5.(19-20) Arrival - The Secret Christians

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19. Arrival

Kimi and Harumi ride an old train packed with farmers returning rich with goods bartered for rice in the Tokyo black-market, or “Yami-ichi” as it is called. At Hiroshima they take a ferry to South Island and continue train to Nagasaki arriving in a barn-like Central Station at sunset.
   Opening train window, Harumi waves and shouts “Auntie, Auntie!” Kimi looks and sees a matronly lady in plain kimono. Beside her is sailor-suit girl pointing at them. “Aunt Seiko and cousin Yotchan” explains Harumi

  
Soon they are all in hired car passing by Nagasaki toward Seiko’s house 30 kilometers (c.20 miles) east on the Shimabara Peninsula on shore of East China Sea. Seiko speaks in South Island way, understandable but quaint to Kimi. Yotchan is shy but Kimi catches her peeking from up front in car and Seiko, noticing, admonishes. They come to 2-story wood house, close by ocean and fronted by rock garden and flowerbeds of yellow and orange chrysanthemum blossoms. Seiko slides entrance door open and, holding back the child, bows them into vestibule where they stop to remove shoes and put on slippers neatly arranged on edge of step-up ledge. Pushing into the entrance hung with jingle-jangle baubles & beads they step up onto spacious rectangular tatami. A large mahogany table with chairs is set for lunch.
   After attending to hanging the outer clothes and stowing the shoes, Aunt Seiko seats her guests at table on pillows and goes into kitchen with Yotchan, who shortly returns bearing tray with 2 tall glasses of ice water and plates with small cubes of green sweet-bean gelatin on toothpicks.
   “How old are you?” asks Harumi.
   “Ten, Ma’am.”

   “Why ‘Ma’am?’ I am cousin Harumi. And here is ‘Kimi.’”

   Yotchan turns her gaze on Kimi, who says, “Call me ‘Big Sis,’” and Harumi adds “And me, ‘Auntie.' Is that alright with you?”

  “Un,” a child’s assent. Yotchan sits on Kimi’s left as Seiko brings in large bowl of steaming white rice and plates with sliced raw brown-red tuna and then sits at head of table with Yotchan on right. She spoons the white rice into the guests’ eating bowls, passing one first to Kimi then to Harumi and then to Yotchan who grasps a pair of chopsticks but is stopped by her mother’s sharp glance. The freshly cooked smell sets Kimi’s eating imagination aflame.

   Putting down the chopsticks, the child silently presses hands together and bows head. Kimi and Harumi do likewise.
   “Thank you, Oh Lord Jesus, for the blessings,” murmurs Seiko.

   Christians, thinks Kimi recalling that Shimabara Peninsula was the last pocket of Christian resistance by converts 300 years before.
   Prayer over, Yotchan, chopsticks flashing, moves rice from bowl to mouth. Healthy child, thinks Kimi noting Seiko’s rice is better than the millet mix that the war has forced on them in Tokyo. But most tasty are the tuna slices, which Kimi prefers to put in mouth directly rather than dipping in the mustard soy sauce mixture in the tray-size square side-dish provided for it.

   “Where is your country?” inquires Seiko using formal language that in Tokyo might evoke laughter but here, to Kimi, has rightness and charm. 
   “North Island.”

   “So, just as I thought. You have big body and light skin of a northerner. And your folk?  What do they?”

   “Fisher folk.”

   “That is why she eats raw fish with no flavoring,” adds Harumi.
   “My father too was a fisherman,” says Seiko smiling, with no upper front teeth.
   Seiko gets up and goes for homemade plum wine.
  With it her formality lightens and she tells about herself.

20. Secret Christians

Seiko’s family had been Christians many generations, “Secret Christians” she explains, descendents of converts of Francis Xavier the Portuguese missionary who discovered Japan for Europe. The early Tokugawa rulers thought they had eradicated them in the 1600's after mass crucifixions, even forcing believers to deny their faith by treading publicly on a picture of Jesus. Expressions of Christianity meant death so prayer had to be carried out cryptically. Thus the home family Buddhist altar – butsudan – had symbols the family recognized as Christian. A Chinese goddess, Kwannon, stood for Virgin Mary and the prayer book had a code in cursive syllable alongside the Chinese characters that could be read by secret Christians as Latin phrases in the Roman Catholic litany.

   Today, being Christian is not special but many have lost faith. Here Seiko looks at Harumi who sits with head bowed. Seiko herself is married to a non-believer. She would have preferred to be a nun but felt a duty to the ancestors to keep the blood line going. Her husband is a business man not at home any more, preferring a concubine in Nagasaki.    That is OK with Seiko who considers men a cross one endures. But she has two children both good Christians. Yotchan here will be a high school teacher and Mitsuo – now in army in New Guinea – will be college professor. Seiko’s face saddens as she talks of Mitsuo. Such a shameful thing is war! Lord Jesus taught all are brothers and sisters so how can she hate Americans? She goes to get photo album. Kimi sees a young man in white naval marine outfit with lieutenant insignia on collar.
   All sit silent. Harumi with hands folded on lap looks at tabletop. Yotchan, expressionless across from her mother, looks straight ahead. Kimi impulsively pulls out small crucifix on beads that Ivan Vronsky gave her and she carries for good luck.
   “I believe in words of Jesus. I will pray your son’s safety and war’s end.”
   All bow heads. When it is over, Seiko turns to Harumi. “At last you show good sense in a friend. Between Kimi-sama and I, you shall be saved at last, you lost lamb.”

Lying on futon later, Harumi says: “Seiko is always trying to show me the light. But it is superstitious goobledy-gook. Yet she is not a bad sort.”
   “No, she’s not,” murmurs Kimi half asleep.
   For next, now, click 5.(21-22) A Walk on the Wild Side - We Left the L...