There was a young girl seated beside me. Very early in the trip I had established that she did not speak English, and for nearly the whole time since we had left Ueno Station she had been reading a thick comic book. When we arrived at the far north of Honshu, at Noheji Station (fifteen seconds) on Mutsu Bay, I looked out the window and saw snow – it lay between the tracks and on blue moonlit fields. The girl rose, put her comic down, and walked the length of the car to the toilet. A green toilet occupied light went on, and while that light burned I read the comic. I was instructed and cautioned. The comic strips showed decapitations, cannibalism, people bristling with arrows like Saint Sebastian, people in flames, shrieking armies of marauders dismembering villagers, limbless people with dripping stumps, and, in general, mayhem. The drawings were not good, but they were clear. Between the bloody stories there were short comic ones and three of these depended for their effects on farting: a trapped man or woman bending over, exposing a great moon of buttock and emitting a jet of stink (gusts of soot drawn in wiggly lines and clouds) in the captors' faces. The green light went off. I dropped the comic. The girl returned to her seat and, so help me God, serenely returned to this distressing comic.
The loudspeakers blared at Aomori, the ferry landing, giving instructions, and when the train pulled into the station the passengers, who crowded into the aisle as soon as the first syllable of the message was heard, sprinted through the doors and down the platform. The chicken farmers with their souvenirs, the old ladies hobbling on wooden clogs, the youths with skis, the girl with her comic: through the lobby of the station, up the stairs, down several ramps, gathering speed and bumping each other, and tripping in the sandals that splay their feet into two broad toes – women shuffling, men running. Then to the row of turnstiles where tickets were punched, and six conductors waved people up the gangway and into their sections: First-Class Green Ticket Room, Ordinary Room, Berths, Second-Class Uncar-peted, Second-Class Carpeted (here passengers sat cross-legged on the floor). Within ten minutes the twelve hundred passengers had transferred themselves from the train to the ferry, and fifteen minutes after the Hatsukari had arrived at Aomori, the Towada Maru hooted and drew away from the dock to cross the Tsugaru Straits. At the Indian port of Rameswaram, a similar operation involving a train and a ship had taken almost seven hours.
I was in the Green Ticket Room with about 150 other people, who were, like me, trying to adjust the barber chairs that had been assigned to them. These sloping chairs were tilted back, and before the lights dimmed many people were snoring. The four-hour crossing was very rough; the snow at Aomori had been deep, and we were now sailing in a blizzard. The ship twisted sharply, its fittings made low ominous groans, spray flew on to the deck, and snowflakes sifted past the portholes. I went out to the windy deck, but couldn't stand the cold and the sight of so much black water and snow. I settled into my chair and tried to sleep. Because of the snowstorm, every forty-five seconds the ship's horn blew a moan into the straits.
At four o'clock there was birdsong – twittering and warbling – over the loudspeaker: another recording. But it was still very dark. A few words from the loudspeaker and everyone rose and rushed to the cabin doors. The ferry slipped sideways, the gangway was secured, the doors flew open, and everyone made for the waiting train through the dry snow on the ramps at Hakodate Station. Now I was running, too: I was going at Japanese speed. I had learned at Aomori that I had less than fifteen minutes to board the northbound train to Sapporo, and I had no wish to be duffilled in such a desolate place.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE OZORA ('BIG SKY') LIMITED EXPRESS TO SAPPORO
E train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky.' The opening lines of Kawabata's Snow Country (set elsewhere, on western Honshu) describe the Ozora, an hour after leaving Hakodate. It was still only five-thirty on that December morning; I had never seen such distances of snow, and after six when the sun came up and yellowed the drifts, giving the snow the harsh glare of desert sand, it was impossible to sleep. I walked up and down the train snapping pictures of everything in sight: it was something no Japanese could possibly object to.
In the dining car, a Japanese man told me, 'This train is called "Big Sky" because Hokkaido is the land of big sky.' I tried to engage him in further conversation, but he cried, 'Please!' and hurried away. There appeared to be no other English-speakers on the train, but while I was eating my breakfast, an American who introduced himself as Chester asked if he could join me. I said fine. I was glad to see him, to reassure myself that I was still capable of assessing strangers and appreciating travel. The mental motion-sickness I had experienced the day before had disturbed me; I had recognized it as fear, and it was an inconvenient state of mind in Japan. Chester was from Los Angeles. He had a handlebar moustache and wore lumberjack's clothes: checked woollen shirt, twill pants, and lace-up boots. He taught English in Hakodate, where he had boarded the train. The people in Hakodate were real nice, but the weather was real bad, his rent was real high, and living was real expensive. He was on his way to Sapporo for the weekend to see a girl he knew. What was I doing?
I thought it would be unlucky to lie: a whiff of paranoia had made me superstitious. I told him exactly where I had been, naming the countries; I said that I had been taking notes and that, when I got back to England, I would write a book about the trip and call it The Great Railway Bazaar. And I went further: I said that as soon as he was out of sight I would write down what he said, that the people were real nice and the weather was real bad, and I would describe his moustache.
All this candour had a curious effect: Chester thought I was lying, and when I convinced him I was telling the truth he began speaking in a rather joshing conciliatory way, as if I were crazy and might shortly become violent. It turned out that he had an objection to travel books: he said he didn't want to hurt my feelings but that he thought travel books were useless. I asked him why.
'Because everyone travels,' said Chester. 'So who wants to read about it?'
'Everyone gets laid, too, but that doesn't eliminate screwing as a subject – I mean, people still write about it.'
'Sure, but you take travelling,' he said. 'Your average person in the States thinks nothing about going to Bally. I know lots of people – ordinary middle-class people -who go to really far-out places like Instantbull, Anchor, Taheedy, you name it – my folks are in Oh-sucker right this minute. So they've been there already: who wants to read about it?'
'I don't know, but the fact that they do travel might mean they'd be more interested in reading about it.'
'But they've been there already,' he said obstinately.