Hiroshima (22 page)

Life in Tokyo

I arrived in Tokyo the year after the Kishi Cabinet resigned in the 1960 Security Treaty struggle.
[1]
Collecting the luggage I'd sent to the home of manga artist K., I settled into a rented apartment—one six-by-nine room—behind Yanaka Cemetery near Nippori Station on the Yamanote Line. My total capital was 30,000 yen,
[2]
and thinking not to waste a penny, I'd searched for a cheap room. The window was blocked by a wall next door, and even during the day it was very dark, but it was cheap, so I made do. My Tokyo life began with me humming a line from a song popular at the time, “A home of my own, small but nice.”

Earning day wages as assistant to manga
artist K., I was keen to draw my own manga. Yoshinaga Sayuri's song “Cold Morning” poured from loudspeakers on the Yanaka Ginza,
[3]
and hugging myself to stay warm, I paced the cemetery dreaming up ideas. Wandering in Ueno Park, I searched out cheap movie theaters and made sure I didn't miss any movies. I frequented cheap movie theaters in several parts of Tokyo.

I was enormously fond of Yanaka, part of Tokyo's working class section. From my apartment I always went to the “World Bath,” and there I saw three disciples supporting Master Kokintei Shinsh
o
¯
[4]
—letting him down into the bath and washing him. He had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and his disciples took care of him. I thought the comic storytelling apprenticeship, too, must be tough. And I thought of Mom, felled by hemorrhage and trying to recover. Since I was a freelance professional, my time was flexible, and one of my pleasures was to be first into the bath. Soaking in the clean water of the bath, facing the mirrors on the wall of the washroom, I questioned myself uneasily: “You really think you can make a go of it as manga
artist?” Sometimes I even forgot the time and, lost in dreaming up stories, I once stayed in the bath nearly five hours, became unwell, and collapsed.

When I finished the work I had contracted to do for manga
artist K. and was free, I immersed myself in drawing my own manga. The summer was hot, and staying in my room, I'd be drenched in sweat, as if I'd poured water all over myself. The composition paper would get sweat-soaked, the ink would run, and I couldn't draw, so I'd flee to the coffeehouse right next door, which had air conditioning. Drinking coffee at 40 yen a cup, I'd hole up in a corner of the cafe until sundown, drawing manga. The proprietress didn't look askance but put up with me, and I was really grateful. Taking finished work, I made the rounds of publishers. I learned from the criticism and used it to make my next work better. I drew and drew.

In my second year in Tokyo I landed a one-year serial in
Boys' Graphic
. Even I felt uneasy: “Is it really a good thing to land a serial so early?” I knew many assistants who'd stayed for ten years on the lowest rung of the ladder yet hadn't been able to sell their work, had grown discouraged, and had quit. So the speed of my debut surprised even me.

Spark #1
,
involving a racecar manufacturer and an industrial spy, began its run as a serial, and I got paid 1,500 yen per page. For the duration, life became easier, and I jumped for joy. What with helping out at manga
artist K.'s and the side job of my own serial, it was manga!
manga! all day long. I was truly fortunate to be able to immerse myself in what I loved. How the months flew!

May 1962. A major accident took place, the collision of two trains at the JNR Mikawajima Station.
[5]
I was living in Nippori, so I could hear the sirens of the ambulances and other vehicles rushing to the scene. The sirens continued to sound into the evening, and when I went to Mikawajima to look, bodies were strewn about in the twilight. I averted my eyes from the grisly sight as corpses were carried away.

