Burial in the Clouds Read online

  Let yourself be seen folding your arms, or whistling, or simply placing your hands in your pockets—not to mention inadvertently failing to salute—and a recon student will descend on you. However, he will not administer his correction on the spot. “Come see me at eight tonight,” he will say, or “Come by after the special course,” leaving you to spend hours in fear. And when you finally report to his quarters, he and his fellows all fall in just for the fun of a good thrashing. Sometimes they beat you right in the middle of the airfield so all the enlisted men can see. But for the moment we student reserves hold back our emotions, finding consolation in a sort of motto: “Exercise caution each day, and get satisfaction in the sumo match.” The wrestlers’ countenances change when they set in to practice. They look touchingly heroic.

  The guidelines for the sumo match were announced yesterday. Each side is to field two teams of seven wrestlers, who will compete in a tournament. However, the recon students have been observing our practice sessions, and obviously they have concluded that they won’t fare well against us. This afternoon they made a proposal: “Let’s make it nine wrestlers each.” When we declined, they came back with yet another proposal: “Then let’s make it a round robin of fifteen wrestlers from each side.” We asked why, but their reasoning was obscure. They are brewing something up, some way to pull rank on us so as to change the guidelines to their advantage. We once competed intercollegiately, in the catch-as-catch-can world of university students, but never once did we resort to such dirty tricks as these, no matter how desperately we wanted to win.

  The recon students are all aged nineteen or twenty. They smoke and drink, some are already whoring around, and yet they are regarded by the public as the noblest of our warriors, as the very salt of the earth. The student reserves, “undermined by liberal education,” are nothing more than an annoying, impure, and perfectly tiresome lot in the eyes of these recon students. How distorted and peculiar their pride is!

  My mother has a younger brother in Kobe and years ago his second son Sadayuki got it into his head to attend a military prep school. His parents opposed the idea, but he persevered. The boy wasn’t at home when my mother and I visited the family to congratulate them on his graduation, and I remember my uncle saying, with a wry grin, “Don’t know, but it seems we’ve got something of a freak on our hands.”

  Only four days remain until the match. It appears that our instructors, Lieutenants Junior Grade S. and N. (both from the Naval Academy), are harboring mixed feelings.

  November 13

  Fujikura landed us in hot water again. Fine, let him stick to that defeatist attitude of his. The problem is that sometimes he goes too far. So long as he thinks and talks seriously, we give him an honest hearing, even when we disagree with him. But what he did today is inexcusable, as it entailed a good deal of trouble for others.

  Seated beside the cigarette tray after lunch, Sakai was reading from the Hagakure when Fujikura stuck his nose into it. Written on the page were the four pledges of the samurai:

  1. Thou shalt not fall behind in the Way of the Warrior

  2. Thou shalt be of good service to thy lord

  3. Thou shalt practice filial piety

  4. Thou shalt be merciful and benevolent

  Fujikura turned it all into a joke, rewording each entry:

  1. Thou shalt not fall behind in the Realm of Famished Ghosts (a riff on the Buddhist Hell)

  2. Thou shalt be of good service to thyself

  3. Thou must understand that getting yourself killed is no way to practice filial piety

  A recon student, Ensign Y., happened to be nearby making arrangements for tomorrow’s sumo match, and he overheard Fujikura. Bloodthirsty as the atmosphere was, the recon students called him in at once. Fujikura returned some thirty minutes later, his face swollen up like a rock. The matter seems to have been referred first to the division officer, and then to the executive officer. Word soon spread that the blows might not fall on Fujikura alone, that the rest of us might be in for a correction, too, or else that Fujikura would take the blows and the rest of us be confined to barracks. Some reproached Fujikura, and others comforted him, but we were all apprehensive. However, toward evening, and rather more easily than we had expected, the affair was brought to a resolution. Only Fujikura and one other senior student were brought up before the executive officer.

