Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (2 page)

“Their ears are educated, my brother,” Manjiro said. “It's called ‘Dutch Learning,' you know that. Don't make the mistake of underestimating these Americans. Their ears are educated, but in an entirely different way.”

Manjiro, the younger of Lord Okubo of Odawara's two remaining sons—a firstborn had died some years ago—smiled at his older brother to cover the didactic nature of the speech he had made, but Einosuke was irritated and did not return the smile. He didn't need instruction from a brother who had spent the last five years of his life holed up in a Buddhist temple studying barbarian ways, from a brother who had surpassed him in the eyes of his government simply because he could speak a barbarian tongue. They had been arguing forever about “Dutch Learning,” which to them meant anything that had not originated in China or Japan, but recently their arguments had grown harsher. Einosuke believed Manjiro to be in favor of everything foreign, disdainful of anything traditionally Japanese, and sometimes, though Einosuke's arguments always equaled Manjiro's in energy and skill, he imagined himself and his opinions as artifacts heaped upon a dung wagon, his brother the horse that would pull that wagon to the refuge depository! Harmony, Shinto rituals, the purity and beauty of the Japanese race itself—who knew what his brother might want to jeopardize next, or what foreign novelty he might embrace?

“Please, Manjiro, do me the favor of standing here silently for a moment and just looking at these ships, enjoying the day,” he finally said. “I heard this morning that the points of the treaty are nearly ironed out. That means that you and Lord Abe will be boarding one of these vessels soon, forced to smile into foreign faces and listen to that bronze band. So why not give us a minute of peace, as a favor to your older brother, before all the real trouble begins?”

Manjiro pursed his lips and nodded. He said the word “brass” again, but was careful to utter it silently, quietly kissing with it the bright March air.

EINOSUKE'S WIFE
, who went by the name of Fumiko, was at the seaside also, along with their two daughters and their infant son, Junichiro. Manjiro loved his brother's children, and was devoted to his brother's wife, the eldest child of a chief retainer of the daimyo from Mito, a vastly larger and more powerful clan than that of Einosuke and Manjiro's father, Lord Okubo. Fumiko was well educated for a woman, and he secredy believed she shared his political opinions because they shared the same birthday, she was precisely Manjiro's age. She was beautiful, though the blackened teeth of a married woman, a tradition he disdained above most others, sometimes made her beauty seem distant now, and not only could she expertly use the tools of dignity and decorum, but she had a good sense of humor and fun. She kept Einosuke's heart light when its natural inclination was to sink in his chest, and she had managed to raise his daughters so that, at seventeen and twelve years old, they were good at learning, but had also retained an unbridled sense of childlike delight, even, most of the time, the elder one. Manjiro believed, in fact, that though Einosuke's political opinions were perfectly wrong, he had a perfect family. And now that the baby was born, now that his brother had a son, he could tell that Einosuke believed so, also.

It was cold that morning, but the sun was bright, so Fumiko and the girls walked under umbrellas, as if it were summertime. Fumiko had taken the baby out of his wrap and was letting Keiko, her seventeen-year-old daughter, hold him. It was her younger daughter's job to keep the umbrella positioned over the baby's head so that no direct sunlight shone into his eyes. This younger daughter's name was Masako, and when they reached the two brothers, Keiko was scolding her for doing a bad job.

“Masako is so infuriating!” she told her father and uncle. “She's moving the umbrella on purpose, trying to make him squint and cry so she can say it is my style of holding him, my way of walking that's done it, and carry him herself. She's tricky, father, and so obvious about it. You just wait, our baby brother's eyes will be permanently damaged if Masako has her way!”

Keiko was like her father in that she had a forthright mind and an argumentative style, but spending too much time with Masako often made her forget her age. Of course Masako was guilty of moving the umbrella, everyone knew it, but she very calmly lied. “I am holding this umbrella properly and walking at a steady pace,” she said. “Keiko is whimsical lately, she's thinking too much, that's the problem. She stops suddenly and tries to show him the American ships, which is ridiculous since he can't even see the bay. Keiko shouldn't be worried about the ships but should be walking properly and looking at the ground. She cares nothing for our brother's eyes, but only wants to show herself off. She's becoming worldly, father. I can't be the only one who has noticed it, any fool can see the signs.”

