An Artist of the Floating World (5 page)

least what Father's doing in the reception room. All he's kindled is my ambition." However, I see I am drifting. My intention had been to record here that conversation I had with Setsuko last month when she came into the reception room to change the flowers. As I recall it, Setsuko had seated herself before the Buddhist altar and had begun to remove the more tired of the flowers decorating it. I had seated myself a little behind her, watching the way she carefully shook each stem before placing it on her lap, and I believe we were talking about something quite light-hearted at that stage. But then she said, without turning from her flowers: "Excuse me for mentioning this, Father. No doubt, it would have already occurred to you." "What is that, Setsuko?" "I merely mention it because I gather it is very likely Noriko's marriage negotiations will progress." Setsuko had begun to transfer, one by one, the fresh cuttings from out of her vase into those surrounding the altar. She was performing this task with great care, pausing after each flower to consider the effect. "I merely wished to say," she went on, "once the negotiations begin in earnest, it may be as well if Father were to take certain precautionary steps." "Precautionary steps? Naturally, we'll go carefully. But what precisely did you have in mind?" "Forgive me, I was referring particularly to the investigations." "Well, of course, we'll be as thorough as necessary. We'll hire the same detective as last year. He was very reliable, you may remember." Setsuko carefully repositioned a stem. "Forgive me, I am no doubt expressing myself unclearly. I was, in fact, referring to their investigations." "I"m sorry, I"m not sure I follow you. I was not aware we had anything to hide." Setsuko gave a nervous laugh. "Father must forgive me. As you know, I"ve never had a gift for conversation. Suichi is forever scolding me for expressing myself badly. He expresses himself so eloquently. No doubt, I should endeavour to learn from him." "I"m sure your conversation is fine, but I"m afraid I don't quite follow what you are saying." Suddenly, Setsuko raised her hands in despair. "The breeze," she said with a sigh, and reached forward to her flowers once more. "I like them like this, but the breeze doesn't seem to agree." For a moment, she became preoccupied again. Then she said: "You must forgive me, Father. In my place, Suichi would express things better. But of course, he isn't here. I merely wished to say that it is perhaps wise if Father would take certain precautionary steps. To ensure misunderstandings do not arise. After all, Noriko is almost twenty-six now. We cannot afford many more disappointments such as last year's." "Misunderstandings about what, Setsuko?" "About the past. But please, I"m sure I"m speaking quite needlessly. Father has no doubt thought already of all these things and will do whatever is necessary." She sat back, pondering her work, then turned to me with a smile. "I have little skill in these things," she said, indicating the flowers. "They look splendid." She gave a doubtful glance towards the altar and laughed self-consciously.

Yesterday, as I was enjoying the tram ride down to the quiet suburb of Arakawa, the recollection of that exchange in the reception room came into my mind, causing me to experience a wave of irritation. As I looked out of the window at the scenery, growing ever less cluttered as we continued south, the image returned to my mind of my daughter seated in front of the altar, advising me to take "precautionary steps". I remembered again the way she had turned her face towards me slightly to say: "After all, we cannot afford many more disappointments such as last year's." And I remembered again her knowing manner on the veranda that first morning of her visit, when she had hinted I had some peculiar secret about the Miyakes" withdrawal last year. Such recollections had already marred my mood over this past month; but it was yesterday, in the tranquillity of travelling alone to the quieter reaches of the city, that I was able to consider my feelings more clearly, and I came to realise my sense of irritation was not essentially directed against Setsuko, but against her husband. It is, I suppose, natural enough that a wife is influenced by her husband's ideas--even, as in the case of Suichi's, when they are quite irrational. But when a man induces his wife to turn suspicious thoughts against her own father, then that is surely cause enough for resentment. On account of what he must have suffered out in Manchuria, I have in the past tried to adopt a tolerant attitude towards certain aspects of his behaviour; I have not taken personally, for instance, the frequent signs of bitterness he has displayed towards my generation. But then I always assumed such feelings fade with time. However, so far as Suichi is concerned, they seem to be actually growing more trenchant and unreasonable. All this would not be bothering me now--after all, Setsuko and Suichi live far away, and I never see them more than once a year--if it were not that latterly, ever since Setsuko's visit last month, these same irrational ideas seem to be infecting Noriko's mind. This is what has irritated me and tempted me several times these past few days to write an angry letter to Setsuko. It is all very well a husband and wife occupying each other with ridiculous speculations, but they should keep such things to themselves. A stricter father, no doubt, would have done something long ago. More than once last month, I had come upon my daughters deep in discussion and noticed how they broke off guiltily before starting some fresh, rather unconvincing conversation. In fact, I can recall this happening at least three times during the course of the five days Setsuko spent here. And then just a few days ago, Noriko and I were finishing breakfast when she said to me: "I was walking past the Shimizu department store yesterday and guess who I saw standing at the tram stop? It