The Mask Carver's Son (16 page)

I
have come to inform you that your father has been ill for the past month,” Iwasaki told me in the seclusion of a small restaurant not far from my school.

“Since you left, he has grown frail and thin. The other actors and I have visited him on occasion, only to find that he rarely will come to the door.”

The old patriarch rested his full and delicately lined lips on the rim of his teacup. The smoke wafted over his face and made him appear even more ghostly than his already hoary appearance.

“We have been concerned for him. We have been unable to commission any masks, yet we know from the fallen cypresses in the forest that he must still be carving.”

I looked down at my plate of grilled fish. My appetite had suddenly vanished, and as I was unable to eat my meal, I concentrated on removing the small grid of bones from the fish’s middle.

“Have you been writing to your father since you’ve come to Tokyo?” he asked, and his tone seemed less kind.

“I have been meaning to for some time,” I said, struggling awkwardly.

“It must have been devastating to your father when you left.”

I remained silent.

“For all of us in the theater, it is damaging when a child does not follow in our footsteps. In this time particularly, when so many of you are seduced by the ways of the West.” He paused and then looked at me with raised eyebrows. I could instantly envision the man who sat before me performing on stage. I need not close my eyes to picture him beating his feet over the polished floorboards in the dance of the demon queller or in the ravaged spirit of Ono-no Komachi.

“It must have been particularly brutal for your father, as you are his only son,” he said, interrupting my reverie.

I could feel my face begin to redden. My ears beginning to burn. Had he traveled all the way to Tokyo to remind me of my betrayal? Something I remembered all too well. Had his reason for attending to affairs concerning the theater been a ruse?

“What you tell me of my father is of great concern to me, Patriarch,” I confessed politely. “It was wrong for me to have been so self-involved here that I have not inquired about the status of his health. I will write to him immediately and I will try to schedule a trip to Kyoto during the next few months.”

“I am glad to hear this, Yamamoto Kiyoki,” he said. As he pushed a small piece of sushi into his mouth I noticed the large, swollen quality of his hands. Once again it struck me that I was sitting across from someone who strongly resembled Grandfather.

As we exited the restaurant, the long red curtains falling to the side of the entranceway, he leaned toward me.

“It is a shame, Yamamoto-kun. We all at the theater had always thought you would be a great mask carver like your father.”

He turned away from me, and his broad shoulders seemed to slope to the ground. The fading light of the distant lanterns made him appear even older, and he sagged when he bade me good-bye.

A
-kan! A-kan! A-kan!
” the teacher shouted at me from his
zabuton.
Saito sensei was from Osaka, and he always slipped into dialect when he expressed his disapproval.

The silence and sobriety of Morita sensei’s painting class was in complete contrast to Saito’s sculpture class. Here we worked in constant fear. Here our teacher reigned from his
zabuton
; the slightest incorrect move from one of our chisels was incapable of escaping from his line of vision. Even Noboru, whose work was least likely to be criticized, often felt the sting of Saito’s vicious bark.

If it hadn’t been for the overbearing presence of Saito sensei, I might have thought I was in my father’s studio again. The smell of freshly stripped wood interlaced with the fresh scent of new tatami made me think of home, and this, combined with Iwasaki’s visit, caused me to be overcome with a certain bittersweet nostalgia that I was surprised to learn was inside me.

It was not surprising that my classmates and I struggled in sculpture. Most of us were familiar with a brush and ink; we had learned how to write our characters with a brush during our earlier years, and drawing was a skill that came naturally to us. Creating in the third dimension, however, was another matter.

I was probably the only one of my peers who had any knowledge of the art of carving. I watched the others receive their chisels, and their faces betrayed their confusion over the shining blades handed to them.

Had Father been here in this room with me, I know he would have balked at the chisels they were dispersing. The slender pine handles were rough and unvarnished, the silver blades square and blunt to the touch.

