It would soon be my turn to wash the corpse.
The undertaker had done an excellent job with the dead body. This eighty-something-year-old woman, with her twenty-something assistant, had brushed rouge into his cheeks as the light of dawn and cicada-song filled the room. Make-up or not, hair done or not, beautifully fitted cotton yukata or not, he still looked dead. Not sleeping. Not peacefully resting his eyes. Dead. Departed. Expired.
My knees and ankles ached from sitting in seiza, the formal way of sitting in Japan. You’ll see this style of sitting during tea ceremonies, kabuki theatre performances, sumo matches, during calligraphy and ikebana flower arranging.
‘Ben-chan,’ Kai-san nudged me conspiratorially. ‘Seiza iranai yo. Daijoubu.’
Translation: Sit in a more comfortable position.
I refused. The only young white man in a room full of Japanese octogenarians, many with hip and mobility problems. I wouldn’t be the only one to break seiza.
It was getting closer to my turn. I watched as others washed the body. I didn’t want to get it wrong. But I’d not seen a dead body this close before. It would be another week until my dog would die in my arms. Another week until we would hold a miniature crematorium for my deceased dachshund in the back of a Toyota Prius, umbrella barely shielding me from the rain and ash cloying the starless night sky of Yokohama.
The body. His skin was almost the same sickly yellow colour as the soft tatami he lay reclined upon. Tatami, by the way, is the straw mat that forms the floor of traditional Japanese households. You sleep on it, sit on it, eat on it. Live on it. Die on it. The more rural you go, the more likely you’ll see it. Atsugi is only 37 miles from Tokyo, 90 minutes by rattling kakueki-teisha train, but you’ll see minka houses with sliding doors and bonsai gardens rather than glittering sky-rise high-scrapers, toilets of the squat rather than high-tech automatic smart-panel variety, and long green trenches of cabbages, daikon, and bamboo.
‘Sugoi na,’ Kai-sai whispered, then attempted stitled English. ‘He looks, ah, very… Nan darou? Beautiful.’
I wanted to vomit. I hadn’t slept the night before and the benzodiazepines weren’t working. My hands shook so violently I needed to keep them planted to my knees. But then my elbows quivered, which made my whole body shake, which made me fear I would soon paint the cadaver and everyone around it with my stomach lining.
The ceremonial corpse-washing cloth, I don’t know what you’d call it, passed hands. From grandson of the deceased to deceased’s brother. He clasped the rag with pinky-less mitts, the only part of his body, minus his face and wing-streaked hair, not stained with yakuza ink.
How’s he washing the body? Quite rough actually. I wouldn’t want to handle it that way. I’d be scared of snapping a ligament, dislocating a digit. Not that this geriatric gangster would have much care for that. And, to be fair, the bones weren’t long from being incinerated.
‘Tsugi, Ben-chan,’ Kai-san said. ‘You-are-next.’
I’d blanked out. Tears blurred my vision. But I could see Emika-san’s outline delicately attending to her father’s body. In death love found an expression that had always eluded life.
Emika-san gifted me the cloth. I tried to protest. He’s not my father. Not my grandfather. Not my brother. Not my uncle. I shouldn’t be washing him. It’s not right. But Kai-san pushed me forward. I finally escaped the seiza position, and found myself on hands and knees beside the corpse, in a circle of black-attired shoeless Japanese mourners. A ray of sun, providing a stream for mosquitoes to sail on, hit me like a spotlight.
I took the dead body’s hand. Tenderly. Never have I clasped a human’s hand so lovingly. And this a stranger. Had he been my blood I’m not sure I could have even sat beside him without breaking in two. Fingers interlaced. His were brittle, stiff, and cold, though the skin was soft. Mine were trembling and clammy. I washed his hands. Then his feet. Gently. Toenails catching on the cloth. Then, struggling to know when to end, I made my way to his face. Those sunken eyes. I stroked the wispy hair, foliage for hiding veins that would never again shuttle blood. I forgot myself for a moment. Uncradled his face. Bowed to the body. Then bowed to the circle.
‘Arigatou, Ben-chan.’ Emika-san’s tears were for me. ‘Daijoubu?’
‘Hai, daijoubu,’ I said. ‘Daijoubu desu.’
Translation: I’m fine.
