Late in March, before doing some business in Okinawa I was able to visit Ie island. It was two hours’ drive north from Naha, then a 30-minute ferry ride. Ie is now a peaceful island with fields of “electric chrysanthemums” and tobacco.
I visited Ie with a reason, having been given information by a friend. My destination was at the eastern end of the island, “The House of Nuchi-du-takara.” “Nuchi-du-takara” means “the treasure is life.” During the Pacific war, when Ie island had an airstrip, it became a fierce battlefield where more than 4,000 people including civilians lost their lives. And after the war, when two thirds of the island was confiscated for military use, many islanders lost their farming land and their source of income.
The civil movement against the military base was led by Shoukou Ahagon who was called “Gandhi of Okinawa.” His weapon was a camera. He kept on documenting by relentlessly taking pictures, since the American army required evidence for anything anyway. His was the only camera on the island. At the time he had to go down to Naha just to get the pictures printed.
The House of Nuchi-du-takara is a private museum he opened on his home estate. After going in the front gate being stared down upon by a huge head with a fearful face like a tengu, then passing through a garden with papaya trees and a main house to a courtyard further back, you will find an exhibition room. It is rather dark. You open the door, flip a switch buried under the panel, then an incredible quantity of things suddenly appears before your eyes.
The space is big enough for an elementary classroom, and is filled with various things from floor to ceiling. Ahagon’s pictures of islanders’ demonstrations, like the ones titled “Beggars’ Walk” (1955-6), cartridges and parachutes that American soldiers dropped, people’s clothes and commodities, banners with phrases of strong protest, - they all were too vivid just to sit there as “exhibits”. Feeling like the space itself was filled with anger, I froze right there for a moment.
I somehow escaped and made toward the main house, then a woman in a wheelchair invited me in. It was Ms. Estuko Jahana, who had assisted Ahagon’s work throughout his life. She is well into her eighties, but her voice shines like a girl’s.
Ms. Jahana started straight away with that voice: how she had been misdiagnosed and her legs became paralyzed when she was small, how her family survived in a trench her father dug, but also how he died in a battle on the very day of the American landing. She talked about COVID-19. About Ukraine. And of course about Ahagon. I was worried about her condition and tried to cut the conversation short, but she wouldn’t stop.
Not only that. Her hands kept moving all through her talk, producing souvenirs one after another and presenting them to me. First, two packs of brown-sugar-coated peanuts, an island specialty, then Ahagon’s biography for children, then some documents from his notes. When she finally presented a magazine with her interview (“Sekai” Iwanami-shoten February 2021 issue), I instinctively said, “I must pay you. How much?”
Then Ms. Jahana replied, angrily.
“I am not doing this for that.”
And she immediately returned to the story of when she’d been a schoolgirl. But those words had a special weight. I realised that I had done something very rude.
The magazine was sold in bookstores and yet she was giving it to me, so I tried to pay the price. Getting something for free means you are in debt to return the favour. Money would make it even. I offered to pay because it would make me feel easier.
However, the gift Ms. Jahana has given me is not something easily returned. She revealed her sufferings to somebody from “mainland Japan”. And I was almost totally ignorant of what had happened in the battles of Ie. She may have thought then, “I’m not going to let you receive these things easily by any means.”
A deed becomes rita only if it is received as such. However, some forms of rita are difficult to receive. They, in short, cause a kind of “scar.” How can I become worthy of receiving Ms. Jahana’s gifts? By telling her stories to the students in university classes, for example? Or by studying about the disabled and the war? I don’t know. The scar won’t heal for a while.
I visited Ie with a reason, having been given information by a friend. My destination was at the eastern end of the island, “The House of Nuchi-du-takara.” “Nuchi-du-takara” means “the treasure is life.” During the Pacific war, when Ie island had an airstrip, it became a fierce battlefield where more than 4,000 people including civilians lost their lives. And after the war, when two thirds of the island was confiscated for military use, many islanders lost their farming land and their source of income.
The civil movement against the military base was led by Shoukou Ahagon who was called “Gandhi of Okinawa.” His weapon was a camera. He kept on documenting by relentlessly taking pictures, since the American army required evidence for anything anyway. His was the only camera on the island. At the time he had to go down to Naha just to get the pictures printed.
The House of Nuchi-du-takara is a private museum he opened on his home estate. After going in the front gate being stared down upon by a huge head with a fearful face like a tengu, then passing through a garden with papaya trees and a main house to a courtyard further back, you will find an exhibition room. It is rather dark. You open the door, flip a switch buried under the panel, then an incredible quantity of things suddenly appears before your eyes.
The space is big enough for an elementary classroom, and is filled with various things from floor to ceiling. Ahagon’s pictures of islanders’ demonstrations, like the ones titled “Beggars’ Walk” (1955-6), cartridges and parachutes that American soldiers dropped, people’s clothes and commodities, banners with phrases of strong protest, - they all were too vivid just to sit there as “exhibits”. Feeling like the space itself was filled with anger, I froze right there for a moment.
I somehow escaped and made toward the main house, then a woman in a wheelchair invited me in. It was Ms. Estuko Jahana, who had assisted Ahagon’s work throughout his life. She is well into her eighties, but her voice shines like a girl’s.
Ms. Jahana started straight away with that voice: how she had been misdiagnosed and her legs became paralyzed when she was small, how her family survived in a trench her father dug, but also how he died in a battle on the very day of the American landing. She talked about COVID-19. About Ukraine. And of course about Ahagon. I was worried about her condition and tried to cut the conversation short, but she wouldn’t stop.
Not only that. Her hands kept moving all through her talk, producing souvenirs one after another and presenting them to me. First, two packs of brown-sugar-coated peanuts, an island specialty, then Ahagon’s biography for children, then some documents from his notes. When she finally presented a magazine with her interview (“Sekai” Iwanami-shoten February 2021 issue), I instinctively said, “I must pay you. How much?”
Then Ms. Jahana replied, angrily.
“I am not doing this for that.”
And she immediately returned to the story of when she’d been a schoolgirl. But those words had a special weight. I realised that I had done something very rude.
The magazine was sold in bookstores and yet she was giving it to me, so I tried to pay the price. Getting something for free means you are in debt to return the favour. Money would make it even. I offered to pay because it would make me feel easier.
However, the gift Ms. Jahana has given me is not something easily returned. She revealed her sufferings to somebody from “mainland Japan”. And I was almost totally ignorant of what had happened in the battles of Ie. She may have thought then, “I’m not going to let you receive these things easily by any means.”
A deed becomes rita only if it is received as such. However, some forms of rita are difficult to receive. They, in short, cause a kind of “scar.” How can I become worthy of receiving Ms. Jahana’s gifts? By telling her stories to the students in university classes, for example? Or by studying about the disabled and the war? I don’t know. The scar won’t heal for a while.