I have been writing with some difficulty a serial on the fifteenth-century shogun Yoshimasa. One problem is that I must produce a manuscript every month, whether or not moved by inspiration. I would like to do the whole thing over again, this time at my own pace.

  I have had little time for reading, but every night I read a chapter or two of a novel by Trollope. I find his novels very uneven. The one I am reading now He Knew He Was Right has an extremely interesting central theme—a marriage wrecked by a jealous husband and a wife whose insistence on her independence takes a most trivial form—but the sub-plots are tedious. He probably was paid by the page. Other Trollope novels have interesting characters and sometimes the situations seem surprisingly contemporary, but he seems second-rate when compared to Dickens or to any of the great women novelists.

  [. . .]

  As ever, Donald

  Tokyo, July 7, 2002

  Dear Shirley,

  It is hard to believe that over a month has passed since I saw you last. First came the trip to Ireland and Norway with one day in Edinburgh in between. I was fortunate in Ireland because acquaintances—the man, the former Irish ambassador to Japan—saw to it that every day was filled with agreeable things to do. I was happy to have been able to meet Seamus Heaney. I had in fact met him briefly at the Academy on some occasion, but this time we had a couple of hours together. I regret now that I wasn’t able to do what you can do so effortlessly, recite my favorite poems of his. But perhaps the pervading genial atmosphere was not conducive to the recitation of his poems. I have read not only his poems but his criticism, especially “The Redress of Poetry” which I much admire.

  I visited Trinity College and was impressed by the architecture, especially the wonderful library. Dinner at High Table, however, was something of a disappointment, mainly because I was surrounded by Mechanical Engineers and the like who were desperately trying to think of something to tell me about Japan.

  Bergen is a lovely town. The houses are painted in bright colors, no doubt one way to cheer people during the long winters. The hotel was filled with Americans in wheelchairs. Some sort of conference or reunion, I suppose. It was easy to escape to the picturesque waterfront and enjoy the distant snow-covered mountains.

  This was my first visit to Edinburgh in over fifty years. In the winter of 1950, I think, I spent about a month there, taking advantage of the Christmas holiday at Cambridge. I chose Edinburgh because I had been told it was the cheapest place in Europe. It was bitterly cold, and the only heating in my room was an electric heater the size of a brick on which I rested first one hand and then the other. I managed to complete writing the revised edition of “The Japanese Discovery of Europe,” but my most pervasive memory is of the cold and of the days that did not get bright until nine but were dark again by three. I went several times to the National Gallery, and went there again this time. The collection has become incomparably richer, and I enjoyed being in an old-fashioned museum with one picture above another. I remembered from my previous visit having seen wax models of sculpture by Michelangelo. I asked about them this time, but a very friendly lady could find no record of such objects. Perhaps it was not Michelangelo. You are the only person I know who might know.

  [. . .]

  I have nothing whatever to report about Tokyo. I have given two lectures and will give more before I leave, but I have not been able to do my own work.

  All my best wishes, Donald

  Tokyo, November 12, 2002

  Dear Shirley,

  It came as a shock to me this morning to realize that we have not been in touch since August. Unless one does something to make time stop passing the months disappear, rather in the way of old-fashioned Hollywood movies in which leaves dropped from a calendar to indicate the rapid passage of time.

  My stay in Japan has been happy on the whole and even very happy in the last two or three weeks. I learned first of all that I had been named a Person of Cultural Merit, the title that sounds less silly in Japanese than in English. There was no statement informing me of why I had been chosen, but I suppose that it was because of my contributions to making Japanese culture better known abroad. This is only the second time a non-Japanese has been recognized with this decoration. To my surprise I discovered that I will receive a monthly grant for the rest of my life. The sum is modest, but it is pleasant to think that I needn’t worry about money.

  The second good thing that happened was the award made by a Japanese newspaper to my book Emperor of Japan as the best work of nonfiction published in the preceding year. This, too, was most welcome, of course.

  Last night I finished making corrections on the manuscript of my book on the creation of a new Japanese culture in the late 15th century. It will be published by Columbia University Press, presumably next year. The Japanese edition will appear in January. Today I am to meet an editor to discuss illustrations. I am always astonished by the rapidity with which the Japanese can produce a book. But, of course, they don’t have to learn all twenty-six letters of the alphabet!

  I hope that your work has progressed smoothly. Perhaps it will be completed by the time I return to New York, on the 9th of January.

  As ever, Donald

  New York, November 28, 2002

  Now 7th Dec, Pearl Harbour Day . . .

  Dear Donald—

  I’d no sooner typed the above November date than the city dropped on me—“in they broke, those people of Importance”: this, a quotation from Browning, from a marvellous poem about avocations of great artists. The particular theme in this case being a reference, in the Vita Nuova of Dante, to Dante’s having started to paint an angel, when the servant (lucky Dante) came to tell him that “persons who could not be denied” wanted to see him. Of course, the angel evaporated. [. . .] I am also working, happily and passionately, on my novel, still hoping to give it to Jonathan Galassi in late February. I don’t know whether I can do that, but it will be thereabouts.

