Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

The shrine was in my mind because it was controversial (it has been compared to a Nazi monument), because its presence was another victory for the yakuza ("steering Japan backward and to the right," as one observer put it), and because it was mentioned in Underground, in a question posed by Murakami to an Aum cultist. "People who believed in the emperor thought that if you died for him your soul would rest in Yasukuni Shrine and find peace," Murakami said. That included enshrined memories of the murderers and rapists of Nanking, the torturers of enemy prisoners of war, the looters of Singapore, the sadists on the Bataan Death March, the suicide bombers of Pearl Harbor, the abductors and debauchers of Korean women, forcing them to be sex slaves for the imperial army, and many others regarded by non-Japanese as war criminals.

"The Yasukuni Shrine is for politicians. They want to show their patriotism," Murakami said when I asked him.

And it was a fact that every prime minister visited the shrine—that repository of the souls of soldiers—in the spring and fall, and on August 15, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender.

"Before 1945 we were militaristic," he said. "After that, we were peace-loving and gentle. But we were the same people. The soldiers who massacred the Chinese in Nanking came home and were peaceful. Let's stop here. Want a cup of coffee?"

The small coffee shop was of traditional Japanese design, all wood paneling and wooden tables and stools. Murakami said he chose it because such mom-and-pop places were disappearing, being forced out of business by the larger, mostly American coffee shop chains. And the coffee was better here too.

"Is this an old place?" I asked.

He said, "Because of the American bombing, every building around here is less than sixty years old."

"Do people hanker for the old days?"

"My mother used to say that Osaka is better now," he said. "That it's a better world now. A more peaceful one than before."

"What do you think?"

"We were given liberty. We were given the capitalist system. You know, we never had a revolution in Japan."

I was also thinking, but did not say: And you were delivered of the notion of conquering Asia and the Pacific, making it part of the Japanese empire. You were saved from that complex fate, and without an empire or an army you were able to concentrate your efforts on becoming prosperous. Murakami might have agreed with that, though he probably would have added: We were A-bombed and humiliated. Which was true.

"You were in college in '68," I said. "That was a time of tremendous student protest. Were you in those demonstrations?"

"I was a rebel at Waseda, yes. American soldiers were here on R and R from Vietnam. We held demonstrations. We occupied the university."

"Are there demonstrations now against the Iraq War?"

"None."

"Because the government discourages them?"

"No. Student apathy, probably."

"But there's repression of a cultural kind in Japan, isn't there?"

He nodded. The coffee had come, served by a little old woman in a blue apron and white mobcap. We were the only people in the shop. And it was easy to scribble notes in my notebook at the wooden table.

"Always the feeling you are watched," he said.

"Did you feel that way—conspicuous?"

"Yes. You have to make up your mind to be different."

"Your father was bookish," I said. "Wasn't that a help to you?"

"My father and I never talked about books. I wanted to escape Kyoto."

"There's this line in a Henry James essay about England where he says that every Englishman is a tight fit in society. Isn't that also true in Japan?"

"It's true here, but it's changing. I rebelled against it."

"How?"

"After college I became nothing. My father was disappointed. I was disappointed. Our relationship soured."

"But you wanted to be a writer."

"No. I had nothing in my mind." He stared at me over the top of his coffee cup. "I was married. I just wanted to listen to music."

That was when he told me about starting his jazz club, and how for years he indulged himself in listening to music—and also reading. And he had married so young, at twenty-two, his parents thought he was lost. He moved to Yoko's house, where he got on well with her father, who was a shopkeeper and made no demands.

"I loved Yoko. That was everything to me."

Murakami made these simple statements with a great deal of feeling, such unexpected intensity that I seemed to get a glimpse of both passion and a deep loneliness that love had relieved.

After that, we plunged into the shops of Kappa Bashi. At a place that sold cutlery he showed me the specialty knives, the cleavers and daggers and buck knives of dark tempered steel, and a long, narrow, sword-like knife for slicing big fish for sashimi. On the walls and in display cases were chisels and saws for shaping blocks of ice.