Int. Note: Letter to Jito Joo
Dear Jito Joo ,
Please ignore everything I said yesterday. Allow me to explain it in a different way. I have not spoken of it really to anyone, and so it came out wrong. What I said was perhaps closer factually to the way it happened, but I can say it in a way that you may understand better, in a way of immediate understanding. Let me give you that now .
A man fell in love with a tree. It was as simple as that. He went into the forest to cut wood and he found a tree and he knew then that he loved it. He forgot about his axe. It fell from his hand and he knew it not. He forgot about the village that he had come from, forgot the path along which he had come, forgot even the brave ringing voices of his fellows, which sounded even then in the broad wood as they called his name, seeking after him. He sat down there before the tree and he made a place for himself and soon no one passing there could even see that he was lying between the roots .
It was for him as though a blade of grass had turned to reveal a map of broad longing and direction and over it he could pass — and did .
He and his love then sought what they would with nothing asked of anyone. Asking no permission, they devised all manner of delights and found in each other everything that the world had lacked. You are as bright as a coin. You are as tall as a grove. You are as swift as a thought. And so well did they hide themselves in their love that grass grew over their hearts and all their loud songs became indecipherable ribbons of air .
But then one day, the man awoke. He found himself again in front of a tree, but it was one he had never seen before. He had never seen the forest either — and the clothes he wore were worn almost to shreds. Where have I been, he asked himself, and stumbled out of the woods to where others waited at a string of houses. But, they could tell him no tidings of himself .
Where have I been, he wondered. With whom, in my loveliest dreams, have I so endlessly been speaking? But as he thought it fell away, and he was poorer then than anyone .
Raise yourself up, the others called to him. Raise yourself up, you fool .
Ah, he said, so this is how fools are made. For I did never know .
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Int. Note: Two Weeks
For two weeks, then, I wandered about in a bit of a haze. Speaking about my life had set me at an angle to the world I was experiencing. I felt in some way that I had put myself before Joo to be judged. What a ridiculous thing! Especially considering that she had done nothing to earn it. In fact, her part in the entire business with Sotatsu would lead one to believe nothing good about her. Yet, somehow, Sotatsu had trusted her, and likewise, now, I was trusting her.
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I wrote several letters to people I knew back home. I tried to read two different novels unsuccessfully. I ate at several different restaurants, all of which were good, and ordered either much too much food or far too little.
In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another. To simply find out what had happened to Oda Sotatsu, that was the main thing. That was always the main thing. But if in learning that, I could see somehow farther …
Finally, after two weeks, I went back to Joo’s apartment. Somehow, I expected that she would not be there, but she was. The first thing I noticed inside the building was that my letter was no longer in the box. So, she has read it, I thought. I went up the stairs. When she opened the door, she was holding the paper in her hand.
Come in, she said.
Her face was gentler than it had been. I don’t know if I had won her over, or what. Her face was gentler, but in a way its gentleness revealed still further the difficulties that her life had put on her. She had the severity of a person who has lived in the out of doors, beneath a constant sun — the look of a field laborer or an Appalachian musician. I have always been partial to such faces, have always thought it would be fine to have such a face for myself. It seems there is a great deal of suffering prior to obtaining one. I thought of none of this then. What I thought then was, she is holding my letter. I was desperate to hear what she would say, about my situation, about Oda Sotatsu, about Kakuzo. Here she was: suddenly I was much closer to writing the book I longed to write, to discovering the material that would make possible the telling of the proper story.
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But, the first thing she did was to go to the window and sit down. She gestured that I should do the same.
Let’s not talk for a while, she said.
We sat there for a while. Through the floor, I could hear the sound of the apartment below. The sun set on some other part of the building. In Joo’s apartment it became steadily darker until she was finally forced to turn on the light or leave us sitting together in darkness.
I watched her face in the light and tried to see the girl who had visited Sotatsu, who had lived with Kakuzo. After a time, I felt I could see her. She looked at me and said:
I don’t think anyone has looked at me for that long in many years. This is a thing that regular people don’t understand. Because they live in families or groups, because they do not live alone, unmet, they do not know what it is like to be alone. Months can go by without anyone looking at you, years, without anyone so much as touching your hand or shoulder. One becomes almost like a deer, impatient to be touched, terrified of it. A momentary contact in a supermarket, or on a train, becomes bewildering. However often such contact comes it is always bewildering, because it isn’t meant. And then there comes the day when no one so much as looks at you, unless it is by accident.
She clasped her hands.
I work in the next street, at a machine company. I am a secretary. There are two other secretaries beneath me. Someone tells me what to do. I tell them what to do. It is all so simple that none of that is really necessary. I eat my lunch by myself and when work is done, I come home and sit and eat my supper alone. Sometimes I walk by the harbor and look at the ships. When you say these names to me, Oda Sotatsu, Sato Kakuzo, when you say to me this name, Jito Joo, I feel so far away. You tell me of your own life and I am sorry. You have been hurt. So have I. It isn’t done. It will keep going on. I know it. But, I have read your letter. I wrote you one of my own and now you can have it. I threw it out two days ago, but then I got it back. Here it is.
She held it out to me.
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I think I would like for you to go now. I wish I knew what to say to you.
