Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (6 page)

Keiko stood up and stepped down onto the pathway that surrounded her father's rock garden. She bent without looking and picked up a small stone.

“Here,” she said, passing it up to her Aunt Tsune.

The stone was perfect, precisely the size of the candy they had eaten, and when Tsune put it in the box's empty corner its solid calmness seemed to settle the remaining candies down.

Tsune closed the box and turned it in the air, letting everyone see how well the thumbprint realigned. She placed it on her lap, sliding half of it under the folds of her kimono.

They all stood then, as if the morning had suddenly grown too cold. The women left the room first, hopelessly followed by Manjiro. When Keiko stooped to pick up the baby, Masako said it was her turn and began pulling on his arms.

“Stop that,” said their grandfather. “Here, I will carry the little boy.”

Argument often invaded the household when it came to other things, but when their grandfather spoke both girls still knew enough to obey.

It was only then, after all this time, that Junichiro opened his mouth again. He had been sucking on the chocolate acorn, and, despite what the others thought, enjoying it well. He smiled at his grandfather and his grandfather swung him high, letting another line of thick brown drool come out of his mouth, to swing through the otherwise empty air like a vine.

5
.
Approach of the Outside World

THE RECENTLY COMPLETED TREATY
house sat on a gentle rise of land, at Kanagawa, a quarter of a mile back from the waters edge. It was a simple structure, closed on three sides but open where it faced the sea. Six thick beams supported its roof along the front, yet it had within it only a single large room with a single low table at its center. Unlike the banquet table on the American flagship, this one was not surrounded by chairs, but the walls were hung with scrolls, bold black ink on long white paper, poetry and slogans about casting the barbarians out.

In order to find a good spot Einosuke had insisted that his family, minus his father but including his brother and sister-in-law, arrive earlier than anyone. The interests of most of the Shogun's other guests were elsewhere, however, on the less formal aspects of the American arrival, and the girls were irritated to have to stand for so long. Over the last few hours sailors from the fleet's cargo ships had come ashore to lay a mile of circular railroad track, and now, while people hurried over to watch the arrival of an actual one-quarter-scale railroad train, all the family could do was stand on tiptoe. It was ridiculous and Masako fumed, angry with her father and trying to pull away. Manjiro saw what was happening and offered to take her closer. “Come, my beautiful nieces,” he said. “Only comport yourselves well. That strange American beast eats children, I am told.”

Masako held her uncle's sleeve but Keiko moved only enough to place herself closer to her Aunt Tsune. She disdained being thought of as a child, even by her favorite uncle, and in any case did not want to appear to be rushing anywhere. The kimono she wore, of yellow silk with white cranes upon it, was too formal for speed, and made to be slowly admired.

But in another moment it became apparent that they had missed their chance to get very near the train, so Manjiro briefly lifted Masako high. She could see a silver engine and a black coal car, a caboose and eight passenger carriages which, rumor had it, they would actually be allowed to ride upon later in the day. The engine, winking at her in the morning sun, had a steam whistle whose shrill voice horrified her and made her ask her uncle to put her back down.

Because Commodore Perry had not yet arrived, the official Japanese contingent had not appeared yet either, but Einosuke nevertheless earnestly searched the crowd, hoping to find his father near the great Lord Abe, so he could point out both men to the girls. When the steam whistle blew again, however, in three measured notes accompanied by three puffs of pure white smoke, the strangely unbrassy sound of military music came to them from the far side of a stand of scrub pine. All could hear the music from wherever they stood, but no one could see its source. It wasn't the same sound that had serenaded them from the bay these last long days, but was rather the strung-out strains of whistles and drums.

Einosuke and Fumiko, the girls and Aunt Tsune, strained their eyes, trying to match a vision with the cacophony, but when Manjiro touched them they all looked back inside the treaty house to find five of the eight lords who'd attended the American banquet, Lord Abe in the middle, already sitting behind the table. It was as inspiring a sight as it would have been if the Shogun himself had come. There was an area directly beside the treaty house that had been roped clear, but now that area, too, was packed with lesser members of the Great Council. To have these lords in attendance but not inside the treaty house seemed an unprecedented public demotion, and while Manjiro bowed toward their father, whom they all could see among the outcasts, Einosuke only stood there, embarrassed and appalled. Just then, however, the whistles and drums grew louder, and when the musicians came coughing into view everyone was united again, watching the approach of the outside world.

