Juliet is the Sun

By Gemma Nishiyama

“….all of the best secrets are hidden in plain view….”----

T.K. kimi no tameni

Books and websites quoted in this novel:

All quotations from Shakespeare are from The Riverside Shakespeare, Houghton-Mifflin Company.

Boston, MA. 1974 (Evans et al. eds.)

In Chapter 17, parts of the morality play Mankynde are shown in a fictionalized and simplified

representation I created after reading this play. I quote some lines from this play which I accessed at

NeCastro, Gerard. From Stage to Page - Medieval and Renaissance Drama.

http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/drama. Date Visited: February 6, 2013.

In the conversation between Professor Yamaguchi and Viola in Chapter 20, a few quotations from The

Renaissance Drama of Knowledge by Hilary Gatti (London: Routledge), 1989, are used with

permission from the publisher. Particularly I quote one paragraph from page 130 and I summarize part

of an argument that Professor Gatti makes on pages 141-2 of her book and I quote the lines she quotes

from Hamlet and Spaccio della bestia trionfante..

In Chapter 26, I quote all of Epops’ song from The Birds by Aristophanes. I accessed this public-

domain play at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/birds.html on July 31, 2012.

In Chapter 31, I quote the opening lines from the ‘Explanatory Epistle’ on page 69 of The Expulsion of

the Triumphant Beast (Spaccio della bestia trionfante (1584) by Giordano Bruno) (Lincoln, NE:

University of Nebraska Press), translated by Arthur D. Imerti, 1964. (I have a subsequent edition

published in 1992). The publisher kindly informed me that the brief passage I quote is covered under

the “Fair Use” provisions it has established.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, whether living

or dead, is entirely coincidental. In addition, this work may contain original theories about or

interpretations of William Shakespeare’s works. In no way, place, shape, or form, do I propose,

purport, assert or claim, by the writing, producing or publishing of this fictional work, that these

theories or interpretations have any merit, value, basis in truth, or validity.

Chapter 1Stand and unfold yourself

One morning, about nine, I returned home from walking our tiny Yorkshire terrier and discovered

an astonishing vision in the tatami mat room, where the rumpled futons were still covering the floor. A

man in brown velvet pants, and strange thick wool stockings of grey, with a frilled linen shirt that was

perhaps off-white or yellowed with age, stood beside the shoji doors.

I take an interest in hand-woven cloth. I like artful things which take time and satisfy the eye and the

touch, but cannot compete commercially. So I knew at one glance that this man’s clothes were not

standard industrial ones: the style, the colors, the fabrics---all were strangeness and irregularity. I wanted

to scream, but hesitated: I have a passion for natural dyes and could tell that his clothes were not modern,

not industrially made or colored. He sat cross-legged near the paper sliding doors, and he looked, if I may

summarize his attitude, apologetic.

“I’m sorry if I startled you”, a low voice, a soft voice, and gentle. He spoke English, and not with an

American accent, but this was not a surprise somehow. He did not seem to be Japanese although his hair

was dark and his beard was dark brown or black, like sable, but silvered a bit. I noticed that he was not

getting up to attack me. He remained seated and I noticed an odd phenomenon then as I came closer to

him: his skin had a whitish-greenish glow, his face, his hands, everywhere where you could see his skin,

there was a faint but bizarre and pearly luminescence. I wanted to scream again.

Usually I am a calmer person. But this odd meeting had unnerved me, perhaps because I myself

had recently fled from the prefecture next to Fukushima. Was he an installation artist from the exclusion

zone, or an obscure activist on the run, strangely attired and wearing the latest in nano-technologically

derived make-up designed to glow artificially? Perhaps his impromptu visit here, a prank no doubt being

recorded, was next to be uploaded on YouTube, then go viral, to be viewed by millions. Did an Internet

debacle await me?

But no. He sat calmly. There was no telltale laptop, blinking, at the edge of the room. There

seemed to be no wires or tiny cameras. I noticed he was darkly handsome, a bit older than me, and he was

smiling, and the word “gentle” could not be avoided again in my brain as I tried to summarize, for myself,

my own impression of him: gentle smile, gentle voice, gentle manner, gentle touch. For now his fingers

pressed lightly on my finger tips, his palm swept softly against mine. In his handshake, I felt his touch to

be cooler than the ordinary temperature of a human body. I dared to look deeply into his brown eyes, now

that he had shown himself through gestures to be kind and friendly, and here I sensed an odd warmth.

In Japan, we, I am happy to say, have many ghosts. They have not been banished from the scene.

Children know all the names of the famous ghosts: Rokurokubi, a classically beautiful woman with an

infinitely and rapidly extending neck, whose head can therefore chase you down a mountain as you flee;

Noperabo, magically taking any gender, any form of a body, but whose pale powdered face lacks eyes and

a nose, though she has a mouth, and Hitotsumekozo, a one-eyed young monk. Local ghosts here in the

Western part of Japan, such as the samurai Chichibei, fatally tricked by a rival, or the fisherman Oraemon

who walks the rocky beach of Horiuki at night, are many and their histories are handed around. I delight

in all such stories, as do most people I know here. So then why, why, was it that when I did finally meet a

real ghost, despite all my years of a really decent—though haphazard--- education in ghosts and occult

lore here in Japan-----why, O why, did I fail so utterly to perceive the truth?

I sat down on the edge of my futon to make further acquaintance with this strange man. What did

he want? Surely it was time for honesty and calm. All right then.

“Who are you?” I asked. I tried to ask it severely, and to display my dominance and no-nonsense

manner.

“Ah, yes! I thought you might ask that.” He said these words sadly, looked mournful, somber,

and cast his eyes down theatrically on to the tatami mat where his stockinged legs crossed rather

athletically in front of him. He had the muscles of an actor or a tennis player or a professional nurse,

someone who walked or ran.

I felt annoyed.

“My name is Viola Matsumura”, I said, trying to sound calm and patient, like a social worker

who has suddenly come across a wandering stranger in need of assistance, “is there anything I can do for

you? Any relative or friend I can call to help you? Can you speak Japanese? Are you lost perhaps? Do you

have a working mobile phone? Are you a traveler in distress?”

The banal questions only seemed to deepen the stranger’s sad and quiet demeanor. After a silent

pause, he suddenly reached out and in one graceful motion, brought my fingertips up to his cold lips,

while his eyes mysteriously burned, a compelling and passionate warmth transferring rapidly into mine.

The motions of his hands, and the motions of his eyes formed two separate sophisticated, almost surreal,

planes of action, undoing me and strangely satisfying me at the same time. I had never been kissed in

such a way before, on my hands. It seemed archaic, yet delightful! If only his skin and his lips were not so

cold!

“Pity me not, but do please listen to my story.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, in what I recognized now finally as my real voice. I drew up my knees

and clasped my hands around my legs.

Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?

The phrase suddenly issued from nowhere, hung---or rather, nestled----in crooks in the air, from

somewhere yet nowhere all at once, a bee sting, a pistol shot, then it was a swan feather floating in

flotsam of the denser sounds from all around us. A sound impossible to deny, yet whose source was also

impossible to find. It had not come from the stranger’s lips. It was then that I began to understand that the

traveler was not from any country one could visit at will carrying just a credit card, or, as I had so

doltishly mentioned, a working mobile phone. There was no one on this earth I could call to help

this….person….or whatever or whoever he was. There was no dimension available to the living where I

could turn to get an account of the full and true nature of this man. For I had just then decided, though by

then I knew better, to call him a man.

At least until I find out what he really was.

I knew enough Shakespeare to have some idea of whose ghost this was.

Chapter 2

And what should I do in Illyria?

I should have made it clear that I majored in English Literature at Harvard College, twenty-three

years ago. My two very favorite classes were both on Shakespeare’s plays (Early and Late), and taught by

an inspiring professor named Margaret Greybard, with the liveliest, most poignant, most skillful delivery

of Shakespeare’s famous lines I had ever heard. Sometimes I would close my eyes during lectures and let

her convincing voice, after all the voice of an authentic, intuitive Shakespeare connoisseur, become a sort

of heavenly music box playing Shakespeare.

“And what should I do in Illyria?”

Professor Greybard was standing at her podium in Sanders Theater, a huge lecture hall, but, listening

to her evocative, ringing voice, I saw only the wide sky of Illyria, the beach and the shipwrecked heroine

wearing a cape and the captain next to her. I saw the water, the waves with white crests.

Everything.

Nice clothes, dates, good grades, and other things that college students usually like were pallid and

dreary compared to Shakespeare. But, naturally not wishing to be thought totally bizarre, I kept this

personal feeling to myself.

This meeting with the ghost now seemed to be a fitting, elegant chance to relive my long-subdued,

long-forgotten undergraduate passion.

“Swear by his sword.”

He was doing it again, magically zapping the air pockets all around me with ghostly vocal sounds which

didn’t seem to come from his lips. The sound of the line, enhanced by the “s” sound of sword and swear,

was eerily all around, like the delicate pink petals of the cherry blossoms now scattering outside in the

cross currents of the wind along the river near the old wooden rented house where I live, here and

everywhere.

hic et ubique

I wanted to calm him down, this ghost, my ghost now, or rather the ghost of my dreams. Obviously,

he was distraught, quoting lines from his own plays out of all context, giving them a delivery which,

while not unpleasurable, was strange because it was not vocalized normally, nor performed in any

ordinary way. How does one understand what a ghost is thinking? How does one know when a ghost is

restless and unsatisfied? There was no rattling of chains or moaning and other things ;like that, as you

might see some famous ghosts doing in novels and films.

What ought I to call him? My dear William? Mr. Shakespeare? Will? Sir?

“Mr. Shakespeare”, I started, “Please----“

His face softened and the surreal glow surrounding his body seemed to become rosier and picked

up in its fervor a little as I spoke. He suddenly seemed like a truly real ghost, and I wondered how I could

have ever made the mistake of thinking him human at the beginning.

“Viola Matsumura. How do you do? Indeed, I am the poet William Shakespeare”.

If a ghost comes to call on you, should you offer him some tea? Should you apologize if your

rumpled futons are not yet put away or some unwashed clothes are scattered on the floor? Should you be

worried about impropriety-----sitting on a futon beside a strange man in your bedroom, a man who is not

your husband? Or rather, a strange ghost who is not your husband.

What was he doing here?

Hamlet’s father returns as a ghost to tell Hamlet some disquieting news. In A Christmas Carol,

the ghost of Jacob Marley visits Scrooge in order to beg him not to make the mistake of greed. Oraemon

walks his beach, Chichibei the samurai searches for his long-dead rival. I now naturally wondered if there

was an undelivered message or an unresolved problem that was preventing this particular visiting ghost

from achieving eternal peace.

But when I looked up to ask him about this, he was gone. Only brilliant sunlight fell on the patch

of tatami mat where he had been sitting. Beside me, the dog, Teru, had disobediently crawled onto a

futon, and was asleep. I was still dazed, but I chased him off and started, paying hardly any attention at

all, to fold up the futons and sheets and put them away.

Chapter 3

No, indeed, sir; the Lady Olivia has no folly: she

will keep no fool, sir, till she be married; and

fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to

herrings; the husband's the bigger: I am indeed not

her fool, but her corrupter of words

After this experience, for the next few days, I was expecting to see the ghost again or rather, I was

hoping to see him again. I was a rather a lonely person, not divorced exactly, but honestly, I could not

say that my marriage was in good, or even in decent, condition. I had an idea of it as a chronically ill

patient in some anonymous hospital, awaiting surgery that would probably fail. So I suppose I can add,

guiltily, that it was a relief that my husband was far away, in Ibaraki Prefecture, which is just beside

Fukushima Prefecture. I had made the decision to leave after the nuclear accident, of course because of

health fears of radiation and radioactive fallout, but if I examine my feelings more closely, and if I am

honest with myself, I can see that I also wanted to get away from my husband and the feelings of

ennui, condescension and irritation we were feeling for each other and with each other.

Even were a ghost to show up in my life, if he would be kind and supportive, friendly, witty,

interesting, if he would divert and amuse me-----I knew right away that I would be able to become

attached emotionally and passionately to such a being, and I somehow knew that if it were

Shakespeare’s ghost----Shakespeare being, of course, someone I assumed to be a supremely wise

being--- I needed to have very little worry of being invited to dance in a graveyard, and other horrible

stories one reads in books.

If nothing else, I felt, perhaps, that I had nothing very much to lose. My children, still in school,

of course, rely on me. But they are quite old enough now to go around by themselves. My parents, in

America, are elderly would not be very interested in the supernatural adventures of their middle-aged

expatriate daughter. My father had always steadfastly explained to everyone that ghosts, gods, spirits, and

such do not exist, and simply cannot exist, by definition----but my father has never lived here where I

now live, nor seen what I have seen. My few friends here in Tsubame were as busy as I was. Where then,

should I turn to find someone who can talk to me, make me laugh, and listen to my stupid jokes? My

husband was not interested in the job, though he had been when we first met.

As a lowly English teacher and proofreader, I can make a small but sufficient living anywhere. I

didn’t need to be in Tokyo, as I had explained many times to my husband. My job as an English teacher, I

am proud to say it, is a sort of modern, minimalistic variation of what people in the Middle Ages in

Europe called a “court jester”, or what people in the Edo Period in Japan called a “geisha”: for a small

consideration, I entertain people for an hour at a time, with conversation that is calculated to please, to

engage, to divert, and occasionally, I hope, to inspire. And in my job, where teaching English is only, in

my opinion, a pretext, it is helpful to follow at all times the advice of King Lear’s Fool: “Nay, and thou

canst not smile as the wind sits, thou’lt catch cold shortly”.

It was not my fault that my husband wouldn’t follow me, his poor Fool, into banishment and poverty

on the mountainous heaths of Western Japan: and, truthfully, I had made somewhat of a go of it. In fact,

ending up nearer the green mountains and close to a clean river had made me relieved at last, instead of

embarrassed, as I had been in the Tokyo area, to be and to always have been, something close to a court

jester: foolish, simple and close to the ground, never serious about and never committed to academia.

Lately I had been thinking that after the children grew up and found their own lives, I would live

alone forever, encased in a sort of ice cube emotionally, but not unpleasantly so. There was my teaching

work, and then my hobbies, darning old socks, going to flea markets, keeping pet cats, a simple existence.

These had seemed enough until now.

But now that a ghost, especially one of a luminous writer, had turned up in my life, I started to get

expectations of happiness, as if the freezing ice cube I was encased in was melting. I reasoned,

calculatedly perhaps, that a friendship with a ghost cannot be counted as infidelity. And probably a ghost

would be able to maintain secrecy, being able to dissolve skillfully into the air if a husband should

suddenly drop by inconveniently.

Of course, you cannot search for a ghost on the internet, or locate a useful email address for one.

Nor are ghosts to be found on social media.

I would just have to wait.

Chapter 4

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

admit impediments…..

The impediments to a steady romantic or platonic relationship with a ghost may be many.

Indeed, I have mentioned some of them: contacting the beloved one in the world beyond, getting over

ones understandable fears of the supernatural, the worry that one won’t be able to “measure up” as a

conversational partner if the ghost is a famous superlative and popular genius, and so forth.

Yet I was to be pleasantly surprised in regard to impediments.

On Wednesdays I take the bus to a small junior college, where I teach one class, in the next town.

The bus ride takes 45 minutes. I generally read a book or I sleep if I am tired, although I also love to

watch the mountains as a sort of musical scenery, jumbles of haphazard little low green peaks, swooping

down from the sky, or rather plunked down by it, gifts from the generous nature gods, now entirely homes

for hawks, ravens, and other birds, whom indeed these gods must have once resembled.

About one month after the first encounter with Shakespeare’s ghost, I was on the bus on my way to

this little college, and I was lightly dozing off when I felt a subtle sort of pressure next to me on my right

arm and shoulder, as if someone were sitting down right next to me, rather too closely. The strange thing

was that the bus had not just stopped to let anyone on!

The seats on this bus are generally sparsely populated, which is to say that most people have cars

these days, except other impractical wanderers like me. There are usually five or so elderly passengers on

the bus besides me, in other words, there are plenty of seats and no one need crowd anyone else or sit

double to a seat.

So, in my lightly sleeping state, the question of who had mysteriously taken the seat next to mine

rapidly framed itself, and I awoke to see, with joy and relief, the handsome sable-bearded stranger

wearing the same clothes as last time, only this time he wore shoes, what I assumed were proper

Elizabethan shoes, a bit pointy, dignified brown leather-heeled things. I couldn’t contain my pleasure at

seeing him again, and the bus was nearly empty anyway.

“Hello!” I cried happily, forgetting even that he was a ghost, “I have been so looking forward to

seeing you!” I said, without thinking.

“Yes.” A smile, and my hand was briefly kissed by his stone-cold lips. A small gold hoop of an

earring flashed beneath his grey-streaked dark hair, which was almost longer than mine, and worn loose.

Up close now, I could notice details such as a fine-worked linen collar, totally outdated. His skin was

rough, sallow, and not entirely clean. I wondered what he would smell like if I leaned closer……the earth

of his earthly grave? This was a thought that somehow, fascinatingly, did not repel me. Or would he smell

like an ordinary living man, slightly sweaty and soap-scented? Or would he have some ancient refined

Elizabethan cologne sprinkled about him, faded into perpetuity, musty damask, lavender, gardenia, forget-

me-nots?

He must have read my thoughts.

“Not flowers, not earth…..that is…to say…..why not... judge for yourself.” His slow voice

carried, deeply and boldly. Was this a challenge? If so, I was not afraid, though I hesitated a little.

He looked slightly amused at my embarrassment, and he leaned in closer to me, and I closed my

eyes and inhaling deeply, I felt a breezy coolness and smelled mountains, sky, the wind, the ocean, all

wild nature in one, salty, piney woods, feathers, sea spray, shells and driftwood, black sand, white sand,

and then one surprising word, a word I had barely heard of, wandered all by itself into my brain:

Thessaly.

“Thessaly”, I said without thinking, softly, a murmur, a reaction, a musical sound only. I had never

been there, barely even heard of it. Wasn’t it somewhere in Greece?

“Very good”, he turned his face, the glance of his bright dark eyes aiming into mine, “indeed.”

We sat together in a peaceful silence for a while, and I tried to arrange my life in my head with this

new dimension now, a ghost added in. When two people meet and form a bond, the mortality of each one,

also shared by the other one, will sculpt a natural and classic, if sad, denouement for their relationship.

But if one of the pair is an immortal ghost, then what sort of future was to be expected for the

relationship? For the sake of our bond, should I perhaps be prepared to become a ghost as well? And if so,

how and when exactly? Certainly I would have to wait until the children were independent.

“No, no”, said Shakespeare’s ghost, reading my mind again, “not at all. That is not the thing I

aim to accomplish at all. Such an ending for you would be completely contrary to my purposes.”

I was mortified to have had my mind read again!

“Well, what exactly are your purposes, then?” I asked a little coldly. I had been privately

planning a sort of ultimate sacrifice of myself, while he had actually caught me at it and then turned down

the offer. A relationship with a ghost brings many strange new topologies and contours in the landscape of

a mind!

Instead of answering, the ghost, (by now I was thinking of him as my ghost), reached his hand

into the little pocket of his dark green woven vest. He drew out something small, black and smoking. I

noted that it had a fiery orange core, like a tiny glowing eye. It gave off an acrid smell. Yet his hands

didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that the object was on fire.

“Burning things are forbidden on the bus!” I exclaimed in panic, “this is dangerous! You could cause

an explosion----an accident!”

“Ah, but, no, there is no possibility of an explosion. You see, this object is not real. It is all done with

imagery, suggestion, mirrors.”

I really didn’t understand, but I didn’t want to seem stupid so I took comfort in the fact that none of

the other passengers (there were three elderly women and one young businessman) or the bus driver

seemed to notice us or the smoking object.

“Yes, you are right. The others are not aware of us. They think they see us, but they don’t really

notice and can’t notice what I have planned to hide from them. They see what they want to see, or rather

what I want them to see, in other words, only that. All done through conjuring tricks.”

“The mirrors again, I suppose, your special imagery, and so forth.”

“Yes,” said the ghost, “that is exactly right. Imagery. A new unobtrusive kind that you didn’t study at

college. Although it might have been better if you had. But, you see, this is exactly the sort of imagery

that hasn’t yet been noted by the conventional scholars in your field.”

“Oh”, was all I could manage to say by now. I didn’t want to seem like an unaccomplished fool, so I

didn’t point out to him that I wasn’t really working in the field of English Literature. That I was neither a

conventional scholar nor an unconventional one because I was only an English conversation teacher. As

far as erudite Shakespeare scholarship was concerned, I was more like an enthusiast or a fan, watching the

action as if watching a tennis match. I sometimes read scholarly essays, and marveled at the fascinating

theories and amazing turns of phrase, but I could never have begun to write a publishable academic

treatise myself.

“Well,” said the ghost mysteriously, “what do you think it is?”

I said I thought it looked a bit like a charcoal briquette, the sort of thing my father, a fan of steak

dinners, used to heap up and set fire to in barbecues back in the suburbs of Connecticut when I was

growing up.

The ghost smiled thinly, sat up straighter, held up the burning object animatedly and exclaimed---or

rather declaimed, and in a rather pious way, I thought----

“and all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife: I’ll have no wife, Paulina!”

“From, um, Cymbeline?”, I asked, hesitantly. I knew it was one of the romances, but which one?

“The Winter’s Tale, Act five, scene one!”

“Of course! I was always mixing those two up!” This was not actually true; I was only trying to

annoy him a bit. I peered at him closely. Do ghosts like to be teased, I wondered? Or rather, can they

understand---and accept--- the earthly and foolish humor of us mortals?

I noticed his dark eyes focusing on me again, in a way that was not unpleasant. Something had been

exchanged between us, but more importantly, something, a very interesting gift, had been given to me. I

wanted next very badly to ask him what sort of conclusions I was to draw from his performance of his

own lines on the bus that afternoon. But when I next looked up, he was gone, and I saw only the clear

glass of the bus window, and outside the occluded and depressing mish-mash of mostly vacant gray

cement buildings of the run-down little town, called Otoshi, outside. Here too, among the cement, was the

train station, the last stop for this bus, and I needed to take the 1:11 bound for Hofu. The small college

was only two stops down on the Sanyo-Honsen Line. But how was I to keep my mind on teaching when I

was now completely enthralled with a ghost, a new literary mystery, a freeing friendship, and vague hopes

that my life, hardly a success up until now, would not be without interest and pleasure?

The bus driver was saying, “Okyaku-sama, o-kyaku-sama, shuuten desu!”, telling me with a little

impatience that we had reached the end of the line. With all the impressions of that afternoon still very

vivid, I wandered up the aisle, paid the fare, and made my way into the station.

Chapter 5

Sampson: Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.

Gregory: No, for then we should be colliers.

For a few weeks I waited patiently for the ghost to return and explain his brief performance from The

Winter’s Tale on the bus. Very often my hopes would be raised as I entered a room in my old house, and I

would look about the unlit corners around my little house in hopes that the ghost would be standing

quietly or sitting, perhaps reading one of the novels I have, or one of my children’s manga, or comic

books. The fact that their manga were written in Japanese would, I somehow knew, be no barrier to the

understanding of a magical ghost with universal powers. But each time, I was disappointed. The room

was always empty.

I found myself always, in idle moments, replaying in my mind the ghost’s “eyes like dead coals”

performance I had witnessed on the bus. Surely, it occurred to me, there must be some deeper significance

here that had missed. I also wondered if the fact that the ghost had theatrically held up what appeared to

be a burning coal must also be important?

I checked an Internet site which lets you do word searches of any word you wish in Shakespeare’s

plays. Shakespeare uses the word coals 32 times in all his works. Sometimes it seemed to be a rather

neutral word as in The Merry Wives of Windsor, when Mistress Quickly says, “Go, and we’ll have a

posset for’t soon at night, i’ faith, at the latter end of a sea coal fire”. Once, in Coriolanus, the sarcastic,

biting, and anachronistic reference was to the economic and political side of coal:

Why so you have made good work!

A pair of tribunes that have wrack’d for Rome

To make coals cheap! A noble memory.

Overall, Shakespeare’s use of the word “coals” gave two interesting and subtle impressions. First of all,

there seemed to be something sinister about the majority of its associations. In Shakespeare, the word

“coal” is repeatedly placed near words that express ideas of death, war, destruction, treachery and filth:

From 2 King Henry VI:

O war, thou son of hell

Whom angry heavens do make their minister,

Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part

Hot coals of vengeance!

From King John:

Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars

Between this chastis’d kingdom and myself…

From The Rape of Lucrece:

His honor, his affairs, his friends, his state,

Neglected all, with swift intent he goes

To quench the coal which in his liver glows.

……………

“The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,

And unperceiv’d fly with the filth away…

………………………

And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,

Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights

From Richard II:

And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black,

For the deposing of a rightful king.

From Titus Andronicus:

Yet I think we are not brought so low

That between us we can kill a fly

That comes in likeness of a coal-black Moor.

But the lines that finally became the focus of my attention were the two opening lines from Romeo and

Juliet:

Sampson: Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.

Gregory: No, for then we should be colliers.

I found myself dwelling on these lines more than the more blatantly negative images of coal in the other

plays, partly because here in Romeo and Juliet, coal was not used as an artistic image to convey color or

heat or agony or rage, but almost as a real thing and therefore the ghost’s use of a “real” piece of coal as a

prop on the bus seemed to echo this “real” quality of the coal more than in the other lines which

mentioned coal.

Moreover, ‘Gregory, upon my word, we’ll not carry coals’, had a special place as the first lines of the

play. I had always had the impression that the opening lines of Shakespeare’s plays are key clues to the

themes of his plays. Perhaps it was the opening lines of Hamlet: ‘Who’s there?’/’Nay, answer me, stand

and unfold yourself’, that seem to promise to show us the playwright himself, in a play about making

plays, which had always made me think so.

My big, huge, and enormous problem was that Romeo and Juliet contained no further references

to coal at all.

What was I to do?

Chapter 6

But room, fairy! here comes Oberon

I awoke in the middle of the night a few days later. A strange sound, like a cough or someone crying

or gasping, interspersed with the sounds of wailing, was coming from the tiny dining room, which is only

three or four meters away from my bedroom. I was not afraid at all, since I did not think that an intruder

would choose my dining room for such activities. Rather, I found myself instantly feeling joy at the

chance that my ghost was here again. I pulled my old gray cable-knit cardigan over my pajamas and slid

open the door, in a few steps crossed the tatami mat hallway, and came to the threshold of the dining

room.

The dining room resembled a bar in the late evening, with low lighting and fanciful plumes of black

smoke making the air seem thick. And standing behind the small low table the children and I use for our

meals was the ghost I had been waiting for. He was wearing something new over his clothes, a short black

silk cape, and he had a thin black band of cloth tied around his forehead. His face looked different,

perhaps because the glow of his ghostly skin was hidden under stage makeup that gave him a powdery

pallor. His mouth was at once redder and browner than usual and I noticed also it was colored by

theatrical makeup, applied thickly and emphasizing, like a tragic mask, a sad expression, a slight crescent

reversed, points down.

He dramatically pointed at the floor next to me when he saw me, and his hands were also covered

with this whitish stage makeup, which appeared more chalky, opaque and clay-like than what I had

noticed on modern stages. I looked down and there was an interesting red velvet cushion on the floor,

with silver tassles and artful embroidery work in the shape of lilies. Apparently I was to sit on it. I

promptly sat, but not without first running my hand over the cushion: as a passionate textile amateur I was

intrigued by the archaic, non-industrial and uneven texture of the velvet. However, the blackish smoke

was worse down here at floor-level. I coughed a bit. Not cigarette smoke, something thicker with more of

a bite, something almost sticky and with a sharp and abrasive flavor. It was also familiar, but I could not

place it, not then.

The phantom all of a sudden tightened every ghostly muscle in his body. Like a cat in preparation for

a pounce, his entire posture shifted, naturally and quickly, legs, arms, back, feet, hands: all at once, in a

smooth professional flow. His right hand flew up to his forehead, a sparrow being victimized in a gale

came to mind, and then he groaned theatrically: “O, O!” I immediately and with great excitement thought

I recognized these as the famous O-groans from Othello, the ones I had read so much about in academic

journals and books. Now perhaps here, in the most perfect and ultimate realization of an English major’s

fantasies, I was to see them performed live by the artist’s ghost himself!

So I was expecting him next to say, “Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulfer! O Desdemon! dead,

Desdemon! dead!”, but I was mistaken: it was not the lines from Othello which he intended to perform for

me. I knew this as soon as he started the monologue, softly crying out in a clear and smooth but

tormented intonation, “Seems, madam? nay, it is, I know not ‘seems’”. He paused to peer down at me, a

sweeping but calculated glance, the sharp eyes of the stage professional. Or was he expecting me to play

Gertrude? But no, he continued, in perfect dramatic form, his pace slow yet melodic, alive and sensitive

to the needs of every syllable:

“’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath,

Nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected havior of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,

For they are the actions that a man might play,

But I have that within that passes show,

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”

He was suddenly silent, and he looked at me to note my reaction, but his pose retained an artful tension. I

applauded and he relaxed a in a graceful bow. He sat down at the little table and I noticed little black

cloudy spots of something dirty on his clothing, while his makeup seemed to have a layer of soot. I tried

to wave the smoke away from us, because now I was coughing, and my eyes were watering.

Suddenly I noticed two pewter mugs on the table. Had they been there all along? Had they

materialized from nowhere? The thought that there may be, in a realistic sense, no such place as

“nowhere” as far as a ghost is concerned crossed my mind. The ghost gently pushed one mug toward me.

“What is it?”

“A sort of wine made of honey called mead.”

I took a sip and it was sweet and slightly spiced. I started to feel nervous. I started speaking too quickly

and too much.

“Mmmmm, quite good. I have always loved sweet things. And ever since reading Beowulf in

graduate school, I have so been longing to try mead, but I have been unable to find it anywhere!”, I cried

in enthusiasm, “and to see you perform the famous ‘seems, Madam?’ monologue from Hamlet is simply a

culmination of everything I have ever dreamed of!” I paused awkwardly, for I was very embarrassed that

despite my efforts to gracefully ignore the smoke, I was choking and gagging. I hesitantly requested, “I’m

terribly sorry……but can’t you do something about this smoke?”

The ghost gave a grimace, a flummoxed mime’s gesture of helplessness.

“No”, he said.

“Well, never mind,” I said, struggling to be cheerful, and waving away curls of sooty smoke as

they approached my nose, “please don’t worry about it. We will enjoy the delicious mead anyway. I

remember reading once that Claude Levi-Strauss cites the invention of mead as one marker in the passage

from nature to culture-----.” I had to stop myself suddenly. Although Shakespeare had freely used

anachronisms in his plays, I was not sure that I could take similar liberties. This was hardly a play, but

real life. Conversing with a ghost was such a fraught experience!

But the ghost didn’t look bewildered at all.

“Ah, yes, I did once hear that.” Shakespeare’s ghost seemed not particularly interested in pursuing the

topic further. But his answer intrigued me very much! Had Shakespeare actually been managing to keep

abreast of all the intellectual developments down here on earth for the last four hundred years?

And if so, how?

He suddenly seemed to be once again in his usual good humor. Shakespeare’s ghost smiled

quizzically at me and stood up. He seemed about to start another performance. I sat rapt. Which

monologue would he choose? Would he take requests? My all-time favorite was ‘to-morrow and to-

morrow and to-morrow’ from Macbeth. If only the smoke would go away, then how much more I would

enjoy it. As it was now, I was afraid of coughing and interrupting the performance.

He widened his eyes and whispered, “And still your fingers on your lips I pray!” He sounded like a

spy, transmitting an exciting and precious secret in code.

I wanted to ask more questions and discover more information. I was deciding how to ask, in the

most tactful way, about which books he had read, which writers and thinkers and critics he preferred, and

which ones he thought were wide of the mark. Much more to the point, though, I wanted to know which

ones amused him the most, which ideas he found folly, which theories were the ones he found most wild,

and whose rhetoric was the most delightful, clever, and fashionable. I was desperate to know!

If only he would stay!

However, he tiptoed softly backwards. When he reached the wall behind his back, his body

completely dissolved in a magical display of fine-grained rainbow-colored light particles. The wall closed

smoothly around these tiny beams of light, and I was once again alone. In the air, the smoke was

thankfully gone, but a sour sooty smell remained and on the table I saw a light layer of soot that somehow

looked familiar, as well the two empty mead cups. Through the window I saw an inkling of dawn-colored

sky, the dark and moody shapes of the leafy cherry trees beside the river.

I remembered having seen this kind of soot before and smelling the same sort of smoke, and

suddenly I knew exactly what kind of smoke I had been smelling.

Chapter 7

Swallows have built

In Cleopatra's sails their nests: the augurers

Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly,

And dare not speak their knowledge.

The town of Tsubame (the word means “barn swallow” in Japanese) has a single train track running

through it. The train line---the Yamaguchi Line---is one of the smallest in Japan. Trains share the single

track, so that trains that are going in opposite directions (Northeast to the Japan Sea or Southwest to the

Japan Inland Sea) must wait for each other at the few stations that have a double-track waiting loop.

Much of the track passes through mountains and the scenery is quite beautiful.

One special feature of the Yamaguchi Line is the “SL”, or Steam Locomotive, an antique black cast

iron steam engine, over 100 years old, that only runs in the summer, once a day in each direction. It is

mainly for tourists. The engine has a whistle that can be heard for several kilometers, and it has an

enormous iron coal tender, loaded with coal. Engineers dressed in light blue overalls and round caps ride

the coal tender and shovel coal into the boiler. The smoke that is emitted from the top of the engine is

fearsomely dark, sooty and unfiltered; unfurling, it swirls in the mountain air and forms puffy black

scoops in a line as the train heaves noisily along. If you are riding on the train as a passenger in one of the

antique, refurbished cars, and if your window is open, and if the train then enters a tunnel through the

mountains, you can even taste the smoke as it blows inside, a heavy and bitter ashy flavor, not very

pleasant, not as sharp as tobacco smoke, but more sickly and much more voluminous. Your eyes will start

to tingle and tear. Your nose will wrinkle, attempting in vain to avoid the smoke and the soot that is

already settling in a fine gray film on your white sun hat. You will then decide to close your window.

The smoke that night in the dining room had this same smell, the same consistency and flavor

that I remembered from the emissions of the steam locomotive. Shakespeare’s ghost was once again, as

he had in the “eyes like dead coals” speech, pointing out coal or coal smoke to me. But why? Why was he

so fascinated by coal, such a dreary, dirty thing?

Chapter 8

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,

And make me travel forth without my cloak?

To let base clouds o’ertake me on my way,

Hiding thy brav’ry in their rotten smoke?

Three nights later, after teaching English conversation classes all afternoon to classes of

schoolchildren, I was pleased to go to bed a bit earlier than usual. Kaoru and Zenji were tired, too, and we

had all tumbled onto our futons shortly after 10.

In my dream that night, I was flying through the air. A young man dressed in black tights, short

leather boots, and a green tunic was flying beside me. All sorts of strange things may happen in a dream

and seem perfectly normal. I was not surprised when he grinned and said, “Hello. I’m Puck!”

I was not surprised to be flying through the air either.

“Hello”, I said, “I’m Viola.”

“Yeah, I know!”

I had to laugh. He reminded me of an impish college student. He was handsome, cool and insouciant.

He had a certain vitality, an earring, long hands, black hair in a pony tail. The ponytail blew in the breeze.

We just flew naturally, quickly and without effort, with our arms stretched lazily in front of us. I was

wearing a long blue cotton nightgown, and I was very pleased with the way it fluttered around my bare

feet.

We were soaring over the sea. It looked ashy-green, Having grown up near the Atlantic Ocean, I

could recognize that this active, splashy ocean was the same one. The Pacific Ocean, the ocean of my

home now, is blue and grey. It has quite a different spirit, huge, mysterious, dark, quieter.

“It’s so green! Is it the Atlantic?”, I shouted over the wind.

“Yes.”

