Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Tokyo, 1947
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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www.penguin.co.uk
Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Black Swan
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Lynne Kutsukake 2016.
Cover photographs: girl © Curioso; blossom © Andrew Burgess; paper © Habrda/Shutterstock; GI © Collaboration JS; street scene © elcarchives.
Cover design by Becky Glibbery/TW.
Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.
Lynne Kutsukake has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473526747
ISBN 9781784161149
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4
For Michael
THE CAR IS in a parade all by itself. Traffic must stop whenever the boy’s father travels, so the road is completely empty. Crowds line the street to watch them. Normally the boy is not allowed to ride in the big Cadillac, the special car reserved for work, but today is special. Today the boy is in the parade, too.
It is a short ride to GHQ, General Headquarters, the office from which his father rules Japan.
‘Look at all the people!’ The boy raises his finger to the car window. He sees a tiny old woman in a gray kimono, a sunburned man in a white shirt and black pants, a mother with a baby strapped to her back.
‘Arthur, don’t point.’
The voice is firm but not harsh. Even when it reprimands him, it is the voice he loves. ‘Yes, Father,’ he murmurs and steals a glance at the figure seated beside him in the backseat. His father has not turned his head once since they got into the car, not toward the boy or toward the crowds.
‘Your mother explained about the photographers, didn’t she?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He will have his picture taken with his father, and it will appear in all the newspapers and magazines in America.
‘You’re not nervous are you, Sergeant?’
‘No, Father.’
‘That’s right. Nothing to be nervous about. Just a few photos. You should be yourself. Act natural.’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘When we’re finished, your mother will meet you and take you to the PX. The photographers may want to take more pictures of you. Maybe your mother will get you one of those special hamburgers. Would you like that?’
His father’s mouth takes the shape of a smile, but the boy cannot see his eyes. The dark lenses of the sunglasses reveal nothing.
Up ahead, the boy spots two girls lining the route. He can’t help noticing other children, especially if they look at all close to his own age. Suddenly one of the girls breaks from the crowd and dashes onto the road. She is heading straight for them, as if she means to run directly in front of the car’s path. There is shouting, loud cries in an unintelligible language.
The girl is close to the car now, close enough for the boy to see her eyes. She is staring right at him, locking her wild gaze on him, and he finds he cannot turn away. Then as abruptly as it started, it is all over. A Japanese policeman grabs her and her body snaps backward as if she has reached the end of an elastic band. The boy cranes his neck to see what is happening. He wants to turn around and look out the back window, but he doesn’t dare. He wants to tell his father what he has seen, to share this extraordinary thing that has happened on this extraordinary day, but General MacArthur is chewing on the end of his pipe, deep in important and private thought.
EVER SINCE HER sister had gone away, Fumi looked forward to the democracy lunches with a special, ravenous hunger. The American soldiers came to her school once a week with deliveries, and though she never knew what they would bring, it didn’t matter. She wanted it all, whatever it was. Sometimes it was powdered milk and soft white bread as fluffy as cake. Sometimes it was a delicious oily meat called Spam. Occasionally it was peanut butter, a sticky brown paste whose unusual flavor – somehow sweet and salty at the same time – was surprisingly addictive. The lunch supplements supplied by the Occupation forces reminded her of the kind of presents her older sister, Sumiko, used to bring in the days when she still came home. Fumi’s hunger was insatiable, and although she couldn’t have put it in so many words, some part of her sensed that her craving was inseparable from her longing for her sister’s return.
All the pupils knew that the lunches were to help them think clearer, think freer. To become creative and independent. On very rare occasions, hard-boiled eggs were distributed. Eggs were a special treat, high in protein, and while not strictly speaking an American food, they were said to make you democratic faster. They were Fumi’s favorite. Throughout the war and ever since the surrender, fresh eggs had been in extremely short supply in Tokyo, almost impossible to obtain except at great expense in the black market.
She knew today was an egg day because Akiko’s younger brother Masatomi had spotted the army jeep at the end of recess and a GI had given him one. From that moment on it was all Fumi could think of. Under her desk, out of Kondo Sensei’s sight, she cupped her hand in her lap and pretended she could already feel the weight of the egg in her palm. It was nature’s most perfect food, she’d decided, for what else came in its own self-contained package, a smooth thin shell that peeled off in sheets to uncover the slippery skin inside.
