[. . .]

  With all friendliest greetings from us both, and with much affection—Shirley.

  Tokyo, September 5, 1986

  Dear Shirley,

  Now it is my turn to feel ashamed of a long silence. It is not that I have let you and Francis drift out of my thoughts. I have been putting off an answer until I was able to answer your question about the place where nonmilitary enemy aliens were interned during the war. The question should be easy to answer. There are undoubtedly many people who actually had the experience and could tell me if I knew how to get in touch with them. But, believe it or not, I’m still unable to give you a clear answer. Most Japanese assume that enemy aliens were repatriated in 1942 on the first or second ship (Gripsholm, I think). I have been told that those who remained were interned in Karuizawa or Hakone, two mountain resorts. I know that Germans were in Karuizawa during the war. But they were not enemies. I bought a book by an elderly Australian named Harold S Williams called Tales of the Foreign Settlements in Japan. It is maddening: he writes as if he knew what specifically I wanted to learn and was deliberately refusing to tell me. On page 24 there is this statement: “Mr. Griffiths died during the war in the Canadian Academy Internment Camp.” Mr. Griffiths seems to have been an Australian (Williams never says). He lived in Kobe, which is where the Canadian Academy still is. I telephoned a friend who is a member of the board of directors of the academy and asked if he knew whether or not it was a place of internment for foreigners during the war, but he had never heard anything to that effect. He suggested I try the police!

  I don’t know why you need this information. Presumably you want to be accurate about some detail in the novel you are writing. I think that if you say the camp was in Karuizawa or Hakone, nobody will object (unless a survivor, who has been waiting for a chance to denounce irresponsible novelists, decides to write a letter to the Editor of the TLS). If you give Kobe, this may be a mistake, but you can blame Mr. Williams. He was born in 1898, so he probably has learned by this time how to defend himself.

  Peter Morton sent me the tapes of a series of broadcasts about Japan with which he had some connection. They are intelligently organized, and the technical problem of what to do with Japanese who do not speak English has been cleverly solved. But the series is so distorted politically that I find it painful to listen to the tapes. I imagine that the series is intended as a look at Japan from the other side, in contrast to the familiar explanations of Japan’s economic miracle, the harmony in factories, lifetime employment and so on. But the Japanese speakers are all extremely left-wing members of the new left, and some of what they say is plainly untrue. For example, we are told that the farmers are so oppressed and have such difficulty making a living from the soil that most of them must also work elsewhere in order to make ends meet. It is true that there are now only some 100,000 Japanese who make a living exclusively from agriculture, but this is because the use of farm machinery has drastically reduced the number of hours they must work on the land, and enabled them to augment their already considerable incomes by taking other jobs. Most farmers now consider themselves middle-class, and many have been to Europe. The prostitutes in Copenhagen are said to know one Japanese word, “Nōkyō”, the abbreviation of “Farmers’ Union”; they greet Japanese with this word, assuming that they are members of the union! Anyway, this makes it very difficult for me to thank Peter Morton, whom I liked very much when we met.

  I have written to the professor of Japanese in Naples saying that I would like to teach there in the spring of 1988. I don’t expect an answer for some time, considering how long it is likely for anything official to be arranged, but I have formally requested permission from Columbia Univ to be on leave during that spring. This coming spring is not possible because colleagues are on leave, and I would prefer to have my stay in Naples and environs during the spring, when there is much music, rather than in the autumn.

  To answer your question: I have not seen any expression of Japanese interest in the Waldheim case, though I might easily have missed articles in the serious magazines. The Japanese tend to be unreservedly in favor of anything international, at least in principle, perhaps by way of reaction to wartime nationalism. Please do ask any questions you may have about Japan, but my knowledge of the immediate post war situation is second-hand. All my best to you and Francis. Yours Donald

  Postcard, Naples, September 20, 1986

  Dear Donald—

  Your letter of 5 September just reached me, brought here by Francis from NY—he arrived yesterday—and I send an interim quick word to thank you. I was just going to write you, in case you’d not been well. Thank you, you’ve answered my Japanese internment question—it’s all I need. Yes, of course, that survivor who has been waiting his opportunity forty years will certainly pounce. Good news, great news, that you’ve requested a spell of teaching at Naples in 88 (a year when I’ve been asked to go to Australia for the bicentennial—probably in August if I accept). I hope indeed you will write to Peter Morton what you’ve written me about those tapes—how otherwise will he know the truth?—he is a “liberal” (small l), but very objective and not at all in favour of distorting the political reality for a particular end. He really must be told about the nature of these broadcasts . . .

  Radiant days here—& in Capri—tonight we are the only people not going to hear Bernstein conduct at Pompeii—all affection from us both—Shirley.

  Tokyo, October 17, 1986

  Dear Shirley,

  Thank you for your card with the picture of the Marina Grande. It brought back fond memories of Capri. I have trouble remembering where you are, especially now that there are three places where you might be. I hope that this letter is being sent to the right place.