If it could be avoided no one in the family ever wanted to argue with Masako, who used passion as if it were logic, and threw words around as if they were skipping stones. Masako would never quit, so their mother simply said, “Be quiet girls. At least while we're with your uncle, at least during our remaining time in Edo, let's try to have him think us well behaved. We don't want him to tell the Americans that we squabble all the time.”

“Mother's right, Masako,” said Keiko, “we mustn't let the truth get out. But wait, maybe we can use you as a weapon against the Americans. If they knew about your squabbling that would put an end to all these negotiations. If they heard about you they would turn their ships around and go home.”

Masako handed the umbrella to her mother and squeezed in between her uncle and her father. “Tell her the medical truth, uncle,” she said. “Tell her what awful things the sun can do to a baby's eyes.”

She took a breath to start again but her father put his arm around her and cupped her chin and jaw. Keiko saw him do it and said, “Part of a father's job is quieting a mouth that will not quiet itself.” But speaking again had been a tactical error, and because of it she was forced to hand the baby back to her mother and go stand by her uncle on his other side.

IT WAS TRUE
that Einosuke and Manjiro had fought over what Japan should do about the Americans, they had argued about politics in general all their lives, but they were close and affectionate brothers in other ways. Einosuke was forty-one, Manjiro thirty-four, and as they strolled away from the shoreline, his daughters' argument somehow made Einosuke remember carrying Manjiro through another sunny spring, just as Keiko had carried his son today. It was in such ways, by honoring the elder daughter with the right to carry her baby brother before the younger one got the privilege, it was through such traditions as these that strong family bonds continued, that parents could give their children the opportunity to experience true responsibility and a sustained sense of joy. Einosuke didn't know what would happen when the Americans came, but he believed with all his heart that the world as they knew it would be irreparably changed, and was bereaved by the additional belief that Manjiro wanted it that way.

Einosuke's house was in a convenient area of Edo, not far from the castle where the Great Council met. For a decade Lord Okubo had leased the house, and last year he had finally bought it and invested in an expansion of its garden and in shoring up its foundation and cracked front wall. The house was still too small, especially now that Junichiro was born, and there were workmen coming daily, repairing the bath and kitchen, even at this most awkward time. Not only that but as soon as the family left for Odawara an entire second wing would be built.

O-bata, their troublesome maid, met them in the entryway. She took the baby and bowed and waited until the adults, Keiko included, had passed into the garden room, before hurriedly pulling Masako aside.

“Well?” she demanded. “Did you see them? Did you see the American ships? The maid next door saw them yesterday and said that carved on the side of each one is the image of a foreigner's face! That can't be true, can it? Tell me, Masako, did you see such a thing?”

“They are big and ugly and stupid,” said Masako. “They are dark and looming, all eight of them, and it seems to me that if you tried to make them move they would not go fast. But if they've got faces on their sides, they're not as ugly as the one on the maid next door.”

O-bata threw her hands to her mouth but laughter came out anyway, jiggling her breasts and snorting between her fingers, like the steam from one of the foreign ships. Masako was becoming rude these days! “Oh, Masako,” she said, “I pity the man who marries you! When the investigators come I hope they don't ask the opinion of the maid next door!” She laughed again, then waited until Masako left before picking up Junichiro and slipping back outside. She was in love with the local fish seller's son, and, even under threat of firing, would not leave the young man alone.