“He does know how to make an entrance,” Tsune said. “I'll give him that much.”

The musicians had burst from the stand of pines with such power and muscle that they made the trees look small. It did not seem likely to Manjiro that the American Commodore could have picked these men for size alone, since the first requirement of musicians, even in America, had to be their ability to perform, but the drummers were as thick of body as young sumo wrestlers, with necks that looked like the beams that held up the treaty house. They played their drums as if they were trying to break into them, and the flute players, too, seemed to want to pry the music out of their instruments as if it were enclosed in jars. Even so, they didn't play badly, and for the first time both brothers understood how directly connected music was to war.

The effect on the Japanese was quite what Commodore Perry must have wanted. The musicians numbered twenty-four and wore red jackets with tight white wigs on their heads, their faces pink as fish bellies, sweating under the cool March sun. Even though they were big men they were trying to march across the sand lightly, like they'd no doubt done while practicing on the deck of one or another of the American vessels, and their feet looked small. The music itself dictated their pace, but as they came closer and the sand got deeper, those in front bogged down. Their movement wasn't slowed, but they had to pick their feet up higher, like horses might, flipping bits of sand into the tightly packed crowd. They marched right into the treaty house, boots twisting sores into the delicate tatami, and the moment they turned, freezing in their positions like dolls, a brass band, which had also been hiding in the little pine forest, burst into a breezy version of “Anacreon in Heaven,” the American national song.

“Here comes the man himself I'll bet,” said Einosuke, so captured by the moment that he started rubbing the
netsuke
carvings that held together the drawstrings of his various pouches.

The band came the same way the fife and drum corps had, but stopped short of the treaty house, turned and folded into itself, and separated again to form two columns. The anthem finished just as the musicians faced each other, from either side of the newly formed and deathly silent corridor. For two full minutes no one moved or spoke. Even the wind, which had been playing out among the waves all morning, seemed to stop the whitecaps in their cresting while the seconds ticked away. It was like a moment of prayer followed by a drum roll so soft at its beginning that people thought it was only a new wind rising in the pines. But pretty soon the tip of a shaft came out of that sound, the American flag below it, and carrying the shaft in his thin black hands came an actual American Negro.

The Negro's appearance had a strong effect on everyone, but Commodore Perry himself came next, and in such close proximity to his color bearer that people no longer knew where to cast their eyes. Though he wore a uniform that was as dark as the one he'd worn on shipboard, this time it was so festooned with medals and shoulder tassels, that though he was an average-sized man, he appeared now to be small. He walked with an exaggerated swagger and held his left hand up in the air, as if at any moment he might start waving to the crowd. Behind the Commodore came a line of other high-ranking men, but by then no one could concentrate on anyone but Perry. It was like he'd practiced his smallness in order to give himself an indisputable sense of ultimate size.

When the Negro reached the treaty house and turned to hold the colors at an angle under which the Commodore could stride, Lord Abe and the other lords suddenly stood up again. The American officers had fanned out behind Perry with their hands locked behind their backs, while Perry simply waited, his own hands at his sides.

“Good day, gentlemen!” he said, as exuberant as he'd been in his banquet room. “How well we are received! How beautiful everything is! This structure—how magnificent!—built in honor of what this day will bring, seems as solid as, I pray, the friendship between our two countries will turn out to be.”

His interpreter commenced putting his words into Dutch but Manjiro translated for Einosuke.

“You are welcome. Please, join us at the table now, let's proceed with dispatch,” was Lord Abe's only reply.

