Suddenly it was April, and the busy time of starting new classes, and long, almost endless meetings in the department ensued. Springtime that year was stunning, with the cherry blossoms praising the sun and skies all over Kobe, and the hills singing almost as cheerfully as the Salzburgian variety depicted in movie lore. Unless you’ve lived in Japan through a long winter, it’s hard to communicate the elegance of the cherry blossoms in their full glory. The beauty of striding down the hill to the university, and, on weekends, walking the well-marked paths of the nearby national park, or driving Richard’s Nissan up into the craggy canyons and valleys of central Japan, all punctuated by rapturous cherry blossoms, was enough to send my benighted spirit soaring and assure me it was still good to be alive in Japan.
Work, more than the wonders of nature, was quite redemptive in that respect. I had terrific classes my final year in Japan. One in particular was a group of seniors I met with weekly, outside the classroom, for informal discussions on a variety of topics. These conversations took place at what I had dubbed our “Munchen coffee-train,” a regular meeting I had managed to keep going for almost two years, except for breaks in August and January. Mondays and Fridays at 3:00 p.m., the coffee train kept chugging along. Some of the students who came regularly had been in classes with me over the entire time of my stay, and most were young women: charming, shy, with their long black hair and irregular yet beaming smiles. They were excellent in conversational English, and wanted to stay in practice. Yuko, tall, willowy, and with that mildly erotic innocence that so many college women have in Japan, had been around the longest. She had an amazing knowledge of old British and American rock and roll, which obviously gave us an immediate connection. Now that she was graduating, she spoke hopefully of going to live in London and working in some aspect of the music business. As a senior, she came to almost every meeting of the coffee-train, along with her silent and rather disturbing cohort, Minami, who still could not bear to look me in the eyes and almost never spoke, but who laughed even if the jokes were not funny to anyone else, covering her mouth obsessively. I had heard only about a dozen sentences issue from her in over eighteen months.
Yuko and Minami had been twinned in my mind since I began teaching in Kobe. In other cultures, one might think they were lovers, but that did not appear to be the case. Perhaps they were just friends spending time together. I sometimes got the feeling Yuko was waiting for me to make the move on her—an energy that eluded me, though in truth, the thought did cross my mind. But then, all at once, she made a move, something I thought I would never see from a Japanese-born woman. It was not long after my falling out with Sensei. Considering what she said to me one late Friday afternoon—“Jack-san, you look so lonely”—I must have been looking pretty forlorn indeed.
I glanced up at her, and caught a glimpse of something warm and sparkly in her dark eyes. “I’m OK. Just tired, I guess.”
Minami was not there, probably away on one of those rare occasions when the two were not bound together. In fact, we were all alone at the Munchen. The sun was drooping below the trees, the barista in a back room. Yuko hesitated shyly, then pounced. “I’ve been wanting to ask you … possibly, can I cook you dinner tonight? Do you like yakisoba?”
I admit the combination of fried noodles and several bottles of cold Asahi Dry, followed by a lusty encounter with a young, beautiful student was a powerful temptation. But somehow I begged off and got away with my scruples intact. That surely sounds Spartan to me now, in my dying days, when some hot noodles with Yuko sounds like a pleasant prospect. It remains memorable all these years later because it was the only time I was offered such an opening—at least so far as I was able to pick up. And who knows? Maybe Yuko just wanted to feed me and practice her English. But that night, lying in bed, again my fantasies drifted off toward a detailed bodily investigation of Japanese women. A “close reading” and analysis, as I might undertake on a poem by Ezra Pound. Eventually, of course, my imagination led me, lamely, to Mika. Her overpowering effects on me had a claw in my brain that I had no luck pulling out—and I admit, still haven’t.
A few of the male students also came regularly to the coffee-train. Some of these were also students I had met the first year and who kept coming back for more. Tohru, Eddie, and Kenichi among them. Eddie was tall (6’3”), and he played forward on the school basketball club. Once he learned of my days as a gym-rat back in Indiana, he invited me to scrimmage with them, which I did every Wednesday afternoon for about a year. (He could actually dunk, a pretty unusual ability among Japanese players, who tend to have hands too small to palm a regulation basketball, and arms and legs slightly shorter than they would be on North Americans of the same height.) One evening we rented the classic film Hoosiers, and watched it together. I laughed at the dubbed Gene Hackman chewing out the players in a high-pitched, nasal Japanese voice.
