Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"When I heard this, I thought that though Patron and Guide had suf- fered a lot, if they continued to live quietly like this until they died these would be their happy golden years. Like an acolyte in a monastery, I was happy to serve them and I completely forgot about dancing."

Ikuo was irritated at Dancer's romantic way of speaking. "But even before the Somersault," he asked, "wasn't there an attempt to sever the pipe- line between Patron and Guide? I can understand the radical faction want- ing to be directly connected with Patron, without Guide as a go-between. They must have dreamed of becoming mystics themselves, having the same kind of trance visions that Patron did, and then realizing them in the real world."

Kizu spoke up. "Just as with Ikuo, I had nothing to do with the church at that time. I'm basing this on church documents I've read. But didn't the church teach that believers following Patron would also have trances?"

"You have to understand there are two aspects to trances," Dancer answered. "One aspect is as part of the daily prayers of the followers who've accepted Patron as their savior; the other came about when the radical fac- tion went off on their own and committed the mistakes they did. In a normal situation, where the church was healthy, Guide should have been able to keep the radical faction under control."

"So the radical faction short-circuited the process, lumping themselves and Patron together," Kizu said. "Guide felt he had to restore this circuit between himself and Patron, that he had to strengthen his control over their followers, right? So it was unavoidable that he cut off the radical faction-in other words, do the Somersault."

"It's a little strange to be speculating about these things with Dr. Koga and Mr. Hanawa here with us," Dancer said, "but I'd have to say I agree en- tirely. And in making sure that happened, wasn't Guide doing the right thing?

"The radical members who killed Guide were people who held a par- ticular grudge toward the Somersault. They're different from the members who've moved here with us. I hope the local people will appreciate the dis- tinction. The first group held Guide prisoner and roughed him up to the point where he died, so the whole thing had to be referred to the Tokyo DA's of- fice. It's unbelievable how cruel they were, pushing him to the point where the aneurysm in his brain burst.

"One thing's for sure," Dacner went on. "When he was being mistreated by them, Guide maintained his dignity to the very last. Toward the end of the tape recording you can sense he has resigned himself to being killed. He stood up to them. 'Why,' he asked, 'are you using professional equipment to record all this? Are you planning to provide the courts with proof of your crime? ' The radicals said, 'We're doing it so we can send it to Patron and make him suffer and die.' They loathed Patron too. They had a great deal of anger toward both men."

"But didn't Guide, who created the institute in the first place, have a pretty intimate relationship with them?" Kizu wondered. "They shelved that relationship and tried to connect directly with Patron. After the Somersault, though, the press claimed that Patron and Guide got some devilish thrill out of letting the radical faction climb to the top of the roof and then yanking away the ladder."

"That's completely wrong," Dancer insisted. "Guide translated Patron's visions back to him in understandable language, and then he transmitted them to the followers. That was Guide's role. Guide wanted to insert the reactions of this group of sensitive, intelligent young people into the pipeline between himself and Patron."

Kizu pressed on. "If anyone got a devilish thrill out of this, wasn't it those who tortured and killed Guide while recording the whole thing? But what was their goal? What possible significance was there in making Guide suffer, physically and emotionally, to the point where he died?"

"I don't think they acted without a purpose," Dancer said. "I think they were trying to be proactive, trying to figure out why the Somersault had to take place. Guide told me about some of those young radicals. What I got out of it was that these were young people who were trying to fill in what was missing in their own lives. They were searching for spiritual peace. They wanted the wisdom that would allow them to live in the trying times to come.

"They were bright and serious, which makes them all the more sad.

These lonely, suffering young people had, for the first time in their lives, cre- ated their very own community at the Izu Research Institute. But Patron and Guide just couldn't handle them. If the control of the church was turned over to the radical faction, the ship of the church, so to speak, would have rammed into an iceberg. So Patron and Guide scurried away to safer ground. You can't deny that, right?"

"You're pretty outspoken for a young woman, aren't you?" Kizu said regretfully.

Patron, who'd let it all slide by, spoke up. "But she's exactly right, " he said, standing up for Dancer. "We not only abandoned ship, we denied that the ship ever had any use to begin with-either back in the beginning or in the future. That's what the Somersault was all about."

When Dancer saw that his little pronouncement was over, she spoke again, before Kizu had a chance to comment.

"Apart from their special fields," she said, "Guide was the main teacher for those young people, showing them how to live a life of faith. As everyone admits, he was a born educator. The young people's group in Izu should have been Guide's masterpiece. I don't see it as a group of sadists. These were the best and brightest of the elite university system, people used to the seminar system of training, right? They weren't about to dig themselves holes in which to ponder things alone; they were best at getting together to study and debate as a group.

"Their last seminar-with the guest speaker being held against his wishes, a dangerous thing to do-revolved around learning what, ten years after the fact, the Somersault meant to Patron and Guide.

"If you listen to the tape, you'll hear that in the beginning they were divided into two groups. One group vehemently denied Patron, saying the church was totally meaningless. They were the ones who felt abandoned and wanted revenge. The other group insisted that Patron and Guide were vic- tims. TV had made them into laughingstocks all over Japan. Thanks to this, the underground shock troops didn't get a chance to leap into action.

"This second group viewed the Somersault as Patron's clear warning that the end of the world was near. Just as Jesus was crucified along with two criminals, letting oneself fall into the most wretched place possible meant the final stage had been reached, where the end time is announced.

'We should believe in the sullied and insulted Patron and Guide and await the Day of Wrath,' they said. 'If Guide, who suffered the worst pain in the most wretched of places, tells you to believe in him, all trials can be trans- formed into something positive.' That's the kind of appeal these people made.

"The two groups didn't just debate each other, they also talked about their individual experiences, the trying times they had had because of the Somersault-not just the obvious abandonment and loss of spiritual support but their need to take responsibility for the plans of the whole group, be in- vestigated by the authorities-all of this must have been horrible.

"In the face of this horror, Guide didn't try to make excuses or explain away his true intentions. As long as the questions were straightforward, he answered them concisely and sincerely. The only time he got emotional was when he heard they'd poisoned his Saint Bernard. 'Why did you have to do that?' he rebuked them. This brought on laughter from those who were de- taining him, from the first group, at least.