Zen is the most precious possession of Asia… he said, returning us to my book, and quoting its opening sentence. It is the strongest power in the world.

  I hope you’re not planning to sit there and recite the whole damn thing to me, I said. All four hundred pages.

  He laughed again, coughed, recovered himself.

  Maybe not, he said. But I do love that opening paragraph.

  It is a world power, for in so far as men live at all, he continued, they live by Zen. Wherever there is a poetical action, a religious aspiration, a heroic thought, a union of the nature within a man and the Nature without, there is Zen.

  Bravo! I said. I do rather like to get up on my soapbox, don’t I? Or climb into the pulpit for a bit of a rant!

  That’s what I love about it, he said. It’s wonderful!

  Nevertheless, I said, noting again that slightly fevered glint in his eye, I hope you will take this too with more than a pinch of salt. Or would do if such a thing were available in these straitened times.

  He licked his top lip, tasting the salt of his sweat. He glanced down at the book I had put down, the papers I had pushed aside.

  You were chuckling when I came in, he said. Can I ask what was making you laugh?

  Ah! I said. Senryu!

  As a form? Or one particular poem.

  Both, I said, and I read him the poem in question.

  When the Buddha was born,

  the first thing he did

  was blow his own trumpet.

  He nodded, smiled. That’s good, he said. I like it.

  I once thought, I said, and rightly enough, that poetry was the most important thing in the world.

  I picked up the book of senryu, still bent back, open at the page.

  Now I think, also rightly, that humour is the main thing. The real thing.

  The thing itself, he said.

  Exactly.

  I’m not so familiar with senryu, he said. I haven’t come across many in translation.

  I laughed, said I thought the most popular would find it hard to get past the British or American censors.

  And why is that?

  The best…and worst…of them are decidedly…earthy.

  He shook his head.

  There’s so much I don’t know, he said, so earnestly I laughed again.

  That’s a good place to begin, I said.

  So, he said. Can you teach me?

  I gave it a moment’s thought, said, Perhaps we can unlearn together.

  I mentioned to Bob, half reluctantly, that I did my best to sit every day in zazen, at least for half an hour in the early morning, before the place came to life. He asked if he might join me from time to time, and if I might teach him. Perhaps even more reluctantly, I agreed, with the proviso that I was no kind of teacher.

  That couldn’t be better, he said. No-kind-of-teacher is exactly what I need!

  I tended to meditate sitting up on my bed, my rough curtain drawn, but for Bob to join me there would have caused consternation among my neighbours, and would also have been rather difficult to explain. Bob’s accommodation was even more cramped. As a late arrival he had been allocated a corner in a larger room, sharing with six other internees. We agreed I would stick to my routine, do my own meditation every morning first thing. We would try to find a space, a niche, a little corner when we might be able to sit together, perhaps of an evening after the sparse evening meal. If we found such a place, I said, I would endeavour to un-teach him the little I didn’t know.

  That would be just dandy, he said.

  I should have known he would find something – he was keen to learn (or unlearn), with all that aforementioned zeal. He felt somehow it was fated that we should meet, that it was beyond coincidence, not chance but sheer grace. For my part I had no reason to disabuse him of the notion. For all I knew, it might well be true.

  He took to exploring the building so far as he was able. Some areas, housing the commandant and the guards, were off limits, out of bounds. The rest was made up of the dormitories, the kitchen and bathrooms, the communal area and canteen. All this I had told him, but he was determined to look for himself.

  And one afternoon fate and grace conspired together once more and he found himself part of group commandeered to carry some crates and boxes down to the basement. I had been assigned similar duties myself on occasion, knew the basement was dank and inhospitable, a few small rooms off a dimly lit corridor. The rooms were used only for storage, all of them, as far as I knew, packed floor to ceiling, cluttered with things they couldn’t use but didn’t want to get rid of – sticks of furniture, old bedding, bits of broken machinery that would never be repaired.

  While he was down there, Bob had wandered along the corridor, trying the different doors. Right at the far end he had found a tiny room, not much bigger than a cupboard with nothing much stored there – a couple of palettes, a rolled up futon, damp and stained. The room was dusty and cobwebbed, smelled stale and mildewed. But in Bob’s imagination it was the perfect haven, a meditation-space, a monk’s cell.

  The guard called him to get back to the group immediately and he did, bowing and apologising, hurried back upstairs. When he found me he was still smeared with dust from the basement, but grinning, excited to tell me what he had found.

  I said it sounded like a good idea but we should tread carefully, ask the commandant most humbly for his permission. Bob bowed to my wisdom (in fact, looking back that was something he always did, rightly or wrongly) and said he was happy to be guided by what I thought best.

  Deep breath.

  I waited till Mr Higasa was making a routine inspection. I stood before him and bowed deeply, addressing him in the most formal language I knew, indicating I was showing him the utmost respect.