The eggs were especially coveted because the Americans never seemed to bring enough to go around. The other items – the milk, the bread, the peanut butter – could easily be stretched so that everyone got something, but an egg was an egg. The elementary grades were served first and inevitably there was a shortfall by the time the older pupils like Fumi, who was twelve and in the first year of middle school, had their turn. On the last egg day, despite jumping up as soon as class was dismissed, she had been pushed out of the way by two larger girls who were determined to beat her to the line. She vowed she wouldn’t make the same mistake again. Strategy was key. This time she planned to use her smaller size to her advantage, to slip between everyone’s legs, crawl on the floor until she was through the door, and then run down the hall to where the makeshift distribution table was set up.
So Fumi simply couldn’t understand why, today of all days, she had gotten stuck with looking after the repat girl.
The new girl had arrived shortly before noon. There was a sharp rap at the door and the principal, who was rarely seen outside the teachers’ office, stepped into the classroom. Everyone automatically stood up, bowed in his direction, and remained standing while he and Kondo Sensei conferred in low whispers. The principal was a short, stout man, not much taller than most of the girls in their all-girls class, and Fumi couldn’t help noticing that he stood on tiptoe when he was speaking into Kondo Sensei’s ear. After this brief consultation, the principal returned to the doorway and reentered, this time followed by a girl who hunched her shoulders like an old woman and hung her head so low no one could see her face. She looked miserable.
‘This is your new student,’ the principal said aloud. He was speaking to Kondo Sensei but now everyone could hear.
‘I see.’
‘Shimamura. Aya Shimamura.’ He jerked his chin in the girl’s direction. ‘She’ll start today.’
‘Yes, sir. But as the term has already started—’
‘Please. Do your best.’ The principal turned and walked away. It wasn’t clear to whom this last remark was addressed.
There was a moment of confusion, with some of the girls continuing to bow toward the empty doorway through which the principal had retreated. Kondo Sensei rapped his pointer on the side of his desk.
‘Class, rise!’ he said, even though everyone was still standing. ‘Let’s welcome our new classmate, Miss Aya Shimamura.’
They bowed formally, but not quite as low as had been required for the principal. After all, this was only another student.
‘As of today, Miss Shimamura will be joining our class. We are very lucky.’ He paused as if uncertain how to continue. ‘She is from America.’
This remark caused an almost electric charge to flow through the classroom.
‘From America,’ he repeated, his voice stronger. ‘As you are all aware, the mastery of English is one of the goals of our new middle-school curriculum, and I am sure that Miss Shimamura will be able to make many helpful contributions toward this end.’
He paused and looked from left to right until his eyes fell on the desk Fumi shared with Akiko in the center of the front row. Briskly he tapped his pointer on the side where Akiko sat.
‘Right here. Miss Shimamura, you can sit at this desk. Fumi, it will be your responsibility to look after your new seatmate. Take care of her. Make sure she knows what to do.’
Fumi immediately sat up straight. What about Akiko, she wanted to protest. But Akiko had already gathered her books and Kondo Sensei was directing her to a desk at the back.
No sooner had everyone gotten settled than a bell began ringing and Kondo Sensei looked at his watch. He sighed and set his pointer lengthwise across his desk.
‘Very good. Class dismissed for lunch.’
Fumi was halfway to the door when she heard her name.
‘Miss Tanaka!’
The other girls rushed past her and stampeded out of the room.
‘Sensei?’
‘What are you doing? Come here. Did I not give you a special responsibility?’ He tipped his head in Aya’s direction.
‘But, Sensei, it’s an egg day.’
‘Well, take her with you and help her get something.’ He picked up a book from his desk and left.
The new girl was frozen in the same hunched posture she had assumed as soon as she sat down, her forehead within inches of resting on the desk. They were alone in the classroom.
‘You heard the teacher. Come on!’
The girl did not move or give any indication that she heard or understood.
‘Get up, let’s go! We have to hurry or we’ll miss out.’ Fumi leaned over and put her mouth next to Aya’s ear. ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you deaf? Get up!’
Still the girl didn’t budge. Instead, she seemed to be trying to retract her head into her neck like a turtle. Something about that ridiculous action infuriated Fumi and she grabbed the sleeve of Aya’s blouse. ‘Get up!’ Fumi tugged once, twice, and on the third tug the thin material tore right off at the shoulder. For the first time the girl came to life. She burst into tears and ran out of the room.
‘How’s your new friend?’ Akiko’s laugh sounded a bit malicious.
‘Yeah, the repat.’ Tomoko snickered.
‘How should I know?’ Fumi muttered.
‘My mother says the imin shouldn’t have come back. The immigrants eat all our food. There’s not enough to go around.’ Tomoko spoke with authority.
‘Stupid imin,’ Fumi said. ‘She can’t even talk.’
‘Do you think she knows Japanese?’
‘She can’t even move, never mind talk.’
‘Stupid. Baka.’
