Mister Timeless Blyth, page 13
I asked if something was wrong, and he brought me into focus, said simply, This world.
He had been reading an article about the Great Kanto Earthquake.
A terrible thing, I said. And not so long ago.
The earthquake had happened just a year before I arrived in Korea. It had hit Tokyo and Yokohama, left more than 100,000 dead. I had read about it, seen images of the devastation, the reconstruction that followed.
Earthquake was bad, said Shinki, But this was worse.
He passed me the article, a sombre account of the aftermath, a state-orchestrated massacre of Koreans living in Japan on the pretext they were exploiting the earthquake, looting and pillaging, committing acts of sabotage and terrorism, poisoning water supplies, all with the aim of undermining the state. Thousands of Koreans were murdered, executed, lynched, in what was effectively a pogrom.
I knew about the earthquake, I said. But not this. Not this.
I spoke of it later to Akio and he nodded, said quietly, Yes, it was a very dark story. He said there were Korean students at the school whose families had escaped here from Yokohama.
It has made these last years even more difficult, he said. Much hostile feeling against the Japanese
Understandably, I said.
He sat silent, serious, then spoke again.
It was partly why I was willing to come here and teach, he said. Give something to Korea, teach these young boys our culture is good.
A noble aim, I said.
Yes, he said, nodding. Noble.
Things were changing. Akio looked deeply troubled as he spoke of a rising tide of militarism in the homeland. In recent years Japan had annexed Manchuria in the name of economic necessity. Now there was war with China, brutal victories hailed as glorious triumph. He said some of our own boys would be enlisted and sent to fight. (Already they had been ordered to use the Japanese forms of their names to facilitate their conscription to the army).
The thought made me sick to my stomach.
From time to time Ma would send me an English newspaper, usually the Times, and the news from Europe was equally dispiriting. It reinforced everything Mr Watson had told me in London, the rise of Nazi Germany, the seemingly inexorable move towards yet another war, the same dark forces at work – greed, rapaciousness, the plundering of resources.
Was this, then, what the Hindus called the Kali Yuga, the epoch of darkness and destruction, annihilation?
It escalated quickly, Czechoslovakia, then Poland. Mr Chamberlain’s Peace in our time proved not so much a mantra as a vain and desperate hope, now replaced by the grim banality of the announcement. This country is at war with Germany.
No Cry Havoc. No Let slip the dogs. No rhetoric or oratory, just the statement, dull and factual but cataclysmic in its impact.
This country is at war.
In Korea too, our lives were suddenly less comfortable, more unsettled, the whole situation more volatile. Anti-Japanese sentiment was on the rise. The writing was, quite literally, on the wall – slogans daubed on government buildings, factories, the railway station. Free Korea. Japanese overlords out now. There were acts of sabotage, an assassination attempt on a Japanese general.
The numbers 3-1 appeared everywhere. In Korean that was Sami-Il. Akio explained it was a date, March 1st, the date of a historic uprising against Japanese rule, back in 1919. Akio was concerned, for himself and his family, but also, genuinely, for Tomiko and me. He warned me there was a danger my contract might not be renewed. He himself was planning to return to Japan and he suggested I might want to follow him. With his contacts he was sure he would be able to help me find work.
It was another koan, trying to decide what was for the best. Stay in Korea? Move to Japan? Go back to England? Then something happened that cut through everything, everything, everything. Akio had a heart attack and died. That was it, the stark fact of it. Akio died, aged 42. Angina pectoris.
Akio died.
I wept and Tomiko could not console me.
Why should a dog a horse a rat have life and thou no breath at all?
Mu.
This little life of ours. What to do with it? What to do next?
Tomiko’s father, mindful of his business interests, had already moved back to the family home in Yamaguchi. Motoko and little Katsura had also gone, home to Kyoto. Everything, it seemed, was telling us to go.
Tomiko agreed.
That early poem of mine began, We that change, hate change. But Dickinson wrote, In insecurity to lie is joy’s insuring quality.
We made our preparations to sell up and move out, move on. We would take our chances in Japan.
I made a final visit to Myoshin-ji, paid my respects to the Abbot, said goodbye to Bun-san.
It was time.
We would travel by train to the port of Pusan and from there by boat to Kobe. So many years since my arrival with Annie, Akio welcoming us. So many years. Our lives passing.
Shinki said he would be at the railway station to say goodbye and so too did Kasai, that young boy who had spoken up for me when his classmates rebelled. Now he was a grown man, teaching at the school. Time and change.
Tomiko and I stepped from a taxi cab in front of the station. I looked round expecting to see Shinki and Kasai, perhaps a few of their students come to see me off. Instead I saw, assembled in the square, ranks of boys in their uniforms, lined up as if in military formation.
Shinki and Kasai approached, bowed.
They are from whole school, said Shinki.
To say goodbye, said Kasai.
They turned and Kasai shouted out a command. The boys stood to attention and began to sing.
I knew the melody, the tune of Auld Lang Syne that had stirred me as a boy.