1963. Life in Tokyo was full of bad news. The incident in which the little Murakoshi boy was lured away and then murdered made me angry. On the subway to deliver a manuscript to the publisher, I looked at the newspaper the man in the seat ahead of me had spread out and was shocked to see the big headline: “President Kennedy Assassinated!” My first serial came to an end. Intensely conscious of how little talent I had, I felt completely frustrated. I resolved to relearn manga once again from the ground up and became an assistant to manga artist T., a popular author.
[6]

The difference between manga artist K. and manga artist T. was that between commercial and professional. Manga artist K. kept it simple: he drew manga and was happy if they became popular and earned money. Manga artist T. worked right up to the deadline redrawing parts he wasn't happy with. I saw that both had their points, but my sympathies were with manga artist T., the professional. For three months I serialized the sci-fi tale “Space Giraffe” in
Boys' King Weekly
, and I learned how rapidly deadlines loomed for the weeklies. I was so driven by deadlines that I wanted to cry out, “I don't need the money, so let me sleep!” I was absolutely exhausted. Manga artists need strength and nerves—it's almost a matter of the survival of the fittest! Around then I came to understand in my bones the true rigors of the professional world.

In October 1964, on the day the Tokyo Olympics opened, I got off at Harajuku Station. Manga artist K. was in a pinch with a deadline and had asked me to help out. I realized I'd worked through the night. When I looked up, Self-Defense Force planes were skywriting the five rings. Back then in Harajuku, you hardly met anyone, and Omote Sand
o
¯
was a quiet pedestrian street. Taking a break from work, I walked about near the Olympic Main Stadium and watched the sacred flame burning. In stark contrast to the high spirits about me, I grew gloomy, anticipating that the job of working through the night on manga would continue.

What I remember most about the Tokyo Olympics isn't the performance of Japanese competitors or the great skill of the contestants, but a small sidebar a foreign reporter wrote about the Japanese. It slammed the Japanese viciously: “What a sight! In the gallery for distinguished guests: Emperor Hirohito, one of the world's three great mass murderers. Brazenly, Hirohitler
[7]
waved happily to the foreign athletes. What crazy people, the Japanese who watched him with tears of joy!” I agreed with the article: “Absolutely! That's accurate!” Japanese shouldn't forget the sharp eye of that foreign reporter. That has always stuck in my memory.

Never Again Say the Words, “Atomic Bomb”!

Akira married, so after four years away, I went back to Hiroshima. Mom was partially paralyzed and couldn't walk freely, but she smiled and was in good spirits. The
Boys Graphic
that carried my first work was displayed prominently atop the chest of drawers beside her bed. Mom said, “I've read it countless times!” I was happy, but a bit self-conscious. Some time earlier Akira had visited my apartment in Nippori. We'd shared the bed as he told me about things at home. But the true purpose of his Tokyo visit was that Mom had been worried about how I was doing and had asked him to come see. He'd told me, “The old lady worries only about you.” I really appreciated her concern. She was staying with K
o
¯
ji while going regularly to the Atomic Bomb Hospital for rehabilitation.

At Akira's wedding, I sang an old Kyushu folk song
from the bottom of my heart, full of gratitude to him. Uncle H. danced to the song splendidly. Congratulated by the people there, Mom exchanged greetings happily. And she stressed that she had to keep at it until she saw me married: “I can't rest. There's still one more.” On departing, I said to Mom, “You learn to walk. I'll show you Tokyo.”

I returned to my one-room, six-by-nine Nippori apartment, and life went on. I earned day wages as an assistant and drew my own work. I hoped the time would soon come when I could live a settled life as manga artist so I could rent two rooms and bring Mom to live with me. I kept drawing stories and trying to market them. I published work in
Adventure King
,
Manga King
,
Boys
,
Boys Sunday
, and the others, but I continued to wrestle with the difficulties manga presents.

I was shocked to learn that there was atomic bomb discrimination in Tokyo. When talk of home arose and I mentioned to acquaintances that I'd experienced the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, the glances sent my way were indescribably chilly and strange, and I was bewildered—I couldn't recall ever having experienced such hateful looks. If you live in Hiroshima, everyone has bomb victim relatives, and you can speak of the atomic bombing freely and frankly. So I wondered, “Why do Tokyo people give you such hateful looks when they know you're a bomb victim?” Noticing that if I spoke the words, “atomic bomb,” the atmosphere went chilly, I took care not to raise the topic.

