‘I am,’ I say, not knowing what else to say.
‘I thought so,’ he says. ‘I knew it. I’m your most devoted reader, Sensei. I’ve read everything you’ve written. It is an honour to meet you, Sensei.’
I touch the tip of my hat, bow and thank him, but feel sick inside; I have committed every sin known to man, yet still I receive such praise and respect, as though someone or something was mocking me. I don’t even have a conscience any more; all I have is nerves.
‘Would you like a cab, Sensei?’
I nod, then say, ‘But a green one, please. Only a green one.’
The young cab dispatcher smiles. ‘Of course, Sensei.’
I thank him again and get into the back of the lucky green cab; for some reason, every time I take a yellow one I’m always involved in an accident. I tell the driver the address, then slump back in the seat and stare out at the buildings, feeling anything and everything is a lie. Politics, business, science, art; it’s all just a mottled layer of enamel covering over this life in all its horror. I begin to feel as if I am suffocating in the back of this cab. I open the window as wide as possible, but the constriction around my heart will not give way, just tightening, tightening, tighter and tighter …
Eventually, we reach the main intersection at Jingūmae. We should be able to turn down a side street here, but today, for some reason, I cannot find it. I have the taxi go back and forth along the streetcar line, but finally I can’t stand it any longer; I give up and get out of the cab.
Somehow I have ended up at the Aoyama Funeral Hall; I’ve never even passed the front gate of this building in the ten long years since the memorial service for Sōseki-sensei. I had not been happy back then, either, but at least I had been at peace. I peer in at the gravelled courtyard and, recalling the delicate bashō plants at the Sōseki Retreat, I cannot help feeling my own life has now come to an end. Yet I also feel ‘something’ must have drawn me back to this crematorium today, after all these years; a shiver runs down my spine, shaking my whole body, shaking the place where my soul should be.
I turn and walk away, heading towards the mental hospital, unable to suppress the prayer now rising on my lips –
‘Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath: neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore, sore, sore …’
How can any of us escape, except through faith, madness or death?
2. The Houses of the Mad
At his desk in his office at the Aoyama Mental Hospital in Akasaka-ku, Mokichi Saitō, head of the hospital, and renowned tanka poet, closed his eyes again. He was exhausted and he was depressed: exhausted by his workload, the responsibilities and burdens of his position; depressed by this place, not only the asylum, the hospital, but the city, the country, Tokyo and Japan.
Once, Mokichi had escaped; escaped from Nagasaki, escaped from Japan, and gone to Europe, first to Vienna, appointed by the Ministry of Education as a researcher abroad. He had studied at the Neurologischen Institut of Vienna University under Heinrich Obersteiner, had submitted his research as his doctoral thesis in Vienna, and it had been accepted and published. This work had also earned Mokichi a doctorate in medicine from Tokyo Imperial University. But Mokichi had refused to return home to Japan; Mokichi had left Vienna and gone on to study under Emil Kraepelin at his institute in Munich. Nothing would make Mokichi return to Japan, not the inflation and privations of post-war Austria and Germany, not the death of his own father, not even the news of the Great Kantō Earthquake; nothing had made him return until that telegram on the last day of 1924.
Ironically, the Aoyama Mental Hospital had survived the earthquake and fires of 1923, only to be destroyed by a fire on New Year’s Eve, 1924. The fire had apparently begun in the kitchen during the preparation of mochi for the New Year, and then rapidly spread through the main building. Twenty-three patients, a doctor and a staff member had perished. The fire also claimed the many books Mokichi had been sending home from Europe. The situation had been further complicated because his father-in-law and mentor, Kiichi, had neglected to renew the fire insurance. The hospital had been the life’s work of Kiichi Saitō, the culmination of his long medical career, and its destruction had devastated the old man.
On his reluctant return to Japan, the burden of the lack of insurance and the resulting financial problems, the opposition of the authorities and neighbours to reconstruction on the original site in Akasaka-ku, the raising of funds and the search for a new site, all had fallen entirely on Mokichi. The process of rebuilding the Aoyama Hospital as an annexe, along with the construction of a larger new main hospital out at Matsuzawa, had been slow and painful. Two and a half years later, the smoke of that fire enshrouded him still; once again, Mokichi was trapped and imprisoned –
‘Beyond the boundaries / of bitter shock / and deep grieving / words failed me / before the bright sun …’
There was