  I wrote Peter Morton, as you suggested. I realized that it is difficult for me to accept the views of certain Japanese, though I might accept them if voiced by people of some other nationality. When I was first living in Japan in the 1950s there was a strong anti-American bias to almost everything written in intellectual magazines. Some of the accusations were in fact quite correct. I had myself had more than once made up my mind not to return to America. (I was teaching at Cambridge until just before I went to Japan.) The McCarthy era deserved to be attacked. But there was always the fear on my part that if the anti-American writers had their way all Americans, including myself of course, would have to leave the country and never return. Examined objectively, there was little reason for me to be so alarmed. The mass of the Japanese people was not anti-American, those writers who seemed most hostile probably did not have in mind forcible ejection of all Americans. But the thought that I might not be able to return was so painful that every sign of hostility frightened me. I suppose that something of this fear still lingers, so even the intellectuals today have been so disillusioned with respect to the USSR and China that there is no longer a model to adopt in place of America. Probably the greatest danger now, even to me personally, is not from the far left but from the right. The recent utterances of Nakasone and members of his cabinet and especially the revival of official worship at the Yasukuni Shrine seem to signal a new nationalism. So far, this nationalism is not directed against any country, but is content with insisting on the uniqueness and superiority of Japanese civilization. I remember the things I read during the war; there is much repetition. But, on the other hand, when I heard on Peter Morton’s tapes the same kind of utterances I used to hear in the 1950s and early 1960s I felt the same pain I did at that time.

  [. . .]

  Today is the first of autumnal weather. I’m flying tonight to a town in northern Japan where there may even be snow. Ugh. I have become much in demand as a speaker, and though I refuse whenever I can, I seem somehow to accept even more. This whole month will be frittered away in lectures. I will end up with a lot of money, but the only thing I really want to buy is time, and that is precisely what I am squandering.

  I trust that all goes well with you and Francis. When will you be back in New York? I hope you will be there in January when I return. Yours, Donald

  Capri, November 4, 1986

  Dear Donald—

  Thank you so much for yr letter of 17 Oct, which just reached us in Capri. [. . .] This autumn in Italy has been the most radiant such season I recall since the autumn of 1969, which gave us—we were then in Tuscany—just these same warm and golden days. Until the thunderstorms of the last 48 hours, we have not only lunched but dined outdoors almost every day, and worn summer clothes. The Capresi are still swimming—their only chance, as they are too busy in the summer; the winter is only signalled by the very early dark, and by the blessedly bleak piazza and closed shops and hotels.

  I’m glad you wrote to Peter Morton. But, in your present letter, you make—I think—quite different points about his broadcast from before, and I realise that anti-Americanism was one of its themes. Previously you’d written about the distortions of the changes in agricultural communities in Japan. As to anti-Americanism, I don’t know what to say. I have many thoughts about this and its role in world terror. There is of course an entity named America, and its government is—I believe—behaving in a calamitous and tyrannical way to nations that do not give servile assent to its demands. We perhaps never thought to see this. It is not only the savagery against Viet Nam or Central America, or the maintaining in power of brutal regimes like that of the colonels in Greece, or Argentina, of Pinochet, or of Marcos until they fall of their own corruption. It is the rage against, say, New Zealand for taking a stand on principle; or against Aquino for not putting “communists” to fire and sword. I hardly think all this can be condemned enough, and most Americans we know (who are so small a fraction of “the American people”, but who are in positions to be heard and perhaps to influence events at times) do so vehemently on their own ground. As soon as they go abroad, this seems to fall to pieces; they remember not only the better aspects of their nation, but forget what harm is being done. They also, more reasonably, resent the offensiveness—which, in a country like Australia is often a personal animosity disguised, thinly, as concern for world politics—with which criticisms are directed at themselves as representatives of such a country; and, underneath, I think, there is a sense that many many people are getting even if unconsciously a lot of mileage out of “hating” America; just as people who say they “hate Germans” have often merely found an object at which to direct meaningless hatred that is in themselves. None of this changes the fact that “America” has invited hatred and criticism. My own feeling is that there is no hope for a change in world hostility until there is some realisation around the globe that there are people in every country who are generally speaking merely trapped in the fact of being born into one nationality or another; and who feel kinship with all signs of reason and pity around the world, before all else. Whose nationality, that is, is incidental to them; or minor in comparison with being a member of the human race. Many people would claim to subscribe to this idea, I believe; but rarely does one find it genuinely put into practice.

  Even I have been able to see these signals of Japanese nationalism, from my small reading in such matters. Nationalism—tribalism—is on the rise around the globe in a frightening and swift spiral. Italy remains clear of it so far, and Naples would laugh at the idea. This is in part, as Lily once said to me, because someone tried to generate it here recently with such appalling results: “Abbiamo avuto una tale indigestione . . .”10

  [. . .]

  We felt so much your remarks about lecturing, and time. “What I really want to buy is time”, you say. Yes, not only time to write, but time for the state of mind and thought; time for prolonged and habitual silences.

  [. . .]

  On the 14th we go to Venice for a few days. On about 23 Nov to NYC. Of course we’ll be looking for news of your January return, and hoping for word meantime. With much affection as ever—Shirley.

  Tokyo, November 25, 1986

  Dear Shirley,

  Thank you very much for your letter of 4 November. It made me want to answer immediately, but I restrained myself, remembering that you have other things to do besides correspond with me.

