26

The order to leave is given. I have no time to say good-bye to Madame Violette and Masayo before our unit leaves the barracks and heads for the station. Whistles shriek on the platform and several companies of men push and jostle to get into the trains laden with tanks and munitions. We manage to climb up into a double-decker carriage.

The chill air of a hesitant, stuttering spring makes it impossible for me to sleep. I place my hand over my tunic pocket where I have put the last two letters I have received: they are still there. In Mother’s, her fine, clear writing reassures me that she is well, at least temporarily alleviating my anxiety. Akiko has somehow got hold of my address and has written at length.

Before I left, this young woman came to bid me farewell, and I deliberately went to hide, hoping it would make her hate me. She was my younger sister’s best friend and, having lost her brothers in the earthquake, she had become attached to me. Her family was related to the shogun Tokugawa, [8] and her modesty and elegance had appealed to Mother, who secretly hoped we would be married. Encouraged by her own parents, the young girl already believed she was my intended. Once I had left the military academy and had taken up my post on the outskirts of Tokyo, she started to write to me at the barracks-I replied to one letter in four. When I was away she would come to visit my sister, and her smiling and bowing won over my landlady, who willingly opened my door for her. She would wash and iron my dirty laundry, and darn my socks. Like most well-brought-up women, Akiko never spoke to me of her feelings, and her discretion permitted me to put her squarely in her place: she would be a sister, and nothing more.

A few words from Miss Sunlight would certainly have given more pleasure than Akiko’s endless missive. But I know that the geisha will never write to me. The life she has chosen is a whirlwind of parties, banquets, laughter and music. When will she have a quiet moment to think of me?

I passed through her life, but it was a one-way trip.

27

I have been going past the Temple of the White Horse every morning for years, and Min has been taking the same route but in the other direction, although we have never seen each other. For the last week he has appeared just as the bells in the shrine have started to ring.

Before I leave the house I slip into Mother’s bedroom and look at my reflection in her full-length oval mirror. My bangs look childish now and, with the help of two barrettes set with tiny pearls that by dint of sighing and begging I have managed to borrow from my sister, I hold them back to reveal my forehead.

As I reach the crossroads my heart beats so hard I can’t catch my breath and I scour the streets anxiously for Min’s bicycle. At last I see him toiling up a hill and, as he reaches the top, he stops and waves to me. At that moment, he is sharply silhouetted against the sky. The wind trips lightly through the branches, which are full of birds singing their joyful little score. Some young Taoist monks walk past in their gray tunics, eyes lowered. A street peddler stokes his fire, and his fried rolls steam, a delicious smell.

In class, instead of listening to the teacher, I review the image of Min on his bicycle a thousand times inside my head. I remember his eyes shining out from under his hat, the way he raises his arm in greeting with his books in his hand. My cheeks are burning, and I can’t help smiling stupidly at the blackboard, where I think I can see him showing off as he weaves between the words and numbers.

28

After the earthquake I began to feel repulsed, but also fascinated, by death. These thoughts pursued me night and day: I would suddenly be overwhelmed with fear, I would have palpitations and I would cry for no reason.

The first time I touched a gun, I felt its strength in the chill of the steel. My first shooting lesson was outside, on an empty range. I was profoundly fearful, like a pilgrim preparing to touch the feet of a deity. With the first shot, my ears started to hum and, as the weapon kicked back, it struck me violently. That evening I went to bed with a sore shoulder, and a feeling of appeasement.

Every man has to die. Choosing oblivion is the only way of triumphing over this.

When I was sixteen I began to live again. At last I had stopped dreaming about tidal waves and ravaged forests. For me, the army was a giant arch capable of withstanding every kind of tempest. I was initiated into the delights of physical love in my very first year of cadet training, and I discovered the pleasure of abandoning myself inside a woman. Then I learned to sacrifice pleasure to duty. The Hagakure was like a beacon guiding me through adolescence towards maturity.

I prepared myself for death. Why should I marry? A samurai’s wife kills herself when her husband dies. Why send another life hurtling into the abyss? I am fond of children, they are the continuation of a people, the hope of a nation, but I could never have my own. Children need to grow up with a father’s guidance and protection, and to be spared from grief.

The appeal of a prostitute has the transient, furtive freshness of the morning dew. Prostitutes have no illusions and this makes them a soldier’s natural soulmates. They respond with a blandness that is reassuring; as the daughters of poverty and misery, they have an abiding mistrust of happiness. Already damned, they dare not dream of eternity, and they cling to us like shipwrecked mariners clinging to flotsam. There is a religious purity in our embraces.

After our training we no longer had to hide our recreational activities. High-ranking officers openly kept geishas, and second lieutenants made do with more fleeting encounters.

I met Miss Sunlight in June 1931. We were in a teahouse celebrating our captain’s promotion, and the screens slid silently backwards and forwards, revealing a steady stream of geishas. As one group arrived, the previous group was swallowed up in the shadows. Night had fallen along the Sumida, and boats with lanterns glided slowly downstream. I had been drinking and my head was spinning. We were getting one of the officers drunk as he lost his hand at cards, and I kept roaring with laughter. I was just about to run outside to be sick when I caught sight of an apprentice geisha [10] in a blue kimono with wide, flowing sleeves with an iris design on them. She bowed deeply in greeting, moving slowly and with great nobility. Despite the white powder on her cheeks, the beauty mark that stood out against her chin made her look somehow melancholy.

She took a samisen from its case, picked up her ivory plectrum and tuned the instrument. She struck the strings abruptly and they reverberated loudly; it was like a clap of thunder in a summer sky. The wind blew, bending the trees and tearing open the inky clouds. The quiet clipping of the plectrum produced flashes of lightning that hurtled down the mountains. Waterfalls became torrents, rivers swelled and the sea, whipped up by the wind, hurled itself on the foaming shore. A husky voice began to sing of disappointed love, of abandonment and the underworld. I was seized by the misery that sometimes overwhelms a happy drunkard, and I was moved to tears by the desolate passion she described. Suddenly the music stopped, as abruptly as a vase breaking, and the voice fell silent.

All around me the officers were looking at each other, stunned and at a loss for words. After bidding us farewell, the apprentice geisha put away her samisen, gave a little bow and slipped away with a rustling of her kimono.