Their houses in Hiroshima were on the same river. From the Ibuki drawing room, which stood above the stone-lined riverbank, you could drop a line right into the water and fish for goby fry. Koji’s house was seven or eight blocks upstream, and the white riverbed behind it came alive in summer with children playing in its waters. The glistening granitic sands teemed with shellfish, and if you dove into the deep water along the opposite bank, by the woods which stood on the shrine grounds, you would see river shrimp warily moving their pincers among the huge, moss-covered rocks. At flood tide the river there would be engorged bank to bank, its incoming waters laden with discarded wooden clogs and fruit peels. But when the tide ebbed, it became a cold and limpid stream which flowed over the hiding places of shrimp, roach, shellfish, and goby, as it murmured its way toward Hiroshima Bay. When the boat rental shops began to appear along the river it was a sign that spring had come, and the closing of the shops signaled that the city was well into autumn.
Obata Koji was four years younger than Ibuki Yukio. The two of them had been good friends since middle school days, skiing and mountain climbing together, fishing, and taking trips to see plays and visit art galleries. Even now they always returned to Hiroshima during vacations and spent time together. Sometimes Ibuki’s younger sister Chieko, who was one year older than Koji, would join them.
For them and those around them, at least, it was still a time of peace. Neither Koji nor Ibuki found it particularly onerous to buy new books or ski equipment or to earn money for pleasure trips. No one could have foreseen that four years later this self-contained city, blessed with abundant seafood and fresh vegetables, would be reduced utterly to ruin. Yet almost every day long columns of soldiers going off to war paraded through the city on their way to Ujina Harbor, stopping the street cars as the heavy thud of their boots kept time with the bugles. But neither Ibuki nor Koji particularly concerned themselves with this—they felt a vague distaste for the military, a distaste Chieko naturally shared. Yet from time to time the two youths could not help thinking that the day when they would join those lines of men was slowly drawing nearer.
Koji was studying literature at Tokyo Imperial University, but he was not terribly enthusiastic about his studies. He hoped to become a novelist someday. Ibuki Yukio had graduated in the spring from a college in Osaka and was doing research at the Institute of Microbiological Research. Soon Ibuki was to take his pre-induction physical exam, then an examination for the navy’s two-year medical course for active duty officers.
For quite some time Koji had thought of Chieko as more than a friend. He liked the unpretentious way she wore her hair in braids, and several times he managed to catch the clean fragrance of her skin, a scent without a trace of make-up. He enjoyed it when she joined in animated conversation with him and her brother, and was delighted whenever she joked with him and teased him with her arch little thrusts.
Chieko, for her part, was fond of Koji, too, but her fondness seemed to grow out of her respect for her scholarly brother, and whenever she began to think of the younger Koji as a possible marriage partner, she always felt an inexplicable resistance to the idea. Koji’s feelings were much the same.
Koji himself had never given any serious thought to what he ought to do about his relationship with Chieko, so he simply took pleasure in her company, and their relationship continued unclarified. His friendship with Ibuki served as a useful neutralizer for his feelings.
Yet whenever Chieko thought of the reality that her brother, and then Koji, would soon be going off to war, she felt a vague sense of irritation.
Koji’s acquaintances, and Chieko’s, too, had a general idea of their feelings for each other, and yet no one, not even Ibuki, made mention of it.
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Just before the summer of 1941, in his second year at Tokyo Imperial University, Koji received a letter from his elder brother’s home in Manchuria. It was in his sister-in-law’s hand.
I suppose you are at your studies every day. No doubt you will soon return to Hiroshima for the summer vacation. We should also like to return to the home islands and visit Mother and Father, whom we have not seen for such a long time. The current situation being what it is, though, the two of us could not possibly just drop everything here to go home.
We saw Mr. Onodera, Director of the South Manchurian Railway, the day before yesterday. He stayed with us one night and then returned to Dairen. As you probably know, he is a cousin of Mrs. Ibuki in Hiroshima. It was a business visit, but we talked about Hiroshima, and then about the Ibukis’ eldest daughter and about you as well. We understand that several prospective husbands were suggested to Chieko recently, but she rejected them all, and this is causing her parents some concern. Mr. Onodera laughed and said that these days daughters are loath to assent to marriages arranged by their parents. We sensed—and perhaps we are over-reacting—that Mr. Onodera may have come on behalf of Miss Ibuki’s parents to inquire roundabout through us what you intend to do regarding Chieko.
Not being with you, we really do not know the state of affairs, but we know that though a man can be carefree about this, a woman of marriageable age most certainly cannot. We are concerned about the fact that she is older than you, but if you intend to actively pursue this course, then Mother and Father, and ourselves as well, could reconsider this. Since we have no children we are certainly not opposed to your marrying a little early.
