In the Realm of a Dying Emperor Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  NORMA FIELD’S

  IN THE REALM OF A DYING EMPEROR

  “Powerful … a searing, persuasive indictment.”

  —Elisabeth Bumiller, Washington Post Book World

  “In a style packed with poignant details, important facts and vivid historical description, Field analyzes issues of class, ethnicity and gender, further exploring the murky separation of church and state in contemporary Japan … One of the most original and insightful discussions to emerge from recent Japan scholarship.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Brilliant … At a time when America and Japan administer nasty bashings to each other on a daily basis, the deeper understanding of Japanese society provided by Norma Field … is vital. She bridges the two cultures and dramatizes as few writers could the pitiless price exacted from those ordinary Japanese … who made ‘high growth economics’ possible.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Rich and complex.”

  —The Economist

  “In this remarkable book, Norma Field returns to the land of her birth … and examines it through the lens of its own taboos by portraying stories of people who have transgressed them. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor is the most insightful book about modern Japanese society that has come along in a decade. Field’s ironic yet sympathetic style is both engaging and compelling.”

  —Far Eastern Economic Review

  “Poignant … a riveting portrait of contemporary Japan. Field is able to elicit rich personal histories from her interviewees [and] we see them as individuals. [In the Realm of the Dying Emperor] provides a much-needed assessment of modern Japan.”

  —Seattle Weekly

  “A deftly crafted and politically timely book. Miss Field is a rare cultural go-between. The power and authenticity of her text derive from a unique ability to approach the issues with the political ideals and analytical mind of an American scholar while describing Japanese culture with the sensitivity of a Japanese raised in Japan.”

  —Washington Times

  “In these moving portraits from beyond the pale, Field provides a complex social topography in which the tenacity of dissent is pitted against the ‘tyranny of common sense.’ … Field seeks the conscience of [Japan] and finds it memorably.”

  —Times Literary Supplement (London)

  “Evocative … moving … The reader sees the connection between the personal and the political in this book, and this is perhaps what makes it successful. This is a powerful book precisely because it is written with passion [and] the painful and often powerful reflections of a sensitive author.”

  —The Japan Times

  “[Field] anatomizes the Japan she knows in a stylish, brilliantly written, introspective book. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor draws its power not only from Field’s personal experience and her expertise as a leading scholar, but from her courage in tackling the whole subject of Japanese inhibitions about their society in such a vivid, compelling way. Makes all other books about Japan obsolete, uni-dimensional and somehow irrelevant.”

  —Edward Behr, author of Hirohito: Behind the Myth

  NORMA FIELD

  IN THE REALM OF A DYING EMPEROR

  Norma Field was born to a Japanese mother and an American father in Occupation Japan. She currently teaches Japanese literature as an associate professor at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Splendor of Longing in the Tale of Genji, and the translator of And Then by Natsume Sōseki.

  ALSO BY

  NORMA FIELD

  THE SPLENDOR OF LONGING IN THE TALE OF GENJI

  For Maia and Matty

  and the children with whom

  they must make a world

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  “The Paradox of Lamentation” (Poem)

  Prologue

  About the Author

  Other Books by this Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  I OKINAWA

  A Supermarket Owner

  II YAMAGUCHI

  An Ordinary Woman

  III NAGASAKI

  The Mayor

  Epilogue

  A Postscript on Japan Bashing

  PREFACE

  EMPEROR HIROHITO of Japan, posthumously known as Emperor Showa, collapsed on September 19, 1988, and died on January 7, 1989. His state funeral, evidently attended by more foreign dignitaries than any other funeral in world history, took place on February 24. Those five-and-a-half months were lived with particular intensity by most Japanese. For the first time since the nation had been transformed by economic prosperity, there was an attempt to reflect on World War II and its legacy, especially on the role of Japan as aggressor as well as victim. At the same time, such newly critical reflection was truncated or repressed altogether by a spectacular exercise in self-censorship.

