Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“I wanted to say,” offered Iwahashi in all friendliness, “that you really sounded like one of the old-time benshi back there awhile ago.”

“It couldn’t be helped,” said Mochizuki with a trace of overloudness. He checked this show of feeling, revealed in his defensive tone of voice. “I mean, we didn’t have a sound track.”

The current supplicant put forth his question:

“Benshi? What is a benshi?”

Both professors laughed at that, Iwahashi with easy, body moving mirth, Mochizuki with a stiff sniggle.

“Why, then, I’ll tell you,” boomed Dr. Iwahashi. He was a veritable Sam Johnson at explaining things during these typical extracurricular afternoons, unlike his formal classroom self.

“When movies came to Japan, they had a benshi standing out in the wings to explain the action. Talkies, which came in long before your time, naturally put the benshi out of business.”

“That is so,” said Dr. Mochizuki.

“Not only that,” added Dr. Iwahashi, “there was another man waiting at the top of a stepladder with a bucket of water, ready to dump it on the screen after each reel. Ha! What do you think of that? All that bright light beaming down out of the arc lamp, poured through a hot focus onto the paper screen down there—it might catch fire, you know. Hence, the little man with a bucket of water to cool it off, just in case.”

Mochizuki reached for another peanut and chewed it aggressively, without covering his mouth. He could abide no insult to technology, ancient or modern.

“Do you remember,” asked Dr. Iwahashi of the student, “when they first showed Rashomon in town? Kurosawa won first prize for that at Cannes in 1951, the first film Japan ever sent out to an international festival. Nobody back home understood it. So Daiei studios sent out benshi talkers to explain things.

“The trouble is,” Dr. Iwahashi went on, “that Hollywood products are too very much popular.”

“Hai!” said Mochizuki with an explosive sound of positive agreement.

“That’s why the Board of Scientific and Technological Development is interested in Dr. Mochizuki.”

“Hai!”

“The commercial development of his device will make Japanese movies more popular at home and help keep out so many foreign films. This will help our balance of payments, too.”

The day the experiment in bionic moviemaking ended, Ito-san walked into Dr. Mochizuki’s office, stood there until noticed, then, straightening his winter wool kimono with courtly dignity, he kneeled to the floor, kowtowing, and distinctly said: “I cannot do it, teacher, I cannot do it.” And leaning forward, forehead on the floor, he cried great quaking, relieving sobs of tears.

Displeased to learn that his marvel of bionic engineering must shut down for want of a stable telepath, Mochizuki sent for Iwahashi.

When the message arrived, Professor Iwahashi was in the midst of his Thursday afternoon class. He took the folded note from his tiptoeing office secretary, read it, and dismissed her. He decided matters could wait until he finished the lecture.

“This classroom, its furnishing, your clothing, personal belongings, all are of Western origin. Even the subject of my lectures is a branch of Western learning. Brought up and educated in these surroundings, few of you must find it easy to retain any culture which you can call your own.”

Dr. Iwahashi surveyed the high-collared Admiral Perry uniforms of his students.

“What, after all, can be claimed as absolutely native to this country?”

The students of comparative social behavior fingered their class pins, another foreign culture trait, in a state of high anxiety.

Dr. Iwahashi bore down on them.

“It is in the social conduct of your human relations that you are Japanese, if in nothing else. Be that! Remember the art of ki-ga-tsuku.”

Dr. Iwahashi tugged at the wings of his vest and tipped forward on the thin soles of his French patent leather shoes.

“Questions.” He asked for them with a statement and departed the classroom.

The academic secretary, who had been sitting there all the time, hung his head respectfully until the sound of hard heels turned from the hallway and into the professor’s office.

A student in the second row stood up and asked: “Pardon me, but I do not yet understand this business about ki-ga-tsuku. How is this so different from the behavior of foreigners? I do not understand what teacher is trying to tell us.”

Noises of agreement were made by the rest of the class.

Set off to one side of the lectern at a little rickety table, the teacher’s minion sat: a ruined, tubercular little pinch of a man dressed in a soiled suit. He put down his cigarette in slow motion, as if returning from a paradise of intellectual preoccupation to serve dolts, and blew out the last sick lungful of smoke.

It was he, the disciple, now that the master had left the room, who had to come right out in the open with this obscene talk about the private parts of social behavior.

He made cupping movements with his hands, scooping for that elusive balance between charitable clarity and selfish obfuscation required of a scholar as yet not sufficiently established to talk all in riddles.

“Unlike foreigners, Japanese do not like to say what they mean. If we say what we mean we are as naked persons, undressed in the world.”

The secretary sensed that he had gone too far with his conceit and lit a fresh cigarette. He did so nervously, however, and exposed the package to reveal the brand, Golden Bat, the inexpensive favorite of old-time farmer folk, at once dating his taste and discrediting his claim to win a faculty position in the department.

Another student rose up to ask what, after all, was so bad about the behavior of the foreigners?

“Take the Americans for example. They are direct and informal with each other. None of this body ritual we go through, such as bowing and hissing; none of this verbal ritual, such as saying yes when you mean no. Why shouldn’t we Japanese also adopt rational and efficient customs for ourselves?”

The secretary ignored the question. He held out with dogged silence until somebody else stood up. It was the first student.

“Yes, that is my question. What is it, as teacher tells us, that makes us truly Japanese inside?” With a twist of his class pin the student sat down.

The secretary talked to this point with professional ease.

“I refer you to chapter eight of teacher’s most famous work, Patterns of Japanese Interpersonal Behavior.”

The secretary thumbed through his copy of the textbook.

“That is the chapter entitled, ‘The Art of Ki-Ga-Tsuku. ’ What does teacher mean by ki-ga-tsuku! He has talked about this many times. I will repeat it for you.”

Dr. Iwahashi’s secretary flattened out the pages he would talk from. He ducked his cigarette pack under the table and drew out a fresh Golden Bat. It was loosely rolled and he had to twist the ends before lighting it. He spoke from memory, of course, because he had written the book, and many others like it, from his master’s lectures. Theoretically, the long years of feudal servitude on the part of the secretary would pay off with a professorship for himself. Then he, too, would be able to designate a promising young scholar to care for his own later years.

“Ki-ga-tsuku has this meaning: to find out what the other person intends to do. It is a game of perception. But it is different from the one played by Westerners. Foreigners want always to understand each other. Just as they come to Japan and try to understand the Japanese people.”