Jubilee Hitchhiker (190 page)

The June 6 evening edition of
Asahi Shimbun
published Shuntarō Tanikawa's translation of “Night Flowing River” (Yoru ni nagareru kawa) on page 5. Brautigan sent a copy to Jim Sakata in San Francisco, along with a request to help him work out a deal for a one-way ticket back from Japan. When Sakata wrote back to Richard, he promised to get the best possible price on China Airlines. Jim concluded with the news that Tony Dingman had just left for New York to work on Coppola's production of
The Cotton Club.

On the eighth of June, Richard had lunch with Donald Richie, a noted expatriate author described by Tom Wolfe as “the Lafcadio Hearn of our time.” Ten years older than Brautigan, Richie had lived in Tokyo since 1947, returning to the States only occasionally over the years. Fluent in Japanese, he had published fourteen books by the time he met Richard Brautigan, including two classic works on Japanese cinema, treatises on the film work of George Stevens and Yasujirō Ozu, along with studies of ikebana (the art of floral arrangement) and
The Japanese Tattoo.

They drank sangria and ate seafood soup. With his love of the movies and all things Japanese, Richard was fascinated by this erudite polymath. Their conversation focused on literature. Learning Brautigan had been in Paris six weeks earlier, Richie discussed French writers. Both men esteemed the work of André Gide, talking at length about
The Immoralist
. Richie mentioned a recent translation of
Corydon
, a series of Socratic dialogues on homosexuality published earlier that year, saying they “offered new insights into that admirable novel.” Shortly after winning the Nobel Prize and just before his death, Gide had called
Corydon
the most important of his books. The next day Richie sent Brautigan a polite letter of thanks signed “Donald,” along with a copy of Richard Howard's new translation of
Corydon
.

Early in June, after the attorney mailed a current financial report, Brautigan wrote back to Joe Swindlehurst. Richard worried about past-due rent owed on one of his Livingston properties, amounting to a couple hundred dollars at best. He also wondered about a plan to rent his Montana “ranch,” guessing “nothing has happened.” Brautigan asked Swindlehurst to send a monthly $115 payment to Army Street Mini-Storage in Frisco. “Japan continues to be Japan and I'm getting a lot done here,” he concluded, adding a mention of his upcoming lectures in Osaka and Kyoto.

Richard's “lectures,” consisting mainly of questions from the audience and his answers, were called “A Conversation with Richard Brautigan.” He traveled down to Kyoto on June 20, appearing at Doshita University, and continued on to Osaka the next day. Brautigan was not happy with his performances, sensing in advance that they weren't going to go well. “Sometimes one cannot always be on,” he observed. “I did the best I could.” Almost all the questions from the audience concerned his early work, written two decades before. Richard hadn't read the stuff himself in years. He floundered. The audiences in Kyoto and Osaka knew more about his books than he did. “I'm not interested in reading my own writing once it's done,” was his candid assessment. “I was sort of bored.”

Brautigan was back in Tokyo on June 22. His lectures had been recorded. Richard planned to listen to the tapes and see if he was right about his lackluster performance. He probably never did, not being fond of revisiting past work. The day after his return to the city, Brautigan typed a letter to Helen Brann in his hotel room, pressing her to organize his foreign contracts and send copies to Joel Shawn. “There seems to be some confusion among subagents about your still representing my work,” he wrote. “For instance, Mohrbooks agency in Zurich still thinks you are acting as the agent for my books that have been published so far, and Tom Mori here in Tokyo has never heard directly from you about our parting.” Richard wanted “the subagents to be aware of our new situation.”

Brautigan didn't understand he was the one who was confused. All commissions for the deals Brann had negotiated for him continued to be paid to her agency and remained part of their ongoing mutual business. This included all of Richard's books that were still in print. Only
An Unfortunate Woman
and any future work would become the responsibility of Joel Shawn. Helen had explained all this to Brautigan when she sent him the Greek
Trout Fishing
contract a month earlier. As usual, Richard interpreted events to suit himself.

