Interview 17 (Brother and Mother )
[One day, I managed to convince Jiro to come with me to speak to his mother one final time. I had tried repeatedly to get access to her again, but she would not meet me. Jiro said that he thought he could convince her, but that if his father found out, it would never come to pass. He was as good as his word, and we met her in a park. There was a little wood and two benches sitting across from each other. I put the microphone by her and Jiro. I sat on the other bench. Some of my questions turned out to be inaudible, so I have reconstructed or omitted them. The words spoken by Jiro and Mrs. Oda were entirely clear.]
INT.
I wanted to speak to you a little more, because I know that there are so many things you know that no one else does. Your knowledge of Sotatsu is something very valuable, I think, and I would appreciate it very much if you would share some more of it with me.
MRS. ODA
(nods to herself)
JIRO
We were speaking of the time that Sotatsu got a medal at school. Do you remember that?
MRS. ODA
(makes a shushing sound)
JIRO
Of course you remember that. I was trying to recall what the medal was for, but I couldn’t. Do you remember?
MRS. ODA
Geometry. A geometry medal.
INT.
Was there some kind of competition that he won?
JIRO
Yes, I think there was. I think he won a geometry competition and they gave him a medal. He was very proud of it. As a matter of fact, I believe he kept it his whole life.
MRS. ODA
That’s nonsense. It wasn’t a competition. It was a thing he had to do, to get up in front of the school and present at a visit by the mayor. The teacher had him do it because she thought he would do the best job of it, but he didn’t. He actually misdrew the shape and labeled the lines wrong. The teacher gave him the medal anyway, since it had already been made.
JIRO
He always told me …
MRS. ODA
The teacher was very embarrassed. I believe he left the school partway through the year and they had to find a new teacher.
JIRO
Oh, now I remember — and that was because …
MRS. ODA
Because your brother embarrassed us.
JIRO
I didn’t know that.
INT.
But he was ordinarily very good at math, then? That was why the teacher had selected him?
MRS. ODA
I don’t think so. I don’t think he was good at math.
JIRO
Come now. He was good at math. You know that.
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MRS. ODA
I don’t know much of anything. Your father and I went to the auditorium. You were there too. So was your sister. We sat there and someone from each class went up to show the mayor what they were learning. Sotatsu was wearing new clothes that we had bought just for that. We didn’t have very much money. Hardly any. But we did this, because we wanted to show people that we were as good as anybody. He was up there in line with the others. We sat in the audience. Practically the whole town was there. Then the mayor came in, and he went up to the stage, and he shook hands. They brought out the young students to do this and that, and they did it. Then someone showed a science project. Then someone showed something about photography, an older child. Then it was Sotatsu’s turn. He was trying to show something, I don’t know, something about a triangle. He drew it wrong. Everyone froze up. Sotatsu kept trying to explain it. I don’t know actually if he did draw it wrong, or if he wrote the wrong numbers, but they didn’t match up. He kept pointing to the drawing on the chalkboard. Meanwhile the mayor was just looking away. He wouldn’t look at Sotatsu. Your father and I, we …
INT.
Mrs. Oda …
[Jiro’s mother got up then and walked away, saying something under her breath to Jiro that I couldn’t make out. That was the last I saw of her.]
Interview 18 (Watanabe Garo )
[Int. note . This is from a later portion of the in-person interview. It was difficult to keep Garo on subject, so much of the interview was worthless, or I should say it alternated between being invaluable and being worthless. Some subjects will not disclose information unless they feel they are in a conversation. These individuals ask questions of the questioner, beg for particulars and follow ultimately useless lines of inquiry. Such was Garo. I am therefore skipping the tedious discussion of my own life (with his interminable quizzing), as it has no bearing here. I skip to a point at which we are discussing discipline at the prison.]
INT.
But there were beatings?
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GARO
I’m not saying there were beatings, not as such. I’m saying if someone ended up deserving a beating, it would be a rare thing for him not to end up, one way or another, getting the thing he deserved. Do you see it? It isn’t about one person deciding to discipline someone, a guard or anybody else, it isn’t about that person choosing something. It isn’t about the way in which such a thing is gone about. It’s an inevitable thing, a person behaves again and again in a way that is a kind of communication. It is someone saying, I don’t learn the usual way. Try something else with me. And eventually someone else tries something else. Talking about context, it isn’t even the right way. I mean, maybe if you mean, maybe if you are talking about the difference between being above water or below.
