Nureki Chimuo Archive

I can only understand the phenomena that unfolded before my eyes in this era.

I was still only fifteen.

Under something called the Student Mobilization Order, I was dragged out of my school district classroom against my will and brought to a massive factory manufacturing weapons.

Looking right or left, I saw towering masses of black iron. I hated the workshop where workers hammered and cut metal, covered in glistening machine oil.

I thought I’d rather die than work in such a soulless, bleak place.

I appealed directly to the teacher who had brought us there and was transferred to the publicity department, where I drew posters and entertained performers who came to cheer up the workers.

I could only see what was right in front of me, so I had no idea how the war would turn out.

All I knew was that I was still alive today and the daily changes were reflected before my eyes.

American bombers arriving in Tokyo’s skies grew more numerous each day, killing many defenseless townspeople.

Calling it a dark age is one way to put it. But human society, human life, no matter how you struggle, it’s always dark at its core.

Ever since humans first inhabited the earth until today, the killing has continued relentlessly, without end.

Neither the killer nor the killed can be called bright.

Kuga Chiyoko, who worked alongside me as an attendant for entertainers visiting the factory, suddenly disappeared one day.

She was a female student whose school was in Ochanomize, a fellow student mobilized for war work. She was three years older than me.

With her brisk movements and lively speech, she efficiently handled any task given to her. She was a pretty girl with a bob haircut who was well-regarded.

“I haven’t seen Kuga-san lately. What happened?” I asked the Western-style painter, Ichiro Madokoro.

Like me, Kuga Chiyoko also looked up to Ichiro Madokoro, a senior in the Public Relations Department, as her teacher in painting and calligraphy.

He was carving the characters “一露” (Ichiro) into a piece of wood with a small engraving knife, making a seal.

Ichiro was his pen name in calligraphy. He was carving that signature seal.

“My name in calligraphy is Magokoro Ichiro,” he laughed, Madokoro and Magokoro. He was the kind of person who could make puns like that.

“Kuga-san, she’s been absent for three days now, right? Is she ill?” I asked again. Not seeing her made me feel lonely. I harbored a secret admiration for this senior colleague.

“Kuga-kun, huh? Well, Kuga-kun…” he paused his carving knife, his gaze growing heavy as he slowly scanned the room.

No one else was present in the Public Relations Office on the second floor of the wooden barracks.

“I warned her before, you know. You’re not supposed to sketch around here.” Stammering slightly, Ichiro Madokoro spoke in a low voice, avoiding my gaze.

“Huh?”

“Kuga-kun, you see, was sketching sunflowers blooming outside the south gate wall of the factory. She was spotted by someone scary. And then… she was taken somewhere.” Ichiro Madokoro muttered.

Where she was taken, where she is now, I don’t know.

He explained in a quiet, low voice that the scary people meant the Secret Police, or perhaps the military police.

Behind the sunflowers Kuga Chiyoko had sketched stood the wall surrounding the factory buildings.

That alone was enough for her to be considered a spy and taken away somewhere.

Ichiro Madokoro didn’t tell me anything more than that. He probably didn’t know what happened after that either.

The beautiful girl with the bobbed haircut wrote poetry in a notebook she had bound herself from small pieces of straw paper.

Even when I asked to read it, she was too shy to show me.

On the edge of my diary from that time, I wrote these words.

So That’s how it is Fellow humans Seem to be living But they all die Even knowing they’ll die Just for today They struggle and live Today The sunflower withered

For some reason, I thought Kuga Chiyoko disappeared from my life because she had died.

“Now is the time to rise up! The decisive battle on the mainland draws near!”

Days went by where I was forced to paint posters emblazoned with such desperate slogans. Now I realize they were the last gasps of those facing imminent death.

“The decisive battle on the mainland.” Isn’t that just another way of saying death?

Yet, I scarcely registered the reality of death.

Not just me, even the adults around me probably didn’t feel the certain death brought by the “decisive battle on the mainland” as something very close to them.

