Only a few days after the people had gone that autumn
he knew his chance had come. He heard on his radio that Oshima was coming to speak in Kobe. The ferry still came, once a week. Ikkanshi had a travelling cloak. It was black and hid everything, even his face. Even his thoughts, if he wanted it to.
He took the train from Toba. Nowadays few men, only monks, scholars and old-fashioned people, rode the trains wrapped in a cloak. Ikkanshi could be taken for one of their kind. No one paid him any attention. No one could really afford to pay attention to a stranger in their midst. He might be someone who was sympathetic to enemy aliens. He might have dangerous thoughts. Or he might be, as he hoped to be mistaken for, an artist or a professor of some ancient Japanese art, in which case the secret police would respect him.
On the way to Kobe the train track went along the sea. He looked out of the window and saw battleships in the water. Everyone else in the carriage looked the other way. They were not allowed to stare out of the window, in case they encountered military secrets.
In Kobe he found himself an inn and waited there for two days. It was good to walk the streets of a town. This was a place where he could have lived, if he had a normal life. There were many foreigners there, traders and people of all types. He wore his cloak in the streets and looked at the doorways of the traders. He saw a tailor who made western suits. He went inside just to see if he could make him a suit with pleated trousers and a three-button jacket.
‘At one time,’ he told this silent, small man, ‘I lived in London.’
‘You’d best be careful then,’ the tailor said in a low voice. ‘Many of my foreign clients have left the country,’ he said. ‘And some others will be taken as enemy aliens. They will go to the camp up the mountain.’ He gestured but did not look in the direction of his hand, as if even looking there might raise suspicion.
‘Did you know of a man called Hamilton Drew?’ Ikkanshi asked, hoping to be casual. ‘He is a man I knew once. From Scotland I believe. He was buying and selling pearls.’
‘No,’ said the tailor. ‘I don’t know this man. But you might ask elsewhere,’ and he told him a place a few streets away. And then he took several steps around Ikkanshi’s waist at the back as if he had never spoken. ‘My apprentice has gone,’ he said. ‘He was called up into the army.’
‘And what about you?’ Ikkanshi asked.
‘I do not expect to go. I got a C in my physical,’ the tailor replied. He was not very strong, Ikkanshi could see. Probably that was why he was a tailor in the first place. ‘Still,’ he said. ‘I must find another trade to practise. There is very little call for men’s suits at the moment.’
He finished the measurements in silence.
‘I will come back for my suit,’ Ikkanshi said. ‘It may be some time, but I will come back. Will you remember me?’ And he gave him his real name.
‘I will keep it for you, Ikkanshi-san,’ the tailor said, with a solemn bow.
In the street, Ikkanshi went without hurrying in the direction the tailor had told him. There were many small shops and some bigger ones. In the windows were pearls and necklaces and dolls and lacquer boxes, for foreign consumption. It was the sort of place he might see Hamilton Drew. But he did not. Finally he went into a shop that was cluttered, and busy with a few foreigners at the counters. He looked at pearls in their cases. Pretty, round and white shining objects they were, but nothing more, to him. He did not understand their allure. Finally he asked one of the older men serving. He knew he would recognise the way he spoke.
‘I beg your attention for a moment,’ he said in his most formal Japanese. ‘I have a very great favour to ask you. I am looking for an excellent old sword.’
‘I do not carry such things in my shop’, the man said
simply. It was impossible to interpret this statement.
Ikkanshi bowed. ‘Of course you do not.’ He could see that. ‘Would there be anyone else in Kobe who would have old swords? I am Ikkanshi-san,
katanatogi.’
The name was famous among a certain group of people. Knowing fine things and old things, he would be in such a group. The owner bowed to Ikkanshi and gave him directions to some establishment in the city.
Ikkanshi made as if to go.
‘You are very kind. If I could trouble you,’ he said before leaving. ‘There was a Scottish man who was here several years ago. His name was Hamilton Drew. He came to me once looking for swords to sell. I wonder if you ever heard of him?’
‘Sensei,’
he said to the sword polisher. ‘There were many such men a few years ago. Now there are only a few of them.’
