A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding (18 page)

Hinomaru: A red circle against a white background symbolising the rising sun also represents the Japanese national flag. It was officially selected as the Japanese national emblem by the Meiji government in 1870 because it had been one of the symbols of authority granted by the preceding Tokugawa Shogunate. The symbol is very popular in Japan. Hinomaru-bento is a packed lunch with a red pickled Japanese apricot in the middle.

Hideo and I left the restaurant as an ambulance howled its way down the road. We started to walk to the train station. I cleared my throat, awkward with the question. ‘The letters mention Jomei's illness. Is he dead?' He nodded. Hideo said it had been hard to watch the man who had raised him end his life in so much pain. I asked when. ‘Ten years ago.' I had thought so many times about what I might feel when I heard the news of his death, but there was no sense of victory, quite the opposite. I felt cheated somehow. What to do when the enemy is defeated and not by your own hand? I was glad his passing had not been easy, but death does not discriminate; even the most undeserving leave this world in unimaginable agony.

Sato's victims would have known this as they took their last breath. Natsu must have found the letters about Pingfang and presumably read them. How must she have
felt to read this outpouring made not to her but another woman? Or maybe in a moment of remorse, some deathbed confession, he had told her what he had done? Either way, surely, her instinct must have been to burn the letters? What a risk to keep them and then give them to me. Had she feared what I would do with this information?

I paused in the street to get my breath. ‘So now you have no family?'

‘Well, Angela's parents live in Chicago.' He noticed my confusion. ‘Father hasn't mentioned her?' I told him no. He took a photograph from his wallet of a Western woman, thickset, with hair the colour of rice ready for harvest. She was sitting by a pool, laughing, dressed in a sunflower-print swimsuit. Beside her were two children grinning at the camera. ‘These are my children: Benjiro we call him Benji, and this is Hanako.'

I noted with diplomatic care the mix of American and Japanese blood in their genetic make-up. I could see little of Yuko in either. ‘Your children are beautiful. How did you meet your wife?'

‘Angela's a teacher like me. She came to my school to work, a sabbatical for a year. We became friends. I took her to peace rallies, showed her the countryside, picnics on the beach. We got to the end of the year and I realised I didn't want her to go home.' He paused.

‘So you asked her to stay?'

He laughed. ‘We married in 1972. Father died a few months later.'

I looked again at this family of his. Why wait until now to mention them? He too must have had doubts
about me. Why would he share his children, this life with some stranger? His company had been a welcome oasis in the desert of my small world. That was the truth, I think he knew this. Our final hours were nearing. What a gift to give him an identity, and me a grandson. But there had been no moment when I thought, yes, there you are, there's my Hideo. Natsu had set me an impossible task. How could I put an imprint of a seven-year-old boy on this grown man? I gave the photograph back to him and reached into my own purse. I handed him a black-and-white image of Yuko and Hideo sitting under a tree, smiling at the camera. ‘Why don't you have this?'

‘I couldn't, it's yours.'

Here was a kind man. Had the scars made him so, had Sato? ‘Please, keep it for now.'

‘Thank you. When was this taken?'

‘Hideo was six. Shige was just home from training. He left a couple of days after that was taken.'

He looked at his watch and hesitated. ‘I've got time before I need to catch my train back. We could talk some more, if you like.' I caught my reflection in the mirror, a lonely woman with nothing of value to fill her days. Did he feel sorry for me? ‘I know he died in New Guinea. I don't know much else.'

We were standing by a bar with no windows, just a red neon sign that said ‘BAR'. I knew I would need a drink to tell him. ‘Let's go here.'

Inside, a green lamp hung above a pool table. Two customers, in baseball caps, sat hunched over beers. Behind them there was a toilet for men, and a poster with
a picture of a cupid on a condom and the headline,
Don't aid AIDS
. Hideo asked, ‘Is this OK for you?'

‘It has character, certainly.' He laughed and I enjoyed the long-lost sensation of amusing someone. Once that talent had come naturally to me. We hung our coats on metal pegs and chose two stools near the entrance. A bartender, pockmarked at the neck, hair falling long in chemical waves, nodded at us and we ordered a beer and a whiskey. We clinked our drinks together. I thought back to July 9, 1946, the day Kazuyoshi came to tell us about Shige as we packed for a new life. There had been no word from him but still we heard stories of men held in prison camps and of soldiers who refused to surrender. The possibility of life did still exist.

