Authors: Kenzaburo Oe
Alone again, I gave some thought to the elephant. In Hiroshima, they said, the very first group to flee to the suburbs after the nuclear attack had been a herd of cows. Supposing a vaster nuclear war destroyed the cities of the civilized countries—would the elephants in the zoos escape? Could people, perhaps, build nuclear shelters big enough to accommodate such bulky creatures? No—the holocaust would certainly leave all the elephants dead in their zoos. Supposing, then, there were some prospect of reconstructing the towns—would one’s eyes be greeted by the spectacle of human beings, broken and
misshapen by radiation, gathered on a cliff somewhere to watch as their representative set off to trap elephants on the savannas of Africa? To anyone occupied with the question of whether there was any good left in man or not,
that
would surely give a real clue. . . . I’d read no newspapers since the snows arrived, and for all I knew the world might be in still more desperate danger of nuclear war. But somehow the fear and sense of helplessness aroused in me by the idea refused to generate any more intensity than my usual solitary preoccupations.
The envelope the young priest had hunted out for me contained five letters from great-grandfather’s younger brother and a pamphlet, signed with grandfather’s name, entitled “An Account of the Farmers’ Rising in Okubo Village.” The rising recorded in the pamphlet was not that of 1860, but another provoked in the area by the edict of 1871 abolishing clans and establishing prefectures. None of the letters had addresses or signatures. Great-grandfather’s brother must have wanted to keep the site of his new life secret, as well as the new surname he’d invented for use in it.
The earliest letter, though, which was dated 1863, suggested that after escaping through the forest to Kochi the former rebel leader had, as the priest surmised, been assisted in setting out for a new world by an agent from beyond the forest. It showed that less than two years following his flight, the young man had already achieved a meeting with his elusive hero, John Manjiro, and had actually obtained permission to participate in his next venture. For the man from beyond the forest to have had such a powerful influence over John Manjiro where his protégé was concerned must have meant that he was, in fact, a secret agent connected with the Tosa clan authorities. The letter told how the young man had set sail from Shinagawa in 1862 as a common seaman on John Manjiro’s whaler. At the beginning of the following year, their boat arrived in Chichijima in the Bonins, then went on to the whaling grounds. There they caught two baby whales and sailed back to the Bonins, being short of fresh water. Here great-grandfather’s brother gave up work on whalers, partly because of violent seasickness, but also from distress at his frequent disagreements with foreign seamen on the same vessel. Still, it was something at least that a young man brought up in a valley deep in the forest should have encountered two live whales, albeit baby ones. . . .
The second letter was dated 1867. A new sense of vigor and freedom
in the style showed that several years of life in the city had awakened a youthful, humorous quality that during his period on the whaler had still been bottled up in the young deserter from the forest. The letter included an amusing article which he’d read in Yokohama in the first newspaper he’d seen in his life, and which he copied out specially for the benefit of his elder brother back home in the valley in the wilds of Shikoku :
Today I have something that may amuse you. The newspaper in which I saw it forbids unauthorized reproduction, but I doubt that it applies to letters such as this. It seems that a man in Pennsylvania in the United States took his own life, possibly while out of his mind, as a result of unfortunate circumstances which his farewell note described as follows: “I married a widow with one daughter. My father fell in love with the daughter and married her. He thus became my son-in-law, and the daughter, being now my father’s wife, became my stepmother. Next, I had a son by the widow I had married. He became my father’s brother-in-law and also, being my stepmother’s brother, my own uncle. My father’s wife, my stepdaughter, also had a son, who was not only my stepbrother but also, being my stepchild’s child, my grandson. Thus the widow I married, as parent of my stepmother, became my grandmother. So I found myself to be my wife’s husband and grandson, and at the same time my own grandfather and grandson.”
The newspaper carries an advertisement saying: “Wish to instruct young Japanese gentlemen desirous of attaining proficiency in the English language.” Another says: “All aid and advice given to those visiting America for purposes of study, commerce, travel, or tourism.”
