Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Tonii
October 2018: My wife Felicia and I were in Kamakura, a few days into her first sojourn in Japan. The weather was warm, but not the unbearable heat and humidity of summer in Japan. We were staying at Helen and Hisashi’s bed and breakfast in Hase, Kamakura, a few steps from Sagami Bay and near Hase-dera Temple and the Kōtoku-in Temple, the latter being the home of the colossal bronze Buddha, one of the most iconic images of Japan.
We made the mandatory visits to these most famous temples. Both were mobbed; they always are, but one should pay one’s respects to a Buddha statue that dates to the mid-13th century. Having made our visits, we sought quieter, more meditative spaces, so we asked Helen for advice. She recommended the cluster of temples to the north of Kamakura Station, just next to the Shōnan-Shinjuku Line.
We walked along Imakōji Street, noting the Masudaya Tofu Shop along the way. Just to the east of the tracks is another Kamakura that is far more lively and crowded with tourists. The Komachi pedestrian street, may be closed to cars, but it can become impassable with tourists. Like so many Japanese towns and cities, 20 meters one way or the other off of a busy thoroughfare can open into an entirely different world of virtual solitude and elderly women watering potted plants on the ever-so-narrow verges in front of their houses.
Just past the Café Hotaru no Komichi (Firefly Lane) is the entrance to the Jufuku-ji Temple. Jufuku-ji is a Rinzai-Zen temple which is associated with the Kenchō-ji Temple, one of the Five Great Zen Temples dating back to the 13th century when Kamakura was the seat of the Hōjō shogunate, military rulers of medieval Japan. Such places are thick with layers of complex history, but none of that much mattered on that morning in October. We were in search of quiet communion with Kamakura, not a history lesson. Jufuku-ji seemed ideal.
We found what seemed to be the entrance to the temple precincts. An ancient tree bent low toward the ground, propped up by one of the ubiquitous tree-crutches found everywhere in Japan where ancient trees bend toward the ground. Immediately to the right of the entrance was a small gateway which led to a grand-looking house (the priest’s house?). An elderly woman, her hair colored black, stood at the gate slowly raking a few dried leaves off the hard-packed earth. She looked up and I caught her eye.
“Is this the entrance to the temple?” I asked.
“Yes. Just through there,” she replied.
And so we began. I started interpreting for Felicia’s benefit, and once the woman realized I could speak Japanese well enough to have a conversation, she started to talk. She asked where we were from, etc. I said “Amerika.” Maybe I stimulated an ancient memory; I’m a big guy and more than once I’ve been taken for ex-military (I am not). The woman started talking about “Tonii” (“Tony,” drawing out the “y” in an endearing way), someone she knew years ago, likely decades ago. She said Tonii was also from Amerika. The US is a big country, but somehow I caught the whiff of hope that I might somehow know this Tonii. Kamakura is near the large US naval base at Yokosuka on the other side of the Miura Peninsula, and Zushi, which is even closer, housed thousands of US military personnel throughout much of the postwar period. Maybe Tonii was a US Navy sailor?
The woman had obviously been in love with him. Maybe he loved her too. She was of an age when this Madama Butterfly-esque affair might have coincided with the Vietnam War. Whatever happened, Tonii was long gone from the woman’s life. But there was a light in her eyes, an energy, that showed that Tonii was not gone from her heart. Felicia was utterly charmed by this woman who leaned against her rake and recounted a long-ago love.
What I remember with equal clarity from this encounter was the sound of the trains passing not loudly on the tracks of the Shōnan-Shinjuku Line. And in the quiet between the passing trains, there was the sound of a trash truck making its patient rounds through the neighborhood on the other side of the right-of-way. I knew it was a trash truck because, in Japan, these smallish vehicles play tinkly tunes that elicit memories of kindergarten. My favorite truck was one that circulated through a neighborhood where I once lived. It played a wordless rendition of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and it took some time before I realized why they played this particular tune:
They asked me how I knew my true love was true,
I of course replied, something here inside cannot be denied.
They said someday you'll find all who love are blind,
When your heart's on fire, you must realize,
Smoke gets in your eyes.
The city, in its efforts to keep the air clean, was apparently encouraging residents to wait for trash collection and not to burn their trash, as Japanese were wont to do, because “smoke gets in your eyes.”
