Authors: Charles Chaplin
‘Is this customary?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said casually. ‘You don’t have to bow, just step out of the car, that will be enough.’
This request somewhat bewildered me, because no one was around except the two or three cars that had followed us. If it were customary, the public would have known and a crowd would have been there, if only a small one. However, I got out and bowed.
When I got back in the car, Kono looked relieved. Sydney thought this was a strange request, and thought Kono had acted strangely. He looked worried ever since we arrived at Kobe. I dismissed the matter and said that perhaps he had been working too hard.
Nothing happened that night, but the following morning Sydney came into the sitting-room very excited. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said; ‘my bags have been searched and all my papers have been disturbed!’ I told him that even if it were true it was not important. But nothing would allay Sydney’s apprehension. ‘There’s something fishy going on!’ he said. But I laughed and accused him of being overly suspicious.
That morning a Government agent was assigned to look after us, explaining that if we wished to go anywhere we should let him know through Kono. Sydney insisted that we were being watched and that Kono was holding back something. I must admit that Kono was looking more worried and harassed every hour.
Sydney’s suspicions were not unfounded, because a peculiar thing happened that day. Kono said that a merchant had some pornographic pictures painted on silk which he would like me to come and see at his house. I told Kono to tell the man I was not interested. Kono looked worried. ‘Supposing I ask him to leave them at the hotel?’ he suggested.
‘Under no circumstances,’ I said. ‘Just tell him not to waste his time.’
He hesitated. ‘These people don’t take no for an answer.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I asked.
‘Well, they’ve been threatening me for several days; there’s a tough element here in Tokyo.’
‘What nonsense!’ I answered. ‘We’ll put the police on their tracks.’
But Kono shook his head.
The next night, while my brother, Kono and I were dining in a private room in a restaurant, six young men entered. One sat down next to Kono and folded his arms, while the others backed up a pace and remained standing. The seated man began talking in Japanese to Kono with suppressed anger. Something he said made Kono suddenly blanch.
I was unarmed. Nevertheless, I put my hand in my coat-pocket
as though I had a revolver, and shouted: ‘What’s the meaning of this?’
Kono, without looking up from his plate, mumbled: ‘He says you’ve insulted his ancestors by refusing to see his pictures.’
I sprang to my feet and, keeping my hand in my pocket, looked fiercely at the young man. ‘What’s all this about?’ Then I said to Sydney: ‘Let’s get out of here. And you, Kono, order a cab.’
Once we were safely in the street we were all relieved. A taxi was waiting for us and we drove away.
The culmination of the mystery came the following day when the Prime Minister’s son invited us as his guests to the Suomi wrestling matches. As we sat and watched them, an attendant tapped Mr Ken Inukai on the shoulder and whispered something. He turned to us and excused himself, saying that something urgent had arisen and that he had to leave, but he would come back later. Towards the end of the wrestling he returned, looking white and shaken. I asked him if he were ill. He shook his head, then suddenly covered his face with his hands. ‘My father has just been assassinated,’ he said.
We took him back to our rooms and offered him some brandy. Then he told us what had happened: six naval cadets had killed the guards outside the Prime Minister’s palace and had broken into his private quarters, where they found him with his wife and daughter. His mother had told him the rest of the story: the assassins stood over his father for twenty minutes pointing their guns, while the Prime Minister tried to reason with them, but to no avail. Without a word they were about to shoot. But he begged them not to kill him in the presence of his family. So they allowed him to take leave of his wife and daughter. Calmly he got up and led the assassins to another room – where he must have tried to reason with them again, for the family sat in agonizing suspense before they heard the shots that killed their father.
The murder had occurred while his son was at the wrestling matches. Had he not been with us, he said, he would have been killed with his father.
I accompanied him back to his home and saw the room in which two hours previously his father had been murdered. The stain of a large pool of blood was still wet on the matting. A battery of cameramen and reporters were there, but they had the
decency not to take photographs. They nevertheless prevailed upon me to make a statement. I could only say that it was a shocking tragedy for the family and for the country.
