XII.
Drums were beating over the village on the valley floor, but nobody could hear them. Or rather--everybody could, but they knew them only as the rip of fireworks unaware of any premonition they foretold.
From the top of the valley ridgeline, where soccer pitches had been built for the express reason of holding regional tournaments, we wound our way down a long asphalt road that was somewhat kept up, keeping our sandals clear of sharp stones or other obstructions. An outside witness would have seen only a young couple in love, dressed for the festival that was scheduled for that summer night. This is set back now in Kitakata, the final summer before the return.
"So that's it, then?"
"Yes, that's it."
The decision had been made. Life in the village was now intolerable. But planning, return, all these things would be put off for later days, for today was the day of the summer festival, and it was pointless to occupy oneself with other thoughts. The smell of thistle and mountain herbs lay in the air; cicadas buzzing could not be drowned out by the occasional motor-noise of a passing car. The two held hands; the two were close with the closeness of years of association.
"You know--"
"What?"
"Uh... no, nothing."
Such a beautiful couple! By the time we reach the valley, early evening has given way to late, the sky is now darkened to deep blue. Walking amidst the crowds, nobody reacts that he is a foreigner, nobody gives more than one, or sometimes two glances at the summer yukata, the design popular that season and fitting him, who comes off a bit short in the West, somehow more Japanese-like. The concrete sidewalk gives way to an asphalt path amidst rice paddies, where frogs, crickets and late summer insects keep up a chorus, discernible beneath the chattering of the crowd and the increasing frequency of the fireworks, still being sent up one-at-a-time. Gerry--was it Gerry? Yes, he had been the one to put things together; in his half-energetic Midwestern way, he had sent around text messages, and the township's half-dozen foreigners had agreed to meet. Now festival booths begin appearing by the roadside, vendors crying out their hawker cries, fried noodles, flavored ice, okonomiyaki pancakes. The savory smells of oil, soy sauce, grilled sticks fill the air and stir our own hunger, we look over at each other at the same time and stop before the yakitori grill, where the hawker nods and sets to work. It's nighttime. At that moment, a little boy races across the path with a sizzling firework, and the sudden pop is startling, but then we laugh, and I put my arm around Hisako , her warmth able to be felt through the cloth of the summer kimono. But now the sound of music reaching a higher tempo can be heard and we eat quickly to get to the main riverwalk in order to see the spectacle.
"Uh, Gerry? Gerry is that you?" But the voice on the phone is indecipherable. "Send a text."
The others--Eri Hasegawa, Tak--they are already buried too deep by the riverbank to get in. But working our way from one opening to the next, we are able to finally get to the parade already in progress and meet up with Gerry and his girlfriend, who smile in greeting, and we turn now to teams of men or women carrying portable shrines that must weigh several hundred pounds. The largest have as many as twenty or thirty carriers, with three or four separate sections of design that tower eight or nine feet of wooden construction atop brawn shoulders. Dyed-hair girls, though, have their own teams assembled, maybe on a smaller scale, but each one hunkering down the parade route being jerked to and fro even as the teams bounce their way forward is agitated in the same unpredictable motion and the crowd that surrounds the route is similarly engaged, beating on drums, blowing on flutes, drinking and talking loudly and cheering for especial favorites. Flaming wooden torches and festival lights keep the scene vibrant, warm, and full of energy, and Hisako's hand is clasped in mine, tight and warm.
"Ah, so what it is news?"
"Well, it looks like I got into a Master's program back in the States?"
"Oh wow, wonderful. So you're going?"
"Yes."
A quick glance at eyes.
"No more White Cat."
"No indeed."
Finally, the central shrines begin approaching, the really gigantic ones sponsored by the town temples. Some of these are giant enough to have people on top as well, and wearing kabuki masks they leer or chastise the public, warning all of the folly of life or reminding everyone that nothing is really known.
-Ha!
The shrine-bearers heave forward. A startle whips through the crowd.
"Oh hi!" Gerry greets one of his students, a thirteen year old with her parents. They exchange formalities. All the town is out tonight.
"We're thinking of moving back together."
"That sounds wonderful. Any other news?"
"May will be staying, Sonja probably not. I don't know about Rick."