INT.
You are talking about a guard beating someone with a stick?
GARO
Yes, but it isn’t beating, it is communication. It isn’t an action, not in and of itself. It’s a constant pressure, the effect of a constant pressure. It is a result, not a thing. It can’t be looked at by itself, separated out.
INT.
Did Sotatsu get beaten that way?
GARO
I don’t believe he was ever beaten. Nothing physical, or not much, was ever done to him. He went along with things, mostly. He wasn’t any trouble. And he wasn’t there for long. Also, there is a feeling around some — that they are doomed. When that feeling comes, the guards tend to have as little as possible to do with that person. Most of them.
INT.
But some don’t?
GARO
Well, there was one guard.
INT.
What did he do?
GARO
He would lean up against the window of Sotatsu’s cell and he would talk. He would stand there talking to him for hours.
INT.
What was he saying?
GARO
Nobody knew at first, but it came out after a while. It was maybe a week of this guy having shifts with Oda and talking to him. Then a supervisor found out and moved the guy on.
INT.
But what was he saying?
GARO
Well, I went to Sotatsu’s cell one of those days after the guy had been talking to him for quite a while. Sotatsu is sitting there on the bed, holding his shogi pieces, staring at his feet. He looks up and sees me. Something made me open the door and come in. I said, What’s the problem? He looked at me for a little while and I stood there. Then he says, Is it true what Mori says, the way the hanging goes? Is it really like that? That’s how I found out.
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INT.
All that time he was whispering to him about the execution?
GARO
He was, and what’s worse, he was just making up hideous things. Horrible things. He said they brought the family and made them all watch. He said they hanged you naked so they wouldn’t have to bury the clothes. I don’t know half of what he said, but it was awful. Sometimes that happens to a man in that environment. You can start doing things like that. Mori, I guess, he wasn’t suited for the work.
INT.
So what did you tell Oda?
GARO
I described the hanging to him. We’re not supposed to do it. Sometimes it’ll spook the prisoners, make them harder to deal with. We’re not supposed to, but I figured, what Mori began, I had to finish. So, I explained it to him.
INT.
Can you describe it now?
GARO
Well, this was a long time ago. I don’t know how it’s done currently. I wouldn’t want to talk about that.
INT.
Can you just say again what you said to Oda about those hangings, the way it used to be done? It doesn’t have to mean anything about what goes on now.
GARO
I think so, I think I can.
Interview 19 (Brother )
[Int. note . I had to return to the city briefly, and Jiro had also returned for a meeting. So, we met at a train station, before going back to his house. At the station, we had to move around to find a spot that was sufficiently quiet for the recorder. We began several times, and had to stop and move. I got into an argument with a drunk man who kept interrupting us, and this made Jiro laugh. It was in good spirits, therefore, that we began this interview.]
INT.
You were talking about that last visit, about how they took your things away? The tape is recording now.
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JIRO
I tried to bring him a little music box I had found. It was stupid, the music box, not the idea. I think it was a good idea, to bring it, only it didn’t work out. They took it away.
INT.
What did the music box play?
JIRO
Well, it sounds really stupid, but you have to know — Sotatsu loved Miles Davis, especially this one record, Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet .
INT.
But surely there’s no music box that plays Miles Davis …
JIRO
Well, maybe there is now. I don’t know about that. Then there wasn’t, not really. But this one, it was a little box with a mirror inside and when you opened it, it played “My Funny Valentine,” which is from that record. It was very expensive, this music box. It cost me almost a week’s salary. But, I thought, if it can cheer Sotatsu up just a little, then …
INT.
You tried to bring it into the prison, even though you knew such things weren’t usually allowed?
JIRO
I did.
INT.
And they took it away. What did they do with it?
JIRO
I imagine some guard gave it to somebody as a present. I never saw it again.
INT.
And you got into trouble over it, too.
JIRO
They took me into a room and some guy yelled at me for about half an hour. I was very apologetic. Usually, back then, I was, well, hot-tempered. I had a short temper. But, in this case, I just wanted to make sure I could get in to see him. I had taken the bus; I had walked very far. I was there at the prison. If they had made me go home, it would have been pretty bad.
