Sawa did not pursue the matter. Instead, he asked Isao to come to his room to share some delicious cakes he had. The room was a full three mats and Sawa had it to himself in deference to his age. There were no books to be seen, only a few tattered copies of Kodan Club. When chided on this point, Sawa would reply that those who read books to imbibe the Japanese Spirit were “pseudopatriots.”
He poured Isao a cup of tea and offered him the rice cakes, a kind called higomochi, which his wife in Kumamoto had sent.
“Anyway,” said Sawa with a sigh, apropos of nothing, “there’s no doubt that the master loves you.”
Then after rummaging through the debris that littered the floor he came up with a fan decorated with a picture of a pretty woman, but when he tried to present Isao with this holiday gift from a neighborhood saké dealer, whose name and phone number were prominently displayed on it, he was rebuffed. The slender lady with a faraway look somewhat resembled Makiko around the eyes, and this was what lent an undue severity to Isao’s abrupt refusal. Sawa, however, had not meant to imply anything, apparently, and his proffering the fan was but another example of his idiosyncratic behavior.
“Would you really like to go to the training camp?” Isao asked, regretting the harshness of his rebuff and wanting to end at once the lingering tension between them.
“No, not really,” answered Sawa, putting him off casually as though he had lost interest in the matter. “I’d probably be busy and couldn’t go anyway. I was just asking.” Then, as though to himself, he repeated his irrelevant remark. “Yes, there’s no doubt that the master loves you.” He wrapped both of his hands, their plump flesh dimpled at the joint of each finger, around the sturdy mug that held his tea and began a story that was wholly unsolicited.
“This is something I think young Master Isao is old enough to know. It’s only recently that the Academy has been so well off. When I started here, we had all we could do to make ends meet. You were never told, and I know that this was in keeping with the master’s theory of education. But if I might say so, it’s getting to be time for you to learn some unpleasant things. Because if your education leaves out anything that you should know, then later on you’ll be scandalized.
“It was three years ago, I think, that the New Japan came out with a piece attacking Mr. Koyama, the very one whose birthday it happens to be today. The master said it wouldn’t do to let this go by and say nothing. He went to see Mr. Koyama, but I never found out exactly what decision they came to. Anyway, the master told me to go to the newspaper office and demand that they print a thoroughgoing apology. The instructions he gave me were certainly strange. ‘If they offer money, don’t take it. Throw it back at them angrily and leave,’ he said. ‘But if they don’t offer any money, it’s a sign that you’ve handled things badly.’
“It’s rather fun to pretend to be angry when you really aren’t. And I don’t mind seeing a frightened look on people’s faces. Especially in this case, it helped matters that the one they picked to deal with me was a rather cheeky young editor.
“The master’s strategy was wonderfully worked out. He sends somebody like me to begin the negotiations. If I do say so myself, I seem to be a likable sort of person, and nobody takes it too seriously even if I’m boiling with rage, so this fellow thinks he can settle the matter with a little money. Then when to his surprise I break off the meeting, the other side starts to get a bit uneasy.
“The master arranges matters so there’s never a direct meeting with Mr. Koyama, and in the course of the negotiations he puts five actors on the stage, five hurdles, each steeper than the one before. Each one of these gentlemen is more formidable and prestigious than the last. The other side gets in deeper and deeper without having any idea how far we’re going to go before we settle. Furthermore there can be no question of extortion, since we keep insisting that ‘This isn’t a matter of money,’ and so they have no grounds for going to the police. The second actor to take the stage is Mr. Muto, who was involved in the June Incident. And it’s at this point that the New Japan becomes aware, to its great surprise, that this is no simple matter.
“Furthermore, in going from the second actor to the third, the interval is made as indefinite as possible, and while offering the hope that a settlement can be had by a meeting with the third actor, the master arranges it so that this meeting seems as though it’s never going to take place. And then when it finally does come off after all the anxiety, authority has been switched to a fourth party, unknown to them. At this stage, the number of ‘young men who can’t contain their wrath’ soars to far more than a mere one or two hundred, though none of them makes an appearance.
