Pure Land , livre ebook

the pure land
alan spence
To Janani
CONTENTS

1 THE GATELESS GATE Nagasaki, 1945
2 THE KNOWN WORLD Aberdeen, 1858
3 GURABA-SAN Nagasaki, 1859
4 SILK AND TEA Nagasaki, 1859–60
5 ALCHEMY Nagasaki, 1860
6 RONIN Nagasaki–Edo, 1861
7 NIGHT JOURNEY Nagasaki, 1862
8 FLOWER OF KAGOSHIMA Nagasaki–Kagoshima, 1863
9 BURNING BRIGHT Nagasaki, 1864
10 BRIG O’ BALGOWNIE Aberdeen, 1865–66
11 DAIMYO Nagasaki, 1867–68
12 MEIJI Nagasaki–Edo, 1868–69
13 MAKI Nagasaki, 1869–70
14 HOT GINGER AND DYNAMITE Tokyo, 1911
15 FORM IS EMPTINESS Nagasaki, 1945
16 ONE FINE DAY Nagasaki, 2005
17 THE PURE LAND Nagasaki, 1912
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

1
THE GATELESS GATE
Nagasaki, 1945
I f Tomisaburo hadn’t seen for himself, he would not have believed. This was the terrible end of everything; annihilation, nothingness. One single blast had laid waste half the city, destroyed it in an instant, reduced it to rubble and dust. His house was on Minami Yamate , the southern hillside, overlooking the bay. It was far from the epicentre, lay sheltered in the lee of the hill. That simple fact had saved it from destruction.
He’d been seated at his desk, looking out at the pine tree in the garden, the tree that had given the house its name, Ipponmatsu , Lone Pine. The tree pre-dated the house, had been there before his father chose the site, laid the foundations. The first western house on the hill, stone built. If it had been made of wood and paper, would it have burned to ashes in that searing wind?
He’d been looking at the pine tree, that was all, trying to empty his mind. Not think. Or think of nothing. Mu . The pine tree in the garden. The week before, he had opened the Diamond Sutra, turned the pages, looking for meaning. Awaken the mind without fixing it anywhere . The poet Basho had written, Learn of the pine from the pine . Learn how to pine. Everything these days was a meditation on transience, impermanence. He was an old man. It had been cruel of the kenpeitai , the not so secret police, to interrogate him. Because of his background they’d thought he was a spy. This was his fate, his karma , to be caught between two worlds. Neither one thing nor another. Neither fish nor fowl. Now the Americans were coming. They had wrought this horror. There was no hope.
The flash had lit the sky, white light, momentarily brighter than noon. He’d closed his eyes, an afterimage of the pine tree burned on his retina. Then the noise had filled the heavens, huge and thunderous, so loud it hurt. He’d covered his ears as the whole house shook and every window shattered and the hot dry wind rushed in, ripped through everything.
Not thinking, a man in a dream of himself, he’d stood up, shaken shards and particles of glass from his clothes. Not thinking, he’d brushed his sleeve with his hand, felt the sting as the blood welled up in each tiny cut on his fingers, his open palm. Not thinking, he’d stumbled outside, tried to take in the enormity of what had happened. It had suddenly grown dark, like a winter afternoon, but the wind that blew was still warm. Smoke from a burning building cleared and he looked towards the city, but it was gone. Everything to the north was obliterated, every landmark razed. Nothing vertical still stood, except here and there a factory chimney, the skeleton frame of a warehouse. Everywhere small fires burned and flared, adding their smoke to the grey pall overhead.
Not thinking, a man in a dream, he walked towards the devastation, one foot after another, laboured and slow, over uneven ground, scattered detritus. His teeth ached, and his back, and his knee joints. Some of the particles of glass had landed in his thin hair, cut his scalp. But all of this might just as well be happening to somebody else, was as nothing compared to what he saw around and before him. This was beyond imagining. It could not be. But it was.
A Shinto temple had disappeared but its red wooden torii gate stood miraculously intact. A gate to nowhere. He walked through.