The star of the senior class was Kenichi, still hanging around me, and still desperately dreaming of securing a job like mine. He loved American literature and spoke eloquently of the haunting tales of Poe and Hawthorne, considering them to be very much akin to the ghost stories so prevalent in old Japanese writings, including the Noh dramas, many of which were preserved by those lonely and eccentric American expatriates, Ernest Fenollosa and Lafcadio Hearn, Kenichi’s favorite. Kenichi often wore an old blue sweatshirt with PENN STATE emblazoned on it, commemorating a long visit he had made to see a friend who lived in State College, PA. While there, he visited New York City, Boston, and Washington DC—all on his own, via buses and trains. He was understandably proud of this accomplishment. I thought so highly of his abilities that I encouraged him to think about graduate school in the States. I eventually wrote some letters of recommendation for Kenichi, and he managed to get a TA position at the University of Texas, and took a PhD there. That led him to a decent job at Hiroshima University, a position he still holds, along with some prestige and notoriety within the American studies community throughout Japan. He has translated numerous works into Japanese, and produced a fine volume describing the Hawthorne-Melville relationship, making brilliant use of their letters and journals.
Kenichi’s success is a source of great satisfaction for me. It makes one feel like a midwife, I suppose, an academic birthing process that one both inspires and oversees. He occasionally still sends me letters, nowadays mostly e-mails, and it all started with those happy coffee-train meetings at the Munchen Café. It was a mild form of bohemianism, in their eyes, and I was the reigning presence, a pseudo-Walt Whitman at the head of the table. At the time I saw it as all about the students. But eventually I discovered how important this little group was, not just for the students, but also for the maintenance of my own sanity and enjoyment during those last alienated months in Kobe. I found myself looking forward to the coffee-train more than just about anything else; to tell the truth, I think it was the students like Eddie and Kenichi (and yes, Yuko) who kept me dragging myself out of bed each morning.
The Munchen Café and the coffee-trains helped to fill the hole in my life that had been produced by my falling out with Sensei. But the rift kept gnawing at me. I knew I must wait and not initiate anything, or at least I felt that way. But for several long months, I heard not a word from Sensei. I even wished to hear from Miyamoto, in the vain hope he might deliver another invitation or some request for my assistance. These messages never arrived, however. When I saw Miyamoto on the campus grounds, he forged ahead without acknowledging my presence. I had my own pride, and never once initiated a conversation with him. We were total strangers, functionally speaking.
Finally, I admitted that I missed seeing Mika as well. I fantasized about her more and more, often as I lay awake in my bed late at night. My room would be dark and quiet, with ambient noise drifting up from the late night taxis on the streets below. I could easily conjure images of her brilliantly fashioned silk garments, and the swaying black hair, and the way she moved so gracefully in and out of the room. I even recalled her particular odors: the faint sweetness of some Parisian scent, or the mild dustiness of some skin powder that she was fond of brushing on to her slender torso and unseen legs.
Yes, it finally dawned on me that I needed very much to see Mika again—and on more intimate terms, perhaps, than we would ever be able to achieve. I also wondered if she thought about me in similar ways, in the dark as the breezes fluttered through the open curtains on a sultry midsummer night. But I did not act on my desires.
Days and then weeks paraded forward, and soon enough we were deep into autumn. The mountain forests were changing their colors in anticipation of the final blaze of glory in late October. The weather was sunny, almost perfect, with brisk breezes offering the balancing counterpoint to the day’s heat. The clear air of the mountain heights was rejuvenating to me in ways that almost nothing else in Japan was, at least since my time with Sensei had evidently run its course. And the many long months of silence led me to believe that it had.
One day, while driving toward Kyoto with no particular destination or agenda, it hit me that my time in Japan was nearing its end, unless I could come up with a compelling reason to stay. I thought about American football, of all things, wondering how the Colts were doing, and suddenly decided that three years was enough. There was no compelling reason, and it was time to go home. I could not put off finding a permanent position any longer. But then another, more vital realization hit me, again, suddenly out of the blue: the only truly compelling reason to stay would have to be Mika. She was still stuck in my brain, though I had not seen her in nearly ten months.
My car probably played a major part in my thinking that day. As cultural critics are fond of reminding us, cars are quintessential American symbols of power, movement, possibility, and even sexuality. I suppose, then, it makes perfect sense that my own cogitations about lost love came tumbling together one late October day as I drove through the hills. Almost without realizing it, I pulled off the road and sat there for a while. I remember it was just past 10:00 a.m. Then, I suddenly recognized what I had to do. I backed the car into a dirt pathway and turned around to head back to Kobe, spraying loose gravel into the ferns nearby. Other issues besides trees and mountains pressed into my mind with urgency and speed, and I had to attend to them, abruptly and certainly. Once and for all.
The thing is, I remembered that conversation one day with Mika, about the tiny farmer’s market that congregated around one of the train stations near Sensei’s house on Saturdays. She had said she often went there on Saturdays to buy flowers and fresh fruit for Sensei. Just like that, I had hatched my plan. I would go to the market, paperback tucked into my back pocket, and find a decent vantage point from where I could sit nonchalantly and await her arrival. It could all seem like a coincidence, but it would afford me the possibility of talking with her, and possibly meeting on a more regular basis.
