The Age of Dreaming (28 page)

She was correct, of course, in her assessment of the coming legal changes. In retrospect, I realize that her anger was justified, and that my silence that day was wholly inadequate to the weight of the situation. For the very next year, the Supreme Court ruled that immigrants of Japanese descent could not be U.S. citizens; and two years later, Congress passed new legislation barring all further immigration from Japan.

Both these incidents were occasions when Hanako did not act in a manner consistent with her usual equanimity. But upon further consideration, I realize it is perhaps not totally accurate to portray them as moments of rashness. In both cases Hanako knew precisely what she was doing, and in both cases she held strong convictions. I recall them now because they were so unusual for a Japanese woman, and because I myself could not imagine behaving in such a manner. It is not fair, though, to characterize her behavior in the same light as that of other actresses. Hanako was a woman of principle, and she stood by her beliefs, even if they sometimes caused her to act in unpredictable ways.

I waited several days after my conversation with David before I tried to call Hanako, a delay for which there is no easy explanation. When I finally did attempt to reach her yesterday, I discovered that her number wasn’t listed. I reported this to David, who called me back this morning with the distressing news that Hanako—dear, stubborn, gifted Hanako—passed away two years ago. “She had cancer of the uterus, apparently,” he said. “They didn’t discover it until it was too late, and then she didn’t tell anyone.”

I am sure you understand my surprise at this news, as well as the fact that it caused me considerable sorrow. Hanako, my mentor and dear good friend, was gone, and I hadn’t known anything about it. The news of her passing rendered me incapable of social interaction, so I canceled my usual weekend breakfast with Mrs. Bradford and unplugged my telephone. I spent the day recalling the events of the past and wishing I had photographs of Hanako. Some of these memories I had not allowed myself to revisit before, as they caused me a certain discomfort. But today I was powerless to stop them, and did not want to, and I could see Hanako Minatoya, and hear her voice, as clearly as if she stood right before me. It was these memories—helped along by the incident with the bird—that finally drove me out of the house and all the way up to the top of Runyan Canyon. And here I have sat for the last several hours, watching darkness descend on the city. There are thousands, maybe millions of lights spread out before me, each with a set of people and a story. I wonder how many of those people are following courses they will one day regret, making choices they will look back on many years from now and wish they had handled differently.

I remember the last two times I saw her. They occurred within weeks of each other, almost fifteen years ago. After that, we lost track of one another, and although I often wondered how she was, I did not call upon her again. Now time has collapsed and I can recall those last two occasions as clearly as if they’d happened last week.

The first was on a winter night in 1949. Hanako had received the Best Supporting Actress designation from the New York Film Critics’ Circle for her role as Nurse Suzuki in
The Longest Hour
, and the studio—20th Century Fox—was throwing a small party in her honor. If you have even a moderate knowledge of film, you may have heard of
The
Longest Hour
, which is still mentioned along with
From Here
to Eternity
and
All Quiet on the Western Front
as one of the finest war movies ever made. If you should ever have occasion to see this film, you will understand why Hanako was once heralded as one of the best actresses of her generation. You’ll note her dignity and restraint, but if you look in her eyes, you will see there the unbendable will. Note the grace with which she moves, the way her careful assurance seems to calm all the people around her. Note the way she is able to convey emotion with a simple slight shift of the eyes, or with a deflation—like air escaping—of her shoulders. And note, too, her still considerable beauty, intact and powerful even in 1949, when she was sixty-one. There is no question that hers was the best female performance of that year, and perhaps of many years before and after. She later received a nomination for the Academy Award, although she was not the eventual winner; perhaps the members of the Academy did not see fit to give the award to a Japanese so close to the conclusion of the war. Fortunately, the critics appeared to have no such reservations and gave Hanako her just recognition.

The party took place at Yoshimura, the grand old restaurant off Second Street. It was not by any means a standard studio affair; there were only about thirty guests, all seated along two long tables set up in the traditional Japanese style. I had been nervous about the party, for I had not seen Hanako—or almost anyone else in the business—for more than twenty years. But I could not refuse the invitation of my old dear colleague, who had always been so helpful to me.