Between this letter and the next there was a gap of more than two decades. During those twenty-odd years, the boy whose excitement at finding himself liberated from everything related to life in the distant valley had once made him find that humorous article so fascinating, the boy who so obviously cherished a private ambition to go to America, may in fact have got there. Either way, the betrayal that had enabled him to survive the rising, leaving behind him in the valley so many savagely executed dead, had also, it seemed,
secured him a new life of freedom.
This letter written in the spring of 1889, after so long an interval, revealed the style of a man of ripe wisdom. It was a soberly critical reply to a letter that great-grandfather at home in the valley had written to express his joy over the promulgation of the new Constitution. Wasn’t it somewhat hasty—the letter inquired rather depressingly—to become infatuated with the word “Constitution” without even finding out what its actual provisions were? It quoted the following passage from a work by a member of a former samurai family in Kochi prefecture—a possible associate, that is, of the agent from beyond the forest:
One can naturally distinguish two varieties of civil rights. Those of England and France may be called “recovered” rights since the lower orders wrested them from those above them by their own efforts. But there is another variety that may be called “conferred,” in that they are bestowed as a favor from above. Since “recovered” rights are won from below, their extent and nature may be determined at will by those receiving their benefit. “Conferred” rights, being bestowed from above, admit of no such decision; for their recipient to imagine that they may be instantly transformed into “recovered” rights is absurd.
The new Constitution, great-grandfather’s brother predicted disapprovingly, would grant only a few rights conferred as a favor from above, and he urged that some organization be formed to work for more progressive civil rights. As this letter showed, he viewed the political regime following the Restoration with the eyes of a man with a “cause,” in his case the cause of civil rights. It seemed likely, therefore, that the legend that he became a high official in the Restoration government was the exact reverse of the truth.
The last two letters, though written a mere five years later, suggested that his enthusiasm for the “cause” had already suffered a rapid decline. He was still the intellectual well versed in contemporary affairs that he’d been around 1889, but the desire to make assertions about the state of the nation had faded away. The overwhelming impression now was of an increasingly elderly, solitary man, anxious about the well-being of a close relative in distant parts. The Ikichiro mentioned in the letters is the name grandfather used in writing his
“Account of the Farmers’ Rising in Okubo Village.” Great-grandfather’s younger brother had a deep affection for his only nephew, though it is doubtful whether they ever met in the flesh. He was very eager, via his letters, to help his nephew evade the draft, and when the boy unavoidably went to war he was equally concerned for his safety. It showed perfectly clearly that the brutal leader of the 1860 rising had also had, beneath the surface, a vein of gentle solicitude :
I thank you for your letter. I gather from it that you are thinking to request a draft deferment for Ikichiro whether he is accepted for the army or not. We had agreed that should he not be accepted there would of course be no need to present a deferment request. Possibly our letters crossed, but I had word from your wife that he had not been accepted, so instead of drafting the application as I should naturally have done, I determined to do nothing for the moment. Such being the case, there is no need for you to have anyone present the application. I hope to hear that you have understood and agreed.
. . .
Your letter reassures me at least of your continued existence, but leaves me thirsting for anything more detailed concerning the life you are leading in these days. Is there still no word of Ikichiro since his departure for China? The assault on Weihaiwei is still in progress, and I fear that at this very moment he stands in peril of his life. I am eager to know how he fares. I beg you, should a letter arrive, to let me know its purport with all haste.
This was the last of the letters. In all likelihood, great-grandfather’s brother had died still peering in vain for his young warrior nephew amidst the smoke of distant battle. Nothing remained to suggest that he had survived after that.
Just before noon, the Nembutsu music started up again. Today it came from a fixed spot in front of the supermarket, without inspiring other music from the valley folk as it had yesterday, when it had sprung from several places in turn. Takashi and his team must be playing all alone. I wondered whether they would have the energy to go on indefinitely with such monotonous music if there was no sympathetic response from the ordinary inhabitants of the valley. I had a feeling
that the next time the music came to an end might well mark the moment when reaction against the “rising” set in.