  “You’ve all got big mouths,” the XO told Fujikura. “An officer has to learn how to rein in his tongue. And by the way, never confuse the Hagakure with ‘Imperial Instructions to the Military.’ The two things have nothing in common. There will be no need to pursue the matter any further. The recon students exceeded their authority. They overreached themselves, and I intend to admonish them. So don’t worry, just put it out of your mind.” That was an uncommonly fair decision. It turns out that the XO plays a pretty nice game. One fellow advanced a theory that he is a descendant of the masterless samurai who was expelled, during the so-called “cat-monster disturbance,” from the Nabeshima clan and was later to produce the Hagakure.

  Mr. Wang Ching-wei* has died in a hospital in Nagoya.

  November 14

  The day of the sumo match.

  Purple curtains stretched around two sumo rings out behind the drill hall, and navy blankets, emblazoned with anchors, covered the four pillars. Facing the rings, seats were set up for the commander, the wardroom officers, and the officers of the first and the second gun rooms. To the left and right of these were seats for the recon students and the student reserves. Petty officers and enlisted men filled the seats further down.

  The match was conducted as a tournament, according to the initial plans. From 1300 hours, the seamen divisions had their match. Once they had completed their semi-final bout, it was our turn to hold preliminaries. The bustle that had surrounded the rings gave way at once to complete silence, suffused with a kind of mute truculence. To a man, the wrestlers’ adopted a fair-and-square attitude. Team 1 on our side won its match by a single point, but Team 2 lost, also by a point. This meant that Team 1 of the student reserves would compete with the recon students’ Team 2 in the finals. Before that, however, the seamen had their final match, and the victory went to the carrier-based bomber trainees. But we took hardly any interest in anyone else’s competition.

  Finally, our spearhead wrestler, Cadet Murase, faced off against Ensign K. The instant they rose from their crouches, they threw themselves into it, heaving against one another fiercely. Presently they moved into belt grips. First, Murase was pushed outward, his body arching back. My heart pounded, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I thought he was done for. But not for nothing had Murase earned his reputation in sumo back at Waseda University. With a wrapping maneuver, he freed himself, and, in a flash, he pushed his opponent out of the ring. A loud cheer went up. Our second wrestler brought us another win. We lost the third and the fourth bouts, won the fifth, and then lost the sixth. In the end, the contest came down to a match between the two team captains. Never have I witnessed a more exciting fight. Deafening cheers rang out from both sides. Our captain was Shirozaki, a Ritsumei-kan graduate weighing in at seventy-three kilograms. We had firm faith in him, but nonetheless our faces flushed, and all of us, without being aware of it, leaned forward in anticipation. Shirozaki himself, however, approached the ring with an air of perfect composure, stood up, and, without a hint of shakiness, easily dispatched his opponent with an overarm throw. For a moment we were struck dumb, but then came the applause. At last we had won, and our fortnight-long grudge was satisfied. It was a load off my mind. I felt as if I myself had been in the ring.

  We returned to the barracks in triumph, in the excitement rapping each other on the shoulders for no good reason at all. “Hey, buddy!” “Hey yourself!” We talked of nothing but the sumo match. At dinner, our instructor, Lt.jg S., stopped by to eat with us. I was curious as to how he would behave, but he seems to be genuinely happy for us in our victory. In due course, our prize was brought in: a case of beer an
d two bottles of sake. A couple of ensigns from the 13th Class came over to thank the wrestlers. Also present were Lt. O. of the Aviation Maintenance Branch, Surgeon Lt.jg A., and Paymaster Lt.jg J. Next, yet another ensign from the 13th Class, a carrier-based bomber pilot who was good and soused, staggered over to congratulate us. They all looked immensely pleased. Clearly, the Naval Engineering College graduates, the surgeons and the paymasters—not to mention the students of the 13th Class—really had it in for the Naval Academy men. Practically everybody came by, except for the junior officers of the first gun room, all of whom graduated from the Academy.

  We had agreed among ourselves to drink no more than half a bottle of beer each, but our visitors wouldn’t leave it at that. Again and again they cried out, “Cheers!” “Bring more sake!” Aviation Maintenance Lt. O. reeled away, singing “Bring me sake, my true love,” and back he came with a half-gallon jug. Paymaster Lt.jg J. sent his dog robber out to fetch his own personal ration of a dozen beers. And so the whole company went off on a mad drinking spree, singing military songs and overturning the dishes on the tables.