INT.
But they let you in?
JIRO
They did, and it was very lucky that they did. Because that was the last time I saw him.
INT.
Can you describe that visit?
JIRO
Well, they walked me in the same way as before, as on all the other visits. I had to sign in, had to be fingerprinted. They would sometimes check the fingerprints against the others they had made of my hands. Once, the guard made a mistake and he got the wrong fingerprints out, so they thought I was some kind of impostor. But that got solved. It was the same boss guard who fixed that situation, and who yelled at me but let me go in anyway this last time. I guess he must have felt bad about the first mix-up. He didn’t seem like a bad guy.
[Int. note . Here, Jiro’s daughter ran up. She asked if we were working on the book. I didn’t know that the children knew what it was we were doing. I assume that Jiro’s wife must have told them. I said that we were doing some work, maybe it would go in the book. She said that she hoped it would do what it was supposed to do, in the end. I asked her what that was. She looked at her father and said that what it was supposed to do was to make a whole bunch of people feel really bad about what happened. She said they didn’t feel bad enough and now it has been a long time and they have forgotten, and that it should make them remember about how they should be still feeling bad. I said that, sure, that was part of it. Jiro laughed, a sort of half-hollow, half-full laugh. He told her to run along and she did.]
INT.
So, then you were brought to the cell?
JIRO
Yes. It was a strange thing to visit him in jail. You get the impression that you are returning to the same moment. I’m not sure how to say it. It’s as though you went away and time continued, but for the person there, it stopped. For them it has only been a moment since you left. He was there, in the same clothes, in the same position. The same light came from the bulbs. The same pallet was laid there in the same way. I had an eerie feeling about it. At the same time, I was overwhelmed, each time I saw him, with a feeling of relief, that he was still there, that nothing more had been done to him. I approached the door, the window was slid open. Sotatsu looked over, saw me, and came to the door. He had a very odd way at that time, a very odd way of holding his mouth. I think it was because he had stopped talking. Maybe if people didn’t use their mouths for talking anymore, this is the way they would all hold their mouths.
INT.
Was it open?
JIRO
A little bit open, on one side. I don’t remember which.
INT.
And you stood there, looking at him, the routine you two had developed?
JIRO
We did. But only for a short time. Then the guard came and asked me to leave. He didn’t give a reason. I think someone else was coming in, but I don’t know why. It seemed like they were clearing me away, clearing out the area. Maybe they had just gotten the news that his day was coming, and so they wanted everything straightened out. I don’t know.
INT.
That was the last time you saw him.
JIRO
I remember the haircut he had, it had been done badly, so a part of his head wasn’t completely shaved. When I see him in my head, that’s the Sotatsu I see. But he is standing in a street.
INT.
When you picture him, you picture him in a prison outfit, with his head shaved, but he is outdoors?
JIRO
He is in a street, and he has the box I was going to give him. But it isn’t open, it isn’t playing. It’s just closed there in his hand.
Interview 20 (Brother )
[Int. note . That night, after our return, I had gone to my room to sleep, but I was still up, looking at some notes I had taken. After a while, there came a tapping on my door. I opened it, and it was Jiro. He came in and admitted that he had not told me the truth that day, or not all of it. I asked him what it was that he had held back. He told me that on the final visit, something different had happened. I asked him what it was that was different, and why he had held it back. He said it was something he hadn’t shared with anyone, and so it wasn’t clear to him whether he would share it with me or not, up until this evening. I asked him how that visit, that last visit, how it had gone differently. He said Sotatsu had given him two letters that he had written. He said he had those, and asked if I wanted to see them. I said, yes. I said, I didn’t realize that he was allowed to write things. Jiro said that it seemed some of the prisoners were allowed that, and it seemed Sotatsu was one of them. He gave me a paper box with a little clasp on one side. I told him I would be very careful looking at them. He went to the door but stood watching me. I asked him if he wanted these documents to be kept out of the book. He didn’t say anything, but stood there. Finally he said he wanted the book to be complete. He didn’t want anything left out of it. That is why he changed his mind and brought the letters. I thanked him and he went off, leaving me to open the box.]
[The document (sides one and two) will follow this page.]
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