Fuminori Nakamura - Last Winter We Parted

I get the feeling that he is not just an ordinary guy. It may not be outwardly apparent, but it seems as though something inside him might go off at any moment.

“You want to know what it was about the photo. I doubt the answer will satisfy you.”

“All right.”

“… When I saw that photo, I felt like I wanted to push my way through.”

As I speak, my heart pounds slightly.

“Through all those disruptive butterflies. I felt like I wanted leave everything behind, to push my way through those butterflies, and give it all up. It seemed to me that my own essence was to be found there. That until now, my entire life had been completely distorted … I’m a member of K2.”

I take in a breath. As deeply as I can.

“However, I had never lost anyone close to me. So there was no reason for the doll creator to construct a memento doll for me. I had no interest in one of those ridiculous real-woman dolls. Nor did I have any proclivity for forcing myself on a doll … Nevertheless, I spent all my time at his mansion.”

“… I don’t understand.”

“Right.”

It has been quiet this whole time in the coffee shop. There are several crude lights suspended from cords, and they dangle like hanged men.

“K2,” Katani murmurs. “I had been in regular contact with him up until about when he was chasing after butterflies. By the time he was in K2, when he had turned his interest toward dolls, we had pretty much drifted apart. To begin with, although we may have spoken to each other often, we never had very meaningful conversations … You ought to ask the other members about that period. You must know about the time when he was hospitalized after taking too many pictures of the butterflies. He was certainly acting strange after that, but when he really started to go off the rails was probably around the time he became a member of K2. He just … Here’s what he told me, a long time ago. ‘Photography is an imitation,’ he said.”

“… An imitation?”

“Yes, he meant, there is always an object. As opposed to something like an abstract painting, there is always a distinct object, beyond what you are seeing through the camera. Since you take a picture of that object, I guess you could say that the finished product is an imitation of that object … But he also said this: a photograph may be an imitation, but it transcends imitation.”

Katani cracks a faint smile. I realize it is the first time I have seen him do so.

“Another thing he said is, art is a form of revelation.”

“That sounds like something Sartre said. He wrote about how literature functions in the world — in particular how it serves to reveal man to the world.”

Katani smiles once again as I speak.

“I don’t know how he knows so much about so many things. That’s just the kind of guy he is.”

What you said about the inside of your mind was quite boring.

Because you’re hiding behind your cowardice. It seems like you are refusing to share your true self with me — no, refusing to share it with yourself, even. How do you expect to intrude upon someone else’s mind, when you yourself are cloaked in layer after layer of disguise? For most people, things are only ever permissible inside their own mind. The palatable dark places. Shady areas beyond censure. If people can accept those kinds of things, don’t you think they’d want to read a book about whatever that might be for you?

… Last time I wrote, I made it to the point of the butterflies. Including the part about being hospitalized afterward. I’m not going to write about what you want to know until you show me your true nature. But I will give you just a little bit more. Why?… Because I’m lonely.

When I was in the hospital, there was a man there named R. He had lost his younger sister, and he had not been able to adjust mentally, so he had been admitted to the psychiatric hospital. He is the one who told me about K2. That there was a gifted doll creator. That he had constructed a sister-doll for him, but his family refused to let him be with it. It seemed that his family had put him in the hospital as a means of keeping him away from the doll.

He said that he could hear her voice. That he felt as though the doll were actually speaking to him. People who have lost a part of their body say that they can still feel pain in the limb that is gone, but he said that he could hear his sister’s voice coming from the doll. And though it’s extremely disgusting, eventually he confessed to me that he had become aroused by his sister … She said, Make love to me.

It must have been his own desire. By making a doll his lover, he could learn what his true desires were toward his sister. But he was a sensible person, so he could reject his sister’s provocations. When he did so, the sister-doll then started saying that they should kill their parents. If their parents weren’t around, it would just be the two of them … It’s a good thing that he was hospitalized. But they almost put him in the single room next door to me.

My interest had been piqued, so when I was released from the hospital, I went to meet the doll creator. I’m sure you’re aware, but I think most people are surprised at first when they meet him. They expect to see a creepy, jittery man, and instead here is this cheerful, unassuming person waiting for them. But that’s just appearances. He’s a genius. Those kinds of people are the most dangerous, as far as I’m concerned. When he showed me the dolls that he had constructed … I was amazed. It was the first time I had ever been so astonished by someone’s talent.

I wonder if you’ve noticed? A particularly creepy tendency about the way he makes the dolls? He doesn’t attempt to accurately reconstruct the subject of the doll. He subtly emphasizes one trait that suits the client who has hired him, and then he goes on with the restoration. What the doll creator seeks is not integrity, but rather imperfection. The soul dwells in the distorted part, in the instability that maintains such imperfection. But it’s a soul that suits the client.

Being a photographer, I was deeply interested in the work he was doing. In both aspects of it — that first there was an object, and that there was an art to creating an “imitation” in a particular sense. I took dozens of photographs of his creations … I was creating another imitation of things that were imitations themselves. At that point, I felt as though I had ventured into territory where what was original no longer mattered. Do you get it now? The sensation of being in that place was very soothing .

Why was it that you became a member of K2? Even coming up with a name for it was intentional. Don’t you think? The doll creator must have wanted to lower people’s resistance to purchasing a doll, even if only a little. To imply you’re not the only one to buy a doll. You’re not the only one who would do something like this. It means there’s no need to worry, because there are lots of other members … But I wonder. There must have been some who, on the contrary, objected to being considered a member of this group.

In your next letter, I want you to be sure to tell me why you became a member of K2. Have you lost someone? Or did you love someone, someone whom you simply couldn’t have? You must know about that stalker guy. How outrageous, asking the doll creator to reproduce a woman who still existed out in the world.