A more pressing problem confronted Brautigan. He feared his teeth were falling out. He had not had a proper dental cleaning in quite a while. Every time he brushed his teeth, his gums started bleeding. Richard became preoccupied with aging. When he wrote about his relationship with Masako, he said he was fifty years old, adding a year and a half to his actual age. Brautigan's worries had a lot to do with Kano. As a proper, traditional Japanese woman, at twenty-six going on twenty-seven, Masako was supposed to be married. In bed with his Ninji, Richard didn't “feel 50 years old.” Brautigan once discussed with Greg Keeler “the question of whether or not to marry Masako and have a hit squad of Japanese-American kids.” Putting fantasy aside, he knew this was an impossible dream.

To distract himself, Richard “followed so many different drummers into the glories of the abyss.” It rained all through June. “Not a pleasant month [. . .] either too cold or too mucky.” Brautigan distracted himself with “a couple brief love affairs that led to nowhere” and watching “a lot of stupid television.” He couldn't sleep and felt “tired all the time.” Richard knew Masako wanted a permanent place in his life that he was “not willing or able to give her.” Brautigan daydreamed about this possibility and found himself “drowning in ambiguity, temptation and collapsing fate.”

The cold rainy Tokyo spring burst at last into full-blown glorious summer. Richard and Masako took full advantage of the good weather, heading out for sunny adventures like lovers the world over. One afternoon they went to visit the Hanazono-Jinja, an early Edo-period shrine just west of Shinjuku's Golden Triangle. Prayers offered at the shrine supposedly brought prosperity in business.
It's more likely Brautigan sought absolution in his favorite tiny bar, Shinya + 1 (Midnight + 1), hidden on a narrow cobbled lane in the Golden Gai.

Named for
Midnight Plus One
, the 1965 British thriller by Gavin Lyall, the cramped little taproom was decorated with model war planes, tattered movie posters and assorted memorabilia. Chin Naito, a 43-year-old actor, writer and comedian, whose work appeared in Japanese
Playboy
, owned Midnight + 1 which served only cold beer and bourtbon. Richard liked sitting at one of the seven stools crowding the dilapidated bar, getting drunk on whiskey while scrawling poetry on cocktail napkins. Naito sealed his friendship with Brautigan late one night at the end of May by giving him a signed copy of
Yomazunishineruka!
(Can't Die Before I Read [Those Books]!), an anthology of his
Playboy
essays, adding a manga-styled personal caricature to the inscription.

Masako and Richard both enjoyed people watching, finding “a lot of tiny incidents” to amuse themselves while wandering the streets of central Tokyo. They always discovered “something funny” to look at. Kano later acknowledged that others “probably did not get [the joke].” Searching for a larger comedic public stage, Richard and Masako found their way one afternoon to Shinjuku Gyoen, at 150 acres one of the largest public gardens in Tokyo. Formerly the Edo-period estate of the Naitō daimyō family, the gardens were only opened to the public after World War II. The lovers enjoyed observing “young people practicing mountaineering” on a climbing wall and the antics of a foreign mime (“perhaps a drug addict”) performing and begging around family groups cooking rice in the park for their alfresco meals.

Enchanted by the notion of a similar picnic, Richard and Masako returned to Shinjuku Gyoen, planning on cooking a meal of their own. They brought vacuum pouches of curry paste, two hundred grams of Japanese rice, and her brother's aluminum cooker and camping stove. Just as Brautigan lit the fire, they were spotted by a park security guard, who “chased [them] down to the gate.” They planned to try again on a rainy day, when the guard would be off-duty. Richard said he'd borrow a large umbrella from Takako. Like so many well-intentioned schemes, it went astray and they never came back to the park.

In mid-June, Brautigan gave a reading at the Tokyo American Center (“Literature as a Living Process”), followed by an informal reception. Around the same time, Richard and Masako traveled by train out to Kichijoji, a suburb of Mitaka City, itself part of greater Tokyo. Their destination was Inokashira Park, famous for its cherry blossoms. The park and its extensive walking paths surrounded a small lake, where paddleboats, some shaped like swans, were available for rent. Brautigan took Kano for a leisurely cruise around the pond, perhaps not knowing this was a famous way to tell your lover of an impending breakup.

