It was when I came back up the hill, at about eleven, that I had my first news. The telephone was ringing as I came in. It was a Sankei reporter. Needless to say the shock was considerable. Mishima had given us plenty of inklings; Kawabata gave us, so far as I was aware, not one.
Japanese journalism is a remarkable institution. I was on the telephone until one in the morning, and reporters have been after me all the hours since, as sticky and persistent as Canberran flies. In the initial agitation I said yes to everything I was asked to write, and afterwards I had great trouble remembering what all the things might be. In any event they have occupied all my spare hours since, and destroyed a good part of my sleep as well.
On Sunday night I got no sleep at all. Among the journalists who called was Miss Ibuki. She had a car, she said, and was going down to Kamakura, and she suggested that it would be a good idea if I were to go too. So she came by for me, and we were at Kamakura at two in the morning. The lane leading into the Kamakura house was jammed, and there must have been a hundred automobiles parked out on the main street. The flashing of bulbs and the thrusting of microphones were horrendous, and the television lights were so bright that it was next to impossible to avoid mud puddles.
Within the gates, all was quiet. Numbers of people had gathered, and discussion of the funeral arrangements was in progress. When first I offered incense there was a towel over the face. When, an hour or more later, I was invited to say farewell, the towel had been taken away. The face was calm, there seemed no discoloration. I would be tempted to say that he looked as if he were asleep but for the fact that I never saw him asleep, and the fact that the absence of those extraordinary eyes made the face very different from the one I had known. Mrs. Kawabata was dry-eyed. She said over and over again: "I don't understand it. I just don't understand it."
Back in Tokyo in the dawn, I wrote the first of the promised manuscripts. Then I was off for a television panel -- my first television appearance in years and years. Afterward I wrote another article, which was a bit of a triumph, for it made the front page of the Tokyo Shimbun. Then, sleepless since Sunday morning, down to Kamakura again, again with Miss Ibuki, this time to attend the wake.
The wake, at which vast numbers of celebrated persons were, naturally, present, was very different from the Tanizaki wake. That was almost fun. This was hushed and stiff, with everyone keeping to himself. There were Buddhist services. The Buddhism of our day is not very elegant. The priests, though from one of the grander Buddhist centers, seemed rustic and uncouth. And oh, the photographers! If reporters are unpleasant fellows, photographers are worse, refusing even to dress as a sad and solemn occasion demands, looking as if they were recent graduates of an extortionist gang.
To sleep, finally, at about midnight.
This morning it was a discussion with Saeki Shōichi, for the Shūkan Shōsetsu. Back at Yushima in the early afternoon, I frantically pounded out yet another article, this one for the Shūkan Sankei. It would be easy to say that I could have left the telephone off the receiver immediately upon having the news. Or that I could have said no a few times. The latter I have never been good at doing, and the former I could not bring myself to do either. Partly, no doubt, the inability had to do with unworthy feelings of gratification, mixed in with the sadness and shock, at having the attention of the journalists again; but partly too it had to do with a wish, out of respect, to have my say about the old gentleman.
The question everyone is asking, of course, is why he did it. Some say it was because of illness, some because of Mishima, some because of the Nobel Prize. To me the most likely explanation is that he was very tired and could not sleep. But probably, in the final analysis, the only thing one can say is: "I don't understand it. I just don't understand it."
Edward Seidensticker, Genji Days, pages 79-80, from his diary entry for April 18, 1972.
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