a children’s tale, but it is so much more than that, and as I
was soaring in formation at an altitude of two thousand meters, I recalled the Crow Captain lifting off from his honey locust tree, and taking to wing to do battle.
I am Crow!
I
thought, ecstatically. The visibility was good, and since this was the very last of the special training flights, I flew in all directions to my heart’s content.

I love to fly. Have I mentioned that? There is truly no feeling more splendid or more transcendental. Sometimes zazen comes close. I am sitting zazen every day. Thank you for suggesting it.
I am comforted to know that you are sitting, too.

I’m afraid my day is approaching and my next “official” letter to you may be the last one you receive from me. But no matter what nonsense I write in it, please know that
those are not my last words. There are other words and other worlds, dear Mother. You have taught me that.