  This book is a meditation on the death of Hirohito, the deaths in the Pacific War (the Fifteen Year War), and the death-in-life quality of daily routine in the world’s most successful economy. It is also an act of paying homage to those who resist the comforts of amnesia and the lure of fabulous consumption, who insist on thinking of the past and the present against each other.

  More literally than many books, this book depends on others for its existence. My heartfelt thanks to all who appear in it for the generosity of time and spirit they extended to a stranger. My profound debt to family members who are part of this book can only be acknowledged, never discharged. This book is a modest tribute to them, too, especially the womenfolk who raised me with grace at such cost to themselves.

  In Okinawa I was guided materially and conversationally by Hiyane Miyoko and Teruo, Kakazu Katsuko, Miyagi Harumi, Shimabukuro Toshiko, Shimojima Tetsurō, Takara Ben, and Terukina Kei. I am also grateful to Kamiyama Shigemi, Mura-tsubaki Yoshinobu, and Yoneda Masaatsu of Siglo, Ltd.

  In Yamaguchi, Urabe Yoriko and Yabuki Kazuo were generous with their insights and hospitality. Hayashi Kenji, Imamura Tsuguo, and Tanaka Nobumasa helped me understand the Christian struggle in modern Japan.

  Brian and Michiko Burke-Gaffney, Iwamatsu Shigetoshi, Tsuchida Teiko, and Harada Naō, together with all those drawn to his two-room publishing house, had a hand in the Nagasaki chapter.

  The poets Chong Chuwol and Michiura Motoko have a special place in the journey underlying this book.

  Kuriyama Masako generously advised and facilitated.

  Old and new friends sustained the actual writing by reading the pieces I thrust upon them. I wish I could thank each of them with the particularity they deserve. René Arcilla, Bill Brown, Celia Homans, and Richard Rand expressed unrequired enthusiasm that proved essential through fainthearted periods.

  Leslie Pincus and Miriam Silverberg grubbed through the manuscript. Their comments became steadfast companions, prodding me through my self-doubting revisions.

  Finally, there is Maria Laghi, who was there in the beginning to make it all possible.

  Following Japanese custom, I have cited Japanese names surname first. I have also adopted the forms of reference and address prevailing in their communities for Chibana Shōichi, Nakaya Yasuko, and Motoshima Hitoshi: thus, Shōichi, Mrs. Nakaya, and Mayor Motoshima or simply, the mayor. Titles of Japanese works are given in English translation in brackets. Subsequent references will be to an abbreviated version of the translated title. Except for citations from the official translations of the Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 and the postwar Constitution, all translations from Japanese-language sources are my own.

  THE PARADOX OF LAMENTATION

  I open the box of paradoxes: “My lord,

  we regret the passing of your ti
me as a flame

  before the wind. Truly, truly, we

  cannot bear this grief. Aigō!

  Cries of aigō swirl forth.

  At this instant, when you are still of this world,

  even as life regrettably exhausts its span

  at this instant when you, symbol

  of abstraction, neither Great Deity

  nor human, are at last, oh at last

  realized as individual

  and we rejoice for your sake

  at your return to human being:

  it is autumn in the era’s leftover year

  when sympathy dances over the proud profusion

  of chrysanthemums in the fields.

  My lord, thou needst not die—just yet.

  Because the blood of the Great Deity, the source

  of common ancestry of the Japanese and Korean peoples—

  your blood—

  flowed through his veins, he was conscripted, my father,

  as your own babe, to become

  a miner at the Chikuhō coalfields. My father

  who, through the regimen of suffering, said he would,

  he was, he had to, if he didn’t—

  become an upstanding citizen, who said he

  memorized the subject’s pledge to the Empire:

  my father, dispersed as an element

  in a clod of archipelago soil

  to nourish your reign, your land.

  Ah, my lord, thou needst not die.