A longer weekend train trip took Richard and Masako to Azumino in the Nagano Prefecture. Situated between the Hido and Kiso ranges of the Japanese Alps, this tranquil mountain plain provided an Asian echo of Montana. Brautigan wanted to go to Ajiro on the Izu Peninsula, where he'd previously spent time with Takako Shiina. Kano vetoed that plan. She insisted they go somewhere “farther away from Tokyo.” Azumino was “smaller and quieter.” To fortify himself against the unfamiliar, Richard drank beer all the way down on the train. Nevertheless, he “liked the place,” Masako recalled, delighted by the crystalline blue sky framing the snowcapped mountains.

The best time Brautigan and Kano shared together that summer started with a search for the perfect soup. On a Friday late in June, they went to Harajuku, a district northwest of Roppongi centered around the Tōgō Jinja Shrine, looking for Eiichi Yamaguchi, the “soup king.” Richard
and Masako found the modest restaurant and indulged in bowls of his wondrous concoctions while discussing Stephen Hawking's black hole theory. Brautigan wrote two poems about soup before they left. The first, “If Spring Were a Bowl of Soup,” he signed, “Wishing Mr. Yamaguchi a beautiful spring.” “Cucumber Paradise,” the second poem, began by listing various vegetables, meats, and seafood, concluding, “ingredients but a dream, it is the cook that makes / the soup.” Before they left, the soup master gave them each a copy of his soup recipe cookbook.

Around seven in the evening, Richard and Masako set off on a hastily planned adventure, traveling by the Keio Line and later by bus out to Tama City on the outskirts of Tokyo. On the trip they talked about Yamaguchi San and his dedication to soup. Brautigan explained how Mr. Yamaguchi had been a chef at the embassy. As a joke, Kano teased him about writing two poems for the soup master while he'd never written a single line for her.

Richard and Masako's destination was Tama Dōbutsukōen, a 128.5-acre zoological park at the foot of Mount Takao. When it had opened in 1958, as a branch of the much smaller Uneo Zoo near central Tokyo, Tama was intended to display wild animals in a more natural setting, running free behind moats separating them from the spectators. Brautigan had wanted to go to the more local zoo in Uneo Park, but it was much too small for what they planned.

Tama Zoo closed to the general public at 5:00 pm. Richard and Masako arrived sometime after eight. They came prepared for their clandestine expedition with a flashlight. Giggling with exhilaration, they climbed the chain-link fence near the entrance some distance from the
kosha
(guard building). The two lovers felt like mischievous children. Kano went first. Brautigan boosted her up, and her tiny feet fit easily into the wire mesh. Richard followed, climbing without too much effort. Masako worried his weight might “shake down” the gate.

Laughing all the while, they ran into the darkness. Brautigan didn't want to follow the well-lit path toward the lion park. Like kids playing hide-and-seek, “pretending to hide behind the bushes,” they made it to the insectarium, where bugs and butterflies of every exotic sort were housed. Along the way, they stopped to buy juice from a coin-operated machine but found they had spent all their pocket change on the bus. The insectarium was locked. Richard and Masako sat on a bench outside, staring up at the stars and constellations spangling the blue-black sky overhead. In the distance, they heard the flapping wings of hawks and eagles flying under the giant dome of the raptor enclosure.

Stargazing brought poetry to mind. Kano had always liked the “sky and star images” in Brautigan's poems. Richard pulled out his pocket notebook. He asked Masako to hold the flashlight while he wrote. When he finished, Brautigan tore out the page and handed it to her.

Kano read the poem over and over, learning it by heart on the spot. Brautigan took it back and signed the page, returning it to Masako. “You keep this,” Richard said in a distant voice, the Puma nodding like a mountain cat, “and you will make a lot of money someday.”

Masako was furious. She tore the poem into pieces and recited it back to Brautigan from memory. “Now, this poem is only for me,” she said. “Nobody else. This is only for me to remember.”

In truth, Masako saved the torn pieces, throwing them away only after she returned home that night and typed a copy of the poem. She had no interest in selling it. Richard's words were private. Masako kept them in her heart ever after. He told her that the “thing bird” was meant to be her, evoked by the flapping wings of a falcon in the distant darkness. “A beautiful poem,” Kano recalled. “Perhaps a hint of sadness.” She could not imagine how preoccupied her beloved Puma had become with thoughts of his own impending death.