And so the letter went. Koji put it down with a sense of incredulity. He felt that he had somehow suddenly become an adult now, part of a family, his freedom restricted. They were asking him what he intended to do. Was it wrong, he wondered, to simply relax and enjoy the company of his friend’s sister?
He did not relish having to think seriously about marriage so soon. First of all, it also seemed to him that he had no reason to believe that Chieko herself was thinking along those lines. In fact, just a few days earlier he had received a casual note from her, and there was, of course, not the slightest hint of anything of the sort in it.
He left his lodgings in the afternoon, the letter in his briefcase. His friend Ishikawa was stopping off in Tokyo on his way back from Hokkaido and they had agreed to meet that evening on the Ginza. Ishikawa was a medical student at Hokkaido Imperial University and had been a classmate of Ibuki’s in middle school, and he and Koji had been close friends since childhood.
Somehow Koji did not feel up to going to the campus before his meeting with his friend. Apart from the question of Chieko, lately he’d been in a constant state of apathy. Influenced by Mr. Yashiro, one of his teachers at his high school in Hiroshima, he had entered the Department of Japanese Literature, but could generate absolutely no interest in the lectures at the university. He had been attracted to a course entitled “The Literary Environment of Medieval Japan,” but when he attended a lecture he found the professor earnestly belaboring the obvious.
“Hail. Defined in the ancient dictionary Wamyosho as frozen rain. Forest. Forest means a place having many trees. Grove. A grove refers to a place that has somewhat fewer trees than a forest.” The students conscientiously took this all down.
Kurimura, a friend who was also a student in the Department of Japanese Literature, told him about his visits to the so-called “immoral areas.”
“It’s bad for your health to hang around here all the time,” he had said. “Go on. You just decide you’re going to do it, and do it. It’s as simple as going to an oden restaurant for the first time. And it’ll clear your head.”
Koji recalled his friend’s advice as he passed through the great gate of the Yoshiwara prostitution district, which he knew about only from novels. He went twice. Neither time, however, did he return home feeling it was something that he could abandon himself to.
He was looking for something that he could confront openly, something—immoral or not—that could really engage his emotions, but he was utterly unable to find it.
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Ishikawa was leaning against the entrance to the subway reading the evening paper. He was very nearsighted, and kept his eyes fixed on the paper until Koji had come up right under his nose and spoken to him.
It was a sunny spell during the rainy season and the streets of the Ginza were a flood of people out for a stroll. Joining the crowds, the two friends began walking toward Shimbashi.
Married couples loaded down with shopping bundles. Pampered Keio University students and their girlfriends. Saucily-outfitted little girls. Office workers swiftly cutting their way through the columns of people. Shoulders jostling shoulders again and again. A Westerner with an Eyemo camera on a wooden-legged tripod threaded his way through the crush of people, stopping from time to time to trip his shutter at the passers-by. The lamps in the streetlights came on, clear and colorless as water.
Ishikawa looked back at the man with the camera. “He’s going around taking pictures to show what wartime Tokyo is like.”
“Uh-huh.” Koji was wondering where they could eat. “Where’ll we go?”
“Well,” Ishikawa asked, “how about some Western food?”
“Okay, let’s,” said Koji. “Hey, it’s going to be tough for you going all the way back to Hiroshima by train tonight.”
“No, no,” Ishikawa said, “Nothing to it. The porter will give me a third-class sleeper if I put a little money in his hand. I’ll sleep all the way. You want to go back with me?”
“I’m going back in another week or so,” Koji answered.
They went into Lohmeyer’s, a basement restaurant. The ceiling was low, and large painted pipes ran along the wall, giving Koji the impression that they were on a steamship or man-of-war. He mentioned this to his companion.
“That reminds me,” Ishikawa responded, “I hear Ibuki has gotten into the navy’s short-term active duty program.”
“Oh, he has? I think he made the right move,” Koji said, putting the best possible face on it. “It’s better than the army, at least.”
Ishikawa was surprised.
“Really!? But I think that’s foolish. He knows the military’s going to get him, so why is he in such a rush to graduate? The navy might be a good choice, but listen, Japan and America could well end up fighting each other. For my part, I’ve decided the best option is to stick it out in college until they finally tell me I can’t stay anymore, though I’m not all that proud to say it.”
“Even so, it seems to me that if I have to go I’d rather join the navy, but a literature major is useless in the Paymaster’s Office, and there’s really nothing else I can do.”
“They’d probably take you as a seaman, if that’s what you want,” said Ishikawa, “but I hear they whack your butt with a rope.”
“Well, what’ll you do?” Koji asked his friend.
