premieres in Los Angeles and New York. He had been given a major role as a military officer attached to the Japanese embassy in Beijing (then known as Peking)—there was even a scene where he cradled the lead actress in his arms and helped her to escape while bullets were ricocheting off the walls and the unpaved road around them. The review in Los Angeles’s leading newspaper singled Goro out for special notice, rhapsodizing about his “glamorous charm” and remarking that he had an unusually charismatic presence for an Asian actor. Kogito happened to read that article, and he clipped it out and sent it to Goro’s then wife, Katsuko.
But when Goro returned home and looked at the Japanese reviews, he discovered that most of them completely ignored his performance. One anonymous weekly-magazine film reviewer focused on a scene in which Katsuko had a walk-on partas a married woman, splendidly dressed in kimono, who attends a Christmas party for the employees of all the foreign embassies in Peking. The review concluded with the snide remark, “This is the reason Goro Hanawa passed his audition,” implying that Katsuko’s family-business connections had been a factor.
As Goro slid ever deeper into drunkenness, Kogito started talking about Yukichi Fukuzawa’s trademark word, enbo , meaning resentment, bitterness, or envy. Kogito quoted liberally from Fukuzawa’s seminal treatise, An Encouragement of Learning , which he had used as a text in a class he’d taught at Berkeley. In Japan, he explained to his increasingly bleary-eyed brother-in-law, there was only one reason why Goro, as a Japanese actor who was successful abroad as well, would be slighted or even looked upon with disdain. That reason was pure enbo: bitter, envious resentment.
According to Fukuzawa, virtually every word that’s used to describe people can be a two-sided coin. For example, depending on your tone, frugal can mean admirably thrifty or despicably stingy, while rough and ready could imply either courageousness or bellicosity. The exception, he says, is enbo . No matter how you look at it, enbo is a complete waste of time; there’s no way you can put a positive spin on envy, bitterness, and resentment, or turn those emotions into positive human traits.
To which Goro replied, “When it comes to being tormented by the envy and resentment of others, you’re in the same boat as I am, with that vindictive journalist making a cottage industry of dragging your name through the mud. Just watch—as soon as you win a big international prize for literature, that ‘eminent authority’ will rush to press with a book that totallytrashes your entire life and work.” Goro as prophet: that was exactly what did happen, some years later.
“I really don’t worry too much about this kind of stuff,” Goro went on. “But getting back to that article that you went to the trouble of cutting out and sending to Katsuko, where the writer singled me out for special praise? Well, the truth is, I’ve been having some personal problems with that writer. You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with that sort of thing.” Kogito felt disappointed by the way Goro seemed to be changing the subject, as if he wasn’t taking Kogito’s point seriously, so he was gratified to learn from Chikashi, some time later, that Goro had been enthusiastically sprinkling his conversations with his new favorite word: enbo .
It gradually emerged that the film critic who had singled Goro out for such lavish praise in that L.A. newspaper was a fiftyish woman named Amy, who had traveled with Goro’s group for part of the time while he and some of the other actors were on a promotional tour for the movie. After the initial interview, whenever Goro had a little free time she would invite him to join her for dinner at some small restaurant near wherever they happened to be staying, to continue the more detailed interviews she said she needed in order to write a longer article about
But when Goro returned home and looked at the Japanese reviews, he discovered that most of them completely ignored his performance. One anonymous weekly-magazine film reviewer focused on a scene in which Katsuko had a walk-on partas a married woman, splendidly dressed in kimono, who attends a Christmas party for the employees of all the foreign embassies in Peking. The review concluded with the snide remark, “This is the reason Goro Hanawa passed his audition,” implying that Katsuko’s family-business connections had been a factor.
As Goro slid ever deeper into drunkenness, Kogito started talking about Yukichi Fukuzawa’s trademark word, enbo , meaning resentment, bitterness, or envy. Kogito quoted liberally from Fukuzawa’s seminal treatise, An Encouragement of Learning , which he had used as a text in a class he’d taught at Berkeley. In Japan, he explained to his increasingly bleary-eyed brother-in-law, there was only one reason why Goro, as a Japanese actor who was successful abroad as well, would be slighted or even looked upon with disdain. That reason was pure enbo: bitter, envious resentment.
According to Fukuzawa, virtually every word that’s used to describe people can be a two-sided coin. For example, depending on your tone, frugal can mean admirably thrifty or despicably stingy, while rough and ready could imply either courageousness or bellicosity. The exception, he says, is enbo . No matter how you look at it, enbo is a complete waste of time; there’s no way you can put a positive spin on envy, bitterness, and resentment, or turn those emotions into positive human traits.
To which Goro replied, “When it comes to being tormented by the envy and resentment of others, you’re in the same boat as I am, with that vindictive journalist making a cottage industry of dragging your name through the mud. Just watch—as soon as you win a big international prize for literature, that ‘eminent authority’ will rush to press with a book that totallytrashes your entire life and work.” Goro as prophet: that was exactly what did happen, some years later.
“I really don’t worry too much about this kind of stuff,” Goro went on. “But getting back to that article that you went to the trouble of cutting out and sending to Katsuko, where the writer singled me out for special praise? Well, the truth is, I’ve been having some personal problems with that writer. You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with that sort of thing.” Kogito felt disappointed by the way Goro seemed to be changing the subject, as if he wasn’t taking Kogito’s point seriously, so he was gratified to learn from Chikashi, some time later, that Goro had been enthusiastically sprinkling his conversations with his new favorite word: enbo .
It gradually emerged that the film critic who had singled Goro out for such lavish praise in that L.A. newspaper was a fiftyish woman named Amy, who had traveled with Goro’s group for part of the time while he and some of the other actors were on a promotional tour for the movie. After the initial interview, whenever Goro had a little free time she would invite him to join her for dinner at some small restaurant near wherever they happened to be staying, to continue the more detailed interviews she said she needed in order to write a longer article about
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