I saw a ship below us, but it was not a modern one, with a smokestack. It had three masts and sails. The

sailors were dressed strangely.

In one of my four part-time jobs, I proofread marketing proposals, scenarios, storyboards, and scripts

for videos destined for YouTube, at four yen per word. Now, seeing this ship, I guessed at once that they

were generating digital content with a new advertising concept: film at sea on an old ship. People are

desperate for fresh and authentic digital content these days and will endure discomfort to come up with

something original..

Perhaps a commercial for men’s cologne? Or rum? A brand of boots? Lipstick? An espresso maker?

“I think they’re filming an ad video down there!”, I shouted to Puck.

Puck smiled thoughtfully at me.

We approached land, and missing were all the things you would expect to see on a continent these

days. No huge factories, no warehouses, no highways, no port with cranes and giant cement piers. No

interchanges or bridges or electricity poles and wires. Mostly, we just saw green forests and fields,

villages and rivers curving through valleys.

I supposed it must be a strange little undeveloped country, but where? Perhaps this was Patagonia? I had

heard it was undeveloped. Or could it be Costa Rica?

We kept flying and soon we were near settlements of small houses. Further in the distance I saw

a small city, but there were no tall buildings. Instead, there were domes, turrets, rows of little stone and

wood houses. On the roofs, there were many chimneys and black and grey smoke was blowing into the

sky. We flew lower, and I saw horses, cobblestone streets, and people dressed archaically, the women in

long skirts, the men in tights and tunics. No one seemed able to see us at all.

My mind, in its dream-like state, processed the scene and arrived at a conclusion very matter-of-

factly. Had I been awake, I would have been panicked about getting back to Tsubame in one piece.

I had managed to travel back in time, and now, most oddly, I was in London in the late 1500s or so.

In dreams, things that would be frightening in real life can just seem normal, even routine.

We flew over a large park and arrived at a beautiful castle, which was definitely not Buckingham

Palace. It had turrets and battlements. It had square areas inside with little green courtyards and stone

paths, It looked just like the sort of castle that I used to often draw when I was a child.

“Is it Windsor Castle?”, I asked. It was the only other castle I had ever heard of in England.

“No, Whitehall”, replied Puck.

“Whitehall Castle? I’ve never heard of it!”, I said, “are you sure there is such a place?”

Puck laughed, “was such a place, you mean!”

We circled around a few of the stone turrets that had festive gold and red banners fluttering on them.

“Those mean she’s home!”, said Puck to me. He considered which window was the best one to enter.

How did I know that he was considering entering the palace?

In dreams we just know things.

Finally one window seemed correct. It stood open and first Puck alighted on the window sill and

jumped down onto the floor, and then it was my turn. He put his hand up to help me, and I jumped down.

A fierce, pallid-looking woman with red hair and a pinched nose and swathed in black velvet and lace

was pacing up and down on the stone floor.

“Your Majesty”, said a man in red tights, looking somber and apologetic, “we regret to say that we

cannot do anything about the sea-coal smoke from local industries in Westminster at present. The

Ministers will hold a meeting with some of the business officials to discuss the matter next week.”

“I have tried to be patient, but I do not like the smell of that smoke! I can even taste it if I am eating

and it comes in the through window!”

“Your Majesty, wood is too expensive. Sea-coal is what most people can afford now. The forests are

far away and they are becoming depleted.”

“Then what is to be done?”

A man who was seated at a desk was recording the conversation.

“Can they see us?” I asked Puck in a whisper. Somehow, maybe because it was a dream, I was sure

that we were invisible.

“Neither hear us, nor see us. It is most convenient”, said Puck loudly, with another smile. He walked

over to the courtier and stood very close to him. The courtier was telling Queen Elizabeth I that some

noblemen were trying some experiments to make balls from straw and coal that would possibly make the

smoke less sulfurous, acrid and objectionable.

The Queen looked skeptical. “I don’t know if that idea will work. In any case, let us depart from the

city for a while. The noisome smells in London drive us away. Please begin the preparations for the next

Progress at once.”

“Come on”, said Puck to me. He waved “good-bye” at them all theatrically.

We went through the huge doorway and down the stairs. Soon we were outside. My feet were bare,

but somehow I couldn’t feel the ground properly, and I noticed that we were skimming along like spirits.

It was almost like flying, but much lower to the ground. If anyone passed in front of us, we passed right

through them. It was exciting to experience the feeling of being a ghost. In this way we passed quickly

through the palace gates.

The London air did have a smell of smoke. All around us were little workshops and houses. All of

them had chimneys and many of the chimneys were blowing smoke into the air. The sky was not blue, but

smoggy. We came to a large building and stopped. Puck went inside and I followed him. It seemed to be a

government office with official guards and nicely-dressed men. Many men were standing in front of a

large desk.

“It is quite insupportable!” A thin man in brown, in his 50s, was gesturing with his hands in

frustration,

“But we have recently rebuilt the chimney to make it taller, actually precisely in order to clear your

roof”, said a plump, double-chinned man in a dark red jacket.

“Nevertheless, the sea-coal smoke from your brewery blows into our windows and courtyard. My

wife and I are coughing, our fruit trees, our lilies, our roses and lavender are withering from all the

smoke.”

The official behind the desk had been listening while also completing some work in a ledger. He put

his quill pen down and cleared his throat.

“Can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your problems are caused by this brewer’s sea-coal

fires, and not the smoke blowing about in general in the city?”

“But his chimney is so close! The other sea-coal smoke everywhere doesn’t help, that is true

enough.”

“Now, do you have the measurements certifying the distance from the chimney of his brewery to the

edge of your house?”

Puck looked at me.

“Let’s go”, he said with a little smile.

A few minutes later we were outside again.

It was the afternoon, and a chilly spring day.

We flew lightly through the streets. I was enjoying this interesting dream, but my pleasure became

intense as we neared a large round wooden building on the other side of the Thames River. A black flag

was flying from a little turret that stuck out from the thatched roof of a structure that seemed to be on a

building inside the roofless round building.

People were streaming into the theater all around us.

Women were selling apples from baskets. There were stalls with beer.

“A play?”, I asked, “is it one that he wrote?”

“Of course! The black flag means it’s tragedy.”

I started to worry. What if it was a difficult one? I had not been able to manage to get all the way

through Coriolanus and Timon of Athens in Professor Greybard’s class. I had tried, but the gloom had

defeated me. I had always preferred the comedies.

“Is it Hamlet?” I asked, fearing the length but looking forward to the prospect of seeing the definitive

Shakespearean play, what I thought of as his signature work. If this happy time-travel dream could occur

only once, then Hamlet would be my choice, if a comedy was not possible.

“Sorry, no”, said Puck, as we headed inside, “it’s Romeo and Juliet.”

I felt relieved. I had seen the all the Romeo and Juliet movies, the recent ones and the older ones,

about eight times each. I had memorized many lines and read the play more than four or five times.

Romeo and Juliet was not hard. It was Shakespeare’s most popular play.

Chapter 10

Juliet: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,

Towards Phoebus’ lodging; such a waggoner

As Phaeton would whip you to the west,

And bring in cloudy night immediately.

Years ago, growing up in suburban Connecticut, I had enjoyed a magazine for girls called Teen

Beauty. Teen Beauty had stylish fun clothes, of course, but it also had interesting articles and pop

psychology quizzes. One article was called “How to Tell If Your Boyfriend is the Wrong One”. And one

sure way to tell if he was the wrong one for you, according to Teen Beauty, was if he never wanted to

meet your friends or spend time with your family for celebrations or holidays. This type was sure to want

you alone with him only, be rude to your family, slight your friends, and eventually you would wake up to

reality and leave him.

Now I was lying in bed, and thinking about the performance of Romeo and Juliet I had seen at the Globe,

and for some strange reason, this Teen Beauty article, something I had read decades ago, kept annoyingly

invading my thoughts.

O.K. I decided to let my mind freely wander; I would let my thoughts go where they would, naturally, the

little stream of water gurgling and gushing in splashes downhill could go where it wanted. How would

Romeo have scored on the “How to Tell If Your Boyfriend is Wrong for You” quiz, anyway?

Suddenly, with a start, I realized something.

Romeo and Juliet, when they were together, were never to be seen or heard talking to others!

Others, especially the Nurse, might be nearby, or calling to them, but the interaction with others was

not really functional. There was a sealed-up, hermetic quality to their scenes. They conducted their

dialogue always in private. Why?

Was Romeo a “bad boyfriend”? (This was ridiculous)

Or was there another reason for the way their scenes were so isolated and separated from all the other

scenes?

I got out of my futon and wrote down their scenes in a list:

I. Romeo and Juliet meet at a party

II. The Balcony Scene

III. The wedding with Friar Lawrence

IV. The Farewell Scene

V. The Tomb Scene

I was stuck there. How to proceed? I let my mind ramble freely back to the performance.

Thinking back to the smoke I had seen over the Globe Theater, I remembered something odd about

Romeo’s words when he was in love with Rosalind at the start of the play.

I opened my Riverside Shakespeare, a legacy from Professor Graybard’s wonderful class, to the

first act of Romeo and Juliet.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs

Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes,

Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with loving tears,

What is it else? A madness most discreet,

A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

“Smoke,” “choking gall” and “the fume of sighs” all were in Act I, scene i, and all used to describe

Romeo’s disappointed love for Rosaline. In the same Act, other characters also reinforce the idea by

describing Romeo (only in this scene, where he lingers under Rosaline’s influence) in similar dark imagery:

Romeo, “makes himself an artificial night”, an image that recalled for me the coal-blackened London sky.

Images of darkness are numerous and overwhelming: Romeo “steals himself…away from light”, “locks

fair daylight out”, his humor is “black and portendous” and “he is like a bud, bit with an envious worm”

who cannot “dedicate himself to the sun”. All in Act One. And who saves him from his dire, unproductive

love for this dark, smoky and emotionally cold woman who is never given any lines to speak, who is

essentially banished from the text?

Shakespeare’s idea, the perfection of the puzzle, and the answer to the riddle found an answer in a

line I knew well, now that I had learned to engage it from the starry infinite sky.

Juliet is the Sun!

Why did my thoughts return always to the sky?

The actors had shouted their lines above the din of apple sellers and the crowds. And without

electricity and microphones, some words were particularly distinct and clear: the words at the ends of the

lines, for example.

Juliet is the sun.

And now that I saw in the secret play who Juliet was, and who Rosalind was, then I also knew, of

course, who Romeo was. What had Friar Lawrence said to him? I leafed through the play until I came to

the lines I remembered from the performance at the Globe.

“Romeo, come forth, come forth thy fearful man

Affliction is enamor’d of thy parts,

And thou art wedded to calamity”

Romeo was us, Mankind.

That was why the scenes with the lovers were separated and conducted in private.

Man met the Sun, and worshipped it. Then, Man became separated from the Sun with Christianity,

which banned direct nature worship. That is why Juliet is on the balcony.

Man left the Sun, then. Romeo leaves Juliet in the morning. The age of agriculture is giving way to

the age of coal and industrialization.

Now I knew why Shakespeare’s ghost was emphasizing coal and coal smoke.

One day, it seemed, Man would go in search of the Sun again. That was the tomb scene. It did not

look like an easy process..

What did it all mean?

Affliction and calamity! A tomb!

I was pretty scared,

I heard a slight cough behind me. There he was. He smiled, my ghost. He looked haggard and

exhausted, even for a real ghost. His skin looked more translucent than usual, his eyes bore shadows, his

hair had an unkempt appearance. His shirt was untucked, his cuffs undone.

“William!” I cried, instantly forgetting all about Mankind’s plight, our Afflictions and Calamities, and

my own ones too, “whatever is the matter? You look terrible!”

“Ah, my dear Viola, will you not now agree with me that the truest poetry is the most feigning?”

“That I am beginning to understand,” I said, “But why do you look as though you had not slept well?

Actually, you have never told me, but do ghosts need to sleep?”

“Perhaps I have not been taking the proper rest I should have, that all spirits should have. I have been

anxious a bit while you traveled through the ether with Puck. He is sometimes careless, or too quick.

What would you see, learn, and do: I had an idea and I gave him instructions, yet I was bound to wonder

if you both could manage this journey. And then, truthfully, I have been quite worried that you might

draw the wrong conclusions and become depressed or despairing. I’m afraid this has already happened, in

fact.”

“The wrong conclusions? Whatever might those be? I don’t know what you mean.” I said, my voice

coming out in a funny hollow pitch. I was desperately trying to sound as though I had no idea what he

was talking about. I didn’t want him to think me stupid or naive!

This Ghost could see through any lie, though, it was no use for me to try to hide my alarm. He started

laughing at me. Then he deviously aimed one of his famous lines at me, mocking my attempts to play act.

“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?”

The ghost ignored his own witticism, then answered himself in a silly playful parrot’s voice, at once

making my heart turn over inside my chest when the name of our star came up.

“Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun”, he said.

He knew I knew! Now his voice was ragged, pointed, and full of emotion. Was he some sort of a

villain after all? What a strange being, so giddy, so raw, a kind of monster and an angel all at once. I could

hardly comprehend it or match his wits and his unbounded range with my ordinary and plodding human-

sized mind. Now I, too, was being victimized by the antic genius Prince Hamlet, or rather by the ghost of

his alter-ego. Another English major’s fantasy at last come true, or perhaps, rather, an English major’s

nightmare.

I was so shaken that I couldn’t speak.

“Viola! Do you not admit that you feel a bit worried about the ending of Romeo and Juliet? I really can’t

help you until you admit your fears to yourself and discuss them openly. With me, that is.”

“Good heavens! “, I exclaimed, “You sound like a modern psychotherapist!”

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears! I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him!”, the

ghost declaimed this speech kneeling a bit, and swaying, one arm spread out like a politician’s.

I saw that there was no hope for me to hide. I feared he was going crazy. The longer I waited, the

more that I tried to pretend that I wasn’t worried, the more antic and unbearable became the disposition of

this Ghost.

I sighed. Then I began to try to make him understand my feelings. I wasn’t good with feelings. I was

a person who would rather be quiet and in a corner alone with my fears. Or Google them later.

“Yes”, I said, forced to speak, “I will admit that Romeo’s suicide looks very frightening to me, now

that I know who he is really.”

The Ghost looked calmer, and pleased.

“Let’s go back to the beginning. Tell me exactly what you’ve found in the play”, he said. I picked up

my Riverside and opened it to Romeo and Juliet. I would need to quote evidence,

“ I think I’ve found an interesting History of Mankind in the play. Man meets the Sun. This is where

Romeo and Juliet use the language of worship---you know, palmers, saints, prayers, faith, religious

terms. I noticed, by the way, that Benvolio calls the sun “the worshipp’d sun” in Act One. That was very

clever of you to slip that in early.”

“Thank you. Very good. And then?”

“And then the balcony scene is the golden age of agriculture, with Juliet above, she talks of her

bounty as boundless as the sea, does she not? And doesn’t Romeo compare her to a bright angel, a

winged messenger of heaven who bestrides the puffing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air?” Here

I was sounding like a lawyer reading from a document while presenting evidence in a court. How terribly

unromantic these words of love could also be! I felt like Portia.

“She is no longer a god, is she?” I asked.

“No, she is not. Christianity has arrived. Nature religions are gone, at least from Europe.”

“That is what I thought” I said.

I went on, dryly, scanning Romeo’s early lines in Act 2 for other evidence, “Note the white-

upturned wondering eyes of mortals, the brightness of her cheek, the airy region stream so bright, her

eyes in heaven, etcetera, and so forth. And you even have Romeo mischievously divulge her identity

when he says ‘Juliet is the sun’. It was very clever of you, indeed downright devious, the way you

managed that.”

“Thank you” he said, looking pleased.

“We have all thought it was simply a metaphor for centuries on end! Whole libraries of books have

been written on that metaphor without anyone guessing that what you really meant was the sun is Juliet.”

I was suddenly feeling like an odd literary version a detective in a whodunnit who explains the

hidden machinery involved in a strange escapade perpetrated by a mastermind. But this mystery had

straddled centuries and as a detective, I had done nothing..... but encounter a restless spirit and a work of

art.

“Yes, I am well aware of that. And then?” said the Renaissance mastermind.

“And then Romeo leaves her----that is to say, the Sun--- after the wedding. He is sent into exile from

her. He says ‘I must be gone and live or stay and die’. Once people had started burning coal and become

more and more dependent on it, there was no going back without economic suffering. That was

understandably unacceptable, unthinkable, of course, so England grew more and more and then later

became an Empire, using its energetic power to reach out and influence people. Hundreds of years of

history spanning many continents go along with it.”

“Yes, and after that?”

“Well, after England became an Empire, then after about 200 years it ceded its “Number One” status

to a bigger country that had much more coal and something else related to it, too, another fossil fuel,

called oil, which you may have heard of, since you seem to be up on all the news.”

“No, I don’t mean what came after the British Empire. I mean after the Farewell Scene.”

“Wait, but Shakespeare, um…I mean you….knew that eventual fossil fuel depletion meant that

Romeo, that is…Man, would be back to using the Sun again. So Juliet says, ‘O, by this count I shall be

much in years ere I again behold my Romeo!’ That was a very brilliant line. I can see you’re quite a

master at allegory. Ingenious. I must offer my congratulations. I can see that you are not afraid to work

with a large canvas.”

I hoped he would pick up my sarcastic tone. I was quite upset with his trickery, his knavery!

“Thank you. And?”

“Well, Then there is the horrible tomb scene. Ghastly, really. The sun shines as brightly as ever, that

is to say that Juliet, the sun, is quite alive. But the connection between Man and the sun, the solar

economic connection that brought Man all sorts of things, is gone, thanks to coal, which changed the land

and everything. So Romeo can’t reestablish this economic connection, and he dies. I suppose you mean

some sort of collapse, though of course, the process, I mean----- the return to the sun, could take

thousands of years.” I added, “I want to like you, what I know of you as a ghost, or a spirit or a phantom,

but after understanding this scene, I find you too severe and ruthless in your judgment of humanity. I

think your famous antic disposition might have gotten the better of you and you became a dictator and a

bitter ruler over a world of words that you conjured up in your poetic dreamer’s mind. But your world is

not my world, nor my children’s world. And here I reject your dark vision!”

Unexpectedly, the ghost looked really pleased at this.

“The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo!” he said, smiling, “However, my

intentions in the tomb scene are slightly different than your conclusions. I don’t mean that economic

issues don’t matter, of course, but your view is limited. And you have forgotten one very important scene

between the lovers. Look, Viola, look at this.”

Behind the Ghost, on the tatami mat, there had somehow materialized a large soft robe made of dark-

brown wool. Maybe because I love old textiles so much, I felt at once more hopeful and cheerful when I

saw it. Thanks to all my interest in fabrics and dyes, I knew it was old, hand-woven, not knitted, similarly

I knew at once that it was real sheep wool by the way the light caught on it. The Ghost pulled it on then

drew the cowl over his head, and stood up to tie the sash. He now looked exactly like someone whose

name I knew so very well by now. But who? In a small rush, I caught the allusion, and I had to smile.

“Friar Lawrence!” I exclaimed.

“The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night, check’ring the eastern clouds with streaks of

light….”, the Ghost chuckled mystically and looked pleased with himself.. His acting skills were

perfection.

“Ah, You mean to tell me that I forgot to mention the scene where you…that is I mean to say, Friar

Lawrence, marries Romeo and Juliet.”

“For by your leaves, you shall not stay alone till Holy Church incorporate two in one.” The Ghost

brought his hands together.

I understood suddenly.

“Ah! You are Friar Lawrence! It is you who is always working to bring them together. You write a

letter to Romeo to tell him about the true state of Juliet---that she is alive! You also promised Romeo

something about…wait a minute…” I leafed through the play and found the lines, “here it is. These are

Friar Lawrence’s words exactly, after Romeo moans about ‘O, thou wilt speak again of banishment’:

I’ll give thee armor to keep off that word

Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,

To comfort thee though thou art banished. “

The Ghost looked happier now, and I was feeling better. Perhaps Shakespeare, this ambitious ghost, was

trying to help us through the whole thing with his cosmic hand holding our real ones? To understand such

a message was a huge task, spanning centuries, or rather millennia, encumbering a whole planet, and

enormous but not inexhaustible fossil fuel resources.

It must have been our fate all along to use them!

A fate not all good nor all bad. Uneven, bumpy, though. Difficult. A struggle.

He had known…..

“My dear Viola, with Romeo’s death, and the return to the Sun, which could, by the way, take

centuries or even thousands of years, and happen very slowly, I don’t mean at all that Mankind dies. I

only mean that people may change.”

The Ghost continued. “I wrote in a little dialogue----maybe you remember it?---- that explains the

idea that Mankind finds a new path as the Sun becomes more and more important again. That is why

Romeo says

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead—

Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think!—

And breath’d such life with kisses on my lips

That I reviv’d and was an emperor.

I said that I hadn’t noticed that small piece of dialogue before. It is usually cut from films of the play.

I was quite relieved to see it. The transition process could go on for centuries and possibly much longer

than that; I really had no idea about how much fuel was left out there sitting inside the earth. It wasn’t my

concern. But weren’t people talking about wind and solar power these days too?

“Viola, I must go now. I am, as you noted, quite tired. But I am no longer worried and anxious about

you or what you may be thinking of me.” This time he chose a new way to disappear. Pulling closer to his

body the friar’s robe, everything gradually brightened around him, including the air near him. Then

slowly, the outlines of his shape dissolved, he became a sparkling point of light which got smaller and

smaller until it disappeared.

I still had so many questions.

One thing was for sure, though. I made up my mind to absolutely never tell a soul about this. Probably no

one would believe me if I did. The secret play in Romeo and Juliet was a brilliant idea of his; the whole

concept was like an amazing Renaissance puzzle box!!---- but it would be better to have it remain a

complete secret. I would not be the one to divulge the truth.

Chapter 11Then God be blest, it is the blessed sun,

But sun it is not, when you say it is not,

And the moon changes even as your mind.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no universal truth in Shakespeare’s works. I had read

enough books on Shakespeare and his plays to gather that simple and fundamental fact; every English major

on the entire planet both knew and accepted this basic elementary idea. It was a given, a starting point for

all scholars of his work. No matter what else they disagreed about, which was plenty!---- they all started

from the same basic premise: there was no coherent truth in his work.

Secret plays, hidden meanings, true intentions---there had certainly never been any indication of such

phenomena in Shakespeare! Millions of high school classes, college classes and graduate seminars had been

conducted for hundreds of years by thousands of certified literature professionals without any mention, or

knowledge, of a “secret play” in Romeo and Juliet or any other of Shakespeare’s plays. What I had found,

with the help of the ghost, was so radical that there was possibly no room for its emergence; it would upend

scholarship and accepted bodies of knowledge too much. The tomb scene, despite the Ghost’s more benign

explanation, one which I definitely preferred, was also part of a message that, because it was yet to come,

made it a prophecy of sorts, not necessarily a welcome one, there was no denying it. File away the secret

play as the

Idea that Dare Not Speak its Name!

Bury the secret in a dark cave and leave it there.

Maybe in a thousand years, someone could find it and read it and see if Shakespeare had been “right”.

A return to the sun! How crazy was that?!

And what was I to do with this information?

Should I try to write it up in a scholarly article?

No!

Instead of trying to write about this bizarre and unexpected finding---- an undertaking of utter folly---- I

thought instead of privately satisfying my desire for knowledge. As a child who loved to read books and

who had grown up during the Cold War, with all of its elements of mystery, I had always had two very

different, seemingly irreconcilable, jobs I dreamed of doing: English Literature professor and international

spy.

I was now just an obscure and impoverished expatriate English language teacher; but finally, I saw that

now here was my chance to combine the different duties of an English professor and international spy into a

perfect, secret and scholarly holistic inquiry. No danger attended this kind of work, unlike conventional

spying. Nor would it matter to me that the Cold War had ended decades earlier.

I thought maybe I should investigate Shakespeare’s other plays for similar types of secret structures. If

this secret play about the sun in Romeo and Juliet was truly so important then it was very likely I would

find this secret in his other plays as well. I was an English major, so deciphering themes, imagery, and

subtle structures should be something within my capabilities, after all. And if I ran into problems, I

guessed---and I hoped---that my supernatural friend would show up to guide me.

Nevertheless, I was longing to tell someone. This kind of secret was just too big to keep completely to

myself. I mentally listed some people I knew, then rehearsed the conversations I could expect. With quite

dismal results.

Mom, guess what, I have found out about a secret play in Romeo and Juliet. It is about the Sun

and Mankind.

How wonderful for you, dear. I am very pleased that you are doing well. You always did like

Shakespeare, I remember. What was the name of that professor at Harvard whom you admired so much?

No, not my mother!

Daddy, I have some news. I have found a secret play in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. It

is about the Sun and Man. The sun is a source of everything good, wood, fish, wheat, strawberries, rope,

roofing material, boats, and all, what we call energy today, Daddy. Well, Shakespeare knew all about it,

not in our current scientific terms, but he knew. And that is what he was writing about. He did it all in

allegorical form!

Viola, that sounds very interesting. Energy, you say? Ah, well, who knows if people back then

understood about energy? Highly unlikely. Modern science has thankfully freed people in so many

ways from their backwardness and ignorance. Shakespeare could not possibly have understood

about energy. Claiming such a thing simply strains credulity.

No, not my father either. What I had to say would just annoy him. And because it would annoy him, it

would also annoy my mother.

One year before, I had bought a very cute little dustpan made of tree bark that made cleaning such a

pleasure, and also in response to the agonies of Fukushima, I was trying to use less electricity by using a

broom instead of a vacuum cleaner. Now as I swept up some dust on the tatami mats with a broom and the

little wooden dustpan, I debated whether I should tell the children. Kaoru and Zenji would not understand

the significance of the secret solar play. Did they even understand who Shakespeare was? Like so many

modern children, they spent time on the Internet watching favorite music groups or comedy shows, but

definitely not Shakespeare’s plays. Energy and how it delivers food, clothes, warmth, paper, or books---or

the Internet for that matter---was also not particularly interesting to them, or perhaps rather they took it for

granted, as I had also.

That left one person, someone I hesitated to call, but who in some ways I still felt strangely connected

to. That someone was my husband. I wondered where exactly we stood these days with each other. We had

fought a lot, it is true. And I had even left, but not primarily because of him. Now things were agreeably

peaceful, but maybe that was only because we no longer lived together. I collected the dust, tipped it into a

garbage bag, and then made a cup of coffee. I knew I would need the strength of every drop of caffeine to

help me engage in conversation with my spouse of 20 years. Often, when we talked about any topic, no

matter how straightforward and dull, it turned into either a big or a little battle.

Now I had a topic that was obscure, strange, and unexpected. I wondered how he would take my news.

Chapter 12

Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun,

Peer’d forth the golden window of the east

A troubled mind drove me to walk abroad,

Where, underneath the grove of sycamore

That westward rooteth from this city side,

So early walking did I see your son.

I reached Kazuo in his office in one of the huge modern, glass-and-cement buildings that lined the

campus of Kurumachi University, whose academic ranking was eighth in Japan. Kurumachi University was

a national university, built in the 1960s and 1970s during the days of heady growth that had spilled over

from Tokyo, about 30 kilometers south-west, but their construction budget was enormous and the campus

was always being rebuilt and expanded. Kurumachi City was a planned city, with strong connections,

through the construction industry in particular, to the National Government, and known, in a self-

promotional way, as “Kurumachi Science City”. It was full of huge and sprawling anonymous buildings

housing national research centers of every kind: materials science, animal science, astronomy, environment,

weather and more.

The funny, quirky little piece of historical information that many residents of Kurumachi City knew was

that Kurumachi had been designed and planned, back in 1964, to copy the infrastructure of Irvine,

California. Japanese city planners had visited Irvine and been impressed with the huge and modern multi-

lane feeder roads and modernistic highways, and had copied the automobile-centric outlook when they

planned Kurumachi. But when Kazuo and I had moved there, from Tsubame, nine years before the 2011

earthquake, we hadn’t bothered to buy a car. We rode the buses and we bicycled on the bike paths, which

were extensive and safe. But in all my time in Kurumachi, that advanced and planned city, part of me had

always felt like Heidi, secretly mourning the mountains and the little green town of Tsubame, with its tiny

roads, clean rivers, and delicious drinking water. When Kurumachi became radioactive, and with Kazuo,

even before that, growing more and more stressed out from his job and impatient with my dreamy ways,

Tsubame had beckoned like a friendly woodland spirit, who would enfold me in his arms and stand me on

his forested shoulders, where I would sing with pleasure again.

How do jet pilots feel upon bailing out of a plane that they feel is no longer safe to fly? Now I thought,

after landing back in Tsubame, and slowly rebuilding my life, that I knew how, at least, to open a parachute

and crash down safely.

It was lunch time, and I knew he usually bought a sandwich at one of the many university cafeterias and

ate it at his desk.

“Hi, It’s me.”

A Pause. Nothing. Quiet. Our familiar abyss?

“Hello.”

“How’s it going?”

“O.K. Busy. How are the kids?”

“Fine. Kaoru is busy with kendo. Zenji likes soccer and his friends. And those two panda mice he has,

the ones he is always renaming.“

Pause. More silence. You didn’t call me up to talk about panda mice.

“Listen” I said, “something a bit strange has happened.”

How should I explain this? If I mention a ghost, he’ll think I’m crazy.

“What?”

“Well, I had a sudden, weird……umm….. insight into one of Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet. It

looks like there is a mysterious core of a drama, a cosmic drama, playing out the interaction between the

Sun and Man. Juliet is really the Sun. Shakespeare seems to have been aware of the idea of energy as a

source of everything we need.” I explained a bit about the four scenes that delineate Man’s interaction with

the sun: The Meeting of Man and the Sun; the Age of Agriculture; the fossil fuel-induced Exile from the

Sun; and the Return to the Sun.

“Really? That sounds kind of like a ‘Missing Sun’ myth or something.“ Kazuo sounded interested now.

“A what?”, I asked. I should explain here that my husband is an historian of religion, especially the

Japanese religions of Buddhism and Shinto. He specializes in symbolism, myths, and ceremonies. It had

never occurred to me that the Juliet-is-the-Sun figure had any mythical dimensions. Now I was glad I had

called my husband. I saw that I needed a professional to help me.

“In a missing sun myth, the story of the sun god or sun goddess’s disappearance lies at the center of the

story. When the sun goes missing can be read as an allegory for solar events such as eclipses, night, shorter

or longer days of the warmer or colder seasons, and so forth. In ancient Egyptian mythology, Ra, the sun

god, and his solar barge, travel through the underworld every night. In Norse mythology, Sol, the sun

goddess, is eaten by the wolf Skoll. And, of course, I think you have heard about Amaterasu, right?”

My husband had once told me about the Shinto Sun Goddess named Amaterasu. In the earliest sacred

Japanese myth, the Kojiki from the 8th century, she hides in a cave and without her presence, an endless

night ensues. She bars the door and those outside, who need her, are understandably miserable without her

warmth and light, but someone has a mirror or a shiny stone and gently pries open the door and holds this

makeshift mirror up to her bright golden face. She sees how beautiful she is and then she comes out of the

cave and everyone celebrates with dancing and singing.

“Umm”, I said, “sounds close, but I’m not sure. This missing sun myth in Romeo and Juliet tells about

our modern era. It’s a twist on an old theme. Not eclipses, winter, nor night this time. Fossil fuels pull us

away from the sun, temporarily it seems. “

Kazuo asked, “Are there any gods or sun gods mentioned in the play? I’ve never read any

Shakespeare.”

“Actually Shakespeare does mention ‘the worshipp’d sun’, and he mentions Titan’s fiery wheels…and

Apollo….but I’m not sure Juliet is a god. Although, hmmm”, I was now thinking fast, “ the Nurse does say

‘God forbid!’ as if she is chattering to herself when she calls Juliet onto the stage the first time. ……Oh my

God,” I exclaimed, “Juliet may be a sort of god! That would have been pretty much heretical for the time.”

Another Idea That Dare Not Speak Its Name!

“Well, not so fast”, said my husband, ever the cautious academic. “Assuming you are right about the

secret play, Shakespeare might have just been showing some sort of, uh, sensitivity to his subject, you know,

awareness of history and background and such. Where we’ve been. Contextualization. Part of the discourse.

You mentioned Apollo, the Greek sun god. But it doesn’t mean that Shakespeare worshipped Apollo,

obviously.”

“I see”, I said, feeling as though I would have a lot to ask the ghost about when I saw him again, if I

saw him again.

What did Shakespeare know and think and when did he know it and think it?

“How did you come up with that, anyway?” asked Kazuo.

“Umm, well, that’s a good question. You see, actually…..”

I reached for a quick lie, not including ghosts!--- that would sound truthful.

“I had some time to read Shakespeare again, and in the back of my mind, I was thinking about coal and

oil and images of them in stories and I noticed that the first two lines of Romeo and Juliet were rather

peculiar, about coal; they seemed so out of place and jarring. They were tiny details, trifles that no one had

wondered about before. I wondered why he put them there. In such a prime position.”

Thankfully, the lie unfurled smoothly out of my brain as if by magic, with no effort on my part to

construct a contorted story to hide the ghost’s contribution.

“Coal? Oil? What made them so interesting all of a sudden? Usually people don’t think about coal and

oil, especially in relation to works of literature. Fossil fuels are oily, sort of dirty substances….I only hear

my colleagues wailing about gasoline prices lately, and so on…..”

I was thinking fast again.

Fukushima.

Images of cranes, trucks squirting thousands of tons of water, long rows of emergency vehicles, cement

mixers, all of them heavily dependent on oil, all of them in the foreground of every shot of Fukushima

Daiichi. Didn’t they need oil and coal, its stony relative, to get the energy to build nuclear reactors and

mine uranium too?

Gregory, upon my word, we’ll not carry coals!

Of course, we had carried coals, and a whole bunch of other valuable things too, out of the ground.

And who could possibly blame us? We had good intentions, always, even when we built things like

Fukushima Daiichi. But, of course, there was an old saying about that.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And if any place on earth looked like hell, it was the mangled, tangled, highly radioactive ruins of

Fukushima Daiichi, still emitting millions of bequerels of radioactive substances every day.

Romeo: I thought all for the best.

“Well”, I said, “probably, it was because of Fukushima in the back of my mind somewhere. And yes,

Fukushima did start me off thinking about the sun more. Fukushima Daiichi, with all of its heavy cement

and metal---you know, people need machines to move those things---- seems like it is partly related to the

use of oil and coal, and mass industrialization in general. Maybe that’s why I thought of it….. Hey, here I

am, a nuclear refugee, after all.”

Over the phone line, I heard him become silent and freeze up.

Always back to Fukushima Daiichi.

It was the event where our long-frayed relationship had finally become a schism, my husband

abandoned and isolated. Our so-called nuclear family. Or a postmodern variation, maybe by now a lonely

one.

I’m sorry, part of me wanted to say, but the words would not come. Friends were still there, others I

knew. Why had I taken the plunge to leave when others were willing to live with the risk?

Because I had missed the green mountains of Tsubame, where we had lived for five years together

before my husband had gotten the job at a more prestigious Kurumachi University. I loved ancient Tsubame

with its archaic tiny twisting streets, its old wooden houses and shops, its rivers, rice fields and birds. You

could walk out of your house and soon you would find yourself dreaming along the path next to a river, no

car necessary. Being away for 10 years had only made me love this town more.

I only had succeeded in irritating him even more.

“So, Viola, what is your point? What do you want me to do about your idea? Literature isn’t really my

field, as you well know. I think you are calling the wrong person. If you want to tell me about the kids, fine,

otherwise, I’m busy. I’ve got a class in 20 minutes.”

Obviously the topic of the nuclear reactor and its ongoing troubles or what lay elementally and

energetically and historically behind it, was not a welcome one to my spouse. Whenever he says my name

like that with the word “so” in front so, Viola, I know he is annoyed.

Well, obviously, Viola! Duh! Why should it be welcome?

“Well, first of all, I just wanted to tell someone. It’s fascinating, don’t you think? I chose you to tell,

O.K.? We’re still married after all.” Now I was being defensive, and I was worried that things in this

conversation were starting to vaguely deteriorate.