The quiet life of foreigner English teachers unfolds.
-Ha!
Another jerk. The shrine is brought up two meters; it must be at least a ton.
"God that must be painful."
"No, I'm sure there's enough of them."
People buzz about, chit and chatter. To one side, a vendor has set up gold fish in plastic bins. It is just about possible to flick one out of the water with a paper spatula.
"The thing about this thing is that it's really when all the Japanese people can let down their hair. You know, you got company presidents right next to factory workers; teachers drinking beer while teenagers are trying to sneak off with somebody special."
-Ha!
Children run laughing and screaming; the feeling of excitement is palapable. The people are now all packed together as close as commuters on a rush-hour subway, but from our viewpoint atop a retaining wall, we can see the full motion of the crowd, the waves of loin-cloth clad men pressing forward to keep the shrines in motion, the religious fervor which fills the tableau with a sense of climactic urgency.
"How about you? What plans do you guys have?"
Hisako and I exchange glances.
"Well, we've been talking about going back to Tokyo?"
"Oh yeah?" Gerry does seem mildly interested. "Isn't that a step back?"
The path of the shrine bearers extends forward to the base of a small but steep hill. It seems almost unfair; unright that people should have to heave up a multi-ton structure on their bare shoulders with only straw sandals on their feet. But that is the task of hundreds before them, and hundreds to come in years arriving.
-Ha!
"Well, actually, I think we're beginning to realize that we're city people. This whole thing about living in the country, it's kind of a joke, right?"
"No, I'm not so sure. I rather thought you were beginning to enjoy it."
I breathe out heavily. And here self identity itself seems to dissolve, it becomes impossible to conceive of anything within the framework of I or you or them, we are all pressed together in psychological unity, a deliberate elicitation of the mob instinct, enraptured in what is only a religious bliss. It would be a terrible act for anyone to slow down now, now there's really a mob, now there's really a mob, the mob is moving forward, the shrines are being pumped up and down, and loud ecstatic flute music and drum beating drives everyone forward, forward towards the hilltop temples where the portable shrines will be encased again.
-Ha!
[Hisako hated her father! He was an all right man for most of his life, but when he got old, he kept criticizing and criticizing her; there was never any room to be your own person in that household. Weakness, genetic or family upbringing, sliding down the family line.]
"This life-- you know, raves in one's young twenties, north of England or small town America. English teaching, eight hundred yen an hour, it's just... all this. All this."
-Ha!
[Sakura 2nd was a terrible, terrible middle school! Once all the teachers surrounded her because she kept on misbehaving. It had a reputation for all the dyed-haired rejects even for those thirteen year olds!]
"Well, sometimes I feel that way. I'm not totally sure whether grad school is going to really change anything in my life, though."
"I'm sure it will be fine."
[I never really loved her! It was just a rebound thing. But it went on and on and on...]
-Ha!
Something definitely does unhinge now, the crescendo itself begins to crescendo, and all the sixty thousand inhabitants of Kitakata must be on the street tonight. Forget gappei (town-consolidation); forget the labor troubles at the factory. One hundred twenty thousand eyes are on the shrine bearers, one of whom slips, eliciting sixty thousand gasps, but who then recovers, and the shrine is pushed up another ten meters.
"So what did you learn from all this? Was the countryside worth it?"
"Yeah of course. I mean, take even the hill. They say the temples are hundreds of years old; giant stone monoliths that have survived so many changes of government; so many revolutions and martyrs. Blood from one last band of samurai who resisted the introduction of guns is said to still stain the central shrine."
Now the load-bearers are mounting the steps; with a feeling only describable as agony, we watch in unity with the moment as the shrine trembles, as it trembles.
"So I guess we feel a sense of something bigger than ourselves. That maybe these traditions and old customs are really something worth preserving."
"Yes, maybe. What kind of grad school was it?"
"Oh international relations. Like training for the U.N. maybe."
I find myself privately wondering; I hear most positions go to Third Worlders these days.
"You will both go right away?"
"No, Chika's parents are sick. She has to minister to them. But she'll come over a year later it looks like."
"That sounds nice."
