I was nine years old when I first saw Japan for myself, and it was on my first visit to my own country. Our ship stopped at Nagasaki, a Canadian liner, for my father was convinced that only the English really knew how to make a ship and sail it and only an English captain could be trusted to control his crew properly. The city of Nagasaki is a seaport and in those days a small one, a cluster of houses clinging to the shore and pushed close by the high mountains behind. The people there speak a dialect and my father would not let me learn even a few words of it because, he said, it was not a pure Japanese and it was important that the very first words in any foreign language be learned with a perfect accent. He was himself an accomplished linguist and I always obeyed him. It would not have occurred to me to do otherwise. As for the name of Hiroshima, it remained for me the name of the Japanese ship upon which my baby sister died until years later, decades later, when it became the city of the dead, after the bomb fell.
The lobby of the Imperial Hotel is the place where anyone meets anyone from anywhere in the world. I descended there the next morning in an elevator whose operator was a beautiful Japanese girl in kimono. When I walked into the lobby I was approached by a pleasant-faced American woman.
“You look familiar to me,” she said. “I am from Ohio. Do I know your name?”
I smiled and shook my head. She smiled and went on. The next instant my hands were caught in a warm grasp, and there before me was an old friend from India.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he shouted. “Why aren’t you in New Delhi? Our guest room there is waiting for you.”
We sat down and exchanged promises and he told me the news of his family, his pretty young wife, much younger than he and married to him against her family’s wish, because he is old enough to be her father. But she is a determined young woman and they have been happy together and, to his immense pride, she has given him two sons. He took their pictures from his wallet as he told me about them, and I saw the family standing in their beautiful tropical garden. Ismaya was lovely in her sari, a composed and well-organized young woman, her two little boys clinging to her hands and my friend behind them, tall and handsome and white-haired.
“I look like their grandfather, do I not,” he said proudly, “but let me tell you, nevertheless, I advise parents to have children when they are old. My house will never be empty. I shall leave it before my children do, and when I am gone they will comfort their mother.”
My Japanese secretary was at my elbow. She bowed, smiled placatingly and reminded me.
“Please, now is time for press conference. Everybody waiting.”
Press conference! In Japan this is a formal and even formidable event, and so it proved for us. The day was hot, May in Tokyo is always hot. We gathered in a large room where a long table stretched across one end. Behind the table chairs were arranged in a row, and we took our places, not hit and miss, but in carefully arranged protocol. First we discussed who was to sit at the table. Then we discussed how we were to sit.
I have been in many press conferences, but there was a peculiar excitement about this one. The big room was crowded with reporters from all papers and magazines — more than seventy. Photographers were numerous but they stood quietly waiting, their cameras poised.
As usual in Japan, the press conference began with speeches from selected persons. In our case, it had been agreed that I was to make a few brief remarks as introduction. What I said was simply that I was happy to be in Japan again, grateful to them for their kindness on my last visit and ready to report progress on our project, The Big Wave, a story of Japan. I said that we were pleased to be able to tell them that one of their own companies was co-producing with us, and that I had asked the head of that company to make the formal announcement.
While this was going on the usual pretty girls were serving us glasses of cold tea. A great innovation, this cold tea, influence of the West, certainly, for I did not remember anything but hot tea in earlier days. In the humid heat the cold tea was a blessing. The press sat by submissively without tea, listening closely. Questions are not allowed until speeches are over.
The speech in this case was a notable one. The film executive was well-known and highly respected. He was a man on the young side of middle age, of a calm disposition, complete assurance, and pleasant warmth. I do not understand Japanese, but the speech went on at some length. I wondered what he was saying, for he is usually a man of few words. Our translator told us afterward and privately what had been said. How could I keep from being moved? It was a beautiful speech in which he said that his company felt honored to be part of the picture The Big Wave. He said that once he himself had thought, some years ago, of making the book into a picture for he read it at a time of deep depression of mind, when Japan stood before the world for the first time in her proud history a defeated nation. He himself did not know how to recover his own spirits. One day he found this little book and he read it. He felt the author wished to convey through it a communication of hope to the Japanese people, a belief that as they had lived through centuries with the constant possibility of destruction through tidal waves and earthquake, and indeed had often suffered tragically from such natural catastrophes, only to survive each with renewed courage and strength, so again they would survive even defeat. Now, through peculiar coincidence, he had the opportunity in taking part, on behalf of his company, in the making of the film version of the story. Therefore he announced at this press conference that his company had joined the Americans as co-producers of The Big Wave.
I listened with gratitude to life. It is the highest reward when a writer hears that a book, written in doubt and solitude, has reached a human heart with a deeper meaning than even the writer had been aware of, as she wrote. It is the something extra, the unexpected return. Many questions followed the speech. They related to production, where the location was, who were to be the actors, and so on. We were not ready yet to announce the actors, for we had many candidates to hear and to see. Negotiations had been going on for weeks with certain stars, and only one was decided upon. We were resolute, we tried to be good-humored in parrying all efforts to extract information about the cast. Suddenly, as we were about to disperse, word came in that negotiations had been successful in regard to one star. We could announce that the well-known Japanese actor, Sessue Hayakawa, would take the role of Old Gentleman in The Big Wave.
Upon this the press departed, except for an English reporter, who had not understood Japanese. I spent a few minutes with her, and with one or two other ones who had some special request.
Then everyone was gone and I was alone again. This was the changeless pattern of my days since he had ceased to be himself — a crowd of people, and then no one. I missed him now and especially because he would have enjoyed this press conference. He had presided over many press conferences for me, in many parts of the world, the first one when I came from China, shy and frightened enough to determine in my secret mind that whatever lay ahead, I would not allow my life to be changed. It was changed, of course, the moment he met me in Montreal. I had come by sea and train from Shanghai and although I knew him somewhat through his letters — he wrote the most charming and articulate letters I had ever read — I saw him for the first time, sun-browned and with eyes of a startling blue. I was speechless with my habitual shyness but he was completely at ease, which he always was, everywhere and with anyone, a happy attribute for me, when the next day I faced the formidable press in New York. He knew the reporters, however, and they knew him, for he had begun his professional life as a newspaperman, and they liked him. He set us all at ease, and I found myself answering their questions frankly. Too frankly, he told me afterward with amusement, for when I was asked my age it did not occur to me not to tell it, since in China every year was considered an added honor.