“So you mean you want to write this up as, what, as a scholarly article? Do you think you manage that?

You haven’t written any papers since when?---um, graduate school, and that was 20 years ago, right? I did

advise you to try to write something academic, when you were teaching here, as I recall, many, many times.

You always said you had better things to do, but you could have had a solid and serious career by now.

What do you want to do with this anyway? Where do you want to go with this?”

He was right, depressingly right. What did I want anyway? I had imagined that he would be impressed

but instead he was---with some grounds---reminding me of my obvious shortcomings as a scholar: I had a

very short attention span, I had never followed any academic theorists or conventional scholarly practices,

nor did I have any interest in doing so. I was a dilettante, an amateur, a mere gnat whistling and humming in

the sun on the elephant’s back, the elephant being Academia, Stability, Learnedness, Standard Procedure,

Convention, Importance, Critical Practice, Excellent Grammar and Perfect Footnotes. Solid and serious

An irreverent Court Jester of Academic Prose resided in my head despite every honest effort I made to

evict him.

When I did read scholarly articles, I admit that to amuse this monstrous little clown, I rather heretically

collected some of the words and phrases I encountered as though I were collecting colorful exotic fish in an

aquarium: under the rubric of, problems attendant on, discursive formations, embedded in semantic webs,

gloss, situate his work, a negotiation of changing meanings, implicated in ongoing social processes, and my

very favorite, valorizes.

In idle moments, perhaps while I was waiting at a bus stop or washing dishes, I brought them out to

dance and perform for my own amusement, adding in or substituting prosaic words like tulips, carrots,

dinner, cat litter and socks: socks embedded in semantic webs, discursive formations of carrots, valorizes

dinner, problems attendant on cat litter, under the rubric of tulips.

Oh, God, why could I not be serious?

(And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down before them.)

Yes, indeed!

Why could I not learn to play the academic writing game too? Surely, but surely, it was a both a routine

drill and an economic venture like any other job, accounting, auto mechanics, or operating a nail salon or a

hamburger restaurant…..just a bit more difficult, a bit more of an intellectual rush. It was still just selling

something that would fit into a specialized market.

But it was not for me.

The serious academic words and ideas had lives and loves and fancies of their own, no doubt, but they

were, like fish in a tank, tantalizingly remote, vocabulary that seemed off limits to a person like me who

was too regrettably focused too much on what was real, and what I could taste and touch and feel. I needed

weather, real weather, the rain or the wind or the sun on my face, buttercups underfoot, or asphalt, mud, or

gravel even, but it had to be real.

The universe of academia, so attractive, so exotic, so glamorous and appealing in its own brainy, literate

and digressive way, could never be my world.

Even just for money, I just could not do it.

I was a geisha, a jester, a fool!

I had lately realized that I was wearing my own special invisible cap and bells, all the more powerful

because they were invisible and therefore impossible to remove. Jingling through the streets, with rings on

my fingers and bells on my toes, I was dancing my own special idiosyncratic jig that amused people----and

they paid me to talk, joke, and expound on any little thing during “English lessons” in an entertaining

way---- but this talent, or whatever it was, would never make me a published and respected scholar.

“No, not an academic paper”, I said firmly. “I can’t write one of those.” I was still the same, stubborn,

recalcitrant. We, Kazuo and Viola, were opposites. Opposites, despite what you may have heard, do not

always attract.

“Then, let me ask you again, what actually do you want to do with this. Are you baka? You don’t even

know where you want to go with this?” Kazuo sounded even more impatient and irritated. Baka is the

Japanese word for “fool”, and I was very familiar with its sting. I was always making him annoyed with my

vagueness and my unserious, languid, unfocused approach to life. In his world, projects were undertaken

seriously and with purpose. There were important things like Funding, Meetings, Symposia, Grant

Proposals and Plenary Speakers. His list of publications ran ten pages long.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll think about it, O.K.? It’s just an idea right now. I don’t have to, as you put it, do

anything with it, right?”

There was a pause. We were both glad to be living apart, I realized. Our conversations always ended

unhappily. Then, unexpectedly, Kazuo’s voice got brighter.

“Hey, Viola, because of some M.A. exams in the Area Studies Department, I won’t have to teach classes

on Thursday, then Friday is a holiday, so how about I go and visit you and the kids. It’s Zenji’s birthday on

Saturday.”

“O.K., of course, come if you want to”, I tried to sound pleasant and polite, when I was feeling rather

resentful still, “And you can see the fireflies. They’re out now on the river. They’re beautiful.”

There were no more fireflies in Kurumachi.

Chapter 13

Rosalind: They say you are a melancholy fellow

Jaques: I am so; I do love it better than laughing.

Fireflies-----here in Tsubame their lights glow pale green, tiny beams fading slowly to reappear again

in their mystical signals of “off” and “on”, a language, a dance, or both at once, signals and motions

unknowable beyond the narrow velvet universe of their dark riverbank. They have lights, it is true, but they

are nowhere plugged in, as they sail through the air. I had learned to admire them for that.

People come to the riverside to study, informally, the language of the fireflies. Crowds appear at night,

the smell of sake wafts in the air, couples murmur on the little footbridges, children address the fireflies

directly with a hypnotic, trancelike song supposed to draw the insects closer, since it tells the story of bitter

water that is ‘over there’ versus the sweet water that is ‘here’:

Hoi, hoi, hotaru, hoi

Achi no mizu wa nigai zo, kochi no mizu wa amai zo

Later, there is laughing, shouting, talking as people flooding out from the local bars stop by to observe

the esoteric communications of the fireflies, but the observations are never analyzed, lost amid laughter,

touch, and song.

In Tsubame, at the beginning of June, for two evenings, we have a well-known Hotaru Matsuri ------

“Firefly Festival”--------on a green near the river, a few stalls sell bananas dipped in chocolate sauce, yaki

soba (fried noodles), tako yaki (octopus fritters), broiled squid, balloons and popcorn. In a nearby local

community center, pottery from Hagi is sold at a tenth of its usual price. The clay in Hagi is sandy and

rough, from the piney mountains along the shore of the cold Japan Sea, and the famed pottery is

commensurately sandy and rough too, painted with a milky, rice-based glaze. I looked forward to the

discount sale, these Hagi yaki dishes had slight imperfections that were either unnoticeable or added charm.

Living right next to the river, Zenji, Kaoru and I visited the hotaru every evening. Walking Teru, we

loitered on the footbridges; I even, perhaps unconventionally, made wishes on the little lights. Zenji caught

the bugs in his hands and let them go again. Since returning to Tsubame, our lives had followed the seasons

more closely, and we sometimes, day or night, spent entire minutes watching the river tumbling along under

the footbridges. Slow and satisfying, with nothing much accomplished by the time the sun set over the

mountains, life in Tsubame was perfect I thought.

Kazuo arrived on Saturday afternoon, the first night of the Hotaru Matsuri.

He drank a cup of tea, then, energized, investigated My Housekeeping. According to him, there is dust

everywhere. Why are Seiji’s books and toys arranged so badly in a heap on the shelf? Why are the cats not

in their cage? Can’t I clean the sink a bit better than that?

Ahh. So sorry, but I am not here. I am invisible!

Expertly, I fade away, or fly away, into the margins of the very marginal tiny house---Kaoru has

mentioned insects flying around her room recently that look suspiciously like termites ----, which would be

the farthest away space on the south side of the kitchen.

The ogre stumbles around after me. Where is his cell-phone charger? What are the newspapers doing

there in a pile without a string tied around them? What have I been doing, anyway all this time? Do I not

know where the brooms are? Why does Zenji read only comic books? Why is Kaoru not studying?

But I digress.

Kazuo has two sides; a professional one that a professor, any normal and reasonable and modern

professor may have.

The other side, more private, is the side which burns hotly with a flame of fear and shame.

Fear of living in a house that has a speck of dirt, fear that everyone else has educated children and only

yours are not going to get into college, fear that your wife is not good at cleaning, or worse, doesn’t care

that much. The house should be perfect, the apron always clean and fresh, the housewife must be on duty,

the children are studying sums and equations. Or else they are practicing the piano.

Kazuo was not like this when I married him. But somehow, having children has persuaded him to be

quite fearful, nearly all the time, elementally and profoundly so, about appearances and convention. It is

like a disease of some sort, ravaging him. The disease seemed to have started when we moved to

Kurumachi, but I think, looking back, that it was incipient all the while that he was unhappily teaching at

Tsubame University, which is number 51 in the academic rankings in Japan, and therefore, as he always

said, Not Good Enough.

Yet I fear, judging by the beautiful cars, fancier outfits, and expensive lifestyles of people in their 50s

and 60s, people ten years older than Kazuo and me, that the fancy mold he aspires to was firmer and more

intact before his time. Maybe that is one reason it is so attractive to him. Because of the bursting of the

economic bubble in Japan in 1990, just as we came of age, our generation aspires to an ideal that we cannot

quite manage, however fast we run, to attain. Women must work now, and cars are smaller. And nuclear

refugees such as I must work quite hard and I have no car even, and no financial possibility to buy one even

if I could drive. And driving, moreover, is a skill I have long-ago forgotten. The recent happy and attractive

suburban material ideal has become, for my generation, a twisted grimacing sneering visage in a fun-house

mirror whose very presence but cruelly mocks the seeker, the aspirant, the acolyte, my own Kazuo.

Deny thy father and refuse thy name….

Impossible.

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love….

Hah!

Romeo! humors! madman! passion! lover!

(silence……)

Kazuo, Kazuo, tonight there is a festival.

I saw them setting up the stalls just now coming here, do you not think I know why? Do you think I am

so baka?

Chapter 14

Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish,

A vapor sometime like a bear or lion,

A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon ‘t that nod unto the world,

And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,

They are black vesper’s pageants.

Kaoru left to wander the narrow, lantern-lit streets with Chika-chan and Tamami-chan. Zenji and Kazuo

decided to go down to the area set up with food stalls and buy some yaki soba.

Left thankfully on my own, I drifted over to the community center where, outside, a long table was set

up with the discounted and donated imperfect Hagiyaki pottery, and I rummaged around, one of a large

crowd there. Soon I had selected two creamy-toned rice bowls and a light brown tea mug, quite large.

Under a striped awning in the small parking lot, a small brass band played Supai-no-dai-sakusen (“The

Spy’s Big Strategy”). The musicians were mostly middle-aged men and a few women, and the conductor

had out-of-fashion 1970s sideburns, which you will sometimes see on men in Tsubame, a town that has

stayed in the past in many ways. This festival to celebrate the fireflies is rather eclectic and new, and not a

traditional Japanese festival, where there would be drums and a procession of men carrying an omikoshi

from the shrine.

I had intended to go home, but instead I turned right at the river and found myself on a road leading up

to the mountains. Something about the twilight, the milky translucent color of the sky, the trees on the

nearby mountainside, like pointed castle towers enclosing secrets, and the dark-green ribbons of green

hedges after I had crossed Route 9, something with its own natural force made me continue my way.

After all, Kazuo was responsible for the children. I was free!

I was walking against the crowd, still along the river, and soon no more crowds were around me. I was

nearer to a Buddhist temple, Ensei-ji, locally famous, and soon I reached it, with its five-storied tower built

in 1524, 40 years before Shakespeare was born, all of unpainted wood, and constructed with no nails. The

gates are always open, but I was not attracted to the park-like scene within, nor the fancy shining altars in

there, today.

I rounded a curve in the road, the edge of the mountain came sweeping down, like a large hand in

greeting, and I walked a path that made a hair-pin turn, somehow feeling vaguely that my destination lay up

in this mountain. I started climbing the slope of the mountain along a path, There was a low and simple

bamboo fence here, and the path alongside was well-worn. I had been here many times before. After a few

more hair-pin turns, there was a flat area, a small ledge on the mountain, like a circle, with trees all around

and a bench on two.

By now it was almost quite dark, the sky was the purest deepest blue, but not yet black. The flat

clearing where I stood was empty, no people except for me. What was I to do here? I took a seat on a bench

and I found a wrapped caramel in my sweater pocket and I ate it slowly. Usually I have to rush somewhere:

a shop, the next lesson, home to see the children and cook dinner for them. Now I could enjoy the feeling of

being unnecessary. I could do yukkuri, be at my ease, and no one would need me or miss me for an hour or

two. In a way, I had temporarily ceased to exist. I opened my little purple cell phone. I had acquired a cell

phone after moving to Tsubame to keep in touch with Kazuo, and I had found that reading the news on it

was addictive, perhaps not always in a good way.

My cell phone was spookily dark, however. Nothing I tried could make it work. Hadn’t I just charged it

that morning?

And then I heard the sound of drums and a flute, very faint and far-off, and singing.

I turned around toward the sound and in the twilight, I saw a man coming through the trees, down a

steep path that led further up the mountain. His skin was glowing ever so faintly, just enough for me to be

sure.

“Hello!”, I called out, knowing why I had felt drawn to the mountain now. He had managed to carry out

some sort of magic attracting trick through the air, on me, pulling me here for some reason.

Drums and singing? And a forest setting? Perhaps I was to see a performance of my favorite

Shakespeare comedy, As You Like It. Rosalind, clad in men’s clothes, who mysteriously calls so often on

Jove and Jupiter, and has taken the name of his page, Ganymede, seemed to be, of all of Shakespeare’s

brave and wonderful heroines, the most independent and the boldest. Many times I had conjured up her

image in my mind when I was feeling worried, fearful, or uncertain.

What would Rosalind do?

She was confident. She opened her mouth first, without shyness----- Do you hear, forester?------and

rambled on wittily and people listened. A college classroom can be a hostile place: there are students,

almost all of them, in some classes, who have signed up for the class just because it is required, and have no

wish to be there. I have been faced with glowering frowns, rows of them, as the semester started. And at

these times, I have often put to work the thought: What would Rosalind do?

“Would you like to meet a clownish fool?” the ghost now asked me, in a quiet voice that suited the

softness of night breeze.

“A clownish fool?” I asked, trying to sound confident, “Why? Do you know any around here? I hope

you don’t mean me!”

The ghost smiled and took my hand in his cold one. He led me to the steep dark path that led up the side

of the mountain. I had never been up this path before. In the dark, I hesitated.

“It will be all right, you know.” he said gently. He started first and pulled me along. I found that when I

held his hand, my feet moved smoothly and safely over the unseen rocks and broken sticks, and around the

branches nearby. Where were we going? Up and up, and I didn’t feel tired. I felt lighter and as though I

were being pulled or pushed by many hands, not just his. Some creatures with an elemental upward force

were helping, but they seemed invisible.

A magician….most profound in his art, and yet not damnable.

The singing and drumming grew louder.

“Are we to see a performance?” I asked, feeling very hopeful.

“Something more like a party.”

“Ah.” I felt disappointed because, actually, I don’t really like parties. I never know what to say at

parties. I am at my best when I am performing for money before an audience, which is to say, in my case,

the students in any classroom where I am teaching. Moreover, and though this is trivial, perhaps, one reason

I live in Japan is because the people here generally never give parties or go to them. There is a long and rich

history of paying professionals for live entertainment, jugglers, geisha, storytellers, flutists, dancers and so

forth, and, as a lately somewhat itinerant entertainer of the less obvious kind, which is to say an English

conversation teacher, this suited me infinitely.

The ghost laughed. I supposed, glumly, that he was reading my mind again. Secrets were impossible

when your very mind was to be exposed; was this magical process like ghostly hacking, my thoughts, like

files, being downloaded into the air between us?

He laughed harder.

“My way is to conjure you, and I’ll begin with the women…..” , he said in that soft voice of his, almost

humming, pulling my hand still while turning to glance at me in the moonlight. Or could ghosts see in the

dark?

Ahh well. Now I didn’t mind so much anymore; after all, a party organized by Shakespeare’s Ghost was

sure to be very different from an ordinary party.

Begin with the women? Conjure you?

What did that mean? Were conjuring tricks to be performed? Were there to be only women there?

Or did he mean me?

Chapter 15

Heigh ho! Peter Quince, Flute the bellows-maker, Snout the

tinker! Starveling! God’s my life, stol’n hence, and left me

asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream,

past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an

ass, if he go about t’ expound this dream. Methought I was----

there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and

methought I had----but man is but a patch’d fool if he will

offer to say what methought I had…..

After 15 more minutes of walking up the rather steep path, we arrived at a small flat piece of land, a

natural feature of the mountainside. It was set against the mountainside, and ringed with trees. The

moonlight was bright, but there were also five or six torches burning brightly in special holders. All

magical---even the moonlight?

The oddest collection of beings I had ever seen was assembled in the circle of light. The ghost let go of

my hand.

“These are spirits, and among them you may see the clownish fools I was telling you about.”

My first thought was amusing, even to me, because it was so unexpected: I wish Zenji could see this.

Zenji loves Rokurokubi, Hitomekozo, and Noperabo, and here they were, fully visible, alive, and dancing, a

strange, ghostly swaying type of dance. Rokurokubi, her neck only extended a bit, was wearing a empire-

waist red velvet dress, and had her long black hair swept up in a severe bun, while Noperabo had a green

silk kimono. Her pale powdered face, with only a red mouth, looked somehow amusing, instead of dreadful,

merely a doll who was incomplete. Hitotsumekozou, the one-eyed monk ghost was wearing a monk’s

clothes: black cotton short robe and white cotton pants, and bare feet. But he was not only dancing, I saw

that he had a wooden top, which he wound with a string and then spun around on a flat rock at times.

Then I noticed another strange creature: a stout man with the head of a donkey, with flowers entwined

around his long furry ears. He was dancing too, but it was a capering, jumping sort of circular jig, with hops

and skips, and claps. His dancing partner was a deeply bright red colored, wooden-sort of looking thin and

stick-like man I recognized as a Tengu, a long-nosed Japanese folk spirit, known as a “heavenly dog”,

whose wooden statues are sometimes guarding temples. The Tengu’s dance was stiff but stylish and

modern, his silhouette, with the magnificent nose almost half a meter long, and a simple blue cotton yukata

and sandals, seemed to fit his serious, stern demeanor. He had wings on his back, with feathers.

Near a tree a man in green knee-length pants and a white tunic watched, laughed, and called out in a

hoarse voice, a fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ the forest! A motley fool. A miserable world! As I do live by food,

I met a fool, who laid him down, and basked in the sun……!

The Sun!

Suddenly I was more alert. Surely this was all part of the conjuring.

Where was this speech from? I couldn’t place it. I knew this speech, butfrom where?

This man had a handkerchief that he took out now and wiped his eyes, he was crying—or maybe he was

laughing--- and he got up and started to sing in a ravaged voice;

Who doth ambition shun

And loves to live i’ the sun,

Seeking the food he eats,

And pleased with what he gets,

Come hither, come hither, come hither!

Here shall he see no enemy

But winter and rough weather.

I now finally recognized both the speech and the song as being from As You Like It.

“Possibly……could it be……the famous melancholic Jaques?”, I asked the ghost at my side.

“I think you are right.”

Jaques started singing the second verse of the song, and this time, the ghost beside me joined in the singing,

throwing his arms out theatrically and letting his voice carry through the trees:

If it do come to pass

That any man turn ass,

Leaving his wealth and ease

A stubborn will to please,

Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame!

Here shall he see

Gross fools as he, and if he will come to me.

The ghost finished the verse and looked at me expectantly, hesitantly. I live in a country with a famously

difficult language and, as a foreigner, I have had this experience many times: someone says something to

you that you only partly understand, then he or she looks at you, waiting to see: did you get it?

“Very good”, I said slowly, and then something inside my head went crash, or exploded; a stubborn

Will to please……any man turn ass…..Will, Will. Will.

The Will of the Sonnets!

A stubborn Will to please!

He was one of them. Shakespeare was one of them. Underneath his brilliant courtly wit, Shakespeare

was a merry fool, a champion of the sun, a clown, a court jester, like that merry fellow with the ass’s head

over there, who could only be…….Bottom the Weaver!!

That interesting little recommendation he had slipped in there in the pun, “leaving his wealth and ease.

……. a stubborn Will to please” was clearly something that would find him zero admirers. It was yet

another Idea that Dare Not Speak Its Name.

Wealth and ease was what we all liked. Me included.

London in Shakespeare’s time was an increasingly urban world that relied more and more on coal as its

main fuel. A world of wealth and ease.

Rural places were being enclosed for sheep farming and other crops that could be used to make money

for the land-owners. The people who had lived off the land were sent away, to drift, beg, or go to the cities.

And loves to live i’ the sun?

That wasn’t an option available to most of us now anymore.

Without oil or coal, life was full of hardships that most people, me included, would find unbearable. Yet

it had once been the norm.

A miserable world?

Whose world, now, was he calling miserable?

I have always been able to see right through hypocrisy, no matter how cleverly it is disguised.

“You didn’t exactly shun ambition, though did you?” I said severely to the ghost.

“Well, no, I suppose not.”

“And you must have burned a few coals, or more than a few in your time”, I said accusingly, “meaning

that you hardly, as you so comically put it, lived i’ the sun either.” I found that I was upset, and my tone was

irate.

“Sometimes, yes, I did burn coals for fuel. We all did. We had to. That was all we could afford.”

“Then you can hardly make any honest claims to be the voice of a solar energy advocate.”

The ghost looked sad. “Now you know how agonizing it all was for me,” he said simply. “I had to try to

champion something that couldn’t be saved, and even while I was already well separated from it. So many

of us players and performers were in the same position, and we couldn’t go back to our villages. Things, in

an economic sense, had already gone too far. I thought I would just adopt the outlook in my art, looking

down the road, far, far ahead. I guessed it would be a very, very long time..”

“I see” I said coldly, “I cannot say I am sure of your sincerity. Sometimes I see what you have done as

merely taunting everyone.”

That wasn’t strictly what I thought. His strange visits were helping me, at least, to feel less alone, less

bitter about my sad marriage and my impoverished life as a nuclear refugee. Fukushima was a giant human

failure, and ondanka ----Climate Change----was another. But if even Shakespeare had been tormented by all

the difficult decisions and choices that people were faced with when they encountered fossil fuels, maybe

then, just that he stood solidly with us in our suffering was enough to be of some small use?

Maybe that was why Jaques was so melancholy, though he was aligned with the sun, which somehow

brought out the foolish, the jesterish and the lighthearted in people.

A miserable world? Perhaps, but at least we were not alone.

Bottom the Weaver came dancing near me. The Ghost beckoned him over and he stopped while the

Ghost whispered something in his ear. Bottom smiled, nodded, then cleared his throat and called out,

“Ahem!” Noperabo, Rokurokubi and Jacques came near to listen, then Bottom raised one hand

bombastically in the classic style of a Roman orator and declaimed slowly:

The raaaa---ging rocks

And shiv--vvvering shocks

Shall breeeeak the locks

Of priiiison gates

And Phibbus’ car

Shall shiiiine from far,

And maaake and marrrr

The foolish Fates.

Rokurokubi snaked and bobbed her long neck and her head mischievously around the audience in time

with the rolling “r’s”. Everyone clapped when Bottom gave a deep bow at the end. The Ghost looked at me

expectantly. The light from the torches gave his face hollows and black shadows, and made him seem

ethereal.

I said “It’s from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘a part to tear a cat in, to make all split’. That’s all I

remember. Bottom is hamming it up, trying to show how he can play a tyrant, is I think what the point of the

speech is.”

“And how about the fellow named Phibbus he mentioned?”

“Of course I know, that is Phoebus Apollo, the Greek God of the Sun. He had a golden chariot -----that

would be the sun-----and pulled it across the sky.”

“Phibbus’ car…...shall shine from far”, the Ghost said softly. By now the torches were burning low and

the moon, risen higher, cast a fainter, colder sheen on his face. He looked tired. I suppose it was all taking

longer to explain to me than he had thought. I am not always quick to catch someone’s intended meaning.

But this time, at least, his aim had not missed its mark.

Juliet herself, I knew, had mimed holding the reins of that same famous golden chariot many times, on

stage.

Gallop apace, you fiery steeds, towards Phoebus’ lodging.

Juliet is the sun.

But Juliet wasn’t the only sun. Bottom was another one. Jaques too.

There were likely other sun figures in other plays. This theme seemed to span all his work. Whoever had

it been----who was the brilliant creature who had said-----who had simply decided one day---that there was

no coherence in Shakespeare?

There was. Simply it was a secret, or else, perhaps, it was positively and cognitively inaccessible to a

world running on coal and oil.

The Idea that May Not Speak Its Name.

Mention the sun and no one will think twice about it; it seems like a convenient trope----the sun is

always present in the sky---- to hang any speech on, to tear a cat, to make all split. But sometimes, if a

Shakespearean character mentioned the sun or made a speech about the sun, I now understood that it might

subtly indicate a special status of that character: that character was the sun. It was a shocking and cosmic

idea for an English major, any English major, to have to encounter.

I wasn’t ready for this!

“I see”, I said, feeling a little dizzy, “Bottom is the sun in his play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Jaques

is the sun in his play, As You Like It. Juliet is the sun in Romeo and Juliet. That’s the easy one. You give it

away when you wrote Juliet is the sun!”

“Yes.”

Now I wanted to know more.

“Is there only one sun figure in each play?”

“Yes. Because the Earth has only one sun, our sun.”

A local habitation and a name.

All of this information was most exciting. “Can you please tell me more about all of this, what you have

done and how you managed it all? As you may know, I was an English major back in college---I even went

to graduate school, although, sadly and regrettably, only for one year--- and I think, as a trained , umm, err,

semi-professional in the field, I will be able to understand you, even if you use rather technical words to

explain.”

“Another time,” he said with a small and mysterious smile.

For some odd reason, this Ghost wouldn’t tell me his secrets directly, but rather he enacted them; he

performed them……..

My way is to conjure you…….

The singing and dancing continued. Bottom waltzed past again, this time loudly singing a silly song

about ‘the finch the sparrow and the lark’. Next, a creature I recognized as a Kappa, a Japanese river spirit,

emerged from a small brook behind a tree. He was dripping wet, with a dish full of cucumbers on his head,

and in his webbed hand he also held a cucumber, the favorite food of Kappas. He started to merrily crunch it

while singing and dancing a soggy jig; suddenly he threw a cucumber to Bottom the Weaver, who caught it

as he danced and sang near the Kappa and held it up and made it into a horn on his head.

Next to a tree, an old woman I hadn’t noticed before, in long brown skirts and a wide veiled headpiece

clapped her hands merrily at this sight. Who was she? The tree branches swayed and the leaves shook and

whispered.

Shake, quoth the dove-house, they seemed to say.

I had to laugh as I realized the answer.

Of course! Another clown figure! This old woman was not the sun figure of Romeo and Juliet, (that was

Juliet, of course)----- but the clown figures would usually be aligned with or close to the sun figures----and,

as Juliet’s Nurse, she was Juliet’s confidant and companion. I was thrilled to be catching onto the secret

‘architecture’ , or ‘geography’, which seemed to underlay the structures of the plays. I knew there was so

much more to learn, of course, but now, I had a start. The forest itself tonight was giving me answers.

….tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Then, suddenly, behind the melancholic Jaques, in the darkness, I caught sight of a strange figure, a

man, I thought, who was dressed in a monk’s dark brown cowl and robe. I had almost missed him in the

darkness. His face was facing away from the light of the torch, so his features were quite obscured. Which

character of Shakespeare’s could he be? I wondered. He looked alone, in contrast to all the others, who were

all engaged in the reveling in their peculiar ways. He stood next to a tree. Was he looking at the sky or was

that only a trick of the torchlight? His demeanor was lonely, and a mysterious sadness seemed to possess

him.

Who was he?

Chapter 16

Rosse: Ha, good father,

Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,

Threatens his bloody stage. By th’ clock ‘tis day,

And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp.

Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,

That darkness does the face of earth entomb,

When living light should kiss it?

Old Man: ‘Tis unnatural,

Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last,

A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl kill’d.

The ghost took my hand in his cold hands after a few more minutes had passed. “Come”, he said, “I’ll

bring you back down the mountain.”

“I don’t want to leave”, I said honestly. This world of dreams, shadows, spirits, and conjured illusions

was much more fascinating than my real life. But then I noticed with surprise something crashing noisily

through the tree branches above us, and I looked up to see the Tengu flying away, flapping his wings.

Folklore held that Tengus could fly, and now I saw it was true. And when I looked back at the clearing, no

one was left, and the torches had been extinguished; except for the distant orb of a moon above, all would

have been dark.

The performance was over. Picking up my canvas bag that held the discount hagiyaki, I followed my

host to the path that led down the mountain.

I was still curious, and now I saw my chance.

“By the way, who was the downcast man in the monk’s robe and cowl, whose face was obscured in the

shadows?” I asked as we started down the path.

“A friend, and a friendly spirit.”

“Was he in your plays or was he someone else entirely?”

“Both, entirely.”

“I see”, I said, though I didn’t see at all, “Did he have a name?”

“Ahh, yes, quite a name. Back in our day, yes, his name was well known. Though not everyone agreed

with him, most unfortunately for him. But I did. I knew he was right.”

“Will you tell me who he is?”

Instead of answering my question, the ghost let go of my hand, and veering gracefully to one side, he

magically stepped through the trunk of the tree to his left. The tree closed over his form and he was gone.

No longer surprised by his strange comings and goings, I realized that I had nearly arrived at the place

where he had come to get me earlier. And from there it would be an easy walk along well-worn paths; then

I’d be off the mountain and headed home.

I had more questions than ever now. Knowing about the secret play about Man and the Sun in Romeo

and Juliet had only made me more eager to learn about other hidden structures in the other plays. I couldn’t

wait for the ghost to contact me again and give me more clues and ideas through his conjuring acts.

However, I doubted that the ghost would try to appear when Kazuo was around. Kazuo is not a relaxed

person; he is always worried, about dust, about Kaoru’s grades, about everyone eating enough vegetables in

the morning, and other trivial things which he elevates into matter for dramatic complaining, and I imagined

that the ghost would find his presence to be tiresome. If Kazuo stayed a while, would I be able to meet the

ghost? I felt crimped and vexed. On the other hand, Kazuo, a serious scholar with a lot of knowledge, might

be able to help me with some of the myths, folklore, and historical background of the Renaissance. I decided

to quiz him as much as possible, and hope that the ghost would appear anyway, while Kazuo was out eating

at one of his beloved ramen noodle shops or taking Zenji to see an anime movie.

It was with this general plan in mind that I opened the door to our little house---at slightly after 11--

with a happy smile.

Kazuo and Kaoru were drinking green tea and reading at the table. Zenji was already asleep.

“Where were you?” they both asked.

“Oh, well, umm…… actually a friend asked me to go for a walk near the mountain beside Ensei-ji.”

“A friend? Who?”, asked Kaoru.

“Umm, another…….teacher I met recently.”

I disappeared into the kitchen and tried to make an end of this unwelcome line of inquiry by busily

stacking dishes, putting laundry into the tiny washing machine there, and washing my new hagiyaki.

The diversionary tactic worked, and when Kazuo came in to get more tea water, I started talking about

the new dishes so he wouldn’t try to ask me any more questions about the mountain.

“Very nice”, he said.

“Only 300 yen altogether.”

“Great prices.”

“Yes. A few minor flaws here and there, but who cares?”

Kazuo frowned. Would he make some sort of critical comment about my cheap taste, initiating a new

round of hostilities?

Now in the silence between us, I was wondering how to start questioning Kazuo about some of the

things I had seen that night. I decided that Shakespeare must have had a secret reason for showing ne the

Japanese youkai , or spirits, and the characters from his plays together. Afer all, why had he come to Japan,

in the first place? Surely there were other introverted middle-aged former English-major Shakespeare fans

all over the world whom he could have chosen to….conjure; but this evening’s revels had made me think

that probably the biggest reason he had chosen me was simply because…….. I live in Japan.

“By the way,” I said airily, pretending that I was trying to avoid an argument about the discount dishes,

“I was wondering about Tengus tonight. Is it true that Tengus can fly?”

In his passion to reveal his knowledge, Kazuo forgot to criticize me.

“That is what they say. Although their name comes from the Chinese for “Heavenly dog”, scholars

believe that in folklore, they were actually some sort of bird-----probably a kite, or another bird of prey----

and earliest Japanese depictions of Tengus show them with beaks, wings, and feathers and other avian

features.”

“And those beaks are why they have long noses now!”

“Exactly. The long nose was a way to humanize the bird’s beak. Their long nose is now practically their

most famous, even their defining, feature.”

Birds? Where had I heard about birds recently? I frowned in thought. A shadow of a thought flitted past

and was gone!

Kazuo continued, “And some Japanese scholars make the claim that Garuda is one of the major strands in

the ancient origins of Tengu.”

“Garuda?”

“The Hindi deity who takes the form of an eagle. Garuda is traditionally the mount of Vishnu, the

supreme god in India. Garuda is also the brother of Aruna, the charioteer of the Surya, the Hindi sun god,

and sometimes also depicted as the god of the dawning sun, or part of Surya.”

The sun! Again!

“The Hindi sun god?” I could hardly contain my excitement.

“Yes, and, naturally, since Garuda takes the form of an eagle, and the Egyptian sun God Ra was

depicted as a falcon, some scholars see Garuda, with his associations with the solar deity Aruna, as derived,

at least in part, from Ra.”

“So it all seems to go back to Ra?” I asked. “Then, maybe myths can make journeys together with

people, a kind of oral network connecting people through time and space. But travelers and generations alter

and change the myths over time to fit their local scene and traditions and needs.”

“Something like that.”

“Ra. Garuda. Tengu. In a line,” I said, “moving East, across Asia, centuries ago.” My mind tried to

comprehend the passages of people and eons. Adapting, changing, and mixing with what was there already

to make something not completely new, myths traveled in the minds of the travelers, who rode on camels,

horses and walked on foot. People laden with bags and wooden boxes, trunks, and cloth bundles, and their

own important stories: their gods, their folk spirits. Over rivers, mountains, streams, oceans, fields. The

stories and songs always followed guided, inspired, and knitted people together mysteriously and

fundamentally. Millennia before the Internet had managed to link everything electronically and in complex

detail, humans had accomplished something similar, but on a simpler scale, with only their voices and

imaginations, and powered only by the sun. Under the same sky, the same stars, the moon, the sun, and the

Milky Way, they had known and proven that they were connected.

Ra. Garuda. Tengu…all birds..

A funny shadow with an ass’s head danced a jig through my mind.

…..The finch, the sparrow and the lark!

Suddenly I remembered the reference to birds I had recently heard! It was Bottom the Weaver who had

been singing a song about birds in the forest! Was this also connected?

“Thanks!” I said to Kazuo, meaning it. He looked at me strangely. I didn’t care; I felt radiant with my

realization. Shakespeare, yet another fellow traveler, had been deliberately using old myths and ancient

powerful symbols like birds in fascinating new ways. My niesse? says Romeo to Juliet, then calls her My

nestling hawk:

Hist, Romeo, hist! O, for a falc’ners voice,

To lure this tassel-gentle back again!

Wasn’t a hawk related to a falcon? Was Shakespeare comparing Juliet to Ra? Once again, I was worried

about the references to gods in Romeo and Juliet. What had been the playwright’s intentions with falcons?

Later, after everyone was asleep, I carried my Riverside Shakespeare into the tiny dining room and

looked through Bottom’s speeches and songs. It was not hard to find the one he had been singing, in Act III,

scene 1, just after his transformation into an ass.

The woosel cock so black of hue,

With orange-tawny bill,

The throstle with his note so true,

The wren with little quill,

The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,

The plain-song cuckoo grey,

Whose note full many a man doth mark

And dares not answer nay.

Birds. They could soar up into the sky while we earthbound humans could not. They could approach the

heavens, embrace the whole wide horizon with one swoop, and hover magically in the air. No wonder

earlier humans had identified them with the gods. Birds saw everything from above and traversed all

regions of the earth: sky, water, and land. The finch, the sparrow and the lark.

Was Bottom, associated with the sun, then some sort of god, too, then? I badly wanted to ask the ghost

more questions.

