LOST THOUGHTS OF WAR RETURN: A
DIARY OF THE MIND
DIARIUM
7 Tanka 30 to 33
Jefferson
Barracks, Missouri, 1943
Segregated
company of black soldiers demeaned.
TANKA
30
typical
order
hey
soldier open your eyes ‑‑
training
films for what ~
erect
or blow up bridges
but
the dark room helped us sleep
TANKA
31
one
dreary morning
segregated
black soldiers
were
all asked to stand ~
brethren,
sing spirituals
show
us whites your great rhythm
TANKA
32
they
were melodic
as
his cliche was banal
and
sadly profane ~
but
after many such years
equality
was granted
TANKA
33
race
a dead issue
no
humiliation now
desegregated
~
blacks
and whites sit together
why
did it take them so long
We were frequently being subjected to viewing training
films, presumably to make us more competent soldiers. Unfortunately, these films were thoroughly boring, could not have
been even slightly effective in training soldiers for any task and I can't
recall watching even one of them completely.
The most notorious film was one on venereal diseases that graphically
depicted the skin lesions that were easily transmitted. This caused a few men to get up and run to
the bathroom where their morning's breakfast was deposited. Fortunately, the auditorium was darkened so
it would have been difficult for the officers to see whether our eyes were open
or closed – most of the men used this brief hiatus from our strenuous labor to
get a well‑needed
rest
or even a nap. Not at all unusual for
that time, the auditorium was completely racially segregated: whites to one
side, blacks to the other.
One particularly boring morning, after the day's films
concluded, the sergeant with an obviously thick southern accent, asked us to
sing some trite songs. I really don't'
understand why ‑‑ perhaps he had to fill out the morning's time
schedule before we returned to our units.
After a half dozen of these impromptu songs, apparently his favorites,
he said he had a treat for us. He
followed that announcement by extolling the in‑born melodious singing
ability and impeccable rhythm of our "nigra" soldiers. I sat up straight wondering what he had
planned. He then asked the company of
black soldiers, sitting to our left to stand, and asked then to sing a Negro
spiritual.
He waved his hands synchronously, presumably to keep
them all together while they sang a spiritual and the white soldiers
listened. It was so unbelievably
condescending to be introduced as being able to keep in tune and rhythm, that
for a moment I wondered whether they would just refuse and tell him to sing the
songs alone. But this was decades ago
when subservience was the rule, and their performance was indeed, rather
touching – all this despite his
condescending introduction, the notorious cliche that "our black brothers
have rhythm" [by which he presumably meant they had nothing else of
intellectual significance].
Sir
Sidney
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_________________________________________________________________________
The
philosopher's response:
Always in war, art and philosophy are called into
question. The official mind overwhelms the creative pursuit of the rational
mind. Legacies of this remain, the
wartime Japanese tanka utterly at variance with the great tradition of the
waka, the Nazi pursuit of Aryan art, the Fascist architecture in Italy, or the
ultimate testimony to folly, the execution of the theologian Martin
Bonnhoeffer.
In Japan there was the curious case of Tanizaki
Junichiro‑'s novel Sasameyuki, [The Makioka Sisters]. The first two episodes appeared in January
and March 1943 issues of the magazine Chu‑o‑ Ko‑ron. The plan
was to have the novel serialised in every other issue. However, there was no
instalment in May, and in June the editor of the Magazine, Hatanaka Shigeo,
announced that there would be no further episodes because the novel was at
variance with the self discipline required for the war effort. In fact, Hatanaka had been called before the
Information Bureau of the War Ministry to be directed to cease publishing
Tanizaki's "offending" novel.
Tanizaki, in the great tradition of courageous writers, published the
first volume privately in July 1944.
The novel was published in full in 1949.
* * * * * *
"Would you do this please, Koi‑san." Seeing in the mirror that Taeko had come up
behind her, Sachiko stopped powdering her back and held out the puff to her
sister. Her eyes were still on the mirror, appraising the face as if it
belonged to someone else. The long under kimono, pulled high at the throat,
stood out stiffly behind to reveal her back and shoulders.
"And where is Yukiko?"
"She is watching Etsuko practice," said
Taeko. Both sisters spoke in the quiet, unhurried Osaka dialect. Taeko was the youngest in the family, and in
Osaka, the youngest girl is always ‘Koisan’, small daughter.
The Makioka Sisters, translated by Edward G.Seidensticker.
What had "offended" the War Ministry was the
"sickly" domestic scenes, and the preoccupation with the minute
details of the `miai' or arranged marriage.
* * * * *
From the April 1943 issue of the magazine Kaizo‑:
a report of a literary discussion. The writer Hino Ashihei had been asked if he
had read The Makioka Sisters:
Hino: I'm sure people will take offense if anyone like
myself dares to criticise a great senior writer too outspokenly... [Mr
Tanizaki] He describes scenes of miai and of women putting on their makeup,
worries about a spot under someone's eye which becomes faint and then becomes
dark again...
Kawabata: I wonder if Mr Tanizaki while he was
writing, felt attracted by the syrupy, sticky quality of the life it describes,
or if he wasn't portraying the stupidity of the bourgeois.... A great many ordinary readers have been
fascinated by this book."
Quoted
from Donald Keene, Appreciation of
Japanese Culture. ISBN 4‑7700
0956‑9
the official mind 5
prescribes what must be
done 7
thus truth is always
absent 7
Hugh
Bygott