Kanazawa, p.13
Kanazawa, page 13
“Do you miss Kanazawa?” Emmitt said.
“Maybe I’m a little homesick. Living in Tokyo by myself, life is more complicated than I’m used to. It’s hard to deal with everything on my own.”
“It’s natural,” Emmitt said. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“I know,” Asuka said, turning around to face him and Mirai. “But with all the time I spend in the office, I don’t have much of a life.”
“There are limits to what you can get used to,” Emmitt said. “Over time you’ll come to understand what that means for you.”
Asuka looked at him as if she wanted to hear more.
“You’ll be fine,” Mirai said. “Even if you spend all day in an office, is that so bad?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Mirai looked at her incredulously and shook her head.
“I heard a university in Tokyo might offer you a job,” Asuka said to Emmitt, coming back from the window and sitting before the coffee table, where her father usually sat. “If it’s a good opportunity, I hope you take it. It would mean a lot to me to have both of you there, too.”
“That’s not really how it is,” Emmitt said. “We have no plans to leave Kanazawa.”
“You may still get an offer,” Mirai said. “It’s easy to say no before anything happens, but when an opportunity comes you won’t be able to dismiss it so easily.”
“It won’t change how I feel.”
Emmitt saw Asuka’s face fall hearing his reply.
Apparently not keen to push the matter, Mirai told Asuka that Koyo and Avery had decided to visit Kanazawa next weekend. Mirai had suggested they stay overnight with her and Emmitt in Katayamazu Onsen.
“I wish I could join you,” Asuka said, sounding as if she hoped for an invitation.
“I don’t think I’d want you there. Not when you’re like this, anyway.”
Emmitt thought Mirai couldn’t have hurt her sister more had she slapped her. Inhaling shakily, Asuka was unable to speak up for herself.
Uncomfortable witnessing this side of Mirai, Emmitt left them to talk. He returned to reading Kyōka, whose early work he’d finally begun to put a dent in.
ASUKA RETURNED TO TOKYO the next morning. She had planned to stay until Sunday evening after dinner, but Mirai convinced her to go back early.
Mirai and Emmitt drove her to Kanazawa Station to catch her train.
As they approached the drop-off area, Asuka started crying.
“It’s hard to go back,” she explained, “with all the things happening in my life and also when Otōsan’s still recovering from his injury. I worry about Okāsan and Otōsan more now than ever.”
“You’re only two and a half hours away,” Mirai said. “It’s not difficult to come back, and anyway there’s nothing to worry about. Our parents are fine.”
“I can’t help it. It’s natural to worry about them when they’re getting older and I’ve moved away.”
“That’s not what this is about. There’s nothing you can do, Asuka, but continue with your life. Everything is under control here. Okāsan and Otōsan would say the same thing.”
“I miss Kanazawa. Part of me wouldn’t mind moving back, but maybe that’s the homesickness or separation anxiety everyone supposedly goes through.” Turning to Emmitt she said, “I have a newfound respect for you. You must have experienced worse moving to Japan.”
Emmitt hadn’t wanted to force himself into a conversation between Mirai and her sister. Now that she had addressed him, he wanted to ease her mind. “It’s okay to feel how you do. I never felt that way myself, but I know people who did. For most of them, things got better with time.”
“You never felt homesick?” Asuka persisted.
Emmitt hadn’t thought about that time in his life in ages, and it didn’t come back to him clearly. He shook his head. “As soon as I arrived in Kanazawa, I knew it was where I wanted to be.”
Mirai hardly gave Asuka a chance to hear what Emmitt said. “I don’t believe what you’re saying. And after all the efforts people made to help you.”
“My life has become complicated. And Shin won’t leave me alone; it’s ironic that I see him more now than before, but it’s only so he can criticize me.” She paused before adding, “I didn’t have so many obligations here.”
“You’re in Tokyo working for a top design firm,” Mirai said. “What is there to complain about?”