And that’s what I did. By the time I got back to town that day, it was already well past noon, and most of the merchants had begun closing up shop for the day. I sat there for an hour or two, but saw no sign of Mika. Undeterred, the next week I got up very early, took my place between the station and the market and waited. Hours later, as the monotony of the watch began to take its toll, I decided to pack it in. This same procedure was repeated the following Saturday, when there was a bit more chill in the air. After a couple hours, a slight drizzle began falling and a few of the sellers began packing away their wares. I was just on the verge of calling it a morning when I looked up the hill toward the station. There she was. Mika, carrying a canvas bag in each hand, and wearing of all things, blue jeans, a denim shirt, and a large straw hat. Her clothing suggested a new side of her personality, making her appear as American as John Wayne, or at least like someone who might be with the Duke in The Searchers or The Quiet Man.
I called out, like a loud American, “Mika-san! Hello!” And, as I did so, I jumped up and began walking briskly across the street toward her.
She hesitated, then smiled. “Jack! What a surprise!” Her smile seemed genuine. “O-hisashi-buri desu! It’s been so long! We both miss seeing you, though Uncle is too proud to tell you this. He has mentioned you more than once.”
Even after almost three years in Japan, I was still having trouble decoding the local stylings of sentences like these.
“Should I contact him, then? It would be a pleasure to visit him again, and it was a very bad day when we … parted ways.”
She shook her head. “No, that would not work, I’m afraid. He is … very proud. He is just too set in his ways.” She had a plaintive look in her eyes and she looked up directly into mine. “But we have both missed you, very much so.”
If I had ever wanted to grab her and plant one on her luscious lips, it was at that moment, standing amidst the chaos of a noonday street scene as the rain began changing from drizzle into a more sustained shower. We were under the awning of a furniture store, and I did manage to find the resolve to take her hand. “Mika, can we see each other? I mean—can we meet, maybe have dinner sometime?”
The next minute was one of the longest and most painful stretches of time in my entire life. I awaited her verdict, heart in my throat. Then, she looked up again. “Well, Jack-san. We both know … well, that what you are suggesting is not exactly … so proper. However—” She looked around, as if she expected someone to be watching her. “I do know a very fine fish restaurant, down by the seashore. The owner is an old friend of my family, and if we were to go there, well … I think it would be acceptable. If you will allow me, I would even like to treat you to lunch. Do you like fish?”
I was in heaven. I had asked the unaskable question, it seemed, and somehow had received the unthinkable response. “I live for fish!” I blurted out. If she had invited me to a restaurant where they served steamed hardware, or bowls of doorknobs, I would have been just as delighted. So we arranged a date and time the following week.
And so on the designated day, we met at Sannomiya Station and walked up to where I had stashed my car nearby. From there we rode down the hill and turned east, passing through a rather seedy part of town. This actually surprised me a bit, because I would have guessed that her restaurant choice would be splendid and rich in every way. But the restaurant’s location “down by the seashore” referred to the unpleasant, formerly industrialized areas close to the port, and the restaurant itself was a very small space hidden beneath a railroad trestle.
From the outside, it looked sleepy and dirty, but when she led me in, she said a very long hello to the owner, who let out a boisterous “Irashai-mase!” Welcoming customers is high art in Japan. We found ourselves seated at a long bar overlooking the cooking units. The chef’s specialties included both sashimi and various kinds of grilled fish.
I was a Midwest boy, of course, so until my stay in Japan, my idea of a “fish restaurant” was catfish, trout, or the local Long John Silver’s. I had, of course, learned to eat a variety of fish in Japan and I did like standard forms of sushi, but this place was for connoisseurs and it featured all kinds of mysteries. And, despite my years in Japan I had never quite become an aficionado of exotic sashimi—raw fish, without the rice. I squirmed slightly as I watched the waitress bring out a long, blackened fish to one of the tiny tables, where two large women immediately attacked it with their chopsticks.
“So, Jack-san? What kinds of dishes do you prefer? Do you like fugu?” She meant blowfish, which, if not prepared correctly, contains lethal toxins that can kill the unsuspecting customer. Fugu is, at least according to some, one of the gold standards for true connoisseurs.
What should I say? I did not want to appear a novice, so I said, “Maybe, if you want some.”
Surprisingly, she shook her head derisively. “Yada!” (Japanese for Yuk!) “It is not one of my favorites. Please tell me, what dishes do you like, Jack?”
In a glass case before us were fresh slabs of all kinds of fish, nestled in crushed ice, beside various other side dishes. Along the far wall was a massive aquarium, filled with lively fish that nonchalantly went about their fishy lives, awaiting their sudden execution in the interests of culinary teleology. Customers could simply point a finger at one of their fattened number and within minutes it would be served on a platter, still twitching if you were lucky. The walls were jammed with pictures of sumo wrestlers—the proprietor was a huge fan, Mika said, and the place was a favorite when the wrestlers were in town for the Osaka tournament each spring.