There had been so much pomp, so much weight, placed on the American arrival that even these plain words could not break the spell. It was broken, however, for the brothers at least, by having to watch Commodore Perry try to sit down. He spent a long time wedging his knees under the table in order to keep from falling over backwards on the floor. While he turned and twisted the Japanese lords looked away, but once he was settled, now wearing an uncomfortable smile, someone began reading the treaty aloud. Each section was read twice, first in Dutch, then simultaneously in English and Japanese. It was a strange process, cumbersome and noisy, difficult for anyone to understand. Many times one side or the other stopped the reading, but it wasn't so much to clarify a meaning as to simply catch their breath and go on.

In this way the signing of the Kanagawa Treaty of 1854, signaling Japan's emergence from two hundred and fifty years of relative isolation, took three hours and nine minutes by the official American pocket watch, which was presented to Lord Abe after the ceremony was done.

6
.
Tell Him I'm in Mourning!

“
I MIGHT AS WELL
have stayed home,” said Masako. “I couldn't see a thing, unless you count the backs of heavy kimonos!”

At first she presented her outrage as energetically as always, but now that the boring part of the day was over—all that talking, all those long-winded speeches—she decided that it really might be grand to ride in a circle on the steam train or study the face of a foreigner for a while. When she thought of the train she felt excitement in her spine and imagined the wind in her face, her fingers plugging her ears to keep out the noise. Her mother's expression told her that if she kept on complaining she might very well miss those things, however, and her father's told her that something weighed heavily on his mind. So she closed her mouth and found Keiko, falling back to walk at her older sister's side.

Only a few weeks earlier a treaty with America had been an impossible thing for Einosuke to contemplate, but when he finally spoke to his family on this bright March morning, his desire was not the continued expression of his dismay, but to take defeat with dignity and find reconciliation with his younger brother. He spoke to all of them in a formal manner, but his gaze fell upon Manjiro.

“Because the issue of whether or not to sign this treaty has been decided by its signing,” he said, “we will now have some few months, some few weeks at least, before we have to consider the Americans again. Let us try to use that time to put our differences behind us. Wrongly or rightly, if we can go forward with a unified Japan, why can't we do likewise with a unified family?”

He raised his hands to indicate that the weather, at least, agreed with him, and then he put them down.

It was a sweeter gift than the chocolates for the others to hear him speak that way, not only because they knew the truth of his words, but because they knew how supremely difficult it was for Einosuke to say them. Manjiro bowed, Fumiko touched her husband's wrist with approval and affection, and the girls each took one of Aunt Tsune's thin and oddly reluctant arms. Tsune herself remained as she had been, detached and contemplative, but she too was moved. She thought the comment contained elements of grace and for the first time in years remembered what she had tried to tell her sister at the time of her wedding—that marrying Einosuke was a lucky thing for Fumiko, like catching a firefly whose light flittered into the present darkness from a past era, but burned a noble flame. Fumiko herself had been ambivalent about the marriage, but had grown to care deeply for Einosuke, even before the birth of their first child.

Where previously they had felt only irritation at the crowds, now they all looked around in pleasant amazement. Was it only last week that this land they stood upon had been barren, uninhabited but for the wind and the cold and the scrubby pines? Einosuke smiled when he finished speaking, his heart once again at ease. He looked at the tightly packed throngs both surrounded by and surrounding the whisde and chug of the American steam train and thought that though he would not mount the thing himself, he could not forbid his children to ride.

THE MINSTREL STAGE
was strongly built and large, higher and wider than the treaty house, and backed up against the largest stand of pines. When he looked up at the makeshift curtain, which had been stretched by the Japanese carpenters in error, across the back rather than the front of the stage, Manjiro tried to tell the others that they should forget the train for a moment, that here on this stage the strangest and most wonderful entertainment would very soon take place. A sign said that the minstrels were scheduled to perform three shows that night, but thus far all anyone could see were the scarred sides of an upright piano, streaked with sand and salty lines of dried seawater. The girls had just started speaking again, resuming their lobby in favor of the train, when one of the minstrels came out from behind the curtain, carrying the piano stool and wearing a tall brown hat. His face and arms were once again covered with black paint, while his teeth and the whites of his eyes startled and silenced the crowd. When he reached the piano he put the stool down and looked out. It had grown slightly dark by then, but the stage was lit by torches on the tops of bamboo poles.