The New Samurai (33 page)

Kazuo bit his lip and Sam sat down again, ready to listen.

“We do juken when we get back,” said Kazuo. “My parents expect me to get top grades and go to top university.”

He threw a look of desperation at Sam, not waving but drowning.

“But you don’t?” said Sam.

“I want to be manga artist,” said Kazuo, his face lighting up in a smile. “I’ve wanted to do that career since I was nine years old. But my parents say it’s not a proper job – not respectable – not a serious job. But it is, Patterson-san! There are many famous manga artists – earning good money, too. I could even get a job in Hollywood one day!”

Sam hid a smile. If he had a pound for every kid who told him they wanted to work in Hollywood, or be a reality TV star, or a footballer, he’d be rich. Some of the teachers he knew, too, now he thought of it.

“There are university courses that include manga arts,” he said, thoughtfully.

Kazuo shook his head. “They say that is not a serious course: they want me to be an accountant or an engineer.”

His face crumpled on the words.

“It’s a good back-up,” said Sam.

He meant what he said: he knew from experience that it was important to have a Plan B.

“I will kill myself first!” said Kazuo, his head in his hands.

“No you won’t!” said Sam, quietly but firmly. “Listen, Kazuo: your parents think they know what’s best for you – maybe they do, I can’t say. But if you want to be a manga artist then prove it. Work on your portfolio; send your ideas to film companies and manga publishing houses. If you’re good enough, you’ll start to get work. That’s the only way your parents will take your choices seriously. In the meantime, Accountancy will be useful – especially if you end up running your own manga studio one day.”

Kazuo’s head was still in his hands but Sam could tell he was listening.

“It is hard, Patterson-san,” he mumbled.

“Yes,” agreed Sam. “Life can be hard but.... what is it you Japanese say? If you do not enter the tiger’s cave, you will not catch its cub. It will be hard to study and work on your portfolio – but not impossible. But that way you can please your parents and yourself. Anything else is giving up.”

Kazuo blinked and looked sideways at Sam, a series of emotions skittering rapidly across his face. His expression cleared slowly.

“Thank you, Patterson-san,” he said, respect in his voice. “I will try.”

“Good man,” said Sam. “Now let’s get back to the dorm before they send out search parties. And no more smoking.”

Kazuo laughed nervously.

Sam woke early, Mr Ito’s gurgling snores making further sleep impossible. He dressed quickly, picked up his book and headed back to the garden. He found the stub of Kazuo’s late night cigarette, and buried it with the heel of his shoe.

He looked up to find Ms Amori watching him. He flushed red, knowing he looked guilty as hell. The best case scenario was that she would assume it was his cigarette. But it seemed luck was with him.

“Did you sleep well, Patterson-san?” she said.

“Yes, thank you,” lied Sam briskly, gazing at a spot above her left shoulder.

“No problems with the pupils?” she asked, her dark eyes boring into him.

“Everything is fine,” he said, blandly.

If Ms Amori knew something, she wasn’t saying. Perhaps she wanted to play the long game. Sam knew he didn’t have much of a poker face and looked away.

Then something else occurred to him: Ms Amori was the senior teacher and if Sam made a mistake, that reflected on her competence, too. It was the Japanese way. Maybe if she knew about Kazuo, she would feel compelled to keep quiet. The thought cheered Sam slightly. Very slightly.

There was an awkward pause before Ms Amori nodded curtly and marched back into the hostel. Sam breathed a sigh of relief, his execution temporarily deferred.

Breakfast was a quiet affair: everyone felt the weight of history upon them as they prepared for a difficult day. They were to visit the Atomic Bomb Museum: it was the main purpose of the whole trip and although Sam was keen to see it, he was also apprehensive.

As he expected, Ms Amori set the tone.

“Today will be harrowing,” she said, “but it is your duty as human beings to visit the Atomic Bomb Museum and to visit the Peace Park afterwards. As Japanese, we will remember our ancestors and will remind ourselves that their loss gave us this wisdom: never to repeat the mistake.”

The students bowed their heads.

As they gathered together at the hostel entrance, the atmosphere was tense. Their near-silence on the tram journey to the museum was at odds with the cheerful chatter of other tourists, happy to be in the colourful city.

