Wrong About Japan (13 page)

“We definitely should have brought along Takashi,” he said.

“Charley, we never knew where we were going. We were halfway through dinner before we really understood where we were.”

“We could have called him,” Charley said.

“Yes, we should have.”

But still, of course, we were without him, on our way to meet the most difficult of all our subjects, or the one most difficult to arrange an appointment with. We waited with Jerry and Etsuko in
that cheesy coffee shop Jerry had so carefully chosen, the sort of place where you order fries and cappuccino; and this, as far as I remember, is what we did until the famous director of
Blood: The Last Vampire
showed up.

Given the negotiations with his production company, Mr. Kitakubo was not at all what I had expected, and at the same time he was much more like a cartoon artist than anyone we’d met so far. He was in his twenties, fairly short, with black hair, a skimpy thin moustache and a slightly shy, roguish way of smiling. I liked him immediately. He looked like an underprivileged kid who had grown up drawing manga by the light of the open refrigerator door. Of course, I might be hopelessly wrong, but he seemed more “street,” less groomed than the strangely encoded, visually fastidious work he had directed.

To Etsuko he bowed, with me he shook hands, but on being introduced to Charley he gave that complex shoulder-slamming handshake, and they performed the complete set of moves without a moment of misunderstanding. But if that suggests he’d been somehow fatally Americanised, let me tell you, Fremantle Jack, it was not that simple. In fact, Mr. Kitakubo responded to my written questions in the same style as every other damn Japanese I’d questioned
That is, he made it clear that nothing in this country was as I thought it was. My misunderstandings were very interesting, he said. By which he did not mean to claim that his film did not have meanings—of course it did—but after a long, exhausting Q&A it became clear that he would reveal none of them to me.

All this was offered in the most polite and humble manner, but I was losing the will to conduct this sort of interrogation. I was delighted to have liked his film. I was happy to have my own ideas about it, but I knew it was impossible to winkle from him his feelings about foreigners, America, the Vietnam War, swords, decapitation, evisceration, soldiers, aliens, Commodore Perry and Douglas MacArthur. Really, the best thing that happened in that coffee shop was to see my son get all he had wanted in the first place: a photo op with the director of
Blood: The Last Vampire
. For this, and this only, he had endured hours of boring talk.

After we bid good-bye to Mr. Kitakubo, I really had little interest in visiting the Ghibli Museum. As Takashi had said, we would not meet Mr. Miyazaki, but by now that was almost a relief. I was weary of pulling out my lists of questions, of having insights that were apparently only figments of my foreign imagination, of forgetting to bring my business
cards along to meetings conducted with all the formality of the Treaty of Versailles. I happily would have cancelled the afternoon’s excursion had not Mrs. Yoko Miyagi, who translates my novels into Japanese, pursued Studio Ghibli on my behalf.

It was impossible to get tickets on such short notice. Everyone said so. Even if you were Japanese. Even if you lived in Tokyo. It was harder, said Kenji, than getting midcourt seats at a Knicks game in Madison Square Garden.

I’m not sure if Mrs. Miyagi had known of the level of difficulty this presented or even if she knew who Hayao Miyazaki was, but she got us tickets to the museum and she made sure we could be admitted to the studio itself. Because Miyazaki had just finished
The Cat’s Return
, there would probably be nothing to look at except blank monitors and empty chairs, but it seemed a miracle that she got us in the door. Also, I understood that she made a valiant attempt to persuade the organisation that Mr. Miyazaki should meet with us, though this, it appeared, was totally impossible. He was very famous, very busy, and he was about to go to Europe.

Yoko Miyagi is a wonderful woman, small as a sparrow, but so endowed with energy and intelligence as to constitute a force of nature. It was
not difficult to imagine her pushing at the walls of Studio Ghibli until they yielded.

At the studio we were met by an executive whose name—so many cards—I could not recall when I got home, but it was very, very clear to me that our presence was a puzzle, possibly even an annoyance. Did I have a card? What did I want to know? The film was made, the party over. There was nothing to show but an empty production facility.

“Fantastic,” I said, surveying nothing much.

What did I wish to ask?

We sat at a table, had a soda then the tour. We looked over the shoulders of young animators working at their computer monitors, at a woman colouring a eel. My comments were trite. “Computers! How amazing!” This, it seemed, was what the trip had come to: everything falling apart, Takashi offended, Studio Ghibli looking desolate, a looted museum in the last days of a war.

Now all of the above is what I
thought was
happening. Yet later, when I checked my version of events with Mrs. Miyagi, I learned I had been horribly mistaken.

“I must admit,” she wrote, “after reading the scene in the cafeteria at Studio Ghibli I became quite worried that I gave you the wrong impression.

“After I wrote to you in New York to suggest the visit, I learned that the tickets were sold out, so I was in trouble, and phoned the museum for help. Someone there suggested I talk to the manager of publicity at the studio, Mr. Nishioka (the man we met). I explained the purpose of your visit, that it was very short, and that you were looking at aspects of Japanese culture through the lens of anime and manga.

“He knew your name and your novel
Oscar and Lucinda
and kindly offered us the opportunity to visit. I never pushed him at all. I don’t like to push anyone! Mr. Nishioka informed me that Mr. Miyazaki was going abroad shortly and that meeting him would be unlikely, but still he allowed us to visit.”

