Biogenesis (14 page)

“The article is pretty obscure. It only lists the place of growth as the broad outskirts of Tomarinai. Besides, the midwinter weed is already extinct. There isn’t really anything we can do now.”

Despite the initial request for my help, Dr. Iwai was fairly quick to wave the white flag. I had no choice, in the end, but to head out to the location myself.

Asahikawa Airport is located on a small plateau, cut out steeply from the surrounding earth and surrounded by fields. Dr. Iwai was there to greet me when I arrived. After taking a late breakfast together, we drove in Dr. Iwai’s car towards the city center, the stippled sunlight falling across the countryside in broad strips as we drove. As we discussed the strange whiteness of the midwinter weed, Dr. Iwai suggested that the leaves might have regressed so as to lack chlorophyll, which would leave the plant to draw its essential nutrients via its root.

The local library was a gray, three-story building located on the edge of a man-made pond. The basement was dedicated entirely to stacks for antiquarian books. I had the electromotive shelves rotated to bring forward the section containing texts from pre- to mid-war, where the magazine containing the midwinter weed had been placed. Despite its age the magazine had been sturdily made, and was in good shape aside from a slight bulge in the section where the weed had been pressed. The meter of the Geiger counter responded to the magazine immediately, a clear sign that the radioactive substance from the pressed specimen had also leaked into its pages. The lending card on the back cover was blank, leaving no record of how the plant might have gotten placed into the magazine’s leaves. Though the level of contamination was much lower than the weed itself, the law still stipulated that the contaminated magazine be stored appropriately in a qualified facility. After borrowing the first-floor counter phone to make a request to the Asahikawa College of Science, the nearest such facility, I also placed a call to the Tsukiyama School of Agriculture, to which the article’s author, Yozo Ishikawa, was listed as having been affiliated. My call was forwarded to the dean.

“I suppose there might still be some documents lying around,” said the dean, in response to my questions. His voice sounded optimistic.

After delivering the magazine to the college, I had the car send me around the long way to the town of Tsukiyama, a narrow settlement built around a main railway line connecting Sapporo and Asahikawa. I began my search by looking for family registers at the town hall. The hall was built close to the station and was adorned with a banner reading “City of Everlasting Peace.” Unfortunately, I had no luck in finding Yozo Ishikawa’s name. Walking along the river, I next visited the brand-new agricultural school, located at the center of a wooded area. A stream of students, dressed in work gear, could be seen entering and exiting a vinyl-sided structure next to the building. I was led down a
long hallway, which smelled of livestock, and into the dean’s carpeted office.

“I’m afraid this was all I could find.” The white-haired dean indicated a newsletter which had been issued to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the school’s founding. Amidst a list of past faculty members printed within the magazine was also the name “Yozo Ishikawa, deceased.” After telephoning the other ex-faculty members listed in the newsletter, I was soon given the name of a Mr. Akiba, a local historian living in Tsukiyama who it seems had also been enquiring after Ishikawa.

The telephone directory only listed a single Akiba household in the area. When I went to the house to inquire directly, a middle-aged man stepped out to greet me. He told me that it was his father, Goichi Akiba, lost to stomach cancer, who had been researching the midwinter weed. After retiring from his position as a professor at Hokkaido University’s Agricultural Department, Akiba’s father had returned to his hometown of Tsukiyama in order to enjoy the slow life. Instead, after his operation and up until his death, he had spent the remainder of his time in a fervent search for the midwinter weed. According to local legend, the weed was said to be effective in treating cancer.

