The time I asked him which he thought was better, to be born as he was, into the Imperial family as Crown Prince, into a life of duty and responsibility, or to be born into an ordinary family and have an ordinary life. He gave it serious thought and replied, I don’t know, because I was born to this life and never knew any other.

  What did I teach him?

  The time I had dropped a pen on the floor (intentionally or otherwise, who knows?) The Prince was seated, as usual, not far from my desk. The pen rolled to a point in between us, and I asked, Well? Which of us is going to pick it up?

  He caught my tone, challenging, teasing.

  Perhaps it is a little closer to you, he said.

  Perhaps, I said. Shall I get a ruler and measure the distance?

  He thought for a moment.

  Perhaps, he said, with a smile. But then again, I am the Crown Prince. Perhaps it is not my place to pick it up.

  You are most definitely the superior, I said. No doubt about it. But, on the other hand, perhaps the superior man reveals his superiority by bending and showing humility.

  Perhaps! he said, and after another moment of thought, he bent and picked up the pen, held it in both hands and returned it to me with a little bow.

  I laughed and bowed deeper.

  For some years our household had another member.

  Tomiko had a cousin, who had a good friend, who had a daughter… (Japanese bonds of family and friendship are strong!)

  The daughter, Chieko, was in her late teens. She was a quiet, intelligent girl who had studied at a Christian school where she had learned English. Now she was enrolled at Gakushuin women’s college and Tomiko suggested that she move in with us.

  Home-stay, said Harumi, giving the idea credibility by putting it in English.

  Tomiko said it would help the girl and her family, who were not wealthy (and an education was not cheap). She would be another pair of hands about the house, a companion for Harumi and Nana. She could type and would be a kind of secretary for me, improving her English and helping me with translations.

  What could I say against such a barrage of good reasons? Surely only an unfeeling brute would have any objections. And when I met Chieko I saw why she had touched Tomiko’s heart. She seemed much younger than her years, perhaps because of her sheltered upbringing, her Christian faith. She gave the impression of being serious, studious, a little shy. The girls had already taken to her, saw her as an older sister.

  As with most domestic issues, the women were complicit, the matter had already been decided, and I was the last one to find out. It was decreed. The eternal feminine was to surround me even more. Now, like Lear, I would have three daughters.

  Very well, I said. Home-stay for Chieko it is.

  Chieko’s mother wanted to repay us in some small way for looking after her daughter. It happened that the family had a small house on the Izu peninsula. The accommodation was simple, she explained, and quite basic, but it was in a beautiful spot and not too far from the town of Numazu. She would be honoured, she said, if we would be her guests there in the summer. We agreed.

  The girls were particularly excited. It would be the first real holiday we had taken as a family. Tokyo was hot and humid in summer, sometimes unbearably so, and the prospect of time away from all that, somewhere remote, refreshed by sea air, was exhilarating in itself.

  There were other reasons I was eager to go. The Crown Prince would be spending the summer at the Imperial villa in Numazu, and when I mentioned our family holiday to him he was delighted that I would be close by.

  The Izu peninsula was also associated in my mind with Zen Master Hakuin. I had read a story by him – a parable? a tract? – called The Precious Mirror Cave, in which Hakuin described a kind of vision experienced by a local fisherman who chanced on a sea cave where figures of the Buddha and his two closest disciples miraculously appeared, granting illumination to all who made the difficult pilgrimage to see them.

  As a teacher, Hakuin was ferocious, a hard old taskmaster who battered his students with unsolvable koans till they broke (but only after he had travelled the same gruelling road, driving himself beyond, always beyond).

  This very place is the Pure Land.

  This very body is the Buddha-body.

  Everything he said and did was teaching, for the sake of his students, for the sake of humanity. Expedient means. Whatever it took. He was a Bodhisattva, committed to saving all sentient beings.

  In the story of the Mirror Cave he depicted himself visiting the sacred shrine in person, ferried there by a boatman and at first not seeing the figures which were hazy, indistinct. (A hallucination? A trick of the light?) Undaunted, he returned a second time, humble, surrendered, chanting the Nembutsu with simple devotion, and this time he saw clearly, he was granted a vision, the three figures radiating light.

  I tried asking around, in Numazu when we passed through, and more locally when we arrived in Izu, but nobody had any idea where the cave might be. I was disappointed, but resigned. In any case, what would I have seen? The effects of phosphorescence? A trick of the light? The chance weathering of old rocks into something resembling three holy figures?

  Hakuin made it clear that what the seeker saw in the cave was a reflection of his own consciousness, and that was what he had to face.

  In another story, Idle Talk on the Night Boat, Hakuin spun a yarn about how he went off into the mountains above Kyoto to sit at the feet of an ancient sage – reputed to be 300 years old! – and learned from him how to cure what he called his Zen sickness, a complete and utter exhaustion of mind, body and spirit, engendered by years of austere discipline.

  In re-reading these tales, I was reminded of Bob Aitken’s description of koans as folk-tales, passing on the deepest wisdom, down through generations.

  This very body is the Buddha-body.

