A Tale for the Time Being (22 page)
Read A Tale for the Time Being Online
Authors: Ruth Ozeki
She did not. She knew once the power went out she might not be able to get back on for a few days, so she moved on to the next term on her list. She had already made several exhaustive searches
for
Jiko Yasutani
,
anarchist
,
feminist
,
novelist
,
Buddhist
,
Zen
,
nun
,
Taish
ō
, and even
Modern Woman
, in various combinations. Now she added her new word, gleaned from her reading the night before.
Miyagi
. She sat back and waited.
The room had grown dark, and the glow of the computer screen on her face was the only source of illumination, a small square of light on an island in a storm. She felt small, too. She took off
her glasses, closed her eyes and rubbed them.
Outside, the wind was really howling, whipping the rain in circles and making the whole house shudder and groan. Storms on the island were primeval, hurling everything backward in time. She
thought of her second nun dream, recalled the old woman’s black sleeve as she beckoned, the way her thick-lensed glasses made a smear of the world. The storm did the same. And then that
ghastly sensation of being cast back into nothingness, nonbeing, of reaching for her face and not finding it. The dream was so vivid, so horrifying, and yet after it was over she had slept so
soundly, woken only by the nun’s light touch and the sound of a chuckle and a snap.
She opened her eyes and put her glasses back on. The wheel on her browser was still spinning, which was not a good sign. The signal wasn’t getting through, and with winds like this, it was
just a matter of time before a tree fell across a power line. She was on the verge of refreshing the page and restarting the search when a bright flash lit up the monitor, or was it lightning in
the sky outside? She couldn’t tell, but a moment later, the screen went black, plunging the room into darkness. So much for that.
She got to her feet and groped her way around the desk for the headlamp she kept on the shelf nearby, but just as she found it and was about to turn it on, the hard drive whirred and the screen
flickered, and the blackness was illuminated by the glowing browser page with the results of the search she’d been running. Odd. She went back to the desk and glanced at the page.
It wasn’t much. One item, that was all, but it looked promising. Her heart beat faster as she read:
Results 1—1 of 1 for “Yasutani Jiko” and “Zen” and “nun” and “novelist” and “Taish
ō
” and “Miyagi”
She sat back down, pulled her chair in closer, and quickly followed the link, which took her to the Web page of an online archive of scholarly journals. Access to the archive was restricted to
academic libraries and other subscribing institutions. Without a subscription, only the article’s title, a short preview, and the publishing information were available. But it was a
start.
The title of the article was “Japanese Shish
ō
setsu and the Instability of the Female
‘I.’ ”
Ruth leaned in and read the preview,
which started with a quote:
“Sh
ō
setsu and Shish
ō
setsu—they are both very strange. You see, there is no God in the Japanese tradition, no
monolithic ordering authority in narrative—and that makes all the difference.”
—Irokawa Budai
The term
shish
ō
setsu,
and the more formal
watakushi sh
ō
setsu,
refer to a genre of Japanese autobiographical fiction, commonly translated into English as “I-novel.”
Shish
ō
setsu
flourished during the brief period of sociopolitical liberalization of the Taish
ō
Democracy (1912–1926), and its
strong resonances continue to influence literature in Japan today. Much has been said about the form, about its “confessional” style, its “transparency” of text, and
the “sincerity” and “authenticity” of its authorial voice. Too, it has been cited in the blogosphere with reference to issues of truthfulness and fabrication,
highlighting the tension between self-revelatory, self-concealing, and self-effacing acts.
It has often been noted that the pioneers of
shish
ō
setsu
were predominantly male. Early women writers of
shish
ō
setsu
have been largely ignored, perhaps because, in truth, there were far fewer published women writers then, as now, and perhaps because,
as Edward Fowler, in his exemplary study of the genre,
The Rhetoric of Confession,
has written, “the energies of prominent female writers working in the 1910s and 1920s were
devoted as much to feminist causes as they were to literary production.”
