Just that one word chilblains, resolutely Anglo-Saxon, brings her fully to life. I remember the misery of chilblains from my childhood, on knuckles and toes, red and swollen, itching and painful at the same time. My mother’s remedy was to rub it with half a raw onion. It would hurt at first, nip and sting, then the pain would subside miraculously, bring analgesic ease.

  In another letter, from a few months later, she wrote, We have had a very mild March and there has been no need for fires.

  Cold and warmth, perennially. Then further down the page is a clear-eyed observation, haiku-like in its sharpness. I saw a rook, sitting on eggs, at the top of a bare tree.

  With a little surge of recognition, I see the poet in her.

  A rook,

  Sitting on eggs,

  At the top of a bare tree.

  Later on again she’s writing pure senryu, full of punning delight in language and social manners as she tells of being at a tea party.

  An Indian boy said, ‘If you have no mind, I should like a second cup.’

  Her mind always active, well into old age.

  I had several people to see me yesterday. They all say I look well just because I’m cheerful. But sitting all day by the fire is not stimulating to the brain-box.

  I can hear her voice, see her tapping her forefinger to the side of her head.

  The brain-box.

  Now my own brain-box is malfunctioning, packing it in, giving up the ghost.

  Behind our accommodation at Gakushuin there was a low enclosing wall with a little gateway, a back way out. It was the way I usually came and went, sometimes just walking, sometimes pushing my bike. But the lintel, a solid beam of hardwood, was low, and I was often distracted, lost in thought. It was a regular occurrence that I banged my head on the beam, sometimes quite painfully. I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps the universe was trying to knock some sense into me.

  I recalled the story of Hakuin taking blows to the head in his quest for enlightenment, first from his teacher, Shoju Rojin, then from an old woman wielding a broom when he was begging for alms.

  Breaking through.

  Katsu!

  But these encounters I had coming through the gate had no discernible effect on my own awakening. All I experienced was shock and pain and dumb rage. (Dumb Reg!)

  The first few times it happened, Tomiko and the girls were all sympathy, anxious that I might have injured myself. But it became commonplace, my thick British skull was obviously resilient, and the sympathy faded.

  Tomiko said more than once that I was a typical gaijin who never learned to bow his head.

  (And perhaps that was the lesson I was meant to learn and never did).

  But just now, as I thought of this and wrote it down, I realised the memory might have been stirred by the present pain in my head that builds and builds till it stops all thought.

  This. This. This.

  And I wonder if there might be a connection, if the battering caused lasting damage.

  This.

  I resisted seeking medical advice. It was nothing serious, simply a bad headache, perhaps a migraine. Grit my teeth. Carry on. But the pain became more and more persistent, less easy to ignore. I made an appointment with the local doctor at his surgery near our home. He made a few tests, took my temperature and blood pressure. He shone a light into my eyes, which was most uncomfortable. (It dazzled and hurt). He scribbled notes, said something I couldn’t quite understand (but which I took to mean he couldn’t quite understand). He sent me, direct, to the nearest hospital, Kyoundo in Hiratsuka. There they ran more tests, gave me painkillers, said they would keep me in for observation. It seemed they too couldn’t-quite-understand. I was an anomaly, a mystery, a conundrum. They gave me more painkillers and a course of antibiotics, sent me home still shaky but able to function, just about. I had to work on the final volume of my Zen and Zen Classics, trawl through my dusty boxes of papers, write more of these pages in my yellow notepads, make sense (or nonsense) of it all. Look back. Retrospect.

  Akiko and Nana were anxious, wanted to pamper me, but I was having none of it. All would be well and all would be well and all manner of things would be well. And indeed for some months there did seem to be an improvement in my condition, a reprieve (an interesting choice of word). I experienced what I felt was a remission (another interesting choice – remission of my sentence, time off for good behaviour). Then it began again, the decline.

  I was on my way, late one afternoon to see Suzuki-sensei at his home. On the train I felt wretched, unable to focus, unable to read. When I got off at Kita Kamakura I was overcome with nausea and I vomited right there on the station platform. The others on the platform, arriving or waiting, probably thought I was drunk, confirming their worst fears about gaijin. They looked away, disengaged. The arrivals kept walking towards the exit. But the stationmaster recognised me from my visits to Engaku-ji. He ushered me to a seat, brought me a glass of water. I managed to thank him, apologise for the mess. Ridiculously, I tried to say I would clean it up, but he said it was nothing, mimed filling a bucket, sluicing.

  I was inordinately grateful. I told him he was a Zen man, a Bodhisattva. I had no idea if he understood, but he clearly took what I was saying as a garbled compliment.

  I was shaky as I walked along the road, slow, and up the steep steps to Suzuki’s residence. The autumn colours were vibrant, intense, red of the maple, gold of gingko. A bird sang, piercing, clear. I climbed past the dead of Tokei-ji, the dead I will soon be joining.

