“Let me ask you something, class,” she said. “When you hear people being so critical of the things Sensei wrote, don’t any of you feel like firing back with ‘Yes, but Sensei was on the verge of taking his own life, so maybe it isn’t fair to hold him to normal standards of behavior’? Let’s explore that question together, shall we?”
While she was speaking, Unaiko gestured to Ricchan and the comic duo Suke & Kaku to step out from the two groups of high school students onstage. (Those three were convincingly dressed as students, but by then it must have been clear to the audience that they were grown-up actors pretending to be teenagers.)
“A short while ago, one of you suggested that it was a perfectly natural thing for Sensei to have committed suicide at this point in his life,” Unaiko said. “Would you please explain your thinking based on what’s in the suicide note? And then, for balance, we’ll need to ask the person who was expressing the opposing view to elaborate a bit more. You’ll do that for us, won’t you? Then, after we’ve given a fair hearing to both sides of the argument, I’d like to invite everyone to summon all your strength and throw your ‘dead dogs’ at the faction you don’t agree with!”
In response to Unaiko’s request, Suke began to read aloud from the opened copy of Kokoro he was holding. (Suke’s & Kaku’s faces were helpfully illuminated by the stage lighting now, so I was finally able to tell them apart.)
Sensei: You may wonder why I have chosen to take such a radical way out. But you see, the strange and terrible force that gripped my heart whenever I tried to find an escape in life seemed at last only to leave me free to find escape in death. If I wished to move at all, then I could move only towards my own end.
“This is the sort of thing I had in mind,” Suke said. “Sensei felt that after Emperor Meiji died of natural causes and General Nogi committed suicide to follow his master in death, this unusual set of circumstances had created an opportunity for him to end his own life as well. How is that not natural?”
“Well, okay, but how do you connect the dots between that opportunity and the so-called spirit of Meiji?” inquired Ricchan, still in character as a high school girl. “We know Sensei betrayed his friend, K, so horribly that K couldn’t bear to go on living, and Sensei was haunted by that misdeed for the rest of his life, right? Yet the awareness, however painful, never drove him to commit suicide himself. When he declares, There was nothing I could do, so I decided to go on living as if I were dead, wasn’t he just granting himself a temporary stay of execution? I mean, it seems as if he decided arbitrarily that the reprieve he’d granted himself had finally run out, and he made up his mind the time had come for him to die. And because the spirit of Meiji had effectively perished along with the emperor who gave the era its name, you could say Sensei was simply following that spirit into the valley of death, right? But why does the spirit of Meiji suddenly become a factor at this point? If we’re going to talk about naturalness, is it natural for this phrase to crop up at such a late stage in the story? I mean, until now, both before and after Sensei’s betrayal of his friend, Sensei never really talked about the spirit of Meiji, did he? So why in the world does he suddenly drag that concept into the conversation? Wouldn’t it have been more natural if he’d simply declared that he had lost the will to go on living as if he were already dead and had decided to put an end to his lifelong misery? And what is the spirit of Meiji, anyway? Is it somehow related to the strange and terrible force Sensei invokes, or is it that force’s polar opposite, or what?
“Hang on a minute,” Ricchan said, stopping herself mid-rant. “I’m getting carried away and losing sight of the point I want to make. Okay, here’s what I don’t understand. Are we supposed to believe that all the people who lived through the period of nation building that started with the Meiji Restoration — including Sensei — shared some sort of ideological or spiritual common ground? I see this book as the story of one damaged individual who withdrew from the world because he couldn’t forgive himself for a youthful error in judgment that had unforeseeably tragic consequences. How do you make a connection between one gloomy, introverted person and the bright, shiny ‘spirit of Meiji’ as embodied in all the people who were cheerful, eager, hardworking members of society during that time?”
“The reason you don’t understand is because you’re a woman!” Kaku screamed, storming to the front of the stage. In baseball terms, this rashly chauvinistic (and completely nonsensical) declaration was the wild pitch that lost the game for Suke & Kaku. Within seconds the two comedians were under siege and the air was filled with a flurry of soft-toy dogs aimed directly at them.
The female students who were standing nearby naturally allied themselves with their own gender in the face of such blatant sexism, and they immediately got in on the act by scooping up the “dead dogs” that had landed on the stage around them. However, the girls didn’t heave those missives at Suke & Kaku; instead, they used the stuffed animals to pummel the two actors about their heads and faces, like the aggressors in a particularly violent pillow fight.
An instant later everyone onstage joined the fracas, snatching up the incoming plush toys and slinging them back into the audience with all their might, while continuing to express their opinions in loud voices. It wasn’t long before the scripted play had given way to a festively anarchic fracas. But just as the chaos was reaching its peak the lights were dimmed, transforming the movements of the throng onstage into a sort of shadow play (yet another demonstration of the show’s high production values). At the same time those people’s voices grew gradually fainter, until finally all that could be heard was a passionate, heartfelt whispering, and then the action in the shadow play slowed to a halt as well.
Since a theater in the round doesn’t have a curtain, the illusion of a curtain coming down was created by plunging the stage into total darkness. When the lights came up again, the female high school students, led by Ricchan, were standing there looking very pleased with themselves, while the male scholars on the other side, captained by Suke & Kaku, were crouching down on the stage so that they appeared to be virtually buried under a massive pile of “dead dogs.” This sight evoked an enthusiastic surge of applause and widespread calls for an encore. Once again the stage went dark, and this time when the lights came on Suke & Kaku stood up and loomed over the scrum with stuffed animals dropping around them — a sight greeted by a mixture of applause, laughter, and catcalls. The alternating blackouts and encores went on and on, and almost as an afterthought, innumerable toy dogs continued to be hurled back and forth.
All in all it was a truly extraordinary evening, and everyone agreed that the dog-tossing version of Kokoro was a spectacular success!
Chapter 7. The Aftermath Continues
1
Dear Kogii,
I’ve already told you about the phenomenal success of Unaiko’s play. When I saw her later, I broached an idea that had come to me during the performance and was gratified to find that she shared my enthusiasm.
I’m writing to you about this now because my little epiphany has a direct connection to the Forest House, and I’m hoping very much that you will give this plan your blessing. If my introduction seems excessive, it’s probably because I’m a trifle nervous; I’ve never before asked you for such a large favor, and I may never do so again. Nonetheless, I feel as though I’m putting you on the spot, and that really isn’t my style. As you read this letter, please keep in mind that I was fully conscious of what I was doing and felt very awkward about it.