She stood up. So did I.
I went to the door and she opened it.
Anything I could ever tell you, or anyone else, is in there. Goodbye.
The Testimony of Jito Joo
Int. Note
When I got home, I opened the letter that Jito Joo had given me. I read it straight through twice, set it down, got up to leave the house, thought better of it, returned to my chair and read it again.
I present it to you now in its entirety.
I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it exist, but to find what does exist, and then to see what it is. I believe in trying to understand such love through other loves, other loves that have existed before. Many people have made the records of these loves. These records can be found. They can be read. Some are songs. Some are just photographs. Most are stories. I have always sought after love, and longed for it. I have looked for all the kinds that may be. I am writing to you now to talk about Oda Sotatsu, who is a person I loved, and who loved me. Although I know there are others who will say things about Oda Sotatsu, who may say things about me, who may know about this situation, although they are few, perhaps there are some who can speak about these things, yet what I know is what I felt and what I saw. I am not writing this for any comparison or for any other sort of understanding, but as a record of love, for use by those who love and who hope to love. I am not nimble and I cannot hide things well. I will write what I felt and how. You may see how I do.
I met Oda Sotatsu with another man, a man I was seeing, Kakuzo. It was a strange time, not a good time. I knew Oda Sotatsu hardly at all, although we grew up in the same area. I had not met him until just before he was put into prison. We had exchanged some words. The man I knew, Sotatsu, existed in his situation, as a person with no freedom. That is why I became his freedom. Others who were his family came and went and made noise. They were visiting or they were prevented. For me there were no obstacles. I do not know why that was. It seems to me that there should have been, that it was never so easy for a person to do what I did, to see a person as often, or for as many times. Why it is, as I say, I don’t know. But we were lucky in that. I was Oda Sotatsu’s constant visitor, and whoever the guards were, wherever they were, I was admitted, sometimes as his sister, sometimes as a girl he knew. I was always admitted. I was never turned away, not once. There are things in life that happen like this — I can tell you that because I was there.
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I was with him that night, of course. It was I who brought the confession to the police. I had a lovely green envelope. The paper was so crisp! Crisp green paper folded and secured with a string. Inside it, Kakuzo had put the confession. We were there in the night, awake, Kakuzo and I. We had parted with Sotatsu at the bar, and now we were at home. Neither of us could sleep. He was sitting there in the dark holding the confession in its envelope. There was no clock. We just sat, watching the window. Sometime after dawn, he handed it to me. He said, Joo, take it now . I put on my coat, went to the door, put on my shoes, and went down the stairs. Outside, it was a very bright day. I was so full of it — I felt like the hinge of some long thing. I was turning a door in the distance. A door was turning upon me, and it was all effortless. All that weight, but I could support it. I took the confession to the station. I knocked on the door. The officer was asleep at his desk. He woke up and came over rubbing his eyes. Here is a delivery, I said. Here you go.
They didn’t know what it was, so who I was, I guess, was meaningless. I went away and next I knew Sotatsu had been taken. He was in jail. He was the Narito Disappearer. Suddenly. I sat all day in the house and when it was nighttime, Kakuzo and I went and found something to eat. Will it work? Will it work? Kakuzo kept saying. There was a radio on in the restaurant. That’s how we heard the news.
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It seems that people think of simple ways to say things or know them, but I was always taking the long way around. My mother always teased me. You go the long way every time. I do. I go the long way. When Sotatsu was in jail one day I went to see him. Something had changed for me in the room with Kakuzo and I felt cold all over, empty as a washed bottle. But in the jail I felt young. I had no idea what I was. I asked myself that. I said, Joo, what are you, as I went along the corridor and I truly had no idea.
When I came to his cell, he was sitting facing the wall. Sotatsu, I said, it is your Joo. From then on we were in an old tale. He looked at me and it was like I had lit him on fire, like he was an effigy I had set on fire at a festival. He knew what everything meant. I knew what everything meant. I said, I am coming here every day. We have a new life.
If some say that a man and woman must live together or that they must see each other, even that they must live in the same time in order to love, well, they are mistaken. A great lover has a life that prepares him for his love. She grooms herself for years without hope of any kind, yet stands by the crevice of the world. He sleeps inside of his own heart. She dries her hair with her tears and washes her skin with names and names and names. Then one day, he, she, hears the name of the beloved and it yet means nothing. She might see the beloved and it means nothing. But a wheel, far away, spins on thin spokes, and that name, that sight, grows solid as stone. Then wherever he is, he says, I know the name of my beloved, and it is … or I know the face of my beloved, and she is — there! And he returns to the place where she saw him, and she empties herself out — leaves herself like open water, beneath, past, in the distance, surrounding, able to be touched with the smallest gesture. And that is how the great loves begin. I can tell you because I have been a great love. I have had a great love. I was there.
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I wore a different face, of course, when I saw Kakuzo next. He did not know what happened. He knew nothing at all. But, he told me. You keep seeing him. Keep going. I will keep going, I told him. Hold Sotatsu to his confession. Help him be brave. He is brave enough, I said. This is his myth. It is, said Kakuzo. It is his myth. I want to say how it was that I lived with Kakuzo, that I slept in his bed and woke with him, that I knew him every day and that I was not his, that I was with Sotatsu, that I was Sotatsu’s, that I was in between the visiting of Sotatsu, the seeing of Sotatsu. I was in a life that occurred but once each day for ten minutes, for five minutes, for an hour, whatever we were given.