  Suzuki-sensei took one look at me and insisted I be taken to hospital forthwith. I should go to St Luke’s in Tokyo, where his wife Beatrice had been treated. When his mind was fixed on something there was no gainsaying him. He had decided and that was an end of it. He instructed his secretary Okamura-san to make the necessary phone calls. He told her to use his name and explain the situation was serious, his good friend was in need of emergency treatment. I listened as at a great distance, tried to stay calm and centred as the pain pulsed and thudded in my head and the room was a vortex spinning round me. Suzuki said we shouldn’t wait for an ambulance, then I was in the back of Okamura-san’s car and she was driving me through Yokohama and Shinagawa, the landscape slipping past as I drifted in and out of wakefulness. At one point Fuji was there, itself, that unmistakable shape, great sacred presence, silhouetted stark against the evening sky, just a glimpse then gone as we drove on through miles of urban sprawl, on into the metropolis, the city flashing and flickering around us. I was exhausted, drained, washed up on some far shore. Then I was in a ward, in a bed, dressed in some coarse hospital-issue smock, and a young doctor was giving me something-for-the-pain, and I slept.

  I was walking in the rubble and ruins of burned-out Tokyo. I was looking for my mother and trying to make sense. I knew she shouldn’t be there, dear Ma, in her overcoat to keep warm. Suzuki was speaking, trying to guide me. All forms are burning. The individual fire returns to the All-Fire. In the dream there was something I had to solve but the answer was just out of reach. I came in at the back door of our house in Mejiro, through the gateway. I remembered to duck but banged my head anyway. I heard Tomiko’s voice, You still haven’t learned to bow your head, and she laughed. Inside, it was the house I remembered, but at the same time it was the home in Oiso with the tree growing up through it, and yet it was also my childhood home in Leytonstone and I was walking up the stairs thinking my mother would be there. I heard her call out to me. Dear Reg, she said. Your poor head. You’ve damaged the old brain-box. It’s nothing, I said, though my head really did hurt, even in the dream. It’s nothing. And the word resonated as if with some huge significance that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. Nothing.

  I returned to consciousness, to this time and this place, here in the hospital ward. I was pressing my head with my hands and my cheeks were wet with tears.

  I can smell burning, an acrid charcoal smell like burnt toast or rubber. It comes and goes, but when it comes it is unmistakable.

  The first time I smelled it, I mentioned it to the nurse, who looked puzzled.

  Was it coming from the kitchen? Had something been charred on the stove? Was it somebody smoking in the corridor? Had some papers caught fire in a bin?

  Her confusion increased. She repeated what I had said, to make sure she understood what I was saying in Japanese. She clearly didn’t want to offend me or upset me. She nodded her head rapidly, wrinkled her nose as if sniffing the air. But no, she was sorry, there was nothing burning. She couldn’t smell a thing.

  She had obviously mentioned it to the consultant who came to see me later. He too was sorry, but for a different reason. The smell of burning, when there was none, was a symptom, a side-effect of brain tumour.

  The medical term for it is phantosmia. He pointed to the word in an English language medical dictionary. Imaginary odours. Olfactory hallucination.

  All is burning.

  And what is the all that is burning?

  All forms are burning.

  There is another radio station – the reception always loud and clear – which plays only Japanese music. Today I heard on shakuhachi and koto – flute and harp – that exquisite piece by Michio Miyagi – Haru No Umi. Spring Sea.

  Harumi, so far away.

  Have I already become, as it were, institutionalised, used to being here?

  There has been great excitement in the ward over the Olympic Games being in Tokyo. Apparently it’s the first time the Games have been televised live, all over the world, through the miracle of some new technology involving satellites. They say it is even being shown in colour in America, but the set we have here is small and ancient, and the flickering images are in black-and-white. I think I prefer it that way. Somehow it reduces the whole thing, undercuts the bombast and pageantry that remind me too much of the militarism I abhor.

  Much has been made of the fact that a huge typhoon has just swept the country, over the last few days. It kept me awake at night, the gale force, the rain hammering the windows. The nursing staff arrived quite bedraggled – battered and drenched – and had to towel dry and change their uniforms. But the storm has already been mythologised. Now that it has passed it is being seen as a cleansing wind, clearing the dust and filth from the city in readiness for the great occasion. One commentator said it was the Shinto gods showering their blessings, sweeping away the past, ushering in the future.

  Perhaps.

  Those of us who were still mobile were ushered by the nurses and orderlies, with characteristic politeness, to the patients’ lounge where the television had been set up at the far end of the room, in an alcove that could easily have held a shrine. A televison tokonoma.

  As the set warmed up the images on the screen came into focus and the sound crackled then became clear. There was a long shot of the stadium, raising a little cheer round the room. Then the patients and staff were up on their feet, standing to attention as the camera closed in on the Emperor, himself standing, a small figure in the vast crowd. He wore a simple black, three-piece suit, and with an ordinariness that was as touching as it was unsettling, he took a piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket. peered through his wire-framed reading glasses and read out his short speech, welcoming everyone and declaring the Games open.

