“Yes, I realize that now,” I said. “But at the time, based on what Goro and I saw and heard at the training camp that weekend, we seriously believed you and your disciples were planning to attack the American military base on the outskirts of Matsuyama the night the peace treaty went into effect: September 8, 1951. When the date rolled around we were glued to the radio till well past midnight, expecting to hear some breaking news about your exploits.”
“Oh, right.” Daio smiled sheepishly. “You mentioned in your book that you even took a photo to commemorate the occasion. It seems as though we inadvertently set you boys up for a big disappointment, and I’m sorry about that,” he added, but he didn’t sound very contrite.
“Of course, we knew those discarded guns wouldn’t be of any use in actual combat,” I said. “After all, they were old and rusty and obsolete. We figured you were just using them as props for playing war games, but we really did believe your group was planning to stage some kind of suicidal attack on the American MPs who were guarding the gate of the army base. If you and your subordinates had actually followed through on that plan you would have been shot dead in the blink of an eye — although it would have gone down in history as the only uprising ever staged during the tenure of the occupying forces.”
“Well, the guerrilla warfare didn’t take place, and to be candid there was really never any chance it was going to,” Daio said. “The truth is, we did have one serious goal, although it was probably more of a wild hope. Since you obviously believed our goal was to get ourselves killed and go out in a blaze of glory, we thought you might be moved to drop by the training camp again on the day in question to try to intervene. If you had, I was hoping we would be able to persuade you — as the son and heir of Choko Sensei — to become our leader going forward.
“Going back a few years to when Japan lost the war, the most upsetting thing was that all the army officers and sailors who had seemed to be so gung ho about our earlier plan suddenly began acting as if they had just been released from an evil spell or something,” Daio went on. “They started acting as though everything we had talked about was a big joke and pretending they had never been serious about it at all. Choko Sensei was the only one who was fully committed to our ideologies, to the point where he felt compelled to flee the village, but of course he was swept away by the flooded river and ended up drowning before he could make his escape. Your father cared enough about our beliefs to stake his life on them, so we, as his survivors, were trying to preserve those principles through our work at the training camp after the war was over. Even today, I can’t help thinking about how inspiring it would have been if we could have had Choko Sensei’s son as our leader, to look up to. But yes, it’s true that even though we did have some abstract discussions about staging a kamikaze attack as a sort of posthumous tribute to your father’s devotion to the cause, when that day arrived my young disciples and I sat around laughing about that over-the-top scenario, and everyone agreed it had been a ridiculously unrealistic idea all along.
“Then many years later, when I read your novel, I was surprised to discover how seriously you and Goro had taken the whole thing. I mean, you two were so worried about the possibility of getting into trouble for your part in the illegal gun exchange that you actually went so far as to take a commemorative photo in case you ended up going to jail.”
Daio paused for a moment before adding, with a wry smile, “It’s really kind of funny, when you think about it!”
Chapter 9. Late Work
1
Several days later I plunked myself down on the great-room sofa, which had been jammed into a corner to create more space for rehearsals, and continued unpacking the books Asa had sent down from Tokyo. (I had already devoted three full days to this task.) I spent a few moments leafing through each volume before moving on to the next. When I had finished perusing one stack I put that batch back into its cardboard box, extracted a new pile of books, and began the process anew.
Normally I would have been prospecting for some riveting research topic to throw myself into as the first step toward beginning a new novel, but that wasn’t the case now. These were mostly books I had stashed on the top shelf of a certain bookcase at my house in Tokyo with the idea of eventually getting around to rereading them. In my upstairs study/bedroom there I kept my indispensable collection — many years in the making — of books by an assortment of authors, poets, and thinkers (including the collected works of my mentor, Professor Musumi) and a number of those were in the boxes as well. Finally, there were numerous unexplored volumes that I’d been planning to read someday at my leisure. Since I had abandoned the drowning novel and didn’t have a clue what else I might tackle as part of a late-work plan, the inchoate someday was suddenly at hand.
In the past whenever I had decided to seize the moment and begin rereading a certain book, before long I would toss it aside and move on to the next volume on the shelf. You might think such a scattershot approach would be an unsatisfying way to pass the time, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to look up from the pages and discover that two or three hours had passed in a pleasant blur. This was similar to the process I always went through when I was casting around for subject matter for my next book, but I already knew I wouldn’t be tackling another novel-length fiction project any time soon, if ever. At least, I thought, I could use this fallow time to catch up on my reading — and my rereading as well.
On this day, Unaiko and Akari had driven away in the Caveman Group’s van for an outing that would combine listening to music with exercise. (Those jaunts were now an almost daily occurrence.)
Not long after they set off, I received a phone call from Unaiko. There was a good deal of background noise and I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but she was clearly upset. When I realized that she was trying to tell me something about Akari, I jumped up from the sofa in alarm. The crackling static on the line kept getting louder and louder, and then the phone abruptly went dead. I replaced the handset in its cradle, then stood anxiously next to the phone and waited. Ten endless minutes later, it finally rang again. This time Asa was on the other end, calling from Tokyo. She sounded perfectly calm — almost too calm, as if she was making a conscious effort to convey that impression.
“Akari had a seizure,” she said. “He and Unaiko were up at the Saya, doing one of their fitness walks, and apparently it happened when they stopped to rest. Unaiko called me in a state of panic, saying she had tried to reach you but it was a bad connection to start with, and then the call was dropped. Luckily she was able to get through to Tamakichi’s mobile phone, and he called me in Tokyo. As it happened he’s already in the neighborhood, doing some forestry work not far from your house — planting saplings and whatnot. Anyhow, you need to head over to the Saya as soon as possible, so Tamakichi will swing by shortly to get you. He said it would help if you could be waiting for him at the top of the driveway.”
As I rushed around getting ready to leave, I couldn’t stop worrying about Akari’s seizure. There was a chance he might have fallen and hit his head on one of the rocks scattered around the Saya, I thought. For some reason that image reminded me of the strength and resiliency of Unaiko’s thighs the day we first met on the cycling path near my house in Tokyo, when she caught me from behind and saved me from toppling over.