“I’m grateful, of course. But that doesn’t make things easier.”
Emmitt pulled up to the curb. Tsuzumi-mon, the giant vermilion torii gate before the station, and the “Hospitality Dome,” arching behind it in a graceful latticework of aluminum and glass, towered over travelers hurrying past. Knowing he couldn’t stay at the drop-off point if his wife and sister-in-law continued talking, he was about to circle back through traffic when Mirai reached behind her seat and opened Asuka’s door.
“The longer you stay, the harder it will be for you. So just go.”
“Why are you getting angry with me?”
Mirai shooed away her words. “You’ve been away for less than two months, and already you’re talking about moving back. I’m disappointed to hear you talk like this.”
Behind them a taxi honked. Asuka yanked her daypack out of the car with her. Her face wet with tears, she bowed abruptly to them both, then turned and ran toward the station.
“You were unfair to her,” Emmitt said. “She’s young and inexperienced, and her breakup with Shin makes things harder. She only wanted assurance that things would be okay. It was wrong to get angry like you did.”
“She needed to hear what I said. Where you see youth and inexperience, I see cowardice and selfishness. I see my sister throwing away her dreams.”
“Are they really her dreams?”
Mirai’s eyes seemed to fill with spite. “Whose would they be if not hers?”
Concentrating on turning across traffic, he didn’t answer. After inching out someone finally let him through. The light before him turned yellow, and he accelerated through it.
LATE THAT MORNING A package arrived by courier. Emmitt signed for it while Mirai and her mother drank tea in the dining room.
“Who’s it from?” Mirai said as Emmitt brought the package to them.
“The name says Takahashi. And the address is somewhere in Ibaraki. Tsukuba City, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes,” his mother-in-law said. “Mrs. Takahashi was part of our literary club until she moved. She’s in the hospital now.”
Two weeks ago she had received news that Mrs. Takahashi had been rushed to the emergency room for surgery. Mirai had spent the next day preparing a flower arrangement for her and, at her mother’s request, shipping it by special delivery.
“What kind of surgery?” Emmitt asked.
“It was her heart,” his mother-in-law said. “Ever since I’ve known her, she’s never touched meat, and she’s a serious runner, too. Last year she placed twelfth for her age in a national marathon. She’s only fifty-five. Her doctor says that otherwise she’s healthy. It’s just rotten luck.”
Mrs. Takahashi’s daughter had reciprocated for the flower arrangement with a package of seasonal fish: Pacific Ocean monkfish, abalone, and oysters.
Emmitt’s father-in-law entered the room to see the fish and shellfish. “It’s a shame Asuka went back,” he said. “She’d claim all the oysters for herself.”
“The abalone, too,” Mirai said, crumpling up the packaging to throw it away.
Before she could, her father took it and scanned the label on the package. “It was processed in Oarai City.” He gave a low, questioning hum.
“You don’t think we should eat it?” Mirai’s mother asked.
“You and I can. We’re old enough not to care if it’s contaminated. But Mirai and Emmitt might want to skip it.”
“Contaminated?” Mirai said, bringing the packaging to the kitchen and putting it in the wastebasket there. “You mean with radiation?”
“Oarai is close to Fukushima, you know,” her father said. “Several seafood companies there sued TEPCO a few years ago for damages to their industry. The courts sided with them, from what I recall.”
Mirai stepped back into the dining room. “They couldn’t sell seafood if it wasn’t safe.”
Something in her voice made Emmitt look at her.
“Who knows?” her father said. “But since you and Emmitt plan to have children, why take the risk?”
“It’s not contaminated, Otōsan. And even if it was, one meal won’t affect us.”
“There’s a reason we only buy fish from the Japan Sea.”
Mirai’s voice grew heated. “I ate fish all the time in Tokyo. Now Asuka is living there and doing the same thing. All the testing says the seafood there is fine. At least among what’s being sold to the public.”