Kazuyoshi stood at our door in a dark suit and tie that seemed tailored for a shorter, stouter body. He had been a first lieutenant of the 20th Division of the 18th Army, recruited on our island of Kyushu alongside Shige. They had become friends, two of the 170,000 men sent to New Guinea. Embarrassed, he told us he had been one of only 10,000 to make it home. He seemed to find this shameful. He apologised for taking so long to find us but he had been detained as a prisoner of war, then he had become ill with malaria and only recently recovered. Shige had asked him to deliver a letter to Yuko, in the event of his death. He blushed furiously. He was also sorry to hear the news about our daughter. Reaching into his pocket, he handed over a small bamboo box. ‘This is from Shige. I don't know what to do with it now.'

We invited him into our home, fed him steamed vegetables and broth. When he had eaten, I brought what
alcohol I could find to the table and poured three cups of sake. He thanked us both and we drank. I refilled our drinks. ‘Please, what happened to him?' His mouth trembled. I glanced at Kenzo, who lifted up his own cup as encouragement. ‘Drink up, then tell us.' When the bottle was nearly empty, he asked, ‘The truth?' My husband nodded. ‘Shige would demand it.'

His voice was so quiet we had to lean forward. ‘During those last weeks we saw so much death. Friends and strangers killed by hunger, disease, enemy bullets, their own hand, that stinking coastline. There were bodies everywhere, we had no time to cremate them, we just kept moving. We knew we would be expected to make some last stand, one final sacrificial battle. But Shige would whisper to me, what was the point? Why die in some foreign place? We needed to surrender, to get home. There was no shame in this, he said. Sometimes at night we would hear our enemy calling out. It was always the same man, speaking perfect Japanese in a Tokyo dialect. “Surrender and you will be treated with due consideration under the guidelines of international law. You have fought well but the battle is lost. We have food, medicine, blankets. Come forward and soon you will be home safe with your families.” This went on for days. Then one night Shige handed me the letter and stood up. Before I had a chance to stop him, he dropped his rifle and began to walk. Others watched him, some started to follow.' Kazuyoshi stopped, looked at the bottle, poured another drink. ‘The shot came from over my left shoulder, hit him in the back of the head. He must have died instantly. He didn't suffer, I'm sure.'

Kazuyoshi fell silent. My husband took his time to find his words. ‘Thank you for coming here today. We are grateful.'

Our guest nodded. ‘Shige was a good man, a fine soldier, my friend.'

When he left we sat side by side, staring at the box. Finally, Kenzo picked it up and opened the lid. He pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. ‘I can't, Amaterasu. You must.' I opened it carefully, worried those creases and tears might disintegrate to nothing. Shige had used a blunt pencil, the letters thick and fat.

Yuko,

I broke our promise. I said I would never leave you again. I tried my hardest to come back to you. I'm sorry I failed you and Hideo, but there is comfort in knowing some part of me lives on in him. Don't let him forget me. Thank you for the happiness you brought me. I wanted to spend my life repaying my debt of gratitude. Now that I cannot, promise me you will find joy again. Don't let this war define your life. Be happy, Yuko. We are here to love, so love.

Your husband, Shige

I looked up and saw Kenzo's face, tears falling down his cheek, but then he faded from view. In his place was Hideo, sitting in the gloomy bar with music churning out from a jukebox. ‘Do you still have the letter?' I nodded. ‘Would you let me read it? Just to see, not to keep.' I reached spontaneously for his hand, but he pulled away.
‘I know what you're going to say. But what if I'm right, what if I am Hideo Watanabe?'

A clock next to a row of upended bottles of spirits ticked forward to 3.12 p.m. ‘Isn't your train due?' He looked at my empty glass and signalled to the barman. ‘I'll get the next one. Amaterasu, I understand your suspicion, your caution, I do, but what I struggle with is your total resistance to the possibility that we are related. Why would you not want this . . . well, miracle . . . to happen? This armour you wear. I don't know how to pierce it.' The barman put our drinks in front of us and Hideo took a swig of beer. ‘My good looks don't seem to be working.'

I found myself laughing at this. He did too. ‘Tell me more about Angela and the children.'