Each year when summer came, the mass media would raise a fuss—“Atomic bomb! Atomic bomb!”—and my mood would turn dark. Like it or not, my Hiroshima experience would return, and I'd be made to feel things I hated to feel. I'd feel the illusion that I'd done something wrong by being a victim of the bomb. I'd get really angry at the unpleasant glances of Tokyo people, true pains. Near the Ginza and elsewhere I met members of bomb victims groups collecting signatures for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and I thought highly of them: “In a dignified manner, these people go out in public and act.” I didn't have their courage.

When I was in Hiroshima, I disliked the words “atomic bomb” and avoided them. But having moved to Tokyo, I disliked them and avoided them more and more. When people from Hiroshima asked me in bars or meetings whether I, too, was from Hiroshima, I prayed that the topic of the atomic bomb wouldn't come up. And in conversation, too, I was careful not to provide an opening for anyone to refer to the atomic bomb. One time I had the opportunity to talk with a person from a bomb victims group and asked, “Why are Tokyo people so cold and disagreeable when they know you're a bomb victim?” I was told that lots of people really believed that “if you get near a bomb victim in Tokyo, you'll catch radiation, or that if you touch a cup from which a bomb victim has drunk, radioactivity will invade your body and infect you. So never touch the cup!” Tokyo was an assemblage of people from all over the country who knew absolutely nothing about the atomic bomb, and they believed false rumors. I was aghast. I trembled with anger: how dare they say nonchalantly, “Japan's the only country to be atomic bombed!” I was disgusted. I came to understand that the cold, disagreeable looks I'd encountered were the glances of fools who didn't know the reality of the atomic bomb.

I resolved never to speak the words “atomic bomb” again. When I went to bookstores and there were books about the atomic bomb on the shelves, I averted my eyes and moved on. When the characters “atomic bomb” leapt out of a newspaper article, I didn't read a word of that article. I truly came to hate the word and the characters “atomic bomb.”

Tokyo put forward a different face from one day to the next: the bullet trains ran, impassioned antiwar Vietnam demonstrations raged, and electric guitars wailed all over town.
[8]

I frequented cheap movie theaters and watched all sorts of films and turned them into material for my manga. In particular, I went often to a theater at the east entrance to Ikebukuro Station. Kurosawa Akira's
No Regrets for Lost Youth
,
Splendid Sunday
,
To Live
, and the rest have stayed with me forever.
[9]
The scene in
To Live
, when with the snow falling, the bureaucrat swings on the swing in the park he himself has pushed through to completion and the
Gondolier's Song
rolls from his lips—“Life is short—fall in love, young woman, / Before the red fades from your lips”—reminded me especially of Mom, who loved that song and hummed it. I thought that film was Kurosawa's greatest achievement. I'd hear the
Gondolier's Song
and think of Mom, quickly grow homesick, and want to go back to Hiroshima.

In August 1965, wanting to see Mom, I returned to Hiroshima. I knew that Mom was living with K
o
¯
ji so she could go back and forth to the Atomic Bomb Hospital for physical therapy, so I went to her room on the second floor. When I pulled back the sliding screen to enter her room, Mom's face brightened suddenly at sight of me, and she was greatly delighted at my return. Soon tears welled up in the eyes she fixed on me, and she started to cry.

Seeing Mom cry for the very first time, I was shocked, confused. Worried, I asked her why she was crying, and she said that K
o
¯
ji's first grader had asked, any number of times, “When's Grammy going to leave?” She reproached herself: she should leave soon. Why should a very young child, who didn't understand right and wrong, ask such a thing? Because, she said, he listened when K
o
¯
ji and his wife talked in his presence about sending her packing. Mom wept on: “It's mortifying! It's mortifying!” She wept, flinging at me, back for the first time in a while, what she'd kept bottled up. I was unbearably sad. Had I had the money to do so, I'd have taken Mom on the spot and returned to Tokyo. I'd never before thought as much as I thought then, “Oh, for money!”