I’ve been kind of distracted from the news this weekend, but it’s been hard to miss the reports about the demonstrations in favor of illegal aliens.

I’m not one given to ambivalence, but I’m of two minds about what the best approach is to illegal aliens at this point. I’m a proper-channels kind of guy–which helps to explain why I like Japan, obviously–and find that the minute someone starts blaring about “rights” in connection with people who used unlawful means to enter the country, I want to grimace and turn away. And irrespective of whether Mexicans themselves are likely to be terrorists, porous borders and slack enforcement of immigration laws are security risks. At the same time, I’m not unsympathetic to the it-takes-two-to-tango argument: US de facto policy has made it possible for millions of people to live and work within our borders without documentation. Many of them come from corrupt countries in which scrupulously obeying the law is a great way to be played for a sucker. It’s not difficult to believe that many people who were desperate enough to enter the country illegally are essentially honest and hard-working once they get there. I don’t like the idea of an amnesty program that would reward illegal immigration for those who happened to get in under the wire; but neither do I like our cozy relationship with the al-Sauds, or negotiations with the thugs who run the DPRK, or the nice-making we have to do to conduct trade with PRC enterprises. Unpalatable compromises are sometimes necessary, and while it’s good to reflect on how we got into this situation, we still have to deal with it. It may indeed be more humane and less wasteful for all concerned if we give those who already have established lives in the States a chance to get documentation. To avoid a run on green cards by people hoping to get in under the wire, we’ll have to tighten the borders at the same time in a big, bad way. And if we’re being all generous-minded toward non-citizens who want to live responsible lives within our borders, we might include the long-suffering foreign spouses of Americans who exist in a living hell thanks to the vagaries of the INS. For the future, as long as they’re scrupulously enforced when enacted, I don’t see why more liberal immigration laws would be a problem.

However.

If the purpose of the demonstrations over the last few weeks was to win over Middle America, I’m thinking there were some serious miscalculations. Waving the Mexican flag or painting your face in its colors is a poor way to indicate your loyalty to the US. And thronging the streets of LA in the hundreds of thousands is…I mean, only the Blue City liberals who recall 60s-era demonstrations fondly as opportunities for The People to Speak Truth to Power are likely to be moved to sympathize, and they’re already on the side of illegal aliens, anyway.

Mass rallies are less likely to make the average television viewer be like, “Gosh, just look at all the clean, presentable undocumented workers already living responsible lives in this great land right now!” than to provoke a reaction of “Imagine if all those people did decide to rampage! The cops couldn’t do a blessed thing. Yet there they are today monitoring and protecting them instead of protecting American citizens from crime. And even if only 0.5% of those people are terrorists, they can just melt away into the crowd, and no one will be the wiser!” Maybe that’s fair, and maybe it isn’t–there were plenty of supporters marching, presumably, who aren’t illegal aliens themselves–but it strikes me as the most likely response. Given how long this has been a hot-button issue (it predates 9/11 by quite a bit, of course), it will, if nothing else, be interesting to see how it plays out given that this is an election year.

March is the last month of the fiscal year in Japan, and even though I’m not a banker or accountant, it’s still raining Excel sheets for another week or so yet. And the fact that the cherry trees bloomed early this year means that everyone has essentially been scrambling to move up the planned blossom-viewing parties. Kind of busy.

A few news items of interest here while my attention was diverted elsewhere:

A district court has ordered a nuclear reactor shut, deeming its earthquake-proofing inadequate:

The Kanazawa District Court on Friday ordered Hokuriku Electric Power Co. to stop operating the No. 2 reactor at its Shika nuclear power plant in Shikamachi, Ishikawa Prefecture, ruling that the reactor may be susceptible to earthquakes.

The ruling recognized a demand by a citizens group that the 1,358-megawatt No. 2 advanced boiling-water reactor be shut down.

Hokuriku Electric has said it will appeal to the high court to overturn the ruling.

Presiding Judge Kenichi Ido said, “The reactor has a problem in its antiseismic design, and there’s a real possibility that the plaintiffs might be exposed to radiation if there was an accident at the plant.”

…

The district court then ruled, “An earthquake beyond Hokuriku Electric’s expectations could occur,” and pointed out the following:

— The estimate that the largest earthquake that could possibly hit the area would have a magnitude of 6.5 is too conservative.

