I always meant to frame the scroll, hang it above my desk, but that was one of a great many things I never quite got round to. So it stayed rolled up in its cardboard tube, and the medal in its elegant black-lacquered case sat on a shelf beside a little bronze figure of Amida Buddha and the wooden Daruma doll I had kept since Kobe. Reminders all. Sacred treasures.

  I knew it would come to this. I had reached retirement-age – ripe and old – and bureaucracy being what it was, my contract came to an end. I would be pensioned off, put out to pasture, my golden coach turned into a pumpkin.

  I could still teach classes, at the Girls’ School and at a number of other locations, But I no longer had tenure at Gakushuin itself. Worst of all, we had to vacate our accommodation on campus, our home these fifteen years. In all that time we had been sheltered, protected. In Tokyo even small apartments were expensive and ideally we wanted a traditional Japanese house. But then I needed somewhere with substantial walls to take my 6,000 books. Tomiko said moving would give us a chance to have a clear-out, sell the books or give them away to a library. More than once she said we should lug them to the nearest waste-ground, pile them up, make a pyre and set them alight. All forms are burning. A bonfire of my vanities.

  I had further requirements (demands?): a little breathing space, perhaps a small garden, a decent distance from aeroplane flight paths in and out of Haneda. Not too much to ask, I would have thought.

  Not too much at all, said Yamanashi. As long as you don’t mind moving out of Tokyo.

  Strangely, the thought had not occurred to me, but when he said it I experienced a moment of illumination. Yes. As long as it was not too far, that might be the answer.

  Yamanashi said he would make enquiries, see what he could do. Given the circles he moved in, I should not have been surprised when he got back to me. He had an old friend who was the daughter of Viscount Eiichi Shibusawa the well-known industrialist. The daughter had a house in Oiso which was lying empty and in need of some repair. Yamanashi said he could negotiate a good price.

  Yamanashi accompanied us on the train-ride to Oiso, a little over thirty miles along the Tokaido line. The very name Tokaido still thrilled me – the ancient trade route from Tokyo to Kyoto. Both Hokusai and Hiroshige had made woodblock prints of views from the road. Hakuin had been born at a way station in Hara and set up his temple Shoin-ji close by. I was intoxicated at the thought of it all, the connections.

  Tomiko was disgruntled at the thought of moving from Tokyo, the friends she had made there, the comfortable life we had led. She had said as much, but she bore it well, tense but smiling and nodding, smiling and nodding, saying it couldn’t be helped.

  I had read that Oiso had a population of just 20,000. After Tokyo it felt like a village, a backwater. We stepped off the train and could smell the sea. I could see Tomiko relax, perhaps reminded of her home in Hagi. The girls breathed it all in, laughed, exhilarated. We looked out across the town and there, emerging from mist, sat great Fuji, timeless and familiar, a reassurance.

  The house was on a low wooded hill at the edge of town, quiet and sheltered, a little run down but somehow full of character. Inside it smelled musty, but fresh air would clear that. We slid open the shoji screens, let the outside in. Tomiko looked around, smiled approval at the kitchen, the size of the rooms. The girls ran outside, all excitement, to the back garden where a single pine tree grew tall. They ran back in, laughing the way they had when they were small, ran upstairs and called to us to come up and see, come up and see, there, through the window, in the distance the glint of sun on the water, a glimpse of the Shonan Sea.

  Well? said Yamanashi, eyes twinkling.

  Yes, I said. Yes.

  This would be our home, perhaps my last.

  I adjusted quickly to the new routine, the extended commute to work. I invested in a Green Car train ticket, giving more comfort, greater leg room. I used the journey time to read and even to write, scribbling in a notepad on my lap. If anything, my output increased.

  Did I know my time was short, even then? Time’s winged chariot shunting me back and forth along the Tokaido?

  Certainly my schedule was quite ridiculous. I taught at the Gaimusho for three hours in the morning, then at the Girls department of Gakushuin from 1-2:30 in the afternoon, at Waseda 2-4 at the Jiyu Gakuen 3.30-4.30; and at Kyoiku Dai 4.30-5.30. These times overlapped in the most interesting way, leaving me a minus quantity in which to pass from one place to another.