With this mystery puzzling me, I was forgetful and dreamy over the next few days while Kazuo was

visiting. I spent some time reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, trying to figure out what Shakespeare had

been up to. Yet my distracted state of mind suited me. I could listen to my students, mostly bored

housewives or young people planning to go abroad, at the English language school more patiently. When

Kazuo complained about things in the house, I merely looked at him quizzically as if he were speaking a

language I no longer understood. One morning, I had just noticed something interesting in the passage

before Bottom’s song about birds. It was a line spoken by Peter Quince, the carpenter who organizes and

directs the other rustic players, and while it didn’t mention god directly, it seemed religious in a way. The

line had firmly taken over my imagination, so that when Kazuo grumbled about his socks not being washed,

I found myself responding, with a little laugh, “Bless thee, Kazuo, bless thee! Thou art translated!” This

line disarmed Kazuo, and, laughing, he left me alone---- had Shakespeare infused the line with magical

powers to ward off even husbands?

On the day that Kazuo was to leave to go back to Kurumachi, I came home from a morning of teaching

English to four men at an electronics company that was moving their operations to Malaysia. Kazuo was

looking tired and lying on a futon in the bedroom. The children were playing with Zenji’s panda mice on

the floor.

“My bus is in 15 minutes,“ he said, “I’m just having a rest after lunch. We went over to the Chinese

restaurant.”

“Well, then,” I said, “have a good trip.”

I realized that the plans I had for in-depth discussions about birds, gods, and the sun that I had been

intending to have with Kazuo had gone unrealized. Except for the first night, when he had explained about

Ra, Garuda, and the Tengu, we had talked little about anything at all, with our silences being more

comfortable, however, than the fights we used to have. Definitely Kazuo, who used to be such a fighter, had

been a bit “translated” by my dreamy focus on my new passion, my secret studies. Or was it I who had been

changed?

But sometimes, when I feel that the time is about to run out, I am able to finally act. Now was such a

time. The question relating to the lonely figure formed itself spontaneously, like a wind blowing open a

door. I had never studied much about the sun, or the history of man’s studies of the sun. I had heard of

Copernicus, of course, and Galileo. I only knew about them very vaguely.

There was no time, now, to hesitate or to add an explanatory story. In my mind, I could see the lonely

friar in his cloak in the darkness beside a tree on the mountain beside Ensei-ji.

“Listen,” I said, “before you go, I was wondering if there were any religious figures interested in

studying the sun in Europe in the late 1500s.”

Luckily, Kazuo is used to my off-beat questions, and he likes to show off his knowledge.

“Sure there were. But most of the people interested in the sun were natural scientists”, he said, getting

up, recovered, and putting his wallet and keys into the pocket of his slacks.

“Like Copernicus and Galileo, right? No, not them “, I said, musing, “I’m thinking of a priest or monk

or a friar, someone who wore a hooded robe, who was enrolled in a religious order, even.”

Kazuo glanced at his cell phone and zipped shut the case of his notebook computer.

“Well, in that case, the most important one was definitely Giordano Bruno. A Dominican Friar.

Executed, around 1600, I believe, on the orders of the Roman Inquisition.”

“Oh my god, no!” I blurted out, surprising even myself. Why did I feel such a powerful sense of shock?

I had never heard of Giordano Bruno until this moment. Now the news of his execution had suddenly

opened a hole in the ground of my emotions and I had fallen down into the darkness there, without knowing

or understanding very much. But some intuition told me to trust this sorrow………and that I would

someday know more.

Kazuo, lifting his jacket off a hook near the door, glanced at me wonderingly.

“Yes,” he said, “of course, he was burned alive at the stake. It was pretty common.”

I didn’t want to know more yet. If I were to hear, or read the details of Bruno’s execution, I would cry

for him and for my ghost, who had called him both a friend and a character in one of his plays. Which one?

A tragedy? Where was Giordano Bruno hiding, obscured in the forest of the plays, the pages and pages of

my battered old Riverside….how would I ever find him? And, by finding him, could I help him?

Kazuo was putting on his shoes.

I shook myself free of my gloomy thoughts about the dead. I needed to say good-bye properly.

Life is also and always its own kind of necessary performance art.

The kids called out, “Ja ne!” and I slipped on my sandals and followed Kazuo out the door, through the

tiny garden, and to the little road that runs along the river. When he turned up this road to the larger road

which had a bus stop along it, I stopped.

In Japan, people take a minimalistic approach to public displays of affection, and, after 16 years here, I

had become completely used to this way of going about farewells. He turned and our eyes met and held, for

a fraction of an instant, poised in this space and time. Then, was it a smile, or only a wry lift of the brows

that I caught so fleetingly on his face?

Away he walked, quickly as always.

A few minutes later, my cell phone buzzed. Kazuo and I usually converse in English, but we always text

each other in Japanese: it’s much faster to type syllables than letters. Kazuo had one question: nan de

Buruno no koto kyomi ga aru? Why was I interested in Bruno?

I typed back, ato de oshiete ageru, demo, tabun Shaykusupeeah no koto ga kankei aru!

I’ll tell you later, but maybe there he has a connection to Shakespeare!

Chapter 17O mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities;

For nought so vile that on the earth doth live

But to the earth some special good doth give:

Nor aught so good but, strain’d from that fair use,

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse,

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,

And vice sometime by action dignified.

(enter Romeo)

Within the infant rind of this small flower

Poison hath residence and medicine power:

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;

Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;

And where the worser is predominant,

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. (II.3.15-30))

“It’s about these people, they all get tricked one by one by Zantaru, a monster. Zantaru turns them into

orange smoke, then they disappear, and when they reappear they are on an island.” Kaoru had watched a sci-fi

movie at her friend, Ayaka’s, house, that day, and was telling us about it over dinner.

“Where is this island?” I asked, cracking a raw egg into Zenji’s rice bowl. Zenji loved raw eggs while

Kaoru and I never ate them raw.

“It’s in the Pacific Ocean. That’s where Zantaru lives and rules over a small town. Zantaru looks like

a huge green melon, but he has a digital display where people read his wishes and commands.”

“Oh, that sounds wonderful”, I said.

“Shima de nani yaru?”, asked Zenji. What do they do on the island?

“The people have to fight space aliens and pirates to earn a chance to go back home to Osaka. The

town has a lot of people who are time travelers, mainly from the Edo Era. Some are nice but not all of them.

One of them has a pet sea monster that looks just like the inside of a hard-boiled egg, Except for his

whiskers.”

“That’s great” I said.

Impressed, Zenji paused to look at Kaoru. Anyone who fought space aliens, or even just talked about fighting

them, was deeply interesting.

“And I suppose all of these---space alien fighters, or people, are in high school or college?” I asked.

Japanese popular movies were often targeting teenagers, a market with pocket money to spare.

“Well, Mama, yes, of course they all go to the same high school in Osaka. It’s based on a manga,

that’ s why. Mainly it focuses on this boy named Junpei, he’s a sophomore and he’s into basketball, but his

friends all have to go to the island too with him. Including Yukari-chan, who is sort of his girlfriend. She plays

the piano like a professional. She can only eat food if it has strawberries in it.”

Manga , comic books with a vast popularity in Japan, were part of the culture of the young. I had

read a few and they shared certain qualities: episodic, and with a youthful hero or heroine who was basically

clueless, but determined and cheerful. The most compelling characters often arrived from the world of the

supernatural----to confound, to enlighten, to assist, or simply to charm-----the clueless hero or heroine of the

manga.

In this case, the supernatural figure was Zantaru, the digital melon.

“I see.” What I saw was that Zantaru was someone I hoped never to meet.

I looked at Kaoru, and wondered if I should now describe my encounter with the spirits in the forest, or

about explain about Shakespeare’s ghost? Maybe I could tell her about my own time-traveling adventure? But,

then I thought, No.

People, so quick to accept the supernatural in a story or a movie or a comic book, are much less willing to

think the supernatural may be real in life.

But how about nihon youkai , Japanese spirits, like Kappa, Tengu, Rokurokubi, Noperabo, and others?

They almost seemed to have another status, not like Zantara, belonging only to a story. There was no single

author who could say that he or she had created the youkai.

Like myths, or fairytales, youkai had deep and obscure roots, and generations of people had known them,

and the youkai lived on, in a demi-world, half-way between real and fictional. I had accessed that world, with

the help of the ghost, who seemed to want to conjure up strange visions to explain his intentions. It isn’t

exaggerating to say that I had moved, partly, into this new world of visions and conjuring. My old life seemed

no longer all that I had imagined. It seemed as if, until now, I hadn’t fully understood all the invisible

dimensions that were involved in the universe.

Zantaru’s bizarre island suddenly seemed less strange and impossible after all.

The rainy season had started and the hotaru had one by one disappeared, and now we had gushing rain

sometimes and overcast skies and humidity at other times.

That evening after the children had fallen asleep, I was still awake doing some freelance editing work on

a YouTube ad for perfume.. The sound of the pouring rain outside felt refreshing and I had opened some

windows with relief to gather in the coolness of the water falling.

I went into the kitchen for another cup of tea and when I returned to the dining room on my way back to

my computer, the ghost was sitting at the table. He was humming, and he had a scroll of paper in his hands. It

was tied with a green velvet ribbon, and at once I assumed it was Elizabethan stuff, and therefore, pre-

industrial velvet. I was curious to touch it.

“May I have a look at the beautiful ribbon?” I asked, sitting down.

Outside the rain started to taper off.

“Please”, he said, untying it and handing it to me. It was soft and the green color was pale. Dyes, based on

plants, must have been much weaker and more natural then, I realized. Having examined it, I started to be

curious about the paper he was holding. It also looked old, roughly cut and thick and irregular in texture. He

unrolled it on the table and I saw an intricate hand drawing of a building. It seemed to be the sort of old

structure---a pub--- that was typical for England. There was a sign “The George and Dragon”, on the front.

The windows were panes, the roof low, the walls supported by Tudor-style beams.

“What a beautiful old drawing,” I said. “Have you been there?”

“Yes”, he said. The ghost put his pale cold hand on the drawing and pressed it firmly. Then he pulled his

hand up slowly, and, magically, the old pub came along too, raised into three dimensions. Yet, there was a

curious luminous transparency about the structure.

“It’s a hologram!”, I exclaimed happily. I felt the familiar feeling of magic and fantasy commencing

anew. How I loved this feeling!

“Oh, I have long dreamed of seeing a hologram performance!” I felt quite euphoric.

Suddenly smaller holograms in the form of people were materializing in the hologram, all dressed in the

kinds of clothes that you would expect to see in 16th century England. A courtyard to the side of the pub,

framed with trees, filled up with a few benches where the hologram people sat, some holding large mugs of

hologram ale. Some people sat at a table and servants carried trays and dishes of roast fowls and bread.

Suddenly from behind the trees I saw 5 or 6 players, all men, dressed more colorfully than the others.

Some carried banners and one had a flute, another a trumpet. They nimbly snaked through the crowd and

made their way to a small area that I saw now was a small raised platform. They mounted the platform and an

announcement was made, the banners were waved, the trumpet sounded.

“Which play will they perform?” I asked.

“It’s called Mankynde. That’s the old spelling, with a “y” in the middle and an “e” on the end.”

“Ah, yes, of course”, I said, trying to sound like I had heard of it, when I hadn’t.

I was making an effort to place this drama into some sort of historical context, but my education in the

literature of this era, probably about 1500 or so, had been limited to a single undergraduate survey course. One

name came to mind only. Someone called “Everyman”, torn between Virtue and Vice. But “Mankynde”

sounded like it might be similar.

“It must be a morality play”, I said.

“We called them morality interludes also”, said the ghost.

The performance started. I could not understand all of the language since it was quite archaic, and the

English dialect the actors spoke was unfamiliar to me. Still, the story was not hard to follow at all. A man,

named “Mankynde” was attempting to do some agricultural work in his field. The hologram actor had a spade

and mimed the action of digging. Three actors emerged from behind the crowd and, making jokes and singing

songs, they noisily elbowed their way to the stage.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Their names are Myscheff, Nought, and Now-a-days, the Vices.”

The Vices started taunting Mankynde, trying to take his spade away and hide it, distracting him from his

work, and offering him sips out of a flask of wine. They told jokes which were so broadly conveyed by

obscene body language, gestures and sounds, that the fact that I didn’t quite catch the exact words was,

unfortunately, no barrier to understanding them. They drunkenly invited Mankynde, who was doing his best to

ignore them, to do a jig with them and, then, when Nought suddenly stuck out his backside and pretended to

break wind, Now-a-Days shouted epithets and then cuffed him broadly on the head. They play-acted a noisy

brawl, with lots of loud insults and rude jokes, while Myscheff cheered them on. The audience, following,

cheered loudly too. Looking distraught, Mankynde gave up on his labors, threw down his shovel and,

dropping a bag of corn in his haste, ran off the stage. The scene broke up with the actors removing their hats

and bowing low. Then the Vices went into the audience holding their hats out.

“What are they doing now?” I asked.

“Collecting money, of course, or nuts, apples, trinkets, whatever they can get”, said the ghost with a

smile. “Players also need to eat, and theater tickets and the box office hadn’t yet been invented. The actors can

collect much more if they take advantage of the audience’s mood right now rather than waiting until the end.”

After five minutes or so, when the audience was quiet again, Myscheff went back onto the stage alone and

addressed the audience directly. Myscheff looked to be bringing terrible news, something dreadful was on its

way; Myscheff was all worked up, and gone was his merry mood of the last scene. I caught one alarming

phrase that rang out slowly, “his ABO-MIN-A-BULL PRESAUNCE!”. He bent over the audience, as if

sharing in their dread, and widening his eyes, seemed to confirm everyone’s worst fears. There was not a

sound, the audience was under his spell. But Myscheff carefully broke the spell for a moment, doffed his hat

and asked Nought, waiting near the stage to pass it around for another collection of money. The hat was

handed around again; it seemed as if the audience was being urged to pay up in order to see this “abominable”

character. Then Myscheff exited the stage, wide eyes and a finger on his lips, and the trumpet sounded again.

The players cleverly waited a few minutes for the tension to mount while the audience waited,

impatiently, for what I assumed was the climax. Then suddenly, a large man wearing goat’s horns on his head,

and with a tail made of a long piece of leather, leaped athletically onto the stage. He had fancy tall black

boots, a gold earring, a tailored jacket of red, and a knee-length black cape that he swished around in a manic

way. His hair was wildly curly. He strode about on the stage, addressing the audience directly and

confidentially, with knowing winks and funny leers. This time, I caught some of his speech:

…..for me keep nowur yowur silence!

Not a word, I charge yow, pain of all pains!

A pretty game shall be showed yow, or ye go hence!

“I suppose, dressed like that, he can only be the Devil?” I asked the ghost.

“Technically correct, although his name is more particular-----did you catch it?---it’s Tytivillus. Now

watch.”

Indeed, I watched spell-bound as Tytivillus theatrically picked up the spade of Mankynde and also the

bag of corn that Mankynde had dropped, and, tiptoeing dramatically, hid them behind a wooden box on the

stage . Then Tytivillus exited, with a broad, knowing wink, and pressing his index finger to his lips, implying

that the audience was to participate in the conspiracy to deprive poor Mankynde of his belongings.

Naturally, immediately after this set-up, Mankynde returned to an empty stage.

Alone on the stage, Mankynde looked all the more worried and lost. Where was his spade? Where was

his corn, the fruits of all his work? He made a comically pathetic attempt to look for them. A few members

of the audience called out taunts, to laughter. I saw that Myscheff, Nought and Now-a-Days were now

mingling with the audience and encouraging people to ridicule Mankynde. The Vices slowly worked their

way up to the raised platform and jumped on with glee and merriment. In Mankynde’s dejected condition,

there was a totally new dynamic at work, and he was now unable to resist the temptations of the Vices.

Myscheff, Nought, and Now-a-Days offered him a swig from their bottle and he accepted. He danced a jig

with them and tentatively laughed at their lewd jokes and obscene gestures.

I must have looked dismayed at these increasingly stupid and immoral antics, because the ghost smiled.

“Wait”, he said, “all is not lost.”

Indeed, a new character had entered, and once again, in only a moment, the dynamic changed entirely.

This player wore a long white robe and moved with a slow dignity. He had long loose curly brown tresses,

wore an ostentatious wooden cross as a necklace, and held his hands together in prayer while staring piously

up at the sky.

“Who is he?” I asked, “A priest?”

“No”, said the ghost, “he is Mercy, the Virtue.”

Nought and Now-a-Days shrank away from this authoritative figure named Mercy, and cowered at the

edge of the stage, but Myscheff used his supple body language to convey a bravado that was not

wholehearted. It was clear that Mercy was used to wielding great power. With a contemptuous toss of his

long curls, Mercy accosted Myscheff and quizzed him directly, “Why come ye hither brother? Ye were not

desired.”

Myscheff then gave a surprising speech I had trouble understanding, with lots of references to corn,

chaff, threshing, bread, horses, and baking.

Mercy cut in before Myscheff could finish, “A-voyde, good brother! Ye ben culpable o interrupte thus

my talking delectable!”

Myscheff responded insolently, “Sir, I have neither horse nor saddle, therefore I may not ride.”

But Mercy was not for a moment put off by this excuse, saying, “Hie you forth on foot, brother, in God’s

name!” He pointed majestically off stage with a motion that properly showed off the sleeve of the white

robe.

Myscheff now sprang forward athletically and shouted a cheerful challenge: “I say, sir, I am come hither

to make yow game!”

The audience was silent, now, spellbound by the two verbally sparring while the moral fate of hapless

Mankynde, who stood in the middle, remained at risk. But Mercy would not give up. No matter how many

times Mycheff twisted his words or tried to ridicule him, Mercy calmly faced him down, then, finally, Mercy

ordered him to bring back the bag of corn and the spade. Little by little, Myscheff lost his wit and his power.

He sputtered, fell silent, and then, deflated, went slinking off the stage grumbling and muttering. Exuding

fear and repentance, Nought and Now-a-Days brought back the spade and the bag of corn, and handed them

over to Mercy before fleeing off stage after Myscheff. Finally Mercy made a final solemn and pious victory

speech and put the corn and spade ceremoniously into the hands of Mankynde, who knelt down, kissed the

hem of Mercy’s robe, and promised devoutly to always follow the virtuous path in the future. The audience

cheered.

Before the audience’s attention could be lost, however, three festively dressed musicians, including the

player who had the flute, gathered on stage and started playing quite a fast tune. All the remaining players,

now no longer wearing horns or a tail, or the white robe and cross, gathered on the stage and danced

smoothly and gracefully, true professionals. Once again the hat was passed around and the audience tossed in

coins, or in some cases, apples.

Then the hologram scene suddenly disappeared, like the beam of a flashlight going out, and before I had

time to applaud, the ghost was gone, the drawing was gone, and I was left alone, holding a piece of a velvet

ribbon of an unusual light green color. It was the first tangible gift I had received from the ghost, and I knew

I would wear it in my hair.

Chapter 18

Polonius: Good madam, stay awaile. I will be faithful. {reads the letter}

“Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt that the sun doth move,

Doubt truth to be a liar,

But never doubt I love

Ever since Kazuo had told me about Giordano Bruno, I had started researching about Bruno’s

scientific ideas on heliocentrism. I had felt that, with the line “Juliet is the sun” indicating the

importance of the sun for mankind, I had a new, more scientific, perspective on William Shakespeare,

the playwright who had written that famous line and wanted to talk about our human material need for

the sun. However, I was determined to keep anything of substance that I found on the whole Bruno-

Shakespeare connection totally hidden. Primarily, this was due to the fact that I was being, step by

step, enlightened by a ghost. There is no way that one can convincingly write, in the footnotes of an

otherwise groundbreaking scholarly article, “the ghost said this on such-and-such a date”, or

“information related in a private conversation with Shakespeare’s ghost.”.

The Internet had naturally been the first place I had looked for information on Bruno, and what I

had found there was straightforward and clear. He had been born in the village of Nola, near Naples,

Italy, in 1548. He had entered the Dominican monastery in Naples in 1565, but, after becoming an

ordained priest, he had fled to Geneva in 1576 after hearing that an indictment was being prepared

against him for reading books on philosophy which the senior Dominican priests disapproved of.

Thereafter, he seems to have led a life of hardship, wandering and scholarship: he had received his

doctorate in Toulouse before going to Paris in 1581, followed by a sojourn in England, including

London and Oxford, in 1583. In 1586, he traveled to Wittenberg and lectured at the university there,

followed by Prague and Frankfurt, and then on receiving an invitation from a Venetian nobleman

named Mocenigo, Bruno had returned to Italy. It was implied, but not proven, that Mocenigo had laid a

trap for Bruno: the Roman Inquisition wanted to try him for his heretical ideas in the many books he

had written and published. Bruno’s trial lasted eight years; he was transferred from Venice to a prison

in Rome and then on February 17, 1600, he was led to a public square, the Campo del Fiore, in Rome,

and burned at the stake, after having a nail driven through his tongue, the penalty for heresy.

Bruno’s scientific ideas were interesting and so stunning and advanced for his day, that I

wondered why my high school teachers had never discussed him. I wrote a short list of the ideas of

Bruno’s that I found most interesting. My list looked like this:

1. Bruno was the first to claim that there was no heavenly “quintessence”, a separate totally

different kind of matter, radically separate in qualities from matter on earth.

2. Bruno claimed that the sun was a star.

3. Bruno said that the sun was in the center of our solar system and that life on earth

relied on the heat and light of the sun.

4. He claimed that the universe was infinite and that there were no heavenly spheres, or

separate regions, which were a sort of lid or wall, behind which the Christian God and the angels

were supposed to sit.

5. He saw the universe as one infinite whole, the earth as a tiny part of it, not at the center.

In Bruno’s ideas, I saw the whole strategy of Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet was

understandable as a thematic whole---- mankind getting basic energetic support from the sun for

life, with a small detour ‘away from the sun’ to use fossil fuels for a certain finite amount of

time-----once you looked beyond the isolated parts and examined the play as a whole.

My problem was how to connect the plays of Shakespeare with the ideas of Giordano Bruno in

a more detailed way. There were little hints, such as the line Romeo says to himself when he

secretly goes back to the Capulet’s house:

Romeo: Can I go forward when my heart is here?

Turn back, dull earth, and find thy center out.

Shakespeare was talking about the new science of the solar system, but so sparingly, so lightly,

that it was difficult to penetrate through to this science, which was just in its infancy in Europe at

the time. Combing through the play, I found another example of Juliet, as a baby, whose actions can

also be read, in code, as the movement of the sun:

“Yea,” quoth he, “dost thou fall upon thy face?

Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,

Wilt thou not, Jule?”

Even these words, reported by Juliet’s nurse’s in Act 1, seem to have been able to convey an

aspect of the sun: it has a “face” and it “falls backward” as the afternoon progresses.

A few days later, I happened to be in the shotengai of Tsubame. The shotengai is a long old-

style “marketplace”, a double row of shops, with a long walkway between them, and a roof of

cloudy glass overhead. Each shop is slightly different, owned individually, and has a residence on

the second floor, where the shop keeper may reside. The shotengai in Tsubame is over fifty years

old, and it winds along and takes 30 minutes to walk in its entirety, through the middle of the town.

About one-fifth of the shops are vacant now, since the heyday of the shotengai has long passed, but

many still struggle on, and some are even doing quite well. The shotengai was built before the era

of the automobile, so there was no parking originally, although a few small lots are now to be found

scattered here and there behind buildings. This lack of organized automobile parking gives it quite a

different feeling from an ordinary mall, and now that many young people here in Japan cannot

afford cars, its haphazard design and central location seems almost prescient. Bicycles are

everywhere, of course, and have been from its start. That is why it suits me so well. I have a black

Miyata 3-speed that I am very fond of, but no car at all.

I was walking my Miyata, on my way home. Owing to the naturally hilly topography of

Tsubame, the wide path down the middle of the shotengai is a sakamichi, a slope. If I have a heavy

basket of groceries, it is easier to walk up this slope than it is to ride.

I was near the eyeglass shop “Shiraishi”, which also sells clocks and watches, and has pink

interior walls and big glass windows, hefty doses of polished glass wherever you happen to look.

Up ahead, I saw an old Buddhist monk, bald, with a straw hat and a black silk prayer robe, and

white hakama pants, walking rather slowly down the middle of the shotengai, coming towards me.

He was ringing a little bell and carrying a dish for alms. From the women’s clothes shop,

“Sonoya”,that sells casual, slightly expensive cotton outfits, emerged a thin middle-aged woman in

a stylish green cardigan and plaid skirt. She bowed, dropped some coins in the monk’s dish and

paused; he also bowed and said a prayer in her direction, over some beads he carried in his palm.

I also wanted to donate money to the temple through this monk. I had hopes that the prayer he

would bestow on me would bring me good fortune. I needed some help with my life in every way:

financially, I was poor; in love, Kazuo and I had all but formally separated; in my literary quest to

link Bruno and Shakespeare, I was puzzled and stymied, an obscure and impoverished independent

scholar with no credentials.

I calculated that I did have time to put my bicycle to one side, take out my money, and make a

beeline for the monk as he would pass me. But then a sudden shyness made me wait. Doing that

would make me look as though I were in desperate need of a prayer. The woman in the stylish

green cardigan had strolled out of her shop casually to seek her prayer; my own dash from parked

bicycle to passing monk would make me look like a person nearing the end of all her resources,

and, why advertise the sad fact? What if I were seen by someone I know dashing across the path for

a prayer? How would such behavior look?

But what was this? Here swerved the monk towards me. Into view came the smaller details of

his straw hat, a black band around his chin that was a strap to keep the hat on his bald head. His

black silk robe, sewed with geometrical designs to reflect the varying shapes in the universe, was a

bit translucent, showing a white robe underneath. I noticed his clean-shaven chin, his Adam’s apple,

and on his feet, I noted his straw sandals, purely made of straw and nothing else, bound up to his

ankles. For thousands of years, this fashion had been unchanging, and now here, today, I could see

it so close! I felt a thrill, a sense of gratitude, and then something unexpected happened. The monk

was holding a piece of ordinary white paper, that was folded up. And he reached out his hand and

put the paper in my hand. I was so surprised that I did not have time to react, to try to return it

(which would have not been polite), or even to thank him (which would have been polite). I stood

there, amazed, as he bowed and said a prayer in my direction and then turned and walked away.

Hastily opening my bag, I got out my purse, thrust the paper down into the bag, kicked down the

kickstand of the bicycle, and ran to the monk’s retreating form while opening the purse. No longer

did I care what anyone around me thought, or what impression I was giving. I took out two or three

coins and threw them into the bowl of the monk, who bowed again and said a short prayer one more

time. Then he walked away.

Musing, I returned to my bicycle. I took out the paper, unfolded it, and read it. There was a

name and a cell phone number, both written with an ink brush, shuji style: 山口　道子　先生　０

五０　０四二三　一五六四

I translated the Japanese into romaji:

Yamaguchi Michiko sensei ０５０－０４２３－１５６ 4

A sensei?

What sort of teacher was she? And what would I say if I called her? “Hello, I was given your

phone number by a Buddhist monk whom I had never met before.” Then what should I say after

that?“

……Nice weather we’re having?

I looked at the number again. Something looked familiar about it. Suddenly I realized!

The last eight numbers of the phone number were William Shakespeare’s birthday!

April 23, 1564.

Chapter 19

Thunder and lightening. Enter three WITCHES

1. Witch: When shall we three meet again?

In thunder, lightening, or in rain?

2. Witch: When the hurly-burly’s done,

When the battle’s lost and won.

3. Witch: That will be ere the set of sun.

…………………………………………………..

1. Witch: Speak.

2. Witch: Demand.

3. Witch: We’ll answer.

Should I dial the number?

Some people turn to Tarot cards, they visit a fortune teller, or else they roll dice when they want

to get a clue to the best course of a future action. For me, my favorite way of divination was to open

to a random page of one of my books. I liked using Tsurezuregusa, called in English, Essays in

Idleness, by a Buddhist monk named Yoshida Kenko in the 14th century, but I did not have it on

hand. Tsurezuregusa I borrowed from the library often, but I did not own it. I could have turned to

my Riverside. Yet, since the issue at hand was about Shakespeare, I felt that it was not an unbiased

player.

My problem of the moment was not just whether or not to call, but also what to say to Professor

Yamaguchi when I would call her. I had found out on the internet that she was a Professor of

Renaissance Philosophy at Tsubame University.

I wanted a book to give me an idea of what to say as well as whether to actually go ahead.

I looked around my room for a book to use for divination. Wuthering Heights? The DaVinci Code?

No….

A large coffee-table book about Kabuki theater caught my eye. I had been reading it and enjoying

the amazing plot summaries. Surely my own story was just as strange. My problem seemed, to me,

kabuki-esque: theatrical in that I needed a good story to tell this professor. Also I would have to

become a bit of an actor to tell it convincingly.

I clutched the large book and opened it dramatically, like a wizard casting a spell. My eye fell on a

photograph from the play Sagi Musume, where an onnagata, an actor who plays woman’s roles, is

dressed in a white kimono. Her hair is long and disheveled and she plays alone on the stage. I read the

photo caption:

The scene shows a heron, in the shape of a young maiden turning into

a spirit and returning to the sky. The hair falls loose, showing that the

actor plays a supernatural role.

The caption seemed to be not entirely auspicious for me. It was basically a variation on a “mad

scene” (such scenes are central to Kabuki and lots of Kabuki plays contain them). The heroine, who

is really a heron, hovers between this world and the spirit world, discoursing at length with both.

Her performance will end with her theatrical collapse on stage, a pose, no doubt, but hardly

promising.

Oh dear.

Never mind!

I was also discoursing with the spirit world. One ghost and now a strange monk.

Luckily, unlike poor Sagi Musume, no one knew about my ghostly adventures.

So I had that going for me!

I was conducting it all in utter secrecy. And the message I was no doubt getting was: keep it up!

All is going well!

The message coming to me through the book was: go for it!

My interview with Professor Yamaguchi was to be conducted in a playful, free, and sportive

spirit, like a dance on a stage. After all, Professor Yamaguchi, or any of us, is sure to be a performer

or actor of a kind, are we not?

Not just me, then, you see.

I decided that my efforts to get to the bottom of the Shakespeare-Bruno question, like my own

love for literature or my feelings of love for my husband, would have to be uncertain, incomplete,

defined by absences as much by presences, by misunderstandings as much by understandings:

piecemeal from the start. I would conduct it all in the spirit of Sagi Musume, like a dance, or a

performance, tentatively feeling my way forward on my own makeshift stage.

The events surrounding Bruno had taken place over 400 years before. My resources, the money

I could spend on books or acquiring materials and the time I could invest, were laughable, risible,

miniscule.

Therefore, in a paradox that I couldn’t explain, with low expectations and few resources, I felt

all the more grateful for the chance to start. My endeavor was, from the start, a dream, an illusion,

theatricality, my own strange Kabuki play; perhaps I had imagined all my conversations with the

ghost. My career, or rather I could say, my lowly jobs, didn’t depend on this idea, nor did my

reputation. I was free: no funding also meant no strings, no deadlines, no politics, and no party

lines.

. My quest to find a link between the plays of William Shakespeare and the ideas of Giordano

Bruno was one that I felt earnestly needed attention in this world. Even though I was no scholar or

professor, I would have to do my best to find out why the ghost had led me up the mountain near

Enseiji Temple and let me see the lonely and sad spirit of Giordano Bruno.

I reached for the phone and dialed William Shakespeare’s birthday.

Chapter 20

Benedick: That I neither feel how she should be lov’d, nor

know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that fire

cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake.

Don Pedro: Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the

despite of beauty.

Japanese universities, almost all built in a rush and cheaply between 1955 and 1975, by and

large look the same: the buildings are long cement shoe boxes placed long end down, usually three

stories high. Because of the similarities in the appearances of the buildings, it can be hard to find the

one you are looking for. They are numbered A-2, A-3, and so on. Sometimes, for some logical reason

of the designers, the B series might be half a kilometer a way, while the C-series could be just to the

left of the As.

Professor Yamaguchi had explained that her building, D-3, was perpendicular to the library,

which was beside the cafeteria, which was beside A-1. I easily found the cafeteria; it had an outdoor

eating area, with aluminum tables scattered randomly around a small cement plaza. Scouting around

diagonally to this plaza, I could find the library, which was small, and then around the back, I saw

the letter D and the number 3 on a stumpy cement building rising among a few huge pine trees.

Walking around the perimeter of this building brought me to a non-descript metal door, propped

open with a chair so the breeze could blow through.

I found the stairs and soon I was knocking on the door of office #205.

“Hai, douzo!” came a woman’s voice from inside.

“Konnichiwa,” I said, opening the door. “Yamaguchi-sensei desu ka?”

“Hai, sou desu. Matsumura-san desuka? Hajimemashite.”

“Hajimemashite,” I said, starting to feel nervous. All the walls of her office had bookshelves

filled with books.

Professor Yamaguchi rose to welcome me, and then offered me a chair opposite her desk. She

was 10 years older than me, in her mid-fifties, slim, with short black-and-gray hair. She wore a

simple white cotton blouse and an orange and blue batik skirt that looked like it was from

Indonesia.

I had told Professor Yamaguchi on the phone that I had plans to do some research on the

William Shakespeare-Giordano Bruno connection. I had vaguely mentioned an idea I had to apply

to graduate school. I had explained that my plan was to write a research article on the topic and try

to get it published, and then use it as the springboard for my graduate application. “I’m more of a

specialist on Renaissance thought than literature, so I don’t know how much I can help you,” she

had said, “but I have some time available on Tuesday morning. And I’m a great fan of

Shakespeare’s plays.”

“I know,” I had said, thinking of the cell phone number.

Now, as I sat down, I asked her about the number.

“It’s strange”, she said, “I did not choose that number. I noticed it later after I had had the cell

phone for a week or so. I thought it was funny.”

“Yes”, I said, “someone gave me your number and I guess he thought you could help me.”

“Someone I know?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t know his name. It’s complicated, really. He is actually a monk. I think he might

have just picked up on the idea I have, and thought of your name…..” I left the story vague and

incomplete.

Professor Yamaguchi looked at me wonderingly, but I couldn’t give her anymore information. The

silence grew, and I hurried to change the topic, to the relief of both of us.

“You have been to Italy?” I asked. The Tsubame University website posted the c.vs of faculty

members, and I had seen that Professor Yamaguchi had earned a Ph.D. at the University of Rome.

“Roma. I spent eight years there”, she said, smiling, “and it was a wonderful place to study

Renaissance Philosophy. I became very interested in Giordano Bruno, and I sometimes visited the

Campo di Fiori where Bruno was burned at the stake on February 17, 1600. Every year on that day,

people bring flowers and other tributes there and put them next to a statue of him that was erected in

the late 1800s.”

“I’m interested in researching any connections between Bruno and Shakespeare”, I said. I had

already told her this, but every conversation needs a jumping-off point.

“Ah, yes, a very thorny topic. In Rome, I knew a professor of philosophy named Hilary Gatti, who

was actually from England, and who wrote an article on the similarities that she saw between Bruno’s

ideas in his book The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, and Hamlet. She published it in 1989, while I

was there. But since then, almost three decades ago, no scholar has addressed the topic at all. It is a

blind alley, with no way in and no way out. Shakespeare didn’t make any overt references to Bruno, or

leave any letters in which he mentioned Bruno, and that is probably the main problem.

I had seen vague references to the Gatti book online. Long out of print, it was almost impossible to

buy used, and, of course, not within my tight budget.

“Do you have the Gatti book?”, I asked hopefully, “The, umm…Drama of Something.”

Professor Yamaguchi smiled. “The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge. Yes, I have it, I am very

happy to say.” She got up from her chair and pulled out a book from the top shelf of the bookcase to

her left. Opening it, she glanced through the pages.

“The biggest point, according to Gatti, is that both writers see a reform of language taking place

eventually. Let me see, umm, here…..’Hamlet’s chosen form of revenge can thus be seen in Brunian

terms as a questioning of false words, a pitting of truer words against the able but treacherous words

of his Uncle, the pedantic linguistic formulas of Polonius, the transparent falsity of Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern, the parroting of Osric; for the distortions of their world were seen by Both Bruno and

Shakespeare as intimately related to distortions in the field of language.’….that’s from page one-

hundred and thirty.”