— The probability of an earthquake occurring along the Ochigata fault line was not taken into consideration.

— The method employed to determine the correct design needed to adequately cope with an earthquake is inappropriate.

Three reactors at Tohoku Electric Power Co.’s Onagawa nuclear power station in Miyagi Prefecture were automatically shut down in August after being rocked by an earthquake stronger than had been factored into the reactors’ antiseismic designs.

I haven’t heard much more detail than that, but it certainly doesn’t sound out of the realm of possibility. The Yomiuri has a summary of the factors that are supposed to be considered in such assessments. Yesterday’s main Nikkei editorial observed drily:

It’s not that power generation would be disrupted by unanticipated vibrations, or that they would lead to the release of mass quantities of radioactive material. The issue is risk evaluation for the system in toto, and whether it’s rational to go so far as to halt operations. In that respect, the ruling was on the abrupt side; however, we must give serious thought to grave indications that the state and [plant] operators have been slack about incorporating the latest technology and approaches into quake resistance evaluation.

The editorial points out that feel-good estimates about how severe an earthquake in any region could be fail to take into account hidden fault lines and other unpalatable possibilities.

Oh, yeah, and inspectors identified a crack in a pipe at another reactor, this one in Fukushima and owned by TEPCO.

If you’d like to escape the possibility of being double-whammied by a catastrophic earthquake and radiation exposure, you may want to fly out on ANA:

Trouble-plagued Japan Airlines Corp. was reprimanded yet again Wednesday for operating a 134-seat McDonnell Douglas MD-87 passenger plane for 10 days without conducting a mandatory inspection on its main landing gear.

The cause for the failure to inspect the landing gear was simple: The JAL official in charge forgot to give the instructions.

And when the airline finally did the required inspection on Monday, it bungled that as well.

…

The plane was supposed to have been thoroughly examined by March 11 for cracks in a metal part of the left main landing gear.

JAL maintenance workers had, in fact, scheduled the inspection for Feb. 26, well before the due date, and entered that date on their computers, airline officials said.

But the employee in charge of the inspection forgot to give the instructions.

On Monday, the employee realized the inspection had not been carried out when the computer flashed a warning.

The MD-87 was inspected Monday at Shin-Chitose Airport in Hokkaido. But JAL’s problems did not end there.

The transport ministry found out Thursday that the JAL inspector who conducted the check omitted an important procedure.

The 44-year-old inspector was supposed to have used a fluorescent solvent to search for cracks. However, he did not use this solvent, and said he didn’t find any cracks.

And if you decide you’d prefer to evade the risks of modern life by leaving this world of dew behind altogether, there’s apparently a great doctor we could hook you up with:

Police are investigating the deaths of seven elderly patients at a hospital in Imizu, Toyama Prefecture, who died between 2000 and 2005 after a surgeon removed their artificial respirators, the hospital said Saturday.

Imizu City Hospital said it contacted the police last year as it suspected the surgeon euthanized the patients.

…

The first ruling by a court in the nation on a doctor administering a mercy killing was in March 1995, when the Yokohama District Court gave a doctor at the Tokai University School of Medicine Hospital a two-year suspended prison sentence for administering a lethal injection of potassium chloride in April 1991 to a patient suffering from terminal cancer. The doctor was arrested on suspicion of murder.

In the ruling, the presiding judge set four conditions that must be met to allow doctors to legally euthanize a patient:

— The patient is suffering from unbearable pain.

— Death is inevitable and close at hand.

— There is no other way to relieve the patient’s pain.

— The patient has clearly expressed consent that his or her life be shortened.

I think it would be heartless to deny hopelessly ill people with untreatable pain the right to go off artificial respiration if their heads are clear and they know what they’re doing; but of course, in this aging society, it would be exceedingly dangerous to set precedents that could allow doctors to off patients in an effort to free up beds or save money.

There was a not-too-bad article in The Japan Times a few days ago–how often do I type that?–about what real, live Japanese gays think of Masaki Sumitani, a.k.a. Hard Gay. The writer can’t resist drawing hammy attention to what a broad-minded sensi-hetero he is, which is a little trying:

How right can it be to satirize people who are so marginalized in Japanese society that they have effectively no freedom to respond?

An official at Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., Hard Gay’s promotion company, said neither the comedian nor the company intend [sic–dude, find yourself a persnickety-grammarian fag friend and get him to explain the finer points of correlative conjunctions–SRK] to insult anyone.