  What was most engaging about Hakuin was his sense of humour. I saw it first in his drawings, vigorous, briskly executed, displaying warmth and humanity in every line, and wickedly, surreally, funny.

  Two mice, sumo-wrestling.

  Two bumpkins, beneath a sign reading No Graffiti. One has climbed on the other’s shoulders to write, Sorry For Defacing This Sign!

  Hotei, the pot-bellied god of good fortune, adrift in a small boat, lolling back at ease, hands behind his head. The poem underneath reads:

  Steering his boat

  Where it wants to go –

  Hotei all at sea.

  There are photographs, black-and-white, in an album, taken during that visit to Izu. That time and that place, those people we were.

  The three girls, Harumi, Nana and Chieko, on the beach, smiling, smiling.

  Tomiko, outside the little house, shielding her eyes from the sun.

  Yours truly, His Nibs, Mr RH Blyth, not in a suit and tie, but wearing khaki shorts and an open-necked shirt, the sleeves rolled up. And again, shirtless, bare-chested, posing, giving my best impression of Johnny Weissmuller in the Tarzan films (though with, admittedly, a rather less impressive physique).

  All five of us, one behind the other, straddling the long low branch of a tree.

  (Who took that particular photo? A neighbour? Chieko’s mother? I have quite forgotten).

  I look and look, and each picture becomes a frame, a little window through to where we were, a reality that still exists, outside time.

  This very place is the Pure Land.

  The days were warm and sunny, the balmy sea air a welcome respite from the heat and fug of the city. One day a visitor appeared at the door, a young man bearing gifts. He was like many of the students I taught, formal and polite, his high-necked tunic buttoned up in spite of the warmth of the day. He had been sent by the Crown Prince with a box of fresh fruit – momo and kaki – exquisite pink peaches and what must have been the first persimmon of the season.

  After handing them over, the boy took a letter from his satchel and held it out to me, bowing. The envelope bore the Imperial chrysanthemum crest, and the boy was respectful to the point of reverence, mindful of his sacred role as messenger. We invited him to stay and eat with us, but he said he did not have much time and had to return to the palace. I thought I sensed his resolve weaken when he saw the girls and their obvious delight at the gift. But then he steeled himself, and after accepting a glass of water, he stood to attention, clicked his heels, bowed again deeply and was gone.

  I opened the envelope and read a brief note from the Crown Prince, in his own handwriting, saying he hoped our time at Izu had been pleasant and that we would enjoy the simple offering of seasonal fruit. He said he very much looked forward to renewing our conversations on our return to Tokyo.

  Chieko’s mother was looking across at me, concerned, perhaps, that the letter might contain bad news. (How often is that our reaction – to fear the worst?) I laughed and showed her the envelope with its crest, told her what the Crown Prince had said, and she was overwhelmed, happy and flustered, not quite able to believe a personal letter from the Prince had been delivered to her door.

  Her door!

  Chieko had taken the fruit to the kitchen, washed and peeled and sliced it, divided it into equal portions in little bamboo bowls, and we sat outside and ate.

  I think I can truthfully say there is no fruit I love more than persimmon. Even peeled and sliced, they have to be eaten with the fingers, which have to get good and sticky in the process. (I swear the fingers can taste the fruit). That golden-yellow flesh, the texture almost slippery, the taste both astringent and sweet, lingering at the back of the palate.

  Ah!

  I could completely identify with Shiki who wrote a late haiku which might well have served as his death-verse and epitaph.

  Think of me

  As one who loved poetry

  And persimmons.

  If I could pass it off as my own, I might well use it as my own jisei, my death verse, instead of that anonymous piece about leaving my heart to the sasanqua blossom.

  As Tomiko had hoped, Chieko effectively became part of our family, like an older sister to the girls. Her English was good, which was immensely helpful to me as she could help when I was translating poems from the Japanese.

  She was also musical, could sight-read and had taken violin lessons as a child. So with Harumi on viola (though she still said she preferred the ukulele), Nana as second violin and my esteemed self on cello, we had a string quartet. We worked on a repertoire, practised of an evening if my school work allowed, and performed little recitals on a Sunday afternoon to an audience of Tomiko and the dog.

  We always had dogs, this particular fellow being a doughty character of doubtful lineage. I named him Joshu.

  Did this dog have the Buddha nature?

  Hear him bark!

  Occasionally Joshu would join in, add an unscripted counterpoint to what we were playing, an improvised solo for howling dog

  Let dogs delight to bark and bite

  For God hath made them so.

  There is a Sufi poem which begins, The dog barks, the caravan passes.

  Chieko married, moved away.

  The dog barked.

  Our lives flowed on.

  The Crown Prince was eager to tell me his news. It had been agreed he would travel to London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

  I knew from conversations with Yamanashi that this had been proposed, and that in some quarters there had been considerable resistance to the idea. The Crown Prince was too young. He was inexperienced. So soon after the war, he might encounter anti-Japanese sentiment, perhaps even outright hostility.

  Yamanashi had said the diplomatic trick was to turn these arguments into something positive. Yes, Akihito was young, but so was the new Queen – they were of the same generation. He was inexperienced, but that meant he was not jaded. He had the freshness of youth, and as a mere boy throughout the war years, he was free of any taint or blame for those years.