Mr. Akiba showed me into his father’s study. Shelved within the large and full bookshelf, and mixed together with specialist texts such as
The Study of Botany
and
The Flowering Plants of Hokkaido
—books which had been written by his father before retiring—there was also one self-published work entitled
The Legend of the Midwinter Weed
. Additionally, in a cabinet full of research materials, there was a wooden box on which the words “Midwinter Weed” had been written. Inside the box was a stack of correspondence, all made between Yozo Ishikawa and a person named Kokichi Nakarai. The name Nakarai had also been mentioned, with special thanks, in Ishikawa’s article. But reading the beginning pages of
The Legend of the Midwinter Weed
, it soon became apparent that it was Nakarai, much more so than Ishikawa, who had been at the heart of the original research into the midwinter weed.
An excerpt from the book reads as follows:

After borrowing
The Legend of the Midwinter Weed
, as well as the box of correspondences, I took my lodgings at an antiquated inn located in Tsukiyama. Sitting down in a wicker chair which had been placed beneath the window’s parched sunlight, I began to read
The Legend of the Midwinter Weed
, a detached account of the facts as pieced together from interviews with many people. Next, I delved into the correspondence, searching carefully for any details which corroborated the book’s account. By and large, these letters were written from Nakarai to Ishikawa.

Though the book opens with a chapter on Nakarai’s birth in the early Showa period, the actual place of that birth, according to
The Legend of the Midwinter Weed
, remains unclear.

“The boy was found in Kamuikotan Gorge,” recounted the director of Nakarai’s orphanage, “and on the brink of starvation. Initially he couldn’t speak a word. He was so emaciated that you could see his bones protruding beneath his skin. We honestly thought he was beyond saving at that point.”

According to Nakarai’s own recollection, he had been chasing a blue butterfly when he found himself suddenly lost, deep in the woods. Whether his parents had abandoned him, or whether he had simply gotten lost, even Nakarai, himself, had probably been unsure.
Regardless, as no parents came forward to claim him, procedures to hold him in temporary foster care were foregone and he was instead enrolled immediately at Tsukiyama Orphanage.

The former site of the orphanage was located only a hundred yards or so from the Akiba home, but the area has since become a large park. With so few children remaining in Tsukiyama the swings now sit forlorn, pushed back and forth only by the wind. At its most crowded period, the orphanage had apparently taken in over thirty children. Next to where the white-washed orphanage building had stood were the children’s tiny graves. Conditions had been poor and come winter, when colds grew more severe, some of the children, inevitably, would die.

A large blotch had marred Nakarai’s face, and an unsightly keloid, which resembled a huge burn scar, covered him from neck to chest, as vivid and red as if it had been caused the day before. Even after Nakarai’s health improved, his right leg remained paralyzed from the knee down, and he could walk only by dragging the leg behind him as he went. His oversized trousers grew worn and frayed on one leg, and the tips of his shoes on that side quickly developed holes. As a result, he tended to shamble about with his bad foot in a sandal and his other foot in a mismatched shoe. He had been a difficult child to manage. He ate only with his hands, and if he tried to join in with the healthy children they would exclude him from their games. Meanwhile, in the class for disabled children, he would tease and ridicule any children with afflictions more severe than his own. He was eventually knocked down by an older student and the bones in his leg, which had already been warped to begin with, were severely pulverized. Nakarai was bedridden for over two months, after which he needed to walk with the aid of a cane which the doctor had crafted. The cane had no real handle to speak of. It was merely a whittled stick. Nakarai would try to move faster than the stick would let him, which left his hands perpetually bloody. His interaction with the other children soon grew limited. He couldn’t stand to see the other disabled children, whom he had
once looked down upon, now treat him with pity. Instead, he chose to play by himself in the sandbox on rainy days, when the other children avoided it, or else to stick to the brick-enclosed garden where he could stare vacantly at the plants and flowers.

At first the adults around him suspected that Nakarai was slow in the head. When the time came for regular lessons, however, he surprised his teachers by proving to be exceptionally gifted. While the other children were still happy to play cup-and-ball or spin tops, Nakarai spent the majority of his time, from morning until night, leaning against the wall, biting his nails and clinging to an old splintered orange crate as he read a book. Even the director, who had seen his share of children come and go, found the boy’s behavior to be queer. Since no one was sure of his true age, it seemed likely that he was actually starting elementary school at a much later stage than the other children.

