Onodera had not been in Kansai for a long time. In comparison to the quake-scarred condition of Tokyo, everything here seemed to be far closer to normal. Nevertheless, when Onodera’s plane was circling Osaka before landing, there was something about the scene below that struck him as odd. What it was he learned later in a conversation with his brother, after they had accompanied their mother’s body to the crematory in the Nada section of Kobe.
“I’ve been thinking about changing jobs,” said his brother as they were driving back. “Here in the Kansai, you see, all kinds of projects have been suspended or else put off. And in my work, too, there’s not much at all going on.”
“Why is that? The effect of the Tokyo quake?”
“Don’t you know the reason? Why, the land in the Kansai is sinking at an alarming rate.” His brother’s face was grim. “Sinking land is not something new in the Kansai, of course, but now it’s at the stage where it’s no joke—in economic terms, you see. The fact of the matter is that in some places it’s sinking at an average rate of nearly an inch a day.”
“Really?” murmured Onodera, at a loss. Though he worked at Plan D headquarters, he had been so taken up with the exploration of the Japan Trench that he hadn’t seen any reports about the general state of things.
“Really. This started about a year ago, and it’s gradually gotten worse. And it’s not just in one or two places. The tide levels throughout Western Japan have gotten higher. They’re building emergency sea walls, but if the sinking should keep increasing as it has been, in six more months it will pass four inches a day and there’ll be no keeping up with it. That would be three feet every nine days! They say they’ll find some way to deal with it before it gets that bad. But at what point are they going to be able to stop it, I wonder?”
Onodera clenched his fists.
“Take us to the airport.” Onodera’s brother spoke to the driver. “The company has a helicopter. Let me give you a look at the sort of thing that’s happening.”
“But, dear ...” Onodera’s sister-in-law turned around in her seat beside the driver. “You’re in mourning, remember.”
“That’s all right. The public ceremony’s not till tomorrow morning. You go home and get things in order. We’ll come right after.”
When he gazed down at the Osaka waterfront from the air, Onodera was able to see clearly where the sea had made its inroads. Aside from the places where the dikes had been especially high beforehand or else made higher by emergency measures, the Osaka waterfront section and the strip of filled-in land that fronted Kobe were already half awash. The work on the landfill in Kobe Harbor, meant to extend Kansai International Airport, seemed to have been abandoned. The tide swept over the mud flats, and streams of yellow-brown water flowed far out into the Inland Sea.
“You see? The job isn’t an impossible one, but it’s going to take a lot of money. And because the Kanto area is still recovering, we can’t expect much to be available for a while. Take my company—the stoppage of work on the new airport has left us high and dry.”
“You talked about changing jobs. What would you do?” asked Onodera, looking down morosely at the scene below.
“Well, there’s no need to worry about taking care of Mother any more, and so what I’ve been thinking about is work in Canada.” His brother’s voice had a trace of sadness in it. “There’s a development under way in the oil fields of Manitoba. I’ve been intending to take the family and go, but my wife is not enthusiastic.”
“Wonderful!” Onodera blurted out, impulsively covering his brother’s hand with his own. “That’s a fine idea. When do you intend to go?”
“They’d like me to start as soon as possible. But there are all sorts of things to be attended to first, and that will probably take a month or two. I think that probably next week I’ll take a trip there.”
“The sooner the better.” Onodera squeezed his brother’s hand hard. “Don’t worry about arrangements and things like that. No matter what your wife says, take the whole family and go.”
“You make it sound so simple. I’m changing jobs at forty, remember.” His brother laughed, a puzzled expression coming over his face. “Why are you so eager to see me go?”
“Well. . . Japan is . . .” Onodera stopped abruptly. He had to keep quiet, even though this was his own brother. He looked down again, but then he averted his eyes from the scene below.
There were many memories. When he was a mere toddler, he had fallen into a ditch, and his brother had pulled him out. Then there had been a shrine festival in the country, and on the way home he had fallen asleep on his brother’s back. That was the time when the thong of his brother’s clog had broken and he had had to walk home barefoot. His brother had caught beetles for him, had taken him fishing and swimming. He had taught him to play games and to build model planes and done all sorts of other things for him. His brother had been already in college when he was in elementary school, and Onodera had gazed with awe on the Western books and the difficult novels that his brother had been reading. ... It was memories such as these that were now coming back to him one after another.
Just a word. A mere word would do it—so wouldn’t it be all right? Get away, Brother . . . Japan is finished. The words stuck like a searing lump in his throat. As he gazed out through the windshield of the helicopter, Onodera coughed repeatedly. Suppose he were now to whisper something . . .
His shocked brother would immediately start preparing to leave, heedless of his wife’s complaints. And she, most likely, would demand an explanation. His patience at an end, his brother would probably say something to her, a secret between husband and wife. Or when he was about to leave Japan, over a farewell drink, when the talk would naturally take a confidential turn, he might let slip a word to a good friend or someone with whom he worked. Thus the “secret” would become some-thing that was traveling from mouth to mouth and would soon spread beyond all limits. Well, what would be wrong with that? thought Onodera, clenching his fists. This would cause people to flee spontaneously, and thus more might be saved. And yet, thought Onodera, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists so hard that his nails were beginning to draw blood, because I am part of Plan D headquarters, I must keep the secrets that come under the jurisdiction of that headquarters. I have to think that that’s the manly thing to do, but at the same time I can’t avoid the thought that it’s a matter of fleeing to organizational logic in the face of an agonizing human problem. Have I become a faithful bureaucrat? he wondered suddenly. But Onodera rejected that thought at once. The true bureaucrat, secure in his virtue, would never agonize in this way. But when he reflected that among the thousand or so men connected with Plan D there must be other distraught men like him who struggled with their emotions as they debated within themselves whether or not to let the secret out, he felt his mouth going dry. Nakata was obviously right when he said that the time was coming when the secret could no longer be kept. Already, probably, any number of them, rather than bearing the emotional burden, had told their families and were making ready to flee.