‘Imin no baka.’
Fumi was beginning to feel a bit better. She’d debated running after Aya, but hunger led her to the distribution table, just in case something was left. As she expected, everything was gone. By the time she joined her classmates, they had finished eating and were gathered under the shade of the big oak tree in the far corner of the schoolyard. Her own lunch, minus the hard-boiled egg she had so looked forward to, had been a millet ‘rice ball,’ which she’d had to eat very fast because she was late. She could still feel it stuck like a hard stone in the middle of her chest just below her breastbone. It hurt a bit when she laughed. Akiko and Tomoko were laughing, too, and didn’t seem to hold it against her that she had to sit next to the imin. The three girls joined hands to form a circle and swung their arms back and forth, higher and higher, acting as childishly as the elementary pupils with whom they shared the yard.
Just as Fumi was starting to get a bit light-headed, she felt Akiko and Tomoko let go of her hands and in the spot where they had been standing Kondo Sensei appeared. He stepped directly in front of Fumi and slapped her hard on the cheek with his open palm. Fumi felt the entire schoolyard go quiet and still. Her cheek burned. Although she’d been disciplined many times at school before, this was the first time by Kondo Sensei, the new teacher.
‘What did you do to Aya Shimamura!’ he shouted. His face was mottled purple right up to his receding hairline, and his thick glasses had slid to the end of his nose.
‘She wouldn’t move.’ Fumi began to cry.
‘Is that any reason to tear her clothes! How am I going to explain this to the principal? I had to send her home. On her first day!’
There was an audible gasp from Akiko, Tomoko, and the other pupils who were nearby.
‘I didn’t mean to.’ She could hardly get the words out between sobs. ‘She wouldn’t get up. I missed my egg.’
‘Nobody cares about that.’ Kondo Sensei turned to the other students. ‘What are you staring at? Go back to the classroom. Immediately! Go!’
The girls began running away before he had even finished talking.
‘As for you, Fumi Tanaka, you stay here. Stand facing this tree and don’t move until I come back to get you. Do you understand?’
At that, he turned and marched back to the main entranceway, little puffs of dust rising behind his heels.
Fumi kept her head hung low for the rest of the afternoon just in case Kondo Sensei was looking out the window to check up on her. The sun was warm, flies buzzed around her head, and the sand in the schoolyard blew up into her eyes. Her cheek stung for a long time, a prickly tingle like millions of tiny pins. To distract herself, she tried pretending that each tingle was a grain of white rice, that she was being showered mercilessly with buckets of rice. But it didn’t really help. So instead she thought about how the shiny oval bald spot on the back of Kondo Sensei’s head looked just like an egg. This made her feel much better.
It was all the fault of the stupid new girl. Why had Fumi gotten stuck with her? Why hadn’t Aya been paired with Sanae? Skinny, ugly Sanae who might be the smartest in the class but who had bowed legs and unsightly blotches on her face. Or Tomoko who was the prettiest, no one could argue with that, but who had a stuck-up nature. For that matter, why not Akiko? At least her father had a proper job. In her mind, Fumi went through the list of all the things she was not. Not the prettiest, not the most popular, not the best at sports, certainly not the one with money. She knew that to most people she was just an average ordinary girl. But her sister had always told her she was special, and whether it was true or not, Fumi missed hearing it. She missed Sumiko and wished she knew how to find her and make her come home.
AYA WAS TOO ashamed to tell her father about the horrible thing that had happened at school. She hid her torn blouse under a pile of dirty clothes and then crawled into the cramped dark closet where they had to store their bedding during the daytime. Pushing her face onto the futon, she cried openmouthed into its worn musty folds. Although she hated the miserable lodgings that her father had found for them, for the first time she was glad to be here, glad only because she could be alone. Everything in Japan was worse than she could possibly have imagined.
Her father had accompanied her to school that morning as if she were starting kindergarten. The school had a long name – Minami Nishiki Elementary and Middle School – so she had expected a much grander structure than the run-down building that stood in the middle of a dirt yard. The roof looked like it was sagging at one end and many of the windows were broken. The concrete walls were full of cracks. Aya’s father bowed several times to the principal before producing an envelope from inside his jacket, which he offered with yet another deep bow. Then he told her to remember her manners and left.
Aya was given slippers that were torn at the toe and much too wide, forcing her to half shuffle, half slide in order to keep up with the principal as he led her from the main entrance and down the long corridor. She kept her head low and concentrated on the slap-flap slap-flap of his slippers. His feet hung over the backs, revealing a ragged hole in the heel of his left sock that seemed to get bigger with each step he took. Even though the wooden floors were not very clean, it seemed that no one was allowed to wear shoes inside. Later she would notice that none of the other students wore slippers. They were all barefoot.
