Please Enjoy Your Happiness (36 page)

10
 Translated for this book by Carmen Barnard Baca. ‘This is the opposite of waiting for the dawning light of love,’ Carmen notes. ‘It’s waiting for the glow of that light of love, after it has gone over the mountains.’

Acknowledgements

Many friends helped me throughout 2013 and 2014 with the writing and also refreshed my memories of Japan in 1959. Thank you to my sister Mary Finke and my friend Kimberly Rice for reading each chapter diligently and making important suggestions. Thanks to Zona Tropical natural history publisher John McCuen in San José, Costa Rica, who spent one year in Japan himself, for endorsing my idea for the book one morning in his office in April 2013. Thank you to my agent, Michael V. Carlisle of InkWell Management in New York City, for a phone call that startled me one day and for his guidance thereafter, and to Carole Tonkinson, publisher of Pan Macmillan’s Bluebird imprint in London, for insightful editing and encouragement. Special thanks to Ogawa Wakako in Tokyo, my classmate at Columbia University, for attempting to track Kaji Yukiko and for sending films and books that helped me remember Japan circa 1959, and also for her translation of the lyrics to ‘Ringo oiwake’ [‘Apple Folksong’]. Hearty thanks to Patricia Trumps in Florida for excellent editing suggestions and for her enthusiastic support. Special thanks also to writer Emily Benedek in New York City for the generous amount of time she spent reading the manuscript and for the idea of going to YouTube to listen to music mentioned in the book. Thanks to two California author friends: Geoffrey Dunn in Santa Cruz, for his wizardry;
and the late Larry Engelmann of San José, author of
Daughter of China
, and Linda Lee, for their hospitality. Like me, Larry had a habit of recording much of what he saw and thought about in notebooks. Thank you very much to Amy K. Hughes of New York City, who edited a late version of the manuscript in September 2014. Thank you also to Pan Macmillan staff members James Annal, Anna Bowen, Claire Gatzen, and Olivia Morris for their talents and care.

Thanks to former Yokosuka nightclub hostesses Fujiwara Mie and Koreyama Hanako in California for their vivid memories of 1959. Thank you to Michael W. Donnelly who served with me in Yokosuka and who later became a political science professor specializing in Japan at the University of Toronto, for commenting on Yuki’s letters. Thanks also to Roger Goodman, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies at Oxford University, for his encouragement after reading the manuscript on a long flight to Asia. Thanks to Christopher Bauschka in California, son of Mieko Nishii Bauschka and the late US Navy Captain Patrick F. Bauschka, for an email I quote in the book. Thank you to my old friend Shawn Hubler in Los Angeles for giving the book a sensitive reading in the month I completed writing the story. Thanks to Janelle Rossignol of Phoenix, an authority on kabuki, for helpful comments on the story.

A big thank you to avant-garde composer Cedric Lerouley in Paris, France, who is an
enka
fan, for mailing vintage LPs recorded by torch singer Matsuo Kazuko and also by Misora Hibari. Thank you to ‘Muppet’ of Oldskool Japanese Music Thread (1920s–1980s) at forum. jhip.com for the translation of ‘Dare yori mo, kimi wo aisu’ [‘More Than Anyone Else, I Love You’]. Thanks to writer Linda Style and screenwriter Marvin
Kupfer (who, like me, is a former
Newsweek
correspondent), both of metro Phoenix, for important critiquing and advice given at crucial moments. Thank you to Ryan Seki of Phoenix for help with translations of book, film, and music titles, and to Vivian Seki for detecting errors. Thanks also to the remarkable Mehta family of Phoenix – Ajay, Momoe, and Sumi – for their comments and encouragement, and to Barbara Urso in Illinois who every January celebrates a special happiness. Thanks also to Phoenix residents Bob Golfen of classiccars.com and Ed Bergman of cruising66.com, and to San Diego resident Eduardo Aenlle MD; all of whom understood why I wrote the book and my obsession in old age for Alfa Romeos.

My thanks to writer Miguel Ongpin and to Lila Shahani in Manila, Philippines, for their thoughts. Thanks also to Chris Burnside in Crown Point, New Mexico, for giving me the Navajo point of view on love affairs.