“Mika, it would please me very much if you chose some of your favorite dishes, to sample.” And so she began quizzing the chef on what was fresh, what was best that day, and so on. The method of the place was to pour endless small glasses of cold beer or sake, and then to sample dish after dish after dish of tiny but beautifully rendered variations of fish, fish, fish. Mika basically gave free rein to the chef, whom she called Takata-san. She addressed him also with the term taisho, a designation of the excellence of his craft. He was a large, balding, prodigiously-bellied man who easily and quickly produced some of the most delectable food I had ever encountered.
One by one, she ordered up a variety of Japanese delicacies for me to sample. And she refused to tell me what they were until after I had sampled them. This put me in an unfamiliar and awkward position, but I am proud to say that I passed with flying colors. We began with some of the famous local octopus from Akashi: chewy, but delicious and cold, dipped in the soy sauce, spiced up with wasabi. Each small sample was followed with something new to me—succulent, sliced sea cucumbers (namako) in soy sauce, vinegar, and grated white radish; fish foi gras, another delectable treat with a cheesecake-like texture (ankimo); and jellyfish with cucumber salad (kurage). So far, so good. But one final dish that made me sweat and immediately go for the beer was the crab brains (kanimiso). It looked to my untrained eyes like a dab of dark greyish toothpaste. Mika smiled, and told me it was one of her favorites, and so she had saved it for last. But for me, it was the hardest to swallow, and it made me slightly light-headed once I discovered what it really was. But for the pleasure of dining with Mika, I gritted my teeth and took the medicine.
As we ate and sipped our beer, we talked about movies, books, museums in Tokyo, visits to China and Korea, my own travels in Japan, and so on. The topics came and went quickly, like the selections of old Japanese enka music that wafted through the tiny restaurant. I asked about one lovely song. Mika tilted her head, listening intently for a moment. “Ah yes! Hibari Misora. One of the legends.” She explained that enka was a sort of Japanese rhythm and blues, featuring wistful country-style lyrics, heavily nostalgic and heavily stylized.
As the music played, the television was left on, soundless as an NHK announcer read the news. Customers came and went, some lounging around for another beer or sake, while others stood waiting for a table of which there were only six in total, lined along the wall directly behind us. It was a popular place.
Suddenly, about an hour into our lunch, Mika noticed the time. “Ah, sensei. I must be going. I almost forgot I have an appointment!” She immediately gathered her things, and nodded toward Takata that we were done. There would be no bill, since exchanging money would seem crass for a regular like her, and it would be settled later. So I have no idea about the total cost, but I can safely say that this little joint under the railroad tracks ended up being the place where I enjoyed the most expensive meal I ever had in three years in Japan. And it was good—but, even better, far, far better, was my time with Mika alone. Or so I thought.
The taxi she had requested arrived quickly, and she jumped in. She rolled down the window to say farewell. I blundered out, “Mika, can we do this again? I owe you a meal. I need to pay you back.”
She waited a moment. Traffic bustled by. “Perhaps, Jack-san. But I am going to Tokyo next week to see my father. And I don’t know when I can return—maybe not for another two or three weeks, at least.”
Disappointing news, which I think she easily sensed. The taxi began inching away. “But maybe when I return? You obviously know that I come to the market almost every Saturday morning, yes?” Smiling, she threw these promising questions out the window at me. I tried desperately to think of the right word for parting. But before I could answer, she was gone.
A couple days later, I was snoozing on my sofa, television on but muted, and some Japanese enka droning on from my stereo—Hibari Misaro, in fact. Suddenly, a fist began pounding gently on my front door. I say “pounding gently” quite specifically, since Japanese people rarely seem to be over-emotional in anything, including attempts to appear forceful. The knocking startled me, one of those sudden awakenings when you feel you are either drowning or being threatened by some unseen force, when you don’t even recognize you had dozed off in the first place. Silence, then more pounding, slightly less gently, then a muffled, “Jack-san.”
Miyamoto? I checked my watch. It was late, nearly eleven o’clock. What was he doing pounding on my door at this hour?
“Hold on, I’m coming,” I called. I slipped on my robe and stumbled over to the door, kept the chain secured, and cracked it open. I rubbed my eyes. “Yes? It is late and I was asleep. What do you want, sensei?”
“Jack-san, can I speak to you a moment?” That was when I noticed the other man—very large and not very intelligent-looking—looming about five feet behind Miyamoto. He stood as if he were at military attention, with his hands clasped behind his back. He did not look at me. He looked like an enforcer of some sort, like someone out of a B movie. His flashy clothing, deeply wrinkled face, generally greasy appearance, and what looked like a nasty scar from a knife fight on his right ear indicated that he had some sort of mob connection, what the Japanese call yakuza. He fit all the stereotypes of a Japanese wise guy. Or, perhaps my memory is again playing tricks on me. In any case, I was suddenly scared and certainly on the defensive as I unlatched the door.
