But then, becoming a good citizen requires a lot of hard work.
*
After the disaster, the next morning, Ryūnosuke was overcome with worry for his friend Yasunari. Yasunari lived in Asakusa and, throughout the long night, all the rumours and whispers Ryūnosuke had heard filled him with dread for the fate of his young friend; he saw the delicate, refined face of Yasunari broken and crushed beneath the weight of a building, pale and bloodless, or his thin, hollow frame burnt and charred on a mountain of corpses, black and anonymous. And so with a great sense of foreboding and some degree of duplicity, for fear of worrying his wife and family, Ryūnosuke left the relative calm and safety of Tabata – his little bunshi mura, this ‘village of the literati’ on the outskirts – and set off for the Asakusa area.
The journey from Tabata was not an easy one for there were no streetcars and the roads were clogged with survivors, children strapped to their backs, shouldering enormous bundles or pushing handcarts piled high with their belongings, all heading out of Tokyo, in the opposite direction to Ryūnosuke. A military law had already been passed that allowed people to leave Tokyo but forbade others from entering, and so there were soldiers and police on every corner. There were Committees of Vigilance, too, formed by Good and Upright Citizens, all carrying clubs or pipes, sticks or swords, and often wearing helmets similar to the one Ryūnosuke now sported. And as he walked towards Asakusa, Ryūnosuke watched as these committees dragged men from the columns of survivors to accuse them of being non-Japanese, either in blood or spirit, and up to no good. Without fail, these accusations were punctuated by blows from the clubs or pipes, sticks or swords of the Committees of Vigilance. Ryūnosuke was certain that had he not been wearing his new helmet, then he, too, would have been subjected to such accusations and blows. Or worse, much worse.
Finally, Ryūnosuke reached Asakusa. Or the place where Asakusa once had stood. For here the destruction was total; mile after mile of completely charred and still-smoking ruin, from the river in the east in every direction, and everywhere corpses: charred-black corpses, half-burnt corpses, corpses sprawling in gutters, corpses floating in rivers, corpses piled up on bridges, corpses blocking off whole streets at intersections. Every manner of death possible to a human being was on display. And everywhere, the stench of death; an odour of rotting apricots which, even through the handkerchief Ryūnosuke pressed against his face, burnt his nose and scalded his eyes with horror and with grief. For now, at last, tears came, tears flowed as Ryūnosuke remembered the people and the place Asakusa once had been, the little pleasure stalls, all now cinders, the pots of morning glories, all now withered, all now harrowed –
All now dead.
And Ryūnosuke despaired for Yasunari. But then, at that very moment, he heard the very voice of his friend and Ryūnosuke turned; he blinked; he blinked again; he rubbed his eyes with his handkerchief and blinked again. But yes! Yes! It was true! Here, here among all this destruction, here among all this death, here was Yasunari, alive and unhurt, walking towards him across the rubble, coming towards him through the smoke, in animated conversation with Tōkō Kon, another of their friends –
‘Kawabata-kun,’ exclaimed Ryūnosuke, ‘I was certain you must be dead! Sure you must be a ghost …’
‘Everyone is a ghost now,’ laughed Yasunari. ‘Or an orphan.’
Yasunari and Tōkō Kon were walking up to the Yoshiwara to see what had become of the old pleasure quarter, and they urged Ryūnosuke to join them. And as they picked their way through the wasteland, Yasunari never stopped jotting down his impressions in his notebook, or recounting his recent adventures and observations –
‘In the moments after the first great shock, before the fire consumed my lodgings, I was able to salvage some bedding. And so, last night, I slept on that in the park. I even managed to construct a mosquito net. And then who should crawl under the net beside me, but my landlord’s wife and her child.’
But when the three friends came upon the Yoshiwara quarter, even Yasunari fell silent in the face of what they saw there.
The Benten Pond was now a cauldron of five hundred corpses, bodies piled upon bodies, some burnt and some boiled. Muddy red cloth was strewn up and down the banks of the pond, for most of the dead were courtesans.
Ryūnosuke stood among the smouldering incense, his handkerchief pressed to his face, his eyes fixed upon the corpse of a child of twelve or thirteen years. Ryūnosuke looked away, up at the sky, his eyes smarting with the smoke and the sun. He wanted to cry out, to scream at the gods:
‘Why? Why? Why was this child ever born, to die like this?’
And again, as he had many times before, Ryūnosuke saw the image of Christ on the cross, and again he heard the words that haunted him:
‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’
Beside Ryūnosuke stood a young boy of a similar age to the corpse. The boy was staring at the body, too. He stifled a sob, he looked away. But his older brother grabbed his arm, gripped his face and scolded him, ‘Look carefully, Akira. If you shut your eyes to a frightening sight, you end up being frightened for ever. But if you look everything straight on, then there is nothing to be afraid of …’
Suddenly, Ryūnosuke felt the eyes of the young boy upon him. Ryūnosuke turned to smile at the child. But when their eyes met, the boy hid his face in the folds of his older brother’s clothes. Ryūnosuke turned on his heel and marched off, thinking, It would have been better had we all died.
*
Viscount Shibusawa has said