  On one of the last occasions when I spoke to the Emperor, he surprised me by telling me of a trip he made to Europe in 1921. He surprised me even more by telling me his memories of that trip were among the happiest of his life. From a little wallet made of silk he took out a ticket and handed it to me. It was from the Paris Metro and he had kept it all these years, a memento. It occurred to me it might have been the first and last ticket he bought for himself.

  I bowed and handed it back to him, carefully, proferring it with both hands as if it were a holy relic.

  He smiled, gave a brief nod of the head.

  He said when that European trip was first proposed, the traditionalists in the government had opposed it vehemently. They said he would be exposed to corrupting Western influence. Happily, he said, the more progressive element prevailed.

  He said he had not forgotten that in the dark days after Japan’s defeat I had given him a gift, that book about the British Royal family. It had served as a reminder of his own meeting, on that trip in 1921, with King George V, and the kindness he had been shown.

  Decades later, was that a factor when the war cabinet had to decide whether or not to surrender? The Emperor had, it was said, the deciding vote, and his decision, it was said, saved the nation, and the world, from further catastrophe.

  He smiled again, put the Metro ticket back in its silk wallet, then tucked it away in his waistcoat pocket.

  In the stadium there were shots of the Japanese flag fluttering alongside the Olympic banner. A brass band struck up the national anthem and everyone in the ward started singing along, if possible standing up even straighter. I found myself joining in, hand on heart.

  Kimigayo wa

  Chiyo ni yachiyo ni…

  I knew the translation.

  May your reign continue

  for a thousand, for eight thousand generations,

  Until the pebbles grow

  into boulders lush with moss.

  We sang, the halt and the lame, as we watched these flickering images on this latter-day kamishibai screen. There was an utter unreality about it all, the passing show. But as the ceremony progressed I found myself unexpectedly moved. The one chosen to light the Olympic flame from the torch he carried into the stadium, was Yoshinori Sakai, a young man born in Hiroshima on August 6th 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped.

  For the nation to have come so far, from Hiroshima to this, in less than twenty years, was nothing short of miraculous.

  The young man ran briskly up the long steep flight of steps, light on his feet. He stood for a moment, at attention, then raised the torch to the great cauldron and lit the flame. Again the camera closed in as the fire caught and blazed.

  All forms are burning.

  By an almost unbearable irony, the coverage of the Games was interrupted by reports of China testing its first atomic bomb, in the Gobi Desert, close to the ancient Silk Road. The strength of the bomb was estimated at 22 kilotons, more powerful than the Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima. The race is on, it seems, to develop ever bigger, faster, more powerful weapons. And to what end?

  Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

  I have heard it argued that the correct translation is not death, but time. Now I am become time, the destroyer of worlds. But for Mr Oppenheimer’s purpose, for his grim rhetoric, death was the right word.

  The best words in the best order.

  Sometimes I think the Way of Haiku, the Way of Basho, can hardly be said to exist any more, and that is a testament to the stupidity, vulgarity, sentimentality and unpoeticality of human beings. At such moments I view the possibility of their total self-destruction with equanimity

  They speak of the Four-Minute Warning, saying with bland fatalism and numb resignation, that this is all the time we would have from the launching of a nuclear attack to our total annihilation.

  Some years ago there was an old nun, visiting Tokei-ji, who was introduced to me by Suzuki. I was quite taken with her – wrinkled face, gap-toothed smile, eyes sparkling with clear-eyed inquisitiveness – and she seemed equally taken with me. We were comfortable with each other, at ease, with a shared sense that the universe might in the end be some huge joke.

  I asked her what she would do in the event of such a warning. How would she spend her last few minutes on earth?

  Without a moment’s hesitation she said she would sit in zazen, enter into emptiness.

  Nothing returning to nothing.

  Mu.

  She patted my hand and smiled, her eyes, her old eyes, bright with compassion and acceptance, true and hard-earned.

  So, I asked her, where do we go when we die?

  I have no idea, she said.

  Neither do I, I said. But let’s go there together!

  She laughed and bowed, laughed and bowed.

  Don’t mourn for me now, don’t mourn for me never.

  I’m going to do nothing for ever and ever.

  Have I been following what my karma demands, or simply being a foolish old man? Or does my karma demand that I be a foolish old man?

  Long ago I came to the realisation that karma was not moral, but causal. It is not a case of punishment and reward, but the simple (or complex) unfoldment of cause and effect. Follow this course of action, and that will be the result. It follows, as the night the day.

  To thine own self be true.

  Where, then, is free will?

  Suzuki once said, when we follow our desires we are bound. When we follow the dharma we are free.

  Thine own self.

  According to Ramakrishna, everything is maya, illusion, even the name of God. But some maya leads us deeper into illusion, while some can lead beyond itself, to liberation.

  I like the sound of that, beyond its inherent paradox (in fact, because of its inherent paradox).

  I have also realised that men are good at inventing intellectual excuses for what they have done. We wish to be loved without incurring any duties or responsibilities or reciprocity.

  This is how men behave. Blyth is a man. Therefore…