Even at the advanced school, where he was placed under special consideration by the director, Nakarai’s intellect proved to be exceptional. He showed a strong interest in living creatures, especially in plant life. Over the course of a single month he worked his way through their entire section of illustrated botanical references, which lay tucked away in a corner of the library. To the astonishment of his teachers and classmates, he memorized those thick volumes from cover to cover, including the Latin names, which were written in Roman alphabet, something which Nakarai had yet to learn. Additionally, as long as Nakarai had free time, he would visit the botanical gardens at the nearby agricultural school, every day, without fail, in order to show off his skill at identifying and classifying plants before the older students. There was one person in particular, a young science teacher by the name of Yozo Ishikawa, who was exceptionally impressed by Nakarai’s abilities—so much so that he even suggested to the director that Nakarai be allowed to continue on to the old system’s middle school. It was from this time forward that the close relationship between Nakarai and Ishikawa blossomed, and it seems that Nakarai had
begun to think of Ishikawa as his principal teacher and mentor. However, having no precedent for sending one of their wards to higher education, the director could not permit an exception. With few wealthy persons living in the northern regions, there were no benefactors to step forward and support the orphan, either.

Instead, the director found work for Nakarai that wouldn’t require him to walk overly much, as a live-in apprentice to a cobbler. Nakarai took every opportunity to complain to his new master that the work was beneath him, and soon found himself scolded for his attitude. Still visiting the agricultural school every day, Nakarai was never hesitant to complain of his situation to Ishikawa. On one such day, entirely by coincidence, a job opportunity as an orderly at a middle school in Hirafu Village, some distance away, came to hand, and Nakarai was quick to seize on the chance.

Hirafu is located in a stretch of highlands at the foot of the mountains which stretch from Tsukiyama towards Tomarinai Village, the area where Nakarai later discovered the midwinter weed. The only method of reaching Hirafu is to take the Taisetsu line and get off the train at Kurogane, transfer to a bus from Kurogane to Yui, and then walk the last mile along a mountain trail to the village. As one follows the winding slopes and broad vistas of the trail, the distance to the impending mountains, transfused as they are in distilled quietude, soon shrinks away. As for the village which Akiba had visited when interviewing people who had known Nakarai, it too had grown deserted shortly after the nearby coal mine had run dry. Twenty or so abandoned houses spotted the mountain path, at sparse intervals. At a short distance from them were a range of ski cabins, inhabited only in the winter. And beneath the eaves of what looked to be a barn a tin sign, reading “Beauty Cotton,” was swinging on its axle.

A dilapidated schoolhouse stood now with its roof collapsed from the weight of the snow. I almost fancied that I could hear the strains of an old schoolhouse organ playing. The entire building was leaning to
the side, and the hallway had collapsed entirely in places. Inside, next to the peeling blackboard, an old stove heater and an iron box for holding coal had been knocked over on their side. Perhaps the small room, beyond the sliding door at the far end of the classroom, had been the janitor’s office where Nakarai would have been stationed. Through a small window in that room one could see the distant mountain chain.

I walked about the heights for some time, searching for the Ezo black lilies which Nakarai had once discovered in this area. His findings had later been published in a scholarly journal. Amidst a thick vermillion carpet of lily of the valleys, I soon found scattered specimens of giant amana, a lily belonging to the same family as that of the Ezo black. Swarms of dragonflies roamed across the mountain slope, but though the ground was stained a deep red by the many flowers, however far I searched, I still found no trace of Nakarai’s lily.

“Climbing up the ladder to the roof to remove the heavy snowfall is a day’s job all in itself. I slip and fall back down at least once every time before I finish.”

Nakarai’s letters to Ishikawa provided a glimpse into the daily hardships of his life. Judging from the letter he sent to Ishikawa, which complained of being run ragged after the school’s repairs, his situation was significantly more miserable than it had ever been before. Nonetheless, the lessons on which he eavesdropped from the hallway, as well as the library books which he was free to read, went far in supporting him in his work. “Sometimes I catch mistakes in the lessons,” Nakarai bragged in one letter, “but the teacher gets angry if I teach the students what’s correct.”