  He nodded for me to speak, and I explained that Mr Aitken and I were studying the precepts of Zen and endeavouring to put them into practice in our daily lives. I said this involved studying the sacred texts – here I showed him my much-read copy of the Mumonkan – but it also involved sitting in zazen, silent meditation, at least once a day. Bob stood behind me, gangling and inoffensive, following my lead in giving a deep respectful bow.

  Mister Aitken, I said, had noticed in passing the tiny unused basement room, and we wondered if the honourable Higasa-san might do us the utmost kindness of allowing us to clean it out and use it on occasion for our practice.

  He was silent then gave a little noncommittal grunt. He didn’t seem to engage but I thought there was a faint flicker of amusement in his eyes.

  The room really is small, I said. Maybe two-tatami size. I mimed small with my hands. Ni-jo.

  At this he threw back his head, let out a sudden, unexpected laugh.

  He copied my mime, indicating how tiny the room must be.

  Ni-jo! He laughed again. Zen Gaijin! The he spoke in English.

  You get all gaijin here do zazen. Then camp become zendo. You sensei. Be very good. No need for guard!

  I bowed even more deeply than I had before and Bob did the same. Then I offered the most humble thanks I knew – respect, gratitude and obeisance gathered into one word.

  Osoreirimasu.

  Higasa-san acknowledged it with the slightest nod.

  The next morning Bob turned up as I sat cross-legged on my bed reading Suzuki’s book of essays. He was accompanied by one of the youngest guards who was doing his best to sustain a peremptory gruffness of demeanour, ordering Bob, quite unnecessarily, to move quickly.

  Hayaku! Hayaku!

  The boy – for he was little more than that – explained to me that we should go with him to the basement, as ordered by Higasa-san.

  Perhaps because I was a little older, or because he had heard Higasa-san speak of me with a modicum of respect, he was slightly less aggressive, less brusque in his manner, trying instead to maintain a kind of impassivity. The effort, conversely, made it clear just how young he was. I realised, with a pang, he was not much older than Lee, and I bowed to him and thanked him, let him usher us out of the room, along the corridor and downstairs to the basement.

  I had only glanced at the room before – a casual saunter downstairs, a quick look behind the door. Now it looked even smaller. There were no windows at this level, but the room had a working lightbulb, albeit weak, that gave off a dim glow. It was enough, and Bob’s enthusiasm was undiminished. We set to, dragging out the contents, lugging the junk along the corridor to a bigger room while the young guard stood and watched, overseeing our efforts, maintaining his detachment. When we had cleared everything out, shifted it along, he looked at the newly empty space, then showed us to a broom cupboard with an old sink in it, ragged mops and bamboo brooms and scrubbing brushes, scraps of torn-up cloth. He mimed that we should get a move on, clean out the room for our use, then with a little snort of disdain he took himself off, back upstairs, and left us to it.

  We wiped down the walls, got rid of cobwebs, spread water on the floor to damp down the dust, then swept and mopped as best we could. When we were done, we left it to dry out, came back next afternoon and sat down rather self-consciously on the hard stone floor. I led Bob in chanting, as I had learned to do, invoking the blessings of the Bodhisattva Kannon.

  Enmei Jikku Kannon Gyo….

  In our cell, our cave, our retreat, in the faint glimmer of our single bare bulb, we folded our hands in gassho, bowed, took refuge.

  I was touched that Bob had a set of sandalwood japa beads he had picked up in Guam – a rosary for counting repetitions when he chanted a mantra or prayer. Somewhere he managed to find a couple of old worn tatami mats, threadbare but serviceable, which we laid out on the floor.

  I was wrong about the size of the room, I said. It must be four tatami!

  We each brought a blanket, rough, regulation issue. But folded and re-folded, each one made a cushion, not quite padded zafu, but they did the job.

  We’re in business, said Bob.

  I told him the first thing I had learned in the earliest days of my practice at Myoshinji – that rule about always responding when the master called out Oi! Immediately, without hesitation the student must call back Hai!

  That’s it? he said.

  That’s it, I said. Oi! and Hai!

  For the moment, and after all, everything was just for the moment, I would assume the role of the master, and Bob would continue to play the part of the student.

  I couldn’t imagine it any other way, he said. You do know a thing or two.

  And much good it’s done me, I said, Oh, there was one other thing the Abbot told us at the very beginning, a really important rule.

  I’m listening, he said.

  You must never, never, smoke a cigarette while pissing.

  He looked thoughtful.

  And I guess, he said, we should never piss while smoking a cigarette.

  I think that goes without saying.

  I think I’ve got it, he said.

  Good, I said. Oh, Bob?

  Yes?

  Oi!

  He laughed.

  Hai!

  Now, after all this time, our roles are reversed. He is the teacher, I the (lapsed) student. As if to confirm it, he recently sent me a one-word telegram. Oi!

  I replied. Hai!

  We began by sharing books. I loaned him Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism, English translations of The Sutra of Wei-lang, and the Blue Cliff Record. In return he loaned me a selection of Dogen’s writings and introduced me to the poetry of Wallace Stevens.