Still, the logical thing seemed to be to ask some Japanese homosexuals what they think of Hard Gay–whose handlers, by the way, say that he is straight and has a girlfriend.

What did he find when he asked around? Some gays think Hard Gay is funny. He makes them laugh. Some gays think Hard Gay is mocking homosexuals. That makes them sad. And some gays don’t pay much attention one way or another. He makes them feel bored.

A real revelation, huh?

It’s hard to fault the reporter, exactly. Being in the position of weighing the positions of people whose world he doesn’t inhabit, he probably figured it was wise to keep asking around until he got one yes, one no, and one neither on the issue raised just to keep all the bases covered. Also, if you’re a foreign reporter who wants to find out what gay people think about this or that, you probably have little choice but to wander to Shinjuku 2-chome, choose a prominently gay shop with an open front door (implying that non-regulars are welcome), and start talking to the guy behind the counter. Or to look up gay organizations in the phone directory and start dialing.

Unfortunately, that kind of approach produces the same problems that “researchers” who are taken more seriously get into when they conduct “studies” by trawling for subjects at bars or in classified ads, and they’re worth looking at. While he got a set of varied opinions, it’s questionable whether he talked to a representative sample of gay Japanese people.

Guys who own gay shops and bars are, obviously, those who have elected to work as well as socialize in gay life. Gay organizations have relatively low memberships, too–partially because a lot of people would be scared to be on their mailing lists and things, but also because such organizations just aren’t very popular in Japan. (Most people have their hands full conforming to all the expectations within their companies and neighborhoods. The last thing they need is another group to be beholden to.) And obviously the sorts of people who are going to join a study circle dedicated to solemnly working out their feelings about a TV character are going to constitute a self-selecting sample. The Japan Times was therefore talking to a sample of the gay population that had an unusual amount of energy to devote to sitting around thinking about the meaning of homosexuality in society.

That doesn’t mean there was nothing to learn from them. Their opinions are as genuine as anyone else’s–though the reporter doesn’t seem to have cared much that the guy from the Sapporo organization he talked is transgendered and not even gay. But experience leads me to suspect that the representative opinion was the one relegated to this throwaway paragraph:

Other gays felt pretty much the same, he said. “We don’t really talk about him [Hard Gay] much.”

I don’t know a scientific sample of the gay Japanese population myself, probably, but my acquaintance would seem to square with that. I have quite a few friends who hang out in little pub-like Shibuya gay bars and rarely venture to Ageha or 2-chome or other more high-profile places. They tend to be ordinary office worker types who don’t know many foreigners besides me. The other Japanese guys I know are those who like foreigners and hang out in 2-chome at the handful of foreigner-friendly places. Many of them have spent significant time in the States or places in the British Commonwealth and thus can compare gay life here to gay life in other places.

And I’ve only ever heard Hard Gay mentioned twice. Once, someone told an acquaintance of mine that he looked like him, which he does (his facial features, I mean). Another time, when I went out in a black T-shirt of somewhat unforgiving cut, one of the bar guys cracked that I was “looking very Hard Gay.” (“No, he just looks like a homo as always,” a friend piped up.)

Otherwise, nothing, even at gatherings where uncensored bitchy opinions are flowing freely about anything and everything. The implication of the article’s conclusion, that there are a lot of gay Japanese who would protest about Hard Gay’s image if they felt at liberty to, doesn’t strike me as plausible. If pressed, I guess most people I know would say that while Sumitani’s antics are a bit much, at least the stereotype he’s reinforcing is one of vigor rather than nelliness, and you can’t expect things to change in Japan overnight.

Even the acknowledgment that gays exist in Japan represents progress. Open homosexuals are at a disadvantage here, but so are career women and ethnic Koreans. This is a society that values conformity above all, and everyone is used to the fact. Everyone here has secrets. In general, if you preserve the expected public face, no one is going to interrogate you about your private life. We can question whether it should have to be that way in an ideal world, but the gay guys I know all pretty much seem to accept with equanimity that that’s the way it is for now and that it’s a trade-off they can live with.

