I am immensely grateful for the twenty-five years of care and love that you have given me. I appreciate what you must be feeling, but I truly hope that you are assured I go in peace and am content with my mission; and also that you will not grieve too much about my fate.
Various things have set me to brooding, but last night I had a good dinner and slept deeply. When the time comes, I believe I really can embark with a light heart, just as so many of my friends have, so please don’t be troubled about me.
May you be in good health whatever comes, that is all I earnestly pray for.
There is nothing I must ask you to take care of after I’m gone. No financial problems, no relationships that might need sorting out. Tend to my books as you see fit. There is this person, by the way: Miss Fukiko Fukai, of Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture. She was very kind to us when we were in training at Izumi. I might have mentioned her to you if I had lived. It is not necessary, though, for you to contact the Fukais, since Fukiko knows nothing of my feelings for her, and since we have not corresponded with each other. I just wanted to tell you about her, as she might come to my mind, together with images of you two, as I crash into my target.
It is now half past eight. Excuse my scribbled note. So long.
Farewell note 2.
To Kashima.
My dear old friend, how are you faring? Remember our time in Kyoto, when we studied and had such fun together. We hashed it all out over cups of sake. Those were the good hours, the precious hours. Oh—Otsu, Yamashina, the seaweed offshore at the town of Nabari, the shallows of the Furukawa River. Even after we joined the navy, fate saw to it that we lived under the same roof, never failing to accompany each other. My friend, have you ever thought about that? Close as we were, we seldom had a quiet, heart-to-heart talk. There may be no end to regret, once I am gone, but I hope this letter will do, anyway, as a reminder of something.
My friend, keep yourself well.
Letter by Kashima
I can only imagine how lonely and inconvenient life must be at your evacuation camp. Already two months have passed since we lost the war, and obscure feelings have me utterly in their grip. After being demobilized, I left my hometown and set out on an aimless, wandering journey with the help of a small sum of money, and of some friends and acquaintances. I do intend to return to the campus in Kyoto, but I don’t feel like doing it just yet. I lost every one of the three friends who joined the navy with me in the middle of our academic pursuits. The shock is too great for me.
As for the final hours of your son’s life, I do not know the from the stories of his comrades who were stationed at the same base, once the world calms down. So far, I have checked closely the back-issues of newspapers, and the like, from the period, but I find no articles that appear to concern your son’s mission. I noticed, however, that on the morning of July 10, a U.S. task force approached mainland Japan, and that a total of more than eight hundred planes raided airfields in the Kanto district in several waves. Judging from the date of the farewell note I received from your son, I would say that he probably embarked on a special attack mission that day, and that he dived into a U.S. aircraft carrier at sea to the east of Japan. I do not know why you have not received an official report from the navy. Possibly it was mislaid in the confusion of defeat. At any rate, it is utterly inexcusable, and I am very sorry for that.
I am staying in a town called Ubara, on the eastern coast of Chiba Prefecture. In any case, I believe your son’s body rests somewhere far from this shore. I am certain that he reposes in peace at the horizon, where ocean and sky meet, with the sea for his grave, and his epitaph written in the clouds. It is a beautiful shoreline, with its many twists and turns, and its sheer cliff rising. Japanese silverleaves grow thick on the cliffside, producing their yellow flowers. The coastline here probably touches on the arc of the great circling route to America, as I often see what look like large American steamers sail by offshore. A storm seems to be at hand. The clouds are disturbed and the water is troubled, though the sun occasionally appears.
I enclose a clumsy poem that I wrote along this shore, to be placed by his picture. I will certainly visit you when I get back to Kyoto, sometime in the future, and talk with you at length.
With kindest personal regards.
“A Visit to the Grave”
—Dedicated to the late Jiro Yoshino
Copyright
First English-language edition published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, Vermont 05759 U.S.A.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
English translation © 2006 Teruyo Shimizu
“KUMO NO BOHYO” by Hiroyuki Agawa
Copyright © Hiroyuki Agawa 1956.
All rights reserved.
Original Japanese edition published by Shinchosha Co.
This English-language edition published by arrangement with Shinchosha Co.,
Tokyo, in care of the Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Agawa, Hiroyuki, 1920-
[Kumo no bohyo. English]
Burial in the clouds / Hiroyuki Agawa; translated by Teruyo Shimizu.—1st ed. p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8048-3759-0
ISBN-10: 0-8048-3759-7 (pbk.)
I. Shimizu, Teruyo, 1967- II. Title.
PL845.G3K713 2006
895.6’35—dc22
2006015263
ISBN-10: 0-8048-3759-7