The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel (3 page)

But whatever I said or did I would not gain the affection of my stepmother Natsuko or her sister Shimako. They were set against me from the start and the best I could hope for from them was indifference. They were an odd pair, quite different in appearance but devoted to each other. Natsuko's great beauty, her long dark eyes, high cheekbones and rare smile, belied her nature. Shimako was plain with a broad face and a bent body and seemed made by the gods to mop up misery. It must have been hard for her to live in the shadow of her beautiful sibling and her charmed brother-in-law Kawashima.

The only person I could truly rely on was Sorry. She was always on my side even though there were times when I tested her patience to breaking point. Her loyalty to me never wavered and without her my early life in Japan would have been very bleak.

After a few months I settled into the rhythm of the house, my homesickness faded as I grew out of my shoes and out of my misery. I discovered in that long house with its monochrome garden a place for myself that was more interesting and complex than the one I had occupied in my Chinese home. It took me some time to get used to a house without concubines. At first I had thought it novel, but I soon realised that I missed the chatter and the constant dramas that a house confining thirty women is bound to host. But my life was freer and more independent in my new home as no one other than Sorry seemed to be in charge of my welfare, and I grew more autocratic and more determined to have my way than ever before. Sometimes I found myself in the company of the women of the house but I never felt myself to be one of them. I had a secret desire for Natsuko to favour me but I could not bring myself to court her, and so instead I became the adversary she had from our first meeting taken me to be. While Shimako mostly ignored me, Natsuko broke my heart with her sarcasm and coldness. The Kawashima women never relented in their dislike of me and my own contempt for them was confirmed as I grew up an outcast amongst them. It was not in my character to be a victim and so I set out to shock them by being their opposite in both morals and manners.

As the years passed I wove myself into the fabric of the Kawashima family life while never losing sight of the fact that my thread was of a different colour to theirs. Japanese society was unlike the one I had known in China. It was not my heritage but I liked it better, especially as I had no predetermined place in it.

With Sorry more in my charge than me in hers, I had the freedom to expand boundaries and to take my pleasures in a variety of ways that would never previously have been allowed me. As neither true daughter nor guest, I may have thought of myself as special, but in hindsight I think that I was simply abandoned. I was the daughter of a prince, high born and equal in status to my adoptive family, but I know now that to Kawashima I was just a novelty with a good dowry.

Unlike China, Japan was coming to terms with the modern world, but in the Kawashima household old traditions still held sway. Had Kawashima's daughters been born just a few years later, they would have been educated at a ladies' seminary, shopped in department stores and enjoyed a life outside the home. As it was, they were on the cusp of that time and spent their days perfecting the tea ceremony and enduring hours of calligraphy lessons.

No one questioned that I chose not to join the women in their delicate pursuits. Sometimes though, when I heard their soft laughter or saw Natsuko's head close to one of her daughters as she explained a stitch, I felt a pain as real as toothache.

Like my father Prince Su, Kawashima was not much interested in me, that is, until my body ripened and my face became the sort that excited men. Unlike my father, though, he allowed me an education. I shared lessons with his sons and, like the women warriors of Japanese legend, I was taught judo and fencing. I picked up languages early and had adjusted to Japanese. Along with Hideo and Nobu I was instructed in the English language and quite soon I overtook them in my knowledge of it. I never questioned why Kawashima's blood daughters were not offered my opportunities, I just believed I was special and not cut out for their predetermined lives.

On the rare occasions that I came to Kawashima's attention he seemed mildly amused by my boyishness. He knew the women did not like me and that their shunning of my company had turned me to his sons for companionship. He was entertained by my swaggering and indulged my extreme naughtiness with his indifference to it. In common with many of the men of his generation, Kawashima was half in love with western culture and I convinced myself that he had chosen me over his daughters as the one to take advantage of the liberation of the new century.