Yesterday was a busy day in Pyongyang:

In a notice dated 21 March, the permanent committee of North Korea’s eleventh Supreme People’s Assembly (the equivalent of the Diet) announced a resolution to hold its fourth session on 11 April in Pyongyang. The resolution was publicized on the radio on 22 March by means of a Korean Central News Agency release. The focus of the session will be whether to hammer out a new economic policy program based on the results of Kim Jong-il’s January visit to China. The backdrop for the session being the failure of 6-party talks after North Korea’s objection to “financial sanctions” by the United States, [the world] will also be listening closely for any mention of the nuclear issue.

The Supreme People’s Assembly will hold a session to discuss the state budget in spring of next year. Kim Jong-il attended last year’s session, at which a state budget in which an 11.4% increase in spending over the previous year was approved. On the nuclear issue, North Korea has taken the the position that an end to sanctions by the US is the “minimum condition” for a resumption of 6-party talks.

This isn’t exciting news; in a way, what moved me to cite it was its sheer everyday-ness.

You get regular, poker-faced reports in the Japanese media of stuff like the above–as if the Supreme People’s Assembly were in any way, shape, or form actually comparable to the Diet! Japan has a gajillion political parties, a free press, freedom of movement for its citizens, a capitalist economy, and a high standard of living. (I mean, yes, I grouse a lot about the power held by bureaucrats rather than elected officials here, and there are plenty of things that would be more liberalized and transparent if I were running the place. Even so, there’s no comparison.) Everyone knows that the DPRK is run by nut cases and their sane toadies whose idea of fun is shooting test missiles over our heads and who wouldn’t know viable economic policy if it jumped up and bit ’em in the ass. On the other hand, it’s close by. Knowing what’s going on there is important, and frothing over its evil and craziness is not going to move it farther away. So Japanese reporters, and the citizens they report for, note important developments and then get on with business.

When American friends asked me what the Japanese (or at least, those Japanese who pay attention to international business and news stories) thought of the brouhaha over the Dubai Ports World deal, it was hard to put into words. I don’t think it made us look anti-Arab or more generally racist, just kind of skittish and a bit silly.

We’re not used to having enemies near to hand in America. Our only actual borders are with Canada and New Mexico. No one’s worried about Cuba since the Bay of Pigs; and Alaska, despite its proximity to what was the USSR during the Cold War, has a low population and is isolated from the US mainland. We think of our enemies as far away.

But since most deep-seated ethnic and religious rivalries developed over local resources long before communication and transportation technology enabled animosity to be projected quickly over long distances, having hostile neighbors is a fact of life for much, if not most, of the world. Pakistan trades with India; China, Japan, and South Korea trade with each other; Israel trades with several of its Arab neighbors. The driving force, needless to say, is economics and not trust–the Israelis haven’t suddenly forgotten what happened in 1948 in their zeal for selling their plastics. Trade is an economic good in general, and mutually beneficial economic ties also make mutually destructive war a riskier and therefore less likely response to frictions that arise.

The analogy to Dubai isn’t perfect: I realize that with the ports deal, we weren’t talking about whether to import its actual goods. But then, it turned out that we weren’t talking about outsourcing port security to the UAE, either. Ultimately, it wasn’t at all clear what the issue was; the jabber about “lack of transparency” seemed lame, given that none of those issuing it seemed to have been too worried about such matters before.

So I think it was difficult for businesspeople who followed the story to see it as being motivated by much beyond anxiety over the fact that people from around where the terrorists are–you know, over there–might be spending a lot of time at our ports. The UAE, despite having recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan a while back, is a known center of entrepreneurship and a major US ally in the region. So I think that, given that you can practically see the DPRK’s missile silos with binoculars from Honshu’s west coast, the reaction read as a bit on the hysterical side to Japanese people I know.

I have no objections to getting older–I’ve frequently been told numerous times that my level of crotchetiness will take me a good twenty years to grow into, and I find people get more interesting as they age, anyway. So turning thirty-four the other week didn’t bother me at all.

It’s funny what makes the passage of time hit you, though. Today is my father’s and brother’s birthday. My little brother is twenty-eight, which means I appear to have been distracted since a few moments ago when he was in his bassinet (home birth–it was the 70s) and I was reading him his first story.

Also, Dad is fifty-five, and for some weird reason I don’t pretend to understand, having two parents who are now the conventional retirement age makes me feel kinda near the crest of the hill, if you know what I mean.