“I don’t want to have anything to do with either of them,” Ishikawa answered. “You’re the kind of guy who’d rush his graduation in order to fight, so I’ll tell you something right now. Try your damnedest to stay alive. If they order you to charge, do your advancing from the rear if you can. As for a glorious death in battle, a man who’s killed is just a poor sap. You can count me out.”
“You’ve got it all figured out,” responded Koji, “but I can’t quite see it your way. I really don’t know what to do.”
“What’s to be confused about? You certainly can’t tell me it’s a just war. In any case, I want no part of it. I’m going to keep failing my courses and staying in school as long as I can.”
The two of them continued in this vein as they ate, their voices lowered so as not to be overheard by those around them.
Koji suddenly felt a hand seize his shoulder. Startled, he turned around to see Tanii, a friend majoring in Japanese literature, standing behind him.
“Damn! Don’t do that!” Koji rebuked his friend. “Can’t you see you scared me to death? What is it?”
“Sorry, sorry,” said Tanii hurriedly, “I was just on my way out after dinner with my family when I noticed you were here. But you’re with someone, aren’t you. I’ll see you later.”
“No. Sit down with us. We’ll all leave together.”
“No, I’m with my family, so I’ll—”
“Oh, come on,” persisted Koji, angry at having been startled. “Sit down.”
“Oh, okay, then, I’ll tell them to go on ahead,” Tanii said, and left. “Who’s that?” asked Ishikawa, glancing up at the departing Tanii as he cut his meat.
“The most congenial friend I have at the university. He’s a connoisseur of the theater and such a naive brat that everyone calls him a botchan.”
“If you call him a botchan he must really be green,” said Ishikawa, and the two young men laughed.
Tanii returned, sat down beside them, and began smoking a cigarette.
“Hey, you know Helmick?” he began. He was talking about an American, born in Japan, who was a year ahead of them in the Department of Japanese Literature at Tokyo Imperial University. “He was talking big to the owner of a second-hand bookstore in Kanda yesterday. ‘If a war starts between Japan and America,’ he says, ‘I’m going straight back to the States to join up.’”
“He did, did he?” said Ishikawa. “So America has its share of idiots too.”
Tanii stared dumbly at Ishikawa, astonishment on his face. Koji laughed and introduced the two men to each other.
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That night, Ishikawa went back to Hiroshima on the express train. Koji decided he would return home after attending two more sessions of his Chinese class. He had taken the course more on impulse than anything else, yet now it was the only course at the university he had the slightest interest in. The students in the class, each a little self-consciously, imitated the teacher’s pronunciation, their mouths gaping wide like so many grammar school pupils at their lesson. Koji felt at home with this new foreign language, which was falling into place for him little by little. It was much more satisfying than the incomprehensible, purely theoretical lectures he encountered in his other courses.
The instructor, Mr. Chu, had been born in Peking and his pronunciation of the tongue-twisting Mandarin dialect was absolutely flawless. He was a tall, spare man with a dark complexion. One day he wrote a string of words down the blackboard: “Peihai Park,” “Tungtan,” “cooked wheat cakes,” and so on, and began to talk proudly of the city of Peking. Then he wrote the word “Shanghai,” mumbling something to himself. After that he wrote “Americanized” next to it and quickly crossed it all out. His dark face flushed red.
Mr. Chu blushed a lot. When they asked each other questions about their families in the conversation period, he would turn red as a beet when talking about his own. As Koji watched him, he thought of his high school teacher, Mr. Yashiro, who often blushed the same way.
Mr. Chu’s class always ended at 4:30. He would bow farewell to his students, leave the classroom, and, with his well-worn black leather briefcase under his arm, light the inevitable cigarette. Then he would stroll alone along the road lined with ginkgo trees to the main gate of the campus. He was a strangely melancholy figure. Koji sometimes wondered to himself what the professor thought of the war that Japan and his country were bogged down in.
Koji went back to visit Hiroshima at the beginning of July. He took pleasure in his feelings as the train drew near the city. The train, its brakes squealing, described gigantic arcs again and again as it swung down through the long Seno mountain pass. When the train put Akinakano station behind it, the arcs gave way to gentle curves as the train traveled along the river through a cut at the foot of a bluff. Vineyards came into view on his right. Station signs whipped past the window facing the mountains. As the train approached the harbor, the conductor came and lowered the shades of the windows on the ocean side to hide the military transports from view. A huge building, a brewery in the middle of a field, came into view. Beyond it, Mount Gosaso, which Koji had climbed many times with Ibuki and Ishikawa. The whitish surface of the mountain. Newly planted rice paddies. A long marshaling yard on the far side of a small railway bridge. A light locomotive making its steam sounds as it shunted freight cars. More locomotives. Huge crossings. The sound of bells. The train’s speed would slacken. And then they would arrive at the familiar platform in the station.
