Vignette 10

Nagasaki (I)

 

In April 1948, the overnight train that took us from Tokyo to Nagasaki was a designated American Military Government private compartment attached to the regular Japanese trains jam packed with the repatriation of approximately 7 million defeated Japanese soldiers from all over Asia back to their homes. I was snuggled cozily into my upper berth behind my drawn curtains, gently lulled by the rhythmic rocking of the train as it rumbled toward Nagasaki in Kyushu. In my somnolent darkness, I was dimly aware of my brother Austin in his upper berth across the aisle scuttling down the ladder from his berth and being slung back up by father. After a few rounds of Austin's down, then up and over gymnastics with father, I suddenly heard Austin's rending shriek followed by loud wails. Poking my head out from my curtained alcove, I saw my father administering the same punishment on my brother's bottom that I remembered from my Chongqing "toy" gun mischief when I was 3 years old and had appropriated the guns my parents were safeguarding for their ROC officer friend on leave from the defense of the Burma Trail lifeline between China and our Allies.

 

Father had left Chicago for Nagasaki in the previous summer of 1947 to assume his new assignment as ROC Consul, restore a Consular office and find a residence for us. After some months in Chicago of packing up and waiting for father's instructions, my mother, brother Austin and I followed father on our voyage to Japan from San Francisco in October. During those months of travels, frequently changing sleeping set up, Austin had become used to sleeping in mother's comforting, familiar arms every night. But the narrow train berth from Tokyo to Nagasaki made it difficult for even slender mother to sleep with a four year old so father helpfully hauled my brother back up into his berth. Austin must have thought this a merry game of escaping his cold, dark platform for my mother's warm little nest and be lifted up by father over and over again. Father finally put a weary stop to this escapade with a hearty spanking on Austin's behind. After a little sobbing behind the curtain of Austin's berth, all was quiet for the rest of the rolling night journey.

 

During the previous 6 months of our Tokyo stopover, I had gathered from the hushed discussions among the adults that father's new post was a somber destination and I wondered what gloomy habitat awaited us. To my delight, Nagasaki revealed itself to be a sparkling gem in the emerald crown of verdant hills reigning over a majestic, blue silken waterscape. Besides some collapsed buildings, I could not discern any severe devastation to the city comparable to Tokyo's rubble.

 

Upon father's first arrival in Nagasaki in the previous year, father had quickly developed a friendly relationship with the US Occupation Military Government and was able to persuade the American authorities to include us among the almost 15,000 US military families living in requisitioned comfortable Japanese housing across the Occupied Islands. This large assembly of American military and civilian personnel was delegated by the Supreme Commander MacArthur to oversee the demilitarization and rehabilitation of our former enemy. O became warm with Ying-Ying chan and Austin "otoko no-ko sama" who would often cuddle in the ample lap and hefty arms of our laundress. Austin, being a boy, was accorded a higher courtesy and preferential treatment than me. He quickly became used to being daily dressed, undressed and bathed by the chamber maid.

 

Austin and I,  Nagasaki 1948

Actually, Nagasaki was a safe city. After a few weeks, my parents let us explore our neighborhood to our hearts' content for the months before our school started in the fall. We were not to venture beyond the famous 19th C Oura Catholic Church at the bottom of the hill but our adventures became particularly entertaining after father took us further uphill around the bend to meet Capt. Joe Goldsby and his wife who lived in a spacious house with an even more commanding view than ours. After our visit, father told us our good behavior had earned us an open invitation from the Goldsbys' to play in their vast multi-tiered garden if their gate was open. Father further instructed that we were not to make noise nor bother the main house and to be careful not to touch anything that could be broken or not be put back. In other words, like good children, we were to be seen but not heard or suffered.

 

Then father sat me down to listen to a record of my first opera. This opera, father explained, was set in the house we had visited and it is the love story between a beautiful Japanese girl named Butterfly (Cho-cho San) and her American husband, naval officer Pinkerton. The haunting strains of Puccini's Madame Butterfly became unforgettable to me and forever intertwined with my memories of Nagasaki and Capt. Goldsby's Madame Butterfly house, our neighbor on Minami-yamate Machi.