I may have to scale back tomorrow’s workout from the usual. Wouldn’t want to break my hip, or anything.

Anyway, happy birthday, guys.

The arguments over the relocation of US military facilities now housed in Futenma are still developing. Prime Minister Koizumi met with Japan Defense Agency head Fukushiro Nukaga this morning, and talks with the US are slated to begin the day after tomorrow:

The main focus of the talks will be the issue of who will pay for the relocation of Marines currently stationed in Okinawa to Guam. The US has asked Japan to pay 75% of the US $10 billion tab. Japan, the relevant cabinet ministers having agreed that they “cannot accept” such a burden, plans to negotiate for a lower percentage.

Of course, the price tag may be the focus of Thursday’s talks, but it’s not the only bone of contention:

Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, Mayor of Nago City in Okinawa Prefecture, the planned site to which certain US military installations are to be relocated from Futenma [USMC] Air Station as part of negotiations over restructuring, held a meeting in Naha with Okinawa Governor Keiichi Inamine on 21 March. The Mayor expressed his intention to oppose a new, slightly tweaked proposal by LDP Policy Committee Chairman Hidenao Nakagawa; the new plan would move the facilities to the shoreline of Camp Schwab.

Governor Inamine affirmed his own rejection of the tweaked proposal and his support for the Mayor’s stance: “We will persevere together.”

…

At the meeting, the Mayor emphasized that he would not consider negotiations unless there was a large-scale shift of the planned site of relocation offshore in the “shoreline proposal”: “(Area residents have) acceded to (an existing plan, which would create a facility off the Henoko district of Nago), a variation on the ‘offshore proposal.'”

A few months back, residents weren’t keen about any plan at all. The federal government continues to state that it will not accommodate more than minor adjustments to the plan and will keep talking to residents until it gets them to accept it.

The Nikkei had an uncharacteristically squishy editorial about China-Japan relations the other day–squishy in that its recommendations were airy and unspecific:

Japan-PRC relations have been deteriorating for a while, but one can’t help feeling especially anxious over the “war of condemnations” between the two governments since last month. On 8 February, Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan told a visiting group from the Japan-China Society, “We have no no more hopes for Prime Minister Koizumi.”

On 7 March, PRC Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing harshly criticized Prime Minister Koizumi’s pilgimages to the Yasukuni Shrine as “an imbecilic and immoral thing” at a National People’s Congress press conference. Li’s indignant manner was not characteristic of him. Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe countered, “It is inappropriate to criticize the leaders of other nations in terms so lacking in dignity.” Quite so.

But on the other hand, on the Japanese side, Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso has provoked the Chinese by repeatedly referring to Taiwan as a “country” (4 February, 9 March). Aso emended his statement on 9 March, stating, “Well, it’s accurate to call it a ‘territory,'” but there are reports in China that there are doubts there about whether the slip of the tongue was really unintentional. It’s aberrant for those responsible for diplomatic relations between the two countries to repeatedly express themselves in ways that betray loss of a sense of good citizenship. [Our leaders] must not lose their reason and decorum in dealing with each other.

In the midst of all this, PRC Premier Wen Jiabao held a press conference for domestic and foreign journalists at which he tersely indicated what China’s provisional Japan policy is. Of relations between the two countries while Prime Minister Koizumi, who continues to make pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine, is in office, Wen stated, “Smooth progress has hit extraordinary obstacles, but the responsibility lies with the leaders of Japan,” thereby differentiating between the public and its leaders.

What makes it so squishy is the way it the way it focuses paragraph after paragraph on failures of nice-making and then gives its most concrete policy recommendation in a single blink-and-you-miss-it sentence later on: “Through expansion of exchange and economic cooperation between our peoples, we can prevent the deterioration of political relations from having a deleterious influence on economics and trade.”

Well, sure. Liberalized trade is likely to strengthen bonds between China and Japan and make occasional diplomatic eruptions of their ancient enmity less damaging. But Japan still needs to draw lines about what it is and is not willing to concede. Could it make things easier on itself if Koizumi were less obstinate about the Yasukuni Shrine pilgrimages and Aso occasionally learned to rein it in about…well, anything? It’s reasonable to think so. At the same time, the CCP is not populated by idiots. China knows how useful it is to be able to divert its citizens’ dissatisfaction with their own rulers in the direction of Japan. (Remember last year’s demonstrations.)

