Juliet is the sun

Juliet is the Sun
By Gemma Nishiyama
Dedicated to the brave people fighting and resisting the
construction of oil pipelines and to people working for
renewable energy everywhere on our planet
Books and websites quoted in this novel:
All quotations from Shakespeare are from The Riverside Shakespeare, Houghton-Mifflin Company.

Boston, MA. 1974 (Evans et al. eds.)
In Chapter 17, parts of the morality play Mankynde are shown in a fictionalized and simplified
representation I created after reading this play. I quote some lines from this play which I accessed at
NeCastro, Gerard. From Stage to Page - Medieval and Renaissance Drama.
http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/drama. Date Visited: February 6, 2013.
In the conversation between Professor Yamaguchi and Viola in Chapter 20, a few quotations from The
Renaissance Drama of Knowledge by Hilary Gatti (London: Routledge), 1989, are used with
permission from the publisher. Particularly I quote one paragraph from page 130 and I summarize part
of an argument that Professor Gatti makes on pages 141-2 of her book and I quote the lines she quotes
from Hamlet and Spaccio della bestia trionfante..
In Chapter 26, I quote all of Epops’ song from The Birds by Aristophanes. I accessed this public-
domain play at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/birds.html on July 31, 2012.
In Chapter 31, I quote the opening lines from the ‘Explanatory Epistle’ on page 69 of The Expulsion of
the Triumphant Beast (Spaccio della bestia trionfante (1584) by Giordano Bruno) (Lincoln, NE:
University of Nebraska Press), translated by Arthur D. Imerti, 1964. (I have a subsequent edition
published in 1992). The publisher kindly informed me that the brief passage I quote is covered under
the “Fair Use” provisions it has established.
Chapter 1
Stand and unfold yourself
One morning, about nine, I returned home from walking our tiny Yorkshire terrier and discovered
an astonishing vision in the tatami mat room, where the rumpled futons were still covering the floor. A

man in brown velvet pants, and strange thick wool stockings of grey, with a frilled linen shirt that was
perhaps off-white or yellowed with age, stood beside the shoji doors.
I take an interest in hand-woven cloth. I like artful things which take time and satisfy the eye and the
touch, but cannot compete commercially. So I knew at one glance that this man’s clothes were not
standard industrial ones: the style, the colors, the fabrics---all were strangeness and irregularity. I wanted
to scream, but hesitated: I have a passion for natural dyes and could tell that his clothes were not modern,
not industrially made or colored. He sat cross-legged near the paper sliding doors, and he looked, if I may
summarize his attitude, apologetic.
“I’m sorry if I startled you”, a low voice, a soft voice, and gentle. He spoke English, and not with an
American accent, but this was not a surprise somehow. He did not seem to be Japanese although his hair
was dark and his beard was dark brown or black, like sable, but silvered a bit. I noticed that he was not
getting up to attack me. He remained seated and I noticed an odd phenomenon then as I came closer to
him: his skin had a whitish-greenish glow, his face, his hands, everywhere where you could see his skin,
there was a faint but bizarre and pearly luminescence. I wanted to scream again.
Usually I am a calmer person. But this odd meeting had unnerved me, perhaps because I myself
had recently fled from the prefecture next to Fukushima. Was he an installation artist from the exclusion
zone, or an obscure activist on the run, strangely attired and wearing the latest in nano-technologically
derived make-up designed to glow artificially? Perhaps his impromptu visit here, a prank no doubt being

recorded, was next to be uploaded on YouTube, then go viral, to be viewed by millions. Did an Internet
debacle await me?
But no. He sat calmly. There was no telltale laptop, blinking, at the edge of the room. There
seemed to be no wires or tiny cameras. I noticed he was darkly handsome, a bit older than me, and he was
smiling, and the word “gentle” could not be avoided again in my brain as I tried to summarize, for myself,
my own impression of him: gentle smile, gentle voice, gentle manner, gentle touch. For now his fingers
pressed lightly on my finger tips, his palm swept softly against mine. In his handshake, I felt his touch to
be cooler than the ordinary temperature of a human body. I dared to look deeply into his brown eyes, now
that he had shown himself through gestures to be kind and friendly, and here I sensed an odd warmth.
In Japan, we, I am happy to say, have many ghosts. They have not been banished from the scene.
Children know all the names of the famous ghosts: Rokurokubi, a classically beautiful woman with an
infinitely and rapidly extending neck, whose head can therefore chase you down a mountain as you flee;
Noperabo, magically taking any gender, any form of a body, but whose pale powdered face lacks eyes and
a nose, though she has a mouth, and Hitotsumekozo, a one-eyed young monk. Local ghosts here in the
Western part of Japan, such as the samurai Chichibei, fatally tricked by a rival, or the fisherman Oraemon
who walks the rocky beach of Horiuki at night, are many and their histories are handed around. I delight
in all such stories, as do most people I know here. So then why, why, was it that when I did finally meet a
real ghost, despite all my years of a really decent—though haphazard--- education in ghosts and occult

lore here in Japan-----why, O why, did I fail so utterly to perceive the truth?
I sat down on the edge of my futon to make further acquaintance with this strange man. What did
he want? Surely it was time for honesty and calm. All right then.
“Who are you?” I asked. I tried to ask it severely, and to display my dominance and no-nonsense
manner.
“Ah, yes! I thought you might ask that.” He said these words sadly, looked mournful, somber,
and cast his eyes down theatrically on to the tatami mat where his stockinged legs crossed rather
athletically in front of him. He had the muscles of an actor or a tennis player or a professional nurse,
someone who walked or ran.
I felt annoyed.
“My name is Viola Matsumura”, I said, trying to sound calm and patient, like a social worker
who has suddenly come across a wandering stranger in need of assistance, “is there anything I can do for
you? Any relative or friend I can call to help you? Can you speak Japanese? Are you lost perhaps? Do you
have a working mobile phone? Are you a traveler in distress?”
The banal questions only seemed to deepen the stranger’s sad and quiet demeanor. After a silent
pause, he suddenly reached out and in one graceful motion, brought my fingertips up to his cold lips,
while his eyes mysteriously burned, a compelling and passionate warmth transferring rapidly into mine.
The motions of his hands, and the motions of his eyes formed two separate sophisticated, almost surreal,
planes of action, undoing me and strangely satisfying me at the same time. I had never been kissed in

such a way before, on my hands. It seemed archaic, yet delightful! If only his skin and his lips were not so
cold!
“Pity me not, but do please listen to my story.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, in what I recognized now finally as my real voice. I drew up my knees
and clasped my hands around my legs.
Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?
The phrase suddenly issued from nowhere, hung---or rather, nestled----in crooks in the air, from
somewhere yet nowhere all at once, a bee sting, a pistol shot, then it was a swan feather floating in
flotsam of the denser sounds from all around us. A sound impossible to deny, yet whose source was also
impossible to find. It had not come from the stranger’s lips. It was then that I began to understand that the
traveler was not from any country one could visit at will carrying just a credit card, or, as I had so
doltishly mentioned, a working mobile phone. There was no one on this earth I could call to help
this….person….or whatever or whoever he was. There was no dimension available to the living where I
could turn to get an account of the full and true nature of this man. For I had just then decided, though by
then I knew better, to call him a man.
At least until I find out what he really was.
I knew enough Shakespeare to have some idea of whose ghost this was.
Chapter 2

And what should I do in Illyria?
I should have made it clear that I majored in English Literature at Harvard College, twenty-three
years ago. My two very favorite classes were both on Shakespeare’s plays (Early and Late), and taught by
an inspiring professor named Margaret Greybard, with the liveliest, most poignant, most skillful delivery
of Shakespeare’s famous lines I had ever heard. Sometimes I would close my eyes during lectures and let
her convincing voice, after all the voice of an authentic, intuitive Shakespeare connoisseur, become a sort
of heavenly music box playing Shakespeare.
“And what should I do in Illyria?”
Professor Greybard was standing at her podium in Sanders Theater, a huge lecture hall, but, listening
to her evocative, ringing voice, I saw only the wide sky of Illyria, the beach and the shipwrecked heroine
wearing a cape and the captain next to her. I saw the water, the waves with white crests.
Everything.
Nice clothes, dates, good grades, and other things that college students usually like were pallid and
dreary compared to Shakespeare. But, naturally not wishing to be thought totally bizarre, I kept this
personal feeling to myself.
This meeting with the ghost now seemed to be a fitting, elegant chance to relive my long-subdued,
long-forgotten undergraduate passion.
“Swear by his sword.”
He was doing it again, magically zapping the air pockets all around me with ghostly vocal sounds which

didn’t seem to come from his lips. The sound of the line, enhanced by the “s” sound of sword and swear,
was eerily all around, like the delicate pink petals of the cherry blossoms now scattering outside in the
cross currents of the wind along the river near the old wooden rented house where I live, here and
everywhere.
hic et ubique
I wanted to calm him down, this ghost, my ghost now, or rather the ghost of my dreams. Obviously,
he was distraught, quoting lines from his own plays out of all context, giving them a delivery which,
while not unpleasurable, was strange because it was not vocalized normally, nor performed in any
ordinary way. How does one understand what a ghost is thinking? How does one know when a ghost is
restless and unsatisfied? There was no rattling of chains or moaning and other things ;like that, as you
might see some famous ghosts doing in novels and films.
What ought I to call him? My dear William? Mr. Shakespeare? Will? Sir?
“Mr. Shakespeare”, I started, “Please----“
His face softened and the surreal glow surrounding his body seemed to become rosier and picked
up in its fervor a little as I spoke. He suddenly seemed like a truly real ghost, and I wondered how I could
have ever made the mistake of thinking him human at the beginning.
“Viola Matsumura. How do you do? Indeed, I am the poet William Shakespeare”.
If a ghost comes to call on you, should you offer him some tea? Should you apologize if your
rumpled futons are not yet put away or some unwashed clothes are scattered on the floor? Should you be

worried about impropriety-----sitting on a futon beside a strange man in your bedroom, a man who is not
your husband? Or rather, a strange ghost who is not your husband.
What was he doing here?
Hamlet’s father returns as a ghost to tell Hamlet some disquieting news. In A Christmas Carol,
the ghost of Jacob Marley visits Scrooge in order to beg him not to make the mistake of greed. Oraemon
walks his beach, Chichibei the samurai searches for his long-dead rival. I now naturally wondered if there
was an undelivered message or an unresolved problem that was preventing this particular visiting ghost
from achieving eternal peace.
But when I looked up to ask him about this, he was gone. Only brilliant sunlight fell on the patch
of tatami mat where he had been sitting. Beside me, the dog, Teru, had disobediently crawled onto a
futon, and was asleep. I was still dazed, but I chased him off and started, paying hardly any attention at
all, to fold up the futons and sheets and put them away.
Chapter 3
No, indeed, sir; the Lady Olivia has no folly: she
will keep no fool, sir, till she be married; and
fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to
herrings; the husband's the bigger: I am indeed not
her fool, but her corrupter of words

