I know almost nothing of Japan, or the pride of defeated warriors, only that, here, perhaps, the remnants of something noble passed, irregardless of the blood on its hands. The footage is strangely square. As if even the TVs of that time were hard and constrained. In the background against a robin’s egg blue sky, tall buildings as rigid as monoliths, atriums like lacquered helms atop. In the city street, people with hands folded against black suits stand in disarray. To one side there is a canopy, as if this were a sideshow fete, when even the grand, the delicate and dignified should, today, have pates and necks bared to the sky.
There is a temple, broad-shouldered and monumental, nevertheless with a lotus-like elegance. Three discs of white chrysanthemums on tripod legs, by the entrance wall, in the haze of grained film, look disarmingly like an array of pom-poms, the targets for a bemusing archery game, the colour of spring snow, perhaps cut from the embellishments of a hundred devoted page’s blue silk suits, in one of those futilely wounding mourning gestures, as if such devotion were possible anymore, amongst the crowds with drab hair, in drab dress, with drab, uncertain mouths, mounting the temple stairs, there seems only, an uncertain bewilderment.
Police in bright neat gloves gesture for the crowd to slow. Inside, as mourners lay the strangely innocent blooms brusquely on the plinth of stone, one can only wonder, in the burgeoning neon world, the temple now a brooding skull against a somber afternoon, if the chiaroscuro of his stern sideways gaze, unbending in disapproval, is for the widow alone, asking, in his negligence, for her to forbear. In her elegantly modern coiffure, beside her, brazenly echoing amongst the jostling crowd, the narrow frame of an empty chair, one imagine’s assent, if not acceptance.
Monks with close cropped hair, in voluminous burnt-yellow robes, to the sound of timeless bells, utter timeless prayers. On damask clothed tables, candles with small sharp flames are relit, and again burn down. Soldiers in the unthreatening neutral brown of dress uniforms wear black armbands with disdain. With no one left to fight, death becomes the only adversary. To challenge not to mourn. On their chests, buttons shine in rows like toys.
A dignitary speaks, into the rectilinear angularity of a silver microphone. From this distance, there is no sound. A woman wearing the pale repose of a geisha’s painted mask, has the tight, pursed lips of grief. Ache concentrated in the wound tightness of her hair. His mother reportedly said, “you should have brought red roses for a celebration. Be happy for him. For the first time in his life he did what always and desperately wanted to do.”
I do not know if this is her, though I readily understand the iron in the ambition.
There is perhaps, in a kind of curt disgrace, part annoyance, part shame, part overwhelming and inescapable honour, a loose thread in the diamond embroidered on the breast of her black kimono.