The girl Joo who went with Kakuzo where Kakuzo wanted to go, who lay with him, who sat in his lap, she was less than nothing. I set no store by her. She was a shell, a means of waiting and nothing more. Each day as I set out for the jail, I would put my life on like a garment and the blood would run out through my arms, my legs, my torso. I would breathe in and out, living, and go out, living, through the streets to my Sotatsu.
What was it for him? Some say I do not know. How could I know, they say. I never knew him. I visited. We spoke little. They say these things.
In fact, I know what it was for him. I will tell you it simply: he felt he was falling. He felt he fell through a succession of wells, of holes, of chasms, and that I was there at windows, and we would be together a moment as he fell by. Then I would rush to the next window, down and down, and he would fall past, and I would see him again.
I am not a shouter. I did not shout to him, nor he to me. We were like old people of some town who write letters that a boy carries from one house to another. We were as quiet as that.
Of silence, I can say only what I heard, that all things are known by that which they make or leave — and so speech isn’t itself, but its effect, and silence is the same. If there were a silent kingdom and but one could speak — he would be the king of an ageless beauty. But of course, here where we are, here there is no end to speaking and the time comes when speaking is less than saying nothing. But still we struggle on.
I imagined once that there were horses for everyone — that it might be we could all climb on horseback and make our way somewhere not waiting for any of the things deemed necessary. I would cry at the thought — I, a little girl, would cry to think of it, but it made me so happy I can’t tell you. I believe there was an illustration I had seen, in some book, of a sea of horses, and it made me feel just that — there were so many! There were enough for me to have one too, and for us all to leave.
Oh, the things I said to Sotatsu!
I said to him, I said, Sotatsu, last night, I dreamt of a train that comes once a year like a ship to some far-flung colony. I said, on the ship are all the goods that the colony needs. It carries everything, this ship, and all the colonists must do is last until the ship comes again and all will be well. Out of the west, the train, this ship, it comes along the track. It dwarfs everything. This is my dream. The gigantic train is more real than the world that surrounds it. Sotatsu, I bring nothing to you, but it is what you need what I bring and I will bring it again and again and you will wait and be strong and fare well. We will not wait, you and I, we won’t wait for another life. This life, this is our life. We will have no other, nor need any other. Here all is taken care of. We have been set aside, set apart, like legs removed from a table. Our sympathies remain with each other entirely and when we lie touching, it is as though we are the whole table, as though the missing table moves back and forth between us, there where we touch, we two table legs.
I was always saying such things, and he would smile. He would turn his mouth like a person does when tying a knot or opening a letter. That was the smile that he developed in order to smile at me. I was so fond of it — let me tell you! For there were not all good times. He had lost all his strength when he was caught and it took time for him to regain it. Then he was moved and moved again. He was put on trial. He was removed from trial. He was put in a new place, and then another place, another new place.
In the first place, we soon made a routine. I would wear a coat so it could not be guessed, what I was wearing underneath. I would say, what color am I wearing? Am I wearing any color, any particular color? And he would say one color or another color, he would say a color. Then, I would off with the coat and we would see what color it was. Being wrong or right about something meaningless is very strong. He would never guess correctly, though. I think he did it on purpose, but I don’t know. Like many things, this thing I know not at all with any certainty.
I would say to him, confess to me, to your Joo. Confess that you are in love with me. Say it.
Then he would say, my Joo, Joo of the coat and colors, Joo of all visits. He would say such things, meaning that he loved me.
When we were near to each other, he would become very stiff and still. He would stare at me. I wanted to pretend that nothing mattered, for it didn’t. Although it might have been pretending, if two pretend then it is no longer that. It becomes actual. I asked him to die. When he could say that he did not confess, that he did not agree with what he had said. When he could say the whole business right out, about Kakuzo, about the confession, and that he knew nothing … he realized, I am saying, he realized, because his brother came there and said it, he realized he could say that, and it would free him. But that same night, I was there with him, and he told me, and I said,
The line of trees that is at the horizon — they are known to you. You have not been to them, you have only seen them from far away, always for the first time. One looks out a window into the distance, or comes down a circling drive, turns a corner. There in the distance, the tree line, all at once. It is dark here and there. It moves within itself, within its own length. It is merely a matter of some sort of promise. One expects that the forest there is nothing like anything is, or has been. I will go there, one thinks, and enter there, between those two trees.
Sotatsu, I said. I am those two trees. We are entering that forest now, and the way out has nothing to do with anyone. You should not bother with anyone. They are just rasping stones that pull at you. Each person chooses his life from all the roles in all the theaters. We are a prisoner and his love. For I am sometimes one and sometimes the other. You are one and then the other. We are diving in the thin and wild air, as if the spring has just begun. We are diving but we are composing the water beneath us with our dreams, and what I see gives me hope. I will return to you, my dear, and I will return to you and return to you and return to you. You will be mine and no one else’s, and I will be the same. I will turn my face away, and look at you when I am elsewhere. I will look only at you.