The city of Hiroshima was beautiful at the end of the rainy season. Koji knew of rivers that turned into shallow streams at low tide, exposing their sandy beds. At flood tide they were transformed into deep, green pools of high water. Each of the many rivers would be full of swimming children. Koji often walked about the city in just pants and a shirt.
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That spring, Mr. Yashiro had decided that the house he was renting by the foul-smelling drainage ditch behind the high school was not a healthy place to raise his two children, so he had moved his family to a house near the heart of the city. Koji went to visit his former teacher at his new home.
Mr. Yashiro was a student of the Man’yoshu, the ancient Japanese poetry anthology, and books and journals on poetics stood in piles all over his study. When Koji arrived, two students from the high school were there talking with Mr. Yashiro over food and saké.
“I went to the Buttsu Temple the other day,” he was saying, “and found it rather pleasant. I admire the Obaku sect too—you know the passage written on the sounding board in the temple dining hall, ‘With deference we address this assembly’?” Taking pencil and paper in hand, he wrote it out for them. Vital to salvation the cycle of life and death, impermanent and swift. Be circumspect and not wanting in restraint. “Very well put, I’d say.”
His wife brought in chopsticks and a plate of food for Koji. His son, six, and the daughter, four, followed her, circling the table again and again.
“Have whatever you like, if you’ve an appetite,” he told Koji. He poured saké into his own drinking cup and poked at the vinegared bean paste with a piece of lettuce.
“Colleges these days,” he went on, “make the exaggerated claim that their dormitories are just like home, but the truth is it’s important for a man to live now and again where he can breathe undomesticated air, completely free of womanish influences.”
“When we graduate and go into the military,” said Koji, “that’ll happen soon enough.”
“Right you are,” the teacher replied, forcing a smile. He changed the subject. “Obata, are you working on your senior thesis now?”
“No, I haven’t done anything yet,” Koji answered. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but somehow I’ve lost all interest in my lectures and seminars. I tell people I’m writing a novel, but that and everything else suddenly seems like wasted effort now when I realize I’ll be going straight into the service in two years.”
The teacher chose not to respond to that, but continued: “Most students like to grapple with a grand theme when they write their senior thesis, but it’s better to get a firm grasp on something modest, as long as it’s worthwhile, and write a solid paper.”
“But is it true,” asked Koji, “that the students in Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo are praised if they write long senior theses, the kind you have to trundle about in a wheelbarrow?”
“True or not, it’s beside the point,” said the teacher. “It’s your work, after all. It’s stupid just to put on an empty show.”
Mr. Yashiro often went to student gatherings and listened with pleasure to the naive discussions. He was on friendly terms with Ibuki, and Chieko knew him through his outside teaching. Naturally Ibuki’s decision to join the navy came up in their conversation that day.
The letter from his sister-in-law in Manchuria had made Koji reluctant to visit the Ibuki household very often. Most of the time he chose to invite Ibuki and Ishikawa out with him instead.
One day in August the three of them met at the small house on the outskirts of town that Ishikawa was renting for the summer. They were going saltwater fishing. They got their gear in order and set off.
“You know, when I had my physical exam,” Ibuki said as they walked along, “I realized that even in the military guys from Osaka are a little strange. The examining officer, a lieutenant colonel, leaned toward me and said quietly in his heavy dialect: ‘You’ll be classified 1-B. Graduated from Osaka University, right? Are you doing some kind of research? Used to be you didn’t have to go if you were 1-B, but times being what they are, reckon you’ll have to go. More’s the pity.’ He was really comical.”
The three young men laughed, then Ishikawa turned to Ibuki.
“I was telling Obata the other day. Once a man joins the navy he’s there for quite a while. Why didn’t you try to postpone graduation a little longer?”
“Of course I’d rather be in a lab at the Institute fiddling with a centrifuge and growing culture media than on a warship treating sailors for V.D. But what’s the point? Sooner or later you have to go in.”
“You know, being on a ship,” interjected Koji, “that has a certain appeal.”
“Sail around the world at government expense, like an American sailor, eh?” asked Ishikawa. “I doubt you’d be so lucky”
“But I’d like to be able to see the research I’ve started take shape before I go,” continued Ibuki. “You hear that you have more free time when you’re at sea and can read. Don’t believe it. I asked someone who knows and he said it wasn’t true. What they actually do is drink saké and read low-brow historical fiction. When I come back, I’ll have to start again from square one.”
The three young men sat down on the stone seawall and dropped their lines into the water.
