But I realized something else as I watched her that night. Even without the endorsement of the New York film critics, she still would have been this happy. She had never acted in films or worked in the theater for attention or approval. She had not needed recognition or an adoring crowd to make her feel that she was doing something valuable. Although she had now received a major award, the victory was almost redundant. In pressing on for all those years, she had already won.
I saw Hanako only one more time, a few weeks after the party. She had sent me a card thanking me for my attendance at Yoshimura and inviting me to tea at her house. Although I was somewhat apprehensive about seeing her alone, I was also—I must admit—rather pleased. In the time that we were colleagues, we had shared many hours of pleasant conversation—just the sort of give-and-take I had missed so much in the intervening years, as my life had grown more solitary. I was curious to see whether our minds still met in this fashion; whether there was still the same ease between us.
As I drove out to her home in the Palisades, the decades fell away. Highway 1 was wider than it had been in 1912, when we used to drive out in William Moran’s company car, and there were many more houses cramped together along the beach. But the hills were the same, and the ocean, and I might have been twenty-one again, driving along the coast to my fantasy job beside a talented and beautiful woman.
Hanako lived in a small house that was nestled in the hills. The yard was a shaded alcove that cut into the hill itself; from the back, one could just make out a sliver of the ocean. The setting was peaceful and we talked easily in English, which came more naturally to me, now, than Japanese. The garden had a carp pool and a small arching bridge, flanked by two stone lanterns. Other than Hanako’s beloved cacti, which lined the side of the house, the scene reminded me of gardens from my youth.
“This looks like Japan,” I remarked as she led me over the bridge and to a small table at the far end of the garden. “I had the lanterns shipped over four years ago,” she said. “I went home soon after the war. My sister’s husband and children were lost in the bombings at Osaka, and I wanted to make sure that she was able to care for herself.”
“I am sorry to hear that. My family was fortunate. They were in Nagano-ken, and were spared any serious damage.” She gestured for me to sit, and poured green tea from a porcelain pot. “It is incredible—the great destruction, and now new cities rising whole from the ashes. Japan is reinventing herself and shaking off the past. Have you visited since the end of the war?”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t been back at all since I first came to America.”
She looked at me strangely. “Why such a long absence?”
“I don’t know,” I said, although of course I did. I had never been as popular as Hanako in Japan, where people had viewed films like Sleight of Hand with disapproval. And after the passage of the immigration laws, there was such a backlash against all things American that Hollywood films—including mine—were despised. Then, of course, there were the events of 1922. For the several months that followed, I thought about making a trip to Japan after my career had resumed. By the time it became clear that it would never resume, I was simply too ashamed to go home.
Hanako considered me sadly, and then said in Japanese, “That’s truly unfortunate, Nakayama-san.”
I looked down at my tea, and then over at the pond, where several large carp, all flecked orange and white, were pressing their mouths to the surface of the water, working their lips like mute humans.
“But I suppose,” said Hanako, returning to English, “your decision to stay here isn’t hard to understand. When I came to America as a teenager, I never thought I’d spend the rest of my life here. I always believed I’d return one day to Osaka.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“There was too much opportunity. I don’t know if I could have had such a varied career in Japan. Certainly I could not have run a theater company.” She looked at me over her cup of tea. “You always knew you would stay here, didn’t you?”
“Not at first—I planned to go home after university. But I suppose I knew I would stay once I entered the theater.”
“It was so simple in the beginning,” said Hanako. “It was as if we would always be acting in good productions, working with talented people, with the whole world ours for the taking.”
I nodded. “I could not have imagined a better way of life.”
“But even more than the work,” she said, “I loved the newness of it all, the sense of possibility. The excitement of working with other people who inspired and challenged me.” Here she took a sip of