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I thank you very much.’
‘Sensei,’ the shopkeeper said, ‘this man did come into my shop from time to time. But I have not seen him for one year now, and perhaps more.’
The following day, Oshima was giving his talk in a middleschool auditorium. There was a big crowd to hear him. Ikkanshi sat at the back of the hall, but not too far back. He did not want to be conspicuous. Most of the crowd were men, and young boys, but there were some women there too, a few.
His friend was changed, he saw when Oshima came on stage. He had been a thin boy; now he was stocky. His face was flat, and drawn in to itself, as if he had walked up too often to face a hard wall, and his features had stepped back and were held to attention. His chin, on the other hand, held its ground. The result was a face that was scooped out as if with a shovel, hard staring eyes, and a chin which preceded all. He wore his uniform and saluted, while the men
who came in with him saluted and all the boys and men in the hall who wore their cadet uniforms saluted too. He was surrounded by a small forest of salutes. Ikkanshi resisted the impulse, bred into him for all the years of his youth, to salute back.
Oshima’s voice, when he spoke, had lost all its soft modulation. Ikkanshi remembered that; it was the way he himself had spoken once rattling like a piece of galvanised tin being shaken. He told the audience about how the Germans were their natural friends, a small country but very powerful, one that needed to expand its boundaries. He told them about the great army the Germans had. He boasted a little about his nearness to the higher-ups in the German cause, Ribbentrop and Hitler himself. He talked of course about ridding Asia of foreigners and he talked about the British and Americans as enemies, while the Italians and the Germans were apparently friends. Japan was the rightful and natural leader of all Asian nations, he said; the Soviet Union, which was Communist, must be taken under Japan’s wing and the Germans, on the other side of the Soviets, were to be their natural allies.
At the end of his speech, Oshima was roundly applauded and saluted, and he stood and quickly escaped the crowd. Ikkanshi hoped to encounter him in the back halls of the school. Luckily almost all schools in Japan were made the same way, and he knew exactly where he would be. Having the advantage of surprise, Ikkanshi turned a corner and was suddenly before him. He pulled off his cloak.
‘Hiroshi,’ he said. ‘It is I, Tadatsune.’
Oshima’s men stepped forward instantly: perhaps they were on the alert for an attack on his person. But the sword polisher had thought of that. His training did not let him down. Before they had even moved he had anticipated each one and disarmed the first with a simple block. A gun clattered to the floor. Then he held his hands out to the side to show that he was harmless. The minute Hiroshi’s eyes connected with Ikkanshi’s, he signalled the guards away. Then he laughed. It
was a strange, mixed laugh – harsh, mocking, and yet, buried within it he could hear rue and even the old needy respect.
‘Good one,’ he said. ‘They told me about you.’
Although Ikkanshi wondered what ‘they’ had said about the officer who had resigned to become a sword polisher, he resisted the urge to ask. This was not a meeting that had anything to do with him.
‘I trust you are well,’ he replied. He surprised himself that he cared to ask. Hiroshi, in Ikkanshi’s mind, had gone mad, but in person, especially now that his face was in motion, he was the same old young man of his memories and he felt the same old affection and concern.
‘Exceptionally well,’ Oshima said, with a glowing face. He had holidayed, he told Ikkanshi, the previous summer in the company of his good friend Ribbentrop. Ikkanshi recalled how miserably he had spent his own, and then quashed the feelings. He could in no way envy Oshima his central place in these hearts of darkness that had formed around the globe. Of course that was what Oshima wanted.
He tried and he failed to engage him. Meanwhile Oshima told him many wonderful things about Hitler and the German cause. He then surprised him by asking how the polisher occupied his time.
‘I continue my father’s work,’ he said. ‘I have several fine old blades and when I can spare the time from sharpening the tools and implements for the fisher people I live among, I work on restoring them. I have much to learn. In the meantime I have come to speak with you on the basis of our long friendship. You will not be surprised by my message,’ he said.
‘Ah Tadatsune,’ said his old friend. ‘You were always such a good student. Of course you have much to learn. But not from work at the polishing stone.’