In Japanese, they say ‘red lie’ instead of ‘white lie’. As if to demonstrate my ability to do both in each language, my face turned from an ill ivory pallor to a deep crimson flush.
We built the coffin together. Sides constructed out of cypress, planed to perfection, and each funerary member assigned the task of decorating. I watched them take turns painting well-wishes and signing their names in kanji.
I felt yet another prod from Kai-san, right in the ribs, followed by the heat of grieving eyes. My turn again? I made the same protestations as before. All ignored. So I dipped a brush in red ink and wrote the only English message, deciding that even the dead would think the language to hold éclat. The family surveyed the message, nodded thoughtfully, then looked to Kai-san to translate despite my Japanese fluency. Kai-san mistranslated. More thoughtful nods. Outside yakuza brother was lighting a cigarette beneath a shedding cedar tree.
We shouldered the coffin and slid it into the undertaker’s car, which then spluttered up to the temple at the top of the hill in a cloud of exhaust. A hundred miniature Bodhisattva Buddhas, carved from marble and adorned with knitted shawls, lined the path up to the temple. We walked in procession, past grey gravestones that looked more chimney-tower than memoriam, incense filling the wet green air. One-by-one the mourners approached the coffin, now open, and cushioned the corpse with chrysanthemums and lilies as they said their goodbyes.
‘Ganbatte.’ Sister of the deceased, a ninety-something hunchbacked lady, embraced the body, sobs rocking her back and forth. ‘Ganbatte yo. Arigatou. Zenbu arigatou.’
Good luck. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you for everything.
After a sea of goodbyes came the chanting. Chants of a thousand saints’ names, led by a bald shepherd of the Shinto faith, lulled me to sleep. I awoke with a snap. The rumble of a low-level earthquake beneath my feet. No longer in the temple, time had skipped, and now I was swaying in a regimented block of extended friends and family at the crematorium. A thick red curtain guarded the fire, but still we felt the heat upon our faces. The coffin disappeared. We filed out of the room to the soundtrack of ravenous crackling flames. The room next door was completely bare, cold and clinical. We formed a semi-circle and the surgically-masked director of cremation wheeled in a metal table, the contents of which were concealed by a draped white tarpaulin. He beckoned us forward, like an illusionist in the build-up to revealing the trick, and removed with tarp without flourish.
Even dust piled up can become a mountain, the Japanese say. Chiri mo tsumoreba yama to naru.
One moment I was washing his hands and feet, the next he was nothing more than dust on a table. Not just dust. Bones, long and short and fractured, pieces of human unable to be completely charred, jutted out of the grey pile. The director produced an oversized pair of chopsticks, one in each hand, pinched a clavicle, and held it aloft.
‘Sakotsu,’ the director said.
The crowd leaned in. Kai-san caught my eye and rubbed his collarbone. The director deposited the bone in an urn. He then sifted through the ashes and produced another ivory treasure.
‘Ago,’ he said.
‘Jaw,’ Kai-san whispered to me, rubbing his to illustrate.
The director dropped it with a rattle into the urn. A few more bones later, each accompanied by Kai-san’s private translation, the director invited us all to approach, two at a time, and lift the remaining bones into the urn. I could handle udon, sticky noodles, and even slippery squid, but the hand that held the chopstick responsible for conveying bone to urn trembled relentlessly.
I passed the oversized chopstick to the yakuza brother. He smiled, grey fillings glinting, and clapped me on the back.
‘Suman,’ he said. ‘Eigo hanasanai. Daijoubu?’
Translation: Sorry, I don’t speak English. You okay?
‘Shinpai irimasen,’ I said. ‘Daijoubu desu.’
I told him not to worry. But those two words – ‘I’m fine’ – were pregnant with the complicated tangle of tatemae and honne. Tatemae is what the Japanese call your public face. Honne is your true feeling. It’s important to craft a public face so convincing that people cannot distinguish between your facade and your honne. When a Japanese person compliments your language skills, and you only know how to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’, that’s tatemae. When you tell a family member that you’re fine whilst standing in front of a pile of their dearly departed’s ash, that’s tatemae. But honne has no place here. You can’t tell them that you should be the one enquiring after them. You can’t say that, despite not knowing the deceased, you’re not fine. You can’t say that you feel like curling up into a ball and hoping everyone you love lives forever. You simply hope that some honne shines through your mask as the mountain of dust disappears.