In Japan it was also a song of parting, sung at every graduation ceremony, Hotaru no Hikari. Light of the Fireflies. It told of poor students studying by the light of fireflies, the moonlight reflected on snow. Now they were graduating and moving on.
Light of the fireflies, moonlight on snow…
Many suns and moons spent reading.
Before we know it, years have passed.
Now resolutely we open the doors and depart.
The whole thing was unremittingly sentimental but I was completely undone by it, overwhelmed by the surge of emotion in my chest. Beside me Tomiko was sobbing and I knew if I looked at her I would be helpless.
It was the sheer unexpectedness of it, the innocent intensity of the boys, the swell of the young voices raised as one, and beyond that the simple humanity of it all, ritualised, formalised, timeless but of the moment, this moment.
This.
I looked out across the square, to the hills beyond the city, for all the world like a stage set, a painted backdrop, and I knew in my bones I would never return, would not see this place again. This part of my life was over.
The song came to an end and the boys bowed. Shinki and Kasai turned to me, expecting me to make some kind of farewell speech. But I could not. All I could do was bow and say, Thank you, my voice breaking.
Thank you.
I had nothing more to say. No more words.
5
PERSONS IN A BELLIGERENT NATION
Novelists know this. There are times when the passage of years can be rendered in a paragraph, while a single moment may require pages.
So those first few weeks in Japan are a blur, so quickly did they pass. I suppose they were a time of transition. (Though what time is not?)
We stayed with Tomiko’s family in her hometown of Hagi in Yamaguchi prefecture. The town itself was beautiful, overlooking the Sea of Japan. Tomiko’s parents were overjoyed to see her, and they were hospitable and welcoming. Right from my arrival in Japan I once more had that sense of familiarity – it felt like coming home. But I was also driven by a restlessness, a need to move on.
I had worked like a fiend on my book. The manuscript was almost complete. I was inexorably drawn to Tokyo where I thought it would be easier to find work and perhaps also interest a publisher. I made the decision. Three months after arriving in Japan we found a small house to rent in Ueno.
The very name thrilled me. I had translated Basho’s famous haiku.
A cloud of cherry blossoms.
The temple bell –
Is it Ueno? Asakusa?
And on the way to Tokyo by train, I had looked up, seen through the window a great mountain flash past. Moved to tears by this glimpse, I bowed to great Fuji-san, grateful to have seen it at last. Then a few moments later the real Fuji-san came into view, unmistakeable, vast. My sense of foolishness was immediately subsumed in a moment of initiation, the mountain suddenly there, overwhelming, this huge, otherworldly presence, in this world and yet somehow beyond it, archetypal, sublime. This time I was overcome with emotion and again I bowed, this time in deep obeisance. One or two Japanese passengers had not been looking up, not paying attention to this great being in their midst, taking it for granted. They noticed me, this foolish tearful gaijin, and they smiled, took a sudden pride, and they too bowed, remembering.
In Ueno I felt instantly at ease. Our house was near the railway station – again I heard that clatter and rumble of trains I had always loved, a comfort to me, a mantra. And around the station was the sprawling market in the narrow lanes and alleys, the arches under bridges, all random and ramshackle, every inch of it crammed to bursting, teeming with raucous life. To walk through it all was to step into a woodblock print, a Hokusai or a Hiroshige, the riot of colour and noise, the floating world.
In Ueno Park was the Zoo. I could hear the animals, the trumpeting and roar of them carried on the wind, but I could not bear to go in.
I agreed with Blake: A robin redbreast in a cage / Puts all heaven in a rage…
At the edge of the Park I looked up at the looming bronze statue of legendary samurai Saigō Takamori. It was all solid strength, enduring, but what appealed to me was the figure of his dog, given its due, its rightful place beside him on the pedestal.
Did this dog have the Buddha-nature? Without a doubt.
Another reason for moving to Tokyo was to be closer to Suzuki-sensei. His home, I discovered, was in Kamakura, a short train ride away, beyond Yokohama. I wrote to him care of Engakuji temple where I understood he lived. He replied, mirabile dictu, on a handwritten postcard, said he was just about to travel to his hometown of Kanazawa where he had agreed to do some teaching. He would be delighted to meet me on his return to Kamakura, or earlier if the opportunity arose for me to come to Kanazawa.
I replied that I would be in Kanazawa the following week (I made sure of it!) and we arranged to meet at the inn where he was lodging.
I arrived in Kanazawa, excited, beside myself, as they say. (And which self would present itself to this esteemed teacher?)
I imagined Suzuki might be fierce, a ferocious Zen patriarch, a Hakuin, a Bodhidharma. a hard taskmaster like Daito Kokushi, who would – physically and not just figuratively – rap his students on the knuckles if they gave an unsatisfactory answer to the question, What is Zen? And for Daito Kokushi, any answer at all was unsatisfactory. (As, for that matter, was no answer).
What is Zen?
The cherry tree in the yard.
Rap!
What is Zen?
Who wants to know?
Rap!
Feeling anticipation and trepidation in equal measure (a fluttering, like electricity, in the heart, a dull churning in the gut) I walked the half mile or so from the little ryokan near the station where I had booked in on my arrival.
