Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"I came here because I wanted to meet the people who are taking over the building used by the Church of the Flaming Green Tree," Satchan went on, "and also because I feel responsible to the local people here for your activities. People in your group were involved in some major terrorist activi- ties, so the mayor and members of the town council asked us to find out what sort of group was moving in here. We do recognize, mind you, that your Somersault put a stop to the radical faction's plans.

"We had a group in our church, too, that began to make waves, and as we confronted this we began to steer the church back to the small gatherings with which it began. Right at that critical juncture we lost our leader, and our church fell apart. But your church is getting back on its feet, with this region as your stage. My main concern is that this radical faction might once again play a major role."

"I quite understand your concern," Patron said. "Our church started out much like yours, and until it reached a certain size it was basically just a prayer group. There was another person who made this group with me and helped me run it-Guide, the man whose terrible death I'm sure you've heard about.

His idea was to gather together young people who'd been specially trained in the sciences, and he created the Izu Research Center for them.

"While living there communally, these young people continued research in their special fields, and as they began reflecting on their own faith they started debating the entire direction the church was taking. In the end they came up with their own unique course of action, which could be summarized like this: Their faith tells them the end of the world is near, which allows them to repent and prepare themselves as righteous people. As the righteous, then, they call on all mankind to repent. But how exactly do you go about preach- ing repentance to the masses? The church was pretty vague on this point, and the young people needed a clear-cut model, so they began concentrating on a concrete direction their ideas could take. In the end they went past the point of no return.

"At the time I was at the Tokyo headquarters, my role that of spiritual leader for the ordinary followers in their walk of faith. Guide was in charge of keeping contact with the Izu Research Institute. Which isn't to say he was in charge of the movement that was starting there-he wasn't. The institute was self-governing.

"Guide would take the funding that the Tokyo headquarters had allotted to the institute and hand it over to their accountant. But he refused to exert any direct influence on the management of the institute. He was more like their sponsor. When things were pretty much all set up the way they wanted, he took me there to deliver a sermon, but I'm sure he never spoke to them on his own about faith. The self-governing board of the institute selected board members whose job it was to oversee everything-from all the various re- search projects to matters of faith.

"Guide wanted to make a research facility free of the archaic structures of universities, and by word of mouth he gathered together a group of re- searchers who felt stifled in their former institutions. Naturally, he also chose people who were already members of the church-people who'd graduated from college or graduate school and were already working, but suffered set- backs, either through illness or car accidents or the like. People who went through rehabilitation and then entered the church. One of those people was Dr. Koga, who'll be in charge of the clinic in the Old Town.

"Some of these people were hoping to use their research at the institute as a stepping-stone, a way to circumvent Japanese academia and obtain a position in an American or European university. If anything, Guide was happy with this sort of ambition. He often stayed over at the Izu Institute, and when he returned he couldn't stop telling me, despite my complete igno- rance of all these cuttingedge scientific fields, about how well these young researchers were progressing."

"The people at the institute," Patron continued, "were dyed-in-the-wool scientists. Also, as I've said, there were people who, in university, graduate school, or at work, had suffered various disappointments and frustrations. But thanks to the wonderful facilities, experimental lab apparatus, and the free system of research at the institute, these people once again came face-to-face with the crisis they thought they'd solved--a more fundamental crisis, one they began to see included spiritual questions.

"They also began to take a good hard look at the religious aspect of the church. Some of the members sent me a list of requests, which made me ap- preciate how tense the situation was there. The members who wanted to see me were ones I had personal memories of, who after renouncing the world had joined the church before being selected as members of the research insti- tute. And this is what they told me: "Our souls have been aroused, and we've drawn close to your religious ideas. Through Guide's good offices we've been selected for something that's almost too good to be true, to be able to live together with other church members and at the same time carry on our individual research.

"For some time we've been meeting after work, holding discussions about the happiness and peace that come from the visions of the other side you've provided. As you preached, our prayers were based not on some outside source but on our inner selves as a source of energy, and we began to hold joint prayer sessions, with prayers that welled up sponta- neously from within. Guide told us our prayer group was the best and most natural group in the whole church.

"With this prayer group as a foothold, one after another of the mem- bers of the research team who weren't church members came to faith.

As we met more often, we began to have doubts that our prayers would really reach the other side, just by continuing our lives as they were- supported by the church to conduct research, and praying as we did.

Through our prayers we stood ready, like a sprinter bent over at the start- ing line. Both body and spirit expectant, waiting with bated breath for the sound of the starting gun. But was this really enough?

"As we prayerfully await the starting signal, our bodies and minds tense, it's painful. That pain does not come from the feebleness of our prayers. We talked about it at our meeting, and one person said it's the pain of our thirsting souls, and surprisingly everyone said they felt the same way. Which brings us to our requests to you.

"Patron, you give us a vision of the end of the world, of the end time.

And you call for repentance. From the bottom of our hearts we feel this as we pray. You bring back words that are given to you directly on the other side, which Guide then helps convey to this side. Those words strike us deeply and urge us on to ever more devotion to prayer.

"So this is what we ask of you, Patron: What does God want us to do?

Tell us straight out. Why are we at the starting blocks? For what pur- pose are we training our bodies and our spirits? Use your trances to find out for us, we beg of you. Perhaps you have already seen this. Is this vi- sion so frightening you shrink away from it, not even revealing it to Guide, and claim that God has not yet spoken?

"We are waiting for you, Patron, to transmit the words of God. Prayer teaches us this-that the only thing we have to accomplish in this world is to receive these words of God and use them as our basis for action. We are scientists, which means that more than other people we can clearly hear the approaching steps of the end of the world. And we are zealously await- ing your words. Didn't you receive us into the church, and didn't Guide select us as members of the research institute because of this? Because we listen to these words? Are we really so fragile that we can't bear the bur- den of those terrible words? We beg of you, please accept our petition."