“Yes, sensei? What can I do for you, at this very late hour?” I wanted to be sure he caught my irritation, even with Guido the Goon lurking behind him. So I yawned and stretched my arms, just to make sure he got it.
Miyamoto had a devilish attitude about him and took his time. He peered behind me into the condo, as if he were looking for someone else. Spying on me, I thought, looking to see if I had a girl up there. “Jack-san, we are here on behalf of the Goto family. I need to … explain some things to you. May we come in?” I noticed his use of the “we” plural and wondered if Guido understood English. He had not moved or seemingly even taken a breath since I opened the door.
“It is very late, sensei. Please just tell me what it is you want.” I remained firmly in the doorway, blocking their entrance. A rather ballsy move, in retrospect.
My brazen attitude seemed to catch him off guard. Then he said, “This will not take long. I just thought that you might like some … privacy, in case your neighbors were listening.”
“My neighbors are all asleep. Like I was. What is it?”
He looked down the hallway both directions. “Very well. I’m here to … advise you concerning your relations with Mika-san. It is in your best interests to leave her alone and to never see her again.”
So it was about Mika.
“Relations? What are you saying?”
He cleared his throat, smiling, ready to go for broke. “Sensei … we know that you met with her last Saturday and that you dined with her at Takata’s place. You insult me to suggest I am not fully aware of these actions.”
“These actions? You make it sound sinister. It was just lunch.”
“Nevertheless.” He relished this word, maybe it was the word of the day on some English vocabulary schedule he had. “Nevertheless, such a rendezvous cannot be repeated. You are to stay away from her. Is that understood?”
“What are you telling me? Are you threatening me? What if I do see her again? Anyway—we do plan to meet again.” I lied. “I promised her.” Sort of true.
Miyamoto briefly rubbed his ear, then down the side of his face. Guido stood eerily by, statue-like. Finally, he spoke. “I think you would be much better off canceling those plans. I am here to say that it is in your best interests not to approach Mika-san again in … such a manner. She is … even now, being prepared for other plans.”
Other plans? “Who sent you here?”
“As I said, I have come on behalf of the Goto family.”
“Professor Goto?”
“That is not important.” He paused, scratched himself. “But maybe you should understand—more fully. Most directly, I have come here on behalf of Mika-san’s father, Mr. Goto.”
So now Miyamoto was tied up with the other Goto. Or was he? What did he imply with that phrase, “most directly”? My head was still fuzzy from being awakened so suddenly, and something alien was swishing loudly through my bowels, alerting me to the necessity of relieving myself in the very near future. I had no more questions and no curt reply. So I simply said, “Is there anything else?” Suddenly Guido shifted his weight, and crossed his burly arms over his chest. He now looked like one of those demon warriors guarding the gates of a mountain temple. All he needed was a fiery sword.
“Yes, Jack-san. I need to know that you … understand this arrangement.”
Arrangement? Another vague Japanese styling. “If you mean, will I keep away from Mika, you can tell your boss that he has no power to tell me how to live my life.”
This seemed to amuse Miyamoto, and a sudden gleam came to his eyes. He even chuckled, then waited a moment before saying, “Yes, of course, I will be happy to convey your message. Nevertheless”—again, he used his fancy new word—“I must warn you that Mr. Goto does not like hearing … disappointing news. Are you certain that this is what I should tell him?”
Oddly, Miyamoto’s line about conveying “disappointing news” to his stern boss reminded me of some dialogue from The Godfather, and I suddenly beheld in my mind the image of a bloody horse head turning up in my bed. Maybe he had recently seen the film, and wanted to act like the cagy Robert Duvall character. Maybe he was imagining himself as some kind of consigliere to the great Goto dynasty. Delusions of grandeur, I thought.
I was tired of Miyamoto’s insinuations, but nevertheless, the thought of Guido banging my head on pavement, or throwing me down a flight of stairs, was not very pleasant either. “Tell him … that I only had a lunch with Mika, and that we are only friends.” Then I really hit bottom. “And that I will leave her alone and have no … romantic plans for her. Is that better?”
He smiled his sinister smile. “Yes, sensei. Much better that I take that message to Mr. Goto. I know you would not wish to … have another late night visit from my colleague, Endo-san.” He gestured behind him to his silent partner, who noticed his name and Miyamoto’s gesture, and bowed slightly in my general direction. “Thank you for your time, Jack-san. I will let you return to your rest.”
And without a word, I slammed the door, though gently, in the slightly rebellious manner the Japanese style allows.