Everything has reached its final, ultimate point. The steps are mounted, blood is flowing from the shoulders of more than one shrine-bearer, but with the collective attention of an entire farming valley's inhabitants urging on the load-carriers, there can be no possibility of retreat now. Streams of sweat, streams of blood are pouring down the flesh of the muscled men, and every muscle is tense, every last ounce of strength is being channeled. And it almost does seem to be on the verge...
...of collapse. They really do seem like they will all collapse. But there is no return now! There is no retreat possible now! Everything that has been written is about the airless hopelessness of town life! Everything that has been written is about the airless hopelessness of expat English teachers in Japan and Asia-at-large! All their dreams were pointless in the end, for Julian never went anywhere with his film, and Melanie just got older to disappear into Taos, a respected figure to a new generation of dreamers who would be doomed to sell-out or achieve only minor success, our art-major degrees were pointless in this IT-major's world, and even the IT majors were swept away by the trendlines, the economy collapsed, America collapsed, Western civilization collapsed, and tears and fears could not change a thing. Pointless love affairs gave away to passionless sex, it didn't matter five lovers or five hundred, everyone just got old, nobody married anymore, and entire districts were depopulated. Finally they mount. Finally they mount. The shrine bearers have ascended the peak, it is over, it is over!
-Ha!
Catharsis, as complete as tears running down one's cheeks; as complete as the feeling of removing a plug of sebum from a clogged up pore; I am heavy and fulfilled; all banalities have fallen away. I am nothing, a silly American amidst people who are thousands of years old in culture. And everything has finally come to an end.
If it took hours; if the town had anticipated the festival over the course of days, it now begins to unwind in a matter of an hour or two. From the absolute tension and collective dissolution of will, everyone now forms and dissolves off into pairs or small groups, to find a convenient patch of riverbank in which to finish off snacks and beer, or to make their way to the train or bus stations or car parking lots. They say next valley over it's all about fireworks. The main branch of the river goes through that one, and everyone collects on the riverbank to watch this one family that does only this, for a six hour show that gets televised on NHK. But here it's just daisy-cutters or sparklers, whirla-gigs and handheld fizzlers. Children run to and fro. The crowds re now going the opposite direction, still avoiding running children, onlookers who give a curious stare, girls in their kimono comparing each other's choices. The night is filled with the sounds of cars starting, motorcyclists revving their engines, the traffic lights buzzing as they do only here.
Hisako holds my hand. So much has been omitted. The press of words is like a pressure on my lips, the internal feeling of something inside bursting to get free. The artists and their film-making, the ambitions that were born and only went so far, or maybe what was really missing were the midnight car-rides. Living in the country maybe that's all you did, get into that vehicle and drive drive drive, six hours, eight, sometimes to end up in morning Morioka before turning around and retreating back home at a slower pace. It was an epic thing, yes; and the night with its rhythms had its own passion, it's own remembrances to be immortalized in some other convention. Here also, however, is a definite completion, for although our days and dreams were like this so, our successes were only as half-baked as we liked, still we went where we could with what we had, and all of this, dying away if it were, was still in some unknown sense the proper way of doing things. Gustav, the newbie to the film-program, eventually ended up becoming Aoyama's shooting star. A not-too-tall but muscled Swede, he was perpetually cheerful and carried a megaphone as he went on to be a well-respected filmmaker. His little three-minutes samurai flicks achieved 100,000 views on YouTube. Gangs of people went off or on to make a good living or be good at boating or to be mildly respectable in their own ways. Adventures were had in parked cars or in moving ones, police fled after film-makers got high and had their scenes. But everyone got their driver's licenses in the end. And here, this one thing, this limited and boundaried love affair, it came to an end here, I suppose, but something else endured and everyone would go to where they were going anyway.
The countryside is slower. The salary measured out in differences of two point five or three thousand even would make little difference in final outcomes; the quiet girl ends up accumulating a small fortune; the one trying to go to advanced international studies comes back in the end and hides out of unnecessary shame.
Hisako, you know, was never so bad as they said; we were never so minor as might be assumed. Eight years passed, from her sixteen to twenty-four: this is just what we were. The flood waters would come rolling in; everything we had would be swept, swept away, but before it went, I would shed a bitter tear.