The principal stopped at the last classroom.
‘Class, rise!’
Aya heard the teacher announce her name and say she was joining the class. He said she was from America. America, America, he kept repeating, and she didn’t know how to correct him. Not America – Canada. She hung her head even lower until her chin touched her collarbone. Her name was repeated over and over. If she weren’t feeling so nervous, she could have understood more of what he was saying, but as it was, the only thing she caught for sure was her own name and ‘America’ and the word ‘English.’ Ingurishu was what it sounded like.
‘You must bow properly. Zettai wasureruna! Don’t forget!’ She recalled her father’s instructions delivered in his gruff Japanese. Keep your arms pressed tightly against your sides and bend your upper body at a ninety-degree angle. Hold for as long as you can. It was important to know how to bow, how to behave. Every phrase had a correct counter-phrase, every gesture a precise and appropriate response.
‘You have to learn how to behave like a real Japanese or you’ll never survive,’ he’d said. ‘We’re here now. We’re here forever.’
She realized with horror that she had missed her chance to bow earlier when she was standing in front of the class. Now the opportunity was gone and she was being urged to hurry and sit down. The narrow bench wobbled when she slid onto it. Aya shot a sidelong glance at the girl beside her, who had quickly turned her head away and moved to the far side of the bench. All Aya could see of her was her thick black hair cut straight across just below her chin. The surface of the desk felt rough, the wood unfinished. Aya put her hands in her lap, reluctant to take up any space on top of the shared desk, and squeezed her fists tighter and tighter until the knuckles turned white and shiny. Then, with her head bent low, she stared at the two fists in her lap. They didn’t look like her own hands.
Nothing was recognizable anymore, not even her hands.
Aya was in Japan because her father had signed the papers to repatriate. Go east of the Rockies and disperse, or go to Japan – that was the choice Canada had given them. No Japanese Canadians would ever be allowed to return to the west coast. In the spring of 1945, even before the war was over, officials arrived in the internment camps with forms to sign and gave everyone three weeks to choose between going ‘back’ to Japan or scattering to unknown parts across Canada.
Aya heard the panicked discussions among her father and other adults. Strange terms like ‘deportation’ and ‘forced exile’ confused her, but other things they said were perfectly clear: ‘Everything we have is gone,’ ‘They want to get rid of us,’ ‘How can I start over again at my age?’ Clearest of all, though, was this: ‘They hate us. No matter where we go in this country, they will always hate us.’ It was her father’s voice.
He signed, and with his signature gave the government what it wanted – the ability to deport him. Once the war ended, he was not allowed to revoke what had been done. Aya knew she would have to go with her father. It was just the two of them now that her mother was dead.
They did not leave until the fall of 1946, boarding their train in Slocan City to make the same journey in reverse as when they had been interned. From the interior of British Columbia, they traveled over jagged mountain passes, across endless tracts of forest, along the length of the mighty Fraser River with its thunderous roar pounding in their ears. At the port in Vancouver they waited under guard in the immigration shed for the American military transport ship that would take them to Occupied Japan.
They were told they could take as much luggage as they liked, but they had next to nothing. Aya’s mother’s ashes were in her father’s suitcase, inside a small square box that had been sealed tight and wrapped in a white cloth. Sometimes she wanted to make sure her mother was still there, but she didn’t dare open his suitcase to look. Inside her own suitcase she had all her clothes, including the winter coat that had once been too big but that now barely fit her. And in a corner of the suitcase she’d also tucked the handkerchief in which she’d wrapped six little stones from Slocan Lake. They were ugly and gray, not like the sparkly stones she and her friend Midori had collected when they were pretending to be prospectors searching for precious gems. The stones weren’t heavy at all. For Aya, they could never be heavy enough.
As soon as their ship came within sight of Japan, a cry had gone out that spread from family to family. ‘We’re approaching the coast. We should be able to see Nippon any minute now!’
It was drizzling, but everyone, including Aya and her father, climbed up to the deck and crowded around the railing. They peered into the thick mist. No land was visible yet, although they could see a few small fishing boats close by dipping in and out of the ocean waves.
‘Mieru? Can you see?’ Her father pointed into the murky distance.
She couldn’t see anything, not even the horizon. The sea, the sky, and the rain were all of a piece, a flat wash of gray.
‘We’re here at last. Our journey is over. Our long, hard journey.’ His voice cracked with emotion. She sensed that he meant something more than their two-week sea voyage.