He knew he was humouring me but he began to sketch out their lives. He told me how Benji was more like his mother: lively, boisterous, a joker. Hanako was quieter, more sensitive. She was older, nine. He was seven. They had terrible fights but loved each other fiercely. I listened, nodded and smiled and thought back to my own childhood. No one knew about my life before my marriage. Not even Kenzo. At least, not the whole truth, just carefully chosen excerpts. Unlike Sato, I had felt no need to confess my past even if I could not forget it.

Geisha: Around the end of the seventeenth century, geisha girls replaced an earlier class of ‘courtesans' who were skilled in such arts as music and dancing. Geisha no longer carries the sexual implication that is often suggested by the English use of the word. Dressed in kimono and often with their hair done in the old Japanese style, they entertain a group of men by playing
the shamisen, singing, dancing, serving food and drinks, or through
light-hearted talk with a sympathetic smile. Some are highly educated and are intellectually stimulating enough to entertain elite businessmen.

Mother took me to Bar Printemps when I was fifteen. Father had died of an impossible mix of black lung and rice wine. She was too fond of sake herself. She said we needed the money and there was no shame in the work. She was too old but I was the perfect age. Maybe in time I would be introduced to a decent man, unlike her. She would bemoan the cruel fates that had thrown her in the path of my ‘feckless' father. During slurred rows and thrown cups, I learned neither had wanted to marry the other, but my impending birth necessitated the union. She said her beauty had cursed her life with the attentions of this good-for-nothing but my looks could be put to better use.

We lived close to Maruyama, the red-light district of
Nagasaki known as Shian Bashi, or Hesitation Bridge. Anyone wanting a night of pleasure would have to cross this first point of entry. Once they had, they would then pass over, guilt-free or not, Omoikiri Bashi, Made Up Your Mind Bridge. Safe among the rows of wooden homes, where women lounged from balconies, visitors to the area had their choice of entertainment: tea houses, bars or dance halls. The customers came not just from Japan but Malaysia, Europe, China and India. Traders, sailors, merchant seamen, local workers and foreign diplomats could all be found drinking, talking and doing deals behind shoji screens. The modan gaaru, or modern girls, of the jazz age had not yet arrived, nor had the cafe girls, dressed in their kimonos and aprons with their fast flirtatious chat, but the men found plenty of variety to distract them. There were geishas, skilled in musical instruments or dance; there were women who could laugh and pour drinks; there were concubines to love and prostitutes who expected no such commitment. Girls driven from poor rural areas, or the textile factories with their low pay and harsh discipline, would head to this part of the city, targets for traffickers who would take them to the docks for transport across the water to the brothels of Shanghai.

Rain battered the cobbles the day we arrived at the bar. The mama-san was looking at a ledger of accounts as she sat on one of the maroon velvet banquettes. She was probably older than Mother but with her gleaming hair pinned high, careful make-up and trim figure, her age was an elegant mystery. She saw us and checked her watch then closed her book. She gestured for us to come closer. Mother bowed very low and said, ‘This is my
daughter, Amaterasu.' Mama-san looked at my mother's stained kimono and unwashed hair and then checked me up and down as you might a beast at the cattle market. She pointed to the seat opposite her and we sat down. She asked Mother questions, confirmed my age, my schooling. She studied me once more, asked me to turn my face to the side. She told me to smile and frowned when I did so. Did I know how to pour drinks? Could I light cigarettes? Could I hold a conversation? Mother said I was a quick learner. Mama-san said she would be the judge of that. She nodded as if she had come to a decision. She would loan me an initial sum to pay for kimonos and make-up. She expected rigorous hygiene. She looked at Mother when she said this. I must go to the baths more than once a week. She had a doctor she could recommend if I fell ill. If she found out I had been meeting customers on my own time, I would be fired. She wanted to be clear about these punishments. Mama-san told me to come back that evening. I could observe proceedings from the kitchen, which had a view of the bar.