Then he saw that I was right, that I was the only one for him, the only one turned entirely to him, the only one looking only at him. I earned him. He knew that with that moment, there was a possession as total as any to be gained; not even the earth, consuming the bodies of our children, can have something so completely — for only I would give myself again, again, again. Our deaths we give and they are gone. But this, we give and receive, give and receive, give and receive.
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I went home to Kakuzo and I said, that brother told him to give up. He said, give up. I said, he told him to. He was going to. He said, he better not. For whom, I said. He’d better not, he said. You’d better tell him. I told him, I said. That’s good. He grabbed my face and he said, Joo, that’s good. You remind him.
Kakuzo was a foolish person. He was a fool, a person who is foolish as a job, as a profession. But not a fool in a court or a fool with a crowd. He was a solitary fool, his own fool. He was a fool because he did not know what made a life, and he could not see that I had made one right in front of him. He could not see the difference, couldn’t see: his Joo was gone and had been replaced by a gray woman with a raincoat who nodded and sat and cooked and blinked and blinked. He could not see that it must mean this: I was living elsewhere, like the boy who stares at an old photograph and leaves his body with a sigh.
Oh, my dear! I want so much to be again in that life. Speaking of it like this, writing it down: I am like a yard of shadows when the sun is even with the lowest clouds. I am multiplied, but only with my bags packed, only where I stand, at the station, my hat pulled low. Have you seen an old woman like me? I have been old a very long time.
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How can I explain it, put it in a line for you? I can say there were a series of visits. I can number them and recount them one by one. I do not remember any of them. That’s true. Also, I remember every one without exception. It is most correct this way — I can say a thing about that time and know if it is true or not true. Then I write it down. I leave the false things on their own.
In the first part of my life with Sotatsu, he lived in a cell in a jail where the sun came south through the window on an avenue all its own where it was forced to stoop and stoop again until when it arrived at its little house it was hardly the sun at all, just a shabby old woman. Yet we were always looking for her, this sun, when she would come, always eager to have her meager presents, her thin delineations. I would say, oh, Sotatsu, oh my Sotatsu, today you are like a long-legged cat of the first kind. He would smile and laugh, meaning, Joo, I have nothing to do with such a cat as you describe.
In the first part of my life with Sotatsu, he lived in a basket on the back of a wolf that was running westward. I was a flea in the wolf’s coat, and had all the privileges of my grand station. I could visit the prisoner. I could speak to the prisoner. I made the wolf aware of his important profession. I said to the wolf one day, actually, I said, you are carrying a most important prisoner, you know, away beyond the frontier. He said, flea of my coat, it is your work to tell me such things, and mine not to listen.
In the first part of my life, I told Sotatsu everything about myself. I told him I was the youngest of fourteen children (a lie). I told him I had a dress that I wore as a child with a fourteen-foot train and the other children would carry it, so becoming I was. I told him I had a course in fishing where seven would stand in a stream using fourteen hands to weave a rope and the fish would leap up and into the canvas bags we wore on our waists. Every lie was a lie of fourteen. I wanted him to know about me. I said what was true also. I said, I have seen nothing that was worthy of me until you were lying in this cell. I said, I am not my surroundings or my fate and you are not who anyone says. I said, I will say things and you can stop me, but no one else can. I will be a speaker and I will speak on all subjects like a tinny radio rustling in a shop window. I will make up all the world’s smallest objects and doings. I will confuse them, muddle them like a jar, and produce them at odd times. This will be the tiniest edge, the tiniest corner of our love: so much you have yet to expect from me.
In the first part of my life, I knelt by the bars of a cell where my love lay and I called as a woman calls to pigeons when she is old and cannot see them. I made shooing noises with my mouth, for I was sure someone said once, someone said such noises would make birds come to you.
I draped myself on the bars like a blanket. I cried for him. I smiled and laughed. I was a playhouse of a hundred plays where there are no actors to do any but the one play, that first play, made when the theater, unbuilt, is first considered. If we should have a theater, this is the play we would do, and all we would need is one actor and a cloth for her to place before her face. I placed so many cloths, and taught my Sotatsu all manner of things that no one knew, not me or anyone. These were true things in our life, but empty in the common air.
In the first part of my life, I was stopped on the steps of the jail by a woman, my mother, who said she had heard about where I was going, heard about who I was seeing, heard strange things that she would learn the truth of. This woman, my mother, when she stopped me on the steps of the jail, I felt I was in a history of classical Greece, and she was my deceiver. Good mother, I told her. A person visits a friend and is unchanged.
In the first part of my life, I was asked to appear in an old film by an early director. This was filmed many years ago, he told me. You are just right for the part. There will be many scenes that are nighttime scenes, but we film those during the day, for we need all the light that can be mustered. We need as much light as possible to see, because we must be clear. We can afford for nothing to be hidden.
The first part of my life came to an end when Sotatsu was moved to the jail where they would starve him.
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In the second part of my life, as you know, dear friend, my Sotatsu was starved almost absolutely to death by the guards who would give him no food. They said to him, you must ask us for your food. He told me, they say I must ask them for the food. I said, you? You? Ask them for food? He agreed that he would never do so. I am not in charge of my life that way, he said. He said all this by smiling. I said all this by winking. I stood at the cage in my coat and held the bars with both hands. I could see he was very hungry, and thinner.