By this time, there were air raids almost every day, and each time, women, children, and the elderly left behind in the towns were killed. Perhaps everyone already felt like they were in the midst of a decisive battle on the mainland.

Had we become accustomed to “death?”

The entertainment troupes that had once visited quite frequently stopped coming so often.

The war might have been so desperate that there was no longer any leeway to send entertainers to boost the morale of the workers.

I, the youngest and lowest-ranking member, didn’t know the full story, but a plan had emerged. Instead of relying on outside performers, the Public Relations Section would take the lead and put on a play for the workers using only their own resources.

No matter how desperate the situation became, the factory management understood that people still needed comfort and entertainment.

Thousands, perhaps even over ten thousand conscripted laborers were gathered inside the factory.

It didn’t seem difficult to find men and women with theatrical talent among the vast buildings lined up in rows.

An amateur theater troupe was quickly formed.

The leader was a man named Keichiro Suzuki, the deputy chief of the Public Relations Department.

He was a tall, stout man in his forties, not conscripted but originally an employee of Hitachi Ltd.

He apparently had no actual stage experience, but he loved theater and always wanted to play the leading roles.

It was the deputy chief who proposed forming an amateur troupe and took the initiative to make it happen.

He undoubtedly formed the troupe for his own hobby, not for the entertainment of the workers.

An interesting cast of characters came together.

Yoshioka Shintaro, a former movie-talker, a katsuben, who genuinely believed himself to be a leading man.

By currying favor with Chairman Suzuki, he was always given leading roles in the “Public Relations Troupe.”

He boasted about how the female audience members would scream and fuss over him during his katsuben days.

With his high cheekbones and sunken eyes, I didn’t think he was all that handsome.

He claimed he’d avoided being drafted into the army because he had a pre-existing tuberculosis condition.

When the “Public Relations Troupe” performed a parody of the kabuki play “Suzugamori,” Yoshioka Shintaro energetically played the white-faced leading man, Shirai Gonpachi, opposite Suzuki, the troupe leader, who played Hatasui Inbee.

“I’ll do it in the Tachibana-ya style,” he declared with confidence, and indeed, his delivery was smooth, and it had the proper form.

There was a man who had once been part of the Sogonoya Goro troupe, performing as an onnagata.

Back then, I saw this troupe’s play just once, taken by my father to either the Togeki or the Shinbashi Enbujo. They were immensely popular in Kansai at the time.

Few people have seen Soganoya Goro in person anymore.

The role I saw him perform was his signature old woman part, but his voice was rough and raspy, making it hard to hear from the third floor seats.

He left behind many comedy scripts under the pen name Ichisakai Gyojin, collected in an anthology.

Adaptations of his sentimental comedies are still performed by popular theater troupes nationwide. The performers likely have no idea they’re acting out works by Gyojin, that is, Soganoya Goro.

Tracing the plays performed by Fujiyama Naomi, the current leader of the Shochiku Shinkigeki troupe, leads back through Fujiyama Kanbi and Shibuya Tenge to these “Goro plays.”

And I, too, actually received several of these scripts from the complete collection of Gyojin’s works later on.

But writing about that here would be endless, so I’ll skip it.

After quitting the “Goro Plays,” he ran some kind of business in Tokyo before being conscripted. His name was Yamakawa Otomatsu.

He spoke in a soft Kansai dialect, was kind, had a bit of a campy vibe, and was a genuinely good person. He could also do stage makeup, so he was highly valued in the “Public Relations Troupe.”

A wig stylist is someone who ties, puts on, and does detailed maintenance on the wigs worn by actors.

On occasion, like when we’d be alone together in the dark backstage, she’d stare intently at my face and quietly say in a motherly tone, “Boy, you must take care of your head. You cannot die.” Then from her large eyes behind her glasses, a single tear would suddenly fall.

“Watching your head” meant being careful of American air raids.

No matter how much she warned me, there was no way to watch out for them. They came in large planes, flying in formation high above, dropping bombs from the distant sky.