After this experience, for the next few days, I was expecting to see the ghost again or rather, I was
hoping to see him again. I was a rather a lonely person, not divorced exactly, but honestly, I could not
say that my marriage was in good, or even in decent, condition. I had an idea of it as a chronically ill
patient in some anonymous hospital, awaiting surgery that would probably fail. So I suppose I can add,
guiltily, that it was a relief that my husband was far away, in Ibaraki Prefecture, which is just beside
Fukushima Prefecture. I had made the decision to leave after the nuclear accident, of course because of
health fears of radiation and radioactive fallout, but if I examine my feelings more closely, and if I am
honest with myself, I can see that I also wanted to get away from my husband and the feelings of
ennui, condescension and irritation we were feeling for each other and with each other.
Even were a ghost to show up in my life, if he would be kind and supportive, friendly, witty,
interesting, if he would divert and amuse me-----I knew right away that I would be able to become
attached emotionally and passionately to such a being, and I somehow knew that if it were
Shakespeare’s ghost----Shakespeare being, of course, someone I assumed to be a supremely wise
being--- I needed to have very little worry of being invited to dance in a graveyard, and other horrible
stories one reads in books.
If nothing else, I felt, perhaps, that I had nothing very much to lose. My children, still in school,
of course, rely on me. But they are quite old enough now to go around by themselves. My parents, in
America, are elderly would not be very interested in the supernatural adventures of their middle-aged

expatriate daughter. My father had always steadfastly explained to everyone that ghosts, gods, spirits, and
such do not exist, and simply cannot exist, by definition----but my father has never lived here where I
now live, nor seen what I have seen. My few friends here in Tsubame were as busy as I was. Where then,
should I turn to find someone who can talk to me, make me laugh, and listen to my stupid jokes? My
husband was not interested in the job, though he had been when we first met.
As a lowly English teacher and proofreader, I can make a small but sufficient living anywhere. I
didn’t need to be in Tokyo, as I had explained many times to my husband. My job as an English teacher, I
am proud to say it, is a sort of modern, minimalistic variation of what people in the Middle Ages in
Europe called a “court jester”, or what people in the Edo Period in Japan called a “geisha”: for a small
consideration, I entertain people for an hour at a time, with conversation that is calculated to please, to
engage, to divert, and occasionally, I hope, to inspire. And in my job, where teaching English is only, in
my opinion, a pretext, it is helpful to follow at all times the advice of King Lear’s Fool: “Nay, and thou
canst not smile as the wind sits, thou’lt catch cold shortly”.
It was not my fault that my husband wouldn’t follow me, his poor Fool, into banishment and poverty
on the mountainous heaths of Western Japan: and, truthfully, I had made somewhat of a go of it. In fact,
ending up nearer the green mountains and close to a clean river had made me relieved at last, instead of
embarrassed, as I had been in the Tokyo area, to be and to always have been, something close to a court
jester: foolish, simple and close to the ground, never serious about and never committed to academia.

Lately I had been thinking that after the children grew up and found their own lives, I would live
alone forever, encased in a sort of ice cube emotionally, but not unpleasantly so. There was my teaching
work, and then my hobbies, darning old socks, going to flea markets, keeping pet cats, a simple existence.
These had seemed enough until now.
But now that a ghost, especially one of a luminous writer, had turned up in my life, I started to get
expectations of happiness, as if the freezing ice cube I was encased in was melting. I reasoned,
calculatedly perhaps, that a friendship with a ghost cannot be counted as infidelity. And probably a ghost
would be able to maintain secrecy, being able to dissolve skillfully into the air if a husband should
suddenly drop by inconveniently.
Of course, you cannot search for a ghost on the internet, or locate a useful email address for one.
Nor are ghosts to be found on social media.
I would just have to wait.
Chapter 4
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
admit impediments…..
The impediments to a steady romantic or platonic relationship with a ghost may be many.
Indeed, I have mentioned some of them: contacting the beloved one in the world beyond, getting over
ones understandable fears of the supernatural, the worry that one won’t be able to “measure up” as a

conversational partner if the ghost is a famous superlative and popular genius, and so forth.
Yet I was to be pleasantly surprised in regard to impediments.
On Wednesdays I take the bus to a small junior college, where I teach one class, in the next town.
The bus ride takes 45 minutes. I generally read a book or I sleep if I am tired, although I also love to
watch the mountains as a sort of musical scenery, jumbles of haphazard little low green peaks, swooping
down from the sky, or rather plunked down by it, gifts from the generous nature gods, now entirely homes
for hawks, ravens, and other birds, whom indeed these gods must have once resembled.
About one month after the first encounter with Shakespeare’s ghost, I was on the bus on my way to
this little college, and I was lightly dozing off when I felt a subtle sort of pressure next to me on my right
arm and shoulder, as if someone were sitting down right next to me, rather too closely. The strange thing
was that the bus had not just stopped to let anyone on!
The seats on this bus are generally sparsely populated, which is to say that most people have cars
these days, except other impractical wanderers like me. There are usually five or so elderly passengers on
the bus besides me, in other words, there are plenty of seats and no one need crowd anyone else or sit
double to a seat.
So, in my lightly sleeping state, the question of who had mysteriously taken the seat next to mine
rapidly framed itself, and I awoke to see, with joy and relief, the handsome sable-bearded stranger
wearing the same clothes as last time, only this time he wore shoes, what I assumed were proper
Elizabethan shoes, a bit pointy, dignified brown leather-heeled things. I couldn’t contain my pleasure at

seeing him again, and the bus was nearly empty anyway.
“Hello!” I cried happily, forgetting even that he was a ghost, “I have been so looking forward to
seeing you!” I said, without thinking.
“Yes.” A smile, and my hand was briefly kissed by his stone-cold lips. A small gold hoop of an
earring flashed beneath his grey-streaked dark hair, which was almost longer than mine, and worn loose.
Up close now, I could notice details such as a fine-worked linen collar, totally outdated. His skin was
rough, sallow, and not entirely clean. I wondered what he would smell like if I leaned closer……the earth
of his earthly grave? This was a thought that somehow, fascinatingly, did not repel me. Or would he smell
like an ordinary living man, slightly sweaty and soap-scented? Or would he have some ancient refined
Elizabethan cologne sprinkled about him, faded into perpetuity, musty damask, lavender, gardenia, forget-
me-nots?
He must have read my thoughts.
“Not flowers, not earth…..that is…to say…..why not... judge for yourself.” His slow voice
carried, deeply and boldly. Was this a challenge? If so, I was not afraid, though I hesitated a little.
He looked slightly amused at my embarrassment, and he leaned in closer to me, and I closed my
eyes and inhaling deeply, I felt a breezy coolness and smelled mountains, sky, the wind, the ocean, all
wild nature in one, salty, piney woods, feathers, sea spray, shells and driftwood, black sand, white sand,
and then one surprising word, a word I had barely heard of, wandered all by itself into my brain:
Thessaly.

“Thessaly”, I said without thinking, softly, a murmur, a reaction, a musical sound only. I had never
been there, barely even heard of it. Wasn’t it somewhere in Greece?
“Very good”, he turned his face, the glance of his bright dark eyes aiming into mine, “indeed.”
We sat together in a peaceful silence for a while, and I tried to arrange my life in my head with this
new dimension now, a ghost added in. When two people meet and form a bond, the mortality of each one,
also shared by the other one, will sculpt a natural and classic, if sad, denouement for their relationship.
But if one of the pair is an immortal ghost, then what sort of future was to be expected for the
relationship? For the sake of our bond, should I perhaps be prepared to become a ghost as well? And if so,
how and when exactly? Certainly I would have to wait until the children were independent.
“No, no”, said Shakespeare’s ghost, reading my mind again, “not at all. That is not the thing I
aim to accomplish at all. Such an ending for you would be completely contrary to my purposes.”
I was mortified to have had my mind read again!
“Well, what exactly are your purposes, then?” I asked a little coldly. I had been privately
planning a sort of ultimate sacrifice of myself, while he had actually caught me at it and then turned down
the offer. A relationship with a ghost brings many strange new topologies and contours in the landscape of
a mind!
Instead of answering, the ghost, (by now I was thinking of him as my ghost), reached his hand
into the little pocket of his dark green woven vest. He drew out something small, black and smoking. I
noted that it had a fiery orange core, like a tiny glowing eye. It gave off an acrid smell. Yet his hands

didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that the object was on fire.
“Burning things are forbidden on the bus!” I exclaimed in panic, “this is dangerous! You could cause
an explosion----an accident!”
“Ah, but, no, there is no possibility of an explosion. You see, this object is not real. It is all done with
imagery, suggestion, mirrors.”
I really didn’t understand, but I didn’t want to seem stupid so I took comfort in the fact that none of
the other passengers (there were three elderly women and one young businessman) or the bus driver
seemed to notice us or the smoking object.
“Yes, you are right. The others are not aware of us. They think they see us, but they don’t really
notice and can’t notice what I have planned to hide from them. They see what they want to see, or rather
what I want them to see, in other words, only that. All done through conjuring tricks.”
“The mirrors again, I suppose, your special imagery, and so forth.”
“Yes,” said the ghost, “that is exactly right. Imagery. A new unobtrusive kind that you didn’t study at
college. Although it might have been better if you had. But, you see, this is exactly the sort of imagery
that hasn’t yet been noted by the conventional scholars in your field.”
“Oh”, was all I could manage to say by now. I didn’t want to seem like an unaccomplished fool, so I
didn’t point out to him that I wasn’t really working in the field of English Literature. That I was neither a
conventional scholar nor an unconventional one because I was only an English conversation teacher. As
far as erudite Shakespeare scholarship was concerned, I was more like an enthusiast or a fan, watching the

action as if watching a tennis match. I sometimes read scholarly essays, and marveled at the fascinating
theories and amazing turns of phrase, but I could never have begun to write a publishable academic
treatise myself.
“Well,” said the ghost mysteriously, “what do you think it is?”
I said I thought it looked a bit like a charcoal briquette, the sort of thing my father, a fan of steak
dinners, used to heap up and set fire to in barbecues back in the suburbs of Connecticut when I was
growing up.
The ghost smiled thinly, sat up straighter, held up the burning object animatedly and exclaimed---or
rather declaimed, and in a rather pious way, I thought----
“and all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife: I’ll have no wife, Paulina!”
“From, um, Cymbeline?”, I asked, hesitantly. I knew it was one of the romances, but which one?
“The Winter’s Tale, Act five, scene one!”
“Of course! I was always mixing those two up!” This was not actually true; I was only trying to
annoy him a bit. I peered at him closely. Do ghosts like to be teased, I wondered? Or rather, can they
understand---and accept--- the earthly and foolish humor of us mortals?
I noticed his dark eyes focusing on me again, in a way that was not unpleasant. Something had been
exchanged between us, but more importantly, something, a very interesting gift, had been given to me. I
wanted next very badly to ask him what sort of conclusions I was to draw from his performance of his
own lines on the bus that afternoon. But when I next looked up, he was gone, and I saw only the clear

glass of the bus window, and outside the occluded and depressing mish-mash of mostly vacant gray
cement buildings of the run-down little town, called Otoshi, outside. Here too, among the cement, was the
train station, the last stop for this bus, and I needed to take the 1:11 bound for Hofu. The small college
was only two stops down on the Sanyo-Honsen Line. But how was I to keep my mind on teaching when I
was now completely enthralled with a ghost, a new literary mystery, a freeing friendship, and vague hopes
that my life, hardly a success up until now, would not be without interest and pleasure?
The bus driver was saying, “Okyaku-sama, o-kyaku-sama, shuuten desu!”, telling me with a little
impatience that we had reached the end of the line. With all the impressions of that afternoon still very
vivid, I wandered up the aisle, paid the fare, and made my way into the station.
Chapter 5
Sampson: Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.
Gregory: No, for then we should be colliers.
For a few weeks I waited patiently for the ghost to return and explain his brief performance from The
Winter’s Tale on the bus. Very often my hopes would be raised as I entered a room in my old house, and I
would look about the unlit corners around my little house in hopes that the ghost would be standing
quietly or sitting, perhaps reading one of the novels I have, or one of my children’s manga, or comic
books. The fact that their manga were written in Japanese would, I somehow knew, be no barrier to the

understanding of a magical ghost with universal powers. But each time, I was disappointed. The room
was always empty.
I found myself always, in idle moments, replaying in my mind the ghost’s “eyes like dead coals”
performance I had witnessed on the bus. Surely, it occurred to me, there must be some deeper significance
here that had missed. I also wondered if the fact that the ghost had theatrically held up what appeared to
be a burning coal must also be important?
I checked an Internet site which lets you do word searches of any word you wish in Shakespeare’s
plays. Shakespeare uses the word coals 32 times in all his works. Sometimes it seemed to be a rather
neutral word as in The Merry Wives of Windsor, when Mistress Quickly says, “Go, and we’ll have a
posset for’t soon at night, i’ faith, at the latter end of a sea coal fire”. Once, in Coriolanus, the sarcastic,
biting, and anachronistic reference was to the economic and political side of coal:
Why so you have made good work!
A pair of tribunes that have wrack’d for Rome
To make coals cheap! A noble memory.
Overall, Shakespeare’s use of the word “coals” gave two interesting and subtle impressions. First of all,
there seemed to be something sinister about the majority of its associations. In Shakespeare, the word
“coal” is repeatedly placed near words that express ideas of death, war, destruction, treachery and filth:
From 2 King Henry VI:
O war, thou son of hell
Whom angry heavens do make their minister,
Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part
Hot coals of vengeance!

From King John:
Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars
Between this chastis’d kingdom and myself…
From The Rape of Lucrece:
His honor, his affairs, his friends, his state,
Neglected all, with swift intent he goes
To quench the coal which in his liver glows.
……………
“The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,
And unperceiv’d fly with the filth away…
………………………
And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,
Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights
From Richard II:
And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black,
For the deposing of a rightful king.
From Titus Andronicus:
Yet I think we are not brought so low
That between us we can kill a fly
That comes in likeness of a coal-black Moor.
But the lines that finally became the focus of my attention were the two opening lines from Romeo and
Juliet:
Sampson: Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.
Gregory: No, for then we should be colliers.
I found myself dwelling on these lines more than the more blatantly negative images of coal in the other
plays, partly because here in Romeo and Juliet, coal was not used as an artistic image to convey color or

heat or agony or rage, but almost as a real thing and therefore the ghost’s use of a “real” piece of coal as a
prop on the bus seemed to echo this “real” quality of the coal more than in the other lines which
mentioned coal.
Moreover, ‘Gregory, upon my word, we’ll not carry coals’, had a special place as the first lines of the
play. I had always had the impression that the opening lines of Shakespeare’s plays are key clues to the
themes of his plays. Perhaps it was the opening lines of Hamlet: ‘Who’s there?’/’Nay, answer me, stand
and unfold yourself’, that seem to promise to show us the playwright himself, in a play about making
plays, which had always made me think so.
My big, huge, and enormous problem was that Romeo and Juliet contained no further references
to coal at all.
What was I to do?
Chapter 6
But room, fairy! here comes Oberon
I awoke in the middle of the night a few days later. A strange sound, like a cough or someone crying
or gasping, interspersed with the sounds of wailing, was coming from the tiny dining room, which is only
three or four meters away from my bedroom. I was not afraid at all, since I did not think that an intruder
would choose my dining room for such activities. Rather, I found myself instantly feeling joy at the

chance that my ghost was here again. I pulled my old gray cable-knit cardigan over my pajamas and slid
open the door, in a few steps crossed the tatami mat hallway, and came to the threshold of the dining
room.
The dining room resembled a bar in the late evening, with low lighting and fanciful plumes of black
smoke making the air seem thick. And standing behind the small low table the children and I use for our
meals was the ghost I had been waiting for. He was wearing something new over his clothes, a short black
silk cape, and he had a thin black band of cloth tied around his forehead. His face looked different,
perhaps because the glow of his ghostly skin was hidden under stage makeup that gave him a powdery
pallor. His mouth was at once redder and browner than usual and I noticed also it was colored by
theatrical makeup, applied thickly and emphasizing, like a tragic mask, a sad expression, a slight crescent
reversed, points down.
He dramatically pointed at the floor next to me when he saw me, and his hands were also covered
with this whitish stage makeup, which appeared more chalky, opaque and clay-like than what I had
noticed on modern stages. I looked down and there was an interesting red velvet cushion on the floor,
with silver tassles and artful embroidery work in the shape of lilies. Apparently I was to sit on it. I
promptly sat, but not without first running my hand over the cushion: as a passionate textile amateur I was
intrigued by the archaic, non-industrial and uneven texture of the velvet. However, the blackish smoke
was worse down here at floor-level. I coughed a bit. Not cigarette smoke, something thicker with more of

a bite, something almost sticky and with a sharp and abrasive flavor. It was also familiar, but I could not
place it, not then.
The phantom all of a sudden tightened every ghostly muscle in his body. Like a cat in preparation for
a pounce, his entire posture shifted, naturally and quickly, legs, arms, back, feet, hands: all at once, in a
smooth professional flow. His right hand flew up to his forehead, a sparrow being victimized in a gale
came to mind, and then he groaned theatrically: “O, O!” I immediately and with great excitement thought
I recognized these as the famous O-groans from Othello, the ones I had read so much about in academic
journals and books. Now perhaps here, in the most perfect and ultimate realization of an English major’s
fantasies, I was to see them performed live by the artist’s ghost himself!
So I was expecting him next to say, “Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulfer! O Desdemon! dead,
Desdemon! dead!”, but I was mistaken: it was not the lines from Othello which he intended to perform for
me. I knew this as soon as he started the monologue, softly crying out in a clear and smooth but
tormented intonation, “Seems, madam? nay, it is, I know not ‘seems’”. He paused to peer down at me, a
sweeping but calculated glance, the sharp eyes of the stage professional. Or was he expecting me to play
Gertrude? But no, he continued, in perfect dramatic form, his pace slow yet melodic, alive and sensitive
to the needs of every syllable:
“’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath,
Nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are the actions that a man might play,
But I have that within that passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”
He was suddenly silent, and he looked at me to note my reaction, but his pose retained an artful tension. I
applauded and he relaxed a in a graceful bow. He sat down at the little table and I noticed little black
cloudy spots of something dirty on his clothing, while his makeup seemed to have a layer of soot. I tried
to wave the smoke away from us, because now I was coughing, and my eyes were watering.
Suddenly I noticed two pewter mugs on the table. Had they been there all along? Had they
materialized from nowhere? The thought that there may be, in a realistic sense, no such place as
“nowhere” as far as a ghost is concerned crossed my mind. The ghost gently pushed one mug toward me.
“What is it?”
“A sort of wine made of honey called mead.”
I took a sip and it was sweet and slightly spiced. I started to feel nervous. I started speaking too quickly
and too much.
“Mmmmm, quite good. I have always loved sweet things. And ever since reading Beowulf in
graduate school, I have so been longing to try mead, but I have been unable to find it anywhere!”, I cried
in enthusiasm, “and to see you perform the famous ‘seems, Madam?’ monologue from Hamlet is simply a
culmination of everything I have ever dreamed of!” I paused awkwardly, for I was very embarrassed that