  Someone commented on how much I managed to accomplish. How do you find the time? he asked.

  I make the time, I replied, with a rhetorical flourish.

  So there it is. I find time. I make time.

  I continued work on my Zen and Zen Classics, on a two-volume History of Haiku and on Japanese Life and Character in Senryu.

  In addition, and perhaps as a necessary counterpoint, I threw myself into the physical work of repairing and restoring the house. I built those bookshelves for the 6,000 books, I patched and replaced torn shoji screens and laid new tatami. I fitted new tiles on the roof where the old tiles had slipped or broken. I built in a kotatsu heated table for the winter, over a pit sunk into the floor, a brazier to take the coal briquettes, old blankets tacked in place to keep in the heat.

  When I was too exhausted even to lift the lightest hammer, I busied myself with translating the Mumonkan, struggling with the koans. Does a a dog have the Buddha nature? Why did Bodhidharma come to the West?

  Pass me the hammer!

  I stood one day looking at the lone pine tree in the garden behind the house, and I had a moment of revelation, inspiration. I would build a little outhouse around the tree, the trunk running up through the middle, living, growing. A tree-house! The spirit of Crusoe was strong in me.

  I worked hard at the building all through autumn and there it stood, ramshackle but sturdy, my retreat.

  There was someone else Suzuki wanted to introduce to me. (I should simply have handed over my entire social calendar to him). I was aware that the novelist Yasunari Kawabata lived in Zushi, near Kamakura, so he and Suzuki were almost neighbours. I recalled Mrs Vining speaking of him with great respect and admiration after meeting him at the PEN Conference in Tokyo.

  I had not read his novels, but Suzuki said they were very fine. Yukiguni Suzuki translated as Snow Country. Then came Meijin The Master of Go, Senbazuru, The Thousand Cranes, and most recently Yama no Oto.

  The Sound of the Mountain, I ventured.

  Yes, he said, nodding approval.

  They are good titles, I said. Resonant without being overly poetic.

  Sadly, said Suzuki, they have not yet been translated into English. But I think you would appreciate them. They are filled with love, melancholy and loss.

  Perfect themes for the novelist!

  Suzuki had arranged for us to meet, perhaps surprisingly, at a fashionable coffee shop close to Kamakura station. It was in Komachi-dori, a little street I had always loved, lined with craft shops and tea houses, shops selling nothing but incense, or kimono, or hanging scrolls. The cafe was called Iwata and had opened after the war, the decor stylishly western, menus in English and Japanese, plastic-topped tables, upright chairs covered in some kind of faux-leather.

  From where to where, I said to Suzuki, looking around. To have come to this in a few short years.

  Indeed, he said.

  Kawabata, when he arrived, was unmistakeable. He wore a warm kimono jacket and a fedora hat. He doffed the hat and bowed to us, swept a hand through his thick white hair.

  Mrs Vining’s description of him as deer-like was a good one. He was thin and almost delicate, but wide-eyed and alert, and I had the impression he was a man of sharp intelligence and insight.

  He sat down at our table, looked around with a kind of amused wonderment. We ordered coffee (water for me) and Suzuki suggested we try the special pancakes, saying they were famous.

  Kawabata nodded, perhaps a little bemused that pancakes could be famous. When they arrived, stacked, inch-thick and drenched in jam and cream, he set to, laughing and declaring them delicious.

  He had a lightness about him that I had not expected. Suzuki had told me his novels were elegaic and that quality had only deepened since the war. He was unlikely, said Suzuki, to write anything frivolous.

  Over more coffee he lit a cigarette (after ascertaining we didn’t smoke, and asking our permission). Somehow the cigarette looked large between his thin fingers. He inhaled, held, breathed out, relaxed.

  Suzuki took the opportunity to ask him how his work was progressing. He said he was very lazy so perhaps he had less time to work than other writers. But then, he continued, by the time he thought about putting in effort, the work was already done.