“The public are sheep,” Otōsan said. “And the media—the government-controlled media—leads them by their collective nose. Here, take this into the kitchen, too, if you don’t mind. It needs to be kept refrigerated.” He held out the seafood, in vacuum-packed plastic, to Mirai.
She made no movement to take it, however. “So everyone in Tokyo is eating contaminated seafood? That’s completely unreasonable. How could you let Asuka move there if you’re so worried?”
Her father sighed but said nothing.
“Tokyo is not contaminated the way you suggest. I’m not saying that Fukushima isn’t a potential danger, but you’re trying to sow fear. If you don’t want to eat the seafood Mrs. Takahashi’s daughter sent, then I will. Or you can throw it away; I don’t care.”
“You’re making too much of this, Mirai,” her mother said.
“No, I’m not.” Mirai’s voice grew shriller. “But I won’t be ruled by fear or the stupid things Otōsan says.”
Emmitt pulled her out of the kitchen. “What was that about?” he said when they were upstairs in their bedroom.
“My parents,” she said. “They’re—”
“No, I mean with you. Why are you so angry about what Otōsan said? I’m sure he planned on all of us eating it together.”
“He was being paranoid about all of Tokyo. He was drawing a circle around it and suggesting it was poisoned, it was off-limits. I felt like he was trying to discourage me, even criticize me.”
“But for what? If anyone sounds paranoid . . .”
His words seemed either to injure or shock her. “I’m not paranoid at all. It’s just that he’s always been that way. He’s always taken digs at me to show when he doesn’t like something I represent.”
He stared at her for a long moment, unsure of anything anymore. “And what do you represent?”
“His failures.” When Emmitt looked at her in confusion she turned away. “Maybe I overreacted, but I’m certain about what he meant.”
As Emmitt was about to return downstairs, she asked him to drive her to her ikebana school. He reminded her that the family planned to eat lunch together soon, but she said she wasn’t hungry.
“You can take me there and be back in time to eat with them. I have to prepare for tomorrow’s classes.”
“I didn’t know you taught tomorrow.”
“The school exhibition is coming up, and they’ve asked me to teach an extended class. We could also use the extra money.”
He calculated what she would earn; it didn’t seem possible that the money could be so important. Even so, he respected her commitment to the school and her students.
He waited for her in the genkan. He heard her running down the stairs before calling out to her parents that she was leaving.
“What will you do about lunch?” her mother called back.
“Otōsan ruined my appetite,” she answered while slipping into her shoes.
The front door closed behind her as her father chuckled from the kitchen.
“I’ll be back soon,” Emmitt said. He waited in the doorway for a reply, but when Mirai’s parents started talking to each other in low voices he shut the door.
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON EMMITT waited in the ikebana school lobby for Mirai to finish teaching. Beyond the window of the enclosed room, roseate in the late-day light, was the studio where she instructed her students.
The silence in the building made it easy to overhear her, though it was difficult to tell if her students were listening.
“Ikebana goes back fifteen hundred years,” she said. “I practice it every day, and teach it, as a way to keep the tradition alive. You must recognize that what’s beautiful is eternal, and what’s merely fashionable has no meaning—in flower arranging, too. Although perishability is central to ikebana, we need to make arrangements using what we’ve learned from the past—even if just to wonder at it. ‘Why do these flowers combine so perfectly?’ ‘How does space affect our reaction to an arrangement?’ ‘What kinds of flowers did people use long ago?’ ‘What would someone fifteen hundred years ago think of what you arranged today?’ ‘How different is our sense of beauty now compared to then?’ Looking at what our predecessors accomplished, it’s hard to argue that our appreciation of beauty now is superior, and that makes our task a greater challenge. Understanding what came before feels like a quiet space into which we can unfold ourselves—to feel and to think. Besides art, what else allows this?”
The students had raised their eyes and were watching her, waiting for her to go on. For someone who often opposed his interest in Kanazawa’s past, Mirai’s reverence for a fifteen-hundred-year-old art form seemed improbable. He wondered what it would take for them to find a middle ground.
