Mister Timeless Blyth, page 21
I repeated it to Tomiko. Nantoka naru.
Hai! she said. Yes.
In the matter of the black market, even Yamanashi said they were a necessary evil, a way to get trade and commerce up and running again. I realised he knew infinitely more about the subject than I did, so I did not presume to argue with him. Rather, I remained silent, kept my own counsel.
The Admiral was instrumental in commissioning a memorial stone to the young boys of Gakushuin killed in the war. They had marched off in their uniforms, marched off to die. The class of ’44, graduating before their term was ended, so they could go to the war.
Yamamashi said he had wept as they went, and he wept again as he unveiled the little stone monument in the campus grounds.
The boys had each composed a waka poem ending with the same lines.
To bloom
With the cherry blossoms
Of Mejirogaoka.
The words were carved on the stone, in the admiral’s calligraphy.
The waste of it, a generation lost. The cherry blossoms of Mejirogaoka.
I bowed my head every day when I passed the stone, on my way to work.
At home I have another beautiful piece of Yamanashi’s calligraphy, trailing elegantly down the page. It is written on a scroll of handmade paper and it hangs on the wall in my study. A rough translation would be: Changes arise one after another. Even the gods do not know how things will turn out.
That the words are inscribed by the admirable Admiral makes them all the more profound. profound.
My heart went out to the boys I was teaching. Their world had been turned on its head, their city blitzed and fire-bombed, their nation defeated. Now here they were, back at school, getting on with their lives.
As we moved into winter, the rooms were freezing, unheated, and the boys wore only their thin school tunics with at best a wool jumper underneath. Their uniforms were for the most part ill-fitting, outgrown, sleeves and trouser-legs too short, leaving wrists and ankles exposed. Often their hands were red-raw with cold and they rubbed them together for warmth, their breath clouding in the chill air. I saw some of them had chilblains, knuckles itching and sore.
Nothing daunted, I continued with my lessons, teaching the necessity of poetry and of zen, insisting they were one and the same. From the outset I tried to convey more than mere sentence patterns and rules of grammar. I taught through question and answer, where the question itself teaches some useful fact or raises an interesting problem. Or, I would give an answer and ask them to make up a question.
It’s usually made of wood.
It’s made of feathers.
Because a razor is very sharp.
We call it a spade.
They were rather like reverse koans, beginning with the answer and working back.
Another technique I used was the correction of sentences. Like the strange contrivances of the White Knight, they are my own invention.
He saw her earnestly.
He always insists his opinion.
War began to break out.
I feel regrettable about it.
My approach was, one might say, unorthodox. But then I never did believe in orthodoxies of any sort. (No -isms or -ologies please).
Away from the rather cloistered atmosphere of the school, the world continued on its own chaotic way, at its not-so-sweet will. My apprehension about the black market proved prescient. Tomiko came home one day from Ikebukuro, shaken and upset. She said there had been violence – a gang of thugs had smashed up some of the smaller stalls and beaten up the stallholders, getting away before the police arrived.
A week later there was a major incident near Shibuya Station. The papers described it as a confrontation between Taiwanese gangs and Japanese Yakuza over control of the markets. Hundreds of gang members were involved, fighting with clubs, metal pipes and even firearms. Policemen trying to contain the violence were among those injured and killed.
A necessary evil?
Yamanashi said time would tell.
Tomiko shopped where she could, paid a little more. We managed.
The very heart of my work, it might be said, was the teaching of the Crown Prince, Akihito. I had actually seen him before we were formally introduced. Close to my accommodation at the school, next to the stables, was a small open field, and one day as I was passing, I looked up and saw a young boy riding a white horse round the perimeter. Two attendants who looked like military men were stationed by the gate, and I realised the boy on the horse was the Crown Prince himself. I stopped for a moment to watch, surprised and intrigued. The scene was utterly matter-of-fact – nothing special – a young boy on horseback, trotting round a field – and yet at the same time it was quite extraordinary. This was the future Emperor of Japan, riding a white horse. The moment was timeless, the image heraldic. One of the guards looked across and caught my eye. I bowed and walked on.
My first formal meeting with Akihito was in a little ante-room at the Palace. I was accompanied by Yamanashi, and two or three officials were also present, among them the Chamberlain Mr Sumikura.. The boy stood to greet me, gave a little bow and held out his hand to shake mine. I was touched by the gesture, and by just how young he actually was. The effect was heightened by the fact that his hair was cropped short, close to the skull, a cut that might be military or monastic, but only seemed to emphasise his youth, the fine shape of his head. He wore the regulation school uniform, navy blue, with the tunic buttoned up to the neck. His, however was embellished with a little crest at the collar in the form of a silver chrysanthemum, the symbol both of his Imperial family and of Gakushuin.
He said, as he had no doubt been instructed, I am very happy to meet you, Mr Buraisu Sensei. Thank you for coming from England to teach me.
I did not think it would be polite (or politic) to explain that I had not crossed oceans and continents for the express purpose of being his tutor, but had lived in Japan for some time, notably as a guest of the Japanese government in Kobe. No. Instead I bowed and thanked him and said it was a great honour and privilege for me to be here.
