Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [35]
As far as the eye could see there was not a living soul. The only living things in this landscape were my brother and I. To me we seemed as small as two beans in all this vastness. Or else we too were dead and were standing at the gates of hell.
My brother then led me to the broad market grounds of the garment district. This was where the most people lost their lives in the Great Kanto Earthquake. No corner of the landscape was free of corpses. In some places the piles of corpses formed little mountains. On top of one of these mountains sat a blackened body in the lotus position of Zen meditation. This corpse looked exactly like a Buddhist statue. My brother and I stared at it for a long time, standing stock still. Then my brother, as if talking to himself, softly said, “Magnificent, isn’t it?” I felt the same way.
By that time I had seen so many corpses that I could no longer distinguish between them and the burned bits of roof tiles and stones on the ground. It was a bizarre kind of apathy. My brother looked at me and said, “I guess we’d better go home.” We crossed over the Sumidagawa again and headed for the Ueno Hirokoji district.
As we approached Hirokoji Street, we came upon a large burned-out area where a great number of people had gathered. They were assiduously sifting through the ruins, looking for something. My brother smiled bitterly as he said, “It’s the remains of the bullion treasury. Akira, shall we look for a gold ring as a souvenir?”
But at that particular moment my eyes were fixed on the greenery atop the Ueno hills, and I couldn’t budge. How many years had it been since I’d seen a green tree? That’s how I felt, as if I had after a long time at last come to a place where there was air. I took a deep breath. There had not been a single trace of green in all the ruins of the fire. Until that instant it had never occurred to me how precious vegetation is.
The night we returned from the horrifying excursion I was fully prepared to be unable to sleep, or to have terrible nightmares if I did. But no sooner had I laid my head on the pillow than it was morning. I had slept like a log, and I couldn’t remember anything frightening from my dreams. This seemed so strange to me that I asked my brother how it could have come about. “If you shut your eyes to a frightening sight, you end up being frightened. If you look at everything straight on, there is nothing to be afraid of.” Looking back on that excursion now, I realize that it must have been horrifying for my brother too. It had been an expedition to conquer fear.
Honor and Revere
THE KEIKA MIDDLE SCHOOL in Ochanomizu burned down in the fire. When I saw the rubble of my school, my first thought was, “Ah, summer vacation will be extended,” and I was delighted. I realize as I write this that I must appear insensitive, but to describe the feelings of a not very brilliant middle-school student honestly, this is what you get, so it can’t be helped.
I have always been honest to a fault. If I did something bad at school and the teacher asked who was responsible, I would always honestly raise my hand. And then the teacher would take out his grade book and give me a zero for conduct.
When we got a new teacher I continued my honesty. I raised my hand when he asked who did it. But this new teacher then said that everything was all right because I had not tried to dodge responsibility. He took out his grade book and gave me a hundred for conduct.
I don’t know which of these teachers was right, but I have to admit I liked the teacher who gave me the hundred better. He was the same teacher who had praised a composition of mine as “the best since the founding of Keika Middle School,” Mr. Ohara Yōichi.
In those days Keika Middle School graduates had an excellent rate of entrance into Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo), and this was a great matter of school pride. Mr. Ohara always used to say, “Even a ghost could get into a private university.” These days it isn’t that easy, but