I felt overdressed in my tweed suit, my collar-and-tie, but the occasion was formal and I was aware how ludicrous I would look in Japanese clothes. I was still sometimes the subject of a certain curiosity, the portly round-eye, the gaijin in their midst, and I had no wish for that to turn to mockery or animosity.
I found the address and stood on the threshold, uncertain whether to open the door and announce my arrival. Suddenly the shoji-screen panel slid open and a small middle-aged Japanese woman was bowing and smiling at me, bowing and smiling, and she indicated I should take off my shoes and step inside.
She led me to an inner room where Suzuki-sensei himself was waiting, and he stood to greet me, bowing with a little half-smile. I turned to thank the woman but she had already gone, closing the shoji behind her with a quiet swish.
I was here, alone with the master, and he nodded to me to sit facing him on a small zafu cushion like the one he himself was using.
So, he said. Buraisu-san. Welcome.
How to find the words – the right words – to describe him?
He was small and extraordinarily thin with prominent cheekbones and unruly eyebrows. Far from being ferocious, his manner was gentle, sympathetic, kindly. He asked after my health, and the journey to Kanazawa, and my lodgings, and I began to feel he was more interested in me and my everyday life than in philosophising.
He reminded me of a character from fiction, Mr Heyhoe, the minister in a story by TF Powys, who never spoke to anyone for the purpose of teaching them (for God had his own time for that!) Rather he was always ready to speak of the most trifling matters, for who could tell in what little way the joy of religion might enter the soul.
The joy of religion.
The shoji swished open again and the woman came in carrying a tray with a teapot and two cups, a little plate of mochi sweets. Again she bowed and smiled, bowed and smiled, as she poured the tea, placed everything just so, her movements deft, efficient, unhurried.
He introduced her as his landlady, Mrs Yazaki, and he praised her kindness as she quietly took her leave.
We sipped the bitter green tea. (On such occasions I felt it would be impolite not to). We ate the sweet, soft mochi. I felt content, at peace.
He noticed me looking at a framed photograph of a very striking Western woman, older but with a directness and strength in her gaze, self-contained, smiling for the camera. He told me it was his wife Beatrice, an American, and that it was only a year since she had died.
I said I was sorry and he said that was not necessary. Their time together had been long and happy.
A blessing, I said.
May I ask you, he said after a silence, how you came to be interested in Zen?
I replied with a certain eagerness (which might have seemed gauche had it not been so heartfelt) that it was through reading his Essays on Zen Buddhism. I said the book had changed my life and I was hugely indebted to him.
I have never forgotten his response. He bowed his head, and I cannot say how much that simple action impressed me. It was not modesty, not even gratitude. There was humility in it, but more than anything it was an expression of the inevitable, an acceptance that might be summed up, Is that so?
I was deeply moved, but composed myself and said the book had led me on to further study.
As you know, I said, I have just come from Korea, where I studied under Hanayama Roshi at Myoshinji Betsuin.
As I spoke the words I heard them as faintly ridiculous, as if I were puffed up and full of myself, announcing my credentials.
So, he said simply. Can you tell me what is Zen?
I believe I have already mentioned this exchange in these pages. But it seems to me important, and worth revisiting. What is Zen?
As I understand it, I said, there is no such thing.
Ah, he said. I can see you know something of Zen.
Thank you, I said, and could think of nothing else to say.
No such thing as Zen, he said. Now, have more tea, another mochi.
It is hard to believe that first meeting with Suzuki was almost a quarter of a century ago (although there are times when I feel I have always known him).
Suzuki who taught me all I don’t know.
Suzuki who can read what I can’t write.
Suzuki most definitely put in a good word for me at his old school. I also had exemplary references from Keijo. So as if by magic (things unfolding as they must) I was employed as an English teacher at the Fourth Kanazawa High School. Once again we were on the move.
We settled in accommodation provided by the school, as Annie and I had done in Keijo all those years ago. My salary was fixed at the same amount I had been paid before. Once again I felt somehow protected, almost as if by some higher force, shaping my destiny, guiding me towards I knew not what.
There was something about Kanazawa I liked, something in the air, a certain mildness. The weather was often misty and perhaps that as much as anything else reminded me of London (unlikely though that may sound). The boys I taught also had a mildness and a kind of earnest straightforwardness. When I told them their city reminded me of London they didn’t understand. London was a metropolis, and their image of it, if they had one, would be of Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge, Horseguards on parade, red double-decker buses, bowler-hatted city gents. Kanazawa, they said, was like Kyoto but smaller – Sho Kyoto, Little Kyoto, with its temples and gardens, its maze of narrow lanes beside the city walls.
I understand, I said. But still, there is something….
Hai, they said, humouring me. So desu.
Just as I had done in Korea, I bought an old bicycle and fixed it up, made it roadworthy. I rode it to work and at weekends went further, exploring the city. One afternoon I emerged, leisurely pedalling my bike, into the square beside the railway station. There was some kind of gathering opposite the main gate, a speech being made through a loudspeaker. It brought to mind my departure from Seoul, those boys singing their song of farewell, Hotaru no Hikari.
