Emerging on the far side of Rainy Mountain, where it was windy, I heard before I saw it the rattling against the metal railing of those long narrow sticks with black characters on them. Cherry blossoms hung sickly in the streetlight behind a giant spreading tree. Here stood the narrow stele of a family tomb and there another, each stele upon its nested pedestals, each pedestal bearing a pair of silver cups for flowers and often an oval mouth for incense; sometimes a family crest had been etched into the stone. All this reminded me of something I could scarcely name. Between two silver cups lay a groove for incense, at which I finally remembered the breasts of my sweet Rainy Mountain ghost!
More clammy gusts played in this pallid forest of sticks which reached up toward the greyish night sky of Tokyo. Seeking to decode that long sad rattling, I reminded myself: Could they talk, this would be the only way they could do it, since nothing else moves. — Ever more desperately hopeful waxed my longing to see something, even something gruesome, for instance a ghoul or vampire shambling toward me up one of the long narrow alleys of gravestones. For to exist is to be alone.
Stopping at a very dark-shadowed tomb (streetlight glinting silver on its nearest flower-cup and on one granite corner-groove), I discovered the stone to be already engraved with nine names, in each case first the postmortem name and then the secular one. If only I knew what my Rainy Mountain ghost had been called! (I should have known; why didn’t I?) Then I could have drifted from tomb to tomb with some pretense of purpose. But didn’t I have all the time in the world?
Glumly I regarded the tomb, which seemed to stare back at me, for its two glowing cups resembled eyes in a black square stone face.
Falling back on hope, I bowed twice, clapped twice and bowed yet again. Here at once came my Rainy Mountain ghost with a horde of her bygone friends, some of them bearing twin lanterns and fresh white chrysanthemums, most of them skeletal, a few with the heads of foxes or horses, but all of them with their long black tresses perfectly combed. Spying me, they halted as if in confusion. Then, in that universally known gesture of threatening rejection which the dead make to scare away the living (but wasn’t I one of them?), they signified in the air: What cures you harms us, and vice versa. So stay away; stay away!
Ignoring this — what harm could they do me? — I sped toward them almost as rapidly as a cherry petal whirls down an April brook. They wavered, but disdained to sink back underground. So I peered between my sweetheart’s legs, but she was incubating nothing of mine. I won’t pretend I was surprised.
But as I hovered disconcerted, she reached into my bone cradle, pulled out an urn and shattered it against the tomb while her companions tittered. I oozed down upon the blue-black ashes to taste them. Thus was I apprised of her final disappointment — her sojourn with me. After that, nothing remained to me but the words of Lord Tokugawa Ieyasu: Blame yourself, not others.
THE CAMERA GHOST
In Kabukicho a certain crow caws and memory sticks protrude from behind the concrete wall. Unless you know somebody here, you will not think much of this spot — just another cemetery from the Meiji period! White apartment towers stand behind it; plastic pallets sometimes lie before it, mingled with cardboard boxes which once held frozen fish. Seeking the past without expectations, I entered through the open gate. A pine tree was slowly lifting the flagstones of the Naito family tomb. A woman was walking, with her eyes nearly closed, and two incense sticks smoking in her left hand; she was striding down the path of concrete flagstones to her family’s place. Whatever she would meet there would be hers alone, no matter whether she thought of herself as belonging to others. Charmed by her beautiful accomplishment of grief, I dreamed of photographing her. But she disappeared.
Approaching a vermilion-headed shrine high above whose bell was painted a golden swastika, I bowed and clapped my hands twice, hoping to see what was gone. The incense-bearing woman had expressed no such prayer, I guessed; she would have felt she’d done enough. Let the dead bury the dead, said Christ; while the cremated Buddha, smiling, blew smoke-rings as he rose away from his pyre. I for my part thought: Everything ought to be remembered forever.
Bending over a nearby tomb whose inscribed characters were moss-greened, I now descried the representation of a camera, which in my situation I considered lucky. Bowing, clapping and praying for old things, I remained there for the duration of two joss-sticks, then departed the cemetery.
An old man came walking slowly, dressed in tan, with a rust-pocked little Leica dangling from his shoulder. To speak more correctly of his outfit, it consisted of a tan-green coat, dark tan pants, pale beige hat and white gloves. At his shoulder hung a cracked briefcase. He came to me, leaning slowly on his black cane. I was prepared for him; I was the watcher on the side.
I assured him that since he must be the lonelier of us two, I would help him however I could.
He replied: You didn’t call me on my account, so no misstatements! What do you want? Speak quickly; my bones hurt!
Well, sensei, I remember film, paper, chemicals and cameras, real cameras—
I might know a little about those, he allowed, and we both grew happy.
And afterward, with your permission, I’ll buy a bottle of snow-white sake and pour it over your grave.
At this he graciously bowed. Perhaps his other followers had died or forgotten him.
Walking side by side, we passed another young lady; soon she would be smoke and ashes. I said: How sad! — The girl did not hear; she was already gone.
He asked me: How long can you remember her?
Photography remembers, I insisted.
So does imagination.
It only thinks so. You’re testing me, sensei.
Yes. Now answer at once: Would you rather have her before you all the days of her life, or make a picture of her which would be safe forever in some place you could never see?
The second, of course. It would be for her, not for me.
Good. Now tell me what she looked like. Be accurate.
I can’t remember. How long has it been? She was beautiful. Did you see her face? She—
Coughing smoke and dust, my companion remarked: I’ve managed not to regret my death. Anyhow, it’s time to make your wishes clear. My dead bones, you see…
Perceiving how frail he was, I bowed to him and clapped two times, at which he wearily nodded. A funeral shop stood in that block, with open double doors. I escorted him inside, and he inhaled three breaths of incense. That was all he needed. As soon as the clerk approached me, I apologized, and then the old man and I went out.
He said to me: Describe your own regrets. Please get to the point.
I told him that I reckoned my life from before and after the day when film went away. Of course I grieved for the sake of all cameras, but particularly for one of mine which was constructed entirely of metal, silk and glass; this machine had always been heavy around my neck, and even when it was new, other photographers had laughed at me, disdaining what they called its obsolescence. What knowledge it ever brought me I cannot say; whether it made me more or less fitted for life I can answer only too well (my dreams fading secretly in albums, so that I need not see); nonetheless, my camera was everything to me. Needing no battery, nearly impervious to humidity or shock, it could resist a century as easily as a speck of lint. Its round eye was brightly tireless. I told the old man that my camera saw ever so differently from me, and yet it never lied. If it never wept, sometimes what it saw touched the eyes of others. Well, now it had starved to death. Defying reality, I saved a few rolls of film in my freezer; the cosmic rays must have fogged them by now.