The old man said nothing. Tadokoro heard him cough faintly.
“I know it sounds strange, but the truth is that this is what I really wanted to do. I wanted to speak out to my fellow Japanese. I wanted to say: Listen to me. This country we love, this island country, is going to break apart and sink into the ocean. Since we love it so, let us die with it. . . . And even now I think that might well have been the better thing. Why? Because those who have escaped overseas are going to experience hardships worse than any the Japanese race has ever before encountered.”
Another strong gust of wind blew into the room. Tadokoro felt a stream of ashes brushing his cheek. Was it his imagination, or did the wind carry the scent of the sea? Had it come that close?
“Professor Tadokoro ... I think I understand now. You’re in love with Japan herself, aren’t you?”
“That’s right, I am,” answered Tadokoro, as though he was happy to hear it put into words.
“It’s as though the woman you loved were dying.”
“Exactly.” Tadokoro covered his face and began to sob. “And when I found out that she had to die, I wanted to die with her.”
“A love suicide, eh?” A wheezing sound came from the old man’s throat. It was not a cough. Tadokoro must have said something that had struck him as funny. “Ah, the Japanese . . . a strange race indeed.”
Tadokoro raised his face, still streaked with tears, and gazed up at the somber sky. “It’s not as though we were a race that came from somewhere else to these four islands. We were formed here, and we’ve become one with this land—with these mountains, these rivers, these cities and villages, these monuments left by our ancestors. Once these have all been destroyed, what meaning could there be in being Japanese?”
Suddenly there was the boom of an explosion, and a moment later the sky seemed to shake with an ear-splitting roar. Somewhere nearby, it seemed, the earth had been rent yet again.
“I pride myself in not being an especially provincial or narrow-minded person.” Tadokoro was speaking again. “I’ve seen most of the world. I’ve been almost everywhere. I’ve seen other peoples. I know their customs and their environments. The truth is that I am in love with Japan. And now, when her end is near, I can’t bear to leave her.”
Once more emotion overcame Tadokoro, and he could not speak.
The old man’s coughing fits had become more severe. Nonetheless, he began to speak in his hoarse, quavery voice: “The Japanese are a young race,” he said and then paused for breath. “They’re like infants who have had a happy time of it . . . these two thousand years . . . clinging to their mother’s bosom . . . these four islands, with their warm, gentle climate. If they ventured out into the world and suffered mishap, they could always run back to their mother. Now that mother, whom they loved so much, is dying.”
Tadokoro listened with the intensity of a disciple hearing his master’s words.
“From now on, the Japanese must experience suffering. As long as these four island were here, there was a home to return to, a place to raise children, children who would live exactly as they . . . but there are not many races who have been so fortunate as to have so secure a home of their own for so long a period. Through thousands of years of history there have been countless races that have experienced the bitterness of exile. This, then, will be a test for the Japanese. Their bridges have been burned behind them. They have no choice but to go forward. Whether they wish it or not, the chance to achieve adulthood is being forced upon them. Let them be swallowed up by the world ... so much the better! They can emerge as a mature people, with their language and customs intact, ready to take their place in the world of the future. . . . But if they bewail their fate and cling to past glories, then there is no hope for greatness. This is what’s now at stake . . . Professor Tadokoro
. . . it’s well for you to mourn for the passing of the woman you love, but spare a blessing for the future of your fleeing younger brothers and sisters. They have no idea of what Fve been trying to tell you. Nor will they ever realize that it was you who saved them. But I recognize it... I realize it. Well and good, Professor Tadokoro?”
“Well and good, sir,” said Tadokoro, nodding. “I understand what you said.”
“Well, well...” whispered the old man, taking a breath. “You understand me, do you? Fm gratified. Come to think of it . . . Tadokoro . . . you’re the last stiff-necked Japanese I’ll have to deal with. The truth is I didn’t want you to die thinking as you did . . . taking the whole Japanese race with you. When I was listening to you just now, I suddenly felt as though for the first time in my life I fully understand the Japanese character. For, you see, there have always been aspects I did not quite grasp. ...”
“How do you mean, sir?” Tadokoro asked, even though he did not expect a significant answer. The old man’s words had suddenly become much more labored. He sighed briefly and then said nothing for a few moments. When he spoke again, his voice was a bare whisper.
“Perhaps . . . because I am only half Japanese.” He paused to take a breath. “My father ... he was a Chinese monk. ...”
Startled, Tadokoro looked down intently at the old man, waiting for him to go on. But no more words would come.
“Mr. Watari ...”
Tadokoro studied the old man’s face for some time. Then he took up the purple Akashi kimono which lay on the mat and placed it gently over the old man’s face. The wind was growing stronger. He got to his feet and stepped down into the garden, where he picked up two small rocks. He returned to the old man’s bedside and placed one upon either sleeve of the fluttering kimono. Then he sat down once again, his back straight, his arms folded.
A thunderous roar of awful force drowned out the noise of the approaching typhoon. The earth began to quake with a terrible frenzy, and from somewhere in the house came the sound of steel reinforcing rods being torn asunder.
The end came in September. Despite the typhoons, the rescue units had pursued their task with a still more frantic zeal, but toward the latter part of September four groups were wiped out in eruptions, and the LST carrying the last few hundred refugees was lost in a typhoon.
Shikoku had moved more than a seventy-five miles to the south and was completely submerged. Kyushu had broken in half, and the southern part of it was overwhelmed. The two great peaks in the central part of the island, Aso and Unzen, barely showed above the surface, though they continued to erupt. In the Northeast Region of Honshu the mountainous area had already slipped beneath the sea. In Hokkaido, reports said, only Mount Daisetsu remained. The final drama was played out in the Central and Kanto regions of Honshu, with no witnesses. The slipping of the earth had generated so much heat that when the waters rolled in, there were explosions of such cataclysmic force that the mountains were blown apart and shattered to fragments. While the Pacific coast slid away into the deep, the Japan Sea coast rose up for a brief moment, like one side of a capsizing vessel. But then the same blind force took hold of it and plunged it, too, down into the sea.