  “Is our real enemy America or the Naval Academy?” someone asked. “We dedicate ourselves to Japan, but we don’t intend to die for the Imperial Navy,” declared someone else. At which a drunken Fujikura yelled out, “I don’t intend to die for anybody!” I kicked him in the shin. Fortunately, in all the chaos his voice didn’t carry.

  The party finally ended when the command to “Prepare for the rounds” was issued. By that time, we had emptied one hundred eighty bottles of beer, seven half-gallon jugs of sake, and a considerable quantity of alcoholic beverages of a dubious nature. Each of us downed eleven apples and four oranges. Hard to believe how much we consumed. After the rounds I stood duty, my head spinning.

  November 19

  We had a spell of lndian summer days, with on-again/off-again training flights. But today at 2140, for the first time in a long while, Lt.jg S. ordered us all out on deck. We drew up, wondering what could be the matter. There seemed to be no call for a reprimand, now that the frenzy over the sumo match had subsided. The lieutenant showed up on the dot with a strained look on his face. He stared at us for some time.

  “As of tomorrow, your training flights will cease.” This was unexpected. “And there is no prospect of resuming them in the foreseeable future. No fuel is available. Japan staked the fate of the nation on Operation SHO-1 in the Philippines, and the results are anything but welcome.” His emotions overcame him as he spoke, but he pressed on as if talking to himself, choking up from time to time. “We spoke of life and death, we talked about breaking through, but now we have nothing. Nothing at all is left us.”

  My mind went blank. I couldn’t take it all in. In the month and a half since we arrived at Usa, we have had twelve days of flight training—in all, a mere ten hours and a smattering of minutes in the air. Now it looks as if the final battles may go on without us, that they may be lost to us forever.

  As he wound things up, the lieutenant gave us a kind of placebo. “Surely you will be able to fly again, just as soon as we find a solution to the fuel problem. So don’t let it get you down.” As I climbed into my hammock, a flood of tears streamed down my face. I have finally shaken off my attachments to the things I once loved—to the campus, to the beauty of Kyoto and Yamato, and also to the Manyoshu. I have at last directed my mind into a single channel, and now they are telling me yet again to abandon what has become my sole purpose in life. We are absolutely forbidden to live freely. Will we now be denied the chance to die gracefully?

  November 22

  Sunday schedule. Liberty.

  My father phoned unexpectedly last night, saying that he was in Beppu and wanted to see me. I went directly to the Hinago Inn, diverting myself along the way with speculations as to the occasion for the visit, but what I heard on entering the room was that my brother Bunkichi is dead.

  My dad says he presumably died with honor, together with his outfit on Tinian Island, toward the end of September. I had feared something like this would happen. My father couldn’t bring himself to break the news in a letter, and what with the unbearable loneliness, he decided to arrange the family business so as to find time to see me personally. My mother had totally broken down when she heard. I thought about how she will feel when I’m killed, too.

  Placed on one of the staggered shelves in the room was my brother’s photograph, as a senior private in the Japanese Army. He looked melancholy. There was a glassiness about his eyes, and his uniform was a bit too big. He differed from me in personality, educational background, and circumstances. Above all, he wasn’t young anymore. I imagine he lacked the youthful momentum that allows me and my comrades to coast along in military life. To him, everything must have been downright torture. In what way could his death possibly have helped arrest the decline of the Japanese forces? He must have died in perfect sadness, seeing himself as a weak soldier, and probably of little use for anything. I wish we could have let him live quietly, tucked away in some home unit in inland Japan.

  I bathed alone. Unlike the inn at Kamegawa, this one is equipped with a fine bath. Pure, sweet water springs up abundantly from below. I can’t believe that people who depart this world dwell in some kind of a “heaven,” with bodies like our own. But I have no difficulty imagining that they are, body and soul, resolved into the natural universe, that they are translated back into water, into mist, into the leaves of the mountain trees. Two months have passed. My brother must already have returned to the tidal currents of the ocean, to the autumn clouds, and to the wells of this hot spring. I stirred the smooth waters for a long time.