In the second part of my life, my Sotatsu was thin almost to breaking. He had become like the edge of a hand. I wanted to tell him to eat, but I did not. Instead, I began also not to eat. I said, I will also not eat, but I was not as strong as he. When the dizziness started, and it became hard for me to rise, I knew: I would fail him. Even if I was with him in not-eating, I would be failing in my visits. I could no longer visit him, with such strength as would be remaining. So, I took to eating again, just enough, and visiting.
They would drag him off to a trial. The trial had begun and they wanted him to say things, so they were starving him and speaking to him, examining him, telling him things, asking for his signature. His hands were trembling even when they lay still. His eyes were open — they had stopped closing, I suppose this happens when one doesn’t eat. Finally, it was enough. They brought him food and he began to eat. Even once they were bringing it, though, he could not eat it. His throat had forgotten its purpose. The food just wouldn’t go in. So, it had to be retaught and this took a few days.
In the second part of my life, my love was rescued from starvation by a series of bowls of food. I did not ever see him eat. Such things were not allowed. But, I saw him standing one day. I arrived in the morning, quite early, and he was standing when he could not stand for weeks.
My dear, I called, my standing dear. How well you stand.
He looked at me and explained it, that he had begun to eat once more. That he had broken them. The trial was over, too. I knew that, and I was glad of it. I had the newspapers in stacks. I read them over and over. I had found the place where he would be on the map, and looked up the route.
My dear, I told him that last time, I will join you in the new place.
That was the end of the second part of my life.
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In the third part of my life, I traveled to a prison that was built underground in order to avoid the moon. Jito Joo was the name I would give, and they would allow me to climb through a narrow aperture. They would show me into a hallway and down a hallway. They would show me to a roped-off area, where little rooms knelt like parishioners, each one bending its head. When the guards pulled a lever, the rooms would open, as many as they liked, or as few. I was allowed to go in, suddenly. I who had never been allowed in, I was suddenly allowed in. Sotatsu was sitting on a pallet. He was staring at his hands. He did not look at me. This was the first time I had seen him, I think, in my entire life, such was my feeling. I said, I am looking at him and he is here. He looked up, hearing my voice, and I sat there by him, my arm brushing against his side and shoulder.
Where will we go?
In the third part of my life, I practically lived in the cell with Sotatsu. Properly speaking, I, of course, was far away, mostly. I was mostly on the bus, going to the prison, on the bus leaving the prison, in the house with Kakuzo, sitting, eating, walking on the streets of our village, muttering greetings. I was mostly carrying on that way. But still, as I say, I practically lived in the cell. Every chance I got, I snuck away there. I was like a child with a hiding place. Where is Joo? Where has Joo gone? Joo may be found in the death cell of a prison with her beloved.
I believed then that the third part of my life was my whole life. I had forgotten about the two previous parts. I did not expect a fourth. I believed we would continue that way. Everyone on death row had been there always. They were very old. They expected to die of natural causes and be given neat Buddhist ceremonies attended by whatever gentle family members remained. In this we encouraged them, the guards encouraged them, the guards encouraged us. We were all sternly encouraged in the belief: the world would last forever.
Sotatsu, I would say, some speak of the great cities of the world where anything can be bought. These are the sorts of things I would say, and he would laugh. We would sit, laughing, like old campaigners. (I have known a few, and we are not like old campaigners, he would say by smiling, and I would say, you have known no old campaigners but we are old campaigners of a certainty.)
The third part of my life was where I was told the meaning of my life. One knows the weight of a thing when it is strong enough to bear its own meaning, to hear its own truth told to it, and yet to remain.
Sotatsu, I said, I am your Joo. I will come here forever and visit you. All I need is a small profession, just enough money for the bus and for food. I need no children, I need no objects. I need no books, no music. I am a great traveler like Marco Polo, who visits an interior land. I travel deep into the heart of a place between walls, built between the walls of our common house. I am an ambassador, an embassy sent to a single king. You are that king, my king, my Sotatsu.
Then, he would hold up his hand as if to say, such wild notions do very well, but we must be careful.
Or — let us throw even such caution as this to the winds. Let us be like all the cavalry of ten armies.
These expressions of his, they made me wild! I would leap to my feet and sit again. The guard would come running, thinking he was wanted for some small thing, a glass of water or a query.
No, I would say, it’s only that Sotatsu made a joke.
Then Sotatsu would look at his feet, which, predictably, were doing the things that feet do.
In the third part of my life, I came to a far place. I decided that I would move into a room near the prison. I decided that I had enough put away, that I could do that. I was planning it. I did not tell Sotatsu. I came the night I decided it, and I was allowed in very late. I have told you there were no obstacles and it was always true. No obstacles. I appeared and was admitted. I was taken to his cell, and the guard shut the door. He pulled a shade. I didn’t know the shade was there, but he pulled it, and the cell was closed off. It could no longer be seen from without.
