“I don’t know anything about this,” Greene insisted. “But I’m sure that whatever Mr. Stillman said, he wasn’t referring to you.”
She smiled, but there was no mirth in her eyes. “It doesn’t surprise me that you would believe that.”
Still nobody moved. Hanako’s eyes scanned the set and then settled on me. “What about you, Mr. Nakayama?” she demanded. “Do you have an opinion on this matter?”
I did not know what she was asking, or what she wanted from me. She should have known that I did not follow politics at all, and thus never grew impassioned, as she clearly had, about the developments of the day. In addition, I agreed with James Greene—this matter had nothing to do with people like us. I stood there silently, and Hanako turned away. I could not understand why she was acting in this manner, nor why she said what she did next: “I regret that I will not be able to continue my work here.”
Now Greene looked very worried. “What?”
“My work here has now concluded, Mr. Greene. You will have to find someone else.”
“Look here,” said the director, stepping closer to her, “you’re overreacting, don’t you think? You’ve got to get back on track here. I mean, we’ve got a picture to finish.”
“I regret that is none of my concern.”
“May I remind you, Hanako,” he said, trying another tack, “that you are under contract?”
Now Hanako looked him straight in the face, and he actually took a step back. “It is unfortunate that the rest of your countrymen do not share your same sense of propriety.”
And with that, she simply walked off the set. We all assumed that she would come to her senses and return later in the day, or perhaps the next morning, but she did not. She departed, she quit in the middle of a project, with a rashness that was most unexpected. Gerard Normandy was furious, and although he and Greene found a replacement—a young Chinese actress—she was nowhere near as talented as Hanako, and so the quality of the film suffered greatly. Normandy cancelled Hanako’s contract and swore that she’d never work for Perennial again. And she didn’t, or, over the next twenty years, for any other studio either, for it was shortly after this incident that she returned full-time to working with her theater company.
She was correct, of course, in her assessment of the coming legal changes. In retrospect, I realize that her anger was justified, and that my silence that day was wholly inadequate to the weight of the situation. For the very next year, the Supreme Court ruled that immigrants of Japanese descent could not be U.S. citizens; and two years later, Congress passed new legislation barring all further immigration from Japan.
Both these incidents were occasions when Hanako did not act in a manner consistent with her usual equanimity. But upon further consideration, I realize it is perhaps not totally accurate to portray them as moments of rashness. In both cases Hanako knew precisely what she was doing, and in both cases she held strong convictions. I recall them now because they were so unusual for a Japanese woman, and because I myself could not imagine behaving in such a manner. It is not fair, though, to characterize her behavior in the same light as that of other actresses. Hanako was a woman of principle, and she stood by her beliefs, even if they sometimes caused her to act in unpredictable ways.
I waited several days after my conversation with David before I tried to call Hanako, a delay for which there is no easy explanation. When I finally did attempt to reach her yesterday, I discovered that her number wasn’t listed. I reported this to David, who called me back this morning with the distressing news that Hanako—dear, stubborn, gifted Hanako—passed away two years ago. “She had cancer of the uterus, apparently,” he said. “They didn’t discover it until it was too late, and then she didn’t tell anyone.”
I am sure you understand my surprise at this news, as well as the fact that it caused me considerable sorrow. Hanako, my mentor and dear good friend, was gone, and I hadn’t known anything about it. The news of her passing rendered me incapable of social interaction, so I canceled my usual weekend breakfast with Mrs. Bradford and unplugged my telephone. I spent the day recalling the events of the past and wishing I had photographs of Hanako. Some of these memories I had not allowed myself to revisit before, as they caused me a certain discomfort. But today I was powerless to stop them, and did not want to, and I could see Hanako Minatoya, and hear her voice, as clearly as if she stood right before me. It was these memories—helped along by the incident with the bird—that finally drove me out of the house and all the way up to the top of Runyan Canyon. And here I have sat for the last several hours, watching darkness descend on the city. There are thousands, maybe millions of lights spread out before me, each with a set of people and a story. I wonder how many of those people are following courses they will one day regret, making choices they will look back on many years from now and wish they had handled differently.
I remember the last two times I saw her. They occurred within weeks of each other, almost fifteen years ago. After that, we lost track of one another, and although I often wondered how she was, I did not call upon her again. Now time has collapsed and I can recall those last two occasions as clearly as if they’d happened last week.
The first was on a winter night in 1949. Hanako had received the Best Supporting Actress designation