My sessions with the Crown Prince were every Thursday at the same time – two o’clock in the afternoon at the Imperial Palace. So I came to think, Thursday is the Crown Prince’s day, and I sometimes wondered if perhaps the Crown Prince thought, Thursday is Blyth Sensei’s day. Who knows? (I never asked him!)
In the end (if it be the end) I taught the Crown Prince for some eighteen years, until my recent demise – no, not demise, not yet! The word I am looking for is decline.
In those early days there was a certain awkwardness. The Prince was young, with a natural, innate deference towards his elders (and in my case, a respect towards one designated as his teacher). He had also been born to privilege in the highest degree – the boy would be the 125th Emperor of Japan. Our circumstances, our everyday lives, could not have been more different.
All of this, combined with the fact that his English was as yet limited, made for a kind of restraint between us.
I noticed it was worse when, as was usually the case, there were other adults in the room – one of the Chancellors or a teacher from the school. The boy would invariably defer to them, glancing in their direction before speaking. I would also sometimes wonder how much he was following what I said. I found myself recalling my own earliest schooldays, in Leytonstone, my young self gazing intently at the teacher in the hope that my wide-eyed earnestness would deflect him from seeing I was taking in not a single word. When the teacher eventually realised this, he became very angry at me. Looking back I realised the teacher must have felt insulted by my behaviour (and understandably so). I was regularly bottom of the class because of a congenital inability to master anything arithmetical. (Even today I am unable to add up a column of figures, or do simple multiplication or division). I can only assume that part of my brain never quite engaged. The only things that interested me were insects and religion – subjects more connected than many might suppose.
At secondary school, the only aspects of mathematics that held any interest were a few elements in geometry, an explanation or a proof that worked visually, with an inherent elegance, a clarity that gave a sense of structure, an underlying pattern. This gave an occasional frisson of excitement, but it was as nothing compared to the awakening I felt when I first read poetry.
At secondary school I had a teacher called Mr Goodspeed who for some unknown reason was known to his pupils as Mr Bloodknot. He taught us English and music, and in retrospect I must owe him a great deal. But my abiding memory of him is his animosity towards anything that smacked of religion, he himself being a self-declared atheist (and humanist, and socialist). His naturally red face would get redder still as he argued some moot point of religious teaching (which he dismissed as dogma) with any of us who dared to mention God or quote scripture.
The only thing that incensed him even more was when he found a boy eating sweets in class. I was guilty of it myself, breaking off a square of chocolate from a bar in my pocket and surreptitiously munching it. (My love of chocolate has become a recurring theme in these pages). If Bloodknot did catch a boy out he would confiscate the sweets and make a great show of eating them himself while he carried on teaching.
This, not surprisingly, annoyed the boys, and some of them decided to take revenge. They bought a small box of chocolates, scooped out the insides and filled them with pepper. One boy by the name of Evans volunteered – he hid the box under the lid of his desk and pretended to eat. The teacher pounced and snatched the box, selected one of the sweets and popped it in his mouth. His discomfort was clear, he sweated as his face grew redder still. He glared at Evans and around the room at the rest of us. But he kept chewing the sweet and swallowed it down, all the while looking fierce but continuing with his lesson, closing the chocolate box and throwing it in the bin.
Strangely, the effect on the boys was to engender admiration for the teacher, for the sheer stoicism of his response, and thereafter we simply stopped eating sweets in class.
Mr Goodspeed, I remember, was killed at the Somme, as was the boy Evans.
War and the pity. A foreign field.
At some stage I found myself telling the Crown Prince about Mr Bloodknot-Goodspeed.
The Crown Prince was mainly interested in science, which I have always believed to be the enemy of mankind. I made no secret of this, or of my love for poetry and religion. The Crown Prince had grave doubts about both, thinking that they could easily be used to hoodwink mankind.
He enjoyed the school story immensely, awed by the audacity of the boys, laughing at the thought of the red-faced teacher and full of admiration for his strength and restraint.
So we persevered, His Royal Highness and I. We stuck to our task, and gradually a mutual respect began to grow, which flowered into fondness and a kind of friendship. From the beginning I enjoyed bringing him books to read. (Some of them I asked Ma to send from home). I gave him books on nature study, field guides to British wildlife, and he liked them very much. It was not far from there to how the poets saw nature, to the world of haiku, seeing-into-the-life-of-things, to animism and zen. Little by little, we found common ground and learned from each other.
I first met Emperor Hirohito in person at a reception in the Imperial Palace, a low-key affair I was told, connected with the re-opening of Gakushuin. I had no idea what to expect. I had seen photographs of the Emperor, this controversial figure, in uniform, in traditional robes, in formal western dress, a dinner suit and white tie. The English and American press had published brutal caricatures of him, dressed as a military leader, or in an ill-fitting business suit, affably doffing his hat while standing on a mountain of skulls.
On this occasion he wore a morning coat and striped trousers. I stood in a line of guests, waiting to be presented to him. He stopped briefly in front of each one, gave a slight nod of the head and spoke a few words of acknowledgement, recognition, benediction. I noticed that everyone without exception seemed to take a little half-step back away from him, as if fearful of encroaching on the divine presence. Any courtiers or attendants taking their leave of him did so with a curious crab-like movement, stepping backwards, bent double.