“The field of language?”, I said, trying to sound less ignorant than I felt. But then I remembered

Shakespeare’s words that had already changed in meaning for me.

Juliet is the sun.

The line was not just a metaphor for Juliet’s beauty. It was a new cosmic identity for the

character and a new relationship with Romeo spelled out.

Gatti had been right!

I didn’t know all the details yet, of course.

“I sort of see it.”, I said, feeling my way through, “Actually I’m interested in the sun, in

Bruno’s heliocentrism. I’m wondering if his new view of the solar system, new in his day, that is,

might be connected-----in some way----to the famous line Juliet is the sun from Romeo and Juliet”,

I said.

I decided to explain about the allegory about the History of Man and the Sun. It seemed like I

simply could not avoid telling her what I had learned. I told her about how the scenes between the

lovers made a new secret cosmic play.

Professor Yamaguchi looked startled after my explanation, and then she smiled. “That’s a

fascinating idea, and a radical one---it’s original and I’ve never heard it before, and you may be

onto something with it. But, anyway, Gatti’s article only covers Hamlet.”

I must have looked disappointed. But Professor Yamaguchi continued.

“In a nutshell, Gatti finds many similarities. Many little ones, that is, but no big ones, no over-

arching ones, like what you may be implying with that famous line and Bruno’s heliocentrism. She

even admits that she doesn’t. Of course, she is not a scholar of Shakespeare, but an expert on

Giordano Bruno.”

Professor Yamaguchi looked thoughtful for a moment, then sat back in her chair and brought

Gatit’s book up, near her chest, all the while turning the pages fast. She was getting comfortable,

and I wondered if I was in for an impromptu lecture! Suddenly, she found the page she had been

looking for, and she continued,

“As far as I’m concerned, her biggest and most compelling find is the description Hamlet gives

Polonius of the book he is reading. As Gatti notes, it is a distinct echo of a key passage in Lo

Spaacio.”

“Lo Spaccio?” I said.

“I’m sorry, I was using the Italian title of The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, which is Lo

spaccio della bestia trionfante.”

That title, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, I remembered seeing it online. It was

unforgettable. And strange!

“That title seems totally absurd. The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast. I have never heard

anything so weird, “I said, “It sounds like it’s about an elephant on the loose.”

Professor Yamaguchi laughed. “Well”, she said, “listen closely. Because the passage I’m going to

read you from Lo Spaccio is one of the key ones to understanding its meaning. And at the same time,

and this is no coincidence, I am sure, that it is the very one that Hamlet seems to be quoting in a brief

way. First, I will read the quote from Hamlet. Do you remember when Polonius asks Hamlet what he

is reading in Act II?”

“Ummm, “I said, “vaguely.”.

“Hamlet says ‘words, words, words’. And Gatti makes a reasonable case that this line echoes

another Bruno work, Il Candelaio, which has a pedant named Manfurio who uses words, well,

pedantically. As Polonius does too. Manfurio says, ‘literae, syllabae, diction et oratio, partes

propinquae et remotae’ when a character named Ottaviano asks him ‘what is the matter of your

verses?’ Professor Yamaguchi was consulting the Gatti book a little, but it seemed as though she had

memorized most of this.

“And Gatti sees the Manfurio pedant as a forerunner to the pedant in Lo Spaccio named

Polinnio, whom she claims is the namesake of Polonius. Polonius uses the same phrase, ‘what is the

matter?’, when he asks Hamlet what the book Hamlet is reading is about.”

“Wow”, was all I could say.

“Bruno hated pedants. And we know Polonius is killed off, after being shown to be an idiot, in

Hamlet. Anyway, here, now, is the part of Lo Spaccio, I mean The Expulsion of the Triumphant

Beast, that Gatti believes is paraphrased by Shakespeare in Hamlet. Ready?”

“Okay, “ I said.

“Well, first I had better explain what is going on here in Lo Spaccio,” said Professor

Yamaguchi, pausing and putting the book down, “Jupiter, the main character, is the king of the gods,

but he is getting old, with a bunch of typical health symptoms of aging. Scholars of Bruno debate

what this decrepitude means”

“What does it mean?”

“Some see it as a sign of Giordano Bruno pointing to the moral and physical decrepitude of the

society then. But Gatti thinks it was more universal, and based on Bruno’s ideas about flux and

transitions, also taken up in Hamlet, when Hamlet picks up Yorick’s skull and reminisces about Yorick

being alive, the king’s jester, who had been able to make anyone laugh, so full of life. I agree with

Gatti.”

Alas poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest…..

“Think about it”, Professor Yamaguchi went on, “the king of the gods, Jupiter himself, has reached

the point where he is nearing death. To say that something like a god could die, was to imply that

anything, any religion or any belief, any idea, was also vulnerable to impermanence and to what Gatti

calles “vicissitude”, changes in circumstances. Scientists take the idea of change for granted, now; we

have come, in fact, to expect constant change. However, in the Renaissance, the Catholic Church

wanted to claim an exclusive island of permanence and immutability for itself. That was heaven, the

place of the quintessence, beyond the last “sphere” in the sky. God and his angels reigned there,

without change, without death, forever. There was no death possible there. Bruno said the idea was

ridiculous for many reasons.”

I was glad that her explanation of Bruno’s position on the spheres matched my own research. I

jumped in, “Bruno said the universe was infinite, that there were no spheres, which is to say, there

was no limit in the sky beyond which everything changed elementally. And everyone, following

Aristotle, used the term ‘quintessence’ for the matter beyond the spheres. Bruno said that was all

wrong.”

“The church was bothered by Bruno’s cosmic ideas, too. But what they hated even more was

the way he used those ideas systematically to form his own conclusions, conclusions which

contradicted their teachings, and therefore their power,” Professor Yamaguchi added.

“I see”, I said, “but actually, and I know it’s obvious, Jupiter was not the god of the Catholic

Church. He was in the Roman Pantheon, and that story was already well over. Why would the

Church care about the decrepitude of Jupiter?”

“Well, exactly! Doesn’t that, in a way, only prove Bruno’s point about impermanence even

more clearly? Bruno ingeniously used the material he had available to say what he wanted to say.

And in the end, after his death sentence was handed down, Lo Spaccio was the only book

mentioned by name at the summation of his trial. It expresses his heretical ideas more forcefully

than any other of his works, although all of them were put on the Index librorum prohibitorum.”

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space---were it not

that I have bad dreams

“The Index of what?”

“The Index librorum prohibitorum was the Catholic Church’s list of banned books….but I

digress, Viola. Let me, instead, read the passages for you, side by side.“ Professor Yamaguchi

picked up the book and looked down to find the passage.

“Now, first, here is Jupiter in Lo Spaccio…..

’Look, my body is wrinkling and my brain is getting damper; I’ve started to get arthritis

and my teeth are going: my flesh gets darker and my hair is going grey; my eyelids are going

slack and my sight gets fainter; my breath comes less easily and my cough gets stronger; my

hams grow weaker and I walk less securely.”

“Pretty depressing!” I said.

“And here is Hamlet telling Polonius about ‘the matter’ of his book….

’For the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled,

their eyes purging thick amber and plumtree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit,

together with most weak hams’.”

Professor Yamaguchi looked up from her desk. “There you have it”, she said, “the most

fabulous, striking, and startling similarity, and as far as I know, only one recent scholar has

discussed it, even just a little. No one really knows what to do with it, or what Shakespeare

intended, I suppose. Maybe your research will make the connections clearer!”

“Thank you, I certainly hope so” I said.

“Well, was this any help for your essay?” she asked, adding, “I’m sorry, but there is a faculty

meeting in 15 minutes, so this will have to be enough for now. If you want to chat again, just give

me a call.”

“Thanks”, I said, smiling, “it was a huge help. Hilary Gatti is an amazing scholar and you’re

very lucky to have a copy of her wonderful book!”

Chapter 21

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading

I rushed home to check the passage from Hamlet again. But, hanging up my keys and putting

my bag away, I noticed that Kaoru and Zenji were hungry. They were tired, and fighting over issues

of comic books in the dining room. The weather was already quite hot, with the start of summer

vacation just a little more than a week away. The rainy season was over. Instead of the usual rice,

served hot, I suggested cold noodles. Yes, they agreed with alacrity.

Now, again, I rushed, this time to fill a pot with water, put it on the burner to boil, and slice up

some cucumbers for a yogurt salad. I had a little time now! Dashing into the next room, I picked up

my Riverside Shakespeare, flipped it open to Act II of Hamlet and searched through for the scene

that echoes Lo Spaccio. Yes, here was Gertrude saying, “But look where sadly the poor wretch

comes reading”.

A great comic line.

I had to smile, I skimmed farther down, getting into it, and then:

“Mama!”, shouted Kaoru, “The water’s boiling!”

“Coming!” I shouted.

Lifting up the huge tome, I lugged it through the dining room, still open to Act II, then into the

kitchen. I put it down, still open, on the tiny washing machine in the corner of the kitchen. I put a

clean spoon on the page to mark it.

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading

Kaoru was right. The water was boiling. Soon I had put the noodles in.

“Do you really need meat tonight?” I went to the doorway.

“What do we have?”

“Bacon. Pork chops.”

“Pork chops!” said Kaoru.

“Bacon!”, said Zenji.

“OK!” I said, not even feigning enthusiasm. Actually, I hardly ever eat meat; I like animals to

be alive, not on a plate. There is also something that seems curiously indigestible, heavy and stringy

about meat. Also, it is said in Japan that meat-eaters have a different smell, exuding from their skin,

from those who stick to fish and vegetables. But my children love meat. I opened the freezer and

took out the packages. The pork chops I could grill in the little drawer for grilling. The bacon I

would have to fry. I sighed, but, like the tree falling unobserved in the forest, no one was there to

record my reluctance.

Soon the bacon was in a frying pan, and the pork chops were in the grill. But it is an interesting

fact that a frying pan takes time to heat. I turned my attention back to Hamlet, conveniently on top

of the nearby washing machine. Reading the passage, I could note Hamlet’s words to Polonius in

better detail.

Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey

beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and

plumtree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most

weak hams; all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I

hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, shall grow old as

I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

Slanders? To me that word was a coded reference to the heretical nature of Lo Spaccio.

“Mama!” Kaoru lamented close by, “the noodles are getting overcooked!”

She had come into the kitchen to get a glass of milk. I rushed to the pot and turned off the gas,

drained the noodles, and ran cold water over them.

“They’re fine,” I said, hoping it was true.

(But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.)

“Kaoru, Zenji! Come and get your own noodles!”

I doled out the cold noodles in bowls and gave them a bottle of tsuyu, a soy-sauce-based fish

broth, to pour on the noodles.

“And here are some tomatoes!” I said, putting a plate on the table.

Back in the kitchen, I turned over the pork chops, and then put the bacon on a plate and put it

on the table. Fighting commenced over it. Kaoru, bigger and stronger, gathered multiple pieces in

her chopsticks at once. She shot Zenji a victorious smirk. Zenji shouted, “no fair!”. Fists were

drawn, legs lashed out to kick.

“Stop!” I said, using a voice other than my own. Usually for chiding children, and purely for

my own amusement, I select the voice of a drag queen, or I try to come as close as possible to that

effect, a diva over-acting. My children both usually ignore me and do what they want anyway.

“No! Stopp! Stopp!” I wailed, enjoying the theatrical experience of it all, and wishing I had a

feather boa, pink or emerald green, to toss around my shoulders. I also enjoy, for scolding, a strong

basic New York accent, Brooklyn or Queens. I had found that whether I used my real voice for

scolding or the voice of a New York drag queen, it made no difference in the length the fighting

would last. Therefore I chose the more interesting accent. Luckily I had grown up one hour away

from New York City and I could still do a passable imitation of the basic dialect, delightful in its

own way. It was one of the things, like burritos, that I missed about the States.

“Mama, what about the pork chops? They smell ready!”

“Hai, hai!, mo sugu de goziamasu!”

They probably were ready….but…..

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading

“I’ll bring them in a second!” I called, and turned my attention back to Hamlet. Besides

“Slanders, sir”, there was another interesting segment of dialogue:

all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe

Shakespeare was avowing his faith and confidence in Bruno!

yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down

Did this mean that Shakespeare thought that Bruno had taken too huge a risk in his way of

going about expressing his ideas?

for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

Here I knew not what to think. The drag queen from New York was finally stumped.

The children were still eating. I left my book, found a leftover bowl of rice in the refrigerator,

and served the pork chops. Then I poured myself a glass of plum wine, and went to join them.

I left Hamlet on the washing machine.

Chapter 22

I with Morning’s love have oft made sport,

And like a forester, the groves may tread

Even till the Eastern gate, all fiery red,

Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,

Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.

July 7 is Tanabata, a Japanese festival that celebrates the day, once a year, when two star-gods

from Chinese mythology, married lovers, can meet. Orihime was a princess who was a skilled

weaver (ori means weaving); she married Hikoboshi, the cow herder and their passion was so

complete that they neglected their duties to weave and herd cows. Orihime’s father, Tentei, became

angry and separated them on opposite sides of the Milky Way, but when Orihime became

despondent and begged Tentei to let her meet Hikoboshi again, he relented and let them come

together once a year, every summer. Orihime is the star known in the West as Vega and Hikoboshi is

the star called Altair. Do these two stars actually pass close to each other in the night sky then? It

may be true.

Decorations on Tanabata are bamboo branches with colored strips of paper. You write a wish

on a piece of paper, your yearning echoing the yearning the lovers felt for each other, and hang it on

a branch, hoping for your wish to come true.

The night of Tanabata, I had a strange dream. I found myself alone in the clearing on the

mountain above Ensei-ji. There was a full moon, and I was dressed in a dark blue indigo-dyed

yukata, a long cotton kimono, open, with no obi, sash. Startled to find myself thus exposed, I pulled

the yukata closed around my body. Shivering a bit, I was looking for the path to descend the

mountain when I noticed my feet were bare. The ground was cold and hard with stones and twigs,

so I sat down on a large flat stone nearby, and wondered what to do next. Suddenly a small crowd of

about 20 people emerged from the trees, all wearing golden masks and long robes. One man caught

my attention; his walk seemed familiar, I had seen him before. But who were they?

I wondered if a ghostly party was again about to be held. The people came closer to me and

stopped in a circle around me. The man I had noticed came near to me and sat down beside me on

the stone. He took off his golden mask and I could see it was my husband Kazuo.

“Kazuo!” I exclaimed. I was surprised to see him. I was expecting him to berate me for

dressing so strangely and lasciviously outside. I felt myself preparing an explanation; these clothes

were not my choice!

“Viola,” he said, “hello”.

He sat down beside me on the stone. I started to giggle nervously, but he picked up my hand

and held it.

“Viola,” he said, “you know, we’ve often made love in our house, in our bedroom, at night or in

the morning, after the children left for school.”

“It’s true,” I said.

“We have always enjoyed it, don’t you think so?”

“Usually,” I said, “um….yes, it is almost always very pleasant.”

“So now, tonight, if you don’t mind, do you think we could do what we have done so many

times before, but now here, as a ceremony?”

“A ceremony?” I gasped, “you mean in front of all these people?”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s called hieros gamos, or sacred marriage.”

“Why ever for?” I asked, “What a strange idea! Is it something related to your research?”

“Not mine, actually,” he said, “yours.”

“What do you know about my research?” I was startled, and I must also admit that I was

feeling annoyed. I had tried to hide all of what I had learned.

“I know very little, so don’t worry. I am also, you see, in a dream, just as you are. I was

suddenly summoned here, just as you were. And briefed vaguely on the way up the mountain by

this, er…….man, or should I say spirit? And he didn’t tell me any of your secrets, so don’t get all

worked up, Viola.”

I looked, and sure enough, there was the ghost. He removed his golden mask and came near us.

He was looking rather anxious and apologetic.

“What is this all about?” I asked.

“Viola, there’s a ceremony, called hieros gamos.”

“So I have heard”, I said very coldly.

“It lies at the core of comedy, it’s why comedies traditionally end with a wedding. A wedding is

the best way of preserving the old idea of a hieros gamos. It goes back to Ancient Greece,

agricultural festivals and fertility rites. Theater started as festival, ceremony, ritual. I explore the

theme often in my plays.”

“That is supremely excellent”, I said, “Congratulations on your thematic material! Now you

have explained, and I am most gratified to hear about our methodology, so now I’ll be returning

home, thank you”.

“Wait! Now that you know, don’t you think it sounds pleasant? And wouldn’t you like to try?

It’s the union of opposites, male and female, a god and a mortal, a priestess and a supplicant.”

“No, I certainly wouldn’t like to. Sorry.”

Kazuo looked down, and turned toward the ghost apologetically.

“I told you it would be impossible”, he said, “she is really quite a shy person. She’s not really

religious. You probably just put her off by mentioning all that stuff about priests and priestesses,

gods and goddesses..”

“I see,” said the ghost.

I was very irritated by this point.

“I may not be conventionally religious”, I said, “but I like to think that I am spiritual.”

“You’ll have to think of another way to convince her”, said Kazuo.

“No,“ I said, interrupting them firmly. Just because Kazuo is a Historian of Religion, and my

husband, he seemed to believe that he could speak for me on this issue. “That will not make any

difference at all.”

The people---or spirits--- wearing the masks and robes, turned to each other, murmuring in

surprise, and drifting away from us, started down the mountain. The ghost bowed low and kissed

my fingertips gently before he too turned around and walked away.

Kazuo and I were left alone on the mountain. He sat down next to me, holding his golden mask.

A breeze opened my yukata a little. His yukata was stirred open, suggestively above his knees, by

the next breeze. After all, I realized, the moonlight was very romantic!

“Why did you tell him that I’m shy?” I asked, “you know I’m always proposing that we make

love outside somewhere. I always say how nice it would be to try it under the full moon. You are

rather the shy one, terrified of being seen.”

“What you say is true,” said my husband, “Of course, I knew it was all a lie. I was just trying to

help you get out of performing hieros gamos.”

“You are very kind”, I said

Chapter 23

Oberon: Sound music {Louder music} Come, my queen,

take hands with me, and rock the ground whereon these

sleepers be.

Summer vacation began, and suddenly the children were home all day. Kazuo texted me to tell

me he was flying down from Haneda Airport the next day. I became quite apprehensive about his

visit. Ever since the farcical hieros gamos night on the mountain above Enseij-ji, I had been

wondering how much, if at all, the ghost had involved Kazuo in this adventure. Even if Kazuo had

been brought to the mountain only in a dream, it meant that he might remember something later,

and tie this together with my earlier questions about sun myths and sun gods. On the other hand, my

husband might remember nothing.

Two days later, in the afternoon, we were finally alone. Kaoru had gone shopping with her

friends, and Zenji had walked down the road to kick his soccer ball around a little in a park near the

library. Kazuo eyed me longingly and threw a futon down on the tatami. I hesitated, “Zenji might be

back any minute.”

“So, then we’d better hurry up!”

So romantic!

Afterwards, I rolled over on my stomach and leaned up on my elbows. I couldn’t resist asking

the question that had been on my mind constantly.

“Have you had any interesting dreams recently, uh….dear?” I asked, a little emphatically.

Something flickered in his eyes.

“Don’t you think you better get dressed before Zenji returns?”

“O.K. It’s easy to get dressed”, I said, putting on my shirt and skirt.

I sat on the futon in my favorite pose, arms clasped under my knees, and I tried again. ”But now,

tell me, and don’t avoid my question, how about any dreams you have had, perhaps any with me in

them?”

He was ready now, and combative.“Hah! I knew you would ask about that! You go first. Have

you had any dreams with me in them?”

“But I asked you first!” I said.

“O.K.”, said my husband, sitting up and pulling on his undershirt, “Chotto matte, I will tell you.

But I think, from your question, that we both have.”

“On the mountain above Ensei-ji”, I said softly, “there was a full moon that night.”

“Some ghosts asked us to perform hieros gamos. Was that in your dream, too?”

“Yes, but we didn’t, we wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“I think the unwilling one was you, not me, actually.”

“You mean you wanted to? But you are always the one pulling all the curtains, telling me to be

quiet. You’re always terrified that someone might figure out we were having sex, and now you tell

me that you wanted to perform hieros gamos?” I was incredulous.

“Sex in public is totally different from hieros gamos, which is a sacred ceremony. It would have

been quite an opportunity for not just me, but….for us….. to learn something new. It’s a ceremony I

have read about, a way to unite the spirit with the body, I think. But I wouldn’t want to have had to

persuade you or overcome your real feelings. Hieros gamos has to be performed only by two willing

partners. ”

“You should have told me that you wanted to,” I said, “I’m not saying I would have thought

about it differently, but I might have.”

Suddenly I wasn’t so sure what my ‘real feelings’ were anymore.

“Well, don’t worry about it, you know, we might get another chance”. He grinned at me.

Yes, naturally. No doubt it was to be a common routine.

Another time when we were spirited away in our dreams from two entirely different regions of

Japan, brought to a moonlit mountain in Tsubame by ghosts wearing golden masks, asked to join an

erotic ceremony of the body meant to unite archetypal opposites.

“Kazuo?” I said, “Do you remember the ghost who you said explained the ceremony to you, the

one who you said, talked to you on your way up the mountain?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know his name? Did he tell you?”

“Yes. He said he was the ghost of William Shakespeare. But you can’t believe everything a

ghost tells you, can you? Especially one you meet in a dream.”

“Sou desu ne”, I said. Whatever my husband knew, he wasn’t going to say much more about

that night.

“Viola, I’ll do whatever I can to help you. This is certainly a strange adventure, but it doesn’t

seem like it’s dangerous. I study religion, so for me, it’s not so weird. Spirits, ceremonies, and so

forth, I’m really interested. It’s long been a fantasy of mine to experience something like this. It’s

like something you might read in a book.”

That was good to know. He was keeping an open mind.

“I barely know what is going on myself,” I said. “Sometimes this ghost comes here and

performs a scene from a play, or shows me something strange or new. That’s all.

I told Kazuo about the performances I had seen, the hot coal, the morality interlude, the smoky

monologue from Hamlet, the dance on the mountain on the night of the Firefly Festival. “And all he

says, by way of explanation, ‘my way is to conjure you’. It’s a line from the epilogue of As You Like

It.” I wanted to add, Kazuo, I’m becoming obsessed with this ghost and his story! But I stopped

myself. My husband might think I was losing myself too much.

“You’re sure that it’s not just all in your imagination?”

“Was the dream about hieros gamos all in your imagination?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Kazu, I somehow can’t help but feel that this is somehow connected to Japan in some way too.

Not the Japanese State, but to the culture of the land, the presence of spirits here, the presence of a

sun goddess, ghosts, spirits, folk culture. I still haven’t figured it all out, but I think I’ll need your

help. You know much more than I do about all of these.”

And that was how we left it. It was really up to the ghost, if and when he returned, to explain

further.

We were only foolish mortals.

Chapter 24

Full many a glorious morning have I seen,

Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy….

We had to wait almost two weeks before the ghost contacted us again. Luckily, the time didn’t

have the sense of a long boring waiting period. Now that Kazuo and I had mysteriously and oddly,

partially, at least, repaired our relationship through a shared dream of a farcical and failed hieros

gamos on the mountain, our days were spent enjoyably, once or twice taking the bus to the beach at

Hagi with Kaoru and Zenji. I enjoyed long and ridiculous debates with Kazuo about how to fold up

futons, how often to dust off books, and who needed to do stretching exercises more, he or I.

Finally, I gave up trying to avoid stretching exercises. I arranged myself on the tatami mat and

started bending at the waist down toward my legs.

Kazuo smiled victoriously and I threw the book of stretching exercises at his stomach.

“You do a few!”, I suggested.

“Ha ha! Later! “

“Usau-tsuki!” Liar.

“I’m taking Zenji out to eat ramen at Edokin.”

The minute they left, I got up and picked up a large paper shopping bag I keep in a closet.

Inside the bag were all of my sewing projects. There was a folded-up dark blue yukata, a cotton

kimono, that was too short for me to wear as a yukata. A student, Haruko Noguchi, had given it to

me as a present after I had told her that I liked real indigo. But if I cut the lower part off in a straight

line and sewed the ends together, I could turn it into a skirt. The best part of the whole plan was that

since the material was dyed with natural indigo, I would be getting a free skirt made of natural

indigo cloth. Playfully, I held up the material to see the light from the window through it,

investigating the way I could change my view of the world to one announced through fine and soft

dark blue threads. And then through the indigo-dyed cloth, I saw a man’s shape materialize. This

time I did not scream. I knew exactly who it was.

“I should have known you would be here soon!” I cried happily, smiling, and pulling the fabric

down into a bunch on my lap.

“Indigo dyed cloth has a faint smell, have you noticed?” he asked, my ghost.

“Yes, I have noticed it,” I said, “a good smell. The dye is fermented, so I think the smell in the

cloth is left from that perhaps. It smells like a salty ocean breeze”

“In London, it came from India, where the indigo plants grew and the dye was fermented and

dried, and it was very expensive.”

“Here in Japan, it was pretty common and farmers wore indigo-dyed cotton pants to work in

the field. Ninjas usually wore sappanwood-dyed cotton, which is gray, but sometimes they wore

indigo because, dark blue or gray hides someone better in moonlight than black does. And samurais

wore it. Samurai blue. But now it’s expensive, used for decorative noren curtains and shawls for

women. The farmers all wear polyester now.”

“A pity”, he paused. His eyes searched for my gaze and held it. He paused, searching for the

right words. My heart started to beat faster. I didn’t want to be scolded or criticized by

Shakespeare’s ghost! I began to fear that what had started out as something so interesting, so private

and so fulfilling, was now just becoming another place where I had failed to live up to everyone’s

expectations. Another project where I hadn’t measured up.

“Viola, you need to understand something. It’s related to that night on the mountain.”

“The night I was supposed to perform hieros gamos,” I said. My voice got higher and faster,

“I’m sorry, but I just wasn’t ready. Maybe another time. Kazuo admitted to me that he was actually

quite keen on the idea. It was only me, I just couldn’t, I don’t really understand what it’s all about…

if…..if I read a few books on the subject, then I’m utterly convinced that maybe next time…”

“Viola, it is all right, and there is no problem. You haven’t failed any test or made any mistakes.

That’s all I wanted to say”, he said, gently putting two ice-cold fingers on my cheeks. I was relieved

that he would not upbraid me after all and I stopped chattering nervously. I made up my mind to be

more adventurous and brave, no matter what strange thing he might request.

Yet, I was surprised by his next words.

“Would you play Puck? And I’ll be Oberon. Okay?”

My eyes widened.

“I didn’t know people….that is to say, um, spirits….from the Elizabethan era knew the modern

colloquial term ‘okay’”, I said, finding myself with something else now to be nervous about, “but I

will play Puck to your Oberon, sure. Do I need a costume?”

“Ghosts can keep up with the evolution of language, as well as understand any language and

speak any language we wish. There are no barriers for us. But as for a costume, why not wear the

indigo yukata you have got right there?”

I was excited to perform alongside the ghost of William Shakespeare, but, almost equally, I had

a, well,….Puckish….desire to challenge and tease him. Could he really speak and understand

Japanese, as well as keep up with the evolution of language? I had been wondering ever since

Kazuo had implied as much on the mountain in our shared dream.

“Kore de ii?” I asked casually in Japanese, slipping it over my shoulders.

“Hai, choudo ii desuyo. Suteki desu.” He was smiling. It was clear that he was fluent at

Nihongo.

More to the point, there was another issue……

“Can a middle-aged woman really play Puck?” I asked.

“Why not? It’s often a clever idea to try something new. “

“It’s true” I said, “when people put on dramatic performances of your works, they often change

the age or gender of one the characters, or they change the setting or the time. It seems that your

works are particularly adaptable and seem to allow for this better than anyone else’s, in fact. They

have a certain universal quality. But I suppose you have heard that an infinity of times.”

The ghost looked modestly appreciative.

He smiled mysteriously.

I looked down. When the yukata wasn’t folded and tied up with an obi, it wasn’t too small, and,

untied, it hung like a robe loosely over my summer skirt and T-shirt. I supposed I looked a bit like a

casually-attired apprentice wizard who happened to be a woman in her mid-forties. An eccentric

choice for a Puck, perhaps, though, I reflected, ‘Robin Goodfellow’ could be the name of either a

man or a woman.

Usually Puck is cast as a young man, a typical mischief-maker, a folkish fairy with strong, fast

legs, wearing tights, and a feather cap, who runs all over the stage and bewilders the Athenians. I

supposed a Puck cast as a woman in her 40s would use an image of another sort of fairy, a spirit like

Osakabe, who in legend is a fox who sometimes takes the form of a woman, not always a young

woman, and is said to live on the top floor of Himeji-jo, the castle in Himeji in Hyogo. Once a year,

she appears to tell the fortune of a lucky person who seeks her out.

“Have you heard of Osakabe?” I asked now.

“Yes, I’ve met Osakabe a few times. A very interesting spirit who can tell what will happen in

the future, actually with great accuracy. Most ghosts actually cannot do that, despite what you may

have heard to the contrary.”

I wasn’t surprised to hear that he had met her, so I went on, “She’s said to be actually a fox in

disguise, and foxes, as you probably know, are great mischief makers in Japanese folklore, always

disguising themselves and leading people astray on paths, playing tricks, using funny voices;

actually, they’re just like Puck.”

“You do very well to note the similarities.”

“Imagine me, then, in a costume with fox ears and a fox nose”, I said, “and twelve layers of

colorful silk kimonos, junihitoe. And long, long hair, loose. Appearing and disappearing, changing

form, I--- Osakabe or Robin Goodfellow---- move quickly in the shadows and no one can be sure

where I am, like Puck in the forest outside Athens.”

“Excellent ! You have the soul of an innovative director!”

I had to laugh.

“I suppose we won’t perform much, only a few lines, there being only the two of us?” I asked,

secretly longing for a large audience and many lines.

But the front door slid open, and I heard Kazuo and Zenji taking off their shoes and taking a

step up into the house. The husuma, paper and lacquer wood door, slid open and they stood

together, staring at us.

Kazuo realized immediately who it was, having already met the ghost, and he nodded politely

and said, “ahh, doomoo, konichiwa”, as if one of our elderly neighbors had stopped by for a visit.

Zenji gave the ghost a glance, then looked at me, obviously wondering why I was wearing a

long yukata over my summer clothes.

“We’re going to perform a play!” I said brightly.

“Wouldn’t you like to go to the park and play soccer?” Kazuo quickly asked Zenji. I could tell

what he was thinking: Mom has a ghostly visitor and they are going to perform. Let’s get out of

here!

A cat casually uses a paw to stop a moth from flying away, and now I said brightly, “Oh, let

him stay and watch. It’s Shakespeare, after all. Very educational.”

“Konnichiwa”, said Zenji to the ghost.

“This is Zenji”, I said to the ghost, “and this is..,,umm…William-san”, I said to Zenji.

“Konnichiwa”, said the ghost. He smiled kindly. Luckily he was standing in a shadowy part of

the room and it was hard to tell that his skin was glowing ever so faintly. He looked almost

ordinary, despite his archaic clothes.

“It’s not very long, right?” I asked, “so can he stay?”

“It’s not very long. Of course he can stay. .Right, now we’ll need the play. You have it, I

believe?”

“Here”, I said, lifting up my old brown Riverside from a pile of books I kept stashed in the

tokonoma, the decorative alcove with a raised floor. I flipped to the correct page, 222, near the

beginning. It was very heavy, with almost 2,000 pages altogether.

“Now then, let me see,“ said Shakespeare’s ghost, closing his pallid eyelids and trying to

remember his own words. He pressed a pale forefinger to his chin. “Perhaps, yes, Act Three, Scene

Two, near the end. Puck says, ‘My fairy lord, this must be done in haste’.”

I looked through the play, but the huge tome was heavy, even balanced on my arm, and it

wobbled and almost fell. Kazuo and Zenji had been sitting on the tatami, waiting for us to start

performing, but Kazuo got up and took the book from my hands, holding it up so I could read the

lines more easily.

“Thank you,” I said. I noticed the speech of Puck’s where I was supposed to start. “Here it is!”,

I cried, my voice a squeak.

“Calm down”, Kazuo hissed, giving the ghost an apologetic glance on my behalf.

“I am TOTALLY calm!”, I said.

Zenji rolled his eyes. Why were grown-ups more childish than real children sometimes?

“Okay, shall I begin?” I asked.

“Please.”

“My fairy lord,” I read, using an earnest tone, “this must be done with haste,

For Night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,

And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,

At whose approach, ghosts, wand’ring here and there….”

I paused, unable to continue without glancing at the real ghost standing in his archaically

stockinged feet a few meters away from me. The ghost gave me a strange wisp of a smile,

acknowledging my pause with a slight, comic bow. I gathered myself together and started reading

again.

“um, wandring here and there”, I repeated,

troop home to churchyards. Damn spirits all,

That in crossways and floods have burial,

Already to their wormy beds have gone.

For fear lest day should look their shames upon….”

I was reading slowly, but here I stopped to look at Zenji, whose eyes were brightly opened wide

in pleasure. Beyond all his expectations, this Shakespeare performance was, thus far, a fascinating

exposition of ghosts, wormy graves and horror. I knew he was expecting me to start talking about

vampires and zombies next, and was sorry, almost, when I had to read the real words….

“They willfully themselves exile from light

And must, for aye, consort with black-brow’d Night.”

It was Oberon’s turn next, and Kazuo brought the heavy book over to the ghost, who promptly

took it from him, closed it shut, and gently handed it back, saying, “Domoo, dakedo, ii desu.”

Thanks, but I’m fine like this, without.

And that proved to be the case. He did not need to read the lines he had written so long ago. He

glanced warmly at his “Puck’, as if to show that he was responding to the speech I had just made

with no interruption. He lifted one arm, slightly, but with a flourish, addressing himself to me, but

half turned to his audience, Kazuo, who was now sitting down again, and Zenji, and said,

“But we are spirits of another sort.

I with Morning’s love have oft made sport,

And like a forester, the groves may tread

Even till the Eastern gate, all fiery red,

Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,

Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.”

Zenji looked bored now, but Kazuo seemed to be thoughtfully considering the meaning of the

lines, which the ghost had read slowly with great feeling and passion. My husband glanced at me,

but I was very worried about missing my next cue, for now the book was lying closed on the floor!

The performance would have to be interrupted again!

“Omoshirokatta!”, said Zenji., “Mom, can I go to the park and play soccer?”.

The magical and theatrical atmosphere was dissolving and the ordinary world was coming back

into focus, completely against my will.

“Isn’t there more to perform now?”, I asked the ghost, hoping that there was more.

“Another time,” he said, looking wan. Perhaps the emotional performance had drained his

strength. “Domoo, minna san, thanks to you all.” He bowed graciously.

I was worried that he would give Zenji a shock by dissolving in a cloud through a shoji door.

But he didn’t. He walked to the front entrance, stepped smoothly down, and slid open the door.

Turning to bow slightly, he closed the door silently behind him.

“Mom,” asked Zenji in a puzzled tone a few minutes later “where were his shoes? He didn’t put

any shoes on when he left

.”

Chapter 25

My father nam’d me Autolycus, who being, as I am,

litter’d under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of

unconsider’d trifles.

The heat of summer was just peaking as August began and cicadas sang in the cherry trees

beside the river. A few days later, O-Bon, the three-day festival of the ancestor’s spirits, began. At

O-Bon, the spirits of the dead people in one’s family will return and commune with the living,who

are supposed to lay out offerings of food for them in front of the graves and on the Buddhist altars,

butsudan. Many Japanese people visit their family’s country relatives, especially grandparents, who

have stayed in their villages near the temples and graveyards in the countryside. But Kazuo’s family

lived in Tokyo and they stayed put there. Kazuo was still staying with us.

