The Girl Who Played Go

16

What a pleasure it is to receive my first letters! Venerable Mother gives me a detailed account of the New Year festivities, and I learn from Little Sister one detail that she preferred to keep to herself: since I left, Mother goes to the temple every day and prays for hours on end. On the other hand, Little Sister has had a dream that Buddha has taken me into his protection.

Little Brother’s letter is elliptical-as usual, this doctor of classical letters is economical with his words and his emotions. He concedes that, at the moment, the homeland needs soldiers more than it needs writers. I read his words with tears in my eyes-his message is clear, he is asking forgiveness for misunderstanding me for so long.

As an adolescent, after Father’s death, I felt such an anguished love for my brother that I embarked on a peculiarly intense relationship with him, like that between a father and son, a trainer and an athlete or an officer and a soldier. So that he would live up to my fierce expectations, I forced him to learn the games at which I excelled. Little Brother pretended to obey me and patiently waited for his opportunity to rebel.

The day came. It’s nature’s way: there comes a time when the eldest loses his power over his siblings. When he was sixteen Little Brother was as tall as me, he had become a young man, he had a solid bone structure and impressive muscles. One day he solemnly challenged me in the kendo club. The next moment I was hit right across the face by a wooden saber, such a powerful blow that I staggered. When I regained my balance, the victor bowed and thanked me for accepting the challenge. He took off his mask: his face was gleaming with sweat and glowing with secret delight. He bowed a respectful good-bye and left the dojo still wearing his kendo clothes.

Later, the boy said he wanted to be a writer, and he enrolled at the University of Tokyo. Since then our paths have gone their separate ways. At university he spent so much time with left-wing students that he became aggressive and contemptuous. Influenced by anarchist authors, he took a hostile stance towards the military, accusing them of interfering in government affairs, and calling them “assassins of liberty.”

I no longer had the time or the patience to set my brother straight. He had, anyway, taken to making himself scarce whenever I was at home. As far as I was concerned, Little Brother was lost, swept away on the great tide of red.

Why this change of heart now? Had he quarreled with his friends? Had someone revealed to him how vain Marxism was and how ridiculous their ideas of utopia?

I reply with a letter as brief as his: “My brother, after my first battle the only thing I now worship is the sun, a star that represents death’s constancy. Beware of the moon, which reflects our world of beauty. It waxes and wanes, it is treacherous and ephemeral. We will all die some day. Only our nation will live on. Thousands of generations of patriots will together create Japan ’s eternal greatness.”