By now, winter was nearly unchallenged. Cold winds were a daily routine, snow or freezing rain were regular visitors. Oily puddles turned the streets into obstacle courses. As my final Thanksgiving and Christmas in Japan approached, I was becoming haggard and ready to pack it in. The only thought keeping me engaged was the slim idea of rejuvenating my friendship with Mika. The fish restaurant had now become, at least in my feverish imagination, the mythologized highlight of my three years in Kobe. But Miyamoto’s tacky threats, along with his intimidating, tattooed sidekick Endo, got its claw as firmly lodged inside my brain as Mika’s luminous face—so much so, that I found it hard to reconcile the two competing urges: 1) go after Mika, or 2) save my own neck from being crushed by some yakuza thug.
Nevertheless (as Miyamoto might say), I could not let my nemesis’s threats—or, for that matter, the Moloch of Japanese manners and ideology—determine my fate, Endo’s surly demeanor notwithstanding. It took me almost a month to gather the nerve, but I succeeded. She had mentioned that she might return from Tokyo within a month. So I returned to the Saturday morning farmer’s market. The first week, four hours of lurking proved futile, as did my efforts the next several weeks. Finally, just a few days before Christmas, the sun appeared, the temperature turned balmy, and right on cue, as if the fortuitous weather were an omen, Mika appeared in full radiance. This time, she was walking along with an elderly, conservatively-dressed Japanese woman. Both were laughing together about something. The older woman giggled in the typical understated style of refined Japanese women, with hand over mouth. Mika, whose hands were once again occupied with two filled shopping bags, was laughing out loud, her mouth open, in a boisterous and unapologetic fullness. Her clothing, like her laugh, was again that of a typical Midwestern American girl—bandana, denims, sweatshirt, and boots. It was an image that surprised and delighted me, and I have never managed to shake it in all the years since. Right in mid-laugh, as it were, she looked up and spotted me observing her. This caused her to stop, then smile my way, then immediately glance sideways toward the older woman, who continued chortling away, hand over mouth.
Our eyes locked, some hundred feet separating us, across the open lot. I called out to her, waving with both arms now, again, acting like a true American. The gesture caught the attention of the older lady, and they both looked at me and bowed, almost as if it were in tandem. I got up, walked across the pavement, and bowed myself.
“Mika-san, what a pleasure to see you again. O-hisashi-buri.” I bowed again, knowing I needed to be formal, given her elderly companion.
There was some embarrassment, and finally she spoke. “Jack-san, O-hisashi-buri.” She gestured toward the now rather stern looking woman. “This is my friend from Tokyo, Toda Setsuko.” More bowing. “Hajimemashite,” we both said. “Oba-san, Springs-sensei desu.” We chatted briefly, then I abruptly asked, “Mika, can I speak with you a moment?” I looked at her companion, my eyes imploring her for permission to speak alone with Mika. Getting no sympathy, I proceeded anyway and guided Mika gently away, with a hand on her arm. The tiniest frown worked its way over Setsuko’s crusty demeanor as we strolled across the street together, out of earshot.
“I’ve been hoping to run into you, Mika. Actually, well, our lunch together meant very much to me.”
She waited a moment. “Yes, Jack-san. I truly enjoyed our time together. And I hope you liked my choice of restaurant. I’ll never forget the look on your face as you tried the crab brains. You were very sweet, pretending to enjoy it!” This memory made us both laugh.
Suddenly she grew more serious. “Perhaps you have heard, but I am back in town to look after my uncle.”
I hadn’t heard, of course. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Jack-san, he is not well. He is quite ill, in fact. Since you have left, he seems to be doing more poorly than for many years.” She hesitated. It was awkward trying to talk to her, with the older companion hovering hawk-like a short distance away. “I’m sure he thinks of you often.”
Three years in Japan, but the local nuance of sentences like these still danced around me like gypsies. “Perhaps now is the right time to contact him, then? It would be a pleasure to visit him again.”
She shook her head. “No, that would not work, I’m afraid. He is ill, but still very … self-important. He is … too proud.” She had a plaintive look in her eyes and she looked up directly into mine.
A sudden, almost incomprehensible sadness gripped me at that moment, standing amidst the chaos of a noonday street scene as the sun disappeared behind some dark clouds, and a light drizzle began falling gently. We moved under the awning of a pharmacy, and I did manage to find the resolve to take her hand.
“Mika, can we see each other, again? Can we meet, maybe have dinner sometime? Like I said, I owe you a meal.”
Immediately her eyes broke free from my gaze and she looked down. For the briefest moment she allowed me to hold her hand, then gently removed it from my grasp, both of us absolutely aware of the continuing gaze of her friend, Setsuko. Over the din of the marketplace, she spoke the fateful words that, for all practical purposes, brought my tenure in Japan to a close.