Firmly rooted in the traditional camp, Natsuko was outraged by me, my very existence in her world unsettled her. I knew that she resented her husband's interest in me and was on the lookout for a good enough reason to have me sent back to China. Although her sister Shimako said little to my face and was always polite, I knew that she encouraged Natsuko's animosity. Bitter with grief for her crippled body which made her unmarriageable, Shimako loved intrigue and constantly whispered in her sister's ear, exaggerating everything and keeping the household in a state of tension. Secret enemies are always the most dangerous and despite her slyness, I knew Shimako to be mine.

I liked the old man Teshima well enough and often ate with him in his rooms, but over time his insistent fondling became boring and I began to seek excuses to avoid his company. I had a friendship of sorts with Natsuko's third daughter Ichiyo, who was eight months older than me. Ichiyo spied for me, partly for the pleasure of sharing secrets but mostly because she was afraid of me.

I liked to win and having my father's superior traits I naturally and enthusiastically adopted the Japanese code of conquest and courage into my own philosophy of life. This, Natsuko said, was so unfeminine that men would be repulsed by it.

By the age of twelve I was wandering the house and grounds at will and had found my way out into the winding back streets of the city. The life of Tokyo spilled into those streets, thrilling me with its smells and colours, its endless noise and its parade of people. I saw geishas being carried to their assignations in rickshaws, businessmen making their way to their places of work, busy tea houses run by the mama-sans in their crude-coloured kimonos and the women of pleasure calling to each other from dark doorways and painted balconies. Once I saw a man in an alleyway force a girl to her knees before him. I was close enough to smell his sweat and desire and her fear, and to experience a wrench in my stomach so powerful that I found it hard to breathe. A few days later I tried to find the alleyway again but it had been reduced to dust and rubble. There were building sites everywhere as modern Tokyo emerged from the ancient city. New hotels and offices sprang up almost overnight amongst the little traditional shops and wooden temples, and whole streets were demolished in a single day.

Once, during a bitterly cold winter, I discovered the beggar who stood daily outside our gate frozen to the iron pillar he had watched over since his youth. His body was bent with his right hand still cupped in the begging position. The air was so cold that winter that carp froze in the water and in the dawn hours birds dropped frozen from the sky. Sorry worried that my blood would turn to crystals and wrapped me up in so many layers that I could hardly walk. At night she put hot stones in the bed and brought me only cooked food. Unlike our gate-beggar we survived that bitter season, but ever since I have dreaded being cold; it is too close to death for my liking.

In the company of Kawashima's sons Hideo and Nobu and their newly found college friends, I would sneak to the cellar beneath the western wing where the sake was kept. We would make a fire and heat the sake in an iron pot, dropping crushed ginger into it as it came to the boil. I loved the way it would fizz and heat me up in a thrilling way moments after I had downed a glass. I had first heard of the boys' 'Secret Sake Club' through Ichiyo who had discovered it while spying in my service. At first Hideo was furious that I had found out their secret, but, suspecting that I would make a dangerous enemy, he allowed me to join, as a junior member. The price of my entrance to this male ritual was to allow the boys to touch my breasts and to rub their hands between my legs. Nobu said that as an initiation the boys had cut their fingers and mingled their blood, but he thought that too harsh a rite for a girl. The first time Hideo approached me he clumsily unbuttoned my jacket and put his sweaty hands on my breasts. I knew that he was excited by the way his body trembled but he wouldn't look me in the eye and so I could not share the moment with him. One of the students, a fine-looking boy with a thin nose, said that he could have the servant girls from his father's household any time he wanted and that he had no interest in me. He was the only one to decline the childish game of feeling the Chinese princess.

