Minae Mizumura - The Fall of Language in the Age of English

Soon after Chris started us on our journey, I turned around to greet the man sitting diagonally behind me, the one with typical Japanese features, only to find him looking vacantly out the window. Rather curiously, I thought, he occupied the aisle seat, leaving the window seat next to him empty. Across the aisle from him was a young white man who likewise occupied the aisle seat, leaving the window seat next to him empty, and he too was looking vacantly out the window.

Once we left the college town behind, tall buildings disappeared and modest, two-story houses typical of the American countryside took their place, lit by the white morning light. The view was not particularly beautiful. There was none of the poetry one sees in scenes of the countryside in American films. There was neither order nor coherence, much as in life itself.

Turning to Chris, I roused myself and said exactly what an American might say at such a moment: “Beautiful day!” Chris responded, “Yes, very beautiful!” as one would expect of an American constitutionally blessed, as most Americans are, with an admirably positive outlook on life. And with that began something of a conversation. When I engage an American in conversation, typically the exchange follows a pattern: I try to come up with a question, and the almost always talkative American responds with a lengthy answer. On this day, I had no trouble coming up with one question after another, for, having arrived late and missed the orientation week, I knew next to nothing about the IWP.

While effortlessly steering the wheel, Chris, who has an astonishingly orderly brain — a trait common among American intellectuals but rare among speakers of Japanese, a language that doesn’t even require a clear distinction between “and” and “but”—gave me a succinct summary of the IWP, including its history and its current financial situation. He was relaxed enough to turn toward me and show me his blond-bearded smile as he spoke. He was, of course, constantly checking the rearview mirror. He also reached out an arm from time to time to find a radio station that played classical music or to adjust the volume. I myself am a bad driver who hardly ever took the wheel and ended up losing my license by forgetting to renew it; as I listened with an occasional “Oh, yes?” or “Really?” I was in secret awe of Chris for being able to talk coherently while simultaneously driving and doing so many other things.

Meanwhile, I felt the presence of the Asian writers in the bus weighing on me, especially the middle-aged man sitting right behind me, the one who looked so Japanese.

Fifteen minutes or so passed. When Chris paused, I made an overt gesture this time to turn myself around, feeling I should at least introduce myself. In such a situation, the longer you wait, the harder it is to begin a conversation. The man was still looking vacantly out the window, but this time he noticed me. I put on the brightest smile I could and said, “Hi! I am from Japan.”

The man had a gentle face. It also seemed full of wisdom. I wondered if he might be Korean or Chinese. Mentally I combed through my meager knowledge of expressions from classical Chinese, searching for one that might describe him, and came up with shunpū taitō (serene as the spring breeze).

Where was he from, I asked.

“I am from Mongolia.” A smile filled his gentle face.

Mongolia? Quickly I spread out the world map in my head. At the same time, a vague memory came to me that on the list of IWP participants there was indeed a leader of the Mongolian democratic movement, a one-time presidential candidate. Now that I looked at him armed with this knowledge, he suddenly acquired an aura peculiar to a great man — an aura we can hardly expect from Japanese politicians today. Perhaps when a nation goes through a period of upheaval, those who should become politicians, do. Mongolian sumo wrestlers are a familiar sight on Japanese television, but this was only the second time in my life that I had met a Mongolian in person. The first time was about twenty-five years ago, when I encountered a girl in Paris who claimed to be one. Her ancestors had left Mongolia in the seventeenth century and taken three more centuries to make their leisurely way to Paris. “I know this sounds incredible, but it’s true,” the slim, tall, and strikingly beautiful girl said in perfect Parisian French. A picture unfolded before my eyes, as if on wide-screen CinemaScope, of clusters of the round tents called “ger” moving ever westward across the Eurasian continent at a timeless pace.

The man on the bus was a bona fide Mongolian, born and raised in Mongolia. To me, the word “Mongolia” itself sounds as if it transcends the worldly. Hearing it, I felt a rush of fresh wind from the steppes sweep through my mind, clearing away the clouds that had been ever-present since my first illness a couple of years before. I may have looked too inquisitively at his gentle face when I asked, “Are you a novelist or a poet?”

“I’m a poet.”

“Is this your first time in America?” I asked, assuming that of course it was.

“Yes, it is my first time.” The Mongolian poet then motioned to the young white man sitting across the aisle. “He’s from Lithuania.”

Really? Was there someone from Lithuania in the program? I couldn’t remember a Lithuanian youth on the list of participants. And because as a child, instead of learning anything useful, all I ever did was read novels, now when I tried to check the world map in my head I could not begin to locate Lithuania. I knew that it must be somewhere near Russia, but as to what sort of country it was, what the capital was, or whether there were any Lithuanian historical figures I should have heard of, I was clueless.

Like many young men around the globe, he had an edgy style, with spiky hair and piercing in one ear. I asked him, “Are you a novelist?”

“No, I’m a poet.”

“I see. I’m a novelist.”

Thus ended our conversation that sounded like an excerpt from an English textbook for beginners. Both the Mongolian poet and the Lithuanian poet had what looked like a smile playing around the mouth, but they said nothing further. I too smiled, then faced front again, relieved that I had now made my obligatory greetings as a newcomer and so let others know that I am not excessively antisocial. It was a shame that I had nothing to say about either Mongolia or Lithuania, but the conversation ended not only because of my ignorance: their half-smiles eloquently conveyed their discomfort in speaking English.

On both sides of the road were cornfields spreading endlessly flat under what was now a blue sky. Only later did I learn that cornfields are symbols of industrial agriculture, which is destructive of nature. At the time, as I looked at the long stretches of cornfields, all I vaguely felt was that the sort of poetic country scene that appears in American films was now finally here before me. As the sun rose higher in the sky, it became as bright as midsummer. Several minutes passed before the Lithuanian poet leaned forward and asked me a question.

“Do you know bonsai?”

Bonsai? He was obviously trying to find a topic he could talk about with a Japanese person, I thought. Turning back, I answered, not hiding my sense of being at a loss, “I know what bonsai is, but I really don’t know anything about it.”

That there were bonsai fans in the United States, I knew. But it had never occurred to me that the pastime of elderly Japanese bending over to trim dwarf pine trees had reached all the way to the youth of a country I couldn’t even locate on a map. He actually seemed interested in bonsai. Apparently he was trying to ask something about a particular kind of tree; he mumbled incoherently while drawing the shape of a tree in the air with his finger. I could not understand what he was trying to ask, let alone visualize what tree he had in mind. When it comes to tree names, I hardly know any even in Japanese.