“Jack.” They were seemingly as hard for her to say as they would become for me to swallow. “I am engaged. I am to be married in the springtime.” With this announcement she looked up again to my eyes, smiling in that feeble way suggesting that such a smile is not genuine. Then she looked back across the way toward her older companion, smiling all the more. “In fact, you have met me at a rather awkward moment. You see, Setsuko is my nakodo—the woman whom my father has enlisted to find my husband. And she has found me a wonderful man, one of the young executives in one of my father’s businesses. His family is very prosperous, with an old samurai lineage.” She waited and smiled again. “I believe you Americans would call someone like my Hiroshi a ‘go-getter.’ My father calls him one of his young tigers. He and his parents live near my father, in Setagaya, up in Tokyo.”
I was stunned by all of this, of course. “But I thought you told me that you could never allow yourself to do such a thing for your father? What about all that talk about falling in love?”
“But I do love him, Jack-san.” It did not ring true, however. A moment passed. “He is a good man. And my father assured me that this time, if I did not comply with his wishes … well, I can only say that there was some damaging information that he was willing to release in case I continued to be rebellious.” Now she looked me in the eye again, this time with some terror, it seemed to me. “He simply cannot come to terms with the idea of his daughter remaining unmarried and childless, well into her thirties. And he demands a grandson.” She was staring straight down at the ground.
“What damaging information? You mean about you?”
“No, Jack-san. About my uncle. And his … services to the government, during the war. And some later, dubious business dealings. It would involve much disgrace for him, as well as a substantial part of his share of the family fortune. My father can be quite ruthless, as you must know by now. I have no choice, you see.”
More hesitation.
“And of course, I’m sure you realize. He would never agree to any marriage to someone … who does not meet his specifications.” She straightened up. “That would include an American,” She told me. “Even an American of great wealth.” Then she looked me directly in the eye. “Certainly not a professor.”
That last sentence was like a sharpened dart. “But Mika, don’t you have a choice? Our lives are all choices. Look at you,” I said, gesturing toward her American outfit, though this time it was not quite as brash as the cowboy costume. “Is that something a traditional Japanese woman would wear to the market on a Saturday morning?” I actually laughed at my own little tease. But she only smiled wanly.
“This clothing? Well, I wish to wear it for now, because in just a few months, I may never be allowed to wear it again, at least not in public.” She explained this to me with an utter sadness. She even laughed a little, though it was one of those laughs of despair that signal our resignations in life. “I am sure you can never truly understand all of this, Jack. But I also know what I must do. My uncle … ” She caught herself, and for just a moment it seemed she might sob. “Well … he needs me to do this for him, and so I must obey my father. I will be leaving Kobe at the end of December, to be back in Tokyo for the New Year and to begin preparations for the wedding.”
I was deep in shock, of course. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Setsuko continued keeping watch over our conversation. Lamely, I asked, “So that’s it?”
She looked up, tears actually welling. She brushed them aside, and stood erect. “Yes, sensei. That’s it.”
The conversation was over, but I tried to keep it going. “Well, we can at least meet sometime for tea, or just to talk, right?”
“No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. Anyway,” and here she glanced back toward Setsuko, “my movements are now being … observed. My father has many enemies, and the idea of a scandal would make some of them very happy indeed.” The image of Endo rubbing his hands together, eager to cast me down a stairwell, flashed through my mind.
I understood, so I said after a moment, “Right. So I guess we should say our goodbyes.” Another long, painful locking of eyes. “Well, thanks for all that great tea and sembei!” I even managed to guffaw at this, and she also allowed herself to giggle precociously into her hand. And then I took her hand, freshly giggled into, and held it one last time. “You meant a lot to me here in Japan. Much more than you’ll ever know, I’m sure. But I want you to know that, and I give my best wishes to you, Mika. I hope you find happiness.” With that, I turned, shooting a look of animosity in the direction of Setsuko, and walked away down the street.
A few seconds later, I heard her voice for the last time. “Goodbye Jack-san. I also wish for you to find happiness!”
I turned, myself on the verge of tears, but instead made a little joke, throwing up my hands, and shouting “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!” Three times for good luck. It brought a smile to her face. But then, as I headed off back down the road, the laughter turned to loneliness, and turning the corner, I understood that my effulgent hope of romancing a beautiful Japanese woman had been dashed to pieces, and as I continued down the busy sidewalk, it vanished into a distant past. I never saw Mika again.
Days poured into weeks, like rainwater through a downspout. It was the end of 1994, and the soggy holidays came and went, but the lifeless holiday season in Japan, where most people work until New Year’s, seemed secular and very bland to me. But the end of the school year was nearing, and I had officially told the powers that be that I would leave Japan as soon after the holidays as was allowable. Technically, the school year would not end until late February, and it would be best, they informed me, if I could remain until then. I was in a compromising mood, so I booked a flight for the final day of February and contemplated what my life would be like back in the States. But in my heart, I was ready to get on the plane already.