I had idly speculated whether or not my ghost would make an appearance, a kind of little

cameo, or something, to mark the ghostly festival of O-Bon. I thought that he would appear, surely,

to communicate. But the first two days passed without a visit. I decided my speculations were idle,

and in the late afternoon, as the heat started to wane, I took up a needle and thread and a sheet with

holes in it that needed to be patched.

I was pinning some squares of old material from a green plaid shirt that Zenji had outgrown to

cover the hole in one beige sheet. Kaoru, in the next room, was studying English by struggling

through The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Suddenly, she called out from through the lacquer

husuma doors, “Mom, what does o-b-s-e-r-v-a-t-i-o-n spell?”

“Observation. You know, watching something.”

“And, what does ‘founded on’ mean?”

“Based on or grounded on”

“O.K. and what about the word, t-r-i-f-l-e-s?”

“Trifles are tiny things, details. Do you get it now?”

“I think so.”

I heard her closing the book with an energetic snap.

“Mo sukoshi yonde, benkyo shinasai!”, said Kazuo, calling from the next room, where he was

sitting at the computer. Read more! Study!

“Kore kara Shiori-chan to asobu!” I’m off to play with Shiori-chan.

Her cellphone had been busily pinging away for the past hour, and no wonder, I thought. She

had been making plans to go out with Shiori-chan. A few minutes later, she emerged from her room,

asked me for a few hundred yen, grabbed her bicycle key, and left.

I settled back on the floor again with the sheet. Sewing large items was time-consuming, but

working to pay for things we couldn’t afford, like new sheets, was now not really an option: almost

all of my income went to food, rent and utilities. Kazuo helped us with money, but he had a

mortgage to pay on a house we had bought seven years ago in Kurumachi, which was in the

expensive Tokyo area, just as the real estate market was peaking. Not only had house prices gone

into even further decline after the global financial crisis of 2008, but. now, after the Fukushima

nuclear accident, because of radioactive fallout such as cesium-137, houses all the way down from

Fukushima Prefecture to Tokyo had lost more of their value.

A few meters away from me, Zenji spread out a paper game board and set up stacks of

Pokemon cards around it. He started making them fight each other, a mysterious process. I had seen

him do this many times, and I had come to the conclusion that the figures on the cards were mere

symbols of the real fantastic Pokemon animals. The real ones fought in another zone, one that was

purely in his imagination.

From the next room, Kazuo called my name softly, but with an urgency he only uses when

something is important..

“Viola!”

“What?”

“Come over here. Look at this.”

I put down the patched-up sheet and stuck the needle in the middle so I wouldn’t lose it.

He was watching YouTube. I glanced at the title of the video: “Titania and Bottom’s Scene in

the Forest”. Kazuo pulled the cursor back to the start and the video began again.

On a small, badly-lit stage that may have been in a high school or local community theater, a

young actress with long curly brown tresses, and wearing a cheap-looking white negligee was

asleep beside an installation of huge colorful paper flowers. Bottom, a portly gentleman dressed in a

pair of gray trousers and a striped shirt, was already wearing the head of the ass, and had just

rejoined his associates, who were obviously shocked by his new appearance, with all but one, the

“director” of the amateur group, Peter Quince, a tall, skinny, middle-aged man with red hair,

running away. Peter Quince paused to say, “Bless thee, Bottom! Bless thee! Thou art translated!”,

before running away himself. Bottom looked around and found himself alone. He stroked his chin

sagely and addressed the audience with one finger in the air:

“I see their knavery. This is to make an ass of me, to fright me if they

could, but I will not stir from this place, do what they can. I will walk up

and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid.”

Skipping around, he sang a short nonsense song about “the woosel cock” and “the throstle”,

and I recognized it as the song about birds I had heard before. Then “Titania” woke up. Seemingly

startled, she looked at Bottom and then uttered the famous comic line: “what angel wakes me from

my flow’ry bed?” The audience laughed, and Bottom started singing again:

The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,

The plain-song cuckoo gray,

Whose note full many a man doth mark,

And dares not answer nay-----

It was hard to catch the rest of the dialogue after that----including my favorite line, the one

where Titania says, “out of this wood do not desire to go”, because the director had decided that

Bottom and Titania, though fully clothed, would conduct their dialogue while arranged in a variety

of erotic poses on the floor. I knew that directors of A Midsummer Night’s Dream often tried to

show Bottom and Titania in sexually explicit poses.

“hieros gamos”, said Kazuo. “This play is about hieros gamos!”

“No it isn’t”, I said, “the stage directions don’t say anything about sex. Titania says I will wind

thee in my arms, nothing more. Though directors are always showing them writhing on the floor

together. After all, the directions don’t say they don’t have sex.”　

“Do you remember Oberon’s speech?”

“Of course.”

“Do you remember how it starts? I with the morning’s love have oft made sport.”

“Are you saying those lines are sexual? You mean between him and the morning sun?” I tried

to get my mind around this idea even as I found myself proposing it.

“Well, think about the image: eastern gate, all fiery red, opening on Neptune, there is the

oppositional male god, almost as if Oberon has become a male god through the experience. Plus

look at the words…opening, fiery red, and the ending with the salt green streams. That would be a

sexual climax of the male variety. Hieros Gamos.”

I realized that his erotic interpretation was very convincing.

“Maybe you should have been a literature scholar after all”, I said.

“Ha! Maybe there’s still time for that! I’m only 49.”

I read through the passage again, checking the erotic double entrendres. I was all but oblivious

to the sound of the doorbell chime. Vaguely, I heard Zenji opening the door, saying a few words,

then closing the door.

“Mom.”

Zenji slid open the husuma door and extended his arm to me. I saw he was clutching a slim

light blue book I had never seen before.

“Was it takkyubin?” I asked. Takkyubin is a package delivery service. “Zenji, you know that

you need to show me the box or wrapping paper so I can see who sent it.”

“No, mom”, said Zenji. “It was that man who can here to do that performance with you. This

time he was wearing shoes. I checked.”

I was already jumping out of my chair and on my way to the front door. I opened it as quickly

as I could manage, slipped on flip-flops, and tore down the path that led to the road and the river.

Scanning up and down the line of cherry trees, the noisy, taunting cicadas seemed only to be

oblivious to my sense of loss. I felt that I had missed something important. The blue sky was empty,

and so was the road. Feeling alone, I strolled on a bit, and after a few minutes, I started humming

“Ue o muite arukou”, about someone walking alone who is trying not to cry. There are four seasons

in the song. When it ended, I found I had recovered. The cicadas, mirroring my feelings, now

seemed with their urgent noise, to be energetically encouraging me not to mind this playful visit

from the ghost I had so badly wanted to see.

The book!

Suddenly, I remembered the strange present, and rushed back to the house. When I returned to

the room, Kazuo was still sitting in his chair in front of the computer and he was leafing through the

book.

“Here’s the title”, he said, showing me the title page inside. It was a play, and I wasn’t surprised

at that. But it wasn’t one by William Shakespeare. I read:

The Birds

By Aristophanes

Chapter 26

Bottom (sings): The woosel cock so black of hue,

With tawny-orange bill,

The throstle with his note so true,

The wren with little quill-----

Titania (awakening): What angel wakes me from my flow’ry bed?

Bottom (sings): The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,

The plain-song cuckoo gray,

Whose note full many a man doth mark,

And dares not answer nay---

“Ever read The Birds?”

“Nope”, I said. Actually I had never read any ancient Greek plays.

Kazuo handed the book to me and started searching online for a summary of the classic Ancient

Greek comedy.

“The Birds is set in Athens”,

“Just like A Midsummer Night’s Dream!” I said.

” In Aristophanes’ comedy, two characters, Euelpides and Pithetaerus, set off together looking

for a better place to live than Athens. Along the way, they are surprised to meet a large Hoopoe, a

type of crested bird, named Epops who used to be a man and who says, ‘I have been a man’”,

Kazuo said, reading from the screen.

“Like Bottom, he has been transformed into an animal”, I said.

“And it’s just his head, it seems, which is changed into an animal’s head.”

“Epops, Pithetaeus, and Euelpides decide they will ‘found a city’ in the air. Then Epops flies

into a thicket to wake his wife, a nightingale named Procne.”

I gasped, “Kazuo! Just as Bottom awakens Titania with his song!”

Kazuo did a new online search, “let’s have a look at the play,” he said.

I looked through the book while Kazuo scrolled down through the beginning of the play,

hunting. We both found Epops’ song at about the same time on our different media. I read the first

part of the song, which ends with Procne awakening off stage:

“Chase off sleep, dear companion. Let the sacred hymn gush from thy divine throat in

melodious strains; roll forth in soft cadence…..right up to the throne of Zeus, where Phoebus listens

to you, Phoebus with his golden hair. And his ivory lyre responds to your plaintive accents; he

gathers the choir of the gods and from their immortal lips pours forth a sacred chant of blessed

voices.”

Kazuo hadn’t missed a word. “Apollo”, he said, looking excited. “There is the sun again! What

happens after Procne wakes up?”

I scanned the text. “Procne is not seen; instead, to show that she awakens, the flute is played behind the

scene, imitating the song of a nightingale. Shakespeare seems to have turned that imitation of a nightingale

into Titania’s what angel wakes me from my flowery bed? Scholars assert that there is no source for A

Midsummer Night’s Dream, but this may actually be it.”

“So we may have found a new source for the play!” Kazuo’s voice was low with excitement. He is

always a true scholar.

“It does seem so.“

I was worried.

“Insinuating that Apollo, a pagan sun god, may have inspired Shakespeare is close to implying that he

may have worshipped the sun himself or countenanced sun worship!”, I continued. “ It’s a radical idea that

would surely be quickly rejected by all the major academic journals if we tried to write it up.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Kazuo.

“It all hinges on the sun and the secret identity of Juliet as the sun in the companion play, because that

image then tells us to read Bottom’s reference to Phibbus’ car as his own identification with the sun. It may

be quasi-religious. It’s certainly radical. This is one secret that will never get told. I know enough about

academia to know that.”

“Don’t be too sure”, Kazuo said, shrugging, “times change anyway. Or, how about trying to publish it

in Japan? We still worship the sun here, so it’s nothing new for us. ” He smiled, then frowned, paused, and

continued.

“But where is coal in this play? We can see the sun, but not its opposite.”

“Wait”, I said, “you are going too fast. First, let’s look at the second part of Epops’ song.”

I badly wanted to check the second stanza of Epops’ song!

I read the second and last stanza of Epops’ song, so long it left me breathless:

“ Epopopoi popoi popopopoi popoi, here, here, quick, quick, quick, my comrades in the

air; all you who pillage the fertile lands of the husbandmen, the numberless tribes who gather

and devour the barley seeds, the swift flying race that sings so sweetly. And you whose gentle

twitter resounds through the fields with the little cry of tiotictiotiotiotiotiotio; and you who hop

about the branches of the ivy in the gardens; the mountain birds, who feed on the wild olive-

berries or the arbutus, hurry to come at my call, trioto, trioto, totobrix; you also, who snap up

the sharp-stinging gnats in the marshy vales, and you who dwell in the fine plain of Marathon,

all damp with dew, and you, the francolin with speckled wings; you too, the halcyons, who flit

over the swelling waves of the sea, come hither to hear the tidings; let all the tribes of long-

necked birds assemble here; know that a clever old man has come to us, bringing an entirely

new idea and proposing great reforms. Let all come to the debate here, here, here, here.

Torotorotorotorotix, kikkabau, kikkabau, torotorotorolililix.”

“Wow”, said Kazuo.

“It’s a list of birds, just like Bottom’s whole song in this scene. I felt like a twittering bird myself

while I was reading it aloud. And”, I said, reading on, “it seems the invocation works because tons of birds

show up in The Birds.”

“A powerful summons which works immediately, is adapted, yet its power is preserved by

Shakespeare in that Titania awakens”, said Kazuo.

“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“Thank you”, said Kazuo, giving me a playfully scholarly look. “Or we can say that Shakespeare

has wished to disguise the role of Bottom as a medium to call forth a Sun God, even while having Bottom

do just this”, Kazuo, the scholar of religion, had rephrased his observation.

“But why?” I asked, “Why is the sun put in touch with Titania?”

“Is there anything the matter with her? Anything amiss?”

Vaguely I tried to remember the plot. Titania was fighting with Oberon. There was a boy they both

wanted. And the land had ceased to function.

“Yes, as a matter of fact…A long list, actually. Wait, I’ll get my Riverside. I hate staring at

screens!”

But Kazuo followed me into the next room instead and we both sat down side by side on the tatami

mat to examine the passage in Act II, where Titantia says:

These are the forgeries of jealousy

And never, since the middle-summer’s spring,

Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls thy hast disturbed our sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,

Hath every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents.

The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard.

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock,

The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,

For lack of tread, are undistinguishable.

The human mortals want their winter here;

No night is now with hymn or carol blest.

Therefore the moon (the governess of floods),

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

That rheumatic diseases do abound,

And thorough this distemperature, we see

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,

And on old Hiem’s thin and icy crown

And odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

Is, as in mockery, set; the spring, the summer

The chiding autumn, angry winter change

Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which.

And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension;

We are their parents, and original.

“This is so long! And so complicated”, said Kazuo.

“I think I can make the connections with coal,” I said.

I told Kazuo about the flying dream Puck had taken me on to see various sights of London in the late

1500s. I had seen enough on that trip to understand what Shakespeare was secretly getting at in Titania’s

speech.

Chapter 27

Here come the clusters.

And is Aufidius with him? You are they

That made the air unwholesome, when you cast

Your stinking greasy caps in hooting at

Coriolanus’ exile. Now he’s coming,

And not a hair upon a soldier’s head

Which will not prove a whip. As many coxcombs

As you threw caps up will he tumble down,

And pay you for your voices. ‘Tis no matter;

If he could burn us all into one coal,

We have deserved it.

“First”, I said, “you should know that coal was delivered by sailing ship to London. The coal was loaded

in the north of England where the mines were, and delivered to London: shipping it three hundred miles or

so from Newcastle to London cost less than carrying it even five miles by land. The connection between

water and ‘sea coal’ was therefore vital. The geography was perfect.”

“O.K.”, said Kazuo, “but I still don’t see how that relates to Titania’s speech.”

“The ‘contagious fogs’ that are ‘suck’d up by the sea’ are a metaphorical way of describing the process

of delivering sea coal by sea, and remember that all coal was called ‘sea coal’ until the middle 1600s. Then,

when it was burned it produced coal smoke, which is dark and looks like a fog, particularly in a damp

climate such as England’s. “

“I see”, said Kazuo.

“Coal smoke was disliked and there were many complaints recorded against businesses that used coal

as fuel because of the smoke”, I said, recalling the scene I had watched in London.”But, in general, coal

use and dependency increased over time. London grew, and by the late 1500s, coal became a necessary

cooking and heating fuel not just for many businesses, but for households, starting with the poorer ones.

Wood was too expensive.”

“It’s true that coal smoke, unfiltered and burned in a chimney without a scrubber, is hard to tolerate

because of the sulphur”, said Kazuo, “just look at the antique steam engine here in Tsubame.”.

“Exactly”, I said, “and these problems that resulted from coal use are allegorically presented in

Titania’s speech. For example, the ‘rheumatic diseases’ and also the ‘contagious fogs’ and ‘distemperature’

she mentions are a secretive reference to the ill effects of coal soot and smoke on health. People were

spitting blood, coughing, and their eyes were watering. They coughed up black phlegm. In Hamlet,

Shakespeare also gave Hamlet watering eyes, black clothes, and a cough to show him being plagued by

coal. It’s Hermetic, however, which means that the connection cannot be immediately understood. It’s like

a code. You can understand it if you know what to look for.”

Kazuo pointed to another one of Titania’s lines. “How about the ‘hoary-headed frosts (that) fall in the

fresh lap of the rose’?”

“Well”, I said, “that’s probably an allegory for the blighting effects of coal smoke on plants in London.

Unfiltered coal smoke is full of sulfur, or more specifically sulfur dioxide. The sulfer dioxide heavily

damaged cells in the leaves, giving them a water-soaked look. When they dried, these areas look whitish”,

or, more poetically, like a ‘frost’. And the lines “And on old Hiem’s thin and icy crown/ And odorous

chaplet of sweet summer buds/ Is, as in mockery, set; the spring, the summer/ The chiding autumn, angry

winter change” possibly refer to the way that a more urban environment, such as Elizabethan London

compared to countryside, can produce earlier blooming of flowers and warmer temperatures. “

“I guess you could call it the Climate Change of the Renaissance”, Kazuo said.

I had to smile at his joke. Our fights had become infrequent, and our relationship seemed to be healing

with this common investigation.

“Coal consumption soared. And wood stopped being the major source of fuel and coal became the

major source of fuel for the whole of England around this time.”

“Viola, wow! You should write this all up and submit it to an academic journal! Titania’s woes have

been explained at last!”

“Oh, please, I’m just an obscure nobody. No one would believe me and anyway, the world is running

on coal and oil. Which means, in a way, that this is all sort of subversive. Sort of. So I would never get it

published. I’m not even sure I would want to publish it.”

“Well, you’ve convinced me, at least. So, what about ‘the quaint mazes in the wanton green’?”

“Actually, I’m not sure about that part. Those are country games and sports of pre-modern times. I don’t

really understand why they are in there”

Kazuo yawned. “Let’s try to figure it out later.”

Zenji was putting away the Pokemon cards.

It would be time to start cooking soon. For some strange reason, that was almost always my job.

Kazuo, embedded firmly in his generation where the balance of power was heavily skewed in favor of men,

was one of those traditional Japanese husbands, so dreaded in some quarters, especially among my many

single female friends, coworkers and colleagues in this country who had avoided marriage at all costs.

One day, I was determined to have Kazuo make dinner for me!!

Chapter 28

This is nothing, fool.

A few weeks later, as summer was coming to a close and the children were getting ready to go

back to school, I had another strange dream. I was in a green field with tall green grass cut into the

shape of an enormous maze. I could peer over the edge of the maze, but not enough to tell where the

path would take me out. The smell of fresh grass was strong and sharp. I was walking quickly, not

running, but this maze was indeed a huge field, and no matter which way I turned, I could not find

the way out. Looking down at my body, I was surprised to see that I was dressed all in dark-blue

cotton indigo, the belted jacket and tight-fitting simple pants of a ninja on the job. Touching my

hair, I was interested to notice it was bound up in a ninja’s traditional cloth cap. I had always been

fascinated by ninja, spies and secret fighters who observed and used nature to apply Ninjutsu, the

arts of ninja, just when appropriate. Now, in my dream, I had become one!

What luck!

I turned a corner and I was surprised to see an elderly man with flowing white hair and a long

robe standing in front of me. Wild flowers decorated his beard and a gold crown sat lopsidedly on

his head. He ran his long pale fingers through his hair and started shouting oddly at me, “Blow,

winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow! Your hurricanes spout till you have drench’d our

steeples, drown’d the cocks! You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires!.”

“Excuse me?” I said. But I knew this was King Lear.

He was quite mad.

I started to panic.

King Lear turned around and pointed vaguely at the ground, shouting madly, “there’s hell,

there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption. Fie, fie, fie!

Pah pah!”

He was clearly very upset. I recognized the words as being from the play bearing his name. I

had seen the whole play performed in college once, and had found it very sad and tragic indeed.

Despite his age, he looked stronger than me. I thought that perhaps he could outrun me.

Nevertheless, when he lunged at me and started shouting “Howl, howl, howl! O you are men of

stones!”, I turned and started to run as fast as I could. I swerved and darted through the maze and

tried desperately to confuse him and lose him, but he managed to follow me pretty well at a

distance. I was grateful for my ninja outfit. It was perfect for darting, turning, and running.

I rounded a green corner and was shocked to see a tall and handsome very strong-looking dark-

skinned man dressed as a soldier might have dressed four or five hundred years ago. He had a

sword, a breastplate, sandals made of rope of the sort that are now fashionable again, except now

they are for women, a beautiful red velvet cape and a white silk shirt and very elegant knee-length

trousers that seemed to be made of leather. I had to marvel at the textiles and fashions before me, as

well as the utter style and martial bearing of the man. I wondered if my strange nightmare was

changing into a wonderful dream. Probably, this brave-looking man, who had one chic gold earring,

would be able to defend me from that horrid and nutty King Lear if I asked him nicely.

“Whip me, ye devils, from the possession of this heavenly sight!”, he suddenly roared.

I recognized a line from the famous “O” groan monologue from Othello. He seemed to be as

agitated and upset as the other man. This was definitely not how I wanted to see the monologue

performed, in a nightmare while the character raved crazily before me. All my hopes of being

rescued from the mad King Lear were dashed. Othello continued,

“Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!”

Panting, King Lear caught up with us, and greeted Othello with a mad but somehow strangely

cheerful wave. I could see that there was no point in reasoning with either of them. They were both

annoyed and upset to the point where discussion was meaningless. My only recourse was to flee.

They both looked at me, then at each other. I broke into a run, and they started after me.

What had I done? Nothing!

I tried to turn corners as fast as I could see them, trying to lose my pursuers.

All at once, in front of me, a ninja appeared, dressed as I was, all in traditional dark blue indigo.

His face was covered with a ninja’s cloth mask but his eyes were visible. I recognized them as the

eyes of my favorite ghost.

“Viola! Come this way!”

I followed him as fast as I could, and he was amazingly fleet. Dodging around corners, twisting

suddenly to take an unexpected turn, he held my hand firmly and I noticed, strangely, that his hands

were not cold at all in this special new dimension. They were as warm as mine.

“We’re in the land of mu now. It can be a bit frightening. Hang on. The world of nothingness is

another place to make contact with the spirit world. Fictional characters may also be found here if

one so desires it, or sometimes, actually, even if one does not.”

“I see,” I said, making efforts to keep up with the trim spirit leading me forward through the

paths cut in the tall grass. The maze was enormous and never-ending. The field it was made of must

be the size of a continent, I decided. I would have definitely been lost without some supernatural

help.

Othello and King Lear were still following us, though not with ease. They were still storming

and declaiming, vying to outshout the other.

“O! O! Desdemon dead!”

Well, at least I was finally getting to hear those famous O groans.

“Singe my white head! Strike flat the thick rotundity of the world!”

Just great.

Despite my fear, I almost laughed. The situation was beyond absurd.

Was this an English major’s dream or an English major’s nightmare?

A ninja, who was also a ghost, was leading me through a bizarre maze while two tragic fictional

heroes stormed after me, performing their immortal lines.

Make that three!

Another king had joined them. Like Othello, he was outfitted for battle in armor. He had a

helmet and armor, and his visor was up and framed by black curls. His face was visible, tormented

and haggard. I knew he was a king because he carried a standard with a crown, a crown and the

symbol of a lion standing on its hind legs and displaying its power which I guessed might be the

symbol of Scotland. This king could only be Macbeth, with terribly red, exhausted-looking eyes,

and he was riding a large gray horse.

“The very stones prate of my whereabout, and take the present horror from the time, which now

suits with it”, he groaned coldly, looking anguished.

There was something distant in his voice. I found it more disturbing that the loud, irksome

ravings of the other two.

“I am afraid to think what I have done; look on’t again I dare not”, he added.

Macbeth seemed to be talking to himself. I almost felt sorry for him. But then he charged

forward at us and the ghost pulled my hand and off we ran, away from the three characters who

were so agitated and aggressive, and unable to find any peace.

We two ninjas ran on, but the situation seemed difficult as the horse was coming closer. King

Lear and Othello were grasping the tail of the horse while running behind, and Macbeth was

whipping the animal forward faster and faster.

“Maybe we should stop and see what they want”, I suggested, “I mean to say, let’s talk to them.

Dialogue. Negotiations.”

“Um, all right, if you say so.”

We stopped in our tracks and turned around.

“Please stop!”, I said, raising my hand. Then, whimsically, to sound more convincing I added,

“in the name of the king!”

Macbeth whipped the horse onward even faster forward toward us.

“They don’t want to talk”, said my guide. “They are too infuriated and angry to discuss

anything. Stuck in their respective plays, they cannot move beyond their grief and despair. The

world of mu, of non-reality, or nothingness, if you will, as you must see by now, is not a place of

logic and reason. But it is the only place for us all to meet. It’s either this or nothing, no pun

intended.”

Nothing was sounding pretty good at this point.

I heard the horse breathing hard and saw his immense nostrils frothing.

Suddenly, Shakespeare reached out and, grasping my soft sleeve of indigo cloth, pulled me

quickly into the wall of the green maze. The stalks of grass were quite thick and sharp and formed a

dense forested mass of vegetation. It was difficult to penetrate, but our smooth, soft, and closely-

fitting ninja clothes were perfect for the task. I copied my guide as he bent his body forward and

angled it like a blade, while lowering his center of gravity by bending his knees slightly. Smoothly

he slipped through the stalks. Following in the wake of his path and mimicking his body posture, I

found my own progress was much easier.

We came through and we were in yet another part of this enormous maze, on another path. But

I heard the sound of hooves hammering the turf. Somewhere nearby, the haggard, dissatisfied

threesome was approaching. There was another path in front of us and, running, we turned onto it

and then I was surprised and dismayed to see a new barrier: a large iron gate with spikes on top. It

was wrought in elegant and curious designs inlaid with red and white colored glass. Looking more

closely at the wrought iron designs, I recognized that there were the outlines of chess pieces, some

red, and some white.

“The Red Queen, of course! How elegant! How marvelous! How beautiful!” I exclaimed,

pointing at an intricate, large, crowned and skirted female figure near me, “And here is her knight,

even mounted on a red glass horse!”

The deep ruby-colored glass of the Red Queen’s face shone smooth, smiling, and luminous.

Wanting badly to touch the beautiful glass, I reached out my hand gently.

“Oh! Please don’t touch her, she’s bad luck”, my guide said quietly but rather urgently. I pulled

my hand back quickly. The sound of thundering hooves grew stronger.

Shakespeare, or rather his spirit, looked up at the top of the gate, which was at least twice as tall

as we were.

“Now for the hard part”, he said.

Chapter 29

Say “a day” without the “ever.” No, no, Orlando, men are

April when they woo, December when they wed; maids are

May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are

wives.

It is well-known that ninjas always carry a few small and simple tools with them. My guide reached

into his belted jacket and drew out a long thin cord. Seeing these things, I felt annoyed. I hate climbing

fences, trees, and ladders, indeed, all sorts of items that are tall, sharp, rough, slippery, or rickety. My arms

are thin and not particularly muscular. Also, I don’t like heights, and I have a horror of rope-burn,

scratches, bruises, and falling.

“Can’t we just go around? Through the grass?”, I asked, “like before?”

“No. This fence extends all the way through this maze. If you look, you’ll see it’s true.”

I peered into the masses of stalky vegetation, realizing now that it was actually bamboo, not grass

anymore, and I was shocked to see that the fence, with its intricate designs of wrought-iron colored chess

pieces, had no end.

“Can we not, then, open this gate?” I asked desperately.

“Sorry, no key. Here, grab this end.”

Rather unenthusiastically I held onto a piece of rope while the spirit threw the other end over the gate. It

dangled down near us and he tied it onto a piece of fence near a White Pawn and the Red King.

“Please hurry, since, as you can see, General Othello and the two kings are now coming this way.”

More haggard and beaten-looking than ever, the three characters, now all perched atop the sweating

horse, appeared at the far end of the path. I grasped the rope and pulled myself up, stepping on the filigreed

iron, but making sure to keep well away from the figure representing the Red Queen. The task of climbing

was not as difficult as I had feared since I could use my legs, not just my rather spindly arms.

Soon we were over on the other side. The three men astride the horse merely watched us, perhaps a little

bitterly. The horse was breathing hard, and the men looked exhausted, their eyes dull. Encumbered with

shields, armor or equipment, or old, like Lear, they did not even try to follow us.

We slid down the rope on the other side and the sky changed, from gray and blustery on the other side,

to blue and clear. Here, the air was soft and warm. We didn’t have to run any longer, since no one was

pursuing us.

Soon, we came to a place where the path widened and I heard the sound of light laughter. Two young

women dressed in jeans and peasant blouses embroidered with flowers were sitting on the grass and eating

sweet potatoes and oranges. A bearded man, a bit older, was asleep nearby. He wore a plain brown cotton

tunic and cut-off jean shorts. A curious thing, a round shiny golden crown, lay beside him.

One woman took a bite of a sweet potato. “Delicious!”, she exclaimed.

“Duncan! Wake up! Have one!”, said the other, peeling an orange and nudging the sleeping figure with

one free hand.

I could feel my brain making new calculations, trying to pick up on the correspondences, the names, the

possibility that they were also Shakespearean characters. “Duncan” was the murdered king, I knew, from

Macbeth. I realized, triangulating, then these two women in this strange maze in the land of mu might be

from King Lear and Othello.

“The one eating a sweet potato is Cordelia, and the other one is Desdemona”, my guide whispered,

confirming my guess.

Duncan, the king, sat up and yawned.

My heart stood still as now, certain puzzling lines from the three plays, lines that had always

stumped me, now echoed in the bamboo forest around me, sounding partly like the wind rustling the leaves

and partly like a folk singer’s voice unaccompanied by any instrument:

Here lay Duncan, his silver skin lac’d with his golden blood….…

Welcome hither! I have begun to plant thee, and will labor to make thee full of growing

O, never shall sun that morrow see!

You have seen sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears were like a better way…

There she shook the holy water from her heavenly eyes….

Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight?

By heaven, you do me wrong!

No, by this heavenly light!

Put out the light, and then put out the light.

If I quench thee, thy flaming minister….

These characters were associated with light, heaven, sunshine, and gold..

Cordelia saw us and got up.

“Hello”, she called shyly. Desdemona and Duncan looked up and smiled. Duncan had a harmonica in

his pocket and he started playing jigs on it, while Cordelia and Desdemona danced in a circle.

I could see that in this world of mu, just as on the other side of the fence, normal conversation and logic,

explanation and the language of persuasion and reason indeed had no place. It was indeed a dream-like

world, fit only for a dream, which is only what it all was.

I wondered how to join in their group, or even if I should try.

My ninja guide drew a small bamboo flute, a shakuhachi, from his pocket and started to play,

accompanying Duncan.

Here, for some reason, too much talking seemed unnecessary.

Love, and be silent.

Music was, after all, better than words.

Cordelia and Desdemona began running through nearby paths of the maze, emerging suddenly and

disappearing, laughing and calling out to each other. Duncan put his harmonica down and looked at me.

“Would you like to play in the maze as well?”, he asked kindly.

“Yes”, I said, lifting the ninja scarf off my head and freeing my hair in the warm breeze. .

Soon all four of us were running through the maze, laughing, hiding, calling out.

Duncan! Desdemona! Cordelia!

I heard my name as well, when one of them would call it. How did they know me? I hadn’t yet

introduced myself.

Viola!

It was delightful to be included in this group, just as delightful as it had been awful to be pursued by the

glum, dissatisfied, angst-ridden, and bleary-eyed tragic heroes before. In the bamboo forest, now, we found a

small stream and cupped our hands to drink the clean and delicious water.

Then the sound of the shakuhachi abruptly stopped and we heard strident, demanding voices.

“It’s them!” said Desdemona, looking worried.

“I knew they would find us,” said Duncan sadly.

We went back to the clearing and some new figures, three woman and one man, were to be seen, dressed

in modern business attire. There were two severe-looking women in gray suits with shiny leather briefcases

with the initials “G.L” and “R.L.” embossed in silver monograms, respectively. There was a man in a well-

cut suit with an expensive-looking tie and new fashionable alligator shoes. The fourth one was a woman

wearing a long-sleeved black designer silk dress with spiky black heels. Nearby, I spied a black sports car.

They had probably arrived in it.

“You’ll have to leave,” said one of the women holding a briefcase.

“As my sister, Goneril, says, this land is to be cleared and developed.”, said the other.

“You must be gone! Do you hear! Take yourselves off! Everyone hates you!” said the woman in the

black dress said haughtily to Duncan, sounding a bit as if she were on the verge of insanity. Momentarily, an

sounding sob escaped, like a serpent hissing, from her throat. Her three companions stared at her edgy

display of emotion with hatred.

In a threatening tone, the man turned to us and said, “We can only be…err .. reasonable…. for so long. “

He held up a stack of official-looking documents, “then we will have to resort to legal measures to make you

leave. And believe me, the law is on our side, not yours.”

“As my colleague, Iago, has intimated, we can bring this before a court and get all your rights

terminated instantly!”, said Goneril.

“Lady M.,” she asked, addressing the nutty-looking but most elegant one, “have you brought the pen?

These sun figures never have any pens around. In fact, they never seem to have much at all around. Like

pigs, they live.”

Sun figures? Like Juliet, then.

“I have! I have! Of course I have! In its beautiful case!” hissed the woman in black. She stretched out a

pale hand, with long red nails, to show us an expensive fountain pen. “Sign it! Sign it!”, she hissed.

The five of us just stood there stupidly; my brain had processed these four new characters as Regan,

Goneril, Iago and Lady Macbeth. Yet we seemed to have no answers to their demands. Cordelia took the

elegant black pen and quickly signed the documents Iago held out for her.

“We can’t stay, so let’s go”, said Desdemona sadly, starting to pick up the sweet potatoes and oranges

and wrap them in a cotton handkerchief.

“No you don’t get to keep those”, said Iago, “those are ours too now. Drop them now and get lost. Go

and make all the money thou canst! Put money in thy purse! Ha ha ha!”

Desdemona put the simple foods down on the grass and Lady Macbeth, giggling a bit crazily, stepped

over to put one of her designer stiletto heels through a large sweet potato. Then she squashed it and started

laughing hysterically.

“Must she always get carried away?” said Regan, rolling her eyes.

“Well, I at least thought it was funny”, said Goneril harshly, sneering at her sister.

I couldn’t think of anything to say at all. In this land of mu, there was no logic and no reason. I was, like

Alice, down a rabbit hole in this dream. Things just happened and then they stopped.

Desdemona, Duncan and Cordelia walked off into the maze. Who knew where they would go? In this

land of mu, no doubt there were always places and other dimensions to become lost and found in.

The professionals began rapidly making business calls on their cell phones. They strutted up and down

and busily gave directions, though not to each other. Goneril also took a laptop computer out of her bag and

started typing away. They were not interested in us ninjas at all. I sat listening to their smooth words. Not

quite as melodious as music, their conversations yet had a mesmerizing rhythm and a flow I could feel here

in the world of mu.

Let me speak to the architect at once, at once, I say!

Those numbers are just preliminary.

Five thousand square meters.

Suddenly Iago did a strange thing. His eyes started to become glowing and almost red. Then he put his

hand over the mouthpiece of his cellphone, and, looking very angry, turned to us.

“Burn like the mines of sulphur!” he said loudly in an evil voice and pointed at us.

“Is it a strange curse?”, I asked my ninja guide in a whisper.

“No, I wrote it. It’s line 329, scene three, act three of the play Othello, actually. Do you like it? You must

admit that his delivery, at least, is effective. It might be a fine line for him to use in any adversarial business

negotiations, too, I imagine.”

“Yes, very true”, I said.

I remembered now in Othello how Iago keeps telling Roderigo, an empty ‘cipher’ character used as a

sounding board: fill thy purse with money, go make money, make all the money thou canst again and again in

one scene.

Was this obsession with making money something to do with the transition to a coal economy of

Shakespeare’s time? Indeed, as I had seen, everyone had needed to comply. No one could refuse.

My guide smiled at me as we walked off together. “Let us leave them,” he said. “In this world of mu,

their plans, also, are nothingness itself. By the way, I have a small present for you.”

I took the tiny, round and shiny item he held out. It was a small golden ring, a plain band.

I put it on next to my wedding band.

There may have been a potent spell in the ring. I felt the world disappearing, myself being born again,

emerging somewhere in a new lighted place. I woke up and it was morning, and I was in my futon. I looked

at my hand and found the new ring. I took it off to examine it and I found an inscription engraved on the

outside:

Love me, and leave me not

Chapter 29

Give me that mattock and the wrenching

iron.

Hold, take this letter; early in the morning

See thou deliver it to my lord and father.

