I had not been able to absorb myself in anyone, however, since his death and until this afternoon when for an hour the old habit returned. I felt elated and almost hopeful. At least I was relieved, however briefly, of the miasma of sadness in which I had walked for so many weeks. I laughed with all my heart and for an hour was healed. I can report that I carried through my program for the evening and went to bed at a reasonable hour, also for the first time in all the weeks. The fact marked a beginning.
The abalone diving girls — have I spoken of them? I think not and I must, for they were a unique tightly knit little group in our all-Japanese cast. Abalone clams are a delicacy in the Japanese cuisine but they are difficult to obtain for they cling to rocks with a powerful muscle and they live far down where the sea is dark and the water icy cold. Japanese fishermen prudently refuse to dive for them and allot the task to young women, who are more able to endure the cold and the danger. Men row the boats to the clam beds and wait patiently while the women plunge into the sea, clad only in shorts and belts into which they thrust the long heavy iron knives necessary for hacking the clams from the rocks.
To my amazement, their costume, so natural to them and so sensible, became a matter of concern and even controversy with our American producers. American audiences, it seemed, could not tolerate the sight of the bare breasts of the women divers. In Europe the sight would be quite acceptable, even pleasant, but decency has absolute standards in the breast-conscious United States.
“How?” I inquired. “A woman is a woman and she cannot properly be anything else.”
“Bras,” the American delegate said laconically. He relented slightly when he saw my amazement. “We’ll take two shots of them, one with and one without.”
That is what we did, and I was amused to see how embarrassed the women were when compelled to wear pink brassieres over their round brown breasts. They felt really naked, as Eve did in the garden, doubtless, when she was told to wear a fig leaf.
A peculiar satisfaction in translating my story from one medium to another, from printed page to film, was that the characters came alive in flesh and blood. We found Setsu one day and I shall never forget the moment of pure angelic pleasure when, looking at a young woman, I recognized her. She was a young star of his own company, the production manager told us. More important to me was her lovely little face and large melting eyes of soft brown. She was so small in stature that she was, she told me, a member of the Transistor Club, whose members must all be under five feet. This transistor girl, however, was even smaller. When she stood by our six-foot, grown-up Toru in the film it was exactly right as he looked down upon her, laughed and said, “I like you because you are so small and funny.”
Our cast was complete at last. They could all speak English or could learn the few words they must speak — except Toru’s mother. She was simply too shy to attempt an English word. But she had so sweet a face, besides being a well-known actress in Japan, that we cut her lines and let her act instead of speak. Meanwhile three weeks had passed. All contracts were signed. It was a fine cast, Sessue Hayakawa the star best known in the western world. All the others were stars in Japan, except grown-up Haruko, a new actress chosen especially for the ferocious abalone diving girl, who fell in love with Toru and fought for him against gentle Setsu.
When we were ready to leave Tokyo at last, the cast assembled, the camera and crew waiting, Old Gentleman invited us to a party at a geisha house, and thither we went one evening, he having called for us in state to take us there in his own car. I had grown used by now to evenings spent in quiet inns with Japanese friends. A good inn, in Japan, is never to be found beside a highway. One must descend from car or bus and walk for at least a hundred yards, and likely more, down a mossy path to a secluded spot, where under trees, if possible, low roofs spread over rooms open to gardens and small pools. To such places, as often as I had felt inclined, friends had invited me, professors in universities, writers, playwrights, literary people and artists, groups of talented women.
Such evenings passed in restful conversation, comparisons in customs, and memories of peace and war and peace again. I enjoyed beyond expression the new freedom with which we could talk. Some barrier seemed to have rolled away in the years in which I had been absent from Japan, not from me but from them. I can only attribute it, at least in part, to the experience they have had with Americans during the years of Occupation and after. There had been misunderstandings, but understanding had prevailed.
The evening at the geisha house was not like the quiet evenings among congenial friends. We stopped at a sumptuous new restaurant and then entered a huge room where the longest low table I had ever seen was already surrounded by guests, all of whom, our host assured us, were the highest of their class. Thus we were introduced to an aged prince surrounded by geisha girls, of whom there were plenty, then to a minister of the present cabinet, then to a young giant seven feet tall and three feet wide, who was the champion wrestler in Japan, and so on and on. Each male guest had several geisha surrounding him, and even I was given two to attend me, right and left.
Between dishes, we were entertained by the traditional dancing and singing of trained geisha. What was new, however, were two young girls, magicians. They were among the best I have ever seen, and I have seen magicians in every country because I adore them. These girls, in contrast to the geisha, were in western dress, their arms bare to their shoulders. There was no nonsense therefore of hiding rabbits and fowl and pots of water up their sleeves. They simply did marvelous tricks and I have no idea how.
After some four enjoyable hours the evening came to an end. Reflecting upon its incidents, a bit of fluff sticks in my mind. The American Ambassador’s wife had described to me, at a luncheon in my honor, the formal dresses still required of foreigners attending any function at the court or palace of the Emperor. The dresses, she told me, must be long and must have high necks and long sleeves. Later in the day I asked a Japanese friend of literal mind why foreign women must wear high necks. She answered promptly and exactly. “It is so when they bow the Emperor must not be embarrassed to look down their naked bosoms.”
Our last night in Tokyo, the geisha party over, I sat by my window in the dark before I slept and looked out over the brilliant city, a mass of glittering modern buildings, in the center of which is the high and ancient wall surrounding the imperial palace. Yes, there is a moat. In the division of old and new, which is today’s Japan, I am reminded of a courtesy call I had made that morning to the president of another great Japanese film company. He had been kind enough to lend to us one of his young stars to be our grown-up Toru.
In his way, this executive was remarkable, too. He is a small man, slender and healthy and full of energy. He has keen eyes and a brisk manner. I expressed my gratitude, and he said he wanted the picture to be a success. At this moment I observed high on the wall a miniature Buddhist temple. He is an ardent Buddhist, as I knew, and we talked for a few minutes about that great and ancient religion. I remembered that my scholar father once wrote a long monograph upon the subject of Buddhism as a source for certain Christian beliefs. There were more than thirty such resemblances and I told the distinguished Japanese Buddhist about them. He was deeply impressed, and said my father was entirely right — there is much in common between the two religions, and this not by accident, he was convinced, but by shared experience in history.