As had I.

  Part of Henderson’s remit was to look at the future of Gakushuin which was under threat of having its funding withdrawn. The school was effectively owned by the Imperial Household. Its very name, The Peers School, was a reminder of its elite, elevated status. There were strong voices from the Occupation forces calling for the abolition of the peerage altogether, the transfer of all the Emperor’s assets to the nation. This would inevitably lead to the school itself being abolished. Understandably, Yamanashi was not in favour of this and appointed me to liaise with Henderson and work towards a solution.

  Once a week I was picked up in an official car and driven to the headquarters of SCAP – the Supreme Command, Allied Powers. This was in the imposing Daiichi Seimei building, a huge block owned by an insurance company but commandeered by the occupation forces. Armed guards manned the front entrance, and inside I had to show my accreditation before being led to Henderson’s office on the third floor where he would welcome me with great warmth and eagerness. On the wall behind his desk was a scroll down which trailed a beautiful piece of calligraphy I recognised as the famous epigram from the Heart Sutra.

  Form is Emptiness.

  Indeed it is, I said, the first time I saw it.

  I looked out of the window across the bomb-damaged city.

  Indeed it is.

  Part of our task involved discussing the minutiae of the Emperor Meiji’s Rescript on Education. This was important work, but it was slow and painstaking and grindingly dull. Mercifully we had haiku to talk about in our tea breaks. We shared favourite poems, sometimes comparing our own translations of the same verse.

  He offered this, his rendition of a poem by Basho (in fact the poet’s death-verse).

  On a journey, ill

  and over fields all withered, dreams

  go wandering still.

  I noted the rhyme, countered with my own version.

  Sick on a journey –

  My dreams wander over

  A withered moor.

  We nodded in approval at each other’s efforts, each preferring our own.

  Henderson and I could be formal and long-winded when the occasion demanded. Together we drafted a document for the school authorities.

  It is our intention not to continue the Gakushuin in its present form, by merely changing its legal status, but rather to embark, unhampered by past traditions, on building a truly democratic institution which will focus on creating courses of thoroughly cultural education, and give unprecedented attention to the art and science of government, the study of every aspect of social and political life.

  You could have been a politician, said Henderson, or a diplomat.

  A smiling public man, I said. God forbid!

  The aim of the school, we agreed, would be to train students to develop individuality within a democratic framework.

  Both men and women equally, said Henderson.

  Of course

  To combine the duties of citizenship with a deep appreciation of internationalism.

  Yes.

  To give a practical understanding of general political life in a rejuvenated Japan as a preparation for active participation in that life nationally and internationally.

  You’ve nailed it, said Henderson.

  And I shall help bring this about, I said, by talking to them about poetry.

  No better way, he said.

  The poetry lesson is the most important part of schooling. If it is neglected, if it is a failure, all is lost and God created the world in vain.

  We are poets in so far as we live at all.

  Poetry is not emotion, not philosophy, not religion, not morality, not beauty, not comedy or tragedy, not love or hate, not God, not truth. It is none of these, though any or all of them may be subsumed into poetry.

  What are the enemies of poetry? Shallowness, sentimentality, vulgarity, hypocrisy, bad taste, snobbery.

  Poetry is recollection of identity. Poetry is forgetting the differences. (Take care of the differences and the identities will take care of themselves).

  The leaves fall by gravitation. This is one hundred percent true. But equally the leaves fall because they want to fall. This is poetry.

  9

  DECLARATION OF HUMANITY

  The way things unfold.

  Ma had replied to my anxious letters, assured me all was well with everyone I knew and loved. Now she sent me a picture book on the activities of the British Royal Family during the War. There were many photographs of the royals visiting communities that had been blitzed and bombed, and bringing, as Ma put it, a kind of comfort by their very presence.

  On a whim, or sudden inspiration, I had Tomiko wrap the book and I gave it to Yamanashi to pass on, if he thought it appropriate, as a gift to the Emperor. He thanked me and said he thought it most appropriate and was sure the Emperor would be delighted.

  There was another book I owned, a history of Russia which contained a photograph of the Romanov family – the Czar, his wife and their five children, posed, stiff and formal for the camera, looking out uncaring, unknowing, at a world moving beyond them.

  Official reports indicated only that the Czar had been executed, by firing squad, on the orders of the revolutionary government, for crimes against the state. But stories had circulated that the whole family had been brutally murdered in the basement of a remote country house, their bodies butchered and buried in bleak woodland in unmarked graves.

  Dictatorship of the proletariat. The killings were justified as necessary, to put an end to dynastic succession.