“As might be expected, the newspaper loses no time in hiring a former detective, and this fellow comes rubbing his hands obsequiously, carrying his letter of sanction from the publisher. The master was also very careful in picking out just the right meeting places, and when our fourth actor, Mr. Yoshimori, goes on stage, the setting is perfect. He has connections with a construction company, and so the master makes it the shanty office on a building site.
“After four months of harassment, a smooth big shot who looks easygoing finally appears on the scene as our fifth actor. I can’t tell you his name, but thanks to his hard bargaining, an agreement was reached. The place was in Yanagibashi. The publisher of the New Japan himself was there, and kowtowed to us, but with all that, they handed over something like fifty thousand yen. It seems the master got ten thousand as his share. That took care of the Academy very well for a year.”
Isao had been trying to suppress his irritation as he listened. Vanity compelled him to show that petty evils of this sort could by no means upset him. What was hard to bear, however, was the realization that he himself had up to now been enjoying the fruits of such petty evils.
Nevertheless, to suppose that Isao was having his eyes opened for the first time to the true state of affairs would be an exaggeration. Isao himself would not deny that his unwillingness to look into certain fundamental aspects of his life had somehow been the basis for his sense of purity, as well as the source of the strange anger and disquiet that troubled him. To plant one’s feet upon evil and yet render justice was an overblown concept flattering to the vanity of youth. The problem was that Isao’s imagined evil had been of somewhat greater dimensions. But, whatever the case, this did not offer adequate cause for Isao to have misgivings about his purity.
Calming himself with an effort, he asked: “Does my father still make a practice of doing this?”
“Now things are different. Now he’s an important man. That kind of struggle isn’t necessary any more. What I wanted you to know is what the master had to go through before he got where he is.”
Then Sawa, after a slight pause, made still another incongruous statement, and though he tossed it off carelessly, it stunned Isao: “You can go after whoever you want. But don’t go after Busuké Kurahara. If anything should happen to him, the one who’ll suffer most will be the master. Go ahead out of a sense of loyalty, and you’ll find yourself utterly betraying your father.”
21
ISAO LEFT SAWA’S ROOM abruptly and, determined to probe the significance of his words, shut himself in his own room.
Just as hot pepper becomes less pungent as it numbs the inside of the mouth, so the shock of the words “Don’t go after Busuké Kurahara” was not that intense after a time. They did not necessarily imply that Sawa had penetrated Isao’s secret. For Busuké Kurahara was in the eyes of many men the very personification of capitalistic evil.
If Sawa had perceived that Isao had some plan or other in mind he might well imagine that Kurahara’s name would, as a matter of course, come up as one objective. And his advice not to single out Kurahara would not really depend upon his knowing that Isao had already done so.
There remained a single problem: Sawa’s implication in linking his father’s name to Kurahara. Was Kurahara actually an important financial backer of his father? A secret patron of the Academy
of Patriotism? The thought seemed unbearable. But since this was a problem that Isao was unable to solve in his present circumstances, the truth or falsity of the allegation was a matter that would have to be set aside for a time. The irritation that burned greedily within him came more from this uncertainty than from anger.
Actually, Isao knew nothing of Kurahara other than what he had gained from studying photographs of him in newspapers and magazines and carefully reading about what he said and did. Kurahara was the unmistakable incarnation of a capitalism devoid of national allegiance. If one wished to portray the frightening image of a man who loved nothing, there was no better model than Kurahara. At any rate, in an era when everyone was choking, the fact that this man alone could evidently breathe with ease was in itself grounds enough for suspecting that he was a criminal.