When she finished speaking, she projected arrangements from different schools of ikebana onto a screen, stopping to explain each picture. Tomorrow, students would put on an exhibition involving calligraphy and flower arrangements.
Over the last several days he’d noticed she’d become more stressed. Not only were her exhibition preparations never-ending, but she also worried about Asuka, who either didn’t respond to her messages or responded only briefly.
Before arriving at her school he had visited a bookstore near the station. Wandering down an aisle stuffed with certification materials for various subjects, on an impulse he’d bought three translation practice tests.
He now removed an insert from behind the front cover of a booklet and skimmed the dates listed of when certification tests would be administered nationwide. The next one was in June. After that, September.
When he looked back to Mirai’s studio he saw she had turned the lights on and was writing on a whiteboard.
Fifteen minutes later she spotted him and came over. She apologized for not being ready to leave.
“Take your time,” Emmitt said. “I can study kanji while you work.”
“Go home if you want. I’ll take a bus back or ask someone for a ride.”
“It’s all right.”
“But I thought I told you before not to come. I had a feeling we’d have more to do this afternoon than usual.”
“It’s okay. You were on my way.”
She glanced toward her studio. “I’m afraid that tomorrow’s exhibition will be disappointing. Maybe I’ll let them go early. Are you sure you want to stay?”
“I’m sure.”
His phone vibrated on the seat beside him. The notification at the top of its screen said he’d received an email. It surprised him to see it was from Avery.
When Mirai left, Emmitt opened the message. Laughter surged from another classroom down the hall, and the students inside—junior high school girls by the looks of their uniforms—poured into the hallway and remained there, chatting noisily, sometimes shouting so loudly he expected Mirai to scold them.
Emmitt went outside to read Avery’s message.
Dear Emmitt:
It’s been a long time, and I apologize for not replying to your emails before now. This isn’t an excuse, but Koyo and I have been busy with our lives in Tokyo, which sometimes still feel new to us.
I’m eager to hear about your life these days, and I also want the chance to convince you to visit us here sometime. I know you’ve been to Tokyo before, but not since we moved here. Tokyo isn’t the asphalt jungle it sometimes seems, you know. It’s enormous, true, and yes, commuting by train isn’t always pleasant, but the city compensates for its hassles in ways you can’t imagine. Trees and koi ponds surround our campus, and from the floor of our department you can hear a wide canal. Where we live, there’s a park across the street, the Sumida River is a short bicycle ride away, and in between are shrines and temples I’ve gotten to know. Tokyo is easy to fall in love with if you view it with an open mind.
By the way, the department at my university will soon post public advertisements for instructor openings. I could get you a position with little more than a whisper to my department chair. Maybe we can discuss this when we see each other. I merely ask you to humor an old friend.
It’s hard to believe that Koyo and I will soon be in Kanazawa again. It’s all she talks about these days. Both of us look forward to seeing you again.
Avery
Avery’s generosity moved Emmitt. Tokyo didn’t sound bad the way he described it, but Emmitt reminded himself that he could write a similar letter that might sway Avery, encouraging him and Koyo to move back to Kanazawa.
Tokyo was only two decades younger than Kanazawa, which was founded in the 1580s, but so much of it had been destroyed in earthquakes, fires, and near the end of World War II that vestiges of its history were few. Now, however, it was a miracle of design and engineering, and no city even half its size could compare with it for safety, cleanliness, law and order, and many other things. But it had also felt claustrophobic, especially during rush hours. Its bus and train systems were no less confusing to him than a detailed diagram of the human nervous system. And people were everywhere. No matter where he went, he felt the city encroach.
Kanazawa felt like home to Emmitt in ways Tokyo was too modern and sprawling to rival. With its manifold paths back through time, what Kanazawa offered was enough. Until Asuka moved to Tokyo, Mirai had almost never questioned their plan to live here.
