“That’s right!” Unaiko agreed. “Anyway, there are tons of spirits floating in the ether, and since we were on a tight budget I had to take on the job of portraying the different specters by myself. The basic concept was to create a classical version of our dog-tossing plays, so I did a fair amount of over-the-top ranting and raving along the way! The author of the play kindly took a liking to the idiosyncratic spin I put on it in rehearsals, and he even went to the trouble of writing a bunch of extra lines to clarify the lineage of the spirits, but it still took some fancy footwork for me to play all those different parts. When the author and director created the role — by which I mean those roles, plural — they were apparently visualizing the medium as a woman, but I managed to persuade them to let me portray the character as a young boy.”
“I think that was incredibly perceptive of you,” I said. “In one of my more arcane dictionaries, I noticed that the word yorimashi has etymological and mythological connotations of ‘a dead child.’ The kanji in question means ‘dead’ or ‘cadaver,’ and if you write it in its primitive pictographic form, it looks like this,” I explained as I drew a shape that resembled a turkey’s wishbone, or an extremely abstract human form, on the nearest scrap of paper.
“Oh, that’s adorable!” Unaiko exclaimed. “Actually, when I was brainstorming the role I used a certain someone as my model, and it was—”
“Kogii!” Masao jumped in, excitedly finishing Unaiko’s sentence for her. “Or rather, the Kogii doll that was hanging over our rehearsal space.”
“Exactly!” Unaiko exclaimed. “The Kogii doll was my inspiration, so at least the time we spent groping around for a way to dramatize the drowning novel wasn’t entirely in vain.”
“Since Unaiko’s still pretty amped from her experience on the big stage of Tokyo, this seems like as good a time as any to take a look at her artistic plans from here on out,” Masao said. “By the way,” he went on, “we’re very grateful for your generous financial sponsorship of Unaiko’s first solo flight — venturing out of the nest of the Caveman Group — and, of course, we greatly appreciate Chikashi’s and Asa’s support, too, especially the way they exercised their powers of persuasion on you! The Caveman Group has been on a temporary hiatus ever since our collaboration came to a halt, but I think this unforeseen confluence of circumstances has created a crucial make-or-break opportunity for Unaiko: a chance to try her wings in a big way. You’ve probably heard from Ricchan that they already have a solid plan in place, and it’s looking as if the first offering of Unaiko’s new group will be a stage-play version of the movie Meisuke’s Mother Marches Off to War—filtered through her trademark ‘dog-tossing’ template, of course. Even while she was madly running around in Tokyo, Unaiko has been thinking about this nonstop, and Ricchan has been doing her part down here by conducting background interviews and so on.
“When Unaiko asked Asa for advice on how to involve you in the project, Asa said that rather than standing at the crossroads of crisis and opportunity, as the saying goes, you were smack-dab in the middle of a crisis phase, and she thought it would be better not to pester you about anything just yet. She said she would be more than willing to provide guidance for the project, and she added that she would be happy to try to bring you into the fold after she returned. Anyway, Ricchan has been chronicling the progress on this end in a daily journal, and it struck me that it might be a good idea for everyone who is involved in this project — or at least the people who’ll be coming to the Forest House to work on it — to read Ricchan’s notes. I’d especially like for you to take a look at them, Mr. Choko, and I would be grateful if you could do it now, as a favor to all of us.”
4
I’ve been given the assignment of keeping a daybook, and I’m writing these entries in full awareness of the fact that they will eventually be read by Mr. Choko, who is old enough to be my father (at least). However, I’m also writing with the intention of making these notes available to any members of our troupe who might find their way into the rehearsal area of the Forest House. Since (unlike a diary) these pages are not for my eyes only, I will inevitably exercise a certain degree of self-censorship, but I would still like to try to write as freely and spontaneously as possible. I’m resigned to the fact that some readers may feel baffled by the inclusion of certain personal matters, and I may very well express some controversial views, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Needless to say, I hope all the readers will feel free to note their complaints or dissenting opinions right in the margins of these pages.
I’d like to start by talking about Unaiko. While she was working in Tokyo we kept in close touch by telephone, and one day I told her about how, out of the blue, Akari had shown me his copy of the final-draft screenplay for the film about Meisuke’s mother. With her usual focus, Unaiko immediately wanted to know how a certain pivotal scene had been put together. The scene in question shows the injured folk heroine being carried back to the village on an old storm shutter repurposed as a makeshift stretcher, and trying to figure out how to dramatize the final scene onstage has turned out to be a thorny problem. At present we’re trying to juggle the shooting script for the film along with Mr. Choko’s own notes from when he first agreed to get involved with that project and the rough draft he hammered out in the form of a novel before even starting the screenplay. Using those materials as a jumping-off point, I’ve been trying to create a new script in our own dramatic style. I’ve been agonizing over the best way to tell the story, and the pieces are just beginning to fall into place.
In the movie, as a narrative device to move the action along, the spirit of the late Meisuke’s mother appears and chants in a melodic, singsongy way, while the story of the second uprising unfolds on the screen. However, the movie wasn’t one-dimensional by any means, and it utilized a large variety of techniques and a number of different locations. For instance, in the scenes featuring the spirit or ghost of Meisuke’s mother, the musical base is a revival of the kind of old-style samisen accompaniment we associate with Kabuki. That seems to jibe with the first-person accounts I’ve heard from people who participated in the filming, mostly as extras. Mr. Choko’s grandmother and mother started things off, right after Japan lost the war, by mounting a stage production at the local playhouse. Much later, when Sakura became involved, the play was reenacted on a specially constructed stage at the Saya, and the performance was informally recorded on film, just for reference. The next step was to create a feature film that would be a full-fledged period drama. The basic story, in every version, is about the cruel oppression of the farmers in this area by the local feudal clan. A charismatic young farmer named Meisuke leads the first uprising in response to that tyrannical treatment, and it is a success. After the victory, however, Meisuke is captured by the losing faction and imprisoned in the clan-operated jail, where he becomes desperately ill. In an important scene, Meisuke’s mother (who is still young and attractive) visits her son in jail. As she is leaving, she bids farewell to her ailing son in a deeply affectionate way, speaking the famous lines: “There’s no need to worry — even if you die, I’ll just give birth to you again.”
The next scene features a reprise of the recitative by Meisuke’s mother’s ghost or spirit, in which she tells us how, a decade and a half after the first uprising, the local farmers once again find themselves in exceedingly dire straits. On that occasion as well, those brave souls aren’t willing to knuckle under without a fight. At this point in the filmscript, the spirit of Meisuke’s mother stands up from the platform where she has been chanting, suddenly transformed back into a real, live person. A moment later she is joined by Meisuke II, the young boy who is widely believed to be the reincarnation of her late son, Meisuke (the hero of the first uprising). There are a number of female farmers surrounding Meisuke’s mother, wailing and shaking their bodies in an apparent display of sympathy. Now they line up along the proscenium, and as they drop to their knees and gaze at their leader, Meisuke’s mother begins the famous battle cry: