Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman Page 0,104

the dorm (not that everybody was convinced it was a problem, though) was who ran it—some mysterious foundation headed up by a right-wing fanatic. One look at the pamphlet the dorm put out made this clear. The dorm was founded on a spirit of “achieving the basic goals of education and cultivating promising talent to serve the country.” And a lot of well-heeled businessmen who agreed with that philosophy apparently helped underwrite the dorm. At least that was the official story. What lay beneath the surface was, like many things there, anybody’s guess. Rumor had it the whole place was a tax dodge, or some sort of land fraud scheme. Not that this made a bit of difference to the day-to-day life at the dorm. On a practical level, I guess, it didn’t matter who ran it—right-wingers, left-wingers, hypocrites, scoundrels. What have you. Whatever the real story was, from the spring of 1967 to the fall of ’68, I called this dorm home.

Each day at the dorm began with a solemn flag-raising ceremony. The platform for the flag raising was in the middle of the courtyard, so you could see it all from the dorm windows. Of course they played the national anthem. Just like sports news and marches go together, can’t have one without the other.

The role of flag-raiser was played by the head of the east dorm, the one I was in. He was fiftyish, an altogether tough-looking customer. He had bristly hair with a sprinkling of gray, and a long scar on his sunburned neck. It was rumored he was a graduate of the Nakano Military Academy. Next to him was a student who acted as his assistant. The guy was basically an enigma. He had close-cropped hair and always wore a school uniform. Nobody had any idea what his name was or which room he lived in. I’d never run across him in the dining hall or the communal bath. I wasn’t even sure he was a student. But since he wore the uniform, what else could he have been? Unlike Academy Man, he was short, chubby, and pasty-looking. Every morning at six the two of them would hoist the rising sun flag up the flagpole.

I don’t know how many times I watched this little scene play out. The six a.m. chime would ring and there they were in the courtyard, Uniform Boy carrying a light wooden box, Academy Man a portable Sony tape recorder. Academy Man placed the tape recorder at the base of the platform and Uniform Boy opened the box. Inside was a neatly folded Japanese flag. Uniform Boy handed it to the boss, who then attached it to the rope. Uniform Boy switched on the tape recorder.

“May thy peaceful reign last long…” And the flag glided up the flagpole.

When they got to the part that goes “Until these tiny stones…” the flag was halfway up the pole, and it reached the top when they got to the end of the anthem. The two of them snapped to attention and gazed up at the flag. On sunny days when there was a breeze, it was quite a sight.

The evening ceremony was about the same as in the morning, just done in reverse. The flag glided down the pole and was put away in the wooden box. The flag doesn’t wave at night.

Why the flag’s got to be put away at night I have no idea. The country still exists at night, right? And plenty of people are hard at work. Doesn’t seem fair those people can’t have the same flag flying over them. Maybe it’s a silly thing to worry about—just the kind of thought a person like me is likely to fret over.

In the dorm freshmen and sophomores lived two to a room, while juniors and seniors lived alone. The kind of two-man room I inhabited was cramped and narrow. On the wall furthest from the door was a window with an aluminum frame. The furniture was spartan, but solidly built—two desks and chairs, a bunk bed, two lockers, and built-in shelves. In most of the rooms the shelves were crammed full of the usual stuff: transistor radios, blow-dryers, electric coffeepots, instant-coffee jars, sugar, pots for cooking instant noodles, cups and plates. Playboy pinups were taped to the plaster walls, and lined up on the desks were school textbooks, plus the odd popular novel.

With just men living there the rooms were filthy. The bottoms of the trash baskets were lined with moldy