Hello, my Sotatsu, I said, and I went to him. It was the last of all my visits, and the longest. When I left the sun was halfway up in the sky. The bus had come and gone. There were no more buses that day, but one came. An empty road stretching in both directions. Then, the friendly nose of a bus drifting along. The bus driver said, you are lucky, young lady. There are no buses in this direction, not until tomorrow. I just happen to have gotten lost. Then he took me back in the direction of Sakai.
I felt when I left that day that I would return immediately. I would wait for the sun to set and then I would set out. I would be back again and pressing the buzzer, being admitted through the steel doors. I would be called upon to empty my bags, to leave my things and go past a thousand tiny windows with their attendant eyes. I had grown so used to these things that they calmed me. I looked forward to them as a series of gestures. I felt surely that nothing could take them from me. That any of it could or would end. It seems silly, but I did not believe it. Neither I nor my Sotatsu: we did not believe it.
This is a letter about Sotatsu who was my love; this is a letter about my one true life, which consisted of three parts. I am now in the fourth part of my life, and it has been false. It has been a false portion. In my estimation, they give you the false portion last.
Lastly, Kakuzo
Int. Note
Kakuzo, Kakuzo. Sato Kakuzo. In all my research, I had come upon him again and again only to hit upon one impasse or another. I felt that I must find him if I was to have the full story. As luck would have it, I managed to, but last of all, and only after a long search, culminating in a great piece of luck.
Here is how it happened:
A person like Sato Kakuzo — I imagined he could not be found unless he wanted to be found. The question then was: how does one make him want to be found? Or how does one make him reveal himself? I had a sense of Kakuzo’s vanity. I felt he was not a nihilist — and that he did truly believe in history, in a parade of history. I felt surely that he would not like the idea of a faulty account, of any faulty account. And if there was to appear somewhere a faulty account of him most particularly — or of something he had had to do with …
I was sure that Kakuzo would want the story to be correct; after all, there was every indication that he was the original architect; it was he who wrote the confession.
So, this is what I did: I arranged with a newspaper friend to print a remembrance article about the Narito Disappearances in a Sakai paper. I purposefully left him completely out of it. A long article about the most important event of his life — and no mention of Sato Kakuzo. My friend was understandably hesitant to print such a thing, but finally he did.
For a week we waited. One day, then another. I grew afraid that he had died, or that he had been living abroad for decades. Or perhaps he simply hadn’t seen that newspaper? Perhaps he hated newspapers. When a week had passed, I felt sure he would never be found.
Yet the ruse worked. A week and a half after the first article, the office of the newspaper received an indignant letter. What fools they were, the letter said, to print absolute fallacies without any reference to the truth. Were they journalists or not? Once upon a time newspapers had had a relationship to truth. Had this commitment been completely effaced? And on and on in this fashion. The letter was signed, Sato Kakuzo, and on the envelope was written a return address.
I contacted him then, and he agreed to meet.
The place of our meeting was a sort of boathouse and cafe at the shore. He showed up very late, more than an hour. I was preparing to leave when a car pulled into the lot. Indeed, it was he. Kakuzo wore an old fisherman’s hat, a tweed jacket, and corduroy trousers. He appeared a perfectly innocuous older man. His English was clear and unaccented. He had brought things with him, things for me. If I were to do the story, he would have me know the whole of it.
This interview was the only time I was able to meet him. However, the materials that he gave me provided many hours of study, so I felt that I had spent a great deal more time with him than I actually ever did. One thing that must be stressed is the immense force of personality possessed by Sato Kakuzo. I left the interview unsurprised that he had made Oda Sotatsu sign the confession. Indeed, he might have managed to convince anyone to do the same.
Interview (Sato Kakuzo )
[Int. note . At first we sat at a table by the window, but the position of the sun shifted, and it became too bright, so we were forced partway through to move to another table. Both times Kakuzo chose the chair he wanted and sat in it, without seeing whether I had an opinion on the matter. I suppose, as he was being interviewed, there is a certain justice to that. It was interesting to see that he always chose the seat from which one might observe the door. When I asked him whether I could use my device to record the conversation, he refused. Only after we had spoken for a little while did he relent.]
INT.
So, you had been inspired by the French Situationists? You were inspired by the ’68 riots? That’s what got you into trouble at first in Sakai and led you to return home?
KAKUZO
Do you know the fable of the stonecutter?
INT.
No.
KAKUZO
It is an old fable, Persian, I think. I had read it around that time, and it made me feel, somehow — as though certain things might be possible. I felt that things I had thought should be classed impossible were truly possible, with the very greatest effort.
INT.
What is the fable?
