I folded my hands, bowed to her memory.

  Teimei.

  Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

  Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

  When I taught I was committed (and there were certainly those who thought I should be).

  I wanted to give – and receive – something more than mere sentence patterns, more than grammar or structure. I believe I once wrote that in teaching I wanted to achieve the object of life, the communication of souls. And if that sounds high-flown and overblown, well then, so be it, let it stand.

  My method, or non-method, was to extemporize, quoting passages from books and poems from memory, seemingly unprepared, seemingly at random, and leaving room for the unexpected. It was not teaching in the traditional sense, but a way of opening doors, creating opportunities for the students, letting them gradually get the feel of things for themselves.

  That was the idea.

  One day I was talking to a class about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – The Pyramids, The Colossus at Rhodes, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the rest. The students were moderately interested and one or two could even name a few of the so-called Wonders.

  I heard myself ask, Don’t you think there is something vulgar about Wonders, especially these huge man-made monstrosities?

  For a few moments they were silent, as they often were when I challenged them. Then one or two tentatively agreed, others looked unsure, as if I had asked a trick question.

  All right, I said, What in your opinion is the most wonderful thing in the world?

  Now their discomfort was palpable. They sat rigid, stared straight ahead, or they gave a strained apologetic smile, with that slight inclination of the head I had come to recognise.

  Well? I asked.

  Silence, awkwardness.

  Nobody?

  One of the bolder students asked, Please, Buraisu-sensei, what is your answer?

  I thought for a moment, then said, Haiku.

  Now they were really flummoxed.

  The music of Bach, I said.

  They looked miserable.

  Wait! I said, and I laughed. I have my answer. The most wonderful thing in the world is Zen.

  As I spoke the word, I felt the absolute truth of it.

  Zen is not only the greatest thing in the world, I said, it is the only great thing. It is what makes things great. It is greatness itself.

  Now they knew, beyond any doubt – they were being taught by a madman.

  My exchange with the students put me in mind of an old Celtic story about the legendary hero Fionn Maccuill. One day Fionn was walking in the forest with a few of his followers, and he asked them the question, What is the finest music in the world?

  They thought it over (as my students had done) and one by one gave answers.

  The song of a skylark.

  The sound of the wind in the pines.

  The happy babble of a child.

  A young girl’s laughter.

  The rush of summer rain.

  Fionn said these were all good answers, but there was something more.

  And they asked him, How do you answer, great Fionn? What is the finest music in the world?

  And he answered, The music of what happens.

  This story too I told to the students. One of them asked, What is Celtic?

  It’s an ancient culture, I said. Scottish, Irish, Welsh. The opposite in many ways of Teutonic, Germanic.

  How opposite?

  I took a piece of chalk, wrote two headings on the blackboard, Celts on the left, Teutons on the right, and underneath each I wrote a list of qualities.

  I wrote Vivacious opposite Stolid, Reckless opposite Fatalistic. I wrote Music & Beauty opposite Science and Logic, Dramatic opposite Epic.

  The same student who had spoken out said, These are difficult words.

  Very well, I said, and I scrawled up Fun opposite Dull & Humourless, and I underlined them with a flourish.

  So Celtic is better? said the student.

  They were all painstakingly copying the lists of words into their notebooks.

  It’s different, I said. But then, a long thing is the long body of the Buddha, a short thing is the short body of the Buddha.

  Both good? He was genuinely trying to understand.

  Both equally not-good, not-bad. But maybe Celtic is more not-bad.

  So, he said.

  Ha! I said, and I picked up a duster, wiped the board clear with great sweeping strokes, and I stood a moment looking into the abstract patterns I had made, losing myself in them.

  The boys found my methods (and madnesses) challenging, but that was, after all, the intention. Among these boys were the future rulers of the country, the businessmen and captains of industry, the elite. Theirs would be the responsibility for building a new nation on the foundations of the old. They had to be challenged, cajoled into open-mindedness. They didn’t always take it well. The more ambitious among them, the academically gifted, those eager to get on, were often the most puzzled, the most resistant.

  During one session I asked them (not unkindly, I thought, and with a measure of good humour) what they understood to be their purpose in life.

  Their discomfort took me back to that earliest class in Korea, the student rebellion. I am Spartacus.

  I let the silence sit for a few moments, then said it was an important question to ask, if not to answer. I was, after all, asking myself the selfsame question.

  I am asking it still.

  11

  THIS VERY PLACE

  Another New Year, another poetry party. But this was not like the Emperor’s formal Utakai Hajime which I had attended the year before. (Was it really only a year?) This gathering was entirely different – it was hosted by the Crown Prince, and it really was, first and foremost, a party. It centred round a popular collection of verse, Hyakunin Isshu, One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, and it took the form of a game. The poems formed an anthology spanning the period from the seventh to the thirteenth century, and had been gathered together by a nobleman named Fujiwara No Teika.

  Some of the verses were slight and (I would have thought) forgettable. But some were from the Manyoshu and were very fine indeed.