  You, too, because you were not a citizen, had no rights,

  so said my father (who changed his ancestral name

  to Boss of the Rice Paddies,

  who crowned himself with the title,

  Keeper of Dog-Shit Food)—

  words he bequeathed as a shriek before the end,

  or as the whisper of an insect breathing its last.

  My lord

  thou needst not die just yet.

  Live and hear my father’s last testament:

  I am you! and you are me! hear his lamentation,

  and concentrate your forces, your remaining strength,

  that the good fortune of

  praying from afar, in your shadow,

  for your deliverance from the privilege of sovereign immunity

  into freedom,

  might be sustained, from yesterday to today, and then

  till tomorrow; ah, my lord

  thou needst not die—not as thou art

  aigō!

  Chong Chuwol*

  *“Ai no Paradokkusu.” Asahi Jānaru, October 14, 1988, p. 21.

  PROLOGUE

  AUGUST IN JAPAN. The skies are brilliant, the air is heavy with the souls of the dead. The New Tokyo International Airport heaves with its own ghostly hordes straining for the beaches of Guam and Waikiki and the shops of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, where everything is cheap, from paper napkins to Vuitton bags. Those who cannot participate in this rite of self-confirmation as members of the newly internationalized breed of Japanese may still join the exodus to the countryside that leaves Tokyo in a sun-blasted silence four or five days of the year. For this is O-bon: time to welcome the souls of ancestors, feast, and then encourage them to return whence they came so that the living can proceed with the business of the living. Less refreshed than their forebears, families struggle home, laden with gifts received in exchange for offerings dragged from Tokyo but a few days earlier. Increased efficiency in the dissemination and satisfaction of taste means that the goods traveling to and from the ancestral home are increasingly indistinguishable. Nature, for its part, gallops in flight from this meeting of city and countryside.

  It isn’t only folk custom that makes August the haunted month. First the sixth, then the ninth, and finally the fifteenth: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and surrender. So many souls to be appeased. Television coverage of memorial rites in the two cities has declined precipitously since I was a child. In fact, second city Nagasaki barely makes it to the morning and evening news. Every year, however, in both cities there are still the black-clad representatives of the bereaved, the white-gloved officials, speeches, wreaths, and doves. A scant minority insist on calling August 15 the Anniversary of Defeat rather than, more reassuringly, the Anniversary of the End of the War. (Just across the Japan Sea, in Korea, August 15 is the Return of Light Day, marking the joyous dissolution of the Japanese Empire.) In 1988 a dying Hirohito officiated as usual in the ceremonies held at the giant hall for martial arts constructed for the Tokyo Olympics. He was flown in by helicopter from his summer villa to alight as a frail embodiment of the war, still nullifying all possibility of its discussion. The era closed with his life; does changing a name guarantee the obliteration of memory?

  In 1989 it was the new emperor, nasal-voiced and distinctly uncharismatic, and doubtless the more useful for it. He was too long the diligent son waiting in the wings. I don’t know how he did on the fifteenth. Since boldly announcing his resolve to protect the Constitution “together with all of you” on his first public appearance after the death of his father—a statement noteworthy not only for its sentiment but for its startling and eloquent use of the second person—he has receded into a predictable cautiousness.

  Blistering August has its geographical and temporal role in my own perpetual calendar: birthday month for a biracial child (“one of them war babies!” as the father of a prospective student put it when I guided him and his daughter around the college of my choice in California) bused to school on an American base far from home. Which meant, of course, that there were no schoolmates around to celebrate with me. It would have been reckless anyway to invite those delicate sensibilities into a Japanese household. Ephemerally transplanted, pampered by the novel services of maids and chauffeurs, the American children of the Occupation and its aftermath were singularly respectful of such dictates as don’t drink their water, don’t eat their candy. It was better to leave my classmates out, even if my mother could and did produce birthday cakes from Betty Crocker or the Joy of Cooking, volumes worn with the effort to please her American husband. She invited her second cousins from across the street—three brothers who were closer to me in age—and the girl next door, my best and only friend until our families feuded over six inches of land. That was comfortable enough as long as my father wasn’t around to scare them off.