Thanks to two dynamic Mexicanas. The first is writer and bolero singer Carmen Barnard Baca in California, who visited Japan in her youth, for identifying so passionately with Yukiko and for translating Mexican composer Agustín Lara’s lyrics to his ‘Sombra de mis sombras’ [‘Echoes of my Shadows’]. The second is editor and music lover Elvira Espinoza in Phoenix, who said that the lyrics of ‘Tango Uno’ from 1943 could well have been written for Yukiko, ‘who loved you in her own way inside her own very small and private soul’.

Thank you to photographer James Caccavo of Los Angeles, who worked with me during the Vietnam War, for reading the manuscript and immediately understanding everything. Thanks also to the grizzled denizens of the Blue Marlin Bar (Arnold and Dexter especially) in Costa Rica and to my neighbour, Mrs
Gloria Loeser, for their encouragement, and for frequently feeding me and offering wine and liquor when I neglected to provide for myself.

Thank you to the many scores of Japanese –
mizushobai mamasan
s, salarymen, bar hostesses, cops, and gangsters big and small – who listened with interest, and often with tears, when I first started telling bits and pieces of this story in small sake bars across Japan during the 1960s and 1970s. Thanks to the gracious residents of Hong Kong, especially Paul Feng, who befriended me in 1959.

Finally, thank you to Kaji Yukiko, wherever you are, for writing the letters more than fifty years ago that appear in this book. I changed your name. But if you read your letters again you will know that almost everything you predicted came true. I would enjoy so much having coffee with you again at the Mozart café.

Music and Film References

Chapters 1
,
20
,
22
Maria Callas sings ‘Un Bel Dì’ [‘One Fine Day’] from Puccini’s
Madama Butterfly
: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=AR0SlCTj1Bo

Chapters 3
,
6
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, ‘Ode to Joy’: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=XFX8S9aAgvw

Chapters 3
,
5
,
14
George Gershwin,
Rhapsody in Blue
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFHdRkeEnpM

Chapter 3
Matsuo Kazuko and Wada Hiroshi sing ‘Dare yori mo, kimi wo aisu’ [‘More Than Anyone Else, I Love You’]: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=BOt91HjOtIE

Chapter 4
The Genies sing ‘Who’s That Knocking?’: http://www.youtube.comwatch?v=SX1RbXhvFIA&list=RDY3Wgs KEDg5Q

Chapters 4
,
8
Eric Satie,
Vexations
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBhjGIdL5cM

Chapters 4
,
8
Eric Satie, three
Gymnopédies
and six
Gnossiennes
: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=dtLHiou7anE

Chapters 4
,
22
Misora Hibari sings ‘Ringo oiwake’ [‘Apple Folksong’]: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=U9D0sDgY2eU

Chapter 4
Matsuo Kazuko sings ‘Again’ in English: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=7xrJsjJrEwI

Chapter 4
Puccini,
La Bohème
, ‘Si, Mi Chiamano Mimi’ [‘Yes, They Call Me Mimi’]: http://www.youtube.com watch?v=6tFGGPY1AEs

Chapter 5
Fats Domino sings ‘Whole Lotta Loving’: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=nOONKeST1DM

Chapter 8
Yamaguchi Momoe sings ‘Hitonatsu no keiken’ [‘Experiences of Summer Youth’]: http://kayokyokuplus.blogspot.com/2013/03/­momoe-yamaguchi-hito-natsu-no-keiken.html

Chapters 8
,
19
‘Ginza kan-kan musume’ [‘Ginza Street Girl’] on 78-rpm record: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=GNfdH9nockE

Chapter 11
Franz Schubert, Impromptus Opus 90: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=QDVJkxGz_Tc

Chapter 12
Kurosawa Akira, trailer for the film
Rashomon
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCZ9TguVOIA

Chapter 14
Trailer for the film
Sands of Iwo Jima
: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=NZoRnZ6Jw0w

Chapter 14
Final scenes of Imai Tadashi’s film
Himeyuri no t
ō
[
Tower of Lilies
]: https://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=Vhg_SBGKgz8

Chapters 15
,
16
Trailer for the film
The World of Suzie Wong
: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=jnepiAcqb_g