The wind blew constantly, so the sweat did not stay on their skin, and they faced a fierce sun that seemed to scorch their skin parchment dry. The tide was starting to come in and they could hear the sound of the waves slapping monotonously against the seawall. Ibuki wore a straw hat on his now-shaven head.
Koji felt a bit ill at ease when he was with Ibuki. Ibuki would be going into the service this winter, so it would be awkward to go on ignoring the question of Chieko. Yet the truth was, Koji was not sure of his own feelings and so had nothing in particular he wanted to say.
The huge silhouette of the island of Itsukushima was visible immediately to the west. Far to the east were shipyard buildings, and rows of houses on the south side of Hiroshima shining in the summer sun. As always, five or six ash-grey army transports sat in the harbor. One, its funnels belching black smoke, slowly turned its bow to starboard, and starboard yet again, heading out to sea. A hectic white wake, incongruous behind the gentle movement of the hull, seethed relentlessly at the stern. Countless khaki specks, scarcely visible in the distance, clustered around the flag at the stern and on its upper decks.
Nearby a train passed by on tracks that skirted the water’s edge, shaking the ground under them for some time.
Now and again Ibuki caught black sea bream fry, but Koji had no luck at all. All he had in his huge creel was a single goby three inches long. He was using small crabs for bait. He would feel a tug at his line and jerk his pole up, but each time all that would be left on the end of his hook was a thin crab shell. They had placed the bait box in the shade, but even so a lot of the crabs, which they had sprinkled with sand, had died from the heat, and lay white underside up.
Koji had resigned himself to not catching anything. His eyes vacantly followed the progress of the transport steaming out of the harbor, but his mind was on other things. He was feeling vaguely depressed.
“We’re not doing so well,” said Ibuki.
“Best forget it,” said a voice behind them. They turned to see a fisherman, his wrinkled face sea-burned and ruddy. He was carrying a large sea bream.
“Red tide’s in, so you aren’t gonna catch nothing.”
“Let’s quit and go home,” said Ishikawa, who hadn’t been doing any better.
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Koji visited Mr. Yashiro’s home often during the summer vacation, partly because he felt uneasy about visiting the Ibuki house.
His former teacher talked about the Okagami, an old historical tale, suggested he read the historical novels of Mori Ogai, and chatted about Cézanne and the poems of Han Shan. And now and again he would say something disparaging about the army.
Whenever Koji’s face betrayed his listlessness, the teacher would matter-of-factly tell his wife to prepare some food for them and he himself would bring a small amount of saké into the study. If Koji were in high spirits and prattling on in a shallow vein, Mr. Yashiro, stammering slightly, would reproach him diffidently. Whenever he walked home from his teacher’s house through the ever-cloudless summer evening, Koji would somehow sense in himself a newfound courage. Of course, this courage never lasted long.
Koji always went to a newsreel theater when he was downtown. Among the grey and gloomy images he saw the bearded face of a soldier laboriously hiking up a mountain road deep in the mountains of Shansi, a disassembled weapon on his back, and a sailor busily waving his signal flags on a destroyer buffeted by the waves of the South China Sea. These scenes would bring tears to his eyes. Countless Japanese were doing their utmost in the face of great adversity. If all this were really benefiting the nation, he thought, then obviously he could not stand aloof in the self-serving way that Ishikawa had suggested. He would simply have to set his mind to it, go into the service and become an outstanding soldier. And yet sometimes he found himself wondering if what was happening was right, if it was really best for the country. Above all, the thought of dying made his blood run cold.
From time to time he would stand and watch the columns of soldiers in full battle dress march through Hiroshima to Ujina Harbor, thinking to himself that a good percentage of them would die soon. Which of these men will be killed, he wondered.
And he knew that regardless of what happened to them, he, too, would be going off in two years, and this left him with a curious lack of interest in attending the university or studying literature. He could only look upon his life now as something equivocal and half-baked.
Koji’s father had formally withdrawn from his business in Manchuria and now stayed at home playing go or working in his vegetable garden. Koji spent his idle summer days going out with his parents to eat sweetfish and swimming in the rivers of Hiroshima and in the bay.
Hiroshima was beautiful that summer. The sun shining or hiding behind clouds, the water sparkling, the sound of the waves, evening showers suddenly sweeping down a mountainside and obscuring its peak. He was in good spirits when his mind could free itself of the army and of Chieko. He received a letter from his elder brother in Manchuria inviting him for a visit, but he put that off until next year. As it turned out, he saw practically nothing of Chieko that summer and in September went back to his lodgings in Tokyo.
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One could now sense, even from the censored stories in the newspapers, that relations between Japan and the U.S. were evolving toward a difficult stage. Near the end of August Koji read a report that Ambassador Nomura, who was in America, had delivered a message to President Roosevelt from Prime Minister Konoe regarding the problems in the Pacific. Later Koji frequently heard rumors that Konoe was holding secret talks with Roosevelt on a warship somewhere, or that he would hold them soon.
