The Samurai's Daughter (27 page)

A little white lie.
I thought back to the conversation I'd had with my father just a few weeks ago, the conversation about Buddhist rules. You could still go to heaven, he'd said, if your gentle lie was employed to ensure the well-being of society. The rule didn't work, obviously. The white lies I'd told to get myself into Eric's and Charles's rooms had brought me nothing but hell.

The next day, Hugh worked. I was on the phone all day, paying off accounts. With what little I had left, I went upstairs to my landlady to pay the next month's rent, and to try to explain.

“I don't want to move,” I said tearfully to Mrs. Takashi. “It's because of a sudden problem. I'm needed at home. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. Of course, I expect you to keep my security deposit.”

“I know it's hard,” she said softly, looking away. “The neighbors—they have been bad. Little Kentaro-chan, he was the one who did that crazy thing with your food delivery. I heard about it later, and I spoke to his mother about it. I wish you wouldn't leave.”

“Well, it's not just Kentaro,” I said, although I was relieved to have an answer about the tear gas attack. “I know the majority of the neighborhood is not comfortable with—with my fiancé staying here.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Mrs. Yuto told me. She knows everything and everyone—”

“Yuto-san has lost her mind. She doesn't think clearly anymore. Everyone likes you, Rei-chan. You grow such pretty orchids at your window. You buy food from neighborhood merchants. You are very quiet—generally.”

I blushed, wondering if she was considering the occasional times I had friends over for dinner and drinks—or the more recent, intimate nights with Hugh. She did live upstairs.

“When I come back to Japan, I'll say hello,” I promised. “But I think Hugh and I should get married and then try to find a place to live that's spacious. We need room for children.”

“Children?” Mrs. Takashi's face creased with delight. “Oh, how delightful. I didn't know you wanted children!”

Nobody knew. I hadn't even thought of it that much myself. But now I was faced with the depressing certainty that my children would grow up with peanut butter and chicken nuggets, not
tofu
and sushi. They would never taste the real shavings of a genuine aged fish.

I turned away in tears, and got on with the rest of my business. I hired a company to pack up everything in the apartment—they couldn't come until five days later, but Hugh assured me he'd oversee the process. My worldly goods would go into storage and either be shipped to San Francisco or remain in wait for me, should I ever be allowed to reenter Japan.

I made a list of the people to whom I owed an explanation for my leaving Japan. The Yokohama Shimuras were the ones I loved most—but the hardest to explain things to, so I set them aside. I went out for good-bye drinks with Richard Randall and his partner Enrique, plus Mariko, Karen, and Simone. The day after that—my second-to-last day—I made phone calls to everyone else I could think of and paid a quick visit to Mr. Waka, proprietor of the neighborhood Family Mart. Like Mrs. Takashi, he was convinced that it would be easy for me to get a visa back into the country, once Eric was formally convicted of his crimes and concern about the case died down. He sent me out with a cheerful good-bye and a box of chocolate-flavored Pocky Sticks. I munched them, thinking how much they tasted like cardboard, as I walked along to Mr. Ishida's antiques shop.

“Ah, what a nice surprise,” Mr. Ishida said as I made my way through all the big pieces to the back room, where he was sitting at the tea table reading the newspaper and sipping a cup of tea. A small iron kettle sat steaming on the space heater nearby.

“I see the staircase
tansu
is sold. Congratulations,” I said.

“Yes. I never heard more from Sharp-san, so I sold it to a Japanese gentleman who came in the store the other day. I was quite impressed—he was willing to pay full price for it without much of an inspection. His name is Murano. Have you heard of him?”

“The name sounds familiar, but he's never bought from me. He sounds like a high roller.”

“Well, I hope he comes back for more. With the current economy, the high rollers are few and far between. My profit from that sale took care of my rent for the next eight months!”

“That's good fortune,” I said. “I wish I were so lucky. Actually, I have something difficult to tell you.”

