Yuji takes off his shoes and steps into the pavilion. Ishihara picks up a silk shirt the colour of persimmon leaves, puts it on and begins, with slender fingers, to button it. He apologises for not being ready to receive a guest. Yuji apologises for disturbing him.
‘You’ll be staying for lunch, of course?’ asks Ishihara.
‘Lunch?’
‘Just a few of us — Major Yamazaki from the War Ministry; Dick Amazawa, a director with the Shochiku film company; Ota; and you. And you needn’t worry. I haven’t invited our mutual friend, though he speaks rather highly of you. He was quite excited at the thought of your writing a really in-depth piece, quite persuasive.’ His shirt is buttoned now. He lights a cigarette, exhales slowly. ‘So, how shall we begin?’
‘However you prefer,’ says Yuji, who, as he crossed the city, had nothing more precise in mind than that he would scribble frantically into the pad he has in his pocket while Ishihara made some sort of speech about himself.
There is a playful grin on Ishihara’s face. ‘You’re a writer,’ he says. ‘I’m sure you can read a man’s character in the objects he surrounds himself with. This is where I work. It’s what the Americans would call a “den”. Feel free to explore. I shan’t disturb you.’ He turns and goes again to the far verandah with its view across the ample roofs of neighbouring houses, the heads of trees luminous in their fresh May foliage. For a few seconds Yuji stands regarding the other’s back and wondering what exactly he is being tested on. His skill as a writer (if that is what he is)? Or something else, something less obvious?
He starts to look. The pavilion — the den — seems more a place for relaxation, for pleasure, than for the hard, anxious business of writing. At one end, there is a desk of glass and tubular steel, a chair of steel and leather, but the typewriter on the desk seems as ornamental as the vase of white lilacs beside it. There is not, in fact, any paper to be seen.
At the other end of the room, under a raised and tied mosquito net, is a divan upholstered in peach silk, and on the mats beside it a scattering of magazines — Vogue, Jardin des Modes.
Bookshelves (coloured glass) hold mainly copies of Ishihara’s own works, though with some unexpected additions: volumes of history and economics, like Shigeo Iwanami’s Lectures on the Historical Development of Japanese Capitalism, the same edition Father keeps in the garden study. On the wall between the shelves is a large photograph of Ishihara with an older man, the pair of them muffled in winter coats and standing in front of a monument Yuji has seen before but cannot quite identify.
‘The Brandenburg Gate,’ says Ishihara, who has stepped quietly in from the verandah, ‘Berlin. That’s Kyushi Hiraizumi. It was my thirty-fifth birthday. I am, as you should know, almost exactly as old as the century.’
‘So you’ve been to Europe?’
‘Berlin, Paris, London, Vienna . . even to the Eternal City.’
‘The Eternal . .?’
‘It is what they call Rome. Do you think you would like to see Rome?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps you will.’
‘I’ve hardly travelled at all.’
‘You are still young.’
‘But the way things are going, the international situation . .’
‘The way things are going will give many excellent opportunities to adventurous young men. You needn’t worry about that. But is this what you want to talk about? The international situation? I suppose the author of Electric Dragonfly cannot have a very high opinion of my little efforts with the pen.’
‘Not at all,’ says Yuji, ‘I was only . .’
“‘In the dream of a city poet, electric dragonflies over Shinobazu Pond. The lilies open like distant gunfire.” Have I got it right? I hate to misquote.’
‘Yes,’ says Yuji, blushing and looking down at Ishihara’s naked toes. ‘It’s correct.’
‘The problem,’ says Ishihara ‘— and you don’t object, I hope, to our speaking freely? — is that people now prefer stronger flavours. Or to put it another way, it is the tastes and appetites of the popular classes that dominate our society, as they dominate societies all over the world. Your poetry, Takano, belongs to a more elegant age, the time, perhaps, of our grandfathers or great-grandfathers. It is over. It will not return.’
‘So poetry is finished?’
‘Have you ever stood outside a factory and seen the workers streaming out of the gates the moment the steam-whistle sounds? I recommend it if you want a view of the future. A featureless crowd, semi-educated, longing for some distraction from the harsh reality of their lives. By their mid-thirties they’re exhausted. Do you think they read much poetry? Indeed, do you think they read at all?’
‘Then what hope is there for your own . . work?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘So . .?’
‘What shall we do?’ He lights another cigarette, flicks, with a frown, a speck of ash that has settled on the cuff of his shirt. ‘What else but side with history? With the future. I wonder if you know what that means.’
‘Siding with the crowd?’
‘I’ve heard,’ says Ishihara, ‘that you care for cinema.’
‘Yes.’
‘And your favourite film?’
‘La Grande Illusion.’
‘Shall I tell you mine? Ah, but here is our tea.’
Ota places the tray on the verandah, pours from a silver teapot, throws Yuji a glance of rich hostility, nods to his employer, and withdraws.
Ishihara hands Yuji a cup. ‘Don’t worry about Ota,’ he says. ‘He is somewhat possessive, that’s all. Now, take a sip and tell me what you think.’
‘It’s very good,’ says Yuji.
‘Just the right degree of stimulation?’
‘Yes,’ says Yuji. ‘But I think you were about to tell me the name of your favourite film?’
‘It does not have a name. I saw it privately at General Sugiyama’s house. It was filmed by one of the general’s aides and lasts no more than a few minutes. It shows a battlefield in Shangtung Province. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of dead soldiers, ours, theirs, lying where they had fallen a few hours earlier. The beauty of it is . . beyond my poor powers of description. Their gestures, their stillness, their wounds, their youth. I was filled with an emotion that goes far beyond patriotism or pity, or even terror. A voluptuous sensation, an ardour that no poem or novel or song could have inspired in me. I stood. I leaned towards the images on the screen. I longed to be there!’
‘And this is what the masses want to see?’
‘Oh, probably they do. In a diluted form at first, and dressed up a little. But that is not quite the point I am making.’
‘If you are arguing that cinema is the pre-eminent form, the form of the future, I suppose I must agree.’
‘But would you agree that the future is not simply the depiction of such scenes — a depiction that must indeed be cinematic — but the scenes themselves?’
‘War?’
‘Yes, war. But more than that.’
‘More?’
‘It is the imaginative aspect, the aesthetic aspect, even, dare I say, the religious aspect.’
‘A worshipping of war?’
‘Not exactly war,’ he laughs, ‘but you are getting close. Do you think you’ll remember all this? Perhaps you have a little notebook in your pocket you could use. You see, I am putting myself into your hands. I hope I have not made a mistake?’
Lunch is in the house, an upstairs room where double doors of decorative glass open onto a balcony overlooking the garden. The lunch guests are already seated by the time Yuji and Ishihara join them. The table is as formal, as cluttered, as the tables at the Snow Goose. There are vases of flowers, bouquets arranged in the Western style, and on the walls four or five large paintings, black-and-white abstracts, some kind of Japanese constructivism. Ota is pouring glasses of Monopole champagne. Major Yamazaki is sketching thrusts and dispositions on the starched linen of the tablecloth with the handle of his fork: ‘Naturally I accept the need for a showdown with the Soviets, but the country needs fuel oil — the navy’s using four hundred tons of the stuff every day — and that means pushing to the south.’