  He had the idea that Stevens had been considerably influenced by Zen thought without engaging with it in terms of study or practice. Nevertheless, he said, it seems to me there are moments of real insight, the poetry of emptiness.

  Or the emptiness of poetry, I said.

  Perhaps, he said. Certainly there can be a cold analytical quality to it. But he catches the other kind of coldness, the reality of winter, and how we perceive it.

  He recited.

  One must have a mind of winter

  To regard the frost and the boughs

  Of the pine-trees crusted with snow.

  A mind of winter, I said. That is very good indeed.

  And the last verse, he said, is even better.

  For the listener, who listens in the snow,

  and, nothing himself, beholds

  Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

  Nothing himself, I said. The nothing. Mu,

  Form is emptiness.

  Bob was particularly taken with what he called the near-haiku sequence, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

  Again he recited, the first poem.

  Among twenty snowy mountains,

  The only moving thing

  Was the eye of the blackbird.

  The poem was a little door, he said, opening a way into vastness.

  It’s like a landscape painting, I said, maybe something by Sesshu.

  Moving not moving.

  I told him that particular poem, the first in the sequence, was closest to Zen spirit. That and the last one.

  It was evening all afternoon.

  It was snowing

  And it was going to snow.

  The blackbird sat

  In the cedar-limbs.

  It, said Bob. The nothing that is.

  I said, Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, What is the first principle of the holy scripture?

  Bodhidharma replied, Vast emptiness, nothing holy.

  Nothing, said Bob.

  Listen to us! I said, and we laughed, sitting there on our folded-up blankets, on the worn tatami, on the hard stone floor, in our little zendo, our bare basement room.

  Nothing holy.

  I continued with my early morning meditation, seated on my palette, my curtain drawn. Bob did the same, made the best of his small corner by rising early before his neighbours were awake. But twice a week, every Wednesday morning and Sunday evening, we sat together in our two-tatami room.

  Throughout the week we met every day, talked endlessly, set the world to rights. But in those short sessions (short sesshins) we were generally silent, allowing the meditation to happen. It just felt like the right thing to do, recalling my meditations at Myoshin-ji, or sitting with Suzuki at Tokei-ji. When sitting, we just sat, and we seemed to draw strength from each other’s silence, a shared consciousness, a sustaining power, for which I felt immense gratitude.

  Deep bows.

  If my life in those years was circumscribed, if I suffered the constraints and deprivation of internment, Tomiko’s life was equally difficult, moving to a strange city, bringing up a young child, seeing me once a week, struggling just to get by, to make ends meet. She could see I was not thriving on the food rations at the camp, and she would bring me extra supplies every week, some tofu and fresh vegetables, rice balls wrapped with seaweed, a jar of pickles, soba noodles. She even managed to bring me a little bottle of vitamin pills – wakamoto. She said they were good for digestion and would give me strength. I found myself growing tearful at the kindness, the trouble she took in the face of everything.

  I introduced her to Bob, not long after his arrival, and she was shocked at how thin and gaunt he looked. She began bringing a little extra food, and more wakamoto so I could share with him.

  He was deeply moved, told me I was lucky to have married such a good woman.

  I told him she, in turn, thought he was a good man, very gentle and kind. She said he was not very American.

  He laughed, said he would take that as a compliment.

  Usually Tomiko left Harumi in the care of a neighbour, Mrs Taneda – Yuko – a young mother with a baby of her own. I understood it was difficult enough for Tomiko to come to the camp, carrying the food for me, and the books I had asked her to bring. She would also be concerned that Harumi might be upset and confused, not quite understand what was going on. But from time to time she was able to bring the little one, and for that I was hugely grateful. It brought it home to me what I was missing, the day-to-day contact, simply being there, being a father. But that made the visits all the more precious, as I watched with amazement, week by week, month by month, my daughter, this unique and particular being, growing into herself.

  The child’s laugh –

  Her little hands

  Grasping at everything

  My relationship with Mr Higasa and the other guards was formal and civilised. But when Tomiko came to visit, especially if she brought Harumi, something else entered in, a kind of empathy, a shared humanity. I was still this gaijin, this alien, but I had a Japanese wife and a Japanese child. I had chosen to make Japan my home, to embrace the life here, and for that I sensed in their attitude a greater respect.

  As for Bob, if he was happy to meet Tomiko, then seeing Harumi filled him with delight. At the same time, he could see the separation was hard for me to take.

  But you know, he said, what you have is a hell of a lot. I mean….

  I know, I said. I know.

  Because we had no teacher, no designated path, Bob and I were free to pick and choose, take inspiration where we found it. My own book was a rich source of inspiration, not from my words, but from the myriad quotes I had plundered from here, there and everywhere, from every religious tradition, and none. We would take a haiku as a starting point – perhaps something by Basho – or a line from Shakespeare, or Herbert. A stone dropped in a pool. (A frog jumping into an old pond!) We would let the words carry us beyond the words, into silence.

  Initially Bob was most inspired by the Soto Zen of Dogen with its simple but powerful quietude.