despite my efforts to gracefully ignore the smoke, I was choking and gagging. I hesitantly requested, “I’m
terribly sorry……but can’t you do something about this smoke?”
The ghost gave a grimace, a flummoxed mime’s gesture of helplessness.
“No”, he said.
“Well, never mind,” I said, struggling to be cheerful, and waving away curls of sooty smoke as
they approached my nose, “please don’t worry about it. We will enjoy the delicious mead anyway. I
remember reading once that Claude Levi-Strauss cites the invention of mead as one marker in the passage
from nature to culture-----.” I had to stop myself suddenly. Although Shakespeare had freely used
anachronisms in his plays, I was not sure that I could take similar liberties. This was hardly a play, but
real life. Conversing with a ghost was such a fraught experience!
But the ghost didn’t look bewildered at all.
“Ah, yes, I did once hear that.” Shakespeare’s ghost seemed not particularly interested in pursuing the
topic further. But his answer intrigued me very much! Had Shakespeare actually been managing to keep
abreast of all the intellectual developments down here on earth for the last four hundred years?
And if so, how?
He suddenly seemed to be once again in his usual good humor. Shakespeare’s ghost smiled
quizzically at me and stood up. He seemed about to start another performance. I sat rapt. Which
monologue would he choose? Would he take requests? My all-time favorite was ‘to-morrow and to-
morrow and to-morrow’ from Macbeth. If only the smoke would go away, then how much more I would

enjoy it. As it was now, I was afraid of coughing and interrupting the performance.
He widened his eyes and whispered, “And still your fingers on your lips I pray!” He sounded like a
spy, transmitting an exciting and precious secret in code.
I wanted to ask more questions and discover more information. I was deciding how to ask, in the
most tactful way, about which books he had read, which writers and thinkers and critics he preferred, and
which ones he thought were wide of the mark. Much more to the point, though, I wanted to know which
ones amused him the most, which ideas he found folly, which theories were the ones he found most wild,
and whose rhetoric was the most delightful, clever, and fashionable. I was desperate to know!
If only he would stay!
However, he tiptoed softly backwards. When he reached the wall behind his back, his body
completely dissolved in a magical display of fine-grained rainbow-colored light particles. The wall closed
smoothly around these tiny beams of light, and I was once again alone. In the air, the smoke was
thankfully gone, but a sour sooty smell remained and on the table I saw a light layer of soot that somehow
looked familiar, as well the two empty mead cups. Through the window I saw an inkling of dawn-colored
sky, the dark and moody shapes of the leafy cherry trees beside the river.
I remembered having seen this kind of soot before and smelling the same sort of smoke, and suddenly
I knew exactly what kind of smoke I had been smelling.

Chapter 7
Swallows have built
In Cleopatra's sails their nests: the augurers
Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly,
And dare not speak their knowledge.
The town of Tsubame (the word means “barn swallow” in Japanese) has a single train track running
through it. The train line---the Yamaguchi Line---is one of the smallest in Japan. Trains share the single
track, so that trains that are going in opposite directions (Northeast to the Japan Sea or Southwest to the
Japan Inland Sea) must wait for each other at the few stations that have a double-track waiting loop.
Much of the track passes through mountains and the scenery is quite beautiful.
One special feature of the Yamaguchi Line is the “SL”, or Steam Locomotive, an antique black cast
iron steam engine, over 100 years old, that only runs in the summer, once a day in each direction. It is
mainly for tourists. The engine has a whistle that can be heard for several kilometers, and it has an
enormous iron coal tender, loaded with coal. Engineers dressed in light blue overalls and round caps ride
the coal tender and shovel coal into the boiler. The smoke that is emitted from the top of the engine is
fearsomely dark, sooty and unfiltered; unfurling, it swirls in the mountain air and forms puffy black
scoops in a line as the train heaves noisily along. If you are riding on the train as a passenger in one of the
antique, refurbished cars, and if your window is open, and if the train then enters a tunnel through the
mountains, you can even taste the smoke as it blows inside, a heavy and bitter ashy flavor, not very

pleasant, not as sharp as tobacco smoke, but more sickly and much more voluminous. Your eyes will start
to tingle and tear. Your nose will wrinkle, attempting in vain to avoid the smoke and the soot that is
already settling in a fine gray film on your white sun hat. You will then decide to close your window.
The smoke that night in the dining room had this same smell, the same consistency and flavor
that I remembered from the emissions of the steam locomotive. Shakespeare’s ghost was once again, as
he had in the “eyes like dead coals” speech, pointing out coal or coal smoke to me. But why? Why was he
so fascinated by coal, such a dreary, dirty thing?
Chapter 8
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak?
To let base clouds o’ertake me on my way,
Hiding thy brav’ry in their rotten smoke?
Three nights later, after teaching English conversation classes all afternoon to classes of
schoolchildren, I was pleased to go to bed a bit earlier than usual. Kaoru and Zenji were tired, too, and we
had all tumbled onto our futons shortly after 10.
In my dream that night, I was flying through the air. A young man dressed in black tights, short
leather boots, and a green tunic was flying beside me. All sorts of strange things may happen in a dream
and seem perfectly normal. I was not surprised when he grinned and said, “Hello. I’m Puck!”
I was not surprised to be flying through the air either.

“Hello”, I said, “I’m Viola.”
“Yeah, I know!”
I had to laugh. He reminded me of an impish college student. He was handsome, cool and insouciant.
He had a certain vitality, an earring, long hands, black hair in a pony tail. The ponytail blew in the breeze.
We just flew naturally, quickly and without effort, with our arms stretched lazily in front of us. I was
wearing a long blue cotton nightgown, and I was very pleased with the way it fluttered around my bare
feet.
We were soaring over the sea. It looked ashy-green, Having grown up near the Atlantic Ocean, I
could recognize that this active, splashy ocean was the same one. The Pacific Ocean, the ocean of my
home now, is blue and grey. It has quite a different spirit, huge, mysterious, dark, quieter.
“It’s so green! Is it the Atlantic?”, I shouted over the wind.
“Yes.”
I saw a ship below us, but it was not a modern one, with a smokestack. It had three masts and sails. The
sailors were dressed strangely.
In one of my four part-time jobs, I proofread marketing proposals, scenarios, storyboards, and scripts
for videos destined for YouTube, at four yen per word. Now, seeing this ship, I guessed at once that they
were generating digital content with a new advertising concept: film at sea on an old ship. People are
desperate for fresh and authentic digital content these days and will endure discomfort to come up with
something original..

Perhaps a commercial for men’s cologne? Or rum? A brand of boots? Lipstick? An espresso maker?
“I think they’re filming an ad video down there!”, I shouted to Puck.
Puck smiled thoughtfully at me.
We approached land, and missing were all the things you would expect to see on a continent these
days. No huge factories, no warehouses, no highways, no port with cranes and giant cement piers. No
interchanges or bridges or electricity poles and wires. Mostly, we just saw green forests and fields,
villages and rivers curving through valleys.
I supposed it must be a strange little undeveloped country, but where? Perhaps this was Patagonia? I had
heard it was undeveloped. Or could it be Costa Rica?
We kept flying and soon we were near settlements of small houses. Further in the distance I saw
a small city, but there were no tall buildings. Instead, there were domes, turrets, rows of little stone and
wood houses. On the roofs, there were many chimneys and black and grey smoke was blowing into the
sky. We flew lower, and I saw horses, cobblestone streets, and people dressed archaically, the women in
long skirts, the men in tights and tunics. No one seemed able to see us at all.
My mind, in its dream-like state, processed the scene and arrived at a conclusion very matter-of-
factly. Had I been awake, I would have been panicked about getting back to Tsubame in one piece.
I had managed to travel back in time, and now, most oddly, I was in London in the late 1500s or so.
In dreams, things that would be frightening in real life can just seem normal, even routine.
We flew over a large park and arrived at a beautiful castle, which was definitely not Buckingham