was Jiro Miyake!" "Miyake?" I looked up from my bowl, surprised to hear Noriko mentioning the name so brazenly. "Why, that was unfortunate." "Unfortunate? Well actually, Father, I was rather pleased to see him. He seemed embarrassed though, so I didn't talk to him for long. In any case, I had to get back to the office. I was just out on an errand, you see. But did you know he's engaged to be married now?" "He told you that? What a nerve." "He didn't volunteer it, of course. I asked him. I told him I was in the middle of new negotiations now and asked him how his own marriage prospects were. I asked him just like that. His face was going scarlet! But then he came out with it and said he was all but engaged now. It's all practically settled." "Really, Noriko, you shouldn't be so indiscreet. Why did you have to mention marriage at all?" "I was curious. I"m not upset about it any more. And with the present negotiations going so well, I was just thinking the other day, what a pity it would be if Jiro Miyake was still brooding over last year. So you can imagine how pleased I was to find him practically engaged." "I see." "I hope I get to meet his bride soon. I"m sure she's very nice, aren't you, Father?" "I"m sure." We continued eating for a moment. Then Noriko said: "There was something else I almost asked him. But I didn't." She leaned forward and whispered: "I almost asked about last year. About why they pulled out." "it's just as well you didn't. Besides, they gave their reason clearly enough at the time. They felt the young man was inadequately placed to be worthy of you." "But you know that was just formality, Father. We never found out the real reason. At least, I never got to hear about it." It was at this point that something in her voice made me look up again from my bowl. Noriko was holding her chopsticks poised in the air, as though waiting for me to say something. Then, as I continued eating, she said: "Why do you suppose they pulled out? Did you ever discover about that?" "I discovered nothing. As I say, they said they felt the young man was inadequately placed. It's a perfectly good answer." "I wonder, Father, if it was simply that I didn't come up to their requirements. Perhaps I wasn't pretty enough. Do you think that's what it was?" "It wasn't anything to do with you, you know that. There are all sorts of reasons why a family pulls out of a negotiation." "Well, Father, if it wasn't to do with me, then I wonder what it could have been to make them pull out like that." It seemed to me there was something unnaturally deliberate in the way my daughter uttered those words. Perhaps I imagined it, but then a father comes to notice any small inflexions in his daughter's speech. In any case, that exchange with Noriko put me in mind again of the occasion I myself had encountered Jiro Miyake and had ended up talking with him at a tram stop. It was just over a year ago--the negotiations with the Miyake family were still going on at that point--towards the late afternoon when the city was full of people returning home after the day's work. For some reason, I had been walking through the Yokote district and was making towards the tram stop outside the Kimura Company Building. If you are familiar with the Yokote district, you will know of the numerous small, rather seedy offices that line the upper storeys of the shops there. When I encountered Jiro Miyake that day, he was emerging from one such office, having come down a narrow staircase between two shop fronts. I had met him twice prior to that day, but only at formal family meetings when he had turned out in his best clothes. Now he looked quite different, dressed in a tired-looking raincoat a little too large for him, clutching a briefcase under his arm. He had the appearance of a young man much accustomed to being bossed around; indeed, his whole posture seemed to be fixed on the verge of bowing. When I asked him if the office he had just left was his workplace, he began laughing nervously, as though I had caught him coming out of some disreputable house. It did occur to me his awkwardness was perhaps too extreme to be accounted for merely by our chance meeting; but at the time I put it down to his embarrassment at the shabby appearance of his office building and its surroundings. It was only a week or so afterwards, when learning with surprise that the Miyakes had pulled out, that I found myself casting my mind back to that encounter, searching it for significance. "I wonder," I said to Setsuko, for she was down on one of her visits at the time, "if all the while I was talking with him, they"d already decided on a withdrawal." "That would certainly account for the nervousness Father observed," Setsuko had said. "Did he not say anything to hint at their intentions?" But even then, only a week after the actual encounter, I could hardly recall the conversation I had had with young Miyake. That afternoon, of course, I was still going on the assumption that his engagement to Noriko would be announced any day, and that I was dealing with a future member of my family. My attentions, then, were focused on getting young Miyake to relax in my presence, and I did not give as much thought as I might to what was actually said during our short walk to the tram stop and the few minutes we spent standing there together. Nevertheless, as I pondered over the whole business during the days which followed, a new idea struck me: that perhaps the encounter itself had helped bring about the withdrawal. "It's just possible," I put it to Setsuko. "Miyake was very self-conscious about my having seen his workplace. Possibly it struck him afresh that there was too much of a gulf between our families. After all, it's a point they"ve made too often for it to be just formality." But Setsuko, it would seem, was unconvinced by that theory. And it seems she must have gone home to her husband to speculate over the failure of her sister's proposal. For this year, she appears to have returned with her own theories --or at least, those