As he and his entourage moved along the line towards me, I was overwhelmed, not for the first time, by an air of utter unreality. This small, slightly-built man pausing before me was Hirohito, Emperor of Japan, still seen by many of his subjects as an incarnation, a direct descendant of Amaterasu the Sun-Goddess.
From every kind of man / Obedience I expect / I’m the Emperor of Japan…
So sang the Mikado. I silenced that particular voice and bowed from the waist. The Emperor gave a barely perceptible nod of the head, caught my eye briefly, registered a momentary curiosity and said he had once visited England. He had been very well received there, and King George V had made him very welcome. In England, he said, there was much to admire.
Then he moved on, along the line.
Later I was introduced to the Empress Kojun who said she had heard about me from the Crown Prince. Once again I gave my deepest bow and said how honoured I was to be teaching her son.
That was when she surprised me, saying something in Japanese which her attendant translated after a moment’s hesitation as, You are solid built.
I must have registered confusion. Her Majesty said, in English (with a most definite twinkle in her eye), Mister Buraisu, you are very fat.
I have told this story often, and it always makes me smile. I gathered myself, said it was probably on account of my vegetarian diet. (Elephants are large, I said, and they eat nothing but leaves…) I patted my stomach.
She laughed and repeated what I had said.
An elephant!
There was one more member of the Royal family I had yet to meet, and that was the Dowager Empress Sadako, mother of the Emperor, grandmother of the Crown Prince. The opportunity arose when I was invited to a kind of soiree at her official residence. (Part of the building had been destroyed in an air raid but it had been rebuilt, restored. Her philosophy, often stated, was that life-must-go-on, and with as little fuss as possible). When she entered the room, she impressed with her sheer presence. Small, though no smaller than most Japanese women, she was also sturdy, had an air of strength and poise. She wore a black ankle-length high-collared dress, offset by a long necklace of pearls. She looked about her with a brightness in the eyes, a keenness, a genuine engagement.
She approached me, gave a smile, said she was very happy to meet me and had heard about my interest in Buddhism. She asked if I was familiar with the Lotus Sutra. and the Nichiren faith.
I bowed, recited, Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. I bow to Kannon Bodhisattva.
She looked delighted.
A most powerful mantra, she said, nodding.
I said I very much liked the story of Nisshin Shonin, the founder of the Nichiren sect. He had fallen foul of the Shogun Yoshinori, been tortured to make him give up his faith. As a red-hot cauldron was placed on his head he chanted the mantra and was unharmed.
Yes! she said. The fire did not burn him!
I thought at the time (and I think it still) that my old Ma would have been quite taken with her and the liking would have been reciprocated. (The Dowager Empress taking tea and scones in Ma’s front room. Ma sipping green tea and eating mochi in the Imperial Palace. Both of them setting the world to rights).
The more I read about the Dowager Empress, the more impressed I was. She had been unashamedly outspoken in her opposition to the war. (Perhaps for that reason she had spent the better part of the war years out of the public eye, at the Imperial residence in Numazu). She had long been a patron of the International Red Cross – there were newspaper photographs of her visiting victims of the great Kanto earthquake, speaking with what looked like real concern to a group of awe-struck children.
This, perhaps, was a way forward for the royal family, a way the Dowager Empress had been showing them all along.
I had liked the Americans I met in Kobe, Bob Aitken chief among them, and pace Mr Olsen from Pittsburgh. But I had no idea what to expect from the occupying forces. I was afraid they might behave with the brutishness of the conqueror, trampling roughshod over their defeated enemy. And no doubt there were many who did behave like that. I heard harrowing stories. But the men with whom I had direct dealings were intelligent, urbane and remarkably cultured.
Faubion Bowers was as exotic and aristocratic as his name. He had actually travelled to Japan as a student before the war. He had developed a love for Japanese culture, particularly Kabuki. Then he had served as a translator and had risen through the ranks to be General MacArthur’s aide-de-camp, and found himself part of the advance party, sent ahead to prepare for the General’s arrival. So he was the first enemy soldier to be received on Japanese soil after the war.
The delegation of Japanese officials sent to greet the Americans at Atsugi Air Base waited with understandable trepidation. How would these rough barbarians treat them? What demands would they make? I could imagine their astonishment when this tall, eager young man strode towards them, hand outstretched in greeting, and the first thing he wanted to know was whether Kabuki Master Uzaemon was still alive.
Another member of MacArthur’s delegation was Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Henderson. On first meeting he impressed me as a quiet scholarly man. It was only when he started discussing haiku and saying how much he admired my book, that I realised he was the Harold G Henderson who had published a book of his own translations – The Bamboo Broom – which I had read and appreciated. I said in its way it was a little masterpiece. (His versions of the poems were rhymed, which to my ear was jarring, but this was nitpicking pedantry on my part). I was overjoyed that men of this calibre, showing this degree of empathy with Japan and its culture, had been given a role to play.