An Air Defense Agency and a Territorial Agency were created in the Ministry of Home Affairs, and a unit known as the Defense Command was also established. One could sense a nebulous unease beginning to spread over Japan like a storm cloud, a dilatory, ill-defined force which at any moment could begin its terrifying, ever-accelerating descent.
Would there be a new World War? Where would the Japanese fleet attack? What sort of action might the American fleet take? Would B-17s bomb Tokyo immediately? Did Japan, which seemed to be short of just about everything in its long conflict with China, really have, at bottom, the requisite power? In the end, Koji’s ruminations never rose above the level of an adventure story.
As though a reflection of this unease, it was suddenly announced that the graduation dates of all students in Japan had been moved up.
Koji and his friends learned of it in October while they were temporarily at military barracks at Narashino, where they had gone for field training. A student ran officiously from barracks to barracks spreading the news. Those who were scheduled to graduate next spring would be graduated this year in December. Koji and those who were supposed to graduate in the spring of 1943, the year after next, would be graduated the summer or fall of next year, 1942. Pandemonium reigned briefly, but gradually the students quieted down.
The student in the bunk next to Koji’s, a junior majoring in French literature, grimaced as though he had been informed he had stomach cancer. Wordlessly, he kicked under his blanket, then pulled it up over his head. But the news was not that much of a shock to Koji.
It was from about this time that he again began to receive an occasional letter from Chieko. Her letters reproached him for not visiting the Ibuki home once during the summer vacation. It seemed to Koji now that if he were to indicate even the slightest suggestion of pursuit, Chieko would most certainly react negatively, and this depressed him. When he was in high school Koji heard through the grapevine that one of his friends had ridiculed their relationship, saying that Koji and Chieko were playing a game of rejecting and being rejected. Koji now felt that they could no longer play the game. If the two of them did not intend to marry, they would have to have a serious talk about their heretofore easygoing relationship and come to a decision by the time Ibuki, who served as the bridge for their feelings, went into the service. Having read his sister-in-law’s letter, he could well imagine the concern of Ibuki and Ibuki’s parents.
Another letter arrived from Chieko in the middle of October. She wrote that her brother’s induction had finally been set for early November and would be at the Naval Medical College in Tokyo’s Tsukiji district. Because he would work in his lab up to the last moment, however, he would not return to Hiroshima, but go straight on to Tokyo after tying up loose ends and making the necessary arrangements at his uncle’s place in Osaka’s Sumiyoshi district. Since it appeared that once he went in they would have no chance to see him for some time, she and her father would soon go to Osaka to see her brother off. Chieko wondered if Koji wouldn’t mind coming to Osaka, too, if he could. Her father wanted very much to see him. If he were able to come, she would send him a telegram as soon as a date was decided on.
This seemed to Koji an excellent opportunity. He sent her a reply agreeing to come. A telegram arrived saying they would be waiting at Osaka Station the morning of the seventeenth. Koji immediately sent off a telegram informing her of his arrival time, and departed Tokyo for Osaka on the sixteenth.
Koji stood in the vestibule between cars as the train left the station platform. As the train passed through the Yurakucho area of the capital, he could see the yellow lights of the illuminated news sign blinking a message leftward around the face of the Asahi News building. It informed him that the second Konoe cabinet had resigned en masse.
The train was relatively uncrowded. He pictured Chieko’s face. She would be riding toward Osaka on the Sanyo line about now. Over and over again Koji thought to himself, not without a sense of pathos, that come tomorrow he would be parting from both Chieko and his old and good friend Ibuki.
He woke from a light sleep at Maibara. At daybreak he washed his face, went into the dining car and ate breakfast, staring outside at the scenery, wet with the mists of morning. Koji’s express arrived in Osaka at 8:30.
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Chieko was waiting for him at the west exit, standing on tiptoe, as tall as her small frame would allow. Their eyes met at once.
Chieko smiled at him, but her body was tense. Koji’s face stiffened in response. The tip of one white tabi was soiled. Someone had apparently stepped on her foot.
Ibuki’s father was at the other exit scrutinizing the waves of people leaving the train. Once together, the three of them walked to a nearby hotel where Chieko and her father had left their luggage.
“My brother and niece are also arriving tonight,” said Chieko’s father, “and we’re having a farewell party for Yukio. Why don’t you join us?”
Ibuki had met Chieko and his father at the station early that morning, then gone off to attend to some business.
When they entered the hotel room, Chieko’s father sat down without bothering to take off his overcoat.
