Right Meditative Union
8-Fold Path
Where am I? she asked herself when she regained full consciousness. She was in front of the Aioi bridge. It had been destroyed but remained intact. She vaguely recalled walking to that point. Her memory faded in and out. She turned her head and then the pain enveloped her. She nearly collapsed.
She saw that most of her clothes were gone, burned off. What little was left was nearly ash and crumbling, sticking to her skin. Her joints ached. Her body ached. Her head too. Her skin was blotched with oozing blisters: pus seeped out of them, all yellow or clear. Her breasts were fully uncovered except that they were burned black with slashes of red exposed. She was in her altogether, but her nakedness meant nothing to her.
Every step felt like she was lifting a concrete block. She came to a stop to mitigate the pain. It didn’t work. She twisted around with much difficulty to look at the nearby Shima Hospital. Most of it was destroyed but three of the walls remained standing, half standing. The thick concrete must’ve prevented total annihilation.
But what of her friends in the hospital? Iku-chan, Fumiko, Eiko… She tried calling out, but no sound came out of her mouth. Her throat was sore. She did taste the bitterness of charred remains. What about the patients? Hashimoto, Tabata, Miki… Dr. Shima? What happened to him? What could do all this? How many bombs fell? The Americans were so cruel. Karma in its purest form.
The samurai outside the Oni Room was laughing at her. No, there was something different about him. His countenance had changed. Not a smile…but a look of compassion. Or so she imagined.
Aiko-san, the girls, her children, were they all right? Kuniya, Takeshi? Okaasan? Was the Akamatsu Compound destroyed? She must get home. She knew that now; she remembered her resolve.
***
She turned and began walking eastward across the Aioi-bashi, with its t-shape, it was the most distinctive bridge in Hiroshima. She passed a trolley burning on it. The metal twisted in the flames. The seats warped. She turned her head to the river below and noticed that there was very little water in it. A harder look revealed skeletal black bodies stuck in the mud standing in grotesque poses of agony. In fact, all around her were piles of burnt corpses, hardly human, certainly dead. This must’ve been the captain’s fate…the Shimo Hospital staff…her friends.
She saw in the distance most buildings were razed, a few still stood but the bones of the buildings laid bare and smouldering in the muted sun. Prominent among them was the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, the grand building where her father had brought her when she was a little girl. The dome’s structure, though shattered, remained suspended as a hollow shell, intricate lace like a spider’s web. A few walls supported it but most of the Promotion Hall had lost its integrity and had collapsed to the ground as rubble. Its shiny floor smooth enough to slide along, the various halls leading to secret parts, the overhead lights that illuminated like the brightest day were gone, all gone.
What had happened? An incendiary bomb attack? Like Tokyo?
She fell to the red-and-white linoleum covered stairs and squeezed herself into the crease of wall and steps. A fierce wind roared up the staircase. A Fire-Wind. Her clothes, her body were set ablaze; her skin scalded, she twisted in pain, in agony, she screamed before crumpling into unconsciousness. She thought she heard her friends, patients screaming from below. But no, only silence as her mind darkened.
She stepped off the bridge with difficulty and stepped northward, towards home. It began to rain. The water was cool and a touch of relief for her. But then she realized, the rain was black. Black rain. Fragments pasted onto her skin, sealing the blisters, stopping the pus from oozing. For that she was grateful. But what is this black rain?
The riverbed underneath the bridge was turning wet with it. The rain turned into a torrent replenishing the evaporated river. Bodies in the mud floated to the surface and bobbed in place. Were they alive? Barely recognizable arms and legs reached for the skies from underneath the black water. An oni’s blood flowed towards the delta.
Bodies sank into mud, ash, and dust. All part of the scattered army of the dead.
***
From the other side of the bridge, she moved in the direction she thought was home. The trolley tracks were a good guide marker. Follow the river upstream. That was her plan. She struggled to get her legs to obey. They rebelled. Her left leg dragged behind as the right pulled her ahead. Her arms were numb and useless, her head heavy and dull. It was a wonder she remained upright.
The landscape around her was grey, from the sky to the ground…grey. Rubble in piles everywhere. Half-walls stood but looked like they were about to disintegrate and collapse. Black skeletons swaying in the hot wind.
No relief anywhere.
Occasionally along the way, she saw shadows against low walls or on the sidewalks. They were shaped like bodies. Otousan? Could it be? Had he returned to help her? She needed him now. But no, there were too many of them and they didn’t move with her.
