supernatural creature will come out of the forest. Grandmother used to tell us the Chosokabe would come.”
“Did she? Now that I’m here in the valley I realize I don’t really remember anything much. Even when I seem to remember something, I can’t be sure of its accuracy. In America I often heard the word ‘uprooted,’ but now that I’ve come back to the valley in an attempt to make sure of my own roots, I find they’ve all been pulled up. I’ve begun to feel uprooted myself. So now I’ve got to put down new roots here, and to do so I naturally feel some action is necessary. What that action is I don’t know; I just have an increasingly strong premonition that action will be necessary. . . . Anyway, to come back to the place where you were born doesn’t mean you’re going to find your roots there, conveniently buried in the right place. You may think I’m being sentimental, Mitsu, but the thatched hut of the old days has gone.” He spoke with an air of hopeless fatigue that ill suited his age. “I didn’t even remember Jin really clearly. Even if she hadn’t got so fat, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to recognize the Jin I knew. When she began to cry because she detected in me some signs of the kid she once looked after, I was actually afraid in case this great stranger of a woman might put out her lumpy arms and try to hug me. I only hope my nasty little fear wasn’t apparent to Jin herself.”
Down in the valley it was already dark. From the other side of thetemporary bridge twisting its way over the concrete supports, the teen-agers signaled to us with a cheerful tooting of the Citroen’s horn, but it was impossible to make out the car in the darkness. Takashi, who had been to the forest ranger’s lodge to return the jeep and the oilskin, was dressed in the hunting-type outfit he’d worn on his return from America, but looked pinched and small, as if he’d suddenly shrunk. I tried in vain to picture the same Takashi playing a repentant student activist in front of an American audience. . . . And yet, I reflected, the black forest seen from down in the valley was more over-whelming than any audience, and it was I, not my brother, who had to put up with its jeers when it called, “You’re just a rat!”
Tense as I helped my wife over the dangerous temporary bridge, I felt the buds of pleasure at returning to the valley obstinately shriveled up inside me. The breeze blowing up off the dark waters directly beneath us stabbed at my eyes with its icy thorns, threatening to blind even the good one. From behind and below, the sudden cackle of some unidentifiable bird came wafting up to us.
“Chickens,” Takashi said. “The village young men’s association has a chicken farm where the Korean settlement used to be.”
About a hundred yards from the bridge, down the paved road that went to the sea, lay a huddle of houses that had once sheltered Koreans doing forced labor as lumbermen in the forest. We’d just reached the center of the bridge, and the clucking of the chickens farther downstream reached our ears without any intervening obstacle.
“Do chickens normally cluck at this time of night?”
“People say they’re nearly dead of starvation, several thousand of them. They’re probably complaining of hunger.”
My wife was shivering ceaselessly in my encircling arm.
“The young men of the valley can’t do anything worthwhile without a leader,” said Takashi with unconcealed disgust. “They’re helpless until someone like great-grandfather’s younger brother comes along. They’re incapable of getting themselves out of a fix by their own efforts. When I got back to the valley, Mitsu, that’s the first thing I realized about the strangers who have been living here all the time.”
Dreams within Dreams
O N the morning of our first day in the valley we ate breakfast around the open fireplace in the board-floored room next to the spacious earthen-floored kitchen of the main
“Did she? Now that I’m here in the valley I realize I don’t really remember anything much. Even when I seem to remember something, I can’t be sure of its accuracy. In America I often heard the word ‘uprooted,’ but now that I’ve come back to the valley in an attempt to make sure of my own roots, I find they’ve all been pulled up. I’ve begun to feel uprooted myself. So now I’ve got to put down new roots here, and to do so I naturally feel some action is necessary. What that action is I don’t know; I just have an increasingly strong premonition that action will be necessary. . . . Anyway, to come back to the place where you were born doesn’t mean you’re going to find your roots there, conveniently buried in the right place. You may think I’m being sentimental, Mitsu, but the thatched hut of the old days has gone.” He spoke with an air of hopeless fatigue that ill suited his age. “I didn’t even remember Jin really clearly. Even if she hadn’t got so fat, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to recognize the Jin I knew. When she began to cry because she detected in me some signs of the kid she once looked after, I was actually afraid in case this great stranger of a woman might put out her lumpy arms and try to hug me. I only hope my nasty little fear wasn’t apparent to Jin herself.”
Down in the valley it was already dark. From the other side of thetemporary bridge twisting its way over the concrete supports, the teen-agers signaled to us with a cheerful tooting of the Citroen’s horn, but it was impossible to make out the car in the darkness. Takashi, who had been to the forest ranger’s lodge to return the jeep and the oilskin, was dressed in the hunting-type outfit he’d worn on his return from America, but looked pinched and small, as if he’d suddenly shrunk. I tried in vain to picture the same Takashi playing a repentant student activist in front of an American audience. . . . And yet, I reflected, the black forest seen from down in the valley was more over-whelming than any audience, and it was I, not my brother, who had to put up with its jeers when it called, “You’re just a rat!”
Tense as I helped my wife over the dangerous temporary bridge, I felt the buds of pleasure at returning to the valley obstinately shriveled up inside me. The breeze blowing up off the dark waters directly beneath us stabbed at my eyes with its icy thorns, threatening to blind even the good one. From behind and below, the sudden cackle of some unidentifiable bird came wafting up to us.
“Chickens,” Takashi said. “The village young men’s association has a chicken farm where the Korean settlement used to be.”
About a hundred yards from the bridge, down the paved road that went to the sea, lay a huddle of houses that had once sheltered Koreans doing forced labor as lumbermen in the forest. We’d just reached the center of the bridge, and the clucking of the chickens farther downstream reached our ears without any intervening obstacle.
“Do chickens normally cluck at this time of night?”
“People say they’re nearly dead of starvation, several thousand of them. They’re probably complaining of hunger.”
My wife was shivering ceaselessly in my encircling arm.
“The young men of the valley can’t do anything worthwhile without a leader,” said Takashi with unconcealed disgust. “They’re helpless until someone like great-grandfather’s younger brother comes along. They’re incapable of getting themselves out of a fix by their own efforts. When I got back to the valley, Mitsu, that’s the first thing I realized about the strangers who have been living here all the time.”
Dreams within Dreams
O N the morning of our first day in the valley we ate breakfast around the open fireplace in the board-floored room next to the spacious earthen-floored kitchen of the main
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