Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People (9 page)

Thus encouraged, I did my own work on his time, trying meanwhile to guess what he wanted me there for. A large paycheck arrived every month and my sponsorship was assured—I had a three-year visa. And so, thinking I ought to do
something
, I often wandered into his office to outline large, impractical plans as he smoked one Hope after another, and I would leave ringing with reassurances of regard.

Knowing that he, a Zero fighter pilot, was fond of model airplanes, I suggested a cut-out plane or battleship series. Yes, he had thought of that but he wanted only the best and Janes would not sublicense. Guessing he liked gimmicks, I told him about a new 3-D process which might work in kiddy books. Yes, he knew about it—it was German, not perfected yet. I even descended to scratch-and-smell, where you apply the infant fingernail and inhale the apple. Yes, how clever of me to know about that, but of course I couldn't know that the Ministry of Health would never approve it for a children's book.

Unwilling to believe I was merely an expensive but useless decoration—like one of the ladies at L'Espoir—I decided that he really needed me to advise him on his own ideas, steer him away from errors of judgment. One of these ideas was to go with a photographer to Majorca and do a series of tasteful female nudes to be sold as 3-D pictures. I came down heavily against it. If it was really prestige he wanted, this was the way to lose, not gain it. He didn't want to become a pornographer now, did he?

He seemed to take all this in, nodded thoughtfully, said that it deserved some consideration, and sent me back to my desk feeling pleased that I had found a way to earn my keep. I would be an ombudsman, fearlessly telling the truth, guarding his integrity.

From then on I often went into his office with suggestions. He had earlier had a company devoted to art publications. It had gone bankrupt. This, I explained, was because he paid none of the foreign authors whose work he published and he had been consequently afraid to advertise. If he had paid them, he could have advertised the books; they would have sold, and the company would still be solvent.

Betraying his first irritation, he stubbed out his cigarette and told me that the company had been a tax shelter, designed to go under when its period of usefulness was over. Then, to lighten a suddenly heavy atmosphere, he smiled and took from his desk drawer a 3-D photo. It moved as you shifted it in your hand, and a naked lady alternately hid and revealed her charms, winking the while.

When he announced that we were going to dinner together that night to talk about this idea, I told him that I couldn't, that I was busy. For one thing, he already knew what I thought of the notion. For another, the expensive evenings out were cutting into my own time.

My idea of working hours was still very Western—nine to five and an hour off for lunch. During these hours the company could make its due demands on you, but not outside them. How different the Japanese reality was. Five o'clock came and went and not one of the secretaries hooded her typewriter. Poor Mr.Yago would not even look at the clock but sat on with his calculator till long afterward.

As resident foreigner I could leave early, but by doing so I was removing myself from that warm family spirit which pervaded a Japanese company when the "working day" was over and everyone was still there, nobody daring to make the first move out of the door. It was around then that the boss appeared, feeling expansive, telling a few jokes, inviting the chosen few out for a few beers. And even for those not chosen, the day's work was often not over. They went and got their own beer and bad-mouthed the boss.

Mr. Yago, probably feeling it diplomatic to do so, took me out one evening and told me what a tyrant the man was. Hadn't I noticed that he never began his own work until late in the afternoon to make sure everyone was still there after dark? Yago-san seemed to be trying to warn me. Warn me about my boss's character, I initially thought, but now I believe it was about my own, in the hope of making me conform a bit more, stay late once in a while, try not to break taboos—like telling the boss how to run his business. I had already all but said that the boss cheated his authors, and of course he really was cheating on his taxes. More seriously, I had disapproved of so many of his pet plans (those naughty nudes, for example). I was only an employee, even though I happened to be a privileged one.

This, I now think, the harried Mr. Yago was trying to tell me over warm beer in Roppongi. But in my idleness I was by then convinced that I had been appointed my friend Hiro's conscience, that I would somehow make him a better person, that in fact he was paying me, as he would an analyst, to do so. Not only did I heap scorn on the winking nudes and ridicule Bernard Buffet, but I proceeded to find ways to make his fairytale books more artistic, insisting we go back to the original Perrault text for the new
Sleeping Beauty
, and then suggesting we commission the expensive Maurice Sendak to do
Momotaro.
Told that Sendak was not cute enough for his market, I said that that was the problem and that was why only Africans bought the products.

I now see the man's patience as monumental, though at the time I thought him stubborn. Nor did I detect his deep disappointment in me—an investment which had turned out to be worthless. So I persevered. Became even more personal.

Really, he was smoking too much. And he worked too hard. Every hour not asleep he was in the office. All thoughts were about the publishing house and how to make it more profitable—as well as more prestigious. He took no vacations and resented any of us taking ours. This was not good for him, I said—now Dr. Richie in everything but white coat and stethoscope—just listen to that cough, just look at those black bags under his eyes.

In the meantime, as I went about my medical duties, things were changing, but so slowly that at first I did not notice. I was still attending editorial meetings, and it took some time for me to see that when I talked no one made pencil marks on their yellow-lined, legal-sized tablets. When an important meeting occurred and I was not included, I just assumed that what was being discussed had nothing to do with my department, and took the afternoon off. The boss still treated me with indulgence, even though I was told more often than before that he was rather busy at the moment; and if those awful evenings at his home had ceased, I was glad. I thought a kind of equilibrium had been reached.

The first real indication that something was wrong was that my electric pencil sharpener disappeared. One day it wasn't there, just the screw holes where it had been. I asked around, no one knew. I jokingly suggested a burglar, no one laughed.

I also noticed a coolness among the rest of the staff. Poor Mr. Yago never really had time for me now. The secretaries turned a bit curt. The cleaning lady slopped a bit around my desk and that was all.