One of his best-known comments, quoted by a newspaper, displayed a heedlessness that seemed carefully contrived: “Naturally, having a large number of unemployed is unpleasant. However to equate this immediately with an unsound economy is fallacious. Common sense tells us that the contrary is true. The welfare of Japan is not bound up with there being good cheer in everybody’s kitchen.” Such words stirred anger and resentment and were never forgotten.
The evil of Kurahara was that of an intellect that had no ties with blood nor with native soil. In any case, though Isao knew nothing of Kurahara the man, Kurahara’s evil was vividly clear to him.
There were the bureaucrats of the Foreign Ministry, anxious to please England and America, oozing charm, only able to play the coquette. The financiers, giving off the stink of profit and greed, sniffing along the ground for their dinner like giant anteaters. The politicians self-transformed into lumps of corruption. The military cliques, so armored with the cult of careerism that they were like immobilized beetles. The scholars, bespectacled, sodden white grubs. The speculators eager to exploit Manchuria, their beloved bastard child. And the sky itself reflected a panorama of poverty, like sunrise colors spread wide over the land. Kurahara was a cold, black silk top hat placed in the midst of this piteous landscape. Without saying so, Kurahara looked forward to many deaths, he welcomed them.
The sorrowful sun, the sun glittering with a chill whiteness, could give no touch of warmth, yet rose up sadly every morning to begin its course. This was indeed the figure of His Majesty. Who would not long to look up again to behold the joyful countenance of the sun?
If this Kurahara . . .
Isao opened the window. He spat. If the food he had eaten at breakfast, if his lunch, too, had come through Kurahara’s bounty, then, in his ignorance, he had already corrupted his innards and his flesh with poison.
Suppose he confronted his father and questioned him severely. But would his father tell him the truth? Rather than hear skillful evasions, he preferred to keep silent and pretend to know nothing.
If only he did know nothing, if only he could have gone on without learning of this, thought Isao, stamping his feet and cursing himself for having heard it. He also felt resentment toward Sawa for having sprinkled the poison into his ears. And however much Isao feigned ignorance, Sawa might sometime tell the father what he had revealed to the son. Then, too, he would become a son who knowingly betrays his own father. He would be a traitor who kills the benefactor of his family. The purity of his conduct would be subject to question. An act conceived as bold and pure seemed in danger of becoming most impure.
How was Isao to guard his purity? Do nothing at all? Remove Kurahara’s name from the list of those to be assassinated? No. If he did that, would not the cost of his being an unhappy but dutiful son be to overlook something that threatened the entire nation? Would it not be the betrayal of His Sacred Majesty as well as the betrayal of his own sincerity?
When Isao reflected, he saw that his not knowing Kurahara well was a circumstance that augmented the justice of his action. The evil of Kurahara should be kept as distant and abstract as possible. Only when the murderer could put aside not only all thought of favors granted or personal enmity but even the most elementary human considerations of liking or disliking did his act have a foundation in justice. Thus Isao’s distant awareness of the evil of Kurahara was quite enough.
Killing a hateful man was an easy matter. Cutting down a despicable person was a pleasure. But Isao had no desire to seize upon an enemy’s lack of humanity in order to steel himself to the act of killing. The massive evil of Kurahara as fixed in Isao’s mind had nothing to do with such petty and inconsequential evils as buying off the Academy of Patriotism as a safeguard against assassination. The young men of the League of the Divine Wind had not killed the Kumamoto garrison commander for any incidental human failings.
Isao groaned with pain. How easily such a beautiful act could be destroyed! The possibility of his carrying out this beautiful act had arbitrarily been torn from him. All because of a few words!
The sole possibility left to him, if he were to act, was to become evil himself. But Isao was committed to justice.