“Thanks for coming. Make yourself at home,” he said, motioning toward a chair. “You’ve had breakfast?” He lighted a cigar.
The three of them were silent for a while, then Chieko’s father spoke.
“As a matter of fact, I want to talk to you about her.” He indicated the nearby Chieko with a thrust of his chin.
“Your relationship with her seems to have gotten—how shall I put it—progressively more involved. She refuses to consider any of the eligible men I suggest and so I’m going to have to ask you to decide once and for all just what you intend to do.”
“Yes, I... ,” Koji began, but the strangeness of it all left him speechless.
Chieko looked embarrassed. “Father, please!” she interjected, but he hushed her and she said no more.
The three of them proceeded to have a somewhat meandering conversation for about an hour, then went out together. Chieko’s father left, promising to meet them again at six in the evening in the waiting room at Osaka Station. Now they were alone.
“Let me carry that,” said Chieko. It bothered her that Koji was carrying his briefcase and she offered to take it several times. It struck Koji as odd that Chieko, who had always played the role of the spirited elder sister, was acting quite differently now.
To pass the time they walked along the river to Yodoyabashi, then took the subway to the zoo. It was not very crowded, but they could find no place where they could talk.
“I like that one,” said Chieko, stopping a not particularly intrigued Koji at the cage of a snow-white snake that was deathly still.
“I think there’s something sinister about it,” Koji said. “I don’t like it.” In fact it struck him as unearthly.
They had been waiting for lunchtime. They went to Kitahama by streetcar, entered a restaurant serving Western-style food, took seats in a corner of the room, and were finally able to relax a bit. “You must have hated it when Father talked to you like that.” Koji gave their order to the waiter.
“It didn’t bother me, but I couldn’t give him an answer. Actually, I came down here because I thought that your brother’s going into the service was a good opportunity for us to clarify our relationship.”
Chieko nodded.
“I’m not sure where I should begin,” said Koji. “First of all, you have no intention of marrying either, do you?”
Chieko put down the spoon she was holding and looked at him. “If I did not, I would not have come to Osaka today.”
Koji was stunned to silence. He realized instantly he had been stupid. He felt his mind whirling.
.................................................
In the afternoon they strolled through the pines at Ashiya and returned to Osaka’s Umeda district before the agreed-upon time.
Chieko uneasily explained to him at length how she had arrived at the decision to marry, about the situation at home, and how her feelings for him had evolved. Her tone was more feminine than he remembered. Koji felt within himself a confused mixture of exhilaration and an oppressive sense of responsibility. He promised Chieko that he would think things over once more and meet her again tomorrow in Kyoto, where he planned to spend the night.
Her father came by before long, and on his heels came her uncle, who sat on the Osaka Stock Exchange. The uncle brandished several evening newspapers at them.
“Well, this settles it,” he began in his Osaka patois. “General Tojo has received the Imperial mandate to form a cabinet. This is really awful. Everyone says it finally means war.”
They looked at one another in amazement.
Just then Ibuki arrived, late. His uncle took them to an oyster boat restaurant on the river. An air-raid drill was going on and the city was pitch black.
The talk of war did not abate even after they were seated.
“The question is,” began Chieko’s uncle again, “to what extent can we fight American productivity on even terms? If we bungle it, I tell you there’ll be hell to pay.”
“But will there really be a war?” Ibuki asked. “They say that the navy is against it.”
“And we’re having all sorts of shortages because of the fighting in China,” said Koji. “Are we really up to the awesome demands of such an encounter?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Chieko’s uncle answered. “But our stockpiles of war munitions now are really something. The navy is secretly building the biggest damned ship in the world. Even blabbing about it could get me this,” he said, putting his hands together behind him as though manacled. “And there’s going to be a roundup of Reds pretty soon, too.”
It was a little early in the season for oysters. They had sea bream sashimi and elegant egg dishes. Chieko said nothing, occasionally sipping her saké. They left the oyster boat a little before nine.
The uncle departed immediately for Sumiyoshi, and Chieko and her father went back to the hotel. Koji walked toward Osaka Station with Ibuki, who would return to his room in Nishinomiya. The sky was overcast and the streets were dark and cold.
“They say once you go into the Naval Medical College you’re forbidden to go out or have visitors for some time,” said Ibuki.
Koji nodded. They walked along saying little. When they came to the gate for the Hanshin trains, Ibuki broke the silence.
“Well, take it easy.” He was trying to make the parting a casual one.
Koji quickened his pace briefly and called to his friend to stop. Ibuki looked back over his shoulder as he walked on.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry,” Ibuki said. “Just make sure there’re no loose ends.”
He waved his thin magazine at Koji, took out his railway pass, and walked briskly toward the ticket-taker’s gate.