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This assertion, that a devotion to feminist causes has deleterious effects on literary production, is one I will address, arguing that at least one early woman author
of
shish
ō
setsu
used the form in a way that was groundbreaking, energetic, and radical. For her, and for the women writers who came after, this
literary praxis was nothing short of revolutionary.
This writer is unknown in the West. Born in Miyagi prefecture, she moved to Tokyo, where she became involved with radical left-wing politics. She worked with various
feminist groups, including Seitosha
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and Sekirankai,
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and she wrote, in addition to political
essays, articles, and poems, a single unusual and groundbreaking I-novel, entitled, simply,
I-I.
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In 1945, after the death of her son, who was a student soldier and conscripted pilot in the
tokkotai
(the Japanese Special Forces, also known as the
kamikaze), she took the tonsure and vows of a Zen Buddhist nun.
Her name is Yasutani Jiko, a woman pioneer of the “I-novel,” who has erased herself from . . .
There it was, the name, Yasutani Jiko, on the computer screen. Ruth hadn’t realized just how keenly she’d been waiting for this corroboration from the outside world
that the nun of her dreams existed, and that Nao and her diary were real and therefore traceable.
She leaned forward, intent on delving into the deeper strata of information to which the preview was just the gate. She wanted to learn everything she could about Jiko Yasutani, and not just the
scraps of information that surfaced so haphazardly in her great-granddaughter’s diary. She felt a keen and sudden sense of kinship with this woman from another time and place, engaged in
self-revelatory, self-concealing, and self-effacing acts. She was hoping the article itself might contain a translation of at least parts of the I-novel, which she now very much wanted to read. It
would be useful to get a taste of Jiko’s voice and the style of her writing.
She clicked the
Annoying. She hit the
BACK
button, but got the same results. The screen flickered. Quickly, she tried to navigate back and recover the original Web page, but before it could
refresh, the screen went blank and the power went out, quietly this time, but definitively. She sat back in her chair. She wanted to weep. From deep in the basement she could hear Oliver cursing,
as the smell of gas wafted up the stairs. The generator was broken again, and the engine flooded. Sometimes it took days for BC Hydro to fix the lines and restore service. Until then, they would
remain in the dark.
5.
The next morning the power was still out, but the wind had died down and the rain had stopped. After breakfast, Oliver wanted to go collect seaweed for the garden. Seaweed made
excellent fertilizer, and the beaches would be covered after a big southeaster. They loaded up the pickup with pitchforks and tarps and drove across the island. As they approached the turnoff to
Jap Ranch, they started to see the cars, parked along the road.
“Lots of people with the same idea,” Oliver said.
It seemed odd, though. There were so many cars. More like a rave or a funeral than a few gardeners gathering seaweed after a storm. “I wonder if there’s something else going
on,” Ruth said. “This sucks. We’re going to have to park and walk.”
They unloaded the truck and headed toward the beach. As they crested the embankment, they spotted Muriel. She was standing on the edge, looking out toward the shoreline. When she saw Ruth and
Oliver approaching, she pointed. “Look,” she said.
The beach was dotted with people. This in itself was odd. Even in the summer, at the height of tourist season, the island’s beaches were never crowded and you could spend the whole day,
swimming and picnicking and hunting for relics, and never see more than a handful of others doing the same.
Today, though, people were spread out at intervals all up and down the beach. Some had tarps and were collecting seaweed, but others were just walking, eyes fixed ahead, trudging mechanically
back and forth. Ruth recognized a few of them. Others she’d never seen.
“What’s going on?” Oliver asked.
“Scavengers,” Muriel said. “Looking for stuff from Japan. On
my
turf.”
She was twirling the end of her long grey braid around her finger, a sure sign she was agitated. She’d gotten there early, but before long the others had started showing up.
“Amateurs,” she scoffed. “It’s all your fault, you know. Word got out about your freezer bag, and then someone at the post office started talking about all the money that
washed up in Japan.”
Ruth remembered reading the story on the
Japan Times
website. Most of the tsunami victims had been old people, who’d kept their savings hidden at home, tucked into closets, or
under the tatami floor. When their homes were swept away by the wave, their savings went with them and were sucked out to sea. A few months later, the sea started spitting its spoils back up again,
and safes and strongboxes started washing up on the beaches. They were filled with cash and other valuables, but the authorities found it impossible to identify many of the owners, or even to
determine if they were alive. Still, the people who found them continued to turn them in.