KAKUZO
A king is out riding with his nobles, all ahorse the very best steeds that can be had. They are riding out beyond the city where the king lives. They pass through fields and down road after road. The horse the king is riding is a fine new horse, such a horse as he has never possessed, and so he gives it its head, and the horse carries him farther than he has ever gone. The king and his nobles ride so far and so fast that they become bewildered, but their blood is in their faces and their hearts are beating so tremendously that they want only to course on and on. A wind is blowing and the weather is spinning in the air, clouds turning like looms. The horses trail to a stop, and the company is on a road before a lowly dwelling. It is a stonecutter’s hut. The king dismounts, and goes to the door. He knocks and the door is answered by an old man with pale cruel hands of sinew and bone. The old man welcomes the company and receives them into his hut. Strangely enough, there is a place for everyone. The table is large enough for all. Each lord sits at table, shoulder to shoulder, and the king sits at one end. The stonecutter sits at the other. I will feed you, said the stonecutter, but it will not be anything like what you eat. The nobles groused, saying they would like this or that, saying is there this or that, but the stonecutter looked at them and they looked at his hands, and they fell silent. The king spoke, saying, they were come like beggars, and were glad to be received at all. Such a thing a king had never said. So, the stonecutter went into his larder and brought out a goose that resembled a girl. He brought out a deer that resembled a boy. He brought out bread like the hair of a hundred court ladies, threaded into rope. He brought out honey like the blood of goats. Do not eat this food, the lords said, but the king laughed. The stonecutter watched them speaking, and the king laughed, saying, where you are brought by a swift steed is a place for courage. But the lords said beneath their breath, some steeds are too swift. Then the plates were filled, heaped nearly to the ceiling and passed around, and always the king chose first, and he filled his plate and ate of it, and filled it and ate of it and filled it and ate of it. Never had he tasted such food. And soon they were all fast asleep, and the stonecutter rose from the table. That is the end of the first part.
INT.
What is the second part?
KAKUZO
Do you want to hear it?
INT.
I do.
KAKUZO
The king wakes the next day, and he finds that he is the stonecutter. He sees no lords in his house. There are no horses in his field. There are only the remains of an enormous feast, which ended sometime in the night. He looks down at his hands and he sees how terrifying they are, sees the white bone, the sinew, that which the stone may not resist. But he is a king. He sets out on the road toward his kingdom, and follows the trail of the horses’ hooves. For nineteen days he walks. It takes him nineteen days to travel what on the fastest horses took a single flight of restless speed. Still he perseveres, and on the nineteenth day, he reaches the gates of his city. He presents himself there, and the guards will not let him in. Have you nothing to sell, they ask. Have you no money with which to buy? For what reason do you want to enter this fine city? Do you not know, they asked. Do you not know that this is the richest and wealthiest city in the world? And some fear in his heart keeps the king from revealing himself. I will see, he says, how the land lies. And he goes a short distance into a desolate field, and he finds a stone. He sits by the stone and passes his hands over it. He passes his hands over it again and again, and he knows then things that the stonecutter knows and he breaks the stone and seals it and breaks it and seals it and tears at it as if at a cloth. When he has done, he has made a puzzle of the thinnest weave, a puzzle in stone. He puts it beneath his ragged cloak, and goes back to the gates. There he waits until morning, and when the first guard to wake looks out at the sun, he is there.
You again. Have you nothing to sell? Have you the means to buy? The king lifts the cloak to show the stone puzzle, and the guard’s eyes follow the impossible lines and turns and corners. Round about they go, round about and around and they fall into nothing, into nowhere. Again he tries, again, he can reach nowhere with the puzzle, with his eyes on the puzzle. Very well, he says. You are welcome to the city, and he opens the gate. The king covers his puzzle, and goes then upon the streets of his own city. Never has he seen it so well. The merchants are opening their stalls in the squares and streets. Animals are being fed, watered, slaughtered, skinned, ground, groomed, their manes tied with ribbons. He finds his familiar way to the castle. There is another gate. I will see the king, he says. Anyone has a right, says the guard, to see the king. But it may be the end of you. The guard brushes the king’s hood back and looks upon his face. But he does not see anyone he knows. He has not seen this person before. Good fortune to you, he says, and opens the gate.
Then the king is upon the courtyard of his own castle. He goes along the passages as a claimant, with the others who have things to ask. They are endless in number, it seems, and they are admitted, all at once, to an interior chamber where the king will appear and speak to them. The king himself is astonished. He has never spoken to claimants. He has never seen this room. But an hour passes and another, and a counselor comes out and sits in a high chair. I am the king, he says. I know you, thinks the king. You are but a counselor. And so the king makes himself the last of all those there, and waits, and when they have all spoken to the counselor, and when they have all gone away, he presents himself, saying, I have something to say to the king, but you are not the king. I am not the king, agrees the counselor, stepping down off the high chair, but we will go to him now. So, they go down more hallways and cross more courts, the counselor, the king, and the guards, and they enter another chamber, where another counselor, yet higher, sits. I have known these men all my life, thinks the king, and never did I know … but already he is brought forward. Here is the king, they say to him. Tell him what you will. You are not the king, he says. I have come to see the king. And so they draw back the cloth at the back of the room, the heavy, rich, banded cloth, and there is another passage, and they go down it, the king, the first counselor, the second counselor, and the guards, and they reach a place where the guards can go no farther, and the counselors lead the king on, one on each side. His clothes are so filthy, his face so etched with weather and sun, that they can scarcely bear to be beside him, yet they pass on together. Into the final chamber they go. There sits the king, and he knows himself. He has seen that face, so often! To him he goes, and when the king on his throne perceives the stonecutter’s robes, when he perceives the stonecutter’s hands, when he perceives that the stonecutter has passed all obstacles to come before him, he opens his eyes wide as any owl, and calls out. Who has let this man in? To the counselors, there is a lowly stonecutter, standing before their king. And this is what they see. The king holds out his hands and the stonecutter opens his robe and holds out his impossible puzzle, this fashioning of stone and light. The king receives it into his hands and there he makes it again the stone it was, and he sets it beside him, as it had sat in the field.