Even then, it may not have been too late. The boss reassured me that his door was still open. Maybe it was, but in a state of pique, I left it shut. I who was being slowly ostracized—like strangulation by degrees—decided to ostracize him, to deprive him of my care and company. If he had no use for me, then I had no use for him.

After all those years in Japan, I still didn't have a clue. I may have known all about
mura hachibu
(ostracization in the village, where all they'll do is douse the roof if it's on fire), but I could not recognize it off the page. And I decided not to make the customary—indeed, obligatory—New Year's call on my superior. That would let him know of my displeasure with him.

Instead, after the holiday came word of his displeasure with me, a formal letter expressing his complaints: that I was not doing my work, that I was taking days off, that I was doing other things on company time, that I was missing company meetings. He therefore had no recourse but to fire me.

One does not fire people in Japan. But then the Japanese do not behave as I had done. From my point of view, he had read everything wrong; but, from his point of view, I had done everything wrong.

My friends—my American ones—said I should sue. But suing takes time and money, and besides I am not one of that generation of Americans that regards suing as an immediate recourse. Instead, I wrote him a letter, upholding his right to do what he did, but deploring the way in which he had done it. And, rather like a wife served with divorce papers, I wondered what had gone wrong. What had he expected me to do? What had he really wanted?

He replied announcing the terms of my severance pay—quite generous, he was a gentleman till the last—and giving me instructions on how to get unemployment compensation from the government. Perhaps he knew that if I applied I automatically lost my sponsorship, and then perhaps he didn't.

Since I never saw him again I could not ask. He continued to overwork and to oversmoke and before long he was in the Cancer Institute and in another six months he was dead. I went to the funeral, where I saw his vivacious wife and, uninterrupted, we spoke of Marie Laurencin.

I also learned for the first time that Hiro had been a Catholic. As I sat in the dark church and thought about what had happened, I still couldn't decide how much of a sinner Hiro was, how much of one I was myself.

Masako worked in the barbershop, third chair, the one in the back, the one few customers sat in since Japanese men do not like to entrust to a woman something as important as having their hair cut. The waiting bench would be full, all the comic magazines open, and Masako would be idle.

A plain girl in an apron, she would make tea, sweep the floor, see to the hot towels. Occasionally she was allowed to wash a head, a lesser occupation. After that the male barbers would again take over. Masako was paid, I would imagine, half of what the men were.

I ask for her. This pleases her: she flushes a deep and beautiful pink. The male barbers, the other customers, all swivel, then, having stared their full, decide that there is nothing unusual in a
gaijin
asking for a girl. We have both found our level since neither of us belongs to this barbershop
nakama
, this just-us-Japanese-males-together.

I have my reasons. I need not wait since her chair is forever free and I do not have to make the barber's life interesting by acknowledging his chatter, and—since women barbers always take a very long time—I can read a large chunk of whatever book I am carrying. Finally, Masako is a good barber.

She looks at my head, thinking. She has beautiful, soft, brown eyes. Her gaze is contemplative, inward. She seems to be assessing the work at hand, deciding how best to complete it. She is tentative, combs the mop this way and that, then with that small nod which signifies decision, she picks up the shears and begins to snip. I open my book.

One day, engrossed, I was surprised to hear Masako addressing me. What was I reading, she wondered. And was it English?

- No, it's French. A French novel by a woman called Colette.

She paused, scissors raised. She knew that name. Where could she have heard it? Oh, yes, in a former neighborhood, back in the country, the man down the street had had a small dog. It was called Koretto. Was my book about a dog?

- No, it's about an actress.

She shook her head and, for the first time, smiled. It was a smile that indicated that this was all beyond her, that she knew nothing of such things but that she marveled nonetheless.

I outlined the story and Masako listened, then asked: And did she really have the courage to go out into the world, just like that, all on her very own, knowing no one, having no friends, and then just get up there on the stage and do her best?

It was a very long sentence. She stood back once it had appeared, as though surprised. Then, with a small smile, a shake of the head—such dreams were not for her—she lowered her gaze and went on with my haircut.

The next time I went to the barbershop—more than a month later, since Masako cuts hair short—I carried a small paper-wrapped volume. As I had hoped, Masako remembered Colette. Had she found true happiness, she wanted to know. Well, she found this man, I began.

- No, not things like that, said Masako.

Here, for the first time, I saw impatience, willfulness—in short, character.

- I mean, she said, was she happy leading her own life on the stage?

- Well, she seemed to find it interesting.

The scissors ceased. Masako was thinking.

- I think, she said, it must have been very interesting.

When I left I gave her the book I had been carrying. In a secondhand bookshop in Kanda I had found a Japanese translation of
Mes apprentissages.
She accepted it and looked at me. The other barbers looked as well. One of them smirked and asked, as I was going out the door, who Masako's new boyfriend was. That is how I first learned her name.

She responded, as Japanese girls often do, obliquely. After New Year's I found in my mailbox, unstamped, a small parcel. It was decorated with colored ribbon and had a Snoopy card attached with her full name on it. Inside were six rice cakes brought all the way back from the northern province where she was born.

Other girls might have responded in kind, another book. But some Japanese proceed through analogy—I had given her a product of my civilization and so she now gave me one of hers.

When next I went to the barbershop I smiled to indicate both my gratitude and the fact that I was not going to embarrass her by thanking her. Neither Colette nor rice cakes were mentioned. Yet a difference had been made. She was no longer looking at my nape, my brow: she was looking at me. And her gaze was plainly thoughtful. When she had finished I, for the first time, tipped her.