Ruth scanned the beach. The scavengers looked possessed, like zombies, the walking dead. It was ghoulish. “Has anyone found anything yet?”
“Not that I know of. Honestly, your freezer bag was a fluke, and my toothpaste tube, too. We’re too far inland. I keep telling them. The real pickings are on the open ocean, up and
down the outer coast. We’re not going to see too much good stuff drifting this far back. But our friends here don’t seem to listen.”
“If they find money, they can’t just keep it,” Ruth said.
“Why not?”
“Because it belongs to the victims. It was their life savings. Most of them were old . . .”
“Just like here,” Muriel said.
“Except nobody here has safes,” Oliver said. “Never mind any money.”
Muriel laughed. “You’re right. The only thing that would wash up here is bags of pot.”
Ruth felt her face flush. “It’s not a joke,” she said. “You’re horrible. Both of you.”
Muriel raised her eyebrows. “Well, the rule of beachcombing is finders keepers. It’s a pretty ancient rule. Besides, I see you’re still wearing the watch . . .”
Ruth glared at her and shouldered her pitchfork. “I’m trying to find the owner,” she said. “I intend to keep trying until I do.” She turned to Oliver. “Are we
going to get seaweed or what.”
She headed off toward the beach. From the corner of her eye, she saw Oliver shrug and give Muriel a sheepish smile, which annoyed her even more. She stopped and turned back to Muriel. “And
this is not my fault. You didn’t have to tell the whole fucking island about my freezer bag.”
Muriel nodded. Strands of loose grey hair blew across her face, and she brushed them away. “I know. I’m sorry. Actually, I only told a couple of people, but you know how it is. I
couldn’t help myself. It’s exciting. I live for garbage.”
1.
Old Jiko really loves my dad, in spite of all his problems, and he really loves her, too. She used to say he was her favorite grandson. Of course, he’s her only grandson,
so she was just being amusing, and anyway I happen to know that nuns aren’t supposed to have favorites among sentient beings. Now that I think of it, maybe she loves him because all his
problems give her so much to pray about, and when you’re as old as she is, and your body is like enough already, you need some pretty powerful reasons to stay alive.
She lives in a tiny temple on the side of a mountain near the coastline, but even though the temple is really small, it still has two names: Hiyuzan Jigenji.
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The little buildings cling to the steep mountainside and are surrounded by a forest of sugi
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and bamboo. You can’t believe
how many steps you have to climb to get to it, and in the summer when it’s hot, you think you’re going to die of heatstroke or something. This is a place that truly could use an
elevator, but Zen Buddhists aren’t big on modern conveniences. I swear, getting there is traveling backward about a thousand years in time.
My dad agreed to take me on the train to Sendai, which was a really big deal for him to leave our apartment during the daylight. I could tell it was stressing him out, and I wasn’t
helping. I’d gotten this childish idea that we could make a little detour to Tokyo Disneyland so I could shake hands with Mickey-chan. I knew this was unrealistic because Tokyo Disneyland
isn’t exactly on the way to Sendai, and besides my dad freaks out in crowds, but I really wanted to go. Mickey-chan is from California, and so am I, and I thought maybe he was homesick, too,
so I begged and begged my dad, but of course he said no. In a normal family situation, I think my request would have been reasonable. I mean, a couple of hours hanging out with Mickey-chan
isn’t such a huge price to pay for getting rid of your kid for the whole summer. But our family did not have a normal situation, and I knew Dad was not a Disneylandish kind of person. If
I’d made the effort, I could have forgiven him for this, and we might have even enjoyed the train ride together, but instead I sulked and made him feel guilty and miserable the whole way,
which honestly didn’t make me feel so great, either. In the end, he promised we could go to Disneyland when he came to pick me up and take me home, which cheered me up a little, knowing that
at least he intended to survive my summer vacation.