“Yes, I did,” I said. “To be honest, when I heard my father shouting I literally began to tremble. A moment later one of the officers came out into the hall where I was standing, still shaking like a leaf, and he said, ‘Listen, kiddo, we’re going to be talking about some important things from now on, so you’d better run along to the main house.’ So I did.
“It was much later when my father returned, and while I was aware that he and my mother were talking in low voices, I was in my bedroom so I couldn’t make out what they were saying. In retrospect I realize they were probably discussing my father’s decision to run away in his little boat. As a mere child, I couldn’t very well ask what was going on, but it was obvious the next day that my mother was helping my father get ready for a trip. At one point my father asked me to extract the tube from an old bicycle tire and blow it full of air, but that was nothing unusual. All day, from morning to evening, my chest seemed to be constricted with a vague feeling of anxiety, but I didn’t know why. During that time the military guys were still quietly holed up in the outbuilding next door. The scene I remember so vividly — my father’s departure on the stormy river — happened very late at night, long after my usual bedtime. I’m not sure what time it was, but …”
“So you didn’t really understand what you overheard outside the meeting room!” Daio interjected. “I always used to wonder how much you knew. I even suspected you might be feigning ignorance, but now I realize that wasn’t the case. Rather, I think your memories have been quarantined or frozen somewhere deep in your unconscious because the things you heard (the army officers clashing with your father about the Saya and so on) were just too confusing for your childish mind to deal with.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to monopolize the conversation, but I want to explain my theory. First, under the guidance of his teacher in Kochi, your father read The Golden Bough, with special emphasis on the part about the tradition of killing the old king to protect the country from succumbing to decay and debilitation, and that gave him the idea of bombing the Imperial Palace. He was able to get the army officers on board with this rather extreme plan, at least at first, and they started to get excited about it (to say the least) during the two-day drinking party masquerading as a policy meeting. But I really don’t think that discussion would have made sense to you, not only because you were an innocent child, but also because your formal education was based on the nationalistic, emperor-worshipping model. Actually, the thing that made the lightbulb go on in my head was seeing Unaiko’s ‘dog-tossing’ dramatization of Kokoro. That really got me thinking. The Sensei character in Kokoro talks about the ‘spirit of the age’ or ‘the spirit of the Meiji Era,’ right? In any case, during the performance someone from the audience asked whether a person like Sensei, who had turned his back both on his own era and on society in general, could really be said to have been influenced by the spirit of his age to the point where he ended up taking his own life when the era came to an end. As you know, that sparked a major ruckus, with stuffed dogs flying through the air in all directions.
“Anyhow, that somehow made me think about you, Kogito. Your early education had a militaristic slant, so the ‘spirit of the age’ you grew up in demanded total allegiance to an emperor who was believed to be a god incarnate. (I don’t believe a valid comparison can be drawn between those sentiments and the so-called spirit of Meiji Soseki wrote about, but that’s another discussion for another day.)
“Fifteen years or so ago, you turned down the emperor’s highest cultural award because of your unwavering belief in the principles of postwar democracy, and as a result my young disciples at the training camp (who were still totally committed to emperor worship) decided you were their archenemy. I think that was probably the motivation behind the practical joke they played, sending you a giant live turtle and telling you I was dead, but they could have just done it for mischief, pure and simple. As for me, I think if you’re going to talk about Kogito Choko in terms of the spirit of an age, there are two distinct facets. The first half of the Showa Era you grew up in — in other words, until 1945—revolved around a godlike emperor, while the second half, after the war, was shaped by democratic principles. I think your personal trajectory reflects that as well.
“So we have a ten-year-old boy who was born in the first half of the era and who is, in effect, a poster child for that period in history. This boy happens to overhear his father — whom he holds in great esteem — talking about a scheme in which some navy men, trained in piloting military aircraft, would stage a suicide attack to kill the living god — that is, the emperor. Does it really seem likely that a boy whose schooling was rooted in emperor-worshipping nationalism would be able to process such a radical idea? No, I think what young Kogito heard was so shocking that his conscious mind simply suppressed it. And the only thing the eavesdropping kid retained, indelibly lodged in his unconscious, was the image of the young pilots at the Saya practicing their takeoffs and landings — a fantasy scene he had only heard described through a wall. And there you have it: the source of your Saya dream. Of course, the additional details and embellishments were provided by your famously fertile imagination, which would later bear fruit in the form of novels, but mark my words: your imaginings were firmly based on things that were discussed in the meeting you were surreptitiously listening in on!”
Daio paused for a moment in triumph and then went on: “And so I’ve come to the conclusion that for you, as the unofficial representative of the spirit of the prewar half of the Showa Era, it was simply impossible to wrap your head around what you heard your father saying. On the one hand, your father was an outsider who had married into the village and had embraced many of the local traditions, and I think those stories had a deeper hold on his psyche than the ultranationalist dogma he was spouting to the young officers. The land around the Saya was considered by local folks to be the heart of the forest, so there was no way your father was going to let a bunch of young whippersnappers come charging in and tramp all over the ancient site, digging up the roots of the pine trees with pickaxes and trowels to get at the valuable turpentine, then adding insult to injury by proposing to raze that hallowed ground for use as an airstrip. That was the father you knew and looked up to. But on the other hand, from what you’d overheard it also sounded as if your father was the instigator of a crazy plan to kill the living god!
“I honestly believe your father was probably opposed to such radical tactics, in his heart, but maybe he had just reached a point where he felt the need for a grand symbolic act. So when it became clear that Japan was going to lose the war, he and his cohorts probably discussed a scenario wherein, if the emperor abdicated his throne, they would commit premeditated ritual suicide — you know, junshi. The truth is, Kogito, by the time your father reached the stage of talking about dispatching a kamikaze bomber to target the center of Tokyo, where the palace is, I think he had already resolved to end his own life, one way or another. I didn’t have the courage to tell you this before, but I never thought Choko Sensei was the type of man who would live a long, uneventful life and die a peaceful death in his own bed. To be honest, I don’t believe his drowning was an accident at all.”