‘If it weren’t for this damn rain, we could see Mount Fuji. That’s a beautiful sight, Mount Fuji is. There are lots of beautiful sights in Japan, Aya. You’ll see them soon enough. You’ll be glad I brought you here.’
She looked at his profile. The stubble of his beard was flecked with more gray than ever before, making the shadow of his sunken cheek more pronounced. His jawbone moved just below his ear, in the spot where he was continually grinding his teeth. All the tension and resentment always found its way to that spot.
‘If only your . . .’ He was staring out at the sea. Rain glistened on his hair and forehead.
Aya knew better than to respond. It had become taboo to talk about her mother, for it made them both too uncomfortable. Her death had pushed Aya and her father farther apart, not closer, as if her mother’s absence was a solid mass that sat between them. Absence was not emptiness or nothingness, she had discovered. It was the opposite. Insistent and ever present.
When the rain stopped and the mist thinned, the shoreline came into sight and they could see the sunburned faces of fishermen on boats that bobbed in the harbor. Soon they could even make out tiny figures on land. They were slightly southwest of Tokyo, bound for disembarkation at Uraga.
‘Look!’ Her father suddenly cupped his hand against the back of her head as if he needed to make sure she was facing the right direction. She could feel his rough calluses. ‘This is Japan. These are Nihonjin! Japanese people. Everyone looks like us. We’re home.’
They were close to landing. Aya stared at the group of unkempt men in ragged clothing who were running barefoot along the dock where their ship was coming in. These were the Nihonjin who had come to greet them. They were shouting something in Japanese.
What are they saying, she was about to ask when she made out the words on her own. Not hello or welcome back, but ‘Amerikajin! Cigaretto!’
Initially they moved in with her father’s relatives, an older couple who lived on the outskirts of Tokyo. But it soon became clear that the house was too small, resources too limited, the circumstances too strained. ‘There’s nothing here,’ the husband said repeatedly, in a weary monotone. ‘This is what happens when you lose.’ He was a remote man but not unkind. His wife, whom Aya was told to address as Aunt Ritsuko, terrified her.
‘Why didn’t you teach her to speak Japanese better? She’s thirteen, but she sounds like a six-year-old!’
Aunt Ritsuko’s shrill voice echoed throughout the tiny wooden house, and Aya feared her sharp staccato words as if they were capable of drawing real blood. She quickly learned it was better to be quiet, to listen but not speak, and this habit became her way of coping. If she spoke at all, she whispered, and gradually she felt her throat drying up, her voice pulled thinner and thinner like a strand of toffee. She would have liked to stop talking entirely, but it was still necessary to reply if someone spoke to her. Neighbors and shopkeepers peppered her with questions: ‘Where are you from?’ ‘How long are you staying?’ ‘Where’s your mother?’
‘Don’t tell anyone anything,’ her father had said right after they arrived. ‘People here are nosy. This is a country of busybodies.’ Inside the house, he and Aunt Ritsuko clashed constantly. Whenever he complained about how bad things were in Japan, she would snap, ‘Well, what did you expect? Why did you come back?’ Outside the house, Aya’s father had many different voices, depending on whom he was talking to, sometimes formal, sometimes obsequious, sometimes carrying on about topics he knew nothing about. But Aya noticed that the times when he was the most polite to a person to their face was usually when he would turn around and curse them behind their back.
‘Not good enough, never good enough,’ he muttered under his breath whenever yet another odd job abruptly ended.
Everyone here was busy, always rushing. Aunt Ritsuko did everything fast. Despite the way her feet turned inward, pigeon-like, so it looked as if she might bump into herself with every step, she could actually walk faster than anyone Aya had ever known. Dawdlers, it seemed, were viewed with suspicion. Outsiders even more so.
‘Don’t expect me to translate for you,’ Aunt Ritsuko said, pushing the loose strands of her wiry gray hair back into her tight bun. ‘I don’t have time. Don’t expect me to guess what’s on your mind, either.’
Sometimes Aya understood, often she didn’t. It seemed to depend less on what people said than on how. If they spoke to her slowly and gently, the way her mother always had, then the words were like drops of warm rain that dissolved magically into her brain, and she understood every single word. Aya’s mother had come to Canada as a young picture bride to marry Aya’s father. She had never learned much English and spoke to Aya only in Japanese. Aya could still hear her mother’s soft cadence. ‘Aya-chan, ii ko desu, ne. Aya-chan, you’re a good child. You help me with everything. Aya-chan, what would I do without you.’
But none of that mattered now. Hardly anyone here spoke like her mother. Everyone was in too much of a hurry. Even after she and her father moved to their own place, Aya found that most people she met sounded just like her aunt, so cross and impatient that it was impossible to understand them. Their words swirled around and around, circling her head like angry black crows.
