“So how did the citizens cope with the impending crisis? Well, the people made a conscious effort to prevent the king from dying a natural death — that is, from illness or old age. While the old king still had some energy left, they would send a parade of candidates to attempt to kill him, until someone finally succeeded. And with the ascension of a new king the world, too, would experience a rebirth of sorts: a renewal of fertility. That’s the basic premise. Anyone can see that the myth of the Forest King of Nemi is one of the underlying themes of the entire Golden Bough, from beginning to end. The archetypal myth about the new king who kills his aged predecessor, thus engendering a renascence of fertility in the world, was already firmly established in the folkloric canon when Frazer arrived at the party, so to speak. However, Frazer expanded on the theme at great length, and I think the person who loaned my father these books made the marks to indicate that my father ought to jump ahead and read the pages about the way the old king was killed, and the earth regained its power and vitality as a result. It’s clear from the marginal annotations that my father was under the influence of a mentor who was exceedingly intense about the teaching of political science.”
While I was speaking to Ricchan, Daio ambled into the great room and I saw Akari (who was lying on the floor nearby) raise one hand in greeting. Daio had been out in the south-side garden, doing his usual landscaping chores, and he had apparently been listening to our conversation through a partially open sliding glass door.
“Holy cow, Kogito,” he said. “I think the last time I heard you talking so passionately about anything was while you were still in high school, the weekend you brought Goro to the training camp. Please continue your discussion — don’t mind me!”
“All right,” I replied. “I’m going to get back to Frazer’s book, but I’ll keep in mind that you’re listening too now, Daio. Anyway, I think I’ve figured out the overarching point that the Kochi Sensei was trying to make with all his little notes in the margins. As I told Ricchan, I’ve also realized that while my father was dutifully reading The Golden Bough in order to glean the lessons in political theory his own mentor was trying to impart, he was also reading it on another, more personal level and appreciating the beauty of the prose as a work of literary art. That’s something you’ve mentioned as well, Daio. However, his guru’s notes were clearly focused on posing the question: What should the old king’s followers be doing, in a political sense?
“If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to read this excerpt from the Frazer book aloud: But no amount of care and precaution will prevent the man-god from growing old and feeble and at last dying. His worshippers have to lay their account with this sad necessity and to meet it as best they can. The danger is a formidable one; for if the course of nature is dependent on the man-god’s life, what catastrophes may not be expected from the gradual enfeeblement of his powers and their final extinction in death? There is only one way of averting these dangers. The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay. The advantages of thus putting the man-god to death instead of allowing him to die of old age and disease are, to the savage, obvious enough.”
After I had finished reading, Akari walked silently past us on his way to the restroom. (He had been lying on the floor for a long time, and getting to his feet obviously caused some lower-back pain.) A moment later we heard a loud noise as the door banged shut behind him.
“Akari really hates it when they interrupt his music programs with a breaking-news bulletin, especially when it has to do with murder or any other kind of violent crime,” Ricchan said. “I don’t think our discussion about the state-sanctioned killing of kings sat well with him. That’s why he slammed the door.”
I turned to Daio. “By the way,” I said, “I’ve finally come to understand why my mother and sister were so terrified I might someday finish the drowning novel. I think they were afraid I would tell the world that the Kochi Sensei was using The Golden Bough to convince my father and his cohorts to kill the living god: that is, Emperor Hirohito.”
When Daio didn’t respond, I went on, “The thing is, Daio, the events of that night — the feverish atmosphere of the meeting at the storehouse, and the way the officers seemed to suddenly be ostracizing my father — struck me as completely mystifying at the time. I still find them baffling, even now. What I’d like to know, and I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me, is whether my father and the young officers really understood each other. I mean, suddenly their ties are severed, and my father rushes out alone and drowns. Surely those occurrences must have had some effect on you, as a young man who looked up to my father?”
The sunlight from the back garden seemed to have turned Daio’s close-cropped white hair into a kind of golden aureole. He stood there for a moment with his head held high, thinking, while I waited for an answer. Evidently something about this tableau rubbed Ricchan the wrong way because she snapped, “Hey, how long do you guys expect Akari to stay barricaded in the restroom in self-defense? I mean, he was down here trying to relax, and then he was forced to put up with your talk about death and murder and drowning, just a few feet away! It’s almost time for one of his favorite FM radio programs, Classics Special, so maybe you two could give him a little space. Please?”
Then she added in a softer tone, “This afternoon we’ll be going to the Saya again, and you’re both welcome to tag along. If you could just do us the favor of not hanging around too close to where Akari’s listening to his music, you can continue your gruesome discussion at the top of your lungs, if that’s what you want to do!”
3
After leaving the van in a large open space (a designated turnaround for forestry trucks), we set out on foot along the pathway, thickly bordered by trees and bushes, that crossed over the mountain stream. Daio led the way, with a thin exercise mat and a blanket draped over his one arm, and the rest of us followed in single file. Ricchan was the very model of a perfect caregiver. Carrying a large Boston bag, she stepped carefully in her canvas walking shoes while her body language seemed to be saying, If Akari should lose his balance and start to fall, I’m ready to jump into the shrubbery and hold him up.
The path dead-ended at the lower part of the Saya. We stopped there and Daio spread out the exercise mat on a flat, narrow strip of grassland next to the stream. Ricchan, meanwhile, was extracting the components of the portable sound system and an assortment of CDs from the ubiquitous Boston bag. After Akari had taken a seat on the mat and started to remove his shoes, Daio and I took our leave and headed toward the upper reaches of the Saya.
“I remember the war was still going on when I was given the second floor of the paperbush warehouse down by the river as a place to stay,” Daio said as we climbed the hill, side by side. “I settled in nicely, but I didn’t set foot in the ‘Saya zone’—that is, this area right here — until quite a bit later.”
“The Saya has had an important place in local history for centuries,” I replied, “but it was never one of the spots local people would share with a visitor from the outside world.”
“I remember one time I was invited to go fishing with the man I’ve mentioned, whose son-in-law became a doctor,” Daio said. “It was sweetfish season, as I recall. Anyhow, he told me the triangular delta where your father’s body washed ashore is considered a ‘special spot,’ and he said that even after all these years children still won’t go in the water there. When you think about the ancient landmarks in an area like this, each with its own story, it kind of makes sense that a relatively new site could have taken on ‘special’ overtones as well.