Give me the light. Upon thy life, I charge thee,

What e’er thou hearest or seest, stand all aloof,

And do not interrupt me in my course.

Why I descend into this bed of death

Is partly to behold my lady’s face,

But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger

A precious ring----a ring that I must use

In dear employment—therefore be gone.

I went to the computer and turned it on, and went to Open Source Shakespeare, where all of

Shakespeare’s works may be searched for any words you like. I typed in “love me and never leave me”

and one result was returned: Gratanio’s lines in Act 5 of The Merchant of Venice.

About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring,

That she did give me, whose posy was

For all the world like cutler’s poetry

Upon a knife, “love me and leave me not.”

I had been given, for some reason, Nerissa’s ring!

But why?

I went to get my Riverside Shakespeare to read The Merchant of Venice further and see what the

ring meant. I quietly carried the book out of the room where Kazuo and Zenji were still sleeping on

their futons and brought it into the dining room. I made a pot of black tea, poured a cup out into a mug

and added a little bit of sugar. Now I could attend to the play!

This was the first time I was trying decoding a play without the ghost!

Think!

What should I look for?

The sun?

Friars?

I felt it was very little to go on.

Then something strangely beautiful happened. A tiny golden light in the shape of a ring appeared on

the page! It danced around on the text and settled finally on one the word “sunny” in the speech Bassanio

makes early on in the play when he describes Portia:

In Belmont is a lady richly left

And she is fair and, fairer than that word,

Of wondrous virtues. Sometimes from her eyes

I did receive fair speechless messages.

Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued

To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia.

Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,

For the four winds blow in from every coast

Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks

Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,

Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchis’ strond,

And many Jasons come in quest of her.

The little magic ring was telling me that, in this play, Portia was the sun! And I noticed that there were

other words to conjure up the images of a goddess from antiquity: temples, four winds, wide world. Portia

was the one to follow. I wrote down this down on a piece of paper.

The ring made of light jumped high into the air and hovered near my cheek. I had to smile. It was more

conjuring. Next, I was surprised when the pages of the play turned magically and rapidly, as if blown by

the wind.

The pages stopped blowing forward near the end of the play. The ring stopped at a small speech by Portia.

She has defeated Shylock in court, and is on her way back to Belmont, and she says to Nerissa:

So doth the greater glory dim the less:

A substitute shines brightly as a king

Until a king be by….

Did this mean that Portia was the “king”, a cosmic king, that is, the sun, whose true power has been

revealed, in comparison with Shylock’s, to be much greater than his? I wrote down this question and the

ring jumped up again.

The pages of the play blew back to the famous courtroom scene in Act 4 where Portia starts off her

most famous speech with the words “The quality of mercy is not strained”. The ring hovered and danced

over many words in this speech: “awe”, “majesty”, “throned monarch”, “kings”, “mightiest in the

mightiest”, “God”, “power”. I wrote all of these words and phrases down. The actors on the Elizabethan

stage, I had seen, had no microphone and just yelled their lines. Clearly Portia, by yelling out words having

to do with kings and power, was going to become associated with kings and power, at least unconsciously

in the minds of the audience. It was a kind of theatrical magic.

The ring jumped up and hovered near me again, while the pages blew again, back to Act 5.

Then the ring made of golden light descended and landed on a speech where a messenger enters with news:

Messenger: Stephano is my name, and I bring word

My mistress will before the break of day

Be here at Belmont. She doth stray about

By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays

For happy wedlock hours.

Lorenzo: Who comes with her?

Messenger: None but a holy hermit and her maid.

I pray you, is my master yet returned?

I realized that Portia is now seen in the mind’s eye of the theater audience, to be praying, accompanied

by a mysterious “holy hermit”! But when Portia appears, accompanied by Nerissa, some 60 lines later, the

obscure religious figure has vanished.

Who was this mysterious hermit?

I guessed it must be another stand-in for Shakespeare himself!

Like Friar Lawrence, the anonymous hermit in The Merchant of Venice wants to bring together Man and

the Sun.

The “happy wedlock hours” were the union of the Sun (Portia) and Mankind (Bassanio in the allegory).

I wrote it down.

I sighed. Shakespeare was starting to seem a little bit strange to me. He was absolutely devoted to the sun.

Was such single-mindedness healthy?

The ring made of light jumped up again and the pages rustled. They stopped at the lines which Shylock

cries, although they are reported onstage by Solanio, another empty ‘cipher’ character. The ring danced

over the following piece of text:

And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones,

Stol’n by my daughter! Justice! Find the girl,

She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats. (II.viii.20-22)

Stones?

Hadn’t Lear said something about “you are men of stones”?

Hadn’t Macbeth talked about the ‘very stones that prated of his whereabout’?

I understood that stones were the code word for coals. More importantly, emotionally heightened

utterances were more likely to contain the extra, coded meaning: Macbeth on his way to commit murder,

Lear upon the realization that Cordelia is dead, Shylock in his agony.

Sulpher, the strongest component of coal smoke, was another code word for coal. Lear and Othello

both use the word when they have lost control of their emotions.

As London and England had left the familiar old sun economy, Shakespeare had expressed his own

agony, in disguise, through of the onstage cries of different characters.

I wondered why I should be the one to find out about it. It might be better for it to remain hidden. I

wasn’t active for solar energy or involved with any cause. Why me?

The golden ring hovered again and the pages turned by magic. I was now getting so used to magic that

I was quite blasé about it and I watched the pages while sipping my tea

The pages settled open in Act V, and where the ring made of golden light settled, I read the same words

by Gratiano I had previously looked up on line:

About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring,

That she did give me, whose posy was

For all the world like cutler’s poetry

Upon a knife, “love me and leave me not.”

If stones were coals, then might the golden rings, Portia’s and Nerissa’s represent the power of the sun?

It was a kind of magic, the transmission of the power of the sun, through words.

I started yawning, but the little gold ring danced up again, and the pages spun forward to the

beginning of the play. The ring settled on the line where Salerio calls Antonio’s merchant ships

‘pageants of the sea’. What? I wondered in my sleepiness, was Antonio, with his ventures, another

stand-in for Shakespeare, with his plays that were ventures too?

I was too tired to think about it more. Shakespeare’s allegories were indeed complex mechanisms!

It was all beyond me!

I had woken up too early. I noticed that the little golden ring made of light was gone, and I closed

the book and went back to my futon to sleep a little more.

.

Chapter 30

Love, and be silent.

After an hour of restful sleep, I woke up and started recalling the dream about being a ninja in a

maze.

In the large maze, I had met three groups of characters, all from the same three plays. Only the

second group, the ones who represented the sun, had enjoyed the maze as a game. The others, the

tragic heroes and the villains, had been unable to play or have any fun there at all.

the mazed world now knows not which is which

I lay in bed wondering why on earth playing and playfulness would be related to the sun.

The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,

For lack of tread, are undistinguishable.

The human mortals want their winter here;

Suddenly, remembering Goneril, Regan, Lady M. and Iago, so busy, so serious, so intent, I

understood.

Kazuo was awake by now.

“I now know why Titania was talking about the mazes being undistinguishable!” I said with

excitement, pulling his arm.

Kazuo yawned, “Ohayou”, he said sleepily. Good morning.

“Ohayou” I said, launching into my impromptu lecture. Kazuo closed his eyes again, but I

could see that he was awake.

”When coal became economically important, rural village life became dysfunctional. Here

Shakespeare describes the knock-on effects of enclosing land, which was one indirect effect of coal

burning, since coal burning allowed greater concentrations of people in cities, who could burn coal for

fuel and did not need wood. Playful country traditions, nine men’s morris or making mazes in fields,

have vanished with the old solar-based economy: also freely singing is not appropriate in an urban

place: “no night is now with hymn or carol blest”.

Kazuo opened his eyes. “Makes sense, Viola”, he said. “The same things happened here in Japan

as modernization occurred. People stopped playing and holding festivals and became terribly serious

about education, achievement, money, success. Every little town has about 10 cram schools, every big

city has hundreds of cram schools. Filled with hundreds of children studying until late into the

evening, and expected to achieve and become professionals. Or else their parents will be mortified. I

used to be like that too, I think.”

“I know, I know! I live here, remember?….So I wonder, who, then, is the little changeling boy that

Oberon and Titania are fighting over?”, I asked.

Kazuo was wide awake now. He lay back on his pillow, with his arms under his head and looking

up at the ceiling. “That’s easy, if you think about it”, he said. “Shakespeare gave Bottom metaphorical

‘wings’ and let him soar up, along with his song and his associations with the sun, and create a moment

where magic will take place and the negative forces expelled. When Titania wakes to say, so comically,

‘What angel wakes me from my flow’ry bed?’, then, actually, on the hidden level, it is true: Bottom is

a winged angel who, with her (she is now awake) will join the gods, the ones, like Apollo, who are

strictly associated with natural rituals and older myths and who pre-date Christianity. He joins with her

in love, and she is cured, which is to say that she later hands over the “little changeling boy”, the

source of her argument with Oberon.”

“So who is he?”, I asked.

“He’s us, mankind. He’s living in luxurious circumstances, which is to say using coal, and it’s

driving Oberon crazy, who wants him to be a kind of crazy nature worshipper like Oberon is.”

“Wow!”, was all I could manage to say.

If he had been alive today, Shakespeare might have been a radical environmentalist.

Could I say such a thing? After all, it was such a totally different era. They hadn’t even had

electricity.

“But, “ Kazuo continued, “there’s no going over to Oberon’s side until the sun gets together with

the land, Mother Nature, or Titania, in this case. And I suppose that would take many hundreds of

years of steadily using coal up and therefore expelling its influence slowly through natural depletion.

While the sun gets to be more and more important for us human beings. It might be centuries,

millennia, from now, if you think about it. I have no idea how much coal is left, of course. It would

certainly be a dynamic process. And a very lengthy one. And fascinating from the standpoint of human

studies, culture, religion, technology, everything.”

I breathed in. Now I saw it all. Two halves of the same one unified thing.

A long, long time horizon. Much longer than a human lifespan.

“So, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is actually showing the same natural process of fossil fuel

depletion that is shown in Romeo and Juliet, but from a comic side”, I said.

“Together, we figured the mystery out, Viola”, said Kazuo, grinning and then leaning over and

giving me a sudden congratulatory kiss.

Lying back on my futon, I remembered the morality play I had seen in hologram form months

before. The main characters had been the Vice, the Virtue and Everyman. Now, after my exciting

dream in the bamboo maze, I saw how Shakespeare had used the morality play form to make a

statement about man’s inescapable, though quite interesting, position as a fossil-fuel user in the

cosmos.

“And that’s not all”, I said. “There’s more to this fossil-fuel angle. Lear, Macbeth and Othello all

reject or do away with the sun figures in their respective plays.”

“What?”

“I mean that the tragic hero is a collective idea of people as a large group, the whole society,

functioning as one. We have fire so we can burn fuel, so we can burn fossil fuels too. It’s a path that

leads us little by little away from the sun economy. The sun economy, Cordelia, Duncan, and

Desdemona in their respective plays, is therefore portrayed as being killed or rejected by the tragic

hero. He listens to the Vice, who goads him, flatters him, and otherwise persuades him to do this.

Regan and Goneril, Lady Macbeth, and Iago all use their knowledge of humanity to get the hero to

listen to them. People might want complex, fancy, and elegant things, symbolized by the way Lear

prefers Goneril’s and Regan’s speeches. Or people might be afraid of seeming unambitious and weak,

of being ridiculed, so they make an effort to get ahead, like Macbeth. Or people might feel insecure in

their success, jealous of others, and feel that there was no limit to their needs and desires, like

Othello.”

“I see what you mean. Like when cars came to Japan. Everyone was worried about others having

them and looking modern and cool. No one wanted to be left behind. At least that is what my father

said.”

“Fossil fuels make everyone feel insecure. Someone else will get the goodies and become the ruler

or the company president. People rush in to take what they can get; it’s completely natural to fear that

someone else would get an advantage.”

“I guess it’s the way we evolved, that’s all. Compete or lose.”

“Well, who could blame us? Planet Earth is often rather cold and food is hard to come by. Well

may we feel a bit insecure. It’s natural.”

…..answer with thy uncover’d body this extremity of the skies.

For some reason, I remembered this line from King Lear, my favorite. It made me suddenly

remember the many Shinto Shrines I had seen, some just little wooden shacks, open to the sky, the

stars and the sun.

Shinto Shrines were a human attempt to appease the gods, connect with them, channel them.

We have so little, please help us. ……

I had seen small offerings on the ledges of shrines: one or two yen, a single-serving of sake, an

orange, a cup of uncooked rice.

And in the process of appealing to the sky gods, the nature gods, a curious thing had happened; the

uncovered Shinto Shrines could tell, in their silence, a bare, but necessary truth. Maybe they, and their

insistence on the sun, were why Shakespeare’s ghost tarried so willingly in Tsubame. Tsubame had

several old Shinto shrines.

In its basic mysteriousness, Shinto had no theology, no scripture, no dogma.

Love, and be silent.

Shinto shrines often had little statues of foxes in and around them, on ledges and on steps, because

foxes, vexatious, devious, tricky folk heroes, were a reminder of how things could look like one thing

and become another. A patch of sunlight, a storm, a forest, a river…….they looked reliable, and like

themselves only…..

…..but wait, and you will see that they have subtly changed and become a bamboo flute, a bowl of

rice, a square of cloth.

That was the magic.

Kazuo said, “And speaking of food, I’m getting hungry.”

Unaccommodated man.

“Hey, haven’t you ever heard of unaccommodated man?” I asked, pretending to be annoyed.

“No.”

Kazuo, poor Kazuo, hadn’t yet read King Lear!

Chapter 31

Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy

doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal. I

would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their

business might be everything and their intent every where for

that’s it that always makes a good voyage of nothing.

School was starting again after the summer break, and Kazuo left to go back to Kurumachi. The

mountains surrounding Tsubame turned moody tones of red and orange. On a bicycle trip to a hardware

store near the Fushino River, I saw an orange persimmon and a black raven on a bare branch sharply

framed against the blue sky, and I knew fall had come.

That fall, I was very busy. The translation company I was freelancing for as a proofreader sent me

many scripts and storyboards for commercials to check; I had to teach many eikaiwa classes, and I started

working one afternoon a week for an artisanal indigo-dyeing workshop in Miyano run by a woman named

Nagumo-san. Some of the buckets and rolls of fabric needed two people to lift them, and I loved the smell,

the appearance and soft powdery touch of wet indigo dye.

When I had some spare time, I wrote the ideas about the relationship between Romeo and Juliet and A

Midsummer Night’s Dream down in a notebook. I could now tie Romeo and Juliet together with A

Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I could see how a sun figure could function in a comedy and in a tragedy,

but I wanted to see what Professor Yamaguchi would say if I ran the radical, but fascinating idea by her.

One brilliant and sunny October morning, when I had a little time, I put the notebook in a bag and took a

bus to Tsubame University, where I stopped in at Professor Yamaguchi’s office during her office hours to

see what she would say about what Kazuo and I had found out. I was fortunate to find her drinking tea at

her desk and writing something on her computer. She greeted me warmly.

When I had finished explaining the conclusions Kazuo and I had come to about the plays, especially

the religious aspect of Bottom as a sun figure who “cures” Titania’s coal-related troubles, she clapped her

hands.

“Marvellous! Wow!“

I could not help but smile with relief. I had been quite worried that our ideas, so different from the

standard academic approaches in all the major journals in the West, wouldn’t be accepted.

“To tell the truth”, she said, “I had always wondered about the interaction of Bottom and Titania. It seems

to me, now, as I consider it, that Shakespeare has aimed to create a scene that comes near to containing the

power of an authentic and religious, agricultural festival, necessarily and intrinsically bound up with the

power of the sun. The divine one, the “sun god”, is Bottom, and it is Titania, so in need, who is placed in

communication with him.”

“An agricultural festival?”, I asked.

Professor Yamaguchi grabbed a heavy red book off her shelf and opened it.

“It’s a religious concept, “she said, starting to read, “‘An agricultural festival is a time distinct from

ordinary time. Man can communicate with the divine during this time. The limitations of the present no

longer matter. Different foods are eaten, and in greater quantity; there are special clothes, and even sexual

prohibitions and other restrictions disappear. Emotions are meant to be expressed with freedom. The elites

and rulers may be parodied..…it is a time set in the time of myths and these myths give the present their

sense of time. Through this story, a path is open to all kinds of reform and the ideally perfect state.”

She put the book down. “So, Viola, your solar energy idea points to the presence of an agricultural

festival, which explains why Bottom, usually at the very ‘bottom’ of the social ladder, is now given sublime

fairy food, and waited on, like a king, by the fairies. He wears an ass’s head, recollecting older Fool

figures; his song recollects the Phallus, in that it ends by referring to cuckoo, which is to say the cuckold,

an obscene reference, and so on.”

I could see that I needed to study many more historical and cultural references, ideas, and symbols,

before I would ever be able to be a scholar.

“More importantly”, said Professor Yamaguchi, “your ideas have uncovered deep Hermetic techniques

that seem to be used to stage a profound religious moment that will be only vaguely sensed, not grasped

fully or directly, by the audience. Yet the fairy-magician Oberon has basically set up the whole situation---a

secret religious ritual ---- and Peter Quince, before exiting, has bestowed a religious consecration upon the

scene a few lines earlier: Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou art translated.”

Professor Yamaguchi smiled. “I had always wondered about that line. But thanks to your work, Viola, I

can see its religious importance at last.”

I didn’t tell her that I had once used it on my own husband. But I did say,

“My husband Kazuo has been helping me with this interpretive work.”

She smiled. “That’s great!” She knew Kazuo. His office had been in the next building before we had

left Tsubame.

She looked down at her watch. “It’s lunch time, Viola, are you free for lunch? There’s a university

cafeteria nearby.”

I was very pleased to be invited.

The cafeteria was small, since Tsubame University is not very big. We chose bowls of soba, buckwheat

noodles, and I also was happy to find small dishes of anin dofu, a silky white and sweet jelly served with

fruit syrup and canned fruit. I chose kaiso salad, too, from the refrigerated shelves, and put the bowl on my

tray.

When we had found an empty table, Professor Yamaguchi noticed my salad.

“Do you like seaweed?” she asked.

“Actually I love it. It has a wonderful flavor. Japanese people always ask me if I can eat seaweed,

natto, or konnyaku, or koyadofu. Actually, in my case I like all of them, especially konnyaku. But I eat them

a bit differently from the standard ways here.”

“How?”

“Well, I like konnyaku plain and raw, with a little wasabi on it, instead of boiling it with fish broth. I

eat natto straight, not on rice. And I boil koyadofu with garlic and olive oil and zucchini, I guess it’s kind of

an Italian style, not with sweet fish broth and carrots as is common here.”

Professor Yamaguchi laughed. “You are very eclectic, Viola! Not just in your cooking, but also in your

readings of Shakespeare, I see you like doing a fusion thing between the East and West, and coming up

with something new. Omoshiroi.” Interesting.

I knew that that word, omoshiroi, made up of the two kanji 面白 supposedly originated when

Amaterasu opened the door of her cave and the shining light made all the faces, the 面 of the people

outside, shine white 白.

In this country, every good thing could be traced back to the sun.

“I had never thought of that,” I said, “And thank you. But I haven’t written anything or produced

anything concrete yet. And I’m pretty sure I won’t. Besides, I think that fusion also can mean neither one

thing nor the other, hard to place, and hard to understand.”

“Well, but in my opinion, your ideas are interesting, simple, and persuasive. And I can see that the

ancient culture of Japan has played a role in the way you have come to think about Shakespeare. I think

that’s fascinating. Because I know professors here, not just literature professors, but even a chemistry

professor, who have all of Shakespeare’s collected works in Japanese and love his plays. There is

something universal about Shakespeare. Something that transcends boundaries. And the sun, shining into

every corner of the planet, surely does unite us all. It’s the single star that powers our planet, and without it

none of us would be here. It is easy to forget that in today’s digital, modern electronic age.”

“Yes, I suppose that particularly the sun as a central force, a mythical figure, something to establish a

relationship with: that’s an idea I must have picked up here in Japan”, I said, deciding that I did not need to

mention the assistance of the ghost, “and here we have Amaterasu, after all.”

“And not just Shinto, I think, is important for your ideas.”

“Oh, really? What do you mean?”, I asked.

“Well, how about Buddhism, or Bukkyo, as we call it here, the teachings of the Buddha?”

“I don’t quite see how”, I said.

“Well, remember that passage from Hamlet about the book he is reading, the ‘old men who have gray

beards, their faces are wrinkled, their eyes are purging plum-tree gum’, and so forth. Especially if we

connect it to Lo Spaccio and the passage on Jupiter, an aging god who is dying of old age, isn’t it possible

to see it as basically about the passage of time and the way nothing, even a worldview, lasts and how

everything is impermanent? Now that is also one of the central ideas of Buddhism.”

I had heard about impermanence in Buddhism many times. I had never much thought about the

concept. It seemed like just something people automatically listed when they talked about Buddhism.

“Humans, “Professor Yamaguchi continued, “want to believe everything is forever, any system they

set, whether it’s a political party, a dynasty, whatever. But Buddhism teaches us to try to let go of that idea

of permanence without too much pain and regret”, Professor Yamaguchi waved her hand in the air and

made a gentle swirl. She laughed. “Of course, we never learn”, she said, “in some basic way we just can’t.

Every cell in our living bodies wants to continue living forever. It’s biology! It’s natural! Fight on!

Ganbare! And so we are caught!”

I laughed. “I think so…..I mean I think I understand. Things play out, you mean. It’s a process. We are

part of that in a dynamic, basic and material way….um…actually, it’s kind of exciting, even pleasurable,

don’t you think? Because we are part of it so integrally. At one with it.”

“Another Buddhist concept, as you probably know”, said Professor Yamaguchi.

Caught between the intemperate sun and the cold rock that was our planet, we were really doing our

best, I guessed. I had come here to Japan and learned this, learned to feel more sympathy for people, not

just those in Japan, than I had ever been able to before. Even for Kazuo, the difficult, competitive husband I

had left back in the area where abnormal radiation levels were still being mapped on government internet

sites. Even for myself, a wanderer who never seemed to have a home or really to want one.

But hadn’t I learned that I was always home?

“I know”, I said.

Shakespeare had used his observations of people in contact with coal to make some broad observations

that lit up brilliantly our strange, difficult, yet exciting situation, a totally original balancing act performed

with energy and material in the world, no, in the whole universe, and each one of us was engaged in it.

It was a literary secret that must never be told!

Because who would believe me?

No one except the Japanese!

They were the people whose broad and ancient cultural access to Shinto and Buddhism gave them a

head start in understanding the concepts of Giordano Bruno…..

The concepts Shakespeare had used and hidden very ingeniously!

Professor Yamaguchi laughed, “And yes, I guess it is exciting”, she said, “if you put it that way.”

“It seems that Eastern religions are so broad and sweeping”, I said, trying to sound scholarly and

analytical, “there isn’t always that much theology, but instead big, general, natural and cosmic ideas, like

the importance of the sun and the impermanence of life and everything else.”

“The concepts were broad and universal enough to have been grasped and embraced by Giordano

Bruno, and I don’t mean particularly Buddhism and Shinto, but related ideas in different forms, from the

works of many others, especially in ancient Greece”, said Professor Yamaguchi, looking sad, “But he was

terribly misunderstood for his broad and universal kind of thinking.”

But here in the sunlit cafeteria, with its dusty, dated, 1980s skylight and aluminum chairs and tables,

there was nothing we could do to save Giordano Bruno, over four hundred years after his fiery execution.

We were helpless, victims of the passage of time.

I said, “I always feel sad when I think of Bruno.”

“Yes, if he were alive today, he might be an excellent scholar enjoying total academic freedom. Bruno

was actively synthesizing ideas from the ancients, some of which also made the journey eastward,

changing along the way, through India and China and to our shores in Japan, millennia ago. It really is one

world. Shakespeare could have accessed ideas that ran deeply and widely and parallel to each other in

different cultures and parts of the world, taking on different names and identities. Like mythical figures

with new names and faces, for example, but that resemble related ones in another area. The names of the

ideas were different, but the positions and central tenets had deep commonalities.”

I knew that what she was suggesting was just speculation but nevertheless, it sounded plausible.

People moved around and carried their ideas with them. Venice, in particular, and Italy, in general,

were places through which East-West communications were most active and vibrant because of trading.

Had Italy inspired Shakespeare for this reason? He certainly had set many of his best plays in Italy. He

seemed to have had a fondness, too, for Venice.

Silence fell over the table as it does so often whenever a meal is finished. Professor Yamaguchi and I

surveyed the empty dishes and glasses. Together, we got up and brought the trays over to the metal shelf. I

put my jacket on.

“Thank you very much, for suggesting lunch, sensei”, I said, “I enjoyed talking with you.”

“Come back and visit me again and let’s talk more someday”, she said, “let me know how it goes with

your ideas and your work. Tell me about your plans for your idea.”

“Um”, I said, smiling and bowing slightly as we parted, “but the thing is, I have no plans to do

anything more with this at all. I’m just not a scholar. It’s strictly for my own amusement.”

Chapter 32

The flame o’ th’ taper

Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids,

To see th’enclosed lights, now canopied

Under these windows, white and azure-lac’d

With blue of heaven’s own tinct! But my design!

To note the chamber, I will write all down.

Nagumo-san lived in a 300-year old wooden farmhouse with a large doma, or room with an

earthen floor. The doma was where she kept all the fermenting pots and buckets for the indigo dye.

We had to pay attention to the date when fermentation began on a batch, because the dye would soon

go bad and then become unusable. Indigo dye is delicate and unstable. She was in her late 50s and

single, and she always wore her hand-dyed creations: usually simple pants and a belted jacket. She

tied up her long black and gray hair with interesting cotton indigo ribbons she wove herself from

leftover scraps of material and thread. I loved the way she dyed creative designs, nightingales,

chrysanthemums, a rabbit and a moon, into the fabric. I spent hours learning the difficult techniques

of katazome, resist dyeing with stencils and rice paste, and once a week, I stayed at the indigo dyeing

workshop until the late afternoon, when the sun started to disappear through the fragile-looking old

glass windows of the farmhouse in Miyahara. Sometimes I brought Kaoru and Zenji to help too, so

they could learn this artful technique.

One day, in mid-December, Nagumo-san received a large rush order for 50 noren from a shop in

Kumamoto. We had to look hard for a supplier who could sell us unbleached, un-dyed high-quality

linen noren in a hurry. I was on the computer and on the phone all day finding a good supplier with

enough in stock, and then, when the noren arrived, they had to be dyed; the katazome designs were to

be simple but elegant, plum-tree flowers, cherry blossoms, a pheasant, a pine tree, a dragonfly and a

bamboo stalk. Nagumo-san asked me to work two afternoons a week instead of just one for a while,

and since this meant more money, I was very grateful.

The Christmas season arrived, and the river outside was lined, in piecemeal fashion, with

Christmas lights. Collectively, it was called iruminashon, or “illumination”. The lights were

displayed by the houses or little shops that wished to participate, on their own trees or bushes. I

supposed the electricity cost was at their own expense, and was glad it was not at mine. But I enjoyed

seeing the lights, and I was a bit surprised when Zenji told me vehemently while we were walking

Teru one evening that the river would look better without any lights along it at all, with just the moon

and the stars to illuminate it.

“Well, after all”, I said, “you are always the one who gets mad in June when a car passes and you

can’t see the natural lights of the fireflies well for a few seconds.”.

“Yes”, he said, looking serious. “tondemonai”. Insupportable.

The young, at least if Zenji was any indication, seemed to be becoming more radical than I could

ever have imagined. Where was the world headed? All of my friends in high school had loved cars so

much; and that was only 25 years ago! Luckily, I thought, I was in my mid-forties; the young would

fight every battle and change what they thought necessary for their generation, and I would sit

peacefully, aging gracefully, in my little old wooden house.

Christmas in Japan was mainly celebrated by department stores, as far as I could tell. There were

a few decorations and some generic American Christmas music was pumped through loudspeakers.

Zenji and Kaoru were old enough, and I was busy enough, that I didn’t bother getting a little tree (I

used to keep tiny real ones in flowerpots) or buying presents. Still, on the 24th, I felt a warm feeling, a

rush of pleasure that just had to be, I concluded, seasonal. Even the words Christmas Eve sounded

special that day. All the food shops presented large fried chicken legs in decorative green paper

boxes. It was most unfortunate that I had a fantastically painful headache, transitioning to passing

nausea, an unpleasant syndrome due to exhaustion I sometimes get, but I staggered out to the little

grocery store near us where a 1970s version of Frosty the Snowman was playing in an endless loop. I

bought one of the decorative little boxes of fried chicken, and how pleased Kaorru and Zenji were

when I returned home with it, plus a package of strawberries. Collapsing on my futon, I fell asleep

while they played adventure games online and read manga.

Our Christmas was merry, after all.

Christmas isn’t a holiday in Japan, and Kurumachi University was still in session until the 27th.

On the 29th, Kazuo showed up to celebrate O-Shogatsu, the New Year.

I hadn’t seen the ghost in a while. I had been busy, and did not have much time to think about the

supernatural adventures I had been through. Without the ghost and his message to unite Kazuo and

me in a common enterprise, I felt worried that we would start to argue again.

Once inside, Kazuo rummaged through his little suitcase and brought out a book, black with

stylized red curlicues that looked like flames on the cover.

“A present”, he said, “although it is not wrapped.”

“Thank you”, I said, taking it. I read the title: The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast by

Giordano Bruno.

“Wow!” I said, “Lo Spaccio della bestia trionfante! Thank you!”

“And have a look at Bruno’s opening words”, said Kazuo, “I put a little paper there marking

them. I think you will like them.”

I flipped to the indicated page, the very beginning passage of Lo Spaccio, a section called

“Explanatory Epistle” in this English translation, and I read aloud;

“He is blind who does not see the sun, foolish who does not recognize it, ungrateful

who is not thankful unto it, since so great is the light, so great the good, so great the

benefit, through which it glows, through which it excels, through which it serves,

the teacher of the senses, the father of substances, the author of life.”

“Or, as Shakespeare put it, Juliet is the sun”, said Kazuo.

“That’s the very power of poetry in a nutshell!”, I said. I felt very happy.

“Now where is my tea, anyway?”, said Kazuo.

I did make the tea, but I brought Lo Spaccio into the kitchen with me because without any delay,

I wanted to find the interesting, consequential passage where Jupiter comments on his crumbling

condition, his aging body. And, as everyone knows, water can actually take quite a while to boil.

Leaning comfortably against the washing machine, I switched on the light and leafed through the

magical, once-forbidden pages of philosophy: not my field, but that is just what made it all so

tantalizing.

Shakespeare had read this book four hundred years ago and it had changed his life.

Hamlet proves it.

.

Chapter 33

This is the air, that is the glorious sun,

This pearl she gave me, I do feel’t and see ‘t.

And though ‘tis wonder that enwraps me thus,

Yet ‘tis not madness.

O-Misoka, or New Year’s Eve, has always been my favorite holiday. It is not a day off, it is not a

day with decorations, yet there is something pulsing and vibrant, an urgency, a specialness, and a mood

of unfolding magnificence that needs no decorations to inspire it. Back in the States, I used to love

buying cheese and champagne on New Year’s Eve. It was festive to stand in a long line in a Chicago

deli and enjoy the laughter and smiles of everyone else in the shop. Here in Japan, I loved another food

on O-Misoka: the tradition is to eat a hot bowl of soba noodles in broth at around 10 pm. The dish is

called toshi-koshi soba, the noodles that will “take you over”. Not over the hill, or over the moon, but

simply over the magical stroke of midnight.

At ten, Kazuo cooked toshi-koshi soba for us when I conveniently failed to hear him telling me to

do it.

“O-kaasan! It is time to make the toshi-koshi soba!”

“Hmmm? Chotto matte, ato de.” Stalling tactics. I was beginning to use them effectively.

I hid a smile when I noticed him filling a pot with water.

Without a television, we were happily spared from having to watch the slickly-produced programs

featuring sentimental music acts from the year. At midnight, Zenji was already asleep, but Kaoru, Kazuo

and I were drinking green tea at our little table. We heard the temple bells from Enseiji tolling slowly as

the year changed.

“Akemashite Omedetou!” Kazuo said.

“Akemashite Omedetou!”

“Akemashite Omedetou!”

We bowed gently and smiled, enjoying the fresh feeling of the first minutes and seconds of a new

year. With “Akemashite Omedetou”, what you are doing is actually congratulating someone personally

on making it into the New Year, on just surviving. On just still being alive. This greeting used to seem

strange to me when I first arrived in Japan. But after the Great Earthquake, devastating tsunami, and

nuclear accident, I had come to see that life was fragile and not to be taken for granted.

Kaoru started yawning. “Nenasai”, said Kazuo to her. Go to bed. “Ashita jiichan to baachan to

asobu dakara.” Tomorrow we’ll see grandma and grandpa.

Jiichan and baachan were Kazuo’s elderly parents, who had kindly taken the Shinkansen down to

Tsubame for the holidays and were in a hotel in the western section of Tsubame, where there were many

onsen, or hot spring spas. For lunch, we would be joining them for a New Year’s feast at the hotel.

“Ashita de wa nai”, said Kaoru, going up the stairs, “Kyou!”. She wanted to have the last word, as any

teenager wants to, and she was right, it wasn’t tomorrow that we would see them, but already today,

New Year’s Day.

Kazuo and I stayed awake a little longer. I was reading Lo Spaccio, although it was a bit over my

head. Kazuo was reading his beloved newspaper. I had refused to subscribe to it any longer for many

reasons, among them the poor condition of my finances and the fact that often Japanese newspapers

only seemed to echo the party line, and I read the news online, but he had walked down to the train

station to buy it that day, and he was reading every square centimeter of it, as usual.

Suddenly, outside, there was a tap on the window.

“Who could it be?” I asked.

“Let’s see.”

Kazuo slid open the window and the ghost of Shakespeare stood there in the cold, smiling at us.

“Akemashite Omedetou”, he said.

He put one faintly glowing hand on the window sill and took a leap, landing on the small table

deftly. He stepped down gracefully onto the floor.

“It has been a long time!” I said.

He smiled.

Kazuo offered him some tea.

“Arigatou. Itadakimasu.” I remembered all those months ago, when in this very room, he had

conjured up two glasses of mead. There had been all that choking smoke and he had performed the

thrilling ‘Seems, madam? I know not seems’ monologue.

The ghost caught sight of my book. His smile widened,

“Ah! I see you are reading Lo Spaccio!”

“Yes, or trying to. It’s a bit difficult for me, actually”, I said.

“May I have a look?”

“Please”, I said, putting the book into his ghostly hand.

He held it open with his right hand, furrowed his brow and hunched his shoulders. His left hand

exaggeratedly brushed his forehead as if he were suffering emotional distress. Catching on to his

performance at once, I cried out in delight, “But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading!”

“Excellent”, said the ghost, “do you remember what happens after Gertrude says that line?”

“Well, Polonius chats with Hamlet a while, and Hamlet is irritated and abrasive with him; it is his

antic disposition, full-on.”

“And then?”

I couldn’t remember. My own brow furrowed. I gave the ghost a vacant look.

“I’m sorry”, I said, “but I can’t remember.”

Kazuo said, “Can we check the play in Viola’s book?”

“Please, by all means, go ahead.”

I hurried into the next room where I kept my books in little stacks on the tokonoma.

“Here it is”, I said, flipping to Act II, scene 2 of Hamlet.

“Hamlet reads the part that may have come from Lo Spaccio, then along come Guildenstern and

Rosencrantz, the spies who are friends of Hamlet’s from college. Then Polonius exits and Hamlet chats

with them, but he still has his antic disposition a bit and it is here that he says that famous line that I

love: O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space----were it not that

I have bad dreams.”

Infinite space? I recognized it now as an idea that seemed to echo Bruno’s idea of an infinite

universe. Was it deliberate?

It had to be!

“And then what happens?” asked the ghost kindly.

“Hmmm. Well, they chat for a few more lines and then Hamlet does his famous ‘man delights not

me’ monologue.”