  I realised from your most welcome letter that you have finished your book on decoration and culture in the fifteenth century. How is this possible?—you seem such a decorous man, but there must be a thunderbolt within. One would think your Emperor might have served as laurels to rest on for a year or two at least (for anyone else, a life’s work). I enclose the fine TLS review, which I’m sure you will have seen; but an extra copy never seems de trop. [. . .]

  Your autumn in Japan has been, I see, triumphant. All your admirers and friends throughout the world have known you to be a Person of Cultural Merit; but it’s delightful and heartening to learn that you’ve been so recognised formally in Japan, and that bounty is attached to the title. I have a glimmer of an idea what the ceremonies must be like in connection with such an honour, compounded—if that’s the word—by the award for best nonfiction for your Emperor. I remember that you’ve had similar recognition in Japan before. I suppose that a different culture from America’s would celebrate these distinctions at home on your behalf, and be proud. But this kind of acknowledgement tends, in America, to fall to a rock star or sportsman. I came back from Italy a month ago to attend the board meeting at the Academy, arriving a little early—on 5 November—in order to vote in the half-term elections, the polls closing early that evening. Next morning I woke to calamitous results—the entire country going to the Republicans, it seemed—and felt like bolting back to Rome. Already the victors are seizing the spoils, with drastic effects on the judiciary, the forests, the Alaska wilderness; with flagrant pay offs to Bush supporters, every evil one can think of. A “home security” bill has been pushed through, which will mean that every invasion of privacy can be inflicted on us without our right of appeal. Meantime, the obsession with making war intensifies, and the world seems to be in flames. Forgive these thoughts, which are only what we all know. The arts, the libraries and museums, the ever precarious culture of this paradoxical country—these count for nothing as far as the administration and a large part of the electorate are concerned; or there is outright hostility to them. How long and hard has been the creation of civilised institutions and private thoughtfulness, creativity, decency; and how brutally and quickly swept away in this most powerful country.

  Better things—that you will be here on 9 January. We’ll rejoice, if you’ll allow. Ida Nicolaisen comes back at the same time, with high hopes of seeing you. She was here briefly in November, and we dined together. As we walked along in the early dark to L’Absinthe, where we paused at the very spot where the three of us laughed so delightedly about your encounter on top of the Mayan pyramid; and we laughed all over again. (Do you remember that a man passing, with two or three companions, turned with a smile and said to us, “I wish I knew what it was.”)

  [. . .]

  I wish I had met Seamus Heaney when he came to the Academy—I think I was away. I admire his poetry and his writings on poetry very much, and his “persona”, which has always been without self-importance and uncompromised in intelligence and feeling. I was, in a minor way, troubled by his recent insistence that poetry can now only be important when it comes from persons and cultures which/who have suffered from, for instance, totalitarianism and persecution—eg Eastern Europe. He is greatly impressed by the Eastern European poets, who often indeed seem profound and beautiful; and says—this is trickier—that he feels confident that he understands them fully from translations. I don’t care for this concept of “significance” in poetry. Auden’s insistence that “poetry makes nothing happen” goes—though I understand his cautionary feeling and sympathise with it—too far, I feel, since one cannot guarantee that poetry makes nothing happen, ie, is never “publicly” beneficial. But I am infinitely closer to that point of view than to Heaney’s rather newly propounded one. English poetry has rarely sprung from persons publicly afflicted—where would Thomas Hardy be in a stricture of the kind, for instance? I think that Heaney would respond that our (terrifying) era calls for different qualities. Well, “our poetry” is lacking, mostly, in greatness at present. Literature, language, expression, writing itself—seemed to be deteriorating in the machine and electronic world. That doesn’t mean that nothing more can happen for the better, or that only dire experiences can inspire.

  When we were in Sweden, long ago, and hoping to go to Norway, I wanted to see Bergen, having once had a friend who came from there and who praised it. [. . .] Now I learn from you that it is a painted town, a sort of Pompeiian red and ochre and blue city. I don’t see Edinburgh following suit. The gallery has been greatly improved by the present director (Clifford) whom I know quite well (they often come to NY, raising funds from rich people . . .). He has a genius for collecting funds and for spotting “blockbuster” paintings and drawings in obscure places—and acquiring them. As to the wax models—I will ask Everett Fahy, who goes to Edinburgh regularly, and who will certainly know about anything of the Renaissance kind. (Here I am replying to your lovely letter of last July, antedating your New York trip—I found the letter only on my return to Italy, after seeing you.) My autumn stay in Italy was celestial—for the most part, radiant weather, such light, and, on Capri, such serenity. I did a lot of work, which I continue here. New York makes its demands, however, especially at this Christmas season—in which our president urges us to “buy as much as possible”, while every day the newspaper announces thousands of dismissals from factories and businesses . . . Did you see that a forthright Canadian official, a woman, called Bush an “imbecile”, and had to resign. I think I’ll send her a congratulatory post card—of which I daresay she has many.

  As to my work—you ask if it goes “smoothly”. That is not the word, though I’m so happy doing it. It draws in part on experiences from my eastern youth, which I revisit with enchantment and anguish; and has involved the rereading, after many years, of diaries and letters that wring the heart. However, such things are usually fertile in one’s work, and I hope that will be the case. And in fiction one can correct an ultimate tragedy into a suggestion, at least, of our “happy ending”. That is, set Life right, as one can’t manage to do in reality.