  [. . .]

  I had a very nice letter from Peter Morton saying that my letter had been discussed by the people directly responsible for preparing the program that I had so disliked. I misled you in suggesting it was anti-American. Or if it was anti-American and nothing more it wouldn’t have bothered me at this stage. No, the program was neither anti-American nor pro-Soviet nor anything of that kind. The Japanese left has become disillusioned with its former idols and now contents itself mainly with attacking Japan. There is certainly much that is wrong in this country, as I suppose in any country; but what offended me was not attacking but falsification. I gave the instance of agriculture because it is easiest to demonstrate that it is factually wrong. But when it pictures all Japanese unions as being in the pay of the employers, it is harder to show that this is not the case. And when they take up something which is true, but magnify it to such proportions that it ceases to be true, it is even harder to draw the line between permissible exaggeration for the sake of rhetorical effectiveness and outright lying. It is quite true, for example, that there is a class which still is subject to discrimination. Nobody knows why this is so, but it has been true for centuries. It disgusted me when I learned of it. But it is wrong to insist on this without making it clear that the amount and kind of discrimination have been enormously reduced in recent years. Probably a large part of the Japanese population is now unaware even of the existence of the problem. But the broadcast made it seem as if the worst of Nazi racism was being practiced in Japan.

  I agree with you, of course. The fact of having been born in a particular country should have no more effect on one’s attitudes than of having been born in a particular city. No one would persecute or defame another person just because of the city he was born in. I wrote an article for a Japanese magazine in which I said the only hope for mankind was rootless cosmopolitanism, choosing the term Hitler had used.11 A book of essays in Japanese will be published in January with a title something like “Living in Two Motherlands”. I hope that startles people.

  Yesterday I had bad news. The professor in Naples who had invited me to teach at his university dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 41. Incredible. I don’t think he had been ill previously; must have been very sudden. I did not know him well, but we had a delightful half-day together in Rome. I assume that this means that I shall not be invited to Naples, but the friend who informed me of this sad event is now waiting for word as to whether or not he has been appointed a professor of Japanese art at the University of Genoa. He intends to invite me there if he is. Of course, it would not be impossible to go to Italy quite unaided, and I would like to do so in 1988 when I shall be taking leave from Columbia. But I must think of some way of manifesting myself only when you and Francis have nothing else to do. I fear that I have taken up too much precious time. Perhaps Francis has run across a 17th century abbé who was fascinated by Japan. Unlikely. Anyway, if you refuse to surround yourself with defensive works I shall have to build them for you, allowing you to come out only when I am quite sure that you really need a rest from your labors.

  [. . .] I am reading now a big book called The Last Prima Donnas by a man called Rasponi. I was startled when reading the chapter on Ebe Stignali, the great mezzosoprano of the postwar years, to discover she had been trained at the Conservatory of San Pietro di Maiella, as had Maria Caniglia, another singer I remember. No doubt there is such a Conservatory, but my impression of the church was that its peace and quiet was rarely disturbed by singers or pianists practicing scales.

  I expect to be back in New York sometime after the tenth of January. I am delighted that you and Francis will be there.

  Yours, Donald

  Card, New York, December 1, 1986

  Dear Donald—

  Your extremely welcome letter just came, and—showing none of the thoughtful restraint you yourself display regarding immediate correspondence, I send you my first Christmas message of the year, perhaps not inappropriately inscribed on the reverse of the Pantheon. [. . .]

  How shocking, the death of your colleague at Naples. What moments these are, when one realises the fragility of the thread—then one goes on as if Damocles had no part in one’s day. Please let us know what results at Genova—and how interesting that there should be a department of Japanese art there. Yesterday I had a call from our friend Peter Morton—about an invitation to me to visit Australia in 1988 (their bicentennial year). I simply cannot commit myself to this generous idea at present, as I’m in a panic about my time lost, this year, on my ms, and we’ll talk again about it in the new year. [. . .]

  You will have seen what’s going on in the USA—I suppose this Iranian affair is one of a thousand such shockers the Reagan administration has in hand. Even if Reagan were disgraced over it, on the analogy of Nixon, the public appears to learn nothing, merely going on to elect the next patent imbecile or malefactor.

  I think we went together into the music conservatory?—It is next door to that great Church of San Pietro a Maiella—a huge series of cloisters, the religious establishment long since transformed into a musical one. Do you not recall an anguished seated statue of Beethoven in the first cloister, peering out from a scaffolding of repairs? Lanfranco Rasponi (who may, I think, have died a couple of years ago) is a curious case—a man who truly loved opera and knew much, but a person made absurd in company by his preposterous snobbery and talk of his lineal descent, his palazzi, etc . . . San P. a Maiella is the centre of musical training & scholarship at Naples—there is also a delightful museum there of musical instruments.

  Just back—severely culturally shocked and appalled by the cold, but having some nice times with friends. So much to think about from our Italian months—we had a most beautiful week in Venice in mid-November. More of all this when we meet in mid-January. We’re greatly looking forward to that reunion—with best affection, and our greatest greetings for Christmas and this new year—Shirley