The others had walked through the house, stepping over workmen's tools, to settle into a long tatami room that overlooked the newly finished rock garden in the back. This room was warm in winter yet in summer it was shaded, and when the doors were opened the garden seemed to come up into it, making it a favorite of everyone. It had been Einosuke's idea to add the room first, before any of the other new construction, and his idea, also, that the rock garden below it should be a smaller but otherwise precise replica of the one at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto. Einosuke had not admitted that he wanted the garden for reasons other than aesthetic ones, but in fact it had been while viewing the original garden that he had finally found the resolve to change his life. Until that day, eighteen years ago now, he had been a carouser and a gambler and a regular visitor to pleasure quarters everywhere.

“It is difficult to judge his speed of travel,” Einosuke said, “but I think father will be here sometime tomorrow.”

“Father will travel slowly,” said Manjiro. “He will bear his colors high.”

There was something in that statement that both brothers recognized as true and false at the same time. Lord Okubo would indeed travel slowly, but not so much out of a sense of regal passage as because he abhorred coming to Edo. He was following the Shogun's decree, coming for his year of duty, but he didn't like the expense of it, nor did he want to hurry into the political turmoil that awaited him. Einosuke, on the other hand, was fond of Edo and did not look forward to returning to Odawara, even for the few months it would take to get the Edo house remodeled. He and his family had stayed in Edo for a decade, only occasionally visiting Odawara, and he was miffed that his father insisted upon their return to the countryside. His father had often said that Einosuke should return to Odawara in order to better learn how to run the estates once he became lord, but Einosuke suspected it was merely that his father wanted to be in Edo without him, to deal with the edicts concerning behavior toward foreigners wihtout his counsel.

The brothers looked at each other with rueful smiles. Once again their time alone together had been short. They both knew that their father's arrival would reconfigure things, making their relationship unrecognizable compared to what it was now. Unlike Manjiro's earlier visits, though, which might have been too short but had been harmonious, this time the brothers had shouted and argued bitterly every night. It was for that reason that Fumiko felt it important that there be no arguing on this, the last solitary evening they would have. She believed that harmony at the end of a visit was more important than harmony in its middle. She had instructed her daughters in the matter, but when Masako joined them in the garden room she was still under the influence of O-bata, and her words came out wrong.

“Think of it,” she said. “By the time our fat little brother is grown up there will be foreigners everywhere. Even when we move back to Grandpa's castle we will probably have foreigners living right next door.”

Manjiro reached up and pulled his niece down next to him as she spoke. Whenever he was around these girls what he longed for most was not intercourse with the outside world but marriage and constancy, a family of his own. He hoped, in fact, that he might quite soon find both. “Your father and I discuss such things only so that we can make them clear,” he said.

When Einosuke heard that he knew it was his responsibility, more than his brothers, to regret their long hours of discord. But when he tried to do it, to agree with Manjiro at least that far, he found he couldn't do it well. He admired Manjiro greatly, but at the same moment was angry with him, not because Manjiro held opinions of his own, but because he could not see the need for a united family view. In earlier days, when his role had been subordinate, he would not have dared speak to senior family members the way Manjiro seemed to have no trouble speaking to him now.

“If you are eating in tonight I must send O-bata out to buy fresh fish,” Fumiko finally said. “Are you eating in or are you eating out?”

There was a kind of code in this, a reminder delivered from wife to husband, not concerning Manjiro this time, but concerning O-bata, the maid, and the fish seller's son. Fumiko nearly dismissed her earlier but had lately relented, just the night before allowing O-bata to deliver her farewells to the boy in person, before going to Odawara with the family.

“Oh, we must eat in,” Einosuke told his wife, “but Manjiro and I will buy the fish ourselves. That way we may speak together without the family spies.”

Once outside, however, Einosuke and Manjiro argued about the Americans again, standing next to each other in the frigid night.

They were an hour late for dinner, everyone was upset, and when their father arrived the next day he, too, immediately started arguing, even before he had unpacked his bags.

2
.
Oh, What I'll Find There I Don't Know

THE FIRST SURPRISE
was that the deck felt smooth under Manjiro's feet; familiar, like standing on planks of Japanese cypress, in a temple or in a bath or in someone's finely made entryway.