Father Léon Gracy nodded again, then smiled sadly and said, ‘Well, and though it can be of little comfort, you are not alone. For maybe in all our mistakes and in all our misunderstandings, we are all just running from the waves, all then just hiding and hidden, yet still wanting to believe, still waiting to have faith. And so in the end, perhaps the wanting and the waiting, perhaps that is belief, that is faith. Just wanting, just waiting –
‘The most we can hope for, the very most we deserve.’
*
Arrived Nagasaki, hosted by Mr Nagami, who is showing us around. Already quite impressed by what a good place Nagasaki is. Very good mixture of Chinese and Western tastes. There are a lot of foreigners and Chinese. Mostly, it is stone-paved, with stone bridges in the Chinese style. There are three Roman Catholic Temples. All of them are quite grand. Yesterday, I visited one of them and talked with a French priest for almost the entire afternoon. On the way back, I strolled around the town and found a surprisingly good bargain which I will send to you.
Postcard from Akutagawa to his wife Fumi,
in Tabata, Tokyo, dated May 7, 1919
*
At his desk in his office at the Nagasaki Prefectural Hospital, Mokichi Saitō, chief of the psychiatric division, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Nagasaki School of Medicine, counselling physician to the Nagasaki First Aid Station, and renowned tanka poet, closed his eyes. He was exhausted and he was depressed; exhausted by his workload, depressed by this place. And now he was trapped here, trapped here because of Ishida.
Noburo Ishida had graduated from Tokyo Imperial University Medical School three years ahead of Mokichi. The most brilliant psychiatrist of their generation, Ishida had published the standard textbook on psychiatric disorders. Not only that, Ishida had also translated Don Quixote and, under the pen name of Hamatorō Ojima, written short stories and novels of his own. In January 1918, Ishida had left for the United States to study the treatment of schizophrenia with Adolf Meyer at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. For the duration of Ishida’s studies in America, Mokichi had agreed to temporarily cover for him in Nagasaki. However, things had not gone as planned; in fact, things had gone most awry.
In Baltimore, Ishida had developed schizophrenic symptoms himself, suffering from delusions and auditory hallucinations. He believed he had fallen in love with the head nurse, but then believed he was caught in a ‘love triangle’ with the nurse and a German doctor named Wolf. Early on the morning of the twenty-first of December last year, Ishida hunted down and shot and killed Dr George V. Wolf. The Baltimore police caught and arrested Ishida, but there were then conflicting opinions as to his sanity. Now Ishida was incarcerated in a Baltimore prison, and now Mokichi was trapped in a prison of his own, here in Nagasaki.
There was a knock on his door. Mokichi opened his eyes, rubbed his face, looked at his watch and sighed; he had forgotten, forgotten he had agreed to this visit from Mr Nagami and his two celebrated guests from Tokyo.
There was a second knock now. Mokichi stood up behind his desk and called out, ‘Yes. Please come in.’
Nagami opened the door, leading in his two guests, bowing and excusing the interruption, thanking Mokichi for his time, introducing his guests –
‘This is Mr Kan Kikuchi, or Hiroshi Kikuchi, as he prefers, and Mr Ryūnosuke Akutagawa,’ said Nagami, as the two young men from Tokyo bowed, apologising for the intrusion, but simply honoured to meet Mokichi.
Mokichi came out from behind his desk, dismissed their apologies and any honour they felt, and offered the three of them seats. Mokichi then left his visitors sitting silently in his office, walked across the corridor and asked one of his staff to bring in tea. Mokichi then walked back into his office, sat back down behind his desk, looked across his piles of work at Nagami and his two celebrated guests from Tokyo, both in their fashionable Western suits, one rather plump and bespectacled, the other rather gaunt and foppish, and Mokichi wondered what on earth to say to these two Literary Young Turks.
The embarrassed silence lasted until the plump Kikuchi said again, ‘It really is the greatest of privileges to meet you, Sensei.’
‘It truly is,’ agreed the gaunt Akutagawa.
‘Surely,’ said Mokichi, but with a sigh he somehow could not suppress, ‘surely any man should be grateful and impressed to be able to welcome two men such as yourselves, two of our brightest young literary stars.’
‘Well,’ said Nagami, ‘since arriving here in Nagasaki, they have talked of little else but the prospect of meeting you, Sensei.’
Mokichi smiled a somewhat sardonic and sceptical smile, and said, ‘You flatter me. I am sure I am the very least this place has to offer. And so, gentlemen, I trust your host has been giving you a full and thorough tour.’
‘He has indeed,’ said Kikuchi. ‘Why, only today we have visited so many stimulating places. Actually, we began our day in the Nagasaki Prefectural Library, where, by chance, sheer chance, we met Mr Kunio Yanagita.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Mokichi. ‘My wife mentioned he was here.’
‘How is your wife,’ asked Nagami. ‘I trust she is well.’
‘I presume so,’ said Mokichi. ‘She left for Tokyo this morning.’
There was another silence in the office now, a silence only broken by the arrival of the tea and Mokichi finally asking, ‘How was the esteemed folklorist?’
‘Most charming,’ said Akutagawa, ‘and very friendly.’
Mokichi looked across his desk at this gaunt and foppish young star, smiled, raised an eyebrow, then turned to Kikuchi and asked, ‘And where then?’
‘Where have we not visited,’ laughed Kikuchi. ‘The temples of Sōfukuji, Daionji and Kōfukuji, the churches of Urakami and Nakamichi …’
‘Mr Akutagawa is most interested in and taken with the Christian history of the city and its legacy, Sensei,’ said Nagami.
‘I am not surprised,’ said