Palace. It had turrets and battlements. It had square areas inside with little green courtyards and stone
paths, It looked just like the sort of castle that I used to often draw when I was a child.
“Is it Windsor Castle?”, I asked. It was the only other castle I had ever heard of in England.
“No, Whitehall”, replied Puck.
“Whitehall Castle? I’ve never heard of it!”, I said, “are you sure there is such a place?”
Puck laughed, “was such a place, you mean!”
We circled around a few of the stone turrets that had festive gold and red banners fluttering on them.
“Those mean she’s home!”, said Puck to me. He considered which window was the best one to enter.
How did I know that he was considering entering the palace?
In dreams we just know things.
Finally one window seemed correct. It stood open and first Puck alighted on the window sill and
jumped down onto the floor, and then it was my turn. He put his hand up to help me, and I jumped down.
A fierce, pallid-looking woman with red hair and a pinched nose and swathed in black velvet and lace
was pacing up and down on the stone floor.
“Your Majesty”, said a man in red tights, looking somber and apologetic, “we regret to say that we
cannot do anything about the sea-coal smoke from local industries in Westminster at present. The
Ministers will hold a meeting with some of the business officials to discuss the matter next week.”
“I have tried to be patient, but I do not like the smell of that smoke! I can even taste it if I am eating
and it comes in the through window!”
“Your Majesty, wood is too expensive. Sea-coal is what most people can afford now. The forests are

far away and they are becoming depleted.”
“Then what is to be done?”
A man who was seated at a desk was recording the conversation.
“Can they see us?” I asked Puck in a whisper. Somehow, maybe because it was a dream, I was sure
that we were invisible.
“Neither hear us, nor see us. It is most convenient”, said Puck loudly, with another smile. He walked
over to the courtier and stood very close to him. The courtier was telling Queen Elizabeth I that some
noblemen were trying some experiments to make balls from straw and coal that would possibly make the
smoke less sulfurous, acrid and objectionable.
The Queen looked skeptical. “I don’t know if that idea will work. In any case, let us depart from the
city for a while. The noisome smells in London drive us away. Please begin the preparations for the next
Progress at once.”
“Come on”, said Puck to me. He waved “good-bye” at them all theatrically.
We went through the huge doorway and down the stairs. Soon we were outside. My feet were bare,
but somehow I couldn’t feel the ground properly, and I noticed that we were skimming along like spirits.
It was almost like flying, but much lower to the ground. If anyone passed in front of us, we passed right
through them. It was exciting to experience the feeling of being a ghost. In this way we passed quickly
through the palace gates.
The London air did have a smell of smoke. All around us were little workshops and houses. All of

them had chimneys and many of the chimneys were blowing smoke into the air. The sky was not blue, but
smoggy. We came to a large building and stopped. Puck went inside and I followed him. It seemed to be a
government office with official guards and nicely-dressed men. Many men were standing in front of a
large desk.
“It is quite insupportable!” A thin man in brown, in his 50s, was gesturing with his hands in
frustration,
“But we have recently rebuilt the chimney to make it taller, actually precisely in order to clear your
roof”, said a plump, double-chinned man in a dark red jacket.
“Nevertheless, the sea-coal smoke from your brewery blows into our windows and courtyard. My
wife and I are coughing, our fruit trees, our lilies, our roses and lavender are withering from all the
smoke.”
The official behind the desk had been listening while also completing some work in a ledger. He put
his quill pen down and cleared his throat.
“Can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your problems are caused by this brewer’s sea-coal
fires, and not the smoke blowing about in general in the city?”
“But his chimney is so close! The other sea-coal smoke everywhere doesn’t help, that is true
enough.”
“Now, do you have the measurements certifying the distance from the chimney of his brewery to the
edge of your house?”

Puck looked at me.
“Let’s go”, he said with a little smile.
A few minutes later we were outside again.
It was the afternoon, and a chilly spring day.
We flew lightly through the streets. I was enjoying this interesting dream, but my pleasure became
intense as we neared a large round wooden building on the other side of the Thames River. A black flag
was flying from a little turret that stuck out from the thatched roof of a structure that seemed to be on a
building inside the roofless round building.
People were streaming into the theater all around us.
Women were selling apples from baskets. There were stalls with beer.
“A play?”, I asked, “is it one that he wrote?”
“Of course! The black flag means it’s tragedy.”
I started to worry. What if it was a difficult one? I had not been able to manage to get all the way
through Coriolanus and Timon of Athens in Professor Greybard’s class. I had tried, but the gloom had
defeated me. I had always preferred the comedies.
“Is it Hamlet?” I asked, fearing the length but looking forward to the prospect of seeing the definitive
Shakespearean play, what I thought of as his signature work. If this happy time-travel dream could occur
only once, then Hamlet would be my choice, if a comedy was not possible.
“Sorry, no”, said Puck, as we headed inside, “it’s Romeo and Juliet.”
I felt relieved. I had seen the all the Romeo and Juliet movies, the recent ones and the older ones,

about eight times each. I had memorized many lines and read the play more than four or five times.
Romeo and Juliet was not hard. It was Shakespeare’s most popular play.
Chapter 10
Juliet: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus’lodging; such a waggoner
As Phaeton would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Years ago, growing up in suburban Connecticut, I had enjoyed a magazine for girls called Teen
Beauty. Teen Beauty had stylish fun clothes, of course, but it also had interesting articles and pop
psychology quizzes. One article was called “How to Tell If Your Boyfriend is the Wrong One”. And one
sure way to tell if he was the wrong one for you, according to Teen Beauty, was if he never wanted to
meet your friends or spend time with your family for celebrations or holidays. This type was sure to want
you alone with him only, be rude to your family, slight your friends, and eventually you would wake up to
reality and leave him.
Now I was lying in bed, and thinking about the performance of Romeo and Juliet I had seen at the Globe,
and for some strange reason, this Teen Beauty article, something I had read decades ago, kept annoyingly
invading my thoughts.
O.K. I decided to let my mind freely wander; I would let my thoughts go where they would, naturally, the
little stream of water gurgling and gushing in splashes downhill could go where it wanted. How would
Romeo have scored on the “How to Tell If Your Boyfriend is Wrong for You” quiz, anyway?

Suddenly, with a start, I realized something.
Romeo and Juliet, when they were together, were never to be seen or heard talking to others!
Others, especially the Nurse, might be nearby, or calling to them, but the interaction with others was
not really functional. There was a sealed-up, hermetic quality to their scenes. They conducted their
dialogue always in private. Why?
Was Romeo a “bad boyfriend”? (This was ridiculous)
Or was there another reason for the way their scenes were so isolated and separated from all the other
scenes?
I got out of my futon and wrote down their scenes in a list:
I. Romeo and Juliet meet at a party
II. The Balcony Scene
III. The wedding with Friar Lawrence
IV. The Farewell Scene
V. The Tomb Scene
I was stuck there. How to proceed? I let my mind ramble freely back to the performance.
Thinking back to the smoke I had seen over the Globe Theater, I remembered something odd about
Romeo’s words when he was in love with Rosalind at the start of the play.
I opened my Riverside Shakespeare, a legacy from Professor Graybard’s wonderful class, to the
first act of Romeo and Juliet.
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs

Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’eyes,
Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with loving tears,
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
“Smoke,” “choking gall” and “the fume of sighs” all were in Act I, scene i, and all used to describe
Romeo’s disappointed love for Rosaline. In the same Act, other characters also reinforce the idea by
describing Romeo (only in this scene, where he lingers under Rosaline’s influence) in similar dark imagery:
Romeo, “makes himself an artificial night”, an image that recalled for me the coal-blackened London sky.
Images of darkness are numerous and overwhelming: Romeo “steals himself…away from light”, “locks
fair daylight out”, his humor is “black and portendous” and “he is like a bud, bit with an envious worm”
who cannot “dedicate himself to the sun”. All in Act One. And who saves him from his dire, unproductive
love for this dark, smoky and emotionally cold woman who is never given any lines to speak, who is
essentially banished from the text?
Shakespeare’s idea, the perfection of the puzzle, and the answer to the riddle found an answer in a
line I knew well, now that I had learned to engage it from the starry infinite sky.
Juliet is the Sun!
Why did my thoughts return always to the sky?
The actors had shouted their lines above the din of apple sellers and the crowds. And without
electricity and microphones, some words were particularly distinct and clear: the words at the ends of the
lines, for example.
Juliet is the sun.

And now that I saw in the secret play who Juliet was, and who Rosalind was, then I also knew, of
course, who Romeo was. What had Friar Lawrence said to him? I leafed through the play until I came to
the lines I remembered from the performance at the Globe.
“Romeo, come forth, come forth thy fearful man
Affliction is enamor’d of thy parts,
And thou art wedded to calamity”
Romeo was us, Mankind.
That was why the scenes with the lovers were separated and conducted in private.
Man met the Sun, and worshipped it. Then, Man became separated from the Sun with Christianity,
which banned direct nature worship. That is why Juliet is on the balcony.
Man left the Sun, then. Romeo leaves Juliet in the morning. The age of agriculture is giving way to
the age of coal and industrialization.
Now I knew why Shakespeare’s ghost was emphasizing coal and coal smoke.
One day, it seemed, Man would go in search of the Sun again. That was the tomb scene. It did not
look like an easy process..
What did it all mean?
Affliction and calamity! A tomb!
I was pretty scared,
I heard a slight cough behind me. There he was. He smiled, my ghost. He looked haggard and
exhausted, even for a real ghost. His skin looked more translucent than usual, his eyes bore shadows, his
hair had an unkempt appearance. His shirt was untucked, his cuffs undone.

“William!” I cried, instantly forgetting all about Mankind’s plight, our Afflictions and Calamities, and
my own ones too, “whatever is the matter? You look terrible!”
“Ah, my dear Viola, will you not now agree with me that the truest poetry is the most feigning?”
“That I am beginning to understand,” I said, “But why do you look as though you had not slept well?
Actually, you have never told me, but do ghosts need to sleep?”
“Perhaps I have not been taking the proper rest I should have, that all spirits should have. I have been
anxious a bit while you traveled through the ether with Puck. He is sometimes careless, or too quick.
What would you see, learn, and do: I had an idea and I gave him instructions, yet I was bound to wonder
if you both could manage this journey. And then, truthfully, I have been quite worried that you might
draw the wrong conclusions and become depressed or despairing. I’m afraid this has already happened, in
fact.”
“The wrong conclusions? Whatever might those be? I don’t know what you mean.” I said, my voice
coming out in a funny hollow pitch. I was desperately trying to sound as though I had no idea what he
was talking about. I didn’t want him to think me stupid or naive!
This Ghost could see through any lie, though, it was no use for me to try to hide my alarm. He started
laughing at me. Then he deviously aimed one of his famous lines at me, mocking my attempts to play act.
“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?”
The ghost ignored his own witticism, then answered himself in a silly playful parrot’s voice, at once
making my heart turn over inside my chest when the name of our star came up.

“Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun”, he said.
He knew I knew! Now his voice was ragged, pointed, and full of emotion. Was he some sort of a
villain after all? What a strange being, so giddy, so raw, a kind of monster and an angel all at once. I could
hardly comprehend it or match his wits and his unbounded range with my ordinary and plodding human-
sized mind. Now I, too, was being victimized by the antic genius Prince Hamlet, or rather by the ghost of
his alter-ego. Another English major’s fantasy at last come true, or perhaps, rather, an English major’s
nightmare.
I was so shaken that I couldn’t speak.
“Viola! Do you not admit that you feel a bit worried about the ending of Romeo and Juliet? I really can’t
help you until you admit your fears to yourself and discuss them openly. With me, that is.”
“Good heavens! “, I exclaimed, “You sound like a modern psychotherapist!”
“Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears! I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him!”, the
ghost declaimed this speech kneeling a bit, and swaying, one arm spread out like a politician’s.
I saw that there was no hope for me to hide. I feared he was going crazy. The longer I waited, the
more that I tried to pretend that I wasn’t worried, the more antic and unbearable became the disposition of
this Ghost.
I sighed. Then I began to try to make him understand my feelings. I wasn’t good with feelings. I was
a person who would rather be quiet and in a corner alone with my fears. Or Google them later.
“Yes”, I said, forced to speak, “I will admit that Romeo’s suicide looks very frightening to me, now

that I know who he is really.”
The Ghost looked calmer, and pleased.
“Let’s go back to the beginning. Tell me exactly what you’ve found in the play”, he said. I picked up
my Riverside and opened it to Romeo and Juliet. I would need to quote evidence,
“ I think I’ve found an interesting History of Mankind in the play. Man meets the Sun. This is where
Romeo and Juliet use the language of worship---you know, palmers, saints, prayers, faith, religious
terms. I noticed, by the way, that Benvolio calls the sun “the worshipp’d sun” in Act One. That was very
clever of you to slip that in early.”
“Thank you. Very good. And then?”
“And then the balcony scene is the golden age of agriculture, with Juliet above, she talks of her
bounty as boundless as the sea, does she not? And doesn’t Romeo compare her to a bright angel, a
winged messenger of heaven who bestrides the puffing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air?” Here
I was sounding like a lawyer reading from a document while presenting evidence in a court. How terribly
unromantic these words of love could also be! I felt like Portia.
“She is no longer a god, is she?” I asked.
“No, she is not. Christianity has arrived. Nature religions are gone, at least from Europe.”
“That is what I thought” I said.
I went on, dryly, scanning Romeo’s early lines in Act 2 for other evidence, “Note the white-
upturned wondering eyes of mortals, the brightness of her cheek, the airy region stream so bright, her

eyes in heaven, etcetera, and so forth. And you even have Romeo mischievously divulge her identity
when he says ‘Juliet is the sun’. It was very clever of you, indeed downright devious, the way you
managed that.”
“Thank you” he said, looking pleased.
“We have all thought it was simply a metaphor for centuries on end! Whole libraries of books have
been written on that metaphor without anyone guessing that what you really meant was the sun is Juliet.”
I was suddenly feeling like an odd literary version a detective in a whodunnit who explains the
hidden machinery involved in a strange escapade perpetrated by a mastermind. But this mystery had
straddled centuries and as a detective, I had done nothing..... but encounter a restless spirit and a work of
art.
“Yes, I am well aware of that. And then?” said the Renaissance mastermind.
“And then Romeo leaves her----that is to say, the Sun--- after the wedding. He is sent into exile from
her. He says ‘I must be gone and live or stay and die’. Once people had started burning coal and become
more and more dependent on it, there was no going back without economic suffering. That was
understandably unacceptable, unthinkable, of course, so England grew more and more and then later
became an Empire, using its energetic power to reach out and influence people. Hundreds of years of
history spanning many continents go along with it.”
“Yes, and after that?”
“Well, after England became an Empire, then after about 200 years it ceded its “Number One” status

to a bigger country that had much more coal and something else related to it, too, another fossil fuel,
called oil, which you may have heard of, since you seem to be up on all the news.”
“No, I don’t mean what came after the British Empire. I mean after the Farewell Scene.”
“Wait, but Shakespeare, um…I mean you….knew that eventual fossil fuel depletion meant that
Romeo, that is…Man, would be back to using the Sun again. So Juliet says, ‘O, by this count I shall be
much in years ere I again behold my Romeo!’ That was a very brilliant line. I can see you’re quite a
master at allegory. Ingenious. I must offer my congratulations. I can see that you are not afraid to work
with a large canvas.”
I hoped he would pick up my sarcastic tone. I was quite upset with his trickery, his knavery!
“Thank you. And?”
“Well, Then there is the horrible tomb scene. Ghastly, really. The sun shines as brightly as ever, that
is to say that Juliet, the sun, is quite alive. But the connection between Man and the sun, the solar
economic connection that brought Man all sorts of things, is gone, thanks to coal, which changed the land
and everything. So Romeo can’t reestablish this economic connection, and he dies. I suppose you mean
some sort of collapse, though of course, the process, I mean----- the return to the sun, could take
thousands of years.” I added, “I want to like you, what I know of you as a ghost, or a spirit or a phantom,
but after understanding this scene, I find you too severe and ruthless in your judgment of humanity. I
think your famous antic disposition might have gotten the better of you and you became a dictator and a
bitter ruler over a world of words that you conjured up in your poetic dreamer’s mind. But your world is

not my world, nor my children’s world. And here I reject your dark vision!”
Unexpectedly, the ghost looked really pleased at this.
“The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo!” he said, smiling, “However, my
intentions in the tomb scene are slightly different than your conclusions. I don’t mean that economic
issues don’t matter, of course, but your view is limited. And you have forgotten one very important scene
between the lovers. Look, Viola, look at this.”
Behind the Ghost, on the tatami mat, there had somehow materialized a large soft robe made of dark-
brown wool. Maybe because I love old textiles so much, I felt at once more hopeful and cheerful when I
saw it. Thanks to all my interest in fabrics and dyes, I knew it was old, hand-woven, not knitted, similarly
I knew at once that it was real sheep wool by the way the light caught on it. The Ghost pulled it on then
drew the cowl over his head, and stood up to tie the sash. He now looked exactly like someone whose
name I knew so very well by now. But who? In a small rush, I caught the allusion, and I had to smile.
“Friar Lawrence!” I exclaimed.
“The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night, check’ring the eastern clouds with streaks of
light….”, the Ghost chuckled mystically and looked pleased with himself.. His acting skills were
perfection.
“Ah, You mean to tell me that I forgot to mention the scene where you…that is I mean to say, Friar
Lawrence, marries Romeo and Juliet.”
“For by your leaves, you shall not stay alone till Holy Church incorporate two in one.” The Ghost

brought his hands together.
I understood suddenly.
“Ah! You are Friar Lawrence! It is you who is always working to bring them together. You write a
letter to Romeo to tell him about the true state of Juliet---that she is alive! You also promised Romeo
something about…wait a minute…” I leafed through the play and found the lines, “here it is. These are
Friar Lawrence’s words exactly, after Romeo moans about ‘O, thou wilt speak again of banishment’:
I’ll give thee armor to keep off that word
Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,
To comfort thee though thou art banished. “
The Ghost looked happier now, and I was feeling better. Perhaps Shakespeare, this ambitious ghost, was
trying to help us through the whole thing with his cosmic hand holding our real ones? To understand such
a message was a huge task, spanning centuries, or rather millennia, encumbering a whole planet, and
enormous but not inexhaustible fossil fuel resources.
It must have been our fate all along to use them!
A fate not all good nor all bad. Uneven, bumpy, though. Difficult. A struggle.
He had known…..
“My dear Viola, with Romeo’s death, and the return to the Sun, which could, by the way, take
centuries or even thousands of years, and happen very slowly, I don’t mean at all that Mankind dies. I
only mean that people may change.”
The Ghost continued. “I wrote in a little dialogue----maybe you remember it?---- that explains the

idea that Mankind finds a new path as the Sun becomes more and more important again. That is why
Romeo says
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead—
Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think!—
And breath’d such life with kisses on my lips
That I reviv’d and was an emperor.
I said that I hadn’t noticed that small piece of dialogue before. It is usually cut from films of the play.
I was quite relieved to see it. The transition process could go on for centuries and possibly much longer
than that; I really had no idea about how much fuel was left out there sitting inside the earth. It wasn’t my
concern. But weren’t people talking about wind and solar power these days too?
“Viola, I must go now. I am, as you noted, quite tired. But I am no longer worried and anxious about
you or what you may be thinking of me.” This time he chose a new way to disappear. Pulling closer to his
body the friar’s robe, everything gradually brightened around him, including the air near him. Then
slowly, the outlines of his shape dissolved, he became a sparkling point of light which got smaller and
smaller until it disappeared.
I still had so many questions.
One thing was for sure, though. I made up my mind to absolutely never tell a soul about this. Probably no
one would believe me if I did. The secret play in Romeo and Juliet was a brilliant idea of his; the whole
concept was like an amazing Renaissance puzzle box!!---- but it would be better to have it remain a

complete secret. I would not be the one to divulge the truth.
Chapter 11
Then God be blest, it is the blessed sun,
But sun it is not, when you say it is not,
And the moon changes even as your mind.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no universal truth in Shakespeare’s works. I had read
enough books on Shakespeare and his plays to gather that simple and fundamental fact; every English major
on the entire planet both knew and accepted this basic elementary idea. It was a given, a starting point for
all scholars of his work. No matter what else they disagreed about, which was plenty!---- they all started
from the same basic premise: there was no coherent truth in his work.
Secret plays, hidden meanings, true intentions---there had certainly never been any indication of such
phenomena in Shakespeare! Millions of high school classes, college classes and graduate seminars had been
conducted for hundreds of years by thousands of certified literature professionals without any mention, or
knowledge, of a “secret play” in Romeo and Juliet or any other of Shakespeare’s plays. What I had found,
with the help of the ghost, was so radical that there was possibly no room for its emergence; it would upend
scholarship and accepted bodies of knowledge too much. The tomb scene, despite the Ghost’s more benign
explanation, one which I definitely preferred, was also part of a message that, because it was yet to come,
made it a prophecy of sorts, not necessarily a welcome one, there was no denying it. File away the secret
play as the