Upon entering the restaurant, I saw Hanako immediately. She was sitting at the end of the first long table, and I was struck by how little she had changed over the years, the leniency with which time had treated her. Her hair was still black and her face still lovely, and when she turned her head and laughed at something, she looked like the girl I had known in my youth. When she saw me a moment later, she came right over to greet me.

“Mr. Nakayama,” she said in English, “it’s so wonderful to see you.” And to my surprise, she placed her hand on my forearm and squeezed it. I saw the fine network of lines around her eyes and mouth, the only evidence of age. Our eyes met and we were silent for a long moment, as if it would trivialize all that had happened in both of our lives to make small talk in the company of others.

“You were wonderful,” I said. I feared she wouldn’t realize I was speaking of her performance, but she seemed to understand.

“Thank you. It’s my first film in years, you know. I’ve been spending my time in the theater.”

“You have been working all this time?”

“Yes. What else was there to do? I took a hiatus during the war, of course, but even then I managed to work.” Then, in Japanese, “I put a little company together in Manzanar and did plays for the internees.” She paused. “I heard you managed to stay out of the camps.”

“I went to England,” I said. “I rented a fiat in the country and took long walks through the hills.”

“Did you work?”

“No. I didn’t try to.”

She sighed and returned to English. “I wish you’d consider working again.”

I gave an indulgent smile. “Miss Minatoya, you know as well as I do that I’m finished with all of that. Besides, who would be interested in hiring an old man like me?”

“I would, in a moment. It’s never too late to step back into it—I mean, look at me.”

We smiled at each other, and there was so much I wished to say. Her grip on my arm grew stronger and she returned to Japanese. “We must catch up with each other, Nakayama-san. Just the two of us. Let’s arrange to have tea sometime soon.” Here she gave me an odd, bemused smile. “I won’t let you get away from me again.”

I sat down at the second table, next to a young Caucasian man and a younger Japanese woman. Hanako continued to greet people happily and usher them in, as if she were the hostess of the event and not its guest of honor. I recognized several of the others. There was Steve Hayashi, from the old days with Hanako’s theater company, who still appeared in occasional films. On the other side of the room was the old widow Takayama, who’d been Hanako’s landlady in Little Tokyo in the early years. Beside her was Seiichi Nakano, the other main player from Hanako’s old company, a talented actor who’d left the theater to enter real estate. Nakano had courted her when we were all in our twenties, but for reasons I never knew, she turned him down. All of the guests filtered into the room and found spots at the long tables, which were already covered with plates of sashimi and vegetables, as well as bottles of sake. Finally, Hanako herself came back to her seat, and then a middle-aged Caucasian man from the studio got up and turned to face the guests.

“My friends,” he began, “we’re here to celebrate a very special actress and a remarkable woman. I think all of you know and appreciate the quality of the performance for which she’s been honored by the New York Film Critics’ Circle. But I’m not sure that everyone is aware of Hanako’s accomplishments over the years, or the long odds against which she’s struggled. Hanako Minatoya’s career didn’t begin with this movie. No, it started more than forty years ago, when she joined a traveling Japanese theater company— at the ripe old age of eighteen. She then went on to star in a series of silent films, most of them directed by the legendary William Moran. And then, when prejudice against the Japanese grew so strong that working in film became impossible, Hanako did not let up. She redirected her talent and energy into teaching, and back into the theater, where she acted and directed and produced plays with her own company for more than twenty years.
The Longest Hour
is the first film she’s made since 1921—and guess what, folks: Hollywood is finally ready for her now. Hanako’s a testament of what can result from the marriage of talent and perseverance. She had every reason to lose hope and give up acting, but she didn’t, simply because she had no other choice. So thank you for coming to honor her, but really, the honor is ours. I speak not only for 20th Century Fox but also for the entire community of film lovers when I say it is really us who are privileged, and me in particular, simply to know her and to have had the tremendous good fortune of being able to watch her work.”