The day after the tragedy I was to have met the late Prime Minister at an official reception, which was, of course, called off.
Sydney declared that the murder was all a part of the mystery and that in some way we were involved. Said he: ‘It is more than a coincidence that six assassins murdered the Prime Minister and that six men came into the restaurant that night while we were dining.’
It was not until Hugh Byas had written his most interesting and informative book
Government by Assassination
, published by Alfred A. Knopf, that the whole mystery, as far as I was involved, was clarified. It appears that the society called The Black Dragon was active at that moment, and it was they who had demanded that I bow to the palace. I quote from Hugh Byas’s book the following account of the trial of those who had assassinated the Prime Minister:
Lieutenant Seishi Koga, naval ringleader of the plot, afterwards told the court martial that the conspirators had discussed a plan to bring about martial law by bombing the House of Representatives. Civilians who could easily get passes were to throw bombs from the public gallery while young officers waited at the doors to kill the members as they rushed out. Another plan, which might be too grotesque for credence if it had not been told in court, proposed the killing of Charles Chaplin, then visiting Japan. The Prime Minister invited Mr Chaplin to a tea and the young officers considered a scheme for raiding the official residence while the party was in progress.
JUDGE
: What was the significance of killing Chaplin?
KOGA
: Chaplin is a popular figure in the United States and the darling of the capitalist class. We believed that killing him would causea a war with America, and thus we could kill two birds with a single stone.
JUDGE
: Then why did you give up your splendid plan?
KOGA
: Because the newspapers later reported that the projected reception was still uncertain.
JUDGE
: What was the motive of planning to attack the official residence of the Prime Minister?
KOGA
: It was to overthrow the Premier, who was also the president of a political party; in other words to overthrow the very centre of government.
JUDGE
: Did you intend to kill the Premier?
KOGA
: Yes, I did. However, I had no personal grudge against him.
The same prisoner said that the plan to kill Chaplin was abandoned because ‘it was disputed whether it was advisable to kill the comedian on the slight chance that it might bring about war with the United States and increase the power of the military’.
I can imagine the assassins having carried out their plan, then discovering that I was not an American but an Englishman – ‘Oh, so sorry!’
However, it was not all mystery and unpleasantness in Japan; for the most part I had an interesting time there. The Kabuki theatre was a pleasure that went beyond my expectations. The Kabuki is not a purely formal theatre, but a mixture of the ancient and modern. An actor’s virtuosity is the most important consideration, and the play is merely the material with which he performs. According to our Western standards their technique has sharp limitations. Realism is ignored where it cannot be effectively achieved. For instance, we occidentals cannot stage a sword fight without a touch of the absurd, for no matter how fierce the fighting one detects a modicum of caution. The Japanese on the other hand make no pretence of realism. They fight at a distance apart from each other, making sweeping panache gestures with their swords, one attempting to cut off the head of his opponent, the other slashing at his opponent’s legs. Each in his own sphere jumps, dances and pirouettes. It is like ballet. The combat is impressionistic, terminating in a posture of victor and vanquished. From this impressionism the actors merge into realism during the death scene.
Irony is the theme of many of their plays. I saw what was comparable to
Romeo and Juliet
, a drama of two young lovers whose marriage is opposed by their parents. It was performed on a revolving stage, which the Japanese have used for three hundred years. The first scene was the interior of the bridal chamber showing the young couple just married. During the act, couriers intercede with the parents for the young lovers, who are hoping there may be a reconciliation. But tradition is too strong. The parents are adamant. So the lovers decide to commit suicide in the traditional Japanese way, each one bestrewing a carpet of
flower petals upon which to die; the bridegroom to kill his bride first, then to fall upon his sword.