The initiation was a small price to pay as I enjoyed it as much as they did. I especially liked being half naked while they were buttoned to the neck in their student uniforms. It may be that it was in the dim cellar, full of warm sake and the scent of masculine sweat, that I developed my passion for dressing as a male myself and for men in uniform. I hugely enjoyed what I considered was my private fun, but nothing much remains secret in a household where servants go too quietly about their business and delight in trading gossip. Ichiyo told me that her mother and her aunt, hearing of my exploits, thought me wild and uncouth. I didn't care as I felt only scorn for their diluted experience of life. It seemed to me that they were trapped in the past, conditioned like geishas to live on their knees, rarely grasping the truth, which is that we are alive only in the dangerous moments.

I secretly longed for Natsuko's affection but I could not bring myself to behave in a way that might have secured it. I never pardoned my own mother for being so powerless and I didn't dare trust another to take her place. Yet Natsuko's rejection of me affected me powerfully and led me through my life to value, even above passion, the true friendship of women.

If the women in my life at that time were unsatisfactory, I had no trouble with Japanese men. In their arrogance and unquestioning use of power I admired them even above their Chinese brothers. I thought of Kawashima as a great man who knew how to live his life and make the most of his opportunities. I believed that I would have made a better son for him than either Hideo or Nobu.

That freezing winter that our old gate-beggar died I was officially adopted by Kawashima. I became a Japanese citizen and was renamed Kawashima Yoshiko. Japan was to be my new country and I felt overwhelmed with happiness. If a mother's acceptance was no longer possible for me, at least I could belong here in Japan. Sorry celebrated with me, even though she was not sure she approved of my new nationality. She continued to call me Eastern Jewel when addressing me formally, but Little Mistress was her usual and more affectionate choice of name. We ate a celebratory dinner and lit a firework that rocketed to the stars. Memories of my Chinese family, strong at first, began to recede as my new life took precedence. Occasionally Sorry would cook me a Chinese dish to remind me of my heritage. She would oversee everything in the kitchen to make sure I had the finest rice and noodles and the choicest fish and meats. Despite her fussiness she was well liked by the other servants for, as she often said, she was a humble person with a most interesting mistress.

Although I was delighted to be officially Kawashima's and Japan's daughter, it was an honour Natsuko begrudged me. She had me moved to the western wing of the house, the nearest she could get to banishing me from her sight without incurring her husband's anger. The wing, more generously proportioned than the main house, had been built mostly for show. I think that the Kawashimas found its European furnishings odd and uncomfortable and Shimako described it as being fit only for barbarians. It suited me very well though as the rooms were spacious and the furnishings deliciously foreign. I slept in a bed carved from ebony and walked on floors scattered with Persian rugs. The thing I most loved about it was that it was linked to the main house by a narrow hall with a sprung wooden floor that sang like a bird when walked on. I always knew when someone was coming and became expert at recognising people by their footsteps.

In those years of my youth life progressed well enough. I was often at odds with Natsuko and Shimako, but I had friendships of varying sorts with the children of the house. I was always occupied and never bored. I indulged my passion for food, my interest in sex and my need for information. I took life on without fear, but I could not control the terror in my dreams, which were filled with death and the cold and images of me alone in a barren landscape.

I learnt early that to know other people's secrets was to have power over them. Sorry procured information that was to ease my path through life and allow me to bargain to my advantage. One spring she told me that Natsuko had been soaking sponges in bitter green tea and putting them inside herself to stop her conceiving. A fortune teller had predicted that she could now only conceive girl children. Six daughters was shame enough and Natsuko, deeply in love with her husband, was terrified that he would find out and never call her to the marriage bed again. Shimako had suggested that eating live stag beetles had been known to reverse the trend, but desperate as Natsuko was she had a horror of all insects and could not summon up the courage to do it. So when she threatened to tell her husband of my behaviour in the cellar, I said that in return I would tell him what she had been up to with the sponges and bitter tea. At first she was furious, her lips went white at the edges where they were unpainted, she said my behaviour was so low that she could hardly believe I was a girl of high birth. When I stood my ground, bending her will to mine, she became confused and crumbled before my eyes. She began to weep and begged me to keep her secret.