  Suzuki laughed, said to me, He knows where to put his strength so he doesn’t waste it. It’s like the strongest position in kendo, using power without exerting it.

  Mugamae no kamae, said Kawabata. Nothing position.

  Busy doing nothing, I said.

  Buraisu-san is a great student of Zen, said Suzuki. He knows all about Mu, all about nothing.

  Or I know about nothing at all!

  I think there is a great deal of Zen in Kawabata-san’s novels, said Suzuki. They flow, like a composition that does not know where it will begin or end.

  Kawabata said he was tired of novels that depended on a twist.

  The story ends when it blossoms, said Suzuki.

  Kawabata smiled.

  So.

  They drank more coffee. Kawabata lit another cigarette, spoke about European culture, his love of Debussy and Turner, Flaubert and Mann.

  Where is east? he said. Where is west?

  When we emerged from the coffee shop, afternoon was darkening into evening. We walked together to the railway station, waited on the platform for Kawabata’s train to Zushi, just one stop along the line. Suzuki would go a single stop in the opposite direction, to Kita Kamakura and I would continue, back to Oiso.

  I noticed Kawabata staring across the tracks towards the neighbouring hotel, the name spelled out in English, in wrought iron lettering, Hotel New KAMAKURA.

  He explained it used to be called Hotel Yamagata and the novelist Akutagawa Ryunosuke had spent time there, writing.

  A troubled soul, said Suzuki. A terrifying talent.

  Akutagawa had killed himself, aged only 35.

  So, said Kawabata, a look of great sadness in his eyes. Then his train arrived and he composed himself, smiled and bowed and thanked us, said goodbye and climbed aboard, bowed to us again through the window as the train moved off.

  We crossed the platform to wait for our own train, almost due.

  A remarkable man, I said.

  He works in solitude and pain, said Suzuki. But the result is a kind of flowering.

  He burns very bright, I said.

  Yes, said Suzuki. But I fear he may be consuming himself.

  This meeting with Kawabata came back to me yesterday. As I walked along the hospital corridor, I saw a visitor to the ward, a young woman waiting till it was time to go in. She sat on a bench, poised, completely absorbed in reading a paperback book. I couldn’t help but notice it was Kawabata’s latest novel, just published, Utsukushisa to Kanashimi to, which I believe translates as Beauty and Sadness.

  I resisted the temptation to engage the young woman in conversation, tell her I had met Kawabata in person. She might have thought I was a sad old lunatic, an aged man, a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick. (Unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing). So I showed restraint, said nothing.

  Beauty and sadness.

  Love, melancholy and loss.

  I had been told it would be difficult, but still I found myself completely unprepared.

  Harumi had been courted (I still liked that word) by an entirely acceptable young man, a Mister Kikkawa. (If he had a first name it was not proffered and he remained resolutely Kikkawa-san).

  My first reaction had been the rather incredulous protest that Harumi was just a child, to which Tomiko pointed out she was almost 20 and as such was not younger than Tomiko herself had been when we first met.

  I spluttered, Be that as it may…. then found I could not finish the sentence. I began to feel like the pompous father in some comedy of manners, or one of the farces I’d read about that were gracing the West End stage.

  My own fears (and sense of disappointment) deepened when I found out Mr Kikkawa was effectively a mathematician and a scientist. He was considering a number of job opportunities including, to my trepidation and alarm, a position at the University of Utah where he would be working on some gigantic computing machine taking up its own enormous room.

  I was further appalled to hear the work would be directed towards the continuation of what was known as the Space Race, which I suspected was more about weapon systems and military advantage than communication for its own sake.

  We had read the newspaper reports of the Russian sputniks launched into orbit, first unmanned, then carrying the little dog Laika (Nana had wept for him) and finally with the intrepid Yuri Gagarin, glorying in the designation cosmonaut, a latter-day Jason sailing among the stars. The whole continuing story was thrilling but nevertheless created an undercurrent of unease.