The ghost had put Lo Spaccio down by now. He stood up and by the way he lifted his chin

theatrically, I could see that he was about to start a speech.

The ghost said softly to me, “Could you please read line 292?”

I looked down to find it.

“My lord, we were sent for”, I read.

Kazuo and I both sat still and watched as the ghost turned and took short steps that demonstrated in

his ghostly body language his frustration and sense of futility.

He began,

“I will tell you why, so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and

your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no feather. I have of late—but

wherefore I know not---lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and

indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth,

seems to me a stale promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you,

this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,

why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of

vapors……”

“Wait a minute!”, I cried, interrupting him, “Vapors? Foul? Pestilent? What? Are you secretly

making a comment on horrible coal smoke again? Here? In this famous, noble speech?”

Kazuo looked at me, “Do you mean that you don’t think he should be doing that here?”

“Well, I mean, this speech is supposed to be so profound. Coal smoke is so ordinary, a base and

bitter substance!” I looked at the ghost. “Sorry”, I said, “but I am surprised, or maybe I should say that I

am quite dismayed.”

Kazuo gazed back at me, a bit sharply. “Actually, coal and fossil fuels have been incredible for

people. And brought a lot of problems too. Look at the smog in Beijing now, internationally famous.

Look at Climate Change. You have to understand, Viola, it’s not just about the smoke, but also about the

way we need fossil fuels and have come to need them. It could be something deep that partly, at least,

defines us, determines us, and is, therefore actually us in a way. And it is intimately tied to our use of

fire, our competitiveness and our evolution. Fire is basic for humans. For fire, we need fuel. So I’m

persuaded by his argument. If this is about coal smoke, it can still be profound.”

I gave him a tiny, bitter, metallic smile. Kazuo, a student of the social sciences, could say what he

liked about fire and mankind, but he would never be a literature scholar. Scholars of literature want

more than just coal smoke to be the answer!

We want the passionate, the ethereal, the sublime!

I said nothing, but vowed secretly and vehemently, now for the umpteenth time, never to reveal this

strange idea to anyone: How would professors and professionals in the literary world take it? They

would be devastated and crushed, as I was, or they more likely would laugh.

Fossil fuels were just other gifts from the sun, anyway.

Had Shakespeare known that complicating factoid?

Ought I to enlighten him about it now?

I cleared my throat and got ready to explain about the origin of fossil fuels.

Both of them would love that.

But the ghost interrupted me before I could begin. He seemed amused. “Never mind about it,” he

said, “Can you skip on ahead, please?”

I was happy to move away from the passage that now most definitely delighted me not.

“Well”, I said, “Guildenstern and Rosencrantz now tell Hamlet that some players are on their way to

Elsinore. They talk about that for a bit, then Polonius returns and Hamlet becomes very, very antic. He

sings a nonsense song about Jepthah, who sacrificed his daughter. Then the players enter and Hamlet

greets them.”

The ghost smiled happily, all his nervousness and antic behavior was clearly gone. He cleared his

throat and raised his voice, and started in on Hamlet’s famous speech of welcome to the players.

I was hoping desperately there was no hidden coal smoke or mention of sickness that might be

construed as a secret reference to the effects of coal smoke. I was very tired of all that. It was getting old

for me. The inky cloak and the fruitful river in the eye may have been mischievous references to coal

that I could admire for their impish wit, but to have the ‘man delights not me’ speech revealed to be

merely complaining about smoke was, after all, pretty devastating.

“You are welcome, masters, welcome all!”, said the ghost, turning to a group of imaginary players,

before continuing;

“I am glad to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O, old friend! Why thy face is valenc’d since I

saw thee last; com’st thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young lady and mistress! by ‘ lady, your

ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw thee last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God your

voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not crack’d within the ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll

e’en to’t like French falc’ners----fly at anything we see; we’ll have a speech straight. Come, give us a

taste of your quality, come, a passionate speech.”

He stopped and bowed slightly.

“So, then, what did you notice?”, asked the ghost, suddenly reminding me of a college professor

quizzing a class. I supposed he could play anyone he wished.

“Hamlet seems happy, finally”, I said, “and kind, sincere, generous. The antic disposition is

suddenly gone”

“Very good. And do you notice any strange words that stick out, that do not belong in a more or less

ordinary greeting like this?”

“How about the word God”, said Kazuo, “and maybe ring, gold, and definitely falc’ners.”

“And heaven, face, altitude, and pray”, I said, “they all seem a bit weird here.”

What had Juliet said? O for a falc’ners voice.

Falcons. Heaven. Pray. Gold. Ring. Face.

I looked down at my ring finger and saw Nerissa’s gold ring, a symbol of the sun.

“Love me and leave me not”

The sun was hiding in Hamlet’s strange words!

“All these words add up to the sun!” I said, “You’ve hidden the sun in here! But why?”

Kazuo looked at me thoughtfully.

“Isn’t Hamlet supposed to be about Shakespeare himself?”

“Yes, of course”, I said with impatience.

“Then”, said Kazuo, “unlike Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear, Hamlet is not an Everyman figure

who chooses coal over the sun. Hamlet is this playwright, Viola.”

I saw the allegory clearly, suddenly. Hamlet was about a fight. There was a dead, good king: the sun

economy. There was a bad, powerful and living king; the fossil fuel economy. Hamlet, the son of the

good, dead king, was trying to expose what he felt was the inferiority and falseness of the powerful,

living one.

But was our economy so very wrong? It worked for us. I liked it well enough. I supposed I must be

a person more like Gertrude, just satisfied with the way things were.

I didn’t say that, however.

My secret.

Ophelia had been the green places, the flowers and meadows, sacrificed.

Hamlet had loved her best.

I said, “I get it! Hamlet finds the sun when he meets the players. His speech is social, sincere, no

longer sarcastic and antic. You”, I said to the ghost, “found your calling as a secret defender of

England’s by-then defunct sun economy when you started writing plays and entered the world of the

theater. That is what you have allegorized here. It is about you and the sun. You hid the sun with words

while using its glimmering, golden power. That’s why you keep referring to the dead king as Hyperion,

a primal god of the sun in Greek mythology. I had always wondered why you did that. And the whole

technique depended on the stage. The way that the greeting is grasped on a conscious level, with Hamlet

shouting out the words, while unconsciously, the strangest words create little bumps in the brain of the

listener, where they become unconsciously grasped, and equal the sun.”

The ghost sat down between Kazuo and me and started sipping his tea. He looked tired. We all were

tired. It was quite late, after all. Or early, rather, in this New Year.

“I thought you would never get it”, he said, smiling at us both, “but you did.”

Chapter 34

Hey ding-a-ding-a-ding

Hey ding-a-ding-a-ding

Sweet lovers love the spring

One of my favorite Japanese holidays is Setsu-bun. It is always held on February 3, and marks the

old division of the seasons, winter from spring. It is a remnant of the old lunar calendar that Japan

followed until the Meiji era. It is another form of a New Year.

Zenji, Kaoru, and I were charging around the house in the dark that February 3, participating in

these seasonal magical rites. You must circle inside the house clockwise, and start after dusk. Open

each window of the house and throw out a handful of roasted soybeans while you recite the magic

words.

Zenji shouted “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa Uchi!”

Goblins stay out! Luck stays in!

I scattered some inside the hallway, where we were standing.

Next window! It was in the tiny and ancient lavatory. We crowded beside the toilet, slid open the

windows and threw out three or four beans at a time in turn. Oni wa soto! Then we threw another three

or four beans onto the floor. Fuku wa uchi!

I so enjoyed Setsu-bun. It was like casting spells.

After dinner, I was folding up laundry and pairing up socks on the tatami mat. Zenji, lying on his

stomach, was eating a few roasted beans and reading a manga. Bored, I asked him, “What’s your

manga about?

“It’s about a ninja named Nagato. See, it’s called Nagato.” He showed me the cover. A young

man, striking a daring pose, and wearing a headband, looked very mysterious in black. Behind him

there was the full moon and a huge pheasant wearing a fighting mask. The pheasant’s wings were

spread powerfully. Flames burned in the background.

“A ninja?”

“He is in a school for ninjas. He is learning, Still, sometimes he might have to fight an enemy or

go on a spying mission.”

“What kind of things is he learning?”, I asked.

“Well, he watches things in nature and uses them to understand what is going on. By watching

beetles move a certain way on a tree, he can tell if it will rain. And, by looking into a cat’s eyes he can

tell the time. And if he can get into a certain box, he must be able to get outside the box again.”

“Cat’s have big black pupils when it’s dark”, I said.

“Right. And if birds change their way of flying or singing, he can understand why, like a storm

might be coming, or a hot day would follow.”

“How does this help him be a ninja?”, I asked.

“Well, he can use his knowledge to make a plan to fight his enemies or go on a spying mission.

And sometimes he might disguise himself as a street cleaner or a musician.”

“I see.”

“Mom?”

“yes?”

“I really want to read this, so can you go talk to Kaoru if you want to talk?”

Kaoru was reading another manga, in the dining room, and I didn’t want to bother her.

I had finished the laundry, so I went to the computer and clicked on the “email” icon. Spring was

here, or almost here. This was the season to make adjustments and plans in Japan, where everything,

such as schools and jobs, ends in March and begins in April. Now I was making almost enough money

to support all four of us, though very modestly. Both food and rent were much cheaper in Tsubame

than in the Tokyo area.

What was more, to tell the truth, I felt a bit lonely. The children were great company but they

weren’t the same as having my husband around every day. Kazuo and I had shared the secret of the

ghost and our relationship had improved with the adventure. Would he consider moving here? We

could undertake more ghostly adventures, raise the children together, work as private tutors and

language teachers and part-time college instructors, poor but happy. We could buy a cheap old falling-

down house near the mountains, tell jokes to each other, find old books to read in the library, go to flea

markets, go for walks with Teru, drink coffee together and enjoy growing old together while we were

thrifty and patched up our old clothes.

After all, two people who love each other don’t need a lot of money to have fun and be happy.

Now, with Nagato, Bruno, Shakespeare, Hamlet, the sun, Lo Spaccio, and ninjas all swirling

around in my restless mind, I started to type:

Dear Kazuo,

Zenji told me a little about ninjas and Nagato. Ninjas watched nature very closely and used it to

guide their knowledge and actions. And I was thinking, actually, that Bruno was a lot like a ninja. You

know, he was thinking about the sun being at the center. He realized that it was significant, that there

wasn’t anything else out there, ultimately, to bring anything of material value to the earth.

Copernicus’ discovery had confirmed that. So, like ninjas who learn to recognize the significance of

certain natural phenomenon, Bruno used the same technique (I mean on a cosmic level) to see the

basic relationship that was number one for us, that everything goes back to the sun. And that we are

small parts of this huge whole.

Then I can say (I know you might think it’s funny) that Shakespeare was also like a ninja.

Observing nature (what was happening with coal consumption in London in his time, I mean) and

seeing that it was always growing, he realized that people could never really control their relationship

with fossil fuels. The world was cold and difficult, so we would be forced to use them as we competed

with each other. But coal could change the relationship people had with the sun, and Shakespeare saw

that it was possibly risky. That is what Romeo and Juliet is all about.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I think we should let this theme of ninjas be a good guide

for our marriage—in fact, for our lives!! I escaped from a place where I wasn’t happy, and I could

come back to the mountains. Sure I lost status, I lost my job, we’ve been poor as a result. But ninjas

travel light, they are obscure, they can disguise themselves, and they are focused merely on survival

rather than being number one. It’s a better strategy in my opinion.

I’ve become a sort of ninja here, with my odd jobs. I even work with indigo and wear it a lot, like

real ninjas did, as Nagumo-san lets me use the extra dye for my own clothes, and I have dyed a lot of

them different shades of indigo blue.

As you know, we live in a tiny old house, but it’s cheap and it’s good enough. I’m working for

survival, not for great power or wealth. And I’m happy. I think we (that is, I mean to say, you) should

leave ambition behind and come here to live simply in Tsubame with us. You might find any sort of job

and just do it with your whole heart, looking with gratefulness up to the sun every day. Anyway, that is

what I think.

Love,

your wife,

Viola

Chapter 35Methinks the lady doth protest too much……

The phone rang about two hours later. Kazuo checks his email pretty often,

“Viola, hi.”

There was no more impatience in his voice. We had come a long way. I hoped it wasn’t just

because we weren’t living together.

“Hi!” I said, trying to sound casual and free-spirited.

“I got your email.”

Was he trying to sound like he was being patient?

“Oh? Oh, well, actually, it was just something I wrote without any plan, so if you----“

“Actually, it was very interesting. You made a lot of intellectual connections.”

“Thank you.”

That fusion thing again.

“And I would like to go and live in Tsubame with you and Kaoru and Zenji….”

“But…..?” I said.

I could already hear the punch line coming. I already knew the answer. No.

In my mind, I turned into a lizard sitting on a rock in the sun, impervious to fate and love.

“Oh, Viola.” There was pain in his voice. “I want to, of course. But that’s not the way things work

here in Japan. There are a lot of other people, professors, graduate students, and staff members who are

my friends and colleagues and students, at this big university. We can’t just abandon the enterprise and

leave. You were just a language teacher, a foreigner working on one-year contracts. It’s different for

me. I’ve got tenure. This is a large public university. I have a responsibility to stay.”

I was ever to be the fool, the player, the geisha, the eikaiwa teacher.

Little gigs here and there. My fortune. My fate. A paid entertainer.

Like dinner theater. Cheap gags, riffs.

“ It’s O.K, there’s only room for one ninja in the house anyway!”, I said brightly and falsely.

“Viola.”

“Never mind”, I said, “it wasn’t a serious idea. It was just a joke.”

Ha!

You lie up to the hearing of the gods!

“One day we will be together again. In the meantime, you have managed to find some good jobs

that you like and some interesting experiences happening with a ghost there. Tsubame is an old

traditional town, and it makes sense Shakespeare’s ghost chose it, and not Kurumachi.”

“Yes”, I said simply.

“I’ll still visit whenever I can, you know.”

“I know.”

“The kids are doing well there. The water there is tasty and clean. I’ve learned how important that

is. You’re managing fine.”

“Thanks.” It was true. A skin rash I’d had in Kurmachi had disappeared when I had moved back to

Tsubame.

“And Viola,”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you write a book about this ghost and everything that happened to you there in

Tsubame?”

Could someone with four jobs write a book too?

Impossible.

The ideas were so off-the-wall. A pile of rejection letters and obscurity awaited anyone foolish

enough to try to write about this weird topic and the strange playwright who had loved the sun so

much.

“Never”, I said vehemently, “not in a million years.”

I would not be that fool.

“That sounds like a case of, you know,….methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

“I thought you said you had never read Hamlet.”

“I haven’t.”

“People will only laugh at me.” A thought entered my head, or rather a quotation. I continued,

“Besides, have you ever heard of Viola, I mean the character in Twelfth Night?”

“No, what about her?”

“There’s a big mess having to do with mistaken identities, and she says: ‘O, time, thou must

untangle this, not I, it is too hard a knot for me t’untie.’ She doesn’t have to do anything. I think that is

the right approach here. I don’t want to be ridiculed and mocked.”

“Well, it’s up to you. But I’m not laughing at you.”

Then, of course, the next thing he did was to start laughing at me. “Hey, I bet I’m the only

professor in my department with a real ninja, or a modern version, at least, for a spouse.”

I was so pleased by these words that I stopped sulking.

I had to laugh now.

“Thanks”, I said.

“And remember, Viola, that ninjas spend a lot of time alone, and endure things patiently. That’s

what the “nin” kanji means. Inner feelings, or kokoro, is the lower part of the kanji, and yaiba, or

blade is on the top. The feelings endure sharp pain. It has come to mean forebearance, or shinobu.

Another word for ninja is shinobimono. Ninjas could never make any noise or reveal themselves. They

were secretive and if they suffered, they did so silently.”

“That sounds awful”, I said, “I’m going to change my mind about the whole thing.”

A few minutes later, my cell phone blinked and buzzed on the table. Checking it, I found that

Kazuo had sent me a single emoji, a red b, followed by the kanji for “ninja”: 忍者. I looked at the

kanji carefully. Indeed the kanji “nin” was the kanji for blade, 刃, over the kanji for feelings, 心. I

realized I would have to just have to endure my loneliness. I had entertained, with such a sense of

freewheeling fun, the fantasy of being a ninja. But if I looked more closely at the job, it was one that

also came with suffering inscribed in its very name.

Chapter 36

Your master quits you…..

It was early April, and the heavenly cherry blossoms were in bloom again, pink clouds suspended in

the air. The cherry trees along the river were visible over a wall that runs along a narrow piece of land

behind our house. I have some long poles for drying laundry there; the poles perch on two racks so they

can accommodate a lot of clothes if the clothes are hanging efficiently on the plastic clip hangers most

people use here. I was busy hanging the laundry one morning; the children had started the new school year,

and we were all enjoying the warmer weather and sunnier days. I turned around to pick up a shirt of Zenji’s

from the laundry basket, and there was the ghost, standing behind me, and now wearing a white T-shirt and

jeans. He looked thin.

He hadn’t come around since early that New Year’s Day, so I was very surprised and pleased to see

him. In the bright daylight, his skin looked almost translucent. I was very glad that the space we were

meeting was private, enclosed by a large laurel bush on one side, the wall and another bushy tree on the

other side. He looked more than ever like a spirit, especially outside in the daylight. Somehow, he crossed

and re-crossed the space between the two worlds, spirit and human, to visit me. How had he managed it? I

had no idea. I was just happy to see him again.

“Viola”, he said, “you look well.”

“Thank you”, I said, pausing. I didn’t want to say “you don’t”. But it was true. He was looking more

ghostly and reedy and frail than before.

But he moved with agility. I felt a chilliness as he passed close to me, like cold air from a cave. In a

few steps he was at the laurel tree, and I could see that something which had not been there before was

now, by magic, hanging on its branches. It was the long friar’s robe, brown and homespun. The ghost put it

on a cleared his throat. I knew a performance was about to start. I sat down on the old and worn looking

bamboo bench beside me to enjoy the show.

The ghost began,

“Marry, this well carried shall on her behalf

Change slander to remorse, that is some good.

But not for that dream I on this strange course,

But on this travail look for greater birth;

She dying, as it must be so maintained,

Upon the instant that she was accus’d,

Shall be lamented, pitied, and excused

Of every hearer; for it so falls out

That what we have we prize not to the worth

Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack’d and lost,

Why then we rack the value; then we find

The virtue that possession would not show us

Whiles it was ours; so will it fare with Claudio:

When he shall hear she died upon his words,

Th’idea of her shall sweetly creep

Into his study of imagination,

And every lovely organ of her life

Shall come apparell’d in more precious habit,

More moving, delicate, and full of life,

Into the eye and prospect of his soul,

Than when she liv’d indeed. Then shall he mourn,

If ever love had interest in his liver,

And wish he had not so accused her;

No, though he thought his accusation true.

Let this be so, and doubt not but success

Will fashion the event in better shape

Than I can lay it down in likelihood.”

He stopped, closed his eyes, and stepped over to the bench to sit down beside me. A cherry tree

petal drifted in the breeze and landed top of his ghostly head. Another landed in my lap.

“I’m not quite sure”, I said, “but I think it’s from Much Ado About Nothing. What tipped me off

was the friar’s robe. Friar Francis, this time, not Friar Lawrence. Though, ummm, if you think about it

both of them are religious figures trying desperately to make a young woman appear dead so that a

marriage may take place later.”

“Do you remember the young woman’s name in Much Ado?”

“Something with an o at the end, I think.”

“Hero. Her name was Hero.”

There was something so cold and dead about his voice now, so freezing and still. I felt an abyss

open up in the air surrounding us, a gaping tragedy looming, someone about to be sacrificed, and the

plunging sensation of a horrible death about to be witnessed. But then, instead of this dark despair, the

sound gave way to something brighter: one name came echoing back from this chasm. I could hear it in

the wind. I heard it by magic, something defiant and certain, but also kind and a little impatient.

The satirical rogue!

Of course!

Giordano Bruno.

“Bruno, you wanted to say”, I said, “Hero is Bruno. Hero was Bruno. Your hero.”

I could see it all.

Slandered and falsely accused by Claudio, Mankind, Bruno was to come alive again when his

ideas were recognized and valued finally.

That time was not yet, perhaps.

Although lately renewable energy, which was to say the sun, the tides, the wind and all that, had

certainly become a hot topic.

“How did you work it all out?” I asked with excitement, “did you write any special clues into the

play?”

“Do you have the play?”

I ran to get my Riverside. The sliding door in the back where we were was open, so I just stepped

up, and inside, then returned quickly with the huge brown book. Soon, I had opened to Much Ado

About Nothing.

“Have a look at Act I, scene 1, lines 230 through 235.”

I read the lines:

“Benedick: That I neither feel how she should be lov’d, nor know how she

should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at

the stake.

Don Pedro: Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of

beauty.” “

“I see”, I said, “fire cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake; obstinate heretic. You put

them all together quickly, at the start. I can see it now.”

I started to cry a little, thinking about the execution and the pain, both the physical and the

emotional pain, of 400 years ago. A few cherry blossoms swirled around us.

“Any others?” I asked.

“Yes. In Act V, Don Pedro asks Benedick, ‘Why what’s the matter that you have such a February

face, so full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness?’”

“Of course! Bruno was executed on February 17, 1600.”

“When I read the news, I was devastated. I felt so helpless. I could do nothing to help him. I

decided to write something that would be a lasting tribute to him. Public, but secret.”

“And that is why you called this play Much Ado About Nothing!”, I cried, “It was your public yet

very secret commentary on the charges against Bruno’s, and his whole trial and execution. Wow!”

“Yes.”

“It was very brave of you”, I said, “But why has no one spotted this before?”

“I suppose that no one stumbled onto the basic way I arranged sun figures in my plays, first and

foremost, Juliet, of course. No one caught onto the connection to Lo Spaccio, and its opening lines

about the sun. Without those keys, it is hard to find the others……. But I think you have been looking

for my other sun figures a little in your free time, haven’t you?”

He smiled. He knew!

It was true. I had been looking for the sun figures on my own, when I had a little time.

“Actually, yes”, I said, “And I found one just the other day, Antony, whose face was as the

heavens and lighted…..wait….” I said, unable to remember the lines exactly. I started looking through

the pages, but the ghost was faster.

“His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck a sun and moon, which kept their course, and

lighted the little O, the earth”, he said softly as another shower of pink cherry blossom petals drifted

down from the sky between us.

“Your sun figures do show a lot of variety”, I said, “that is one thing that makes them so hard to

spot. Not all of them are as shining, positive and marvelous as Juliet. There could be only one Juliet.”

“She was really the first one.”

“And was she maybe the best? Desdemona is a nice try, but that phrase ‘thou flaming minister’

Othello uses on his way to stifle her in bed makes me cringe a little. Othello may be my least favorite

play.”

“It did not satisfy me, either.”

“I see”, I said, imagining him as a man 400 years ago in a cold garret in London working over his

manuscript of Othello. “But what about Much Ado About Nothing? Who is the sun figure in it?”

“Can you guess?”

“It has to be Hero, aligned with Bruno She is another Juliet, after all. You are trying to write a

happy ending instead. Like Juliet, Hero is supposed to die, but is secretly really alive. Marries an

impulsive but good young man. Everyman. Claudio and Romeo.”

“I have marked a thousand blushing apparitions to start into her face……...in her eye there hath

appeared a fire to burn the errors that these princes hold. Both lines are from Act 4, scene 1.”

“I understand!” I said, “you are showing Hero’s connection to the sun, with ‘a thousand blushing

apparitions to start into her face’, and her link to Bruno, with the word fire and the errors of the

princes, is to comment on the accusations against Bruno by the powerful authorities in Rome and

Venice.”.

“Right, and a little bit later, I directly connect her to the sun in Act Five when Claudio appears at

her grave to recite her epitaph. Don Pedro says:

“Good morrow, masters, put your torches out.

The wolves have preyed, and look, the gentle day,

Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about

Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.

Thanks to you all, and leave us. Fare you well. “

“It’s like a code!” I said, “it uses a sunrise to refer secretly to the coming resurrection of Hero, or,

rather, Bruno, or rather, his ideas. How very clever.”

“Thank you.”

“But who is Benedick in all this?”

The ghost looked down at his translucent hands and in a rougher voice, said,

“Why he is the Prince’s jester, a very dull fool: only his gift is in devising

impossible slanders. None but libertines delight in him, and the commendation is not

in his wit, but in his villany, for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they

laugh at him and beat him.”

“From Act Two, scene one,” he continued.

I started laughing. “The prince’s jester, it must be you! Impossible slanders! Those are your plays! Oh,

excellent! It’s marvelous! I love it!”

“I wanted to show my own state of mind, my own torment, and how I decided not to kill Claudio

after all. Benedick is my way to do that.”

“Ahh, I see! Beatrice says kill Claudio, and you almost decide to, but then you don’t. It’s an

allegory for the way you felt after Bruno’s death. Part of you wanted to give up completely, but you

didn’t lose faith in humanity and only write bleak tragedies in which the Everyman character dies.”

Cherry blossoms scattered around us.

“Yes.”

“Then I suppose that Beatrice is the desire for vengeance you felt. “

“’Come, talk not of her! You shall find her the infernal Ate in good apparel!’ Do you recall that line from

Act 2, scene 1? ”

“Vaguely. Ate is who, exactly?”

“Ate is the ancient Greek goddess of discord, mischief, and revenge.”

“I see! You overcame that feeling, the feeling to wish to take revenge; you disarmed her and in a sense,

married her. Brilliant. Utterly complex, too, psychologically speaking. Almost modern in its sensibilities.

Benedick kisses her, saying peace, I will stop your mouth, and she becomes silent and doesn’t say

anymore.”

I paused while I searched for the words.

Here and there, blew more cherry blossom petals.

I almost said fantastic use of allegory, but then the right words came, after all.

“It’s……ethereal!....sublime!.....and passionate!”, I cried.

I was now finally satisfied.

“Viola, if I did once actually kiss you, now, for real……would it be all right with you?”.

More cherry blossoms, a rougher wind.

A ghost? I was to kiss a phantom?

Would I survive the experience?

He leaned over and gave me a very faint and brief, but very real kiss on my lips. I felt a sensation

much like ice, with a small, appropriate amount of fire too. The cherry blossoms floated. The sky was

blue. No clouds were to be seen anywhere.

“Viola.”

“Good heavens!”, I exclaimed, feeling at once renewed and peaceful after the strange kiss, “When

will I see you again? Please, oh please, don’t say it will be three months again before you return.”

“I…..I….. won’t be able to return for a while, maybe forever. Ghosts need energy to interact with

the living, and my energy has been terribly depleted. Getting new energy is difficult for us spirits.

Ordinary metabolisms don’t function in the world of mu.”

“You are looking rather wan, after all.” I felt terribly sad. “But we have only gotten started on

Antony and Cleopatra, and there are still so many other plays I wanted to discuss with you! Coriolanus,

The Tempest, Timon of Athens, Twelfth Night, Titus Andronicus, Cymbeline, and Measure for Measure

and more. All the others, in fact. The Histories, too. Did you even hide sun figures and cosmic allegories

in the Histories? Or did you adopt a different approach? I have been wondering, wondering a lot,

actually.”

He looked down at his ghostly hands again. The wind became chillier.

He remained silent, and I realized that he wasn’t going to tell me more for now.

“Come inside where it’s warmer,” I said, trying to change everything, “and let’s talk a little more at

least.”

He didn’t move. I noticed that I could see the laurel bush vaguely through his body. He was

becoming more translucent, even transparent, now.

I sat still and waited, holding my breath, while he faded away into the air.

Soon he had completely disappeared. I sat very still, hoping that he would return. I looked around,

trying to remember everything, the laurel tree, the old and decrepit bamboo bench, the wind, all as it was

that day, so I could conjure it up in my mind later.

The cherry blossoms that had blown around on us lay scattered on the bench and the ground. I

picked them up carefully and put them randomly in some of the pages of his plays.

One day, I would look at them again.

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Months have passed, but indeed, as I feared, he has not returned. I have often played with the idea

of writing a book about the things he said. Sometimes I all but decide to undertake to write a scholarly

tome of 10 volumes, with about eight hundred careful footnotes, and in my daydreams, I even have

extensively debated what color the cover should be, dusky red or cream, azure, the green of bamboo

leaves, or even my familiar favorite, indigo. In pleasant imaginary scenes, I walk past the shelf where I

see these thick books, whose colors change like the sky, and I glance at them, always hoping that he will

be standing there, smiling at me.

I know just how it will be.

We’ll start talking; and this time, we’ll go through all the plays, even the long, daunting histories.

There will be magical performances and surprises, dreams, music, magic, strangers, monologues, and

more recognition scenes.

But he is never there, and I am nothing of a scholar anyway.

And other times, I decide to write down everything exactly as it happened, simply and naturally, but

there the problem is: who would believe me?

So I have not done anything about it.

The seasons still change here in Tsubame, the wind stirring up brawls among the reeds and grasses

along the river. Kazuo visits occasionally and with care and understanding we are managing to balance

things. He mentions Shakespeare’s ghost sometimes, but now less and less frequently. This makes me

sad, but it is natural for people to forget all sorts of things over time, so it might be better to let it be this

way.

The mountains, green and splendid, as always surround this old little town. And in every other way,

also, my ordinary life, another drama not yet played out, does not change.

EPILOGUE

The Capitol

The palace gardens at night

Night has already fallen and a stately, late dinner is being served in the palace. Outside, in the palace

gardens, the branches of the plum trees in the orchard shiver faintly in the evening breeze. Spring arrived

one month ago, and the air is still cool. One pine tree stands nearer the palace walls than the others and

no guards are nearby to observe when a kunoichi clad in the darkest indigo blue crawls along the wall

and steps with difficulty onto one thick branch of the pine tree.

A half moon is framed by a cluster of clouds in the sky. She hugs the branch, then gently and silently

swings down and lands on the ground. Crouching down low and finding the shadowy back part of the

huge pine, she waits there for the stubborn moon to disappear. Ten minutes pass, then twenty. One guard,

a samurai, appears, a languid figure, bored, whose long sword in its case brushes against a stone with a

small cracking sound. He does not see the kunoichi. He stalks away, taking big strides, suddenly in a

hurry, as if he had remembered something urgent.

The clouds fold in, expanding like unfolding gauze, and the moon disappears briefly. How long? A

few minutes, but this is long enough: the kunoichi darts to the shadows of a large camellia bush she has

noticed half way to the palace and waits there while the clouds dance away from their partner, the half-

moon. A few samurai can be heard nearer the palace, talking about the unexpected results of a recent

archery competition.

The samurai move away, nearer to the edge of the palace gate and the kunoichi circles a small pond

as a bird might circle it, a series of movements and starts and stops, naturally dictated by the presence or

absence of light. Now she has come to close to the Willow Room, a large hall. She waits behind a rock,

crouching. A samurai stands guard attentively at the side door. Fifteen minutes pass. Thirty minutes pass.

Another samurai retainer comes to take over the post. She tries to make her breathing even more quiet as

the chill breeze drops and the stone she clutches for support takes on a clammy feel from the dew. Finally

the floor inside creaks softly and the massive wooden door slides open a bit. One of the most senior

advisors of the shogun emerges. Wearing green and gold silk, he has come from the after-dinner

festivities. He steps down and loudly tells the samurai to go inside and look for an important and special

bamboo flute, a shakuhachi, that has suddenly gone missing.

“The flute has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Investigate the matter thoroughly,

please, and then report back to me at once.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The samurai obediently steps up and disappears in the doorway and the senior advisor moves slowly

toward the pond and the stone where the kunoichi is hiding. Encircled by a cluster of clouds, the moon

shines brightly and the kunoichi recognizes the shogun’s senior advisor coming so near her. He is their

only spy on the inside of the palace, a very clever man with great power, a man of such formal and

consummate propriety that no one inside the palace would ever suspect he was actually an agent.

She steps briefly out of the shadows and then back into them, and this advisor, whose name is

Watanabe, brushes near the stone where she hides, disappears into the shadows with her and pauses to

quickly drop something into her hand: a small scroll of paper which has been secreted in his sleeve all

evening. The ninja gently and silently tucks the scroll into the left breast pocket of her indigo tunic.

Watanabe emerges into the moonlight and slowly walks away, as though absentmindedly pondering an

issue of importance. He circles back to the doorway and goes inside the palace.

The scroll bears a secret of great importance, so the ninja knows that she must not fail to bring it out

of the palace gardens.

She waits another ten minutes, until the moon disappears behind some more clouds, before she starts

running back to the camellia bush. Crouching in its shadows now, she gathers herself and prepares to run

back to the pine, but her mind checks her. There is something amiss, and stops herself from making a

single move. What is it? There! In the breeze, she has picked up, only for an instant, the smell of salt and

something sour! A samurai’s sweat!

Samurai, more than most men, carry the faint inescapable odor of an animal; this is because some

samurai, those with a preference for meat dishes, hunt wild boar and deer in the mountains outside the

capitol, and, consuming these creatures, these samurai exude a richer, more sour smell than poorer men,

who eat mostly rice, barley and river fish. The kunoichi waits silently, crouched in the shadows, while the

samurai passes close by; the only sound he makes is when he steps on a twig near her foot. She makes

sure not to raise her face up, nor move, and now her breathing happens silently, the result of fastidious

technical training.

She waits ten more minutes there, sniffs the air again from as many directions as she can manage

while crouching down, then runs softly and stealthily back to the pine tree. She doesn’t bother to climb the

pine tree, but goes over the wall directly, using a rope with a small iron hook.

It is dawn before she is on the winding mountain road leading out of the capitol. A wide straw hat

covers her face completely and she has pulled on a thick and dark gray kimono over her clothes; she had

left it tied in a bundle under a tree outside the palace walls and picked it up after her mission was

accomplished. The dawn sky is grey and overcast, presaging rain, and she shivers a bit in the damp and

chilly mountain air.

Two more hours of walking on the path among pines and bushes, and over streams, brings her to a

small Buddhist temple at the edge of a forested valley. A light, cold drizzle is already falling as she goes

around to a little-noticed side entrance and she bows when she sees a young monk drawing water from a

well nearby. He bows silently in return, and takes the bamboo bucket of water to the door, leaving it

outside. He slides open the door and steps inside. A few minutes later, an older monk, the head of the

temple, appears at the doorway.

“Come inside.”

“Thank you.”

An hour later, she is warm and dry and asleep on a small thin mat in the room of the older monk. He

has given her a bowl of rice, a few pieces of pickled radish, a dish of her favorite fresh creamy tofu, and

some tea. She has often used this temple as a hiding place or a resting place, and the older monk has

shared her bed, though their passion must be conducted in silence and secrecy. Cat-like, she comes and

goes as she wishes.

Carrying the secret scroll, she will be on her way again the next day, on the mountain road leading

back to Iga. Perhaps the monk will arrange for her to travel with a group of itinerant actors as he

sometimes has in the past. Perhaps he will style her hair and rummage through an enormous old

paulownia wood trunk he keeps, a jumble full of strange items he collects and never throws away, and

find clothing, and maybe an old basket, suitable for a mountain woman so that she can pass more easily

through the Shogun’s guarded checkpoints. He seems to enjoy assisting her with her disguises, setting her

up, launching her forward, and warning her away from dangers.

The older monk has a lively, playful, passionate, and devout spirit, with the soul of a scholar, and

that is why she trusts him. It might be said, that of all the men she knows, he is the one who resembles

most closely a husband in her life. Yet, both by nature aloof, they have concluded that they should not

marry. She was born, moreover, in the Year of the Snake, while he is a Tiger, recognized by astrologers to

be among the most incompatible romantic pairs of all.

Besides, she loves being a kunoichi, a spy, a ninja. The solitary job, which comes with difficult trials

and hardships, as well as excitement and novelty, has been her life and taken her to places she could

never have imagined when she was just a girl, the cossetted eldest daughter of a wealthy merchant,

growing up near the coast in the Eastern provinces years ago.