I had no job lined up for fall of 1995 and no real plan to get one. In fact, I hadn’t sent a single job application letter. My flight would take me back to Indianapolis, through Detroit, and at least temporarily to the house of my youth. I would begin my re-entry into America in the large, mildewed basement room I occupied during high school. Like Mika, I was another thirty-something returning to the ancestral home. It was vaguely troubling, if not quite shameful, when I pictured myself eating a Midwestern meat loaf dinner with my aging parents, watching college basketball’s “March Madness” with Dad as he slowly rocked away in his chair, reading the Indianapolis Star. The family dog Caliban, now overweight and arthritic, would be lying on the rug beside us, asleep. Most irritating of all was the thought of calmly making my bed each morning, rather than facing the grim reproaches of an angered mother. Making the bed was a big deal for Mom.
Going back to Indy would relieve the immediate pressures of not having a clue where I would end up in life. But I also knew that I couldn’t possibly handle my parents for very long. So in those waning days after the holidays, I finally began the task of searching for a position for the next fall. I had already missed the major feeding frenzy of job applications that commences in October and November. So that opportunity was long gone. Nevertheless, I hunted through the job listings and sent out a couple dozen halfhearted letters for positions not interviewing at the MLA Convention, already past. Many of those were either one- or two- year temporary jobs, or sometimes post-docs designed for brand new doctoral grads. Or they were heavy-teaching positions at what appeared to be substandard institutions, either at tiny liberal arts colleges in states I had never visited, or at regional state universities with directions in their names—often, multiple directions, like “Northwest” or “Southeast.” I can’t say any of them excited my interest particularly, especially after a decade at elite institutions like Yale and Kobe U. But my savings would not last forever, and you have to pay the bills. So I sent out my letters and waited.
Meanwhile, I began auctioning off my own possessions through the notorious enterprise of the sayonara-sale, like all the other gaijin before me. By the beginning of January most everything of value had been spoken for. I packed up the many books I had acquired and shipped them home to Indianapolis. The only major item left was the neat and clean Nissan that I had bought from Richard. I assumed that I would be able to unload it for a couple grand just prior to my own departure, just as he did. But it didn’t turn out that way.
Pretty much everything else was in place, and I began waiting out the final few weeks of my Japanese sojourn. I was ready to head home, parents’ basement or not. My colleagues at the department held a year-end enkai, a dinner party to bring closure and drunkenness to the group as a whole. As a result, I was essentially liberated from any further duties, or social events, with the school. There remained only one unresolved issue in Japan, but I tended to try my hardest to sweep it under the rug: The failed relationship with Sensei. Try as I might, it nagged at me like an old mule. Despite Mika’s advice that I should not try to contact him, and her implication that I should never visit him without an invitation, the thought certainly did cross my mind. In fact, by the first part of January, only about six weeks before my scheduled departure, I had essentially decided that I must attempt a final visit, Japanese protocols be damned.
And I did make a final visit. But it didn’t happen the way I envisioned. The visit was the defining moment of my life, but I had no way of knowing it at the time. Even now, as I begin to recount that fateful day, I get antsy. A tingling sensation starts deep down in my gut and radiates out toward my extremities. It’s not exactly queasiness. And oddly enough, it’s not remorse—although I freely admit it should be. But it is otherworldly, creepy, maybe something akin to deadness, and it still lives as some sort of hideous presence lurking at the core of my being, a thing that is ultimately unnamable. And the more I dwell on it, a visceral and psychological horror comes rushing back, as it has now as I sit here and prepare to record it.
I look back over that last paragraph and see how lame my sentences sound. Show, don’t tell, is the old writer’s adage. So now, all that’s left is to spin the tale and try to put words to this unnamable something. As a friend once told me, we almost never realize the decisive events of our lives at the moments we are living through them. Realizing comes later—if at all.
So much crucial data in this chapter gets lost upon first reading, I fear. The sadness of losing Mika is palpable, of course—but it coincides with the related, perhaps greater sadness of leaving Sensei behind in the Land of the Rising Sun, which became far more intense, I now surmise. But you are not yet fully acquainted with the reasons for that great sadness, dear reader.
Perhaps it is most appropriate to have our narrator admit that it has in fact required—lo, these many years—even for him to “realize” the meaning of all these interrelated events and personalities. Jack’s use of the phrase “Realizing comes later— if at all” is quite telling. It will remind scholars of the verb’s usage in nineteenth-century America as a marker for what later, post-Freudian psychologists would term “latency”: an inability among the grieving and the traumatized to latch onto the “reality” of a particular loss. Time is required to make death “real.”
Now, rereading this chapter with its references to horror and the inability to “realize” what did, in fact, happen, reminds me of a quote that Jack hid in plain view, for all to see, in his preliminary letter to me, the letter that initiated this entire, lengthy process of recovery wherein he describes his own anguished memories as “the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available.”
A wounded lover, I might add—as are we all, to some extent—or will be, by and by …