Among the gathering of extraordinary talents, seen through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old boy, was Kataoka Tobei, who would later take me to the Tsurukame Theater and turn me into an actor.

To begin with, I started writing about this Public Relations Section to explain my encounter with Kataoka Tobei.

But I ended up getting bogged down in details, and it became too long.

There is much for me to write about from this era.

I also wish to write about a woman named Ichimura Masako, who was in the Takarazuka Revue. So, I’ll put Tobei aside for now and write about Ichimura Masako.

She had been stationed at some field office within the factory when, following orders from someone in upper management, she was reassigned to the “Public Relations Troupe.” When she first appeared before me, my heart nearly stopped at her overwhelming beauty.

Every day, I was just drawing posters, surrounded by scattered plates of mixed paint. Though the colors were lively, the second floor of the office remained bleak. Suddenly, she entered with a bright, refreshing, bouncy voice.

“Nice to meet you! I’m Ichimura Masako!”

She was truly a crane in a dung heap.

After greeting each person in the room crisply, Ichimura Masako finally stood before me.

“Hey kid, let’s be friends,” she said, casually placing her hand on my shoulder and smiling with a warmth that made it hard to believe we just met.

She wore slightly heavy, pale makeup, even lipstick. I caught a whiff of perfume.

For the first time in my life, a young, beautiful woman had placed her hand on my shoulder.

Among the female singers who had come to entertain the workers, she shone more beautifully than any star.

There wasn’t a trace of the gloom brought on by the war. From her very presence, an air of decadence seemed to emanate.

Seeing that carefree, radiant smile right before me, I was so moved I nearly fainted.

After the war, Ichimura Masako did not return to the Takarazuka Revue but instead became a disciple of Mizutani Yaeko in the Shinpa theater company.

I went to see her while she was performing at the Shochikuza theater in Asakusa.

Mizutani Yaeko was, of course, the previous generation, and this was back when she was still married to Morita Kanya.

Ahh, how splendid it was when Yaeko and Kanya performed together as a duo in this Shochizuka production of the “Tale of the Last Chrysanthemum"!

Yaeko as Otoku, and Kanya as Kikunosuke!

I watched from the third-floor seats, tears streaming down my face. I saw it three or four times over.

At times, I pressed a hand towel to my mouth and sobbed.

Ichimura Masako was given several minor roles along with the other numerous characters and appeared on stage. Some roles had just two or three lines of dialogue.

During intermission, I went to the dressing room to see her.

Inside the room with the noren curtain hanging at Yaeko Mizutani’s dressing room, she worked briskly and efficiently, just like a true disciple.

Fearing I might be in the way, I quickly said, “I’ll come back later,” bowing deeply with both hands pressed together, bowed to Yaeko, and returned to the audience seats.

Deeply moved by The Tale of the Last Chrysanthemum, I was seized by the desire to share that same emotion with my father and mother. So the three of us went together to the Shochizuka theater in Asakusa.

(Incidentally, that Shochikuza theater was located near where Asakusa ROX stands today, with its front facing Kokusai Street.)

This was an era when the Shinsei Shihan theater troupe boasted such renowned actors as Hideo Fujimura, Eijiro Yanagi, Ichijiro Oya, Hiroshi Ishi, and Taro Hanabusa.

(For some reason, Shotaro Hanayagi did not appear in this Asakusa production.)

Come to think of it, I also saw several performances by the grand master of the Shinkai, Ryokuro Kitamura.

But I’ve digressed again.

I should have written earlier about her before she became a disciple of Mizutani Yaeko, specifically about her earlier career as the heroine of the “Public Relations Troupe” during the final days of the war.

No, actually, before that, I must write about my encounter with Kataoka Tobei. Otherwise, I cannot return to the person I was at the Tsurukame Theater.

It was at the Tsurukame Theater that I first received payment as an actor.

But before Tobei, I still want to write about Ichimura Masako.

Because she was the one who first seared the raw, vivid image of a woman’s eroticism into the heart of a fifteen-year-old boy.