  Dynastic succession. By official reckoning Hirohito was the one hundred and twenty-fourth Emperor of Japan. There were photographs like those of the Romanovs, showing the Emperor and Empress, the Crown Prince and his younger brother, their four sisters – this family I knew, the child I taught.

  The rational part of me did not believe the same fate could befall them. But the rational part of me would not have believed the atomic bomb would be dropped.

  The Americans might still decide that long term historical purpose required an end to dynastic succession. They might still decide to put the Emperor on trial and force him to abdicate. He might face imprisonment, or worse.

  It was unthinkable, but not unimaginable.

  During that time I had a recurring dream in which the whole family were put on trial in a scene that borrowed equally from Alice and Wonderland and A Tale of Two Cities. A judge shouted Off with their heads! as they were bundled into a tumbril, struggling to maintain their dignity. The Crown Prince looked to me for help but I was frozen, unable to move, unable to speak. The way it is in dreams. That awful paralysis.

  In the Mumonkan it says grappling with a koan is like swallowing a red-hot iron ball, which you cannot spit out even if you try. When you try to communicate you are a dumb man in a dream.

  I have often been questioned, occasionally interrogated, about my own part in it all, the way events played out. Chance or grace or the randomness of fate – call it what you will – conspired to place me in an interesting situation, between the Americans and the Japanese, MacArthur and the Emperor. A rock and a hard place, some might say. For good or ill I was in a position to influence the course of great historical events.

  Not that I laboured under any illusion of my own importance.

  Nimitta matram bhava savyasachin, Krishna told Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, before he went into battle against his own family, his own kin. Be thou a mere instrument.

  My aim was always to keep myself, my self, out of the way. At the same time I did my utmost to effect a result while striving to stay detached from any hope or expectation. Act, said Krishna, but surrender the fruits of your actions.

  A mere instrument.

  It helped, perhaps, that each side thought I was acting on behalf of the other, but with the aim of bringing them together, finding common ground. And in effect that was not far from the truth of it. At the palace I was received as an honoured guest, but one who, they understood, was trusted by the occupying forces. They also knew I would negotiate with those forces on behalf of the Japanese and for the wellbeing of my adopted homeland.

  On one occasion I was received by the Emperor himself, with only two or three of his courtiers in attendance. The room was immaculate, dark polished hardwood, high-backed upright chairs. On the walls, in addition to brush drawings, hanging scrolls, were framed images, I assumed, from his textbooks on marine biology. On a sideboard, surprisingly but perhaps tellingly, was a bronze bust of Napoleon. Tea was served, with the usual formality and restraint. On the low table between us, carefully placed, sat the book I had given him on the British royal family. He gestured towards the book and gave me the slightest nod of the head, said simply, and quietly, Thank you.

  The contrast with General MacArthur could not have been greater. The general’s office, like Henderson’s, was in the Daiichi Seimei building, close to the Imperial Palace but worlds away. The General welcomed me to his sanctum with a vigorous handshake and told one of his aides to bring a pot of coffee, strong and black, which he poured himself into two sturdy china mugs. He was a tall man, powerful for his age and square-jawed, and he carried himself like one of the cowboy characters in a Wild West film. He declared how happy he was to meet me, then proceeded to deliver a rumbling (and rambling) monologue, speaking at me rather than to me, pausing only to refill our coffee cups. He himself drank three cups, each one rapidly. I did not finish the second, fearing its effect, the sudden rush of wellbeing followed by intense agitation.

  You can’t beat a good cup of java, he said, then continued to harangue me, filling me in, as he put it, on his thoughts and impressions, his plans for the transformation of Japan.

  Effectively he saw himself as a proconsul, maintaining order in this far-flung outpost of empire, a country of close on a hundred million people who differ from their conquerors in language, customs, attitude.

  We have to clean up and use the existing government machinery as a tool, he said. That way we save time, manpower and resources. We require the Japanese to do their own house-cleaning, but we provide the specifications.

  Eminently sensible, I said.

  They have to make the transition from a centuries-old feudal system to full-blown democracy.

  Perhaps emboldened by the coffee, I managed, briefly, to interrupt his flow and point out that such a transition would be difficult, might not be entirely welcome, and would certainly not happen overnight.

  Exactly! he said, jabbing the air. And that is where people like you come into the picture. (People like me!)

  Now, he said. Tell me about their religion.

  A long thing is the long body of the Buddha. A short thing is the short body of the Buddha.

  Walking is Zen, sitting is Zen – talking or silent, moving / unmoving.

  When you are hungry, eat. When you are tired, sleep. When walking, walk. When sitting, sit.

  Your everyday mind is the way.

  Tell me about their religion.

  Have you read the works of your countryman Thoreau? I asked. Or Emerson?