When I returned some hours later, Mama-san was perched at the mahogany bar, positioned so that she might keep a discreet eye on most of the tables save for the few designed to be more private in a smaller back room. The girls began to arrive and greeted her with careful respect. They were a rainbow of silk kimonos, their coils of hair glossy with oil, powder heavy on their faces. The lights were dimmed and they began to shimmer like a shoal of koi wriggling over one another for food. Some of them spotted me standing behind the glass beads
that separated the main bar from the kitchen and I could hear them whisper and titter before they began to clean glasses or prepare jugs of sake. A girl, not much older than me, came up and introduced herself as Karin. She said not to look so scared; I would soon get the hang of the work, and the customers. Then the men came and with them the smoke, and noise, and transactions shrouded in low-lit lamps. Most of them stayed in the bar but some headed to the recess at the back and only after a long time would they return.

I watched the girls smile and serve drinks and light cigarettes and flit around the bar gentle as butterflies freed from the cocoon. The hostesses held their hands to their mouths and giggled as their companions emboldened by alcohol slapped kimono-clad thighs if they dared or their own if they lacked the courage. The girls were able to chide them with taps of their folded fans on the end of a nose or a careful exit to replenish the men's drinks. I saw envelopes passed and gifts exchanged and arrangements whispered.

Later still a man dressed in the dark green cavalry uniform of the Kempeitai arrived with a woman on his arm in a rush of night breeze from the entrance. He wore the white armband of the military police on his left arm but his katana sword was missing. Mama-san wriggled from her seat and led him to a reserved table. She told girls yet to be assigned to a customer to bring bottles of spirits. I watched the man's companion as Mama-san fussed around him. She wore a gold kimono emblazoned with red-and-white koi, her hair was pinned in coils, but her face was free of make-up.

They sat down and the man in uniform studied the line of the woman's neck and the patch of skin between her hair and the top of her kimono. He said something and she twisted around and gave him a look of faux annoyance. I saw how she held his gaze for longer than necessary until she turned away as if the bar was imbued with new interest. She scoured the room and saw me, not quite hidden behind the glass beads. The man watched her and turned his head until they were both staring in my direction. Then my view was obscured by one of the hostesses carrying a tray of glasses and corn snacks. I stepped farther back into the kitchen and a few minutes later Mama-san rattled through the beads. ‘Someone wants to meet you.' My heart thumped. I did not want to go into the bar, have eyes upon me in my drab clothes and clogs and the cheap scent my mother had insisted that I wear. Mama-san opened a cupboard and checked her face in a cracked mirror that hung on the inside of the door. ‘Just an introduction, nothing more. Even hidden away you have caught a customer's eye. And not any customer . . .'

When I walked up to them, the man was holding the woman's wrist upwards and tracing the white line of an old scar with his thumb, a reminder of some childhood mishap, maybe. The woman smiled and her eyebrows arched up as she spoke to him.

‘Maybe not good, but I can be bad.'

‘Have you been bad, little one?'

‘Very,' she replied, frowning with mock sombreness. She looked up and smiled. ‘Ah, your little guest.' She patted the seat next to her and I sat down. She smelled
of peony. ‘What a sweet young thing you are. How old are you?' I told her. ‘So young. I remember that age. I was a little younger when I started working. And your name?' She listened and smiled. ‘Most fitting. I'm Kimiko and this is Captain Sakamoto.' I must have looked then. He was sitting back, watching me through a fug of smoke, an amused smile on his lips. He was not a handsome man, but I soon learned that he did not need to be. Wealth and his position secured him the best tables and girls in the bars and brothels of Maruyama.

Kimiko poured a drink. ‘Here, little one, you must be thirsty.' She offered me the glass and I put the liquid to my lips. Suddenly I was coughing and spluttering and Kimiko was laughing. ‘I'm sorry, I should have said. That isn't water. Still, if you are to work here, you will need to acquire the taste.' She poured from a different jug. ‘This is water.' I knew Mama-san was watching and that I should smile but I just kept staring at the table. ‘Do you like my kimono, Amaterasu? A present from Sakamoto. He is a very generous man.' She drank some sake. ‘Captain, do you like Amaterasu's dress?' He tapped his cigarette into an ashtray.

‘You're teasing the girl, Kimiko.'

She lit a cigarette. ‘I'm doing no such thing. I think you look beautiful, Amaterasu. A moth dancing too near the flame. Wouldn't you agree, Sakamoto? Isn't our new little friend adorable?'

The captain, obscured behind a haze of smoke, lifted up his drink in a toast, but said nothing.