He then called for a toast, and everyone raised their glasses. This was followed by equally fiattering tributes from other executives, and then from Steve Hayashi, who made everyone laugh with his story of Hanako as a teenager, eating French fries in a diner with chopsticks. After the tributes were finished, we all settled down to eat, and several kimono-clad waitresses moved quickly about balancing black-lacquered boxes of food. When they laid the first course out before us—unagi so tender it fell apart at the touch of our chopsticks—the young woman beside me turned and asked, “So how do you know Miss Minatoya? Were you part of her theater company?”

“No,” I replied, “I was only in theater for a short time.”

“She’s incredible, isn’t she?” the girl said. “She was my acting coach, you know, and I just got my first part in a film. It’s called
The Angels
and it’ll be out in two months.”

Her date considered me more closely. “You look familiar,” he said. “Are you sure you weren’t ever in movies?”

I laughed. “I did appear in a few films when I was younger. Probably nothing you would know.”

“I’m a film buff,” he said. “I probably
would
know. In fact, I’m the one who pushed the studio to hire Hanako for this role, because I was familiar with her earlier work.” He raised his chopsticks and pointed them at me, and I suppressed the urge to tell him how rude this was. “I know who you are. You’re that actor from
Sleight of Hand.
What’s your name again? Jin? John?”

“Jun,” I said. “Jun Nakayama.”

The man waved his chopsticks like a conductor’s baton. “Oh my God! I loved that old film! You were so dashing and dastardly. But I don’t think I’ve seen you in anything else. Whatever happened to you, anyway?”

He was speaking loudly, and other people began to look in our direction.

“I made many films, actually,” I said, lowering my voice. “The film you mentioned just happened to be the one that received the most notice.”

One of the people who was drawn by the young man’s voice was Steve Hayashi. “Jun? Is that really you?”

This drew the attention of Seiichi Nakano, who got up in order to see me. “Jun! What a pleasant surprise!”

Head after head began to turn in my direction, both those who knew me and those who were simply curious about what was causing the sudden commotion. The eyes felt probing, intrusive, and I wanted nothing more than to wriggle away. But it was too late. And now Hanako, noticing, stood up and made everything worse.

“Everyone,” she said, “I want to acknowledge the presence of a great and renowned actor, one who has had a tremendous impact on my work. Sitting in back there, trying not to be noticed, is the incomparable Jun Nakayama. If you want to see acting in its highest form—not to mention a very handsome young man—I recommend his films
The Patron
and
The Noble Servant
. And if you want to see what
I
used to look like, so you can appreciate how old and ugly I’ve become, you can see us together in
The Stand
and
Jamestown Junction
. Mr. Nakayama was a wonderful friend in the early days of my career. Since I know how much he hates to come out in public, I especially want to thank him for being here. This success I’m enjoying recently is his as much as mine. So much of what we struggled for is finally happening.”

She looked at me meaningfully, and while I knew she had meant this gesture kindly, it somehow only made me feel worse. And it felt no better when the room dissolved into a general buzz, people talking, no doubt, about who I was and what I was doing there. A moment later, Steve Hayashi kneeled beside me. Despite being in middle age now, his features had settled into a kind of permanent youth. I could see how his elastic face lent itself to both comedy and menace, the two most common types of roles he still appeared in.

“It’s good to see you, Jun-san,” he said. “We’ve really missed you.”

I told him it was a pleasure to see him as well, and then did not know what else to say. He had always been a decent sort, although only a second-rate actor—but now his continuing career and friendship with Hanako were more than I could bear to consider.

Around me, the glances and whispers continued. “Why do you think … fi” I heard one person start. “It’s such a shame …” said another.

This was precisely the reason why I had avoided such gatherings—in order to stay away from people like Steve Hayashi. I did not care to hear more about Hanako’s great success. I didn’t even care to hear about Steve Hayashi, who had never become a star, but who had continued to work in theater and film for all of these years. I was more uncomfortable in that room full of Hollywood people than I would have been at a party of stockbrokers. Watching Hanako that evening, as she smiled graciously at everyone who came to congratulate her; as she reveled in the glow of finally receiving recognition after decades of tireless work, I felt a growing sense of emptiness. She had continued to do what she was meant to do with her life, in spite of all the obstacles. She had pressed on, unmindful of fame or prejudice or financial stability, and now, years after any reasonable person would have given up, she was finally being rewarded.