  The poems were printed on cards – about the same size as our playing cards and beautifully illustrated. One set of a hundred cards featured the opening lines of the poems, another set the closing lines.

  Someone appointed as Reader would take charge of the set of opening lines. The other set, the closing lines, would be scattered on the floor. The Reader would shuffle his cards and read out the lines from each card he turned over. There would then be a scrabbling to find the matching card which completed the poem. Whoever found it first scored a point, for himself, or herself, or for their team.

  To my great delight, on this occasion the Crown Prince had asked me to accept the role of Reader, and I said I would be honoured. He said I would be a good intoner. He very much liked the sound of my voice and the way I recited poems, saying I did it with a kind of dignity.

  Gravitas, I suggested.

  But also with humour.

  Equally important, I said.

  I was quite touched that he had asked me. It was very much a gathering of young people, The Crown Prince’s schoolfriends, his younger brother and sister, Prince Masahito and Princess Kazuko, all elegantly dressed in honour of the season. They gathered in a circle round the cards on the floor, eager and intent, ready. I sat at the centre of the circle, the Reader, the Dealer. I did my best Mississippi card-sharp routine, shuffling the deck. Then with a theatrical flourish, a flick of the wrist, I turned over the first card and read out – intoned – the lines written there.

  Nagaraeba

  Mata konogoro ya

  Shinobaren

  In my head I translated as a I went.

  If I should live long,

  Perhaps these present days

  Will be dear to me,

  But before I had even finished, there was a cry of delight and a scrambling on the floor. To my amazement – though I should not really have been surprised – the Crown Prince had beaten everyone to it, found the right card and held it up in triumph. He read out the lines.

  Ushi to mishi yo zo

  Ima wa koishiki

  Again, for my own sake, I translated.

  Just as sad times past

  Come back in quiet thought.

  The Prince bowed to the round of applause and placed the card on an exquisite little side-table, set there for just that purpose, then he turned back to the game, braced and alert.

  I turned over the second card.

  In all my years in Japan I had never seen such unrestrained merriment, joy unconfined. These bright young things, sophisticated and privileged, in public all restraint and composure, were suddenly children again, shouting and laughing, losing themselves completely in the game.

  By mere playing we go to Heaven.

  It filled me again with that unreasoning sense that, in spite of the carnage mankind had wrought on the world, all might still be well, and all might be well, and all manner of things might be well.

  I was told once that in appearance I looked like a cross between Laurence Olivier and Charlie Chaplin. I would take either as a compliment, but it might be difficult to combine the two, would risk confusing one with the other. I am not sure that Olivier could play the tramp, and his Great Dictator would probably owe more to Mussolini than Hitler. But Chaplin as Hamlet would be something to behold. Enter the Prince of Denmark, shuffling, twirling a cane. The film is black-and-white, silent, with captions. Outrageous fortune! it reads, as he dons his bowler hat against a hail of slingshot and arrows flying over his head.

  Take arms! His cane becomes an umbrella which he opens and holds up as a defence, only to find it is full of holes.

  In one of my boxes of documents is a set of tape-recordings to which I was a contributor. I may have resembled Olivier and Chaplin, but my acting career began and ended with these recordings, Obunsha’s Educational Record-Books.

  The one I recall was called Home Life, and my episode was entitled A Friend Pays a Visit.

  The dramatis personae featured an American couple, Henry and Mary Jones. Mr Jones was described by the narrator, Mr Sasaki, as a very kind gentleman who looked remarkably young even though his hair was greying. Mrs Jones, according to the eager Sasaki-san, was a wonderful and charming lady of striking personality. Henry and Mary’s children, the gay and loveable Emily and extremely active and handsome Dick, completed the family.

  I (Ahem!) was the eponymous Friend-who-paid-a-visit, an Englishman by the name of George Smith.

  The action began with a knock at the door (rendered in the studio by a technician rapping on the table).

  The dialogue is seared into my brain.

  Why, hello, George.

  Hello Mary, I haven’t seen you in ages.

  This is a pleasant surprise.

  How’s Henry?

  Oh, he’s fine. I bet he’ll be surprised to see you.

  Well, hello George.

  Hello Henry. How’ve you been?

  Just fine, thanks. And you?

  I’ve never felt better.

  Sit down and take the lead out of your feet.

  Thank you.

  What men will do for money!

  It’s all there in the memory, on tape as it were, reel-to-reel. (Real to real?) George Smith explains why he is in Tokyo, (Sudden business made it necessary for me to come). He comments on the Jones home. (By the way, this is a very comfortable home, a bright home with a pleasing Oriental atmosphere). There is then some prattle about using chopsticks and wearing kimono and geta, before George gives some advice on their teenage son who is reaching that difficult age, telling them Dick’s a good boy and they have nothing to worry about. George then refuses tea, saying he would love to stay, but he has a thousand things to do yet today, before riding off into the sunset.

  Hi Ho Silver, away!