“Yes, of course. But first, you must have some tea.”

I was about to cut him off and say that on this, my last full day in Japan, I had no time for a cup of tea, but then I realized it would never happen again. This would be the final ritual, the ending exchange between me and the man who was like a grandfather to me. So I sat down and took the blue-and-white cup he offered me. After I finished my tea, he said, “So, what is it?”

I'd been able to talk about my deportation with righteous anger to everyone else, but I didn't have the energy anymore. I told Mr. Ishida, in a low voice, that because I had chosen to withhold information from the police, I was being asked to leave the country the next day.

“You are withholding information for an important reason, yes?”

“It's very important, I think. If I were to give up a certain name, it would put an innocent person in trouble. I made her do something silly that she didn't fully understand. Though it led to my being able to break a law, she didn't commit any crime. She's innocent, but I don't trust the legal system here to regard her as that.”

“You used to revere Japanese culture,” Mr. Ishida said slowly. “Something's changed.”

“I still love Japan and its people. But I'm afraid of the military. I know what the military did in the past when powerless women were shipped overseas to service Japanese soldiers. I'm being sent
away, too—not for such a horrific purpose, but because I'm seen as a person with no rights. A foreigner who can't be trusted.”

“Did you know that after the war, many of the military officers found employment in the Japanese police? That's why it's so tough. And secretive.”

“I didn't know that,” I said. But it was interesting—and believable—that the group I considered my enemy was really just a reincarnation of the forces that had abused Rosa and Ramon.

“I was a young man during the war,” Mr. Ishida said. “Just sixteen. My father was already dead from tuberculosis, and American bombs had killed my two sisters. I was the only child my mother had left, and I was drafted to serve in China.”

“Oh, my goodness. I had no idea,” I said.

“As you know, we Japanese like to think of the past as being over. But it's never been possible for me.” Mr. Ishida turned to survey all the old furniture around him. “I buy and sell old things because I want to be surrounded by reminders of what things used to be. I don't have a television or computer because I strive to live in the manner that my family did, before we all lost our innocence. I think you are much the same.”

“Well, I collected my family history looking for those kinds of things,” I said. “But what I found, ultimately, is the worst kind of skeleton.”

“Oh? You don't mean real bones—”

“No.” I smiled, reassuring him. “What I mean is I learned that my great-grandfather was quite terrible. He wrote a coda of Japanese superiority and recorded it for millions of schoolchildren to read. And to make matters even worse, he tutored Emperor Hirohito. For all we know, Hirohito kept the war going such a long time—and permitted the military to brutally abuse other Asians and all its prisoners of war—because of what my great-grandfather taught him.”

“Words are not like bayonets,” Mr. Ishida said.

“What do you mean? It's clear that my ancestor was a significant contributor to the buildup of nationalism before the war. I know I'm supposed to revere my ancestors, but when it comes to this man, I'm quite ashamed.”

“We are all ashamed of the war,” Mr. Ishida said. “Ashamed because we had believed the emperor was God, and then saw him humiliated by the Americans. Ashamed because we were humbled into a starvation state, and then so eager to accept the food given to us by the occupying forces. Ashamed because our Buddhist culture tells us not to kill except in self-defense, and we did otherwise.”

I paused, not quite sure of what he was saying. “Did you have to, Ishida-san?”

“Are you asking me, did I kill someone? Yes!” Mr. Ishida's voice was louder than I'd ever heard it. “Many people. I was in Nanking. The situation that is barely mentioned in today's junior high textbooks, always with the codicil it might not have really happened. Well, Shimura-san, I can tell you that it did happen, because I was there.”

I was stunned. The most horrific war scene of the twentieth century, and my mild-mannered, antiques-loving mentor had been part of it. Of all the men I might have guessed had war guilt, I would have never thought of Mr. Ishida.

