The Naked Ear: 29
“Grandfather, grandmother, this is Jun. Jun, this is grandfather and grandmother. Now, let’s all sit down and go through the motions of getting to know each other. Grandfather, I’m relying on you to put this child at ease. He’s very nervous.”
“Nervous! About meeting us! Surely you told him...”
“I most certainly did tell him. I told him everything about you, and if he failed to draw the conclusion that there’s nothing to be nervous about, that’s his problem. You’ll find him a little slow, I’m afraid. But just look at him. Isn’t he beautiful?”
“He is, he is indeed. Jun, welcome. Tomoko has told us a great deal about you too, and we’ve long been looking forward to meeting you. Haven’t we, Kazuko?”
Kazuko smiled and bowed. Somewhat to Jun’s surprise, she wore a kimono. She was a tiny woman, barely reaching Tomoko’s shoulders, though Tomoko herself was of slightly less than average height. The kimono was of blue-gray unfigured material, the sort of outfit a woman of the pre-modern age might have chosen for an occasion which called on her to be present but inconspicuous. The grandfather, for his part, wore a dark suit and tie, the businesslike appearance his dress gave him belied by the widest smile Jun had ever seen; he seemed to be deliberately drawing attention to his teeth, which were in fact remarkably white and even. He had a thin, almost ascetic face expressive of depths you sense without being able to put your finger on what if anything they signify. Thick spectacles made his eyes seem preternaturally large. His hair was a thin white mane, swept back from his high forehead. The effect of his appearance on Jun was a strange one. It made him think, “I’d really like to paint this man,” though he had never painted a picture in his life, or even thought of painting one.
“Tomoko is certainly right about my being a bit slow,” said Jun with a smile, “but about my nervousness, she exaggerates.”
“Her exaggerating is habitual, as is her malice,” said the grandfather, smiling more broadly than ever. “To her, truth is raw material for genius to distort at will, and she has never doubted for a minute, from the time she was old enough to talk, that she is a genius. On that point I don’t contradict her, but I doubt very much you’re slow. If you were, I’d have noticed by now. When it comes to sizing up character, I’m not the worst of judges. I think even Tomoko would give me credit for that. Wouldn’t you, my dear?”
“All the credit in the world,” said Tomoko. “Come, grandmother. “Let’s us see to tea and let the men talk.”
“Sit down, sit down. You’re used to tables and chairs no doubt, but as Tomoko must have told you everything here is in the pure Japanese style. Does that bother you?”
“Not at all. I am Japanese, after all.”
“Very few people today are Japanese. We are a dying people, though outwardly flourishing. I try, in my own small way...”
“Grandfather...” Tomoko had left the room but now paused in the passage leading to the kitchen. “Grandfather, please, don’t read him a lecture. Though on second thought, why not? He hasn’t heard it before, he might find it interesting, in a quaint sort of way.”
“Tomoko argues that ‘people’ in the sense of nationality is an antiquated concept...”
“A dead concept.”
“...that it is enough to be human without being Japanese or American or Chinese or what have you. But as an amateur student of history I know that it is not enough to be human. Our humanity gives us certain biological possibilities---upright posture, opposable thumbs, a larger brain---but it is nationality, or, if you will, culture, that gives us art, science, civilization. No people has ever been civilized without belonging to a nation; the greater the nation, the greater the civilization. Japan’s is a very great civilization---known, alas, to only a very few Japanese today. Tomoko calls me a militarist and a fanatic because I regret that we have willingly transformed ourselves into a nation of foreigners.”
“What would you have us do, bring back the Way of the Warrior? The only way for Japan to rise above that barbarism was to turn to foreign ideas, because Japanese culture had nothing better to offer.”
“Japanese culture at its best, my dear, was the Way of the Warrior in peacetime.”
“The Way of the Warrior in peacetime is an unsustainable contradiction, which is why it collapsed. Imagine,” she said to Jun, “this argument has been going on since I was three years old! Always the same, down to the very words we use. And yet somehow to grandfather it never loses its freshness. I guess when you reach a certain age irrelevance becomes irrelevant. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll give grandmother a hand in the kitchen.”
Next episode: presently
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