A wooden kendo stave was leaning against the wall in one corner of the room. He seized it and rushed out to the back yard. Sawa was nowhere to be seen. Advancing step by step over the bare, flat ground next to the well, Isao made one stroke after another with furious abandon. The scolding whine of the wooden sword cutting through the air chafed his ears. He tried to make his mind a blank. He raised the sword high above his head, then brought it down. Like a man who hastily gulps saké to make himself drunk, he wanted this burning, oppressive exertion to race through his body. Though his breath was a searing flame, now trapped, now released from his heaving chest, the sweat that should have covered him would not come. All was in vain. He thought of an old poem that a senior kendoist had taught him:
To try to avoid thought
Is of itself to think.
Thus even “Think not!”
Is not to be thought.
And then another:
Since rising and setting
Are one to the unthinking moon,
No mountain ridge
Can vex its heart with shadow.
But these brought no relief. The lovely sky of early evening shone through the worm-eaten leaves of a chestnut tree. Sawa’s laundry seemed to be growing lighter by degrees, as though whiteness were seeping through it.
Still carrying the stave, Isao went to Sawa’s room a second time and knocked on the door.
“What is it?” asked Sawa, opening his door. “Are you hungry? Tonight we could send out for something to eat. What do you say?”
Isao thrust his face abruptly against Sawa’s.
“Was what you said before true?” he demanded. “Is Kurahara somehow connected with the Academy?”
“Don’t threaten me, bringing a bamboo sword like that with you! Anyway, come in.”
In the course of his energetic sword drill, Isao had come to the conclusion that no matter how passionate he might grow in cross-examining Sawa, he need have no fear that he would give away his true state of mind. For it was only natural that an innocent young man would become thoroughly indignant upon learning that Kurahara had aided the Academy.
Sawa was silent.
“Tell me the truth,” said Isao. He had placed the sword at his left side and sat down in a stiffly formal position.
“And if I tell the truth, what do you intend to do?”
“I don’t intend to do anything.”
“Nothing, eh? Then this business needn’t bother you.”
“It bothers me. You suppose it makes me happy to hear someone say that my own father is in league with the scum of the earth?”
“But if he isn’t, are you going to give it to that fellow?”
“It’s not a matter of giving it or not giving it to anybody,” answered Isao, attempting a touch of sophistry. “What I want to do is to preserve the images I have of my father and of Kurahara. Of Kurahara as the perfect villain.”
“Will that make you perfect too?”
“Perfection is no concern
of mine.”
“If it isn’t, why do you let things bother you so?”
Isao was finding himself outmatched.
“Mr. Sawa, only cowards beat around the bush. I want to get at the truth. I want to confront it as it is.”
“Why? Could the truth shake that strong faith of yours? Have you been following some kind of mirage all this time? If your dedication is so weak, then you’re well rid of it. I just thought I’d put a little doubt into your world of faith. If that makes the whole thing start to shake, there’s something missing in your dedication. Where is that indomitable conviction that a man should have? Do you really have it? If you do, speak up right here and now.”
Isao once more found himself at a loss for words.
Sawa no longer seemed to be the man who read nothing but Kodan Club. He was attacking Isao; he was twisting his arm to make him spew up the burning lump lodged in his throat. Isao felt the blood rush to his cheeks, but, with an effort, he suppressed his emotion as he replied: “I’m going to stay here until Mr. Sawa tells me the truth.”
“I see.” Sawa remained silent for a time, as the small room was darkening in the twilight. A stout, forty-year-old man, he sat cross-legged in a baggy-kneed pair of the headmaster’s old flannel pants. His head drooped forward so that the flesh of his shoulders swelled beneath his khaki shirt as though he were wearing a quiver across his back. The keen aggressiveness seemed suddenly blunted. Isao could not tell whether he was pondering or drowsing.
Sawa stood up abruptly. He opened a drawer and searched through it. Then he returned to sit upright across from Isao once more, and placed on the floor before him a dagger in a plain wooden sheath. He drew it out. A pale, sharp-edged crevice split the darkness of the room.
“I said what I said because I wanted to talk you out of it. You’re the heir of the Academy of Patriotism, and so your life’s too important. The master loves you very much.