Idea that Dare Not Speak its Name!
Bury the secret in a dark cave and leave it there.
Maybe in a thousand years, someone could find it and read it and see if Shakespeare had been “right”.
A return to the sun! How crazy was that?!
And what was I to do with this information?
Should I try to write it up in a scholarly article?
No!
Instead of trying to write about this bizarre and unexpected finding---- an undertaking of utter folly---- I
thought instead of privately satisfying my desire for knowledge. As a child who loved to read books and
who had grown up during the Cold War, with all of its elements of mystery, I had always had two very
different, seemingly irreconcilable, jobs I dreamed of doing: English Literature professor and international
spy.
I was now just an obscure and impoverished expatriate English language teacher; but finally, I saw that
now here was my chance to combine the different duties of an English professor and international spy into a
perfect, secret and scholarly holistic inquiry. No danger attended this kind of work, unlike conventional
spying. Nor would it matter to me that the Cold War had ended decades earlier.
I thought maybe I should investigate Shakespeare’s other plays for similar types of secret structures. If
this secret play about the sun in Romeo and Juliet was truly so important then it was very likely I would
find this secret in his other plays as well. I was an English major, so deciphering themes, imagery, and

subtle structures should be something within my capabilities, after all. And if I ran into problems, I
guessed---and I hoped---that my supernatural friend would show up to guide me.
Nevertheless, I was longing to tell someone. This kind of secret was just too big to keep completely to
myself. I mentally listed some people I knew, then rehearsed the conversations I could expect. With quite
dismal results.
Mom, guess what, I have found out about a secret play in Romeo and Juliet. It is about the Sun
and Mankind.
How wonderful for you, dear. I am very pleased that you are doing well. You always did like
Shakespeare, I remember. What was the name of that professor at Harvard whom you admired so much?
No, not my mother!
Daddy, I have some news. I have found a secret play in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. It
is about the Sun and Man. The sun is a source of everything good, wood, fish, wheat, strawberries, rope,
roofing material, boats, and all, what we call energy today, Daddy. Well, Shakespeare knew all about it,
not in our current scientific terms, but he knew. And that is what he was writing about. He did it all in
allegorical form!
Viola, that sounds very interesting. Energy, you say? Ah, well, who knows if people back then
understood about energy? Highly unlikely. Modern science has thankfully freed people in so many
ways from their backwardness and ignorance. Shakespeare could not possibly have understood
about energy. Claiming such a thing simply strains credulity.
No, not my father either. What I had to say would just annoy him. And because it would annoy him, it
would also annoy my mother.
One year before, I had bought a very cute little dustpan made of tree bark that made cleaning such a

pleasure, and also in response to the agonies of Fukushima, I was trying to use less electricity by using a
broom instead of a vacuum cleaner. Now as I swept up some dust on the tatami mats with a broom and the
little wooden dustpan, I debated whether I should tell the children. Kaoru and Zenji would not understand
the significance of the secret solar play. Did they even understand who Shakespeare was? Like so many
modern children, they spent time on the Internet watching favorite music groups or comedy shows, but
definitely not Shakespeare’s plays. Energy and how it delivers food, clothes, warmth, paper, or books---or
the Internet for that matter---was also not particularly interesting to them, or perhaps rather they took it for
granted, as I had also.
That left one person, someone I hesitated to call, but who in some ways I still felt strangely connected
to. That someone was my husband. I wondered where exactly we stood these days with each other. We had
fought a lot, it is true. And I had even left, but not primarily because of him. Now things were agreeably
peaceful, but maybe that was only because we no longer lived together. I collected the dust, tipped it into a
garbage bag, and then made a cup of coffee. I knew I would need the strength of every drop of caffeine to
help me engage in conversation with my spouse of 20 years. Often, when we talked about any topic, no
matter how straightforward and dull, it turned into either a big or a little battle.
Now I had a topic that was obscure, strange, and unexpected. I wondered how he would take my news.
Chapter 12
Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun,
Peer’d forth the golden window of the east

A troubled mind drove me to walk abroad,
Where, underneath the grove of sycamore
That westward rooteth from this city side,
So early walking did I see your son.
I reached Kazuo in his office in one of the huge modern, glass-and-cement buildings that lined the
campus of Kurumachi University, whose academic ranking was eighth in Japan. Kurumachi University was
a national university, built in the 1960s and 1970s during the days of heady growth that had spilled over
from Tokyo, about 30 kilometers south-west, but their construction budget was enormous and the campus
was always being rebuilt and expanded. Kurumachi City was a planned city, with strong connections,
through the construction industry in particular, to the National Government, and known, in a self-
promotional way, as “Kurumachi Science City”. It was full of huge and sprawling anonymous buildings
housing national research centers of every kind: materials science, animal science, astronomy, environment,
weather and more.
The funny, quirky little piece of historical information that many residents of Kurumachi City knew was
that Kurumachi had been designed and planned, back in 1964, to copy the infrastructure of Irvine,
California. Japanese city planners had visited Irvine and been impressed with the huge and modern multi-
lane feeder roads and modernistic highways, and had copied the automobile-centric outlook when they
planned Kurumachi. But when Kazuo and I had moved there, from Tsubame, nine years before the 2011
earthquake, we hadn’t bothered to buy a car. We rode the buses and we bicycled on the bike paths, which
were extensive and safe. But in all my time in Kurumachi, that advanced and planned city, part of me had

always felt like Heidi, secretly mourning the mountains and the little green town of Tsubame, with its tiny
roads, clean rivers, and delicious drinking water. When Kurumachi became radioactive, and with Kazuo,
even before that, growing more and more stressed out from his job and impatient with my dreamy ways,
Tsubame had beckoned like a friendly woodland spirit, who would enfold me in his arms and stand me on
his forested shoulders, where I would sing with pleasure again.
How do jet pilots feel upon bailing out of a plane that they feel is no longer safe to fly? Now I thought,
after landing back in Tsubame, and slowly rebuilding my life, that I knew how, at least, to open a parachute
and crash down safely.
It was lunch time, and I knew he usually bought a sandwich at one of the many university cafeterias and
ate it at his desk.
“Hi, It’s me.”
A Pause. Nothing. Quiet. Our familiar abyss?
“Hello.”
“How’s it going?”
“O.K. Busy. How are the kids?”
“Fine. Kaoru is busy with kendo. Zenji likes soccer and his friends. And those two panda mice he has,
the ones he is always renaming.“
Pause. More silence. You didn’t call me up to talk about panda mice.
“Listen” I said, “something a bit strange has happened.”

How should I explain this? If I mention a ghost, he’ll think I’m crazy.
“What?”
“Well, I had a sudden, weird……umm….. insight into one of Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet. It
looks like there is a mysterious core of a drama, a cosmic drama, playing out the interaction between the
Sun and Man. Juliet is really the Sun. Shakespeare seems to have been aware of the idea of energy as a
source of everything we need.” I explained a bit about the four scenes that delineate Man’s interaction with
the sun: The Meeting of Man and the Sun; the Age of Agriculture; the fossil fuel-induced Exile from the
Sun; and the Return to the Sun.
“Really? That sounds kind of like a ‘Missing Sun’ myth or something.“ Kazuo sounded interested now.
“A what?”, I asked. I should explain here that my husband is an historian of religion, especially the
Japanese religions of Buddhism and Shinto. He specializes in symbolism, myths, and ceremonies. It had
never occurred to me that the Juliet-is-the-Sun figure had any mythical dimensions. Now I was glad I had
called my husband. I saw that I needed a professional to help me.
“In a missing sun myth, the story of the sun god or sun goddess’s disappearance lies at the center of the
story. When the sun goes missing can be read as an allegory for solar events such as eclipses, night, shorter
or longer days of the warmer or colder seasons, and so forth. In ancient Egyptian mythology, Ra, the sun
god, and his solar barge, travel through the underworld every night. In Norse mythology, Sol, the sun
goddess, is eaten by the wolf Skoll. And, of course, I think you have heard about Amaterasu, right?”
My husband had once told me about the Shinto Sun Goddess named Amaterasu. In the earliest sacred

