Mister Timeless Blyth, page 19
The thief
left it behind –
the moon in the window.
Such grateful acceptance.
The wind
brings fallen leaves enough
to make a fire.
I stopped and breathed deep. The wind picked up, a sudden gust. It caught and swirled the white flowers all around me, an uplift, a dance, a momentary exhilaration.
There was a Japanese word for this flurry of blossoms. Hanafubuki.
It was all a dance, everything in motion. All I had to do was let go, begin again, over and over, now and now and now.
Let go.
Tomiko and Harumi were safe. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Back at my desk I laid out the handful of books I had with me, with their scuffed covers, their dog-eared pages. They were suddenly, immeasurably precious.
My few other possessions included the little Daruma doll that had made Harumi laugh.
I tipped it over and it rolled back up.
Eight times up…
Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?
The answer given to this by Joshu – The oak tree in the yard.
Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?
Why did I?
Fallen blossoms,
caught up by the wind,
dancing.
It had been a miracle that Tomiko and Harumi had been at the house of a neighbour, Kaneko, when the bomb fell. Almost as great a miracle – at least stretching the bounds of coincidence – was the fact that Kaneko was the wife of an English naval officer, Lewis Bush, who was interned in Kowloon, and was, as it happened, a friend of my mentor Dr Suzuki.
I wanted Tomiko to take Harumi and go back to the family home in Hagi. They would be safer there. Her father could make the arrangements. But she said travel was impossible, they would have to wait. Kaneko helped her find a small rented apartment, closer to Futatabi. I returned to praying and meditating. There was nothing else I could do.
Whenever the bombs fell Tomiko sent a message, those few kanji spelling out the same simple message. They were safe. They had not been harmed.
Namu Amida Butsu
The later raids were an all out bombardment aimed at the total destruction of the city. The area around the docks was obliterated – the most densely populated neighbourhood where workers and their families were concentrated. Word came through that central Tokyo had also been firebombed in the same way but on a much larger scale. I read about it after the war, in a US report declaring the operation a complete success. I still have the piece of paper where I scribbled down the details.
More than 300 bombers dropped almost 2000 tons of bombs, mostly 500 pound cluster bombs, each of which released smaller napalm-carrying incendiary bombs. These punched through thin roofing material or landed on the ground. In either case they ignited 5 seconds later, throwing out a jet of flaming napalm globs. Other incendiaries were also dropped, each one a 100-pound jellied-gasoline and white phosphorus bomb which ignited on impact.
Again the attack centred on the city’s working class district near the docks. The first wave dropped their bombs in a large X pattern. X marks the spot. Later aircraft simply aimed near this flaming X. The old wooden buildings flared like kindling. 16 square miles of the city were destroyed and at least 100,000 people died.
A complete success.
Why did I write this down, copy out the bare facts? As if it could be grasped. As if it could be understood.
At least 100,000. Incinerated.
I read and I wept.
That humanity should have come to this. Brutality and destruction followed by reprisal, a cycle of escalation that would never end until we wiped out our species entirely.
The mood among the Americans in the detention centre was one of jubilation. They were certain the war was coming to an end and victory would be theirs. They gathered in the canteen and sang their songs – The Yanks are coming… O say can you see… The bombs bursting in air – till the guards broke it up and ordered them back to their dormitories, locking them in for the night.
I hoped it was true that the war would soon be over. But I feared that the Japanese would never surrender. Surrender was not in their nature. Surrender was cowardly and dishonourable. Surrender was less-than-human.
At the height of the bombing there was a thundering roar overhead, the sound of ack-ack and a huge explosion so loud we thought the camp had been hit. I stumbled outside with most of the other inmates, saw flames and smoke rising from the edge of town just a few blocks away. The guards on duty shouted at us to get back inside. They yelled and threatened us, bayonets fixed. It was the first time I had seen them so angry and afraid, and I suddenly saw how young they were.
Next morning we heard the full story. A bomber had been shot down, crashlanded in open ground just north of Futatabi. The pilot had baled out and been brought here to the camp, under guard.
Now we watched as he was led out, limping and clearly injured, blood on his face, on his shirt. Again the guards lined up, facing us, bayonets at the ready. Like them, the pilot was young, so young. He was bundled into the back of a van and driven out through the gates. The commandant, Mr Higasa, turned away, grim-faced, growled out an order to the guards who once more demanded, with menaces, that we go back inside the building.
This was the reality, this, right here on our doorstep. For us the living had been, comparatively, easy. We were non-combatants, enemy aliens, our freedom taken away. But this young man, wounded and bloodied, had been captured, was a prisoner-of-war. As they led him away, I felt a twist of fear as to what would become of him.
Didn’t I know there was a war on?
I have read the stories, the accounts of life in Japanese prison camps, in Java and Malaya, in Singapore, on the Burma Road. As recently as last year, Laurens Van der Post published his novel, The Seed and the Sower, based on his own wartime experience. The stories are horrific, recounting acts of brutality, cruelty and torture – prisoners used for bayonet practice, beheaded for not showing sufficient respect to their officers and guards, for not bowing deeply enough to Kyokujitsu-ki, the Rising Sun flag. I have also read that Korean guards were, if such a thing is possible, worse than the Japanese themselves.
It is sickening. Man’s inhumanity writ large. But it was very far from my own experience of internment. We were in Japan itself and not in some far-flung outpost, and we were non-combatants. In addition Higasa-san, our camp commandant. was a decent man. We experienced none of the barbarism meted out to others. In fact I would go so far as to say my treatment in Kobe was less harsh than what I had experienced as a boy in Wormwood Scrubs. Bolshie bastards and commie scum.
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It’s time to lay the sword and gun away.
I heard much later that the young American pilot, with another surviving crew member, was taken by the Kempeitai, the Japanese Gestapo. Both men were tried for the deliberate fire-bombing of civilian targets. There was no defence. They were taken blindfold from the courtroom to a lonely spot on a hillside not far from our camp at Futatabi. There they were shot by firing squad next to graves already dug for them. The bodies were covered over, the graves left unmarked.
At first it was only rumour. The Americans had developed a weapon of unimaginable power. A single bomb had completely destroyed Hiroshima. Another had done the same to Nagasaki. Unless Japan surrendered immediately and unconditionally, Tokyo would be obliterated. The whole of Japan would be laid waste.
Newsreel film of Robert Oppenheimer, gaunt and skeletal, staring at the camera, looking out narrow-eyed from a deep dark place, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita – Krishna on the battlefield at Kurukshetra, showing Arjuna his universal form, terrifying and all-consuming. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
Beyond all imagining.
The Potsdam Declaration laid down terms for Japanese Surrender as agreed by the USA, the UK and China. It was signed by Truman, Churchill and Chiang Kai Shek. Their ultimatum stated that if Japan did not surrender it would face prompt and utter destruction.
Prompt and utter destruction.
The sheer scale of it, the enormity. The blast ripping apart the very fabric of reality, tearing it asunder. Intolerable brightness that would sear they eye, then darkness blotting out the sun.
Death the destroyer of worlds.
Again there were rumours, and counter-rumours.
The Emperor has been arrested and charged with war crimes.
The Emperor has been executed.
The Emperor has been imprisoned and the military are refusing to surrender.
The Emperor has recorded a message to the Japanese people, to be broadcast on radio forthwith.
This last rumour proved to be true.
Many in the Japanese army were opposed to the war being ended in this way. It would be cowardly and dishonourable. When word spread that the Emperor’s message would be broadcast, as many as a thousand officers and soldiers raided the Imperial palace to destroy the recording. They were unable to find it, hidden in a pile of documents. It was smuggled out of the palace, rather ignominiously in a laundry basket of women’s underwear, and taken to the radio station.
Even then, I heard later, a diehard group of fanatics managed to get into the building in a final kamikaze attempt to stop the transmission. They were gunned down and the broadcast went ahead, from a locked studio, with armed guards at the door.
In Kobe our years of internment ended abruptly. Higasa-san summoned us all to the courtyard one last time, the guards standing rigidly to attention. His voice quavering, he announced what had happened. Arrangements would be made, but essentially we were free to go. He bowed and turned on his heel, strode back into his office.
The doors to the camp were unlocked, the gates left open.
At first some of the Americans thought it might be a trap and we would be shot for trying to escape.
I looked across and saw Tomiko outside the main gate, hesitating then walking towards me.
I went to her, uncertain, and she stopped in front of me. She was in tears, covered her face with her hands. She bowed, then straightened up again, shaking her head, laugh-crying.
Is finished, she said, her voice choked. War is over.