They were the shadows of human beings incinerated against the wall and where they stood. She tried to close her eyes to the evaporated horror, but she could not. Her eyes were seared open, it seemed.
She could only move onwards towards home.
Where are the posters…the slogans? The comfort of the people. What good are slogans now?
Her mind wandered. Chisato was always bothering her growing up together. Make a kimono for me; teach me the latest odori; feed me. What a bother! The worse times came when she fought with Oniisan.
“Here, I’ll be the samurai,” Hideki said as he wielded his toy katana. “You be the Chankoro!”
“Why am I the Chinese?” Chisato complained. “I want to be the samurai.”
“Baka! I’m the boy.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“The Chankoro are like little girls. Weak and stupid. I am a man doing his duty for the glory of the Emperor!”
“Aho! I can do my duty for the Emperor too!”
“Don’t be ridiculous—”
“Will you commit hara kiri after you’ve done your duty?”
“What?”
“You know, cut your stomach open once you’re done.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I would! That’s what true samurai do,” Chisato insisted. “I bet it hurts.”
“Damare! What do you know?”
The shouting brought Chiemi to intercede. Always.
Hideki was the patriotic one with a vivid imagination. He constantly saw himself in battle, fighting whatever enemy of Japan he saw at the time: the Chinese, the Mongols, the Russians, the Koreans, the British, the Americans. Did he know the family was of the Warrior Class? Fight for peace. Did Okaa tell him? Chiemi had only heard about it the one time. And she never heard Hideki bragging about it. That was something he surely would’ve done.
Chiemi smiled, or thought she had, at the memories. She missed her siblings terribly and mother especially.
***
She remembered the day her mother called her to the kitchen.
“Ah, Chiemi-chan. Come learn how to make rice,” she said.
Chiemi must’ve been six or seven-years-old at the time. Okaasan thought it was time for her daughter to make the basic ingredient of a meal. Chiemi was tall for her age so she could reach all the supplies and lift the cooking implements.
From a large tin can, Okaa scooped four or five cups of rice into an iron pot. She filled it with water and swished it about with her hand three times, until the water was clear. She then measured the water up to the first knuckle on her right hand, adjusted the level, covered the pot, and placed it over the fire.
The rice boiled until it overflowed. Okaasan took it off the high heat and let it stand over a low fire. In approximately half an hour, the rice was ready, perfectly cooked.
“You see how easy that is, Chiemi-chan.”
Chiemi took it all in and marveled at how the grains of rice had become fluffy steamed rice. The steam from the open kama, rice pot, warmed her young, plump skin. It felt like…home.
She tried it herself the next time and, though it was a bit burnt, brown and too crisp on the bottom, she was forgiven and told she would get better as time progressed. Her mother was filled with love while she watched.
That Chiemi remembered.
Her father was a reserved, quiet man. He hardly ever expressed emotion. But she knew he loved her and the family. He made a good life for them in growing rice, in lumbering, and in fishing, with a fleet of boats. He built a beautiful compound with a distinctive bushy fence surrounding the estate. They never wanted for food, clothing, or anything really. Well, after he was gone, in the time of war, they experienced hard times just like everyone else. Maybe the various measures enacted by the government were necessary. She didn’t know; she ached for rice most of all, since it was in short supply, even in the Black Market.
When Otousan “left” them, Chiemi feared for the future.
Hideki should’ve taken over, ensuring our well-being. He is Oniisan. He just did that stupid thing he did and left. Selfish.
She suddenly realized her father had not known his grandsons particularly long. He would’ve loved them for their spirit and for their kawaii looks as they grew. But they were so precious when they were born. He would’ve spoiled them, that she knew. Even in the short time he was with them, he gave them candy indiscriminately.
And when she complained, “Why do you give them so much? You never gave me so much. You’ll rot out their teeth!”
“I am Ojiichan. Their teeth aren’t my responsibility,” he explained with a wry smile.
Kuniya, Takeshi. My babies, so precious…so precious.
She liked the hospital work most of all because it was a chance to get out of her parents’ house, away from her rambunctious sons. She loved them, but they were a handful at the best of times. More irritating than her younger sister had ever been. She never understood how her mother and Aiko could manage them. The hospital was a nice break. Had been.
Tears flowed down her cheeks…or at least, she thought she could feel the wet.
Maybe the Black Rain is my sorrow.