Awaken the mind without fixing it anywhere. He looked out at everything, numbed.
A horse crushed under the cart it had been pulling.
Two young men on their knees, dead where they had fallen, their legs tangled in electrical wires.
Three charred corpses, seated on an iron bench where a bus stop had been.
The post office, gone. A shop that sold incense, gone. The pleasure quarter, gone. His favourite teahouse, gone.
The further he went, the worse it became.
Bodies and bits of bodies strewn on the road, trapped in burned-out cars, floating in the harbour, the water a murky rust-red.
A man’s shadow, burned on a white wall; the man gone, incinerated in an instant. A young mother, alive, with a baby to her breast; her face and arms, the baby’s head, all burned; only the breast unmarked, white. The desperate need to hold on, to go on living, even in hell.
People crawling over wreckage, scorched and blinded, their clothes in shreds, crying crying for water, and as if to mock them, a grimy rain starting to drizzle down.
A statue, in the middle of an open space. No, not a statue, the body of a monk, burned black, seated in meditation, accepting this too, this too, even to the last. Awaken the mind.
Tomisaburo’s own mind was empty, his heart dead. Perhaps he himself had been killed in the blast, was now a disembodied spirit, doomed to wander this place of the dead, the realm of the gaki , the hungry ghosts. He tried to remember a prayer, but the words wouldn’t come.
Then he realised his own face was burned, and stinging from a trickle of tears. He watched, detached, a few of the drops fall, make tiny grey beads in the dust at his feet. He turned and started the wretched trek back.

*

All this was how long ago? Days that felt like years. With the windows blown in, the house lay open. He had swept up the broken glass, gathered up the books and papers scattered on the floor. More than that was beyond him.
There was nowhere to buy food, no food to be bought. He survived, day to day, on a handful of cooked rice, a few pickles. It was enough. He had little appetite. He allowed himself an occasional sip of Scotch whisky from the last bottle he’d kept aside, for use in case of emergency. In case of emergency! The irony of that was galling.
It was hard to get reliable news about the situation. Reception on his radio was almost non-existent, drowned out by crackling static. Neighbours would pass by his gate, respond tersely to his questions. He was half-western; that made him partly to blame. Hadn’t the kenpeitai taken him in for questioning?
No smoke without fire.
In any case, the news had been unreliable for so long. All they’d been fed was propaganda and rumour. Now it was worse. The Nagasaki bomb had followed the one on Hiroshima. Now there would be more.
The Americans would bomb Kyoto, then Tokyo, unless the Emperor surrendered. And that was impossible, for the Emperor was infallible, divine. The nation was prepared for a speech from the Imperial Palace, calling for The Honourable Death of The Hundred Million, mass suicide. It was magnificently insane. He felt tears well up again, blurring his vision. The pine tree wavered. The scorching wind, the toxic rain, had shrivelled it, stripped it bare. It stood stark against the grey of the sky. He had gone out one more time, headed towards the city, but once again had turned back, hopeless. Thousands had been taken, or had dragged themselves, to Michino-o station, to the makeshift medical centre. Only a few hundred had been treated and had any hope of survival. The rest had died, would die.
I would never have believed death had undone so many .

He had read that long ago, in another life. Dante’s Inferno .
So many.
He turned again to his copy of the Diamond Sutra, seeking guidance, light in the darkness, trying to understand. The verse read, Shiki soku ze ku .
Form is Emptiness.

*
The signal wasn’t clear, but there must have been a surge in the power supply, just enough for the message to come through. The Emperor himself was addressing the nation, his voice formal and frail. Surrender was total and unconditional. He was no longer to be regarded as a god but remained the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people. He would no longer command political power. Henceforth government was to be by an elected House of Representatives. The armed forces, and the people as a whole, were to lay down their arms. Japan herewith renounced war and the maintenance of military forces forever.
The announcement was followed by a sombre recording of the national anthem, then the airwaves fell silent. Tomisaburo slumped to his knees, his face in his hands, stayed like that a long time.
Eventually he hauled himself up, sat in front of his desk. He felt sick in his stomach, his joints creaked, his bones ached. But his mind was clear. Sooner or later they would come for him. It might be the kenpeitai, intent on retribution; or it could be the Americans, to make him collaborate, help them take over. It mattered little.
Civilisation was at an end. The barbarians were at the gate.
On the desk in front of him he had laid a short wakizashi samurai sword in its sheath, something his father had treasured. In the desk drawer was his father’s revolver, loaded.

He had shaken the broken glass from the framed portraits of his father, his dear wife Waka. He was glad she had not lived to see this. He had placed the portraits on the desk, facing him, his father’s gaze stern, Waka’s gentle and sad. Already it was more than two years since she’d died, seemed like no time, though the days without her were slow to pass. How could that be? Life was short, the days long.
Beside the portraits were a few small things he’d kept since he was a child, things his father had given him for good luck; a bamboo token that had once been used as currency, a Mexican silver dollar, an origami butterfly of folded white paper. His