Madame Butterfly House (Thomas Glover House), Nagasaki, Japan

Front entrance of Madame Butterly house. 

The history of the Madame Butterfly's house began with Thomas Blake Glover, known as " The Scotsman Who Shaped Japan" who in 1860's built a house on the peak of an amiably undulating hillside overlooking Nagasaki harbor . Glover had started his career in Japan in the 1850's as a gun runner for the rebels aligned with the Meiji Imperialists in overthrowing the Tokugawa Shogunate. Subsequently in 1868, the successfully restored Meiji Imperial family rewarded Glover with special commercial access to Japan. Glover became a key industrialist in Japan introducing coal mining, the first steam locomotion train engine, shipbuilding and arms manufacturing and even Kirin Beer. The shipbuilding factory became Mitsubishi Industries which produced many of the weapons in the Japanese military rampage across Asia and to Pearl Harbor.

 

The house built by Glover was originally a simple bungalow style dwelling with broad verandahs to enjoy the sweeping vista of Nagasaki Bay. Additional rooms were added as Glover's successful growing business ventures became a center of social functions for ranking Japanese and western travelers. An American writer John Luther Long in 1898 composed a short story based on his sister's travels to Nagasaki and her recollections of a woeful 1878 story set in a house above the Nagasaki harbor about a geisha abandoned by her faithless French naval officer. When Giacomo Puccini saw this play in London in 1900, he was inspired to adapt the story for his timeless opera which debuted at La Scala in 1904.

 

By the time we had become familiar with the Glover House through the kindness of Capt. Goldsby, the house was already renowned as the house of Madame Butterfly because of the verisimilitude setting to the original stories. I recall on one layer of the garden, there was a lagoon with a pretty island in the middle, around which I would play with my brother. One day, I found a long ladder left by workmen in the garden and decided this ladder could be used to explore the intriguing island. With my little brother barely able to hold up his end, we dragged the ladder and laid a "bridge" across the black water of the lagoon to the beckoning island. After I crawled across the rungs, I coaxed my brother over and it became our enchanted Island of Avalon where the Lady of the Lake hid the mortally wounded King Arthur to revive another day and again rule Britannia. My deadly King Arthur's Excalibur sword was a handy flat, wooden stick from our carpenters' supplies with which I fought off imaginary enemies threatening our safe haven on Avalon. At the end of each play, we would carefully lug the ladder back to its location. One day when I tired of this game, I crawled back to the mainland on my makeshift bridge from Avalon Island and wickedly dragged the ladder back, leaving my distracted brother stranded on the island until he became loudly indignant over my perfidy. In the meantime, unable to reposition the ladder by myself, the ladder slipped into the treacherous lake and I had to seek the help of the Goldsbys' gardener to fish out the ladder from the depth of the ominous water and rescue my poor brother. After that afternoon, I noted that everyday the ladder was securely locked in the gardener's shed but the front gate of the Madame Butterfly's house, I gratefully found, was still left open to us.

 