After the incident with Fumi, Aya was afraid to return to school, but she was more afraid of not going. The other option – explaining to her father what had happened and exposing her shame – struck her as much worse. Her shame would become his shame. She decided she had no choice. She would go back to school, hang her head, and pray. Pray that Fumi would ignore her, pray that the teacher would disregard her, pray that no one would ask her anything, pray that the time would pass and that each day would eventually come to a close. Anything could be endured, she had discovered, if she could only package the time into discrete little packets. She imagined taking the minutes, each one like a pellet, and wrapping them up – one minute, five minutes, fifteen, thirty. Once she had managed to survive a full hour, she could put the packets of time into a box, tie it with string, and push it down a conveyer belt. Just one more minute, one more hour, one more day.
Fumi ignored her. Although this was exactly what she wanted, Aya found herself so confused by the activities at school, she became desperate for someone to ask. Except for the bell and the loud yelling that announced lunch or the end of the school day, she didn’t know how to anticipate what was going to happen next. The rhythm of the classroom was erratic. One minute the students were called to the blackboard to write complicated kanji in large exaggerated strokes, the next minute everyone was doing calisthenics in the aisles beside their desks, stretching their arms wildly or jumping up and down. Sometimes they recited aloud. Sometimes they sat in silence reading quietly to themselves. The textbooks were old and the pages inside were covered with thick bars of black ink, long passages the students had been ordered to censor themselves.
By the end of the first week, word had gotten out about Aya, the repat girl, and after class the boys in the lower grades followed her. They called her names and threw handfuls of sand. She was always relieved to reach home until she looked around at her surroundings. The tatami mats were so old and moldy they sank with each step she took, and the wooden walls so full of holes, the dust blew right in. To cook they had to use the charcoal shichirin in the outdoor hallway. The communal sink was downstairs; the shared toilet was a hole over which she had to squat, holding her nose and hoping she wouldn’t fall in. The other residents of the nagaya – tenement house, she learned it meant – were strangers. Through the walls Aya could hear an old lady cackling loudly to herself. A middle-aged man who sat at home all day kept telling her father he should put Aya to work. ‘Why bother sending her to school? That’s a waste of time.’ Aunt Ritsuko had said more or less the same thing. It was yet another reason why Aya and her father had moved out and found the place where they now lived in the center of Tokyo.
Three weeks passed, then four. Kondo Sensei announced one morning that they would have a short test. Aya sat with her hands in her lap, aware that she had forgotten to bring anything to write with. It didn’t really matter, as she would never be able to understand the test. Beside her she saw Fumi reach for her threadbare cloth pencil case and take out a short pencil stub. Then she watched as Fumi pulled out a second stub, just as short as the first, and without turning her head, slid it over to Aya’s side of the desk. The stub was less than two inches long, but the tip had been whittled carefully with a knife into a clean sharp point.
Aya didn’t know if this was meant to be an apology, but it didn’t matter. She took the pencil. She would take anything.
SATURDAY CLASSES WERE half days, and Kondo usually liked to conduct review lessons to wind up the week. But today the girls seemed more tired than usual. He’d given them an arithmetic test two days ago, and they’d all done poorly. He wondered if it was as demoralizing to them as it was to him. This was his first year at Minami Nishiki, and sometimes he felt as if he were starting all over again as a freshman instructor instead of the experienced teacher that he was. Few of the girls looked up; most kept their heads down, staring either at their fingers or at some blank spot on the top of their desks. The new girl, Aya, was the worst. She never raised her head in class, and so far she hadn’t spoken a word.
The school had recently received a donation of maps for the new geography program, and he decided this was a good time to open the kit he had been given.
‘I have a surprise for all of you.’ He could tell by the way they shifted their weight that he had caught their attention. ‘It’s for your social studies lesson. Would you like to see it?’
‘Yes, Sensei!’
It was hard to tell if they were genuinely interested or simply humoring him.
‘In the past when we studied history and geography, we mistakenly studied bad history and bad geography. We don’t want to study bad things anymore, so that’s why we have a new program called social studies. As we know, American children are more democratic because they are taught social studies.’ He cast his eyes around the room. Most of the students were looking down at their desks again. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Sensei!’
‘Very well. This will only take me a moment.’ He went to the cupboard in the corner of the classroom, pulled out a long thin box, and carried it back to his desk. From the box he took out several long metal tubes. After a few minutes of fiddling, he managed to snap them together into the shape of a stand. He reached into the box again and pulled out a large roll of canvas that he attached to a hook at the top of the stand. Carefully he unfurled the map.