  When I came out of the bath, the meal was already laid out. My father had asked the maid to serve the sake he brought with him, a brand called “Sakura Masamune.” There he sat, sipping sake and eating prawn tempura, in front of my brother’s photograph. I changed into a padded kimono and took a seat opposite him. The people at the inn called me “young master,” which made me feel a bit iffy. But our maid very much resembled Fukiko, in features and in carriage, and as I mellowed, I felt like dropping a few hints about Fukiko, in the way a schoolboy might. But I dissuaded myself. I would certainly have told my father about her if the war were over, and he might have taken pleasure in listening to the story.

  He gave me an heirloom dagger, which had been made by Kenroku, a pupil of Seki-no Magoroku. There was a scratch on the blade, probably made by a whetter, but it had a superb metallic smell. After the meal, we walked toward the shore of Shonin-ga-hama. The wooden clogs felt pleasant on my bare feet. The mountains in Beppu were ablaze with autumn colors. White plumes of steam rose up from the springs among the trees with their elegant lines. The ocean was bright, blue and clear. Waves lapped gently at the rocks, and then ebbed. Along the shore, hot water bubbled up here and there and streamed into the sea, leaving yellowish tracks among the stones.

  “Before you were born, I came to Beppu with your mother and brother,” my father said. “And he sat down right there, along Nagare-gawa Street, and refused to budge an inch until I bought him a toy.” He smiled sorrowfully.

  We returned to the inn around three o’clock, bathed again, and had dinner. My father returns home by boat tomorrow morning, so I took my leave and headed for the base.

  The moon is five days old, so it was dark in the train. Still, Sakai, Fujikura, Murase, and a few others were all on board, and they consoled me for the loss of my brother.

  November 25

  Two carrier-based attack bombers, called the “Tenzan,” were brought in by air transport. The men put them through their paces, gunning the motors full throttle. The propellers made a tremendous roar. Several mechanics clung to the tail of each plane to keep it grounded, but even so, the planes bore down hard on the chocks with their wheels, making creaking noises. I felt envious. A torpedo was clasped to the fuselage of each Tenzan with two cables. I always thought torpedoes were slung directly underneath the body, but these were fastened a little to
the right of center to allow, as I understand it, for the propeller wash and the gunsights.

  Now that flights have been suspended, we do formation training on bicycles. Military discipline, including our reports to field headquarters, is as strict as it ever was during regular flight training, but otherwise, we just ride around the apron on bicycles, with model aircraft in tow. In other words, any practice we get is utterly useless.

  No report on the status of the war. We have no information as to how our forces in the Philippines are being supplied, nor any idea whether effective measures have been taken to cut off the enemy’s lines. Nothing but ominous silence. I hear we can now count our regular aircraft carriers on the fingers of one hand, and that we can count our remaining cruisers on the fingers of two. The carriers Zuikaku and Zuibo are both gone. According to Lt.jg S., the enemy’s raid on Omura the other day destroyed a number of the new “Ryusei” carrier-based attack bombers, together with all the other aircraft that had just come off the line at the Aeronautical Arsenal. The planes were awaiting assignment when two hundred of them were destroyed in eight successive strikes. I wonder why they didn’t take to the air and flee. Furthermore, Omura Air Station is a fighter base, so why didn’t the fighters scramble when they learned enemy planes were over Cheju? Also, I hear that one hundred fighters en route to the Philippines were picked off by a mere four enemy aircraft. Most were shot down. The excuse is that our fighters were unarmed at the time, as they were to be armed when they reached their destination. But their destination was a battlefield! It’s totally ridiculous. Word came in, too, that we produced three new four-engine long-range heavy bombers called the “Renzan,” and that two of them crashed during test flights. Some wag dubbed it “Self-Defeating Aerial Battle.” I can’t shake off the feeling that we are dancing to the enemy’s tune.