Chapter 17
Billie Holiday sings ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=6P96s6bIeQk

Chapter 18
Frank Sinatra sings ‘All My Tomorrows’: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=WNz1DI0ph0s

Chapters 18
,
21
Claude Debussy,
Nocturnes
: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=AtL_enacFn8

Chapters 18
,
21
Claude Debussy,
La Mer
: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=FOCucJw7iT8

Chapter 19
Kurosawa Akira’s film
Shubun
[
Scandal
]: https://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=-sVVaPCP6lc

Chapter 19
Misora Hibari sings ‘Shina no yoru’ [‘China Night’]: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=63mZal2YNO0

Chapter 19
Kokyu
recital of ‘Stairway to Heaven’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDXyjUVl2ak

Chapter 20
Yves Montand sings ‘Barbara’: https://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=AW8kS7zjpyU

Chapter 21
Libertad Lamarque sings ‘Tango Uno’: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=3JZwXiwSIjY

Chapter 23
‘Itsuki no komoriuta’ [‘Lullaby of Itsuki’]: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=PrKESru3550

Chapter 24
Agustín Lara’s ‘Sombra de mis sombras’ [‘Echoes of My Shadows’]: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=die006Q0rQ

Chapter 24
Lena Horne sings ‘Where or When’: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=FnRSM3dLSTk

Chapter 25
Billie Holiday sings ‘I’ll be Seeing You’: http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=zDlKb2cBAqU

Selected Readings, Films, and Music

Books and Magazine Articles

Adelstein, Jake.
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
. New York: Vintage Books, 2009.

Allen, Louis.
The End of the War in Asia
. London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1976.

Anderson, Joseph L., and Donald Richie.
The Japanese Film: Art and Industry
. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1959.

Bacon, Francis.
On the Interpretation of Nature
. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2010.

Bash
ō
, Matsu
ō
.
A Haiku Journey: Narrow Road to a Far Province
. Translated from the Japanese by Dorothy Britton. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1980.

Bash
ō
, Matsuo.
The Essential Bash
ō
. Translated from the Japanese by Sam Hamill. Boston: Shambhala, 1999.

Baumgardner, Randy W. (ed.).
USS Shangri-La CV/CVA/CVS-38
. Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Co., 2002.

Benedict, Ruth.
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture
. New York: World Publishing Company, 1967.

Bernardi, Daniel (ed.).
Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness
. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

Borges, Jorge Luis.
A Personal Anthology
. Translated from the Spanish by Anthony Kerrigan. New York: Grove Press, 1994.

Bornoff, Nicholas.
Pink Samurai: Love, Marriage and Sex in Contemporary Japan
. New York: Pocket Books, 1991.

Bourdaghs, Michael.
Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical History of J-Pop
. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

Bradley, James.
Flags of Our Fathers
. New York: Bantam Books, 2000.

Buruma, Ian.
Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes.
New York: Meridian, 1985.

Buruma, Ian.
The China Lover
. New York: Penguin Press, 2008.

Busch, Noel F.
Fallen Sun: A Report on Japan
. New York: D. Appleton–Century, 1948.

Bush, Lewis.
Japanalia
. Tokyo: Sanseido, 1938.

Chan, Sucheng.
Asian Americans: An Interpretive History
. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991.

Chan, Yeeshan.
Abandoned Japanese in Postwar Manchuria
. London: Routledge, 2014.

Constantine, Peter.
Japan’s Sex Trade: A Journey Through Japan’s Erotic Subcultures
. Tokyo: Yenbooks, 1993.

Dazai, Osamu.
No Longer Human
. Translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene. New York: New Directions, 1958.

Dazai, Osamu.
The Setting Sun
. Translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene. New York: New Directions, 1956.

De Barry, William Theodore, and Richard Lufrano.
Sources of Chinese Tradition
. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Dore, R. P.
City Life in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward
. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1958.

Enright, D. J.
The World of Dew: Aspects of Living Japan
. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1956.

Ericson, Jean E.
Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women’s Literature
. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997.

Fairbank, John King.
The Great Chinese Revolution, 1800–1985
. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.