Kondo took a step back and examined his handiwork. The metal roller running across the top was bent so the map hung slightly lower on one side, and the edges of the map were frayed. In the bottom left corner, he could make out ‘Property of Iowa District School Board’ stamped in light blue letters. Everything was in English, but the girls couldn’t read English yet except for a few rudimentary words and phrases. Of course the map also looked different in more significant ways. Japan was no longer in the center and the vast stretch of red that had once represented the empire across Asia was entirely gone.
‘Class, this is a map of the world,’ he said.
There was a long silence until a small voice at the back of the room asked, ‘Sensei, where is Japan?’
After squinting at the map for a moment, he picked up his pointer and touched a spot so close to the edge of the map it looked like it could fall off. ‘Here. This is Japan.’
It resembled a shriveled bean.
‘This is what the world looks like. This is what we will study.’ He moved his pointer to the opposite side of the map and placed it in the center of the United States. ‘Class, what country is this?’
He looked meaningfully at Aya, but she dropped her gaze immediately.
‘Sanae?’ he said, picking the one student he could always count on. ‘I think you know what country this is. Can you please tell the class?’
Sanae looked down at her desk. ‘America?’ she whispered timidly.
‘That’s it. Speak up so everyone can hear.’
‘America.’
‘Very good. And what is America most famous for?’
Again silence.
It was almost time to end class. Kondo wondered if they were tired or bored or simply hungry. He slapped his pointer against the map a second time, hitting it a little harder than he intended. The metal stand wobbled unsteadily. ‘Come now, it’s not a hard question. You know the answer. What is America most famous for?’
Chocoretto. He heard the whisper at the back of the room but he wasn’t sure who had spoken. Some of the girls started to giggle.
The bell rang and he set down his pointer. Kondo tried to muster his most authoritative tone of voice – it should be confident, full of energy, in control. He wanted them to look forward to the new social studies program. He wanted them to understand everything that this map represented.
‘We’ll continue next week. That’s all for today. Class dismissed!’
After the last student had left, Kondo sat down at his desk. He listened to the girls’ high-pitched chatter grow fainter and fainter as they walked down the school-corridor. Once they had exited the building, he was conscious of them again, this time from outside, as their voices floated up to his ears through the open windows and mingled with the cries of the boys and girls in the younger grades who had been let out earlier and were playing in the school yard. From the distance, all their voices sounded so earnest. Every so often he heard shouts of ‘Stupid!’ or ‘That’s mine!’ – the little boys seemed particularly prone to fighting – and he felt his heart twist at their innocence and their youth. Even though the students in his class were older, they were still such young girls.
The children struck him as so much more adaptable than adults. The younger they were, the quicker they seemed to make the transition to whatever was new. They switched from miso soup to milk, from rice to bread, and back again with barely any need to stop sipping or chewing. Maybe they were hungry, but it was more than that. Change was in the air, and the children handled it with an insouciance that he envied.
It didn’t surprise anyone that the Americans demanded major reforms in the education system. Naturally the old teaching, especially the morals, history, and geography classes, had to go – too feudalistic, too militaristic – to be replaced by a new curriculum that emphasized principles of democracy and individualism. The secondary-school system was also radically revamped by being split into two levels: a middle school of three grades and a high school of three grades. All levels of education were ordered to become coeducational as quickly as possible. Fortunately many elementary schools already had boys and girls attending the same school, so the change was not difficult, but for the higher grades making the shift was more challenging. Many parents found it unthinkable not to have separate education for boys and girls from the age of puberty, so this delicate transition was being phased in more gradually.
The Americans even thought the new middle-school grades should have their own separate buildings (they liked to call them junior high), but everyone recognized the absurdity of such a demand. The economy was precarious and large sections of the city were still in ruins. Many schools, like the one where Kondo used to teach, had burned to the ground during the bombings, and at Minami Nishiki, although they were lucky the foundation had been made of concrete and the building itself survived, there wasn’t enough money to repair the classroom walls or windows, never mind erecting a separate structure. So they came up with an eminently practical solution: to create the new ‘middle school’ by simply putting a handwritten sign over the doors of the classrooms used by the girls who were twelve and up. The older boys had been sent to a neighboring school.
If they could, Kondo was sure the Americans would have changed the school year, too, so it started in September the way their schools did. They seemed to have opinions on everything. Just thinking of the enormous disruption such a change would cause made him cringe. Anyone could see that at least in this regard the Japanese way was better. April, when the cherry trees were in full bloom, was clearly the best time to begin a new course of study.