It was a time of chaos and uncertainty. Nobody knew what would happen next, what kind of rule the Americans would impose. Tomiko was glad the war was over, happy I was home in our temporary rented apartment, our little family once more complete. But she was not at peace. She laughed again, cried again, seemed at times to retreat inside herself, numbed and frozen. She looked out at me from far away, not seeing or not understanding.
I knew in part what she had been through, the upheaval she had endured. But I sensed that this, now, was something more. I asked and she tried to explain. She had been in turmoil since the Emperor’s broadcast.
She spoke, haltingly, of something I translated as The honourable death of the hundred million. It was an old song, she said, sung by the military.
One hundred million souls for the Emperor.
It spoke of the entire nation sacrificing itself, and as I understood it, the song had become a rallying cry, a call to mass suicide as a matter of honour if the Emperor should demand it in his speech.
But surely, I said, that could not happen. It was not possible.
Then I remembered the atmosphere in town, a heaviness in the air that was more than the intense heat, the oppressive mugginess. Tomiko had taken me by the arm and hurried me home. One old man had sat, stern-faced and rigid, outside his boarded-up shopfront, a sword on a low table in front of him. He had unsheathed it, looked long and hard at the blade, as if gauging its sharpness.
Yes, said Tomiko. Is possible.
She looked desolate, hid her face in her hands and cried, and I held her, tried to comfort her.
I heard the recorded message later when it was broadcast again. We tuned in and listened on an old radio receiver, a length of bent wire for an aerial which I moved this way and that, trying to get a better signal.
The transmission was named Gyokuon-hōsō. Jewel Voice Broadcast. A formal declaration. The Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the Greater East Asia War.
Tomiko sat with me, straightbacked on the tatami mat, rigid and attentive, in silent awe that once again she was actually hearing the Emperor’s voice, a voice that was unreal, other-worldly, with a high singsong tonality. She bowed her head almost to the floor when the speech began.
The recording was poor, the words constantly lost in crackle and whine. And even when it could be clearly heard, it was difficult to follow the formal courtly ceremonial language. Tomiko’s brow furrowed and she gave a little shake of the head as she tried to concentrate, make sense of it.
There seemed to be a heightening of intensity, a conclusion, something about the progress of the world. Then the voice cut, an abrupt end. The national anthem was played, slow and sonorous.
Tomiko kneeled, her head bent. Once again she held her face in her hands and sobbed, her thin shoulders shaking. Again I held her, said everything would be all right. Harumi carried on playing with the little Daruma doll, knocking it over, watching it rock back.
Nana korobi ya oki… Seven times down. Eight times up.
It was later still that I was vouchsafed a translation into English. I have it here beside me as I write, the words typed and carbon-copied onto thin wartime paper. Between paragraphs are my notes / comments, scribbled down in red pen as I read the transcript for the first time.
After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our empire today, we have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure. We have ordered our government to communicate to the governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that our empire accepts the provisions of their joint declaration.
No direct statement, then, that Japan was formally surrendering. Extraordinary measure. Accepting the provisions. The thing half-said.
To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations as well as the security and well-being of our subjects is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestors and which lies close to our heart. Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan’s self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandisement.
That was certainly one way of putting it.
But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest.
No mention that a Soviet invasion of Manchuria and other Japanese-held territories had also begun a few days before. That in itself would have been cause for alarm, but had clearly become a side-sow to the main event.
The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
Prompt and utter destruction. Now I am become death.
How are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.
Surrender as atonement, then, the honourable thing to do. Acceptance of the inevitable.
The hardships and sufferings to which our nation is to be subjected hereafter will be certainly great. However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is unsufferable.
We cannot go on. We must go on.
Unite your total strength. Cultivate the ways of rectitude, foster nobility of spirit, and work with resolution, so that you may enhance the innate glory of the imperial state and keep pace with the progress of the world.
The poor quality of the recording and the arcane language of the speech had made the broadcast hard to understand. There was sure to be much confusion. To allay this, and to appeal to the general public to remain calm, there was an announcement by a well known radio presenter Tadaichi Hirakawa, stating in simple direct terms that Japan had indeed surrendered.
There had been no call for The Honourable Death, the ultimate sacrifice. I reassured Tomiko but she was still shaken, still fearful. She laughed again, cried again. For my part I was genuinely afraid that there might still be widespread despair, mass suicides. After we had listened I was unable to sleep, I got up in the middle of the night, sat in zazen, tried to focus my attention on the great chaotic koan all around. One hand clapping? The soundless sound? Death the destroyer of worlds.