“There are so many memories.” Mr. Ishida sighed. “They still come to me at night. I remember it being like an ocean, our army and theirs, surging together. You saw the different colors of the uniforms, but soon you couldn't tell, because it was all covered with blood. But the faces—I'll never forget. The Chinese boys' faces looked so much like our faces. In a different era—before the war—we might have played in sports competition together, shared rice afterward. But that time was gone forever.”

“Please, Mr. Ishida. You don't have to tell me any more—”

“Ah, but I do. It shouldn't have been like that. I knew it was wrong. But I kept going with my bayonet, because that's all I had at that point in the battle. And I was afraid I'd be shot by my commanding officer for disloyalty.”

“Please, you've told me enough—”

“I wasn't alone in my feelings of fear and disgust, Shimura-san. There were other young men who didn't want to be there. We talked about it between ourselves. We kept out of the center of the city, where others were torturing and killing women and children.
But still, we had to show we were part of the team. So we served with our troops, and we carried our bayonets.”

“Did you serve until liberation in 1946?”

“No, I was shipped home shortly after Nanking because of serious injuries I suffered. I was wounded in a way that precluded me from ever becoming a father. So I never married. And in a sense, it was good that I didn't have children. This way, there is nobody to be ashamed of me.”

“Oh, Ishida-san! What I said about my great-grandfather must have made this all come back. I'm so sorry.”

“I wish you wouldn't be,” Mr. Ishida said. “I wish instead you would understand what I'm trying to tell you.”

“You told me a horror story out of your past, something you'd rather forget.”
The hard things survive
, I thought. “That's enough for my last day in Japan—I don't think I can handle any more.”

“What I'm trying to show you is that I obeyed without question,” Mr. Ishida said. “I was ordered to kill, and I complied. You also are being ordered to do something—to give up a name. You've chosen not to do it. I'm proud of you.”

“But my life isn't at stake. Yours was.”

“Your happiness is—and that of several other people. What's life without happiness?”

Through a blur of tears, I said, “I can't imagine life without having you to talk with.”

“Well, there's no reason our talks should stop.”

I looked at him. “It won't be the same. The way I could come in and have tea and learn about a piece of furniture…the way it was just last week.”

“Why not? We can't have tea, but you can serve as my agent within the U.S., importing pieces from me that you think your clients will like. It could be as simple as your calling me about a need and my faxing you a picture, or it could involve your working as a courier to bring the pieces over—in fact, the
tansu
Mr. Murano bought must go to the West Coast tomorrow. Your first job for me could ensure it passes safely through customs and reaches its destination, the home of a Mr. Ikehata. Being Japanese, he's bound to be exacting.”

I was silent a minute, digesting it. “It's an idea. But I want to be more than a gofer or someone who leaves you orders. After all I've learned, and dreamed of doing, I want to have more.”

“What's ‘more'?”

“I might want to have my own retail shop,” I said. “The rents have gone down in San Francisco, you know, especially in this area south of Market Street—”

“Good,” said Mr. Ishida. “And the end result of it is we could be partners, though on paper I'll appear as your employer—which means I can perhaps sponsor your reentry into Japan.”

I bit my lip. “You know, my lawyer said I could reapply to return to Japan after a year's time. I was planning on doing that…but a letter from you would only help.”

Mr. Ishida smiled. “As you know, I've never had children. But I've always thought of you as a granddaughter.”

I caught my breath. “Will you call me that?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can call me Rei-chan, if you like. It would make me feel so happy. So honored.”

“Yes. But only if you will call me Ojiisan.”

He'd given me license to call him Grandfather. I whispered the word, wondering at how good it made me feel. And then we embraced. As I felt the warmth of his thin arms, I thought of them sixty years ago, younger and stronger and holding a bayonet. And I didn't flinch.

The things that I couldn't understand before about Japan, I did now. There were no good Japanese and bad Japanese. They were all the same people sharing a capacity for both kindness and evil.

Mr. Ishida had taught me that the choice lies within all of us. And although the choice I was making was hard, I knew it was the right one.