But let’s not forget that Koizumi is no dummy himself. The course he’s steering doesn’t look so wise right now, given that things have gone from a cessation of meetings between heads of state to an open expression by the PRC that it doesn’t think it can deal with Japan while he’s running the government. After all, despite the PRC’s operatic gestures of woundedness over Japan’s bad faith, it’s difficult to assess how much regional friction would actually be lessened if Japan decided to keep its own counsel about Taiwan and to stop the Yasukuni pilgrimages. China could very easily channel more of its animosity into the issue of development of East China Sea gas fields, or Japan’s ongoing joint military programs with the US. Both of those are in and of themselves issues of material, and not just symbolic, significance. Perhaps Koizumi thinks he can smooth the way for more concessions from China on things that matter come this autumn if he’s combative enough to make his successors look accommodating by comparison.

I would just like it to be known that I’m all topped out on Alans. My best friend is named Alan. There’s a reader and commenter here with whom I sometimes correspond named Alan. There’s another Alan–from the same city in the UK as my friend, no less–whom I’ve now met enough times that it’s going to be considered rude pretty soon if I don’t remember his name. And a few nights ago I met yet another Alan who’s here in Tokyo indefinitely who will also, presumably, tire quickly of being told, “Sorry, man, I forgot your name again.”

Major cognitive dissonance here.

I mean, when you’re an American my age, you expect to know 90 Michaels (of whom, if you’re gay and hang out with people in the Tribe a lot, only 15 will go by Mike), 80 Brians (bonus points for being able to remember who’s an i and who’s a y), 60 Jasons, and 50 Stephens (including the Stevens and Steves, naturally). You never start to greet someone you know casually and think, Wait a minute–this can’t be Brian; I already saw Brian an hour ago. If you don’t know multiple Brians, you don’t get out much.

Also, if you live in Japan…well, the language only has forty-odd syllables, so you quickly become accustomed to not referring to Shinji or Jun or Taka in a conversation without making it clear whom you’re talking about before proceeding.

Alan, however? Perfectly nice name. I’ve come to associate “Hey, Alan” with a feeling of “Am I ever glad to see you, honey!” and warm greeting back of “Hiya, darlin’.” But I have trouble remembering names so as it is, and even though I’m aware that there can be clustering in perfectly random statistical samples, who knows four Alans? Anyway, the Alan-storage synapses in my brain are now officially full.

So if you’re a gay guy called Alan and plan to be running into me in the near future, please distinguish yourself by changing your name to, say, Fred first. Or, if that seems like too much trouble, go hetero.

Much obliged.

The Japan Meteorological Agency has announced that the cherry blossoms are probably going to open early this year–prepare for falling-down-drunkness and inescapable karaoke in t – 6 days:

The JMA announced the dates that cherry (Prunus serrulata) blossoms are expected to open from Kyushu through the Tohoku region on 15 March. For the first time, this year’s blossoms are predicted to open between 1 and 4 days earlier than the average in Tohoku.

…

The projected date for blossoms to open in Tokyo and Yokohama is 22 March.

There are scores of classic poems about cherry blossoms–in the seasonal-devotion sense. But of course, they’re so woven into Japanese culture in March and April that they can become aesthetic placeholders for poems with other themes.

The following is the first poem I ever read and understood (at least lexically) in Japanese:

レモン哀歌

そんなにもあなたはレモンを待つてゐた
かなしく白いあかるい死の床で
私の手からとつた一つのレモンを
あなたのきれいな歯ががりりと噛んだ
トパアズいろの香気が立つ
その数滴の天のものなるレモンの汁は
ぱつとあなたの意識を正常にした
あなたの青く澄んだ眼がかすかに笑ふ
わたしの手を握るあなたの力の健康さよ
あなたの咽喉に嵐はあるが
かういふ命の瀬戸ぎはに
智恵子はもとの智恵子となり
生涯の愛を一瞬にかたむけた
それからひと時
昔山巓でしたやうな深呼吸を一つして
あなたの機関ははそれなり止まつた
写真の前に挿した桜の花かげに
すずしく光るレモンを今日も置かう

高村光太郎

*******

Lemon Elegy

You had waited so for the lemon.
In your sad, white, bright deathbed,
you took from my hand a single lemon
and plunged your pretty teeth into it.
Those few drops of heaven-sent lemon juice
from which a topaz-colored fragrance rose
snapped your consciousness back to normal.
Your blue, unclouded eyes laughed a bit
Your power so robust as you grasped my hand.
There was a storm in your throat,
and just at last possible second,
Chieko became the old Chieko,
and the love of a lifetime tipped into a single moment.
And in the next instant,
you took a deep breath as you had long ago at the top of a mountain,
and with that your machinery shut down.
In the shadow of the cherry sprig standing in front of your photograph,
I will put a cool, glistening lemon today.