Thus, as we passed from one empty office to another, I saw it through the lens of a foreigner’s misunderstanding. I made notes which I would later, fortunately, be unable to read, although I do vividly remember the moment when the man I now know as Mr. Nishioka said, “This is where Mr. Miyazaki works.”

And there, across the counter, I saw a compact man with a grey beard. It was Hayao Miyazaki, walking toward Charley and extending his hand. Perhaps I bowed.

“Of course,” Yoko wrote, “I was as surprised as
anyone when Mr. Miyazaki appeared and introduced himself. He seemed to really enjoy explaining his work to you and Charley, and I was thrilled that you could get to meet him.”

Mr. Miyazaki opened a drawer and took out a little book, which he showed my son. He flipped the pages and figures danced across the top corners as in a silent film.

Mr. Nishioka was now smiling, which surprised me. Mr. Miyazaki looked around for other things that might entertain us. He opened another drawer. He had little English. We had no Japanese. He flipped a second book, and we all laughed. By now the most famous anime director in the world was doing show-and-tell. He was the kamishibai man dashing his wooden blocks together and working the magic of paper film.

He took us to the computer and showed a new work that featured the grandmother of the magical animated cat-bus that Totoro had ridden on. And, thank God, we had no language. Thank God, there were no questions to ask, just the privilege of sharing the joy of a great artist telling a story to an audience.

He took us over to his pinboard, and I saw he’d been collecting works of nineteenth-century science fiction, the graphic equivalents of Jules Verne. Had I spoken Japanese, I might have confessed to having a
similar fascination but what would be the point of that?

Mr. Miyazaki pushed his English to the limit. I nodded and made notes but what I was thinking was, “There is Charley standing next to Hayao Miyazaki and I have left my damn camera in the hotel.”

Then, somehow, there was Mrs. Miyagi with her camera, and there was Charley standing next to God. I never wondered how that might have happened, but when the flash went off I knew my son had the biggest prize of all.

“When I went downstairs to get my camera,” Mrs. Miyagi wrote later, “I noticed on the way back that I had forgotten to put film in it. Mr. Nishioka ran back and retrieved it for me. He was very kind.”

Even then, before she had reason to have her suspicions confirmed, it must have been clear to Mrs. Miyagi that I was confused. That night when we arrived back at the ryokan, there was a fax waiting: “I’m afraid,” she wrote with typical modesty, “you couldn’t understand my poor English at Studio Ghibli, so I think I should clarify what Director Miyazaki said in more detail.

“He said that he thinks one of the most important of man’s abilities is the imagination, so the
purpose of his creative activities is to develop the imagination of children, the coming generations. Imagination can create a totally different world, depending on its use. It can give birth to virtue, or destructive weapons which threaten the whole world. He mentioned being afraid of the potential risk.”

11.

The following morning was an awful rush. Hurriedly, we crammed all the gifts, books, assembled robots, kits, brochures of Japanese toilets, editions of Tanizaki, and rolls of film into our bags. We also had our weighty
Gundam Officials, Limited Edition
and
now Charley wanted to go shopping for
wrapping paper
.

“Why? We need a new suitcase for all this junk, so what do you need wrapping paper for?”

“I am giving this”—he held up the book Yuka and Paul and Irie-san had spent so much time and money producing for Kodansha—“to Takashi.”

I am a good enough traveller until the day I have to catch the plane, but then I become an anxious fool, following a schedule which inevitably lands me at the airport five hours early. I hate the way I do this, but as usual I turned everything into a panic. I bought a case. I found wrapping paper. Finally we came down the stairs of the hotel in a great mess of bags and parcels, paid the bill, somehow communicated to the taxi driver that we wished to stop at Mister Donut en route to Tokyo Station. So far, so good. We came down Kokusai Street and there it was.

But Mister Donut was closed. Impossible. We both got out of the car and stood with our noses pressed against the glass doors. It had been open before, so how could it be closed now? I took the parcel from my son and laid it on the step.

Charley retrieved his gift and then, from deep in a pocket of his baggy jeans, pulled out the map Takashi had drawn when he invited us to his grandmother’s apartment.

“Oh no,” I thought, “no, please, no.”

But what was I to do? My only choice was to hand the driver our map. “We go,” I said in perfect English.

“Okay,” he said, and closed the doors.

“Very far? Long distance?”

“Okay,” he said, reading the map, driving the car, swinging into a little lane.

I did not know if this was a good sign or a bad sign, that we were not heading for a freeway.

“Shitamachi?”

“Shitamachi,” he agreed.

Before long we were deep in the maze of old downtown Tokyo, twisting, turning, backtracking to avoid stubborn sanitation trucks and officious policemen. But finally we arrived at a low dun-coloured building next to a very homely tempura bar.

The driver pointed.

Charley opened the car door, already juggling the heavy gift and little cell phone.

“Do you want me to come?”

“No,” he said.

He knocked on the door, only twelve years old but already five feet eight and square-shouldered, filling the door of that small one-storyed house. Almost a man, I thought, but then, without warning,
the taxi driver tore away leaving my little boy behind.

“Hey!” I cried.

“Okay” said the driver. “Okay.”

Then I understood. We had been blocking traffic. I was not to worry. He was going to circle. He did so very quickly and when we returned Charley had been joined in the street by an elderly woman in a kimono. Takashi’s Kabuki-Loving grandmother, or so I guessed.