The museum was set in large grounds, the mountains blue in the background. Groups of students, smart in their uniforms, quiet in their grief, mingled with more tourists moving in ones and twos. Unlike most museums and other visitor destinations, everyone spoke in hushed tones without being asked. The girls held hands as they drifted past the haunting exhibits: a melted bottle; an aerial photograph of Nagasaki before the bomb, and one with the landscape scoured back to bare rock; a stone staircase that had turned white everywhere, except an area that had once been occupied by a human; a charred doll; and everywhere photographs, endless photographs of the dead, the dying, and the bewildered survivors.

The statistics were stark.

Levelled area: 2.59 square miles

Amount of city destroyed: one third

Damaged structures: 18,409

Killed: 73,884

Injured: 74,909

Total: 148,793

Sam felt nauseous as he wandered from room to room in silence, a burning, choking sensation in his throat. His attention was arrested by a simple black-and-white photograph of a pretty young woman. He could see her profile, although her back was turned to the camera. Her yukata had been slipped off one shoulder, revealing the skin on her back – turned black in an odd criss-cross pattern. The information printed beneath it explained:

“My mother was a hibakusha – a survivor. She did not want me to wear coloured shirts in the summer, only white. She carried the permanent record of all survivors of the atomic blast. When the bomb fell, it had burned her morning’s wardrobe onto her flesh. Heat reflected off white shirts, thus sparing the skin; dark shirts absorbed it, charring the flesh in checkered patterns.”

Mrs Kakaki touched Sam’s arm softly and he nearly jumped.

“So sad, Patterson-san,” she whispered, shaking her head. “So sad.”

For Sam, there were no words.

By the end of the tour several of the girls were crying quietly, walking with their arms around each other, sharing their pity. They were not the only ones. Mr Ito was wiping his eyes with a small, white handkerchief, although he had seen the exhibition many, many times.

A part of Sam wondered why the Japanese had gone on to embrace nuclear power with such enthusiasm – it seemed absurd in the present setting.

A museum curator suggested that perhaps each student would like to make an origami paper crane as a symbol of life – of life that goes on. Sam’s breath was sucked from his lungs when he saw a room full of hundreds and thousands of tiny, brightly-coloured paper birds.

Mrs Kakaki sat down next to him and showed him, step by step, how to fold the thin paper, and Sam’s blue crane took its place in a room that was devoted to life.

As they left the museum, the same phrase was repeated in a dozen languages: ‘We must never forget what happened that day’.

They stumbled out into the subdued sunshine of an autumnal day. But they were not finished yet. Ms Amori led them in a quiet crocodile to the Peace Park. A large, black stone marked the hypocentre – the spot at which, 500 metres above, the bomb had been dropped. A plaque declared that the park stood as ‘a symbol of the aspiration for world harmony’.

Exhausted, the students sank to the cool grass. Sam stood next to Mrs Kakaki, who looked as drained as he felt. He was expecting a lecture from Mr Ito, as the senior historian on the trip, but once again it was Ms Amori who stepped forward to speak.

“This morning has not been easy,” she said, her voice unusually rough with emotion, “but it has been necessary. We have seen what can happen when countries go to war and how the people suffer; we have seen the devastation and despair caused by nuclear warfare; and we have seen the resilience of our people and of our nation. We must learn from this lesson, never to repeat it. But we must also learn that harmony between people and between nations is the way forward.”

She paused.

“Therefore we are particularly honoured that our English language assistant Patterson-san has been willing to accompany us on this spiritual trip. On such a day, we are grateful for the harmony between our two nations, represented here. On behalf of us all, I thank him for coming to share this moment with us.”

She turned to Sam and bowed deeply.

He was stunned – and appalled when he remembered the cynical view he’d had – of why he’d been invited on this trip. And how very wrong he’d been about Ms Amori herself.

“Thank you,” he whispered and bowed his head.

One by one the pupils stood and filed past him in silence, each one bowing formally.

After such a morning, the afternoon was given over to quiet pleasure. Sam took his group on a sight-seeing tour of old Nagasaki. They stood on the Megane-bashi bridge, so called because the double-arched reflection in the still water looked like a pair of spectacles – it was also the oldest stone bridge in Japan; they ate ice cream in Chinatown. They strolled along the marina of Dejima wharf, spending a pleasant hour examining the old Dutch quarter that was once a man-made island for the gaijin, a living museum of the tiny, gated trading community and once Japan’s only contact to the outside world during its long, self-enforced isolation. It was cramped, the buildings leaning giddily one on top of the other and, in all probability, had also been smelly, noisome and exposed to the elements.