Kotaro Takamura

Kotaro Takamura and Chieko Naganuma had one of the most famous artistic marriages in Japan in the last century. Kotaro considered himself a sculptor more than a poet; Chieko was a painter. They had twin studios and shared household duties. Chieko had always been unconventional in dress and demeanor, but decade and a half after their marriage, she began to have delusions. She tried to commit suicide in the early 1930s. Of course, artists are famous for their erratic temperaments, but Chieko’s episodes developed into full-blown schizophrenia. Despite her tendency to break out of the house and harangue the neighbors, Kotaro kept her at home and took care of her for three years until it became too flat-out dangerous. She died another three years after he had her hospitalized.

智恵子抄 (Chieko-sho: “Winnowings [of poems about] Chieko”), the book of poetry Kotaro published three years after her death, contains the above poem and others about their life together. I wrote my undergrad senior research project about it. That was the time I was coming out, of course–and though it might not seem like the greatest idea to be studying poetry about such an unstable person right about then, it was something of a kooky comfort to think that you could be completely falling apart and still have someone who would remain so tirelessly devoted to you.

It’s known that many of the poems are idealizations–or rather, that they couldn’t possibly represent what their life was like in day-to-day terms. “Lemon Elegy” was composed in February, weeks before a cherry bough would have had swelling buds, let along blossoms, on it. Kotaro might have put a particularly shapely bare bough in a vase on the Buddhist altar with Chieko’s photograph on it, or he may just have written the poem as a projection into a time later in the spring. (Perhaps there’s some kind of critical consensus on that, but I’ve never seen it in any annotations.)

Added on 17 March: I remembered last night after posting this that my college language partner, who’d returned with her husband to Japan by the time I was coming here in 1996 and let me stay with them my first week here, had a video tape of a television special about Kotaro Takamura. We watched it the first night I ever spent in Japan.

Part of it was a dramatization of certain poems as they were read in voice-over. In the segment for “Lemon Elegy,” when the actress playing Chieko Naganuma died, the lemon dropped from her hand, landed on the floor with a meaningful thud, sat there for one dramatically fleeting second, and then wobbled dolorously away.

I. LAUGHED. SO. HARD. It could hardly have been more campily entertaining if it had been performed in drag.

While television dramas with naturalistic acting have become more common here, it’s non-mimetic theater, of course, that’s traditional. Scenes of emotional intensity are frequently stylized or exaggerated. (When Chieko returned momentarily to sanity, the look that flashed across the actress’s face was, like, Damn! I think I locked my keys in the car!) It’s a credit to Kotaro’s limpid, direct style that despite having those images in my head, I can still take the poems in question seriously.

Thomas Schieffer, who appears to keep a low profile as US Ambassador to Japan, is in the news today for having visited the beach from which Megumi Yokota was abducted by DPRK agents in 1977:

The ambassador was accompanied on the visit by Yokota’s 73-year-old father Shigeru and others, who explained the kidnapping to him. It was the first abduction scene visit by a high-ranking U.S. government official.

In a news conference after the visit, Schieffer said he was moved by the experience, and that the injustice of the abductions should be solved no matter how many years it took. He added he intended to discuss the issue with U.S. President George W. Bush when he next met him.

…

The visit is seen as lending support to Japan’s stance of seeking a solution to the abductions, following the failure of comprehensive talks between Japan and North Korea in February.

The abductee issue is a big one for Japan (both the government and the public). When there are talks between the DPRK and the US in which Japan is involved, it tends to get backburnered in favor of more attention to, you know, nuclear development and stuff. And Japan and North Korea certainly haven’t solved it between themselves.

Megumi Yokota, BTW, is the abductee whose unknown whereabouts have been reported on most frequently since the issue really gained steam several years ago. The DPRK gave Japan a pile of bones that turned out not to be hers.