  This will wish you, dear Donald, a joyful Christmas and New Year, and a triumphant start to the imponderable 2003. I can’t tell you how I look forward to seeing you in a month from now. Shirley

  Tokyo, August 5, 2003

  Dear Shirley,

  I feel terribly ashamed of myself when I realize I have not written since having your welcome telephone call. There has been no real reason. My time has been chopped up into oddly shaped segments, but there was nothing to prevent myself from calling a halt to my perpetual search for mislaid things, my chief occupation, at least long enough to write a letter.

  July was rainy and delightfully cool. August has begun with a heat wave, so not as bad as the one afflicting Europe this year. I have had to go to Osaka three times and still have one more lecture there, in September. The trip, in an extremely fast and comfortable train, takes only a little over two hours, as opposed to seven and a half hours in 1955, but it is fatiguing all the same, and each year I make a futile vow not to do any more lecturing. The three lectures I gave in July were not my best, but the standard in Japan is rather low, and that makes my lectures seem better than they are. Or perhaps the standard is low everywhere; I managed to avoid attending lectures except if I know in advance they will be outstanding, like yours.

  I have not been reading much. I’m slowly but surely making my way through an 800 page history of Mexico during the last 150 years. It is actually a very good history (by a man named Krauze, not very Mexican), and I’m enjoying it, though I suppose the main reason for having reached page 605 is that I feel ashamed of having known so little about a country I have several times visited. My knowledge of Mexican history came mainly from the films—Bette Davis as the unfortunate Carlota, Paul Muni as Juarez, and Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa. My only Mexican friend, Octavio Paz, was the most remarkable man, a true cosmopolite who was at the same time very Mexican. Last year I took part in a kind of symposium here in Tokyo at which Enrico Krause, a Japanese diplomat, and myself took turns talking about Octavio. It was very moving to me and, I think, to the audience.

  Today I started writing my next book, on a nineteenth-century painter named Kazan.3 I have been reading about him for about six months without writing a word (except notes), mainly because I haven’t been able to decide the form in which the book should be cast. An even more important problem is that Kazan has been so exhaustively studied by Japanese scholars that I have searched in vain for something they have overlooked. Is it enough to present in English material already known to scholars of Japan? I haven’t made up my mind, but I know that I must give three lectures in England in November about Kazan so I am disregarding for the moment questions of form and originality. But they will return if I really go through with publishing a whole book about him.

  I suppose your book must be printed by now and possibly page proofs have been sent to reviewers. Naturally, I am excited at the prospect of this new book, especially because it will be at least in part about Japan. If you tell me the exact hour of publication I shall drink a glass of champagne to you!

  [. . .]

  As ever, Donald

  Have you heard anything recently about Bill Weaver’s condition? If he is able to read a letter I would like to write to him.

  Tokyo, September 29, 2003

  Dear Shirley,

  I returned this evening from a less than thrilling session at which a poet and I decided on who would receive a prize for a short essay in the mood of Bashō’s Narrow Road of Oku, to find a copy of The Great Fire. I opened it with excitement. It looks beautiful. You had showed me the Turner painting that would be the cover, but I had not realized quite how beautiful it would look. Congratulations on what is destined to be another wonderful gift from you to the world—and especially to me.

  [. . .]

  My time in Japan has been cut up into not altogether satisfactory segments—lectures at many places, “dialogues”, reading of entries submitted to contests (like the one today) and many meetings with people who want me to do something. I have written the three lectures I will give in England in November, my one achievement. It may be possible to judge from the reactions to the lectures whether or not I should attempt to write a whole book on the painter (19th century) I have been studying. There is certainly enough interesting material for three lectures, but perhaps that is all. In other words, I may have chosen a topic badly. I hope not!

  I’m sorry now I did not go to New York in the summer, but at that time my work seemed to be going well and I rather dreaded the two long flights. But this year I have suddenly become aware that I am eighty-one. I don’t mean that I am in failing health or that I have lost my memory. I have become conscious that there is a limit to what I can do, that the next may be my last book. I do not feel gloomy about this self-evident truth that I have managed to ignore, but I feel I must take advantage of the remaining time to see my friends as often as possible, to listen to as much music as possible, to read again the books that mean most to me.

  [. . .]

  Next week I shall give a talk to the Verdi society in Japan. Yes, there is one. I think I shall lecture on Don Carlos, not the best of Verdi’s operas perhaps, but the one I always want to see or to listen to on records.

  I hope that you are well, dear Shirley, and I look forward very much to seeing you on my return. As always, Donald

  Asuka, July 2, 2004

  Dear Shirley,

  I am now on a Japanese cruise ship that is travelling through fog on its way to Kamchatka by way of the Aleutian Islands. The fog no doubt will prevent me from experiencing nostalgia as we pass islands where, sixty-one years ago, I spent several miserable months. It is curious how well I remember things that happened, people I knew even slightly, though I probably would have difficulty remembering what I did six months ago . . .