Then the king wakes, and it is morning. The lords have saddled their horses. Come, they say, come let us ride away. And the king rouses himself from the table where he was sleeping and he goes to his horse. Out from the hut comes the stonecutter and he looks into the king’s face. What passes between them then is neither for lords, nor for storytellers. Who can say what it means to be one person and not another? When they returned to the city, the king did nothing as he had before, and he led his kingdom into a new age, which even now has been forgotten. Of it, we have only this tale.
INT.
You felt before that all things were inevitable, that nothing could be done. But when you read that, you saw that there was a tiller? That things truly could be changed, and even one man could do it?
KAKUZO
Exactly. I felt I could be the stonecutter.
INT.
But there is no king. Even if you could be the stonecutter, I don’t see …
KAKUZO
The king is now in general. The kingship is held in general. It is what is tolerated by the people.
INT.
Then, to change their vision, you would need to …
KAKUZO
I needed to speak to everyone at once.
INT.
But you were young, and finding your way. How did you make your plans? How did you set them in motion? It was the middle of the 1970s. Perhaps — civil and legal formality was the farthest thing from anyone’s mind?
KAKUZO
Not so. There were some of us who were concerned. It seemed that Japan had the chance to become what no other nation was or has been: an actually fair place. I wanted that, more than anything. In my own way, I would say, though I’m sure others would disagree with me, I would say I am …
INT.
A moral man? A patriotic man?
KAKUZO
Maybe not in the sense of one who follows the emperor, who gives up everything for someone else’s cause. I gave up everything, but for my own cause.
INT.
Did you? Or did you convince Sotatsu to do so on your behalf?
KAKUZO
His life was a zero. He would have done nothing. Instead, look: someone is writing a book about it.
(Laughs, spits on the floor.)
INT.
I don’t …
KAKUZO
I had returned home from the city. I reconnected with a girl named Jito Joo. We were living together. She had been my girlfriend some years before that, but things hadn’t worked out. I left. Anyway, now that I had returned, we had ended up together again. Oda Sotatsu was an old friend. I started to see him. We were all feeling the same way, very restricted, very angry. Joo and I would stay up all night talking about things that we could do to escape, ways that things could change. I had a few friends who had ended up in jail and I was angry about the justice system. I felt we were very far behind the way it worked in other supposedly civilized countries.
INT.
So, that’s what hatched the idea of the confession?
KAKUZO
Partially, yes. It was partially that, and partially just anger.
INT.
Did you have any help in preparing the confession?
KAKUZO
A friend from Sakai, I won’t say his name, a lawyer. He helped draft it. The intention was that it be legally binding, to a degree. Of course, it is difficult to make it truly binding. But, as binding as we could make it, we did.
INT.
And had you targeted Sotatsu all along? You knew that he would be the one?
KAKUZO
I felt that, and I wasn’t alone in this — I felt that I was too important as the organizer to be the one who would be in prison. I didn’t see that as my part of the task.
INT.
You saw that as Sotatsu’s part?
KAKUZO
He was well suited to it. I knew him to be honorable, to have great inner resources. I also knew that he had obtained a very, I don’t know, bleak outlook. He was not very happy at that time, when I had returned. I was unsurprised when he agreed.
INT.
I should tell you that I have been in contact with many different people in my research for this. Among them, the entire Oda family, and Jito Joo.
KAKUZO
Joo also?
INT.
Yes.
KAKUZO
You have to be careful whom you trust. Everyone has a version, and most of them are wrong. In fact, I can tell you clearly: they are all wrong. I am in a position to help you understand what happened. You need to understand, Mr. Ball, the world is made up almost entirely of sentimental fools and brutes.
INT.
And which are you?
KAKUZO
(laughs)
INT.
Truly.
KAKUZO
A sentimental brute, I suppose. One who means well, but has no feeling for others.
[Int. note . Here Kakuzo gave me the tape of the initial night — the actual tape of the moment when Sotatsu was lured into confessing. I was shocked. At first, I had trouble believing the truth of it, but when I listened, I knew it could be nothing else. Among the many things that were strange and beautiful, one was the manner in which the voices of Kakuzo and Joo were different from when I had spoken with them, but subtly. It was a weight of time — all the time that had passed since the tape had been made, and all the things that had happened.]
[After handing me the materials, Kakuzo did not want to be interviewed any more. He merely gave me the tape of that first interaction, and a series of statements. The statements I provide hereafter, verbatim (changed only as per my initial note). The statements were of drastically varying age, some even predating the events. I will enumerate them below.]
Statements (Sato Kakuzo )
[Int. note . The statements were carbon copies of originals that Kakuzo kept. I occasionally had difficulty making out a word here or there. In such cases, I strove to keep meaning clear and chose the least outlandish or strange usage. Some of the statements were little more than scraps. Others were on larger paper, printed with diagrams and explanatory text. I do not give all here, as the relationship of some to the matter at hand was tangential at best.]
1. Narito Disappearances: Blueprint
2. The Invention of a Crime
3. Confessions & The Idea of a Confession
4. Joo & How It Went in Practice
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