  As Yamanashi put it, he carried no baggage! He was the New Japan.

  Now, clearly, the moderate and progressive elements had prevailed. Akihito would indeed go to London and, for the first time, represent his country at a great state occasion.

  What do you think? he asked, eager but perhaps just a little apprehensive.

  I think it’s wonderful, I said. Subarashi.

  Yes, he said, grinning. Wonderful!

  He had come directly from playing tennis, in his white shirt and v-neck sweater, his wide flannel trousers – his sport-wearing – and he was indeed the embodiment of youthful well-being, a natural poise born of wealth and privilege, not hidebound by the past but truly international, open to it all.

  I told him the lines from Shakespeare I had framed on my wall, written out like a poem in Suzuki’s own hand.

  O wonderful.

  wonderful,

  and most wonderful wonderful!

  and yet again wonderful…

  And yet again. Wonderful.

  My acting career may have been short-lived – in fact it ended after my brief supporting role as Mr George Smith. But I did make a radio broadcast, a spoken commentary describing – in Japanese! – the coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth. I watched a screening of the event, the first television broadcast I had ever seen, in a studio in Tokyo, and I spoke into a microphone, giving my own measured account of the proceedings.

  Ma had told me a neighbour had bought a television set and invited her round with a few other folk to watch the whole thing, live, as it were, on a nine-inch screen, the images black-and-white, a flickering kamishibai, a little moving picture show. All the grandeur and spectacle were reduced and framed, the pageantry diminished. And yet I could imagine how it would be viewed back home. Ma would be seated in the neighbour’s front room, just a few miles from where this Great Ceremony was being staged. She and her friends would be gathered round the screen, history being played out right there in front of them as they ate cheese and ham sandwiches, and no doubt scones and cakes, and drank strong sweet tea, hearts swelling with patriotic pride. It would be a national holiday, the schools and factories closed. Outside there would be street parties, gardens decked with bunting and Union Jacks. They would quaff warm beer and sing God Save the Queen and Roll Out the Barrel and Knees Up Mother Brown, in Leytonstone, E11.

  Home.

  And I watched it on my own little screen, headphones over my ears, microphone picking up my every word, every plosive and sibilant, in a dimly lit studio in downtown Tokyo, half a world away.

  I thought of my charge the Crown Prince, my responsibility towards him, the great weight of expectation on his shoulders, and I felt a kind of empathy towards this slight figure, this young Queen, robed and sceptred, the great heavy crown on her head.

  ‘To the looking-glass world,’ it was Alice that said,

  ‘I’ve a sceptre in hand, I’ve a crown on my head.

  Let the Looking-Glass creatures whatever they be,

  Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen and me.’

  And however ridiculous it all was, however outmoded and anachronistic and downright surreal, it might somehow be necessary, or at least useful, as a symbol, of order and unity, life restored after the dark years of destruction.

  On the wall of the little studio where I sat was a framed photograph of Emperor Hirohito. It would have been from this very building that his speech had been broadcast at the end of the war, the recording smuggled from the Palace under attack from armed extremists. Gyokuon-hōsō. Jewel Voice Broadcast. Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the Greater East Asia War. Tomiko and I had listened in our little rented apartment, straining to hear the message, eerily unreal, as if transmitted from a distant universe.

  Then later we had tuned in to hear Ningen Sengen, the Imperial Declaration of Humanity, which I – incredibly – had helped to compose. That too would have been broadcast from this building, perhaps even from this very studio.

  From his frame on the wall, the Emperor looked down at me, dressed in full military uniform, his expression composed, giving nothing away. My connection to this great Imperial household has been, and remains, a mystery to me, some unfolding of karma.

  Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk, once wrote that a memory of the spiritual life often haunts the throne, that some souls were actually born to this kind of role because of past merit, that they might be in a position to do good in the world.

  Was it actually conceivable that the world might yet move into an era of peace and co-operation? In my own time on earth – a mere half-century – I had already lived through two World Wars, and as an atheist / agnostic, lapsed Christian / faithless Buddhist, crypto-anarchist / sometime nihilist, I prayed with all my being to Christ, Buddha, Siva, Allah, Yahweh, the Cosmic Joker, the Great Self beyond the beyond, that I would not see a third, and, more important, that Nana and Harumi might live in a world at peace with itself.

  But I had my doubts.

  And yet…

  The choir sang, settings of Vaughan Williams. All people that on earth do dwell… The voices rose and swelled. O taste and see… The young Queen stepped out, into her fairytale coach. The crowds cheered. The broadcast ended.

  I removed my headphones, switched off the microphone. I bowed to the producer, and the sound engineer, and they bowed more deeply to me, in deference to my status as resident gaijin, expert on all things royal. Buraisu-sensei.

  They accompanied me to the main entrance. They were amused, and perhaps impressed, that I had arrived on my bicycle. They dispatched a young man from the front desk to fetch the bike from the car park, and all three stood in a row, bowing in unison as I pedalled off.