  August was also the last month of endless summer vacations, when I reread the same dozen books (especially a bilingual edition of Little Women and a battered Modern Library Jane Eyre), because I couldn’t read enough Japanese, because it was too much trouble for the adults to take me to the school library, and because there was no money to take me anywhere else. Since my father’s departure from the family, whether by choice or under duress, my grandparents’ business of making and selling black-and-white postcard-sized pictures of American and European movie stars was faltering under the pressures of television and the growing popularity of color posters.

  It was the August sun that saw me off when I finally left Japan after high school. It was hot in Los Angeles, too, where my father had been living for some years with his Scottish-immigrant mother under the barbarous palm trees. I met my American relatives for the first time: what d’you want to see first—Disneyland, college, or Forest Lawn? Eager to please, I went to them all, cemetery first and college last.

  Since then, August has been the time for leave-taking. After a crammed yet timeless stay in my grandmother’s house, the morning comes for the silent ride to the airport, followed by that endless flight over the Pacific and the Alaskan peaks to the American metropolises that have become my home. Then the walled skies of Manhattan or the vastness of Lake Michigan recover their cold unreality, and I am suspended between worlds equally remote.

  In August of 1988, I reversed tracks and arrived, daughter and son in tow with husband to follow, to take over the two upstairs rooms of my grandparents’ house for a year. The house stands on the plot of land where I was born, delivered by the same midwife who had deliv
ered my mother. This one was built with savings my grandmother had managed from the successes in the 1960s of Robert Fuller and Eric Fleming (of “Laramie” and “Rawhide,” respectively, television and my grandparents’ business having reconciled themselves by then) and above all, of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. It is the house to which my mother and grandmother had hoped to welcome me upon my graduation from college, until they learned that their worst fears had come true: letting me go off to America had meant, inevitably, the emergence of an American son-in-law.

  The house strains to accommodate the four of us with our mostly American bodies. The three of them—mother, grandmother, and grandfather, whose combined ages exceed 230, as my mother is fond of pointing out—help by shrinking their already modest selves into a yet more concentrated diminution. We settle in.

  I remind myself that this is necessarily an artificial homecoming. I must become, again, daughter, granddaughter, and even niece, a process akin to regenerating amputated limbs. I know that I will have to shed these same limbs at the end of the year, when my resuscitated capacity to lunch with family while conversing amiably about the noonday women’s show and reporting on the obligatory reception attended the previous evening will be superfluous. My grandmother doesn’t even like me to do the dishes—ostensibly on the grounds that I do it badly, but in fact because she wants to unburden me of all daily tasks. You have to do everything by yourself over there; we might be getting a little slow, and we’re not much good for anything (“a mended lid for a broken pot”), but at least we’re two women here. Before her determined generosity I am helpless. I am paralyzed by thoughts of finality. There never will be time to return such unmeasured generosity, let alone time to share again so extravagantly in the garden-sheltered house.

  Experts declare that the surge of speculation in land and stocks will turn Japan into a more American-style, visibly antagonistic society. My grandmother blames Nakasone, the prime minister who flattered Reagan and other Americans with resemblance. Though she will not admit it, she broods over how much longer she will be able to stay on the land where she has spent most of her life. Like many Tokyoites, my grandparents own their house, but not the land on which it stands. Current regulations provide renters an uncertain blessing whereby they are entitled to 70 percent of the proceeds from the sales of rental rights. Not unreasonably, with her husband entering his tenth decade, my grandmother worries that when the time comes for title change, the temple owning her corner lot will raise the rent to the dizzying heights of market value and then, driven to selling her rights, she will be hard-pressed to pay the taxes on the proceeds.