When Hoshio brought my lunch, he looked haggard and feverish, and his eyes followed my every movement with almost hungry intensity. It was as though abject shame at being dropped from the “rising” had swelled up inside his head until it came oozing out of his eyes. But why, I wondered, did he need to feel so ashamed toward Takashi ? After deserting Hoshio when he was pushed over in the supermarket office for contravening “regulations,” Takashi was hardly qualified to criticize him for falling by the way. Hoshio, after all, had taken part in the “rising” of his own free will, and had given it practical assistance as technician, even though he hadn’t the slightest connection with the valley. The only possible bond tying him to the “rising” was Takashi’s kindness. With such ideas in mind, I said to him out of naive sympathy :
“It looks as though Taka’s ‘rising’ has quietened down a lot today, doesn’t it?”
But Hoshio stared at me in silent rebuff, trying to indicate that, though he’d finally dropped out of the affair, he had no wish to join a bystander like me in criticism of Takashi and his football team.
“There aren’t enough electrical appliances to go round,” he said, confining himself to objective analysis of the situation. “When it comes to actually deciding who’s going to take them, nobody has the courage to step forward.”
“Anyway, Taka started it, so it’s his job to carry it through,” I ventured in what was supposed to be the same objective spirit. But the only effect was to heighten his irritation. The sense of shame that for some time had been wavering obscurely on his face suddenly reached explosive level, and an apoplectic rush of dark blood flooded his cheeks. When he finally raised his eyes and fixed their gaze on me, they had a steady gleam that looked as if everything they’d been concealing would spill out in a sudden burst. But he swallowed hard, like a child, and said :
“Will you put me up in the storehouse from tonight, Mitsu ? I can sleep downstairs, I don’t mind the cold.”
“Why?” I asked, vaguely taken aback. “What’s the problem?”
An almost obscene flush spread over the peasant-boy face. He pursed his heavily cracked lips, blew out strongly, then said, his whole face paling again as soon as he’d got it out:
“Taka does it with Natsumi, I don’t like sleeping there.”
I watched as the skin of his face, sunburned from the snow, went dry and seemed to break into a fine white powder. Until then I’d thought I was the observer, complacently attributing Hoshio’s abnormal show of embarrassment to his losing his place in Takashi’s “rising.” In fact, it was he who had been observing my own disgrace. But witnessing the discomfiture of someone whose wife had slept with another man had affected him in turn with an unbearable sense of almost personal shame. The realization promptly volleyed the ball of shame back to me again. A surge of hot moisture seemed to suffuse the very sockets of my eyes.
“Then you’d better bring your blankets over here while it’s still light, Hoshi. You can sleep upstairs with me. It’s too cold downstairs.” The hot defiance radiating from his eyes faded, leaving only a suspicious watchfulness. He looked at me and wondered, wavering between a naive suspicion that I hadn’t understood what he’d said and cowardly apprehension in case I suddenly lashed out at him. Then, still keeping an eye on my movements, he mumbled stupidly in a voice dulled by disgust and helplessness :
“I kept telling Taka not to, that he mustn’t and it was wrong, but he did it all the same.” A tear so tiny it looked like a fleck of saliva ran down the whitish, finely cracked skin of his cheek.
“Hoshi,” I commanded, “if this isn’t just imagination or wishful thinking, you’d better tell me exactly what you saw. Either that or keep quiet!” I knew in fact that unless he described it in detail the thing would have no reality for me and I wouldn’t be able to react properly. The blood had rushed to my head, where it pounded noisily, but my consciousness merely drifted about in it, unable to hitch itself either to jealousy or any other practical reaction.
Hoshi cleared his throat feebly in an effort to give more substance to his voice, then went on slowly, emphasizing the end of each phrase so as to impress on me what he was saying:
“I kept telling him not to. I said I’d hit him if he didn’t lay off. I got a weapon and was going to rush into the room where they were sleeping, but when I opened the door, Taka—he had just his training shirt on, and I could see his bare ass—looked round at me and said, ‘I thought you were the only member of the team that couldn’t handle a weapon.’ I just stood there, I couldn’t hit him, I kept saying ‘Don’t, don’t do it, you mustn’t!’ But Taka did it, he wouldn’t take any notice of me!”