of Suichi. So then I am obliged to think back yet again to that encounter with Miyake, to turn it over from yet another perspective. But as I have said, I could barely recall what had taken place just one week afterwards, and now more than a year has passed. But then one particular exchange has come back to me which I gave little significance to before. Miyake and I had reached the main street and were standing in front of the Kimura Company Building awaiting our respective trams. And I remember Miyake saying: "We had some sad news at work today. The President of our parent company is now deceased." "I"m very sorry to hear that. Was he advanced in years?" "He was only in his early sixties. I never had the chance to see him in the flesh, though of course I saw photographs of him in our periodicals. He was a great man, and we all feel as though we"ve been orphaned." "It must be a blow to you all." "Indeed it is," Miyake said, and paused for a moment. Then he continued: "However, we at our office are at something of a loss as to the most appropriate way of showing our respect. You see, to be quite frank, the President committed suicide." "Really?" "Indeed. He was found gassed. But it seems he tried harakiri first, for there were minor scratches around his stomach." Miyake looked down at the ground solemnly. "It was his apology on behalf of the companies under his charge." "His apology?" "Our President clearly felt responsible for certain undertakings we were involved in during the war. Two senior men were already dismissed by the Americans, but our President obviously felt it was not enough. His act was an apology on behalf of us all to the families of those killed in the war." "Why, really," I said, "that seems rather extreme. The world seems to have gone mad. Every day there seems to be a report of someone else killing himself in apology. Tell me, Mr Miyake, don't you find it all a great waste? After all, if your country is at war, you do all you can in support, there's no shame in that. What need is there to apologise by death?" "No doubt you"re right, sir. But to be frank, there's much relief around the company. We feel now we can forget our past transgressions and look to the future. It was a great thing our President did." "But a great waste, too. Some of our best men are giving up their lives in this way." "Indeed, sir, it is a pity. Sometimes I think there are many who should be giving their lives in apology who are too cowardly to face up to their responsibilities. It is then left to the likes of our President to carry out the noble gestures. There are plenty of men already back in positions they held during the war. Some of them are no better than war criminals. They should be the ones apologising." "I see your point," I said. "But those who fought and worked loyally for our country during the war cannot be called war criminals. I fear that's an expression used too freely these days." "But these are the men who led the country astray, sir. Surely, it's only right they should acknowledge their responsibility. It's a cowardice that these men refuse to admit to their mistakes. And when those mistakes were made on behalf of the whole country, why then it must be the greatest cowardice of all." Did Miyake really say all this to me that afternoon? Perhaps I am getting his words confused with the sort of thing Suichi will come out and say. This is quite possible; I had after all come to regard Miyake as my prospective son-in-law, and I may indeed have somehow associated him with my actual son-in-law. Certainly, phrases like "the greatest cowardice of all" sound much more like Suichi than the mild-mannered young Miyake. I am certain enough, though, that some such conversation did take place at the tram stop that day, and I suppose it is somewhat curious he should have brought up such a topic as he did. But as for the phrase "the greatest cowardice of all", I am sure that is Suichi's. In fact, now I think of it, I am sure Suichi used it that evening after the ceremony for the burying of Kenji's ashes. It had taken more than a year for my son's ashes to arrive from Manchuria. The communists, we were constantly told, had made everything difficult there. Then when his ashes finally came, along with those of the twenty-three other young men who had died attempting that hopeless charge across the minefield, there were no assurances the ashes were in fact Kenji's and Kenji's alone. "But if my brother's ashes are mingled," Setsuko had written to me at the time, "they would only be mingled with those of his comrades. We cannot complain about that." And so we accepted the ashes as Kenji's and carried out the belated ceremony for him two years ago last month. It was in the midst of the ceremony at the cemetery that I saw Suichi striding away angrily. When I asked Setsuko what the matter was with her husband, she whispered quickly: "Please forgive him, he isn't well. A touch of malnutrition, he hasn't shaken it off for months." But later, as the guests from the ceremony were gathering in my house, Setsuko said to me: "Please understand, Father. Such ceremonies upset Suichi deeply." "How touching," I said. "I had no idea he was so close to your brother." "They got on well whenever they met," Setsuko said. "Besides, Suichi identifies very much with the likes of Kenji. He says it could so easily have been him." "But isn't that all the more reason not to desert the ceremony?" "I"m sorry, Father, Suichi never intended to appear disrespectful. But we have attended so many such ceremonies this past year, for Suichi's friends and comrades, and they always make him so angry." "Angry? What is it he's angry about?" But more guests were arriving at that point and I was obliged to break off our conversation. It was not until later that evening I got a chance to talk to Suichi himself. Many of the guests were still with us, gathered in the reception room. I spotted my son-in-law's tall figure across the room, standing alone; he had parted the screens which opened on to the