They followed the Tera-Machi, a winding street lined with wooden temples, and wandered past several cemeteries, snaking up into the forest and the hillside beyond.

From there they took a tram to Glover Garden, the former home of the Scotsman Thomas Glover who had lived there during Victorian times, and was credited with dragging a medieval nation into the nineteenth century. It was also rumoured that he was the gaijin on whom the sad story of Madam Butterfly had been based.

Noboru slyly asked Sam which he thought prettiest: Japanese girls or western girls.

Sam laughed and shook his head. “I’m not getting into
that
debate!” he said.

“You are very wise, sensei,” said Jiro. “Noboru has two older sisters – he thinks it is time they married.”

The students eyed Sam speculatively: Noboru pouted and the others laughed.

Sam pointedly changed the subject.

By the time they met up with the rest of their party, the students’ high spirits had been almost completely restored. Mr Ito led them officiously and with precision to an ugly restaurant squashed up against a modern multi-storey shopping centre, to eat the local delicacy: whale meat and champon –
a hearty dish of noodles in a pork-based broth, filled with vegetables, bacon, shrimp, squid, and scallops.

Sam severely disappointed him – and probably offended him, too – by choosing instead chawan mushi, a savoury steamed egg custard, a sort of loose omelette, filled with meat, fish, and mushrooms.

Mr Ito stared disapprovingly, if myopically, whilst he shovelled large pieces of whale meat between his own jaws, with a rapidity and volume that left Sam’s stomach unusually queasy.

Sam waved away the offer of more castella cake with a smile, Noboru once again being the happy beneficiary.

The final entertainment of a very long day was a visit to the opera. Unsurprisingly, they were to see Puccini’s ‘Madame Butterfly’. Sam wasn’t too au fait with opera, which put him in the same position as most of the students.

Mrs Kakaki, however, was excited almost beyond words because a famous Chinese soprano would be taking the part of Cio-Cio, the butterfly girl of the story.

“Is such beautiful, sad story, Patterson-san,” she said, her eyes already misty. “You will like much.”

Sam wasn’t so sure. His knowledge of opera was limited to ‘Nessum Dorma’, often sung at matches, and hazy memories of his sister playing sections from ‘La Traviata’ – after having watched the film ‘Pretty Woman’ 40 or 50 times.

He was momentarily distracted, wondering what Tara would look like in Julia Robert’s famous red dress – and wondering what she’d look like as he took it off her. Then he decided he’d better think of something else entirely, unless he wanted to spend the rest of the evening with his hands in pockets to control the arising situation.

He sighed, forcing his mind to the job in hand. He suspected the next few hours would be about endurance rather than pleasure, but he tried to keep an open mind.

He was seated between Mr Ito and Mrs Kakaki, the students fanned out in the rows behind, which showed a level of trust that Sam would not have dared to offer to his pupils back in the UK.

A tapping of the conductor’s baton alerted the audience that the opera was about to begin, and then the swelling notes of the overture swept through the theatre; immediately Mrs Kakaki began to sniff and dab at her eyes with a paper tissue. Sam groaned inwardly: it was going to be a long evening.

But he was surprised by how much of the music he recognised, familiar perhaps from adverts and excerpts from ‘The Last Night of the Proms’. He looked down at the notes in the programme and started to feel uncomfortable. He read with growing horror the legend of the poor little butterfly’s sad demise.

Cio-Cio, a Japanese girl of just 15, whose nickname meant ‘butterfly’, was married to a rich American called Pinkerton, who wooed and wed her and sang a duet with her that was clearly a prelude to something steamier. This despicable act led Mrs Kakaki to wrap her arm around Sam’s and lean against him, sobbing loudly. They were still in Act 1.

Little Cio-Cio, so delicate in her embroidered kimono, her tiny frame at odds with her powerful voice that soared across the auditorium, was clearly having an effect on Mr Ito, too, who looked as if he would burst into tears at any second. Sam was beginning to feel a bit besieged by the emotions of his fellow teachers. He hoped he could count on the stony-faced Ms Amori, but when he glanced at her, he was horrified to see that her face was on the verge of crumpling. She even hissed when the Shinto priest cursed the little butterfly for converting to Christianity for Pinkerton’s sake.