  I think in my attempt to carry the discussion onto higher ground, I terrified the young man. I heard myself quoting Spengler, saying so-called practical requirements are simply the mask of a profound inward compulsion.

  New York has a great many skyscrapers, I said. Why is this? (I might have added, as now does Tokyo. But that would have muddied my argument).

  Kikkawa-san looked bemused to the point of panic, smiled and nodded his head.

  The standard answer, I said, is because land is scarce, so it is more convenient and cheaper to build upwards than to build outwards.

  He glanced across at Harumi, that rictus smile still on his face. She stared straight ahead.

  Spengler’s answer, I continued, would be that this is an excuse hiding the real reason, which is a desire for infinity, for the vast and limitless. Beyond and beyond!

  (I gestured, spread my arms wide).

  Another sideways glance.

  In this case, I said, it expresses the American desire for the biggest, the highest, the mightiest. It is what Stevenson called the divine unrest of humanity. Perhaps it is this urge, in its purest form, we see in the space race. This is the poetry of it, the thing that inspires us.

  Nevertheless…

  I recognised the look in the young man’s eyes, a look I often saw in my students, a complete bafflement.

  Nevertheless.

  I thought (perhaps unconsciously I even hoped) Kikkawa-san might be frightened off, fearful lest this madness run in the family.

  Nevertheless, a few short months later (no time at all), I found myself, tearful, waving goodbye to Harumi at Hanada Airport as she headed through the check-in desk for her transpacific flight. She was to join her husband-to-be. Mr Kikkawa had gone on ahead to take up his post. They would settle in Utah among Mormons and computing machines, make a new life there.

  Harumi turned, ticket and passport in hand. She wore a pale blue coat, a little pillbox hat. She waved one last time and was gone.

  I am thinking of that Ozu film, Banshun. Late Spring. Technically it is a masterpiece. For the interiors, the camera almost never moves, holds its point of view, the eye-level of someone seated on a tatami mat. Ozu said the lens he used was the closest to the human eye.

  The final scene is almost unbearably melancholy. The old widowed professor returns alone to his home, sits at the kitchen table and begins to peel an apple. His concentration is total as he removes the peel in one continuous spiral. The peel grows longer and longer until his hand finally stops and the peel falls to the floor. His shoulders slump and he bows his head.

  Cut to the last image, the ocean in the half-dark wave after wave washing onto the shore.

  I watched the film for the first time in the early 1950s. The girls would still have been very young, and perhaps Tomiko was at home looking after them. In any case, I remember going on my own to the little cinema in Shinjuku. I sat there in the darkness, alone, and I watched that last scene and I wept. I had to compose myself before emerging into the daylight and the busy city street. The sight of a corpulent tweed-suited gaijin coming out of the cinema would have been unsettling enough in those days, but for said gaijin to be blubbering like a child would have caused consternation.

  When I saw the film again just recently, an old man myself, it moved me even more. I was startled to notice something I had forgotten, or hadn’t registered at the time. The opening frame shows the railway station at Kita Kamakura, just yards from my own grave at Tokeiji.

  From time to time when I was in Kamakura, I visited the Daibutsu, the Great Buddha at Kotuku-in temple. It was a different place entirely from Engaku-ji. The main temple grounds, the monks’ quarters, were hidden away from public gaze. But for a few yen visitors could gain entrance to the gardens and the open courtyard where the colossal Buddha sat.

  I liked the fact that he had sat there for centuries, windblown and weather-beaten, his original bronze worn to a dull patinated green. I liked the fact too that he had originally been housed indoors in a specially-constructed temple building. But the building was destroyed in an earthquake, leaving the Buddha unharmed but exposed to the elements. The temple authorities decided, wisely in my view, that his will was clear – he actually preferred to sit outside in the open air instead of being constrained and boxed in.

  I think he had the right idea.

  On the whole I am not greatly taken with monumentality and grandiosity. Those Wonders of the World I decried to my students leave me cold – examples of man’s overweening pride and inflated sense of himself. But this is different.