I heard the echo of Saito sharpening the edges of his chisels. The sound of the blade against the wet stone brought back more images of Father. Once again I saw him, his back crouched and his knees pressed to the floor, his white wrists jutting from the billowing sleeves of his gray kimono, the blue veins pumping through his skin. He grasped the handles of his chisels like a samurai clasping his sword. Swiftly and powerfully, fingers meshing with wood, Father slid the blades over a shining flat black stone, wet and glimmering in the sunlight. Like the ink stone used by a calligrapher, ground down in the middle.

In accordance with his sharpening ritual, Father always touched the shining blade, sharp as dagger, against his fingertip. The red blood, reminiscent of waxberry juice, ran over his knuckle.

I held the chisels in the palms of my hands. I had traveled so far to avoid the prison of these wooden instruments, yet here I was, picking up the very tools I had rejected years before.

I should have laughed at my situation. The ridiculousness of it could not be met with anger or tears. But in the end, I did grasp the chisels and plow into the wood, just as I had done countless times with Father.

The sensation of wood beneath my blade felt surprisingly refreshing to me. Without the shadow of Father behind me, I worked freely, without the confusion of the man for whom I was carving.

Around me, my classmates struggled. Their hands fell clumsily over their handles. Their blades buckled over the wood. The slab of cedar they were supposed to incise splintered and frayed like a piece of cheap cloth. The irony of my situation amazed me. Here I was, excelling in the only class I had hoped to avoid. The craft from whose chains I thought I had finally sliced myself.

On the second day, Saito called me aside and asked that I remain after class so that he might speak with me.

“Kiyoki,” he said that afternoon

“Yes, Saito sensei.”

“Is it true that you are the son of Yamamoto Ryusei?”

I was stunned. I had not anticipated that my father’s reputation would follow me to Tokyo.

“Yes.”

“I am very pleased to have you in my class, I am sure you will do well.”

“I am honored to be under
your
guidance, honorable Saito sensei,” I replied, stressing the word
your
in order to seem as humble as possible.

“I am sure that you will be far ahead of your classmates, as you have probably been carving since the day you were born.” He chuckled to himself as if the fact that I came from a carving family bonded us.

“Carving may come easy to me, but it is the art of Western painting to which I aspire.”

“Why do you not make your country and the emperor proud by learning to produce the great craftsmanship of the Kamakura?” he asked, his voice revealing annoyance at my irreverence.

“I am not moved by the wood, sensei.”

And then I added, so that the silence between us would be broken, “I am most unlike my father. I am more like my late mother, who was an accomplished painter.”

He looked at me with stony eyes. “Such pain you must have caused your family!”

“Pain has always lived within the foundation of my family. That and wood. Forever entwined.”

The crooked bend of sensei’s nose flashed before me, reminding me of Father’s shard of plum wood that still remained deep in one of my closet drawers.

“I had hoped that you might be a student that I could encourage your peers to follow,” he said, disappointed. “But, alas, I see that I was mistaken.”

The bond that he thought existed was dissolved in seconds. He turned his gaze away from me. I saw the reflection of his face in the glossy weave of the tatami.

“You are dismissed, Kiyoki.”

I heard the crick of his neck as he raised his head, and I felt his gaze burning into my back. It was an all-too-familiar feeling. Reminiscent of my childhood. He was like a bough sliced from the trunk of my father. Wooden and restrained. Disappointed and now silent.

I left the classroom to the sound of my sandals clicking on the hall’s wooden floorboards. The echo was loud and seemed inappropriate within the walls of the school, this contrived structure built to reaffirm tradition and reject the new age outside its gate. Yet as I clicked down the hallway, I made no attempts to muffle the sound.

In fact, with the arrogance of a foolish young man, I tried to amplify it.

N
early a week passed before I gathered the courage to write Father. I was still angry that Iwasaki-san had invaded the new life that I was trying to create for myself in Tokyo.

Dear Father,

I hope these autumn months find you surrounded by many red and golden leaves. Please forgive me for not having written to you sooner, but adjusting to life in Tokyo has been difficult.

I have been struggling with many of my classes. The college is not all that I imagined it to be. Okakura and Fenollosa have certainly established an institution that is staunchly dedicated to preserving the traditional artistic ways of our nation’s past. I am sure that you would be pleased to hear this.