.................................................
Koji returned to Tokyo three days later.
He had met Chieko in Kyoto and turned down her proposal.
In his room the night before in Kyoto his thinking had been uncertain, but a voice within him sounded again and again like the beat of a drum: Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! Your youth lies yet ahead of you. There are plenty of beautiful women and there is so much to enjoy. Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! beat the drum.
Chieko had closed her eyes for a moment.
“I understand. Thank you. Well then, I’ll be going back to Hiroshima.”
Koji had suddenly pulled her to him and kissed her hard on the lips. A sweet sensation, as fragrant as a flower, had spread throughout his body.
Koji went back to Tokyo, only to be tormented by the affection he still felt for her. He felt as though he had made a damnable mess of everything, as though he were filled with all sorts of vague, conflicting impulses. He hated the feeling.
He received a special-delivery letter from Chieko saying she was coming to Tokyo and wanted to meet him just one more time. Koji remembered what Ibuki had said about no loose ends and forced himself to write a letter declining to meet with her.
By now it was late November, 1941.
Koji went out drinking a good deal with two college friends, Tanii and Kurimura. One night when they had had a few too many, strolling along the moat surrounding the Imperial Palace, they were jostled by two young army officers.
“Hey, you! Student!” said one of them as he grabbed hold of Koji’s shoulder. The officers were drunk too. “We, all of us, have dedicated our lives to His Imperial Majesty. There is no difference between us when it comes to that. Am I right?”
The students said nothing.
“Hey! Can’t you answer me?” His sword, caught by his boot, clanked noisily.
“To His Imperial Majesty!”
“Right,” said Koji, “let’s dedicate our lives. We shall not lose!”
“Good! Shake!”
The young officer gave Koji’s hand a painful squeeze in his hardened, huge palm. The two officers then went off humming a martial tune.
It was eight days later that the war in the Pacific began with the surprise attack on Hawaii.
The main force of both America’s Pacific Fleet and England’s Eastern Fleet were annihilated in a matter of days. The American air force in the Philippines, which had been prepared to attack the home islands of Japan, was dealt a crushing blow before it could get off the ground. News of astounding triumphs was endless. All Japan seemed to seethe with excitement and high emotion.
Even Koji’s feelings became crystal clear once the war started. He began to feel that he was really capable of offering up his life, at least in this struggle. He looked upon it as both a duty and an honor for young men like himself.
A sailor with a mustache, a big man, strutted proudly along the Ginza, his cap at a rakish tilt. The Japanese Imperial Navy, which until now had been quietly devoting itself to exercises, was now beginning to be thought of as a force to be reckoned with.
Koji and his friends were always gathering at one another’s houses and talking endlessly about the war.
Singapore fell at the beginning of the year, and while Koji was home in Hiroshima during the spring vacation he read in the newspaper a story told by an English sailor who had survived the sinking of the Prince of Wales. Fleet Admiral Sir Thomas Phillips, commander in chief of Britain’s Eastern Fleet, stayed on the bridge all the while the Prince of Wales was under attack, and as the ship was about to go down a destroyer drew alongside signaling that it wished to take him aboard. His response: “No, thank you.” He raised his hand in salute and, together with the ship’s captain, accepted the ship’s destiny as his own. Koji was exhilarated and inspired by the story.
He brought this mood of martial excitement into Mr. Yashiro’s house as well. His teacher, however, urged him to concentrate on his studies.
“What a disaster if you ended up abandoning your senior thesis because you became distracted by the war.”
Mr. Yashiro told him the story of when Yoshida Shoin, the nineteenth-century scholar-patriot, was in jail. Yoshida had begun lecturing his cellmates on the Analects of Confucius. Saying that they were to be executed the next day, the cellmates demanded he stop. But Yoshida pointed out that in spite of their scheduled execution the next day they were still eating. Ethics, he told them, were more precious than food, and he continued his lecture.
Nevertheless, the war completely occupied Koji’s thoughts. Since his and his friends’ graduation had been moved up, after the summer vacation they would immediately be transformed from students into soldiers.
Koji passed his pre-induction physical examination and was given the highest classification. The student reserves had been established and so the way was now open for those in the humanities to become naval midshipmen. He gave up thinking about his depressing, soon-to-be-cut-short student routine and fantasized about life in the navy, which he imagined as a surfeit of dazzling sunlight, sparkling waters, rigorous precepts, and single-minded self-sacrifice.
His friend Ibuki had already completed his two months of training at the Medical College and been commissioned a lieutenant junior grade. He had been assigned to an aircraft carrier and was said to be sailing outside of home waters, but Koji had no concrete information.
For Koji, the restless days bridging spring and summer went by with the flow of war.
