Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

When Patron, calling Ms. Tachibana's brother by his first name, asked him to put on a CD, the brevity of the response made Kizu realize that this wasn't the first time Morio had spent time here.

Patron discussed his basic plans for moving the new church to Shikoku, an explanation that was connected with Morio's being here. "The model that we'll base our new church on will be the women's commune near Odawara and the safe house of the former Izu Research Institute group. First of all we'll have these two groups move to Shikoku-groups that Dancer now calls the Quiet Women and the Technicians. After that we'll gradually move the other individuals with whom Ogi's been in touch.

"It's also necessary to have a reliable core of office staff. Dancer is increas- ingly busy, so I've had Ms. Tachibana come to take care of my day-to-day needs.

She's the only one who wasn't a follower from before the Somersault that we'll be taking into our inner circle. Morio can't live apart from Ms. Tachibana. I considered this in light of the fact that the men in the Shikoku church are all renunciates who've cut their ties with their families, and I reached the con- clusion that I'll have Morio come with us to Shikoku to assist me in my work.

Just looking at him so absorbed in music does my heart good. He's also good at finding the CDs I want to hear right away."

As soon as he heard his name, Morio-who had a keen ear-raised his head and looked in Patron's direction. Patron nodded gently to him, and he went back to reading the score.

"Having quit my teaching position in America, I need to move out of my apartment in Tokyo anyway," Kizu said. "As I've said several times, I'm planning to go with Ikuo to Shikoku. I'm hoping to be able to live with him there with a modicum of privacy. If possible, I'd like to use the money I saved in the States to purchase a house next to the church. I'll use the house for myself, but the house itself and any remaining money I'll donate to the church."

"I'm very grateful to you," Patron said. He gave instructions to Dancer.

"Please contact the people taking care of the buildings there and see that it's done. I'm hoping nothing will interfere with your private life there, Pro- fessor. Please consult with Ogi and Ikuo about what sort of tasks you'll be doing."

"Ikuo says he wants to use Morio's music to accompany the sermons and other church ceremonies in Shikoku. Maybe we could propose this to Dancer and Ogi."

"That would be fine," Patron said emphatically. "This will be Morio's work in the church, apart from what he does to help me. I heard Ikuo play Morio's depiction of his sister and himself ascending to heaven holding my hand, and I'd like to begin using that piece in a variety of ways, just as Ikuo has proposed. The composer himself likes Ikuo's work, so we'll record Ikuo's playing of the piece."

"I like it," Morio said in clear, refined child's voice.

Dancer added, "Ikuo heard that the chapel has good acoustics, and he's planning to hold a recital of Morio's works. Ms. Tachibana's quite encour- aged by this. So Morio won't just be accompanying Ms. Tachibana; each of them will have their own role to play in the church-and I expect that'll serve as a good example for the others."

Morio, a look of concentration on his face, nodded at Dancer's words.

As Patron had said, Ikuo had one concrete proposal regarding a job for Kizu as they prepared to move the church to Shikoku. While rushing here and there, laying the groundwork for the move, Ikuo discovered that the art supply firm that had sponsored the contest he'd entered when he was a child, the contest for which he'd made his complex plastic model, still had an office and store in the heart of Tokyo. With Kizu a specialist in art education, and this company having pioneered a market in Tokyo, Ikuo came up with a plan for having the company provide art supplies to Kizu, who would then open a model art school for children in Shikoku.

Legally, the buildings the church was to occupy belonged to the Kansai headquarters. The village where these buildings were located had merged with other communities to become a town, and the people from the Kansai headquarters in charge of the buildings met with officials from the town to discuss the transfer. With the outstanding way the Kansai church had main- tained the buildings, plus the fact that the elderly woman supervising their upkeep was from an old established family in the area, the two sides soon reached an official agreement allowing Patron's church to use the buildings as its base of operations.

Memories of the troubles with Aum Shinrikyo around its satyan at the base of Mount Fuji were still fresh in people's minds, however. The local people also couldn't forget that the buildings had originally belonged to another religious organization, which had started there and then dis- banded, causing a huge uproar. Even with the agreement, then, Patron's people had to prepare themselves, once they actually began moving in, for possible resistance from the townspeople. As one way of smoothing the path, Ikuo proposed holding concerts of Morio's music and having Kizu teach art classes.

Kizu found out the address of the art supply company and set off for the Ginza. The first and second floors of the building were a spacious gal- lery; the atmosphere of the place was unlike any stationery shop or art supply store you'd normally find in Japan, and to Kizu it felt like the kind of super- market you'd find in a college town in the United States. He stood there for a while, nostalgically taking in the scene. He noticed some American women among the customers, residents of Tokyo. In one corner near the watercolor paper and painting supplies he saw a rheumatic-looking woman sitting on the floor, legs to one side, checking out various types of sketchbooks; for a moment Kizu was struck by the illusion that she was someone he knew in New Jersey.

Among the Japanese customers were everyone from stylish-looking pri- vate junior high students, with their mothers, to younger children, all leisurely enjoying the paintings on exhibition. Kizu found them totally different from the students he'd taught in Japan some thirty years before. They were so ob- viously affluent and, even if you brushed close to them, they showed no in- terest in others around them.

The American general manager was still quite young; he said he'd first come to Japan as a Mormon missionary. Not to imply, he went on, that he was solely a Japanophile; he was interested in developing markets in China, too, and was studying Mandarin. He was a pleasant, serious young man, and since Kizu was well-known in art education circles, he said that as long as the head office gave the okay he could supply, free of charge, the twenty watercolor sets Kizu wanted, each with over a hundred colors, as well as a hundred inexpensive sketchbooks for children. He promised to ship these to Kizu's new address in Shikoku.

When they'd reached this stage, Kizu felt a bit anxious. He'd already explained that he belonged to a new religious organization, soon to be estab- lished in the countryside, and was planning to hold art classes for the local children. But as he listened to Kizu, the manager seemed blasé.

"Believe me," Kizu said, "I'm not trying to use these painting sets and sketchbooks as inducements to convert new followers."

The manager wasn't perturbed.

"I take the subway to work that was gassed with sarin gas," he said, "and I'm pretty interested in these new Japanese religions. As long as the church you belong to isn't like some fundamentalist sect in the States where every- one commits mass suicide with their leader, I don't see how it could be nega- tive publicity for my company. But even with things like this sarin gas attack, don't you think that in general Japanese aren't very religious? When I was doing Mormon missionary work I already had that impression. Our company aims its goods at the children of well-heeled urban families. But I want to branch out beyond that. That's why I like your idea of opening an art school for children in the countryside."