I am not getting instruction in Western-style painting, as I had wished. Only after one masters the courses in the traditional classes can one ascend to this highly competitive class. And even this class is not a Western-style class but really one that just encourages the best students to create a “new” Japanese style. All of this is very frustrating to me, but I am happy to be on the path toward painting, which, as you know, I love.

I realize, Father, that I have caused you great suffering with my departure. I write because I want to ensure that you are well. Have you been carving? I hope that you will answer my letter and inform me of your status.

I remain your only son,

Yamamoto Kiyoki

I sealed the letter with rice glue and sent it the following week.

I
, Yamamoto Ryusei’s son, still silently resented the wood. I endured Saito sensei’s class, as humiliating as it was, because I wanted desperately to be accepted to the accelerated painting class. There the students were allowed to experiment with spatial depth and the rendering of light and shadow. Still no oils or canvas, but at least it was something.

Dreams such as those, however, had to be postponed until I completed all of my studio work for the day; otherwise none of my assignments would ever be finished. There were mountains of work to be done. My final project in Morita’s class was a replica of a Heian hand scroll, complete with small ink drawings and extremely difficult calligraphy. Additionally, a medium-sized bodhisattva had to be carved for Saito sensei. Then there was still the
bizenyaki
to be done in my crafts class.

Late in the evening, after I had finished my work for the day, I would drag myself home to my small rented room. There I would dream of the paintings I had not yet painted, of exhibiting in spaces I had not yet visited, and of meeting with Japanese painters who had actually studied in Europe. Men like Kuroda Seiki.

All of the newspapers had written about Kuroda’s return to Japan in 1893. He had spent nine years in France, abandoning his initial studies there, as a student of law, for painting. Along with Kume Keiichiro and Fuji Masazo, two of Fontanesi’s pupils from the old Technical Art School, Kuroda began his study of Western art with the academic painter Raphael Collin and eventually cultivated himself into the role of a well-respected artist.

Noboru and I had often discussed Kuroda and his work, especially after the uproar his painting
Morning Toilette
created during its first exhibition in Japan. With all of the publicity the critics created, denouncing the immodest subject matter and the overt sexuality of the model’s pose, Noboru and I decided that we should see the painting for ourselves.

We walked together into the crowded exhibition space not far from the new railway station. It was a far-from-scandalous painting in the eyes of two appreciative art students, especially two art students who wanted so desperately to paint in the Western style. Noboru and I failed to see why the painting shocked the crowds and critics.

It was a rather tall canvas, depicting a young girl standing before a full-length mirror. By introducing the reflection in the glass, Kuroda’s composition increased in depth, as the viewer was now able to see both the frontal and rear view of this naked young girl. Unclothed, the woman stared at her own reflection while wrapping a long lock of her hair around her head. Her upswept hair exposes the most delicate, sensual, and most appreciated area of the female for any Japanese male—the nape of the neck.

Noboru and I both loved this painting. Clearly, it was masterful in its technique: its soft palette well blended and the semi-impressionistic brushwork extremely well executed. But the most wonderful thing about the painting to Noboru and me was that it brought out the hypocrisy of the Japanese public.

“Really!” Noboru exclaimed. “Did you hear Okada-san commenting on how vulgar Kuroda was to show not only a nude woman but also one with her neck exposed? It was if he had never looked at one single work of our own Ukiyo-e artists.”

“We should be sending the old man a print of Harunobu’s
Woman in a Bathhouse
,” I suggested.

“Or even better,” Noboru said, “we could send a book of Tokugawa
shunga
illustrations.”

The thought of seeing the old man confronted with graphic images of sexual practice sent us into peals of hysterical laughter.

We were cocooned in our own amusement that day. We were sated with happiness: by the sun, the exhibition, our impressions of Kuroda’s work, and his success in Europe and Japan. We were satisfied like the happy and drunken image of Hotai, his belly full and his face smiling.

That day there was nothing preventing us from believing that we too could achieve the greatness of Kuroda Seiki. We were swollen in our youthful arrogance as we sashayed through the streets, our sandals clicking and our shoulders back. We were truly convinced that someday our own paintings would hang on those walls.