  The Joneses were played by two charming American academics, Bill Moore and Jay Callender. Between scenes, Bill had us laughing with his coarse take on the storyline, providing his own sub-text.

  Oh yeah? he’d say, his voice gravelly from the cigarettes he smoked. Old George just happened to be in the neighbourhood, eh? Sudden business made it necessary? Damned disappointed if you ask me, finding Henry at home. Henry will be surprised to see you? I’ll bet he will!

  The recording is accompanied by a book containing the script, preserved for posterity. There are photographs of the cast, posing in a mocked-up living room. In one shot, Bill, Jay and I are laughing, probably at Bill’s risqué commentary.

  Oh yeah?

  The studio. The recording. A time, a moment, caught.

  I am aware that in these pages there is little of what might be called the domestic. I have not written a great deal about my home life, time spent with my family, with Tomiko and above all my two daughters. I make no apology for this reticence. It is quite beyond my capacity to put into words what these girls have meant to me. Nana and Harumi. Harumi and Nana. It would be the worst kind of sentimentality. (Is there a best kind?) So I shall not make the attempt. Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof must one remain silent. But I acknowledge it. They are dear to me. I hold that truth in the deepest part of my being. There. Sentimentality avoided (though only just).

  In his Narrow Road to the Deep North, Basho wrote that days and months are travellers in eternity, and travellers too are the passing years. This is profound and true, but most often we perceive time passing, not as a flow but in fits and starts. So I watched the girls grow up, become who they were. The time passed, but not in any measured, linear way. Rather it resembled a home movie with its jumps and cuts, now slowing, now speeding forward, moments flickering, glimpsed then gone. Nor can I choose the moments I remember. The images arise unbidden then fade.

  I gave the girls the gift of music, as it had been given to me. I taught them with my accustomed rigour, had them practise scales and arpeggios, scales and arpeggios, Harumi on viola, Nana on a little violin. Tomiko, like Annie before her, suffered, and not always in silence. Why not a tune? When they were ready the girls played simple melodies, Tannenbaum, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (telling them it was by Mozart, aged five), Au Claire de la Lune, Row, Row, Row Your Boat….

  I imagined us playing Bach together, but Harumi rebelled, said she would rather play on the ukulele. She insisted on it, learning to strum O Susanna, and making me laugh. Sometimes too she would sing along and I thrilled at the quality of her voice. She was pitch perfect, sang with a warmth and sweetness, a slight huskiness in the tone.

  In time, and with patience, I taught her Bach’s Jesu, Praise to Thee be Given. I accompanied her on cello, quietly awed, filled to the brim with gratitude.

  What else?

  I bought the girls bikes (again, a smaller one for Nana), taught them on the pathways round campus at Gakushuin. I showed off (I admit it), pedalling hands-free, or just on the back wheel, the front wheel in the air. Ladeez an genulmen, I give you the amazing trick cyclist, Mister B…. I succeeded in making it look like fun, and the girls, after their initial wobbling uncertainty, grew quickly confident, were soon cycling round with assurance, ringing their little bells so students would get out of the way. One trick I refrained from showing them was something I had done since my own childhood. Cycling behind a truck or a lorry, I would catch hold of it at the back, the tailgate. I could then stop pedalling and be carried along, freewheeling. My mother had scolded me, told me it was dangerous. Now the thought of my own daughters doing such a thing filled me with dread, made me feel sick to my stomach. So quietly, if reluctantly, I gave it up, rode more sedately like the middle-aged English gentleman I was.

  On Sundays, unless it was raining, the three of us would cycle on quieter roads to a cafe and cake shop I had learned to love. (Memories of my time in Korea with Akio’s little daughter Katsura). We ate cake, drank lemonade. I carried something home in a little box for Tomiko (who could not cycle and had no inclination to learn). I would also stock up on my own supply of chocolate, buy two or three bars to see me through the week.

  I have spoken before of my love of chocolate. Let me take it further and state it is my considered opinion that chocolate constitutes a teleological argument for the existence of God.

  I made the same point to the girls, albeit in simplified form. I bit into a thick chunky square, rolled my eyes, said, Ah!

  Yes. There must be a God.

  In my jacket pockets there was often a residue, crumbs or flakes of it, perhaps a little piece that had melted then hardened again, that and chalkdust from teaching. Tomiko would grimace, turning the pockets inside out to shake them clean.

  Chalk and chocolate. A poet would make something onomatopoeic of that.

  How did Mr Eliot put it? I have measured out my life?

  My life.

  Chalk and chocolate. Chalkolate?

  Enough.

  That gift of music I gave the girls was also one I gave the Crown Prince. I recommended (as strongly as I dared) that he should learn a musical instrument, and I was gratified when he told me he had obtained a cello and would begin taking lessons. I like to think my own enthusiasm for the instrument influenced his choice. (I am sure the royal household would not have thanked me if I had pressed him to take up the tuba, or the trombone!)

  My years of teaching Akihito also come back to me as moments, little vignettes from those weekly meetings at the palace. They have the quality of parable – Tales of the Young Crown Prince.