Ikkanshi said he disagreed, then smiled and prepared to listen. Oshima did nothing, for which, he supposed, he should have been grateful. They could have taken him off
to jail right then. Oshima spoke with the assumption of authority that he had grown up with and now, grown into.
Ikkanshi told Oshima what he wanted him to know: that he was mistaken, that Japan was already far overextended in China, that the world, and especially the British and their allies, regarded the Japanese as monstrous, and that he was taking a dangerous path. He told him that he understood what those in power in Tokyo now wanted to hear, and that Oshima would be under pressure to say it. But he said his was a position of great influence and he hoped that he would remember the better aspects of his training and would, instead, tell the truth. He indicated that he understood that now, as a civilian, he too was in his power.
‘Soon I hope to return to Germany,’ Oshima said. ‘It is what I want, and what the Germans want.’
‘Congratulations,’ Ikkanshi said.
‘It is always good to see an old friend.’ Oshima’s people were impatient nearby. ‘Thank you for coming.’ And he took hold of the sword polisher’s shoulders, for one minute. Then he saluted. He bowed. It was over.
Fortunately for Ikkanshi, the train ran that day. From Toba he took the ferry back to the island, with more potatoes.
It was dark for two months and he was glad of the dark. He sat cross-legged in
zazen
and meditated as monks did; he drew his sword and practised the
kata
with grief in his heart. But gradually life returned. He longed for light as if it could somehow stop the spread of evil. The days grew a little longer and the sun returned to the land.
9
Soete-tsuki
Companion hand-thrust; turning to
surprise one on your left
The cold was terrible during Vera’s third full winter in Toba. There was not enough rice. In the village, Vera did not see Tamio. Many of the boys were not in school because their fathers had gone to war. They had jobs delivering or selling. Others, like Tamio, had gone farther up the side of the mountain making charcoal, and did not come home at night.
Teru was old enough to be in uniform. He did not wish to fight, but it was more and more difficult for him to stay out. Only because he was the only son was he allowed to remain at home. Of the soldiers who went away it was said ‘they come home as bones’.
Keiko went every day by boat with the other
ama
to Tatoku Island to scrub the oyster shells. They had one day off every two weeks. Mikimoto carried on: apparently somewhere, women wore pearls. But the mother-of-pearl to seed the oysters that came from China was hard to find.
‘He knows you are here,’ Keiko said to Vera one day.
‘Who knows?’
‘Mikimoto Taisho.’
‘He knows nothing about me.’
‘He knows you are the granddaughter of his old friend. He talks to all the diving women. He asked me about you.’
‘Then can I work at Tatoku Island?’
Keiko ducked her head. ‘He says you may not work. Not in the water.’
Vera scowled.
‘He says one day you may come to the island. Next Sunday. He is having a birthday party for one of his grandchildren.’
There was a crowd at the dock to meet her, Mikimoto aunts and brothers and nephews, she didn’t know how many. They led her, smiling and cooing over her hair, long now, and silver white, touched with green from the sea. Ooh, the women said, and stroked it.
‘Coming to the party?’
When she was young she hated birthday parties. Her mother had had to drag her to them and wait to make sure she didn’t bolt. She felt like bolting on this day. The Japanese children were in a circle far down along by the sea walk, which was built of squared timbers over the stones. She could hear their laughing cries.
‘Come,’ said a kind woman, ‘come with me.’ And the two of them set out, walking to the children.
I wonder if she knows I am not a child? She must; I tower over them, thought Vera.
But the woman cooed on as if she expected Vera to join the game. She did not understand until she came closer to the knot of children. They were gathered around something, someone was making them scream and laugh. But she couldn’t see who.
‘Here, here,’ said her guide. ‘Stand, stay, you will see him.’
Looking over the children’s heads, Vera did see him.
There was a thin, grey-haired man with enormous ears lying on his back on the path. His feet were in the air and on his feet was a ball. He was making the ball twirl, then throwing it, catching it. Each time the ball went in the air the children laughed more.
Of course it was Mikimoto Taisho. She knew that he did this. And still. ‘But he must be very old,’ she said.