Japanese myth, the Kojiki from the 8th
century, she hides in a cave and without her presence, an endless
night ensues. She bars the door and those outside, who need her, are understandably miserable without her
warmth and light, but someone has a mirror or a shiny stone and gently pries open the door and holds this
makeshift mirror up to her bright golden face. She sees how beautiful she is and then she comes out of the
cave and everyone celebrates with dancing and singing.
“Umm”, I said, “sounds close, but I’m not sure. This missing sun myth in Romeo and Juliet tells about
our modern era. It’s a twist on an old theme. Not eclipses, winter, nor night this time. Fossil fuels pull us
away from the sun, temporarily it seems. “
Kazuo asked, “Are there any gods or sun gods mentioned in the play? I’ve never read any
Shakespeare.”
“Actually Shakespeare does mention ‘the worshipp’d sun’, and he mentions Titan’s fiery wheels…and
Apollo….but I’m not sure Juliet is a god. Although, hmmm”, I was now thinking fast, “ the Nurse does say
‘God forbid!’ as if she is chattering to herself when she calls Juliet onto the stage the first time. ……Oh my
God,” I exclaimed, “Juliet may be a sort of god! That would have been pretty much heretical for the time.”
Another Idea That Dare Not Speak Its Name!
“Well, not so fast”, said my husband, ever the cautious academic. “Assuming you are right about the
secret play, Shakespeare might have just been showing some sort of, uh, sensitivity to his subject, you know,
awareness of history and background and such. Where we’ve been. Contextualization. Part of the discourse.
You mentioned Apollo, the Greek sun god. But it doesn’t mean that Shakespeare worshipped Apollo,

obviously.”
“I see”, I said, feeling as though I would have a lot to ask the ghost about when I saw him again, if I
saw him again.
What did Shakespeare know and think and when did he know it and think it?
“How did you come up with that, anyway?” asked Kazuo.
“Umm, well, that’s a good question. You see, actually…..”
I reached for a quick lie, not including ghosts!--- that would sound truthful.
“I had some time to read Shakespeare again, and in the back of my mind, I was thinking about coal and
oil and images of them in stories and I noticed that the first two lines of Romeo and Juliet were rather
peculiar, about coal; they seemed so out of place and jarring. They were tiny details, trifles that no one had
wondered about before. I wondered why he put them there. In such a prime position.”
Thankfully, the lie unfurled smoothly out of my brain as if by magic, with no effort on my part to
construct a contorted story to hide the ghost’s contribution.
“Coal? Oil? What made them so interesting all of a sudden? Usually people don’t think about coal and
oil, especially in relation to works of literature. Fossil fuels are oily, sort of dirty substances….I only hear
my colleagues wailing about gasoline prices lately, and so on…..”
I was thinking fast again.
Fukushima.
Images of cranes, trucks squirting thousands of tons of water, long rows of emergency vehicles, cement

mixers, all of them heavily dependent on oil, all of them in the foreground of every shot of Fukushima
Daiichi. Didn’t they need oil and coal, its stony relative, to get the energy to build nuclear reactors and
mine uranium too?
Gregory, upon my word, we’ll not carry coals!
Of course, we had carried coals, and a whole bunch of other valuable things too, out of the ground.
And who could possibly blame us? We had good intentions, always, even when we built things like
Fukushima Daiichi. But, of course, there was an old saying about that.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And if any place on earth looked like hell, it was the mangled, tangled, highly radioactive ruins of
Fukushima Daiichi, still emitting millions of bequerels of radioactive substances every day.
Romeo: I thought all for the best.
“Well”, I said, “probably, it was because of Fukushima in the back of my mind somewhere. And yes,
Fukushima did start me off thinking about the sun more. Fukushima Daiichi, with all of its heavy cement
and metal---you know, people need machines to move those things---- seems like it is partly related to the
use of oil and coal, and mass industrialization in general. Maybe that’s why I thought of it….. Hey, here I
am, a nuclear refugee, after all.”
Over the phone line, I heard him become silent and freeze up.
Always back to Fukushima Daiichi.
It was the event where our long-frayed relationship had finally become a schism, my husband

abandoned and isolated. Our so-called nuclear family. Or a postmodern variation, maybe by now a lonely
one.
I’m sorry, part of me wanted to say, but the words would not come. Friends were still there, others I
knew. Why had I taken the plunge to leave when others were willing to live with the risk?
Because I had missed the green mountains of Tsubame, where we had lived for five years together
before my husband had gotten the job at a more prestigious Kurumachi University. I loved ancient Tsubame
with its archaic tiny twisting streets, its old wooden houses and shops, its rivers, rice fields and birds. You
could walk out of your house and soon you would find yourself dreaming along the path next to a river, no
car necessary. Being away for 10 years had only made me love this town more.
I only had succeeded in irritating him even more.
“So, Viola, what is your point? What do you want me to do about your idea? Literature isn’t really my
field, as you well know. I think you are calling the wrong person. If you want to tell me about the kids, fine,
otherwise, I’m busy. I’ve got a class in 20 minutes.”
Obviously the topic of the nuclear reactor and its ongoing troubles or what lay elementally and
energetically and historically behind it, was not a welcome one to my spouse. Whenever he says my name
like that with the word “so” in front so, Viola, I know he is annoyed.
Well, obviously, Viola! Duh! Why should it be welcome?
“Well, first of all, I just wanted to tell someone. It’s fascinating, don’t you think? I chose you to tell,
O.K.? We’re still married after all.” Now I was being defensive, and I was worried that things in this

conversation were starting to vaguely deteriorate.
“So you mean you want to write this up as, what, as a scholarly article? Do you think you manage that?
You haven’t written any papers since when?---um, graduate school, and that was 20 years ago, right? I did
advise you to try to write something academic, when you were teaching here, as I recall, many, many times.
You always said you had better things to do, but you could have had a solid and serious career by now.
What do you want to do with this anyway? Where do you want to go with this?”
He was right, depressingly right. What did I want anyway? I had imagined that he would be impressed
but instead he was---with some grounds---reminding me of my obvious shortcomings as a scholar: I had a
very short attention span, I had never followed any academic theorists or conventional scholarly practices,
nor did I have any interest in doing so. I was a dilettante, an amateur, a mere gnat whistling and humming in
the sun on the elephant’s back, the elephant being Academia, Stability, Learnedness, Standard Procedure,
Convention, Importance, Critical Practice, Excellent Grammar and Perfect Footnotes. Solid and serious
An irreverent Court Jester of Academic Prose resided in my head despite every honest effort I made to
evict him.
When I did read scholarly articles, I admit that to amuse this monstrous little clown, I rather heretically
collected some of the words and phrases I encountered as though I were collecting colorful exotic fish in an
aquarium: under the rubric of, problems attendant on, discursive formations, embedded in semantic webs,
gloss, situate his work, a negotiation of changing meanings, implicated in ongoing social processes, and my
very favorite, valorizes.

In idle moments, perhaps while I was waiting at a bus stop or washing dishes, I brought them out to
dance and perform for my own amusement, adding in or substituting prosaic words like tulips, carrots,
dinner, cat litter and socks: socks embedded in semantic webs, discursive formations of carrots, valorizes
dinner, problems attendant on cat litter, under the rubric of tulips.
Oh, God, why could I not be serious?
(And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down before them.)
Yes, indeed!
Why could I not learn to play the academic writing game too? Surely, but surely, it was a both a routine
drill and an economic venture like any other job, accounting, auto mechanics, or operating a nail salon or a
hamburger restaurant…..just a bit more difficult, a bit more of an intellectual rush. It was still just selling
something that would fit into a specialized market.
But it was not for me.
The serious academic words and ideas had lives and loves and fancies of their own, no doubt, but they
were, like fish in a tank, tantalizingly remote, vocabulary that seemed off limits to a person like me who
was too regrettably focused too much on what was real, and what I could taste and touch and feel. I needed
weather, real weather, the rain or the wind or the sun on my face, buttercups underfoot, or asphalt, mud, or
gravel even, but it had to be real.
The universe of academia, so attractive, so exotic, so glamorous and appealing in its own brainy, literate
and digressive way, could never be my world.

Even just for money, I just could not do it.
I was a geisha, a jester, a fool!
I had lately realized that I was wearing my own special invisible cap and bells, all the more powerful
because they were invisible and therefore impossible to remove. Jingling through the streets, with rings on
my fingers and bells on my toes, I was dancing my own special idiosyncratic jig that amused people----and
they paid me to talk, joke, and expound on any little thing during “English lessons” in an entertaining
way---- but this talent, or whatever it was, would never make me a published and respected scholar.
“No, not an academic paper”, I said firmly. “I can’t write one of those.” I was still the same, stubborn,
recalcitrant. We, Kazuo and Viola, were opposites. Opposites, despite what you may have heard, do not
always attract.
“Then, let me ask you again, what actually do you want to do with this. Are you baka? You don’t even
know where you want to go with this?” Kazuo sounded even more impatient and irritated. Baka is the
Japanese word for “fool”, and I was very familiar with its sting. I was always making him annoyed with my
vagueness and my unserious, languid, unfocused approach to life. In his world, projects were undertaken
seriously and with purpose. There were important things like Funding, Meetings, Symposia, Grant
Proposals and Plenary Speakers. His list of publications ran ten pages long.
“I don’t know yet. I’ll think about it, O.K.? It’s just an idea right now. I don’t have to, as you put it, do
anything with it, right?”
There was a pause. We were both glad to be living apart, I realized. Our conversations always ended

unhappily. Then, unexpectedly, Kazuo’s voice got brighter.
“Hey, Viola, because of some M.A. exams in the Area Studies Department, I won’t have to teach classes
on Thursday, then Friday is a holiday, so how about I go and visit you and the kids. It’s Zenji’s birthday on
Saturday.”
“O.K., of course, come if you want to”, I tried to sound pleasant and polite, when I was feeling rather
resentful still, “And you can see the fireflies. They’re out now on the river. They’re beautiful.”
There were no more fireflies in Kurumachi.
Chapter 13
Rosalind: They say you are a melancholy fellow
Jaques: I am so; I do love it better than laughing.
Fireflies-----here in Tsubame their lights glow pale green, tiny beams fading slