“You’re probably wondering what this urgent meeting with Unaiko’s aunt is going to be about. Well, a certain person who used to be a big wheel in the highest echelons of education, with prestigious medals and decorations galore — I’m talking about Unaiko’s uncle, of course — anyhow, he has evidently become aware of the connection between Daio and me and between us and Unaiko. His faction is concerned that the recent additions to the play (you know, the ones regarding the way Unaiko’s personal history parallels the story of Meisuke’s mother) will make the uncle look foolish. There are rumors that the play could cause a major scandal for him, and he wants to find a way to shut it down or to at least remove the offensive sections. With that goal in mind, he and his wife supposedly want to meet with Unaiko, after eighteen years of silence, and try to patch up their damaged relationship. The aunt seems to be a rather assertive type of person, and she’s already in Matsuyama, staying at the ANA Hotel. Daio has gone to pick her up and bring her here.”
That afternoon we assembled at Asa’s house by the river. While Unaiko was parking the car, Daio introduced me to the aunt. She was polite enough, but I got the distinct impression that she had very little interest in the likes of me. Clearly, her attention was focused entirely on Unaiko’s imminent arrival.
Mrs. Koga, Unaiko’s aunt, appeared to be in her midsixties. She had an unusually large-framed physique for a Japanese woman of her generation, but there didn’t seem to be much flesh on those big bones. She sat down at a low table on the tatami-matted floor, and when Unaiko finally walked in her aunt stared fixedly at her and said, “You’ve really changed a lot, Mitsuko. Of course, it’s been a long time since we last met, so I’m not really surprised.”
Not to be outdone, Unaiko shot back: “It’s been eighteen years, to be exact. The last time I saw you I was still just a kid. If I had been allowed to carry my pregnancy to term, the child beside me right now would be about the same age I was then. Who knows, maybe we — you, and I, and my child — could be having a jolly chat about old times.”
“Yes, and I think my husband would probably be leading the way,” Mrs. Koga said matter-of-factly “You were such a cheerful, openhearted girl, so of course he couldn’t help caring deeply about you and sincerely showing his affection.”
“Yes,” Unaiko said sharply. “He showed his affection, all right: day and night. Especially night.”
The aunt looked pained. “It’s true that things ended up going too far, and my husband crossed some boundaries that should never have been crossed,” she said carefully. “I think it started because when you first came to stay with us as a girl of fourteen or fifteen, you were frightened by the ancient network of caves and tunnels around the shrine on one side of our mansion. (As everyone here probably knows, those catacombs are one of Kamakura’s most famous tourist destinations.) My husband started sleeping in your room to allay your fears, and it somehow got to be a habit. I was prone to headaches so I frequently went to bed early, and I didn’t know exactly what was going on between you. I just felt fortunate that when he came home at the end of the day, tired from work, he could always relax in your room for a while.”
“Yes, and it was the nature of the ‘relaxation,’ as you put it, that was the problem,” Unaiko said. “Really, the boundary-crossing stuff began almost right away. Your husband explained to me that while it was forbidden for an uncle to put his hands inside his niece’s underpants, it was perfectly all right as long as his caresses stayed safely on the outside, or around the edges. I didn’t know any better, so I thought, Oh, okay — if you say so. By and by, things progressed to the point where he started putting his hands under my panties, but he promised he wouldn’t insert his fingers anywhere they didn’t belong, because he said it would be too close to having sex.”
Once again, the aunt looked distinctly uncomfortable. “After you left us, when I asked my husband how things could have gone as far as they did, he told me he was startled by what he called the ‘extreme abundance’ of your secretions in response to his affectionate caresses, and he said that was the trigger for the inappropriate escalation of your relationship,” she explained. “As he put it, the physical evidence seemed to suggest you weren’t exactly averse to what he was doing. Tell me honestly, Mitsuko — isn’t it true that you enjoyed having my husband touch you?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I did on some level, after I got used to it,” Unaiko admitted. “But I really didn’t understand what was going on, and I made the mistake of believing that my uncle would never do anything inappropriate.”
“Mitsuko, another thing I heard from my husband, after you had gone home to Osaka, is that when you were a junior in high school you came home one day and told him about a term that, you said, described what the two of you were doing. (Apparently you had heard it from some of your more grown-up classmates.) It’s a little awkward to say this out loud in mixed company, but the term was ‘simultaneous mutual masturbation.’”
“Yes, it’s true, I did tell him about that,” Unaiko said. “I wanted him to assure me that what we were doing wasn’t actually sex, per se.”
“But as an intimate physical relationship develops and escalates, isn’t what you two ended up doing simply consensual intercourse?”
“No,” Unaiko said flatly. “It’s called rape. This was back before houses had air-conditioning in every room, and when the weather was hot I would lie on my bed stark-naked, with my legs apart, just trying to cool off. One day my uncle was lurking nearby, as usual. He stared at my crotch for the longest time, and then he suddenly said in a loud voice, ‘Okay, enough is enough. I’ve had it with this nonsense!’ And then he proceeded to rape me. (At the time, you were off in Kyoto for some kind of women’s college reunion, Auntie.) When I started crying from the pain, my uncle said, ‘Don’t worry, it won’t hurt after the first time,’ and then he went on to rape me again, twice, until it started to get light outside and he finally went back to his own bedroom.
“That morning, I waited until the government car came to pick Uncle up and take him to his office, and then I got on the train and went home to Osaka. As proof of what had been done to me, I took along the underpants I’d put on after the third round of rape, which were covered with blood and semen. I think you all know what happened after that.
“It was a little more than three months later when you called, Auntie, and asked me to come to Tokyo and meet you at one of the most solemn (and controversial) places in the entire country. You told me we needed to talk about my future, and you were proposing that I undergo some kind of purification ceremony, presumably because you had an inkling of what had happened between me and my uncle. While we were at the shrine someone waved a gigantic Japanese flag in front of my face, and I was overcome with dizziness and began to vomit. I guess that was when you realized I must be pregnant, because you promptly hustled me off to get an abortion. Afterward, once again, I took certain items home as proof, and I still have them today.”