[ Postscript: In 2013, my son Benjamin accompanied me back to Nagasaki and I was relieved to see the little "city by the bay" (much like San Francisco in the 1940's) had retained its charm with the quaint green trolley cars and leisurely pace. However, the tranquil Minami-yamate Machi that gently wound around our secluded neighborhood had turned into a brisk tourist parade route trampled by 2 million visitors a year! Our house had been swallowed up by a gauntlet of wall to wall small shops and stalls. Every inch of space was exploited for shopping from the Oura Church Plaza at the base of the hill up to the Glover House entrance. A 2 level outdoor escalator ascended directly from the entrance ticket booth to the tiered Glover Gardens and main house. The original front gate around the upper bend that I used to blithely hop through was now a back gate. In 1970, the Glover House became a protected National Park. The broad green multi-level gardens are now broad concrete terraces to accommodate the bustling crowds of tourists posing with the new resident bronze statues of Puccini, Thomas Blake Glover, Madame Butterfly with her little son and the beloved 1920's Madame Butterfly, Japanese opera soprano Tamaki Miura. In the Glover House Cafe, over a cup of coffee with Benjamin, I could not resist musing about my father's and my 1948 Spring visit with Capt. and Mrs. Joe Goldsby in their serene verandah sitting area. With many seasons of life now behind me, I wondered if the poignant story of Madame Butterfly and her Lt. Pinkerton touch us as only a tragic story of a woman's personal betrayal or allegorically and more profoundly as symbols of Japan's relationship with America since the 1853 arrival of Commodore Perry in Japan. Though deeply haunted by the atomic bomb, Nagasaki is still beautiful today and irrevocably linked to the destinies of the Japanese and US mutual interests in the Pacific. However, I was amused to find that my enchanted Avalon Island suspended in a brooding lagoon lurking with menacing sea life, is but a small outcropping of artful rocks on a picnic blanket size of grass floating like a graceful lily pad in a shallow pond of bejeweled koi fish, narrow enough for an adult to leap across!]

 

長崎之一

1948年四月，我們全家從東京搭夜行火車前往長崎，我們那節車廂是美國軍政府指定的特別座，同行的其他車廂都擠滿了返鄉的日本兵 (當時從亞洲各地被遣返日本的兵士大約七百萬人)。

父親先前首訪長崎時，立刻和美國代表團建立了良好的關係，於是要求將我們家列入美方徵召借用日人住處的行列。後來我們住進一棟位在半山腰非常舒適的房子，俯瞰壯麗的長崎港，從南山手街蜿蜒而上，一棟兩層樓的半西式建築，門廊的石柱端莊堂皇。那時有一群日本人在家裡幫忙各種家事，有女佣、洗衣婦、廚子、兩名園丁、木工，還有二十四小時輪班的守衛。每天晚上我躺在床上時還可以聽到警衛來回巡邏的腳步聲。偶爾，有些日本人坐在我們家門口那條斜坡車道上，一面吃便當，一面觀賞景色，這時警衛就會把他們趕走。我還記得警衛對自己的同胞說話的樣子很嚴厲，但是對我們全家人都很恭敬。在我家工作的日本人都很有禮貌，看不出有一點仇恨或慍怒。我和弟弟一向不知天高地厚，大辣辣地就混進廚房或者他們的工作區域，剛開始的時候他們有點吃驚，不知所措，後來熟了，他們會報以微笑，尤其是洗衣婦，常常把弟弟抱著坐在她厚實的大腿上。他是男孩子，得到的寵愛比我多，也比較多人伺候他，他也很快就習慣了女僕幫他脫衣、穿衣，並伺候他洗澡。

其實長崎很安全，幾個星期之後，父母帶我們在住處附近走動，但我們往下坡走，最遠只會走到山腳下那個有名的十九世紀大浦天主堂。有一次父親帶我們從家裡往上坡走，走到盡頭一轉彎，赫然是一座大宅邸，原來是古思比上尉(Capt. Joe Goldsby)和他太太的住處，得天獨厚的地點得以飽覽長崎港動人的美景。他們家四周的庭園寬闊，多層式的花圃隨著山勢而設計。古思比上尉覺得我和弟弟很乖，歡迎我們去玩。父親特別叮嚀我們不可喧嘩，盡量不要進屋打擾人家，如果進了房子，不可以碰那些易碎物品，更不可以拿了東西忘記歸回原位。換句話說，我們不可以吵到人家，也不要惹人嫌，就是要做守規矩的好孩子。

我第一次聽歌劇是父親的指引，他叫我坐著好好聽，然後解釋說歌劇發生的地點就是古思比上尉的家，講的是一個名字叫做蝴蝶的日本女子，與美國海軍上尉平克頓 (Benjamin F. Pinkerton) 相愛的故事。普契尼 (Giacomo Puccini) 的音樂如此優美動人，從此以後，「蝴蝶夫人」的旋律和我的長崎記憶交織在一起，每當音樂響起，縈繞在我腦中的是長崎港，還有我們在南山手町的鄰居——古思比上尉住的蝴蝶夫人故居。

這個大宅是哥拉巴(Thomas Blake Glover)在1860年代建造的，他被譽為「建設日本的蘇格蘭人」。他找到山頂一處比較平緩的地方蓋房屋，以便居高臨下一覽長崎港。最初的房子是簡單的兩層樓房，寬大的陽台視野遼闊，美不勝收的港灣盡在眼前。隨著哥拉巴日益興盛的生意，宅邸不斷擴建，後來成了日本知名人士或西方遊客聚集之地。

我們和古思比上尉相熟之前，哥拉巴宅邸早就以蝴蝶夫人故居名聞遐邇，主要因為這個地方酷似原本故事所描述的場景。我還記得庭園中一個地方有個淺淺的小湖，中間有個小島，我和弟弟喜歡在湖水旁邊玩。有一次園裡的工人忘了把一個梯子收回去，我們決定拿它來當橋，正好可以讓我們過去看看那個島是什麼模樣。弟弟很小，不太能抓穩他那一端，但我們還是勉強把橋架放在墨色的湖水上頭，我踩過「梯橋」走向那個一直在召喚我們的小島，然後一直唆使弟弟過來。從此以後，這個小島成了我們的阿瓦隆島(Island of Avalon)，那是湖中夫人(Lady of the Lake)藏匿亞瑟王的地方。我在島上扮演亞瑟王，手中的那把石中劍是從家裡木匠那堆東西撿來的木棍，我揮舞著，想像自己擊退那些要來攻打阿瓦隆島的敵人。每次演完之後，我們倆會小心翼翼地將梯子放回原處。有一次我玩膩了這個遊戲，趁著弟弟沒有注意，偷偷地溜回庭園這邊，然後把梯子拉過來，弟弟發現後大吼大叫，我連忙把梯子放回湖中，沒想到梯子沒有架住，沉了下去，我只好找來園丁，把梯子勾上來，拯救可憐的弟弟。從那次之後，我發現那個梯子每天都鎖得好好的，還好蝴蝶夫人家的大門沒有因此而關閉。

2013年我兒子陪我重返長崎，小小的港灣之城有點像1940年代的舊金山，有別致的綠色電車，生活步調悠閒舒緩，感覺它仍舊保留了原本的韻味。但是原本安靜的南山手町卻成了觀光客必遊路線，一年有兩百萬名遊客造訪。我們的家已經被一家家的店舖和攤子吞沒，從山腳的大浦天主堂，一直到山上哥拉巴故居的入口處，成了商店街。一座雙截式的戶外手扶梯，大概有五層樓高，直通哥拉巴庭園和宅邸的售票口。小時候我興高采烈地從家裡往上跑，在上坡轉彎處的大門口現在成了後門。我和兒子在庭園裡的咖啡廳喝著咖啡，回想1948年父親帶著我們拜訪古思比上尉和他的妻子，我們一起同坐在寬敞寧靜的陽台，轉眼間已過數十寒暑。當我帶著人生的閱歷重新思索蝴蝶夫人與平克頓上尉的故事，似乎領略了其中更深刻的意涵。1853年美國東印度艦隊司令培理 (Commodore Perry)進入當時鎖國的日本，外國勢力開始介入，而蝴蝶夫人被背叛的悲劇或許也隱喻了美國和日本的關係。原子彈為長崎帶來巨變與創痛，但是直到現在，港灣依然美麗動人，依然默默地守護著日本的命運，維繫了日本和美國在太平洋的共同利益。

舊地重遊時我還發現一件趣事。小時候以為潛藏可怕海底生物的小湖，原來是飼養錦鯉的小水池，那個令我著迷的阿瓦隆島有如睡蓮般優雅地飄浮在池面上，原來它只不過是野餐墊大小的草地，上面一小堆突露的岩石。池塘很小，大人站在池邊，用力一躍就可以跨過去!]

以下影片轉載自Youtube