The comments of the lovers, as they scatter flower petals on the floor preparing for death, created laughter from the audience. My interpreter told me that the humour was ironic in such lines as: ‘To live after such a night of love would be anti-climax.’ For ten minutes they continue such ironic banter. Then the bride kneels on her mat of flowers, which is at a distance away from his, and bares her throat; and as the bridegroom draws his sword and slowly walks towards her, the revolving stage begins to move, and before the point of his sword reaches his young wife’s throat, the scene turns out of sight of the audience and shows the exterior of the house, drenched in moonlight. The audience sits through what seems an interminable silence. Eventually, voices are heard approaching. They are friends of the dead couple come to bring them the happy news that their parents have forgiven them. They are tipsy and argue about which of them should break the news. Then they commence to serenade them and, getting no response, they beat on the door.
‘Don’t disturb them,’ says one; ‘they’re either asleep or too busy.’ So they go on their way, continuing their serenade, accompanied by a tick-tock, boxlike sound, signalling the end of the play, as the curtain draws slowly across the stage.
How long Japan will survive the virus of Western civilization is a moot question. Her people’s appreciation of those simple moments in life so characteristic of their culture – a lingering look at a moonbeam, a pilgrimage to view cherry blossom, the quiet meditation of the tea ceremony – seems destined to disappear in the smog of Western enterprise.
My holiday was at an end, and although I had enjoyed many aspects of it, some had been depressing. I saw food rotting, goods piled high while people wandered hungrily about them, millions of unemployed and their services going to waste.
I actually heard a man say at a dinner that nothing could save the situation unless we found more gold. When I discussed the problem of automation doing away with jobs, someone said that the problem would solve itself because labour would eventually be so cheap that it would be able to compete with automation. The Depression was deeply cruel.
W
HEN
I arrived home in Beverly Hills, I stood in the centre of the living-room. It was late afternoon and a carpet of long shadows lay across the lawn and streaks of golden sunlight streamed across the room. How serene it all looked. I could have wept. I had been away eight months, yet I wondered whether I was happy to be back. I was confused and without plan, restless and conscious of an extreme loneliness.
I had had in Europe a vague hope of meeting someone who might orient my life. But nothing had come of it. Of all the women I met, few fitted into that category – those that might have done were not interested. And now back again in California I had returned to a graveyard. Douglas and Mary had separated, so that world was no more.
That evening I was to dine alone, something I never liked doing in that big house. So I cancelled dinner, drove to Hollywood, parked the car and took a walk down Hollywood Boulevard. It seemed that I had never been away. There were the same long lines of one-storey shops, the stale-looking Army and Navy stores, the cut-rate drug-stores, Woolworth’s and Kresge’s, all of it depressing and lacking sophistication. Hollywood had not outgrown the look of a boom town.
As I walked the boulevards I began to deliberate whether I should retire, sell everything and go to China. There was no further incentive to stay in Hollywood. Without doubt silent pictures were finished and I did not feel like combating the talkies. Besides, I was out of circulation. I tried to think of someone whom I knew intimately enough to phone and invite for dinner without feeling embarrassed, but there was no one. When I returned to the house, Reeves, my manager, had called up to
say that everything was okay. But no one else had called.
It was like jumping into cold water, putting in appearances at the studio to attend to irksome business affairs. However, I was delighted to hear that
City Lights
was doing extremely well, and that we already had $3,000,000 (net) in the kitty, and cheques of more than $100,000 were still coming in every month. Reeves suggested that I should go to the Hollywood bank and meet the new manager, just to get acquainted. Not having entered a bank in seven years, I declined.
Prince Louis Ferdinand, grandson of the Kaiser, called at the studio and later we dined at my house and had an interesting talk. The Prince, charming and very intelligent, spoke of the German revolution after the First World War as being comic opera. ‘My grandfather had gone to Holland,’ he said, ‘but some of my relatives remained in the palace at Potsdam, too terrified to move. When at last the revolutionists marched on the palace, they sent a note asking my relatives if they would receive them, and in that interview assured them that they would be given every protection and that, if they needed anything, they had only to telephone the Socialist headquarters. They could not believe their ears. But when later the Government approached them about a settlement of their estates, my relatives began to equivocate and want more.’ In summing up he said: ‘The Russian Revolution was a tragedy – ours was a joke.’