  I may have done, in my West Point days, he said. But now I don’t have much time for philosophy, or poetry.

  I recalled the puffed-up rhetoric of his famous declaration on leaving the Philippines. I shall return.

  What about Whitman? I ventured, thinking he might appreciate the swagger, the bravado. Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes…

  The General narrowed his eyes, fixed them on me. Flint.

  I understand the man indulged in certain…questionable…practices, he said.

  I sing the body electric…

  Nevertheless, I said.

  Tell me about their religion.

  Consider the lives of birds and fishes. Fish never weary of the water. But you do not know the true mind of a fish, for you are not a fish. Birds never tire of the woods. But you do not know the true spirit of a bird, for you are not a bird. It is the same with the religious, the poetical life. If you do not live it, you know nothing about it.

  That was from my Zen in English Literature. I could quote the passage by heart, and still can. But I decided against reciting it to the General. He would not have understood. I imagined he might have had me forcibly removed from his office as a kind of madman who had gone native.

  In the world in which he lived and moved and had his being, the General was a good man, an honourable man. (Are they not all honourable men?) But he was first and foremost a soldier, a warrior, and that was both his strength and his limitation.

  Tell me about their religion.

  The General had done some cursory reading into Shinto and Zen. But his interest was pragmatic, political, rather than spiritual.

  You know it has been suggested at the highest levels in Washington, he said, that the Emperor should abandon his Shinto faith.

  At the same highest levels, I said, where it was proposed the Emperor be tried as a war criminal and publicly hanged.

  I was determined, he said, it would never come to that.

  I had read reports of the General accepting the Emperor’s surrender on board the USS Missouri, and by all accounts he had conducted the ceremony with dignity, choosing his words with care and tact.

  It is my earnest hope, he had said, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world founded upon faith and understanding.

  Again it was rhetoric, pure and simple, but entirely appropriate for the occasion. Sufficient unto the day.

  I commended him on the tone of the speech.

  I was adamant, he said, there should be no sense of gloating, or baiting a beaten enemy.

  Indeed, I said.

  And yet I knew he had insisted on a particular photograph being issued to the press and printed on the front page of every newspaper. It showed the Emperor, who was not much above five feet tall, and next to him the General, towering, drawing himself up to his full six feet four.

  No gloating. No baiting.

  When I mentioned the photograph, the General allowed himself a wry smile.

  Hell, yeah, he said. Sometimes you have to make a point. And you know what they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words. Was the same when the Imperial delegation came here. I made sure the guard of honour was made up of soldiers who were six-five and over.

  This time he chuckled.

  Hell, yeah.

  The invasion of Japan had been codenamed Operation Downfall.

  You know, he said, I intervened forcefully to head off those elements in Washington who still felt the Emperor should be indicted for war crimes.

  I had gathered as much, I said. And I am grateful.

  It would have caused a tremendous convulsion among the Japanese people, he said. The repercussions would be unthinkable. Destroy the Emperor and the nation would disintegrate. To contain the situation we would need a million troops deployed here for God knows how many years.

  Might I suggest, respectfully, I said, that allowing the Emperor to retain his Shinto faith would also ease the situation.

  Agreed, said the General.

  However, said the General, I understand the Emperor is still a living god to his people. And let’s face it, ruling through a living god is going to make my job a hell of a lot easier.

  Indeed.

  The line taken by MacArthur was that Tojo and his generals were militarist extremists who had hijacked Japan from 1931 on. The Emperor was a pro-Western moderate, a reformer who had been powerless to stop the military juggernaut.

  I said I was sure that version of events would be effective and well received.

  A long thing is the long body of the Buddha. A short thing is the short body of the Buddha.

  Over the next few days, when I thought over my meeting with the general, there was one thing that troubled me, a little piece of grit in the memory, an irritant. As I was making to leave, he mentioned again the usefulness of the Emperor being perceived by his subjects as a living god. Then he paused as if pondering, looked at me hard, said, However…..

  His fear, I understood, was that those same factions in the US that had called for the Emperor’s removal and even for his execution might need to be further placated by some diplomatic gesture on the Emperor’s part, a declaration perhaps, a written statement.

  Disavowing his own divinity? I asked.

  Something like that.

  To which he never laid claim in the first place?

  I guess we want it both ways! he said, and laughed.

  The idea took hold of me, and with it came a certainty that this course of action was the right one. I raised the matter next time I spoke to Yamanashi and he took it very seriously indeed. In fact he said he would bring it up that very week at a meeting with Ishiwata-san, Minister for the Imperial Household.

  A few days later I attended the Palace for my weekly session with the Crown Prince, and as I was leaving I was surprised to see Yamanashi waiting for me in the entrance hall.