But what difference did the views of one individual like himself make? Whatever was going to happen would happen – a new social studies curriculum, different classroom arrangements, American food for the school lunches. He had to admit that the students seemed to display no resistance at all. Maybe the Americans were right, and even if they weren’t, it didn’t matter because no one here could stop what was happening. Change was moving fast, like a giant tsunami, and Kondo did what everyone else around him did. He ran as fast as he could to keep from being crushed by the wave.
He was lucky; he knew that, too. Many former teachers had been purged at the end of the war. They were the ones who had been too patriotic, the kind who were a bit too eager to report on others who they felt were not contributing as fully to the war effort as they should. These teachers hadn’t thought much of Kondo, whose special subject area was English, the language of the enemy, and whose ineligibility for the draft seemed very suspicious. He explained that he had tried to sign up many times, but no matter how desperate the army recruiters were, even when they were taking older men, they said they had no use for someone so nearsighted. One of them had laughed in his face. ‘With your eyes, you’d shoot one of us, not the enemy!’ In the last three years of the war, he had spent most of his time in a munitions factory, supervising students who had been deployed from school to the war effort. He sometimes wondered what had become of them. How many had been sent to the front and died there?
His relatives and neighbors had felt sorry for him. What a shame he couldn’t serve, what a shame he couldn’t sacrifice himself for the empire, as their own sons were doing. After the war was over, although no one said it, he sensed that people didn’t pity him so much as they resented him. He was alive, their sons were not. He was whole and able-limbed, while their boys had returned damaged and broken.
‘Give it back!’
‘Bakayaro!’
Kondo got up and stood at the window. Two boys in the school yard were fighting. One boy was holding something up over his head, trying to keep the other from getting it.
‘Say you’re sorry, you baka.’
‘No way! You stink! Kusotare.’
‘You stink more.’
‘Your father stinks!’
Kondo thought he recognized one of the boys. He looked like the younger brother of one of his students, Akiko Hayashi. What was his name? Masayoshi? Masatomi? Something like that. Both boys wore tattered clothes that were no better than rags and even from a distance Kondo could see the outline of their ribs through their thin undershirts. What could they possibly be fighting over? Probably some useless scrap. Well, let them enjoy their scuffle. He wondered if they knew that they were also the lucky ones. He’d seen plenty of boys their age at Ueno train station, orphaned and forced to fend for themselves. You grew up quickly in a circumstance like that. Those little boys had no compunction about following the GIs and their panpan women, cadging cigarettes, chewing gum, and who knew what else. A school-yard scuffle belonged to another era for them.
He turned away from the window and looked at the front row of empty desks, his eyes resting on the spot where the new girl sat. She didn’t seem able to talk at all, and he wasn’t sure how much she understood of what went on. What on earth was she doing here? Who ever heard about Japanese coming back from America? Why would anyone in their right mind do that? Leave a land of plenty for this. Only the desperate came here, and there were lots of those. They were from places like Manchuria and Korea, boatload after boatload of hikiagesha, repatriates driven out of Japan’s former colonies. They flooded back to the homeland with nothing except the clothes on their backs and the few possessions that they managed to strap around their shoulders. ‘Go home.’ He mouthed the words in English. Was he talking about the repats? Or was he really thinking of the Americans? ‘Go home, GI Joe.’ He tested the sound of this phrase, speaking the words aloud this time and listening self-consciously to the echo his voice made in the empty room. It wasn’t that he hated the Americans – he didn’t even really dislike them – but it seemed as if they had already been here long enough. A year and a half, soon it would be two years, and no sign of anyone leaving.
As for Aya Shimamura, well, he’d done what he thought best, but look at what had happened. How could he have predicted that Fumi would behave the way she had? The principal had some ludicrous idea that Aya’s presence would somehow stimulate English-language learning. ‘Kondo-kun,’ he’d said, ‘I want our school to get a head start with all this English study. You figure out how to do it. It’s going to be English all the way from this point on, you mark my words.’ Kondo couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he had the sense that something beyond sheer love of pedagogy was behind the principal’s method of running his school. He was a hustler in his own way, yet Kondo had to admit that the principal was able to get things done. Hadn’t he managed to make their school one of the first to receive the new maps from America? Of course, all schools were going to get them sooner or later, but the fact that the principal had gotten his hands on one of the first was an accomplishment you had to admire.
Kondo stood up and walked over to the map where it still hung on its spindly metal frame. He was about to roll it up and put it away when something held him transfixed. Slowly, softly, he began pronouncing the English names he saw stamped in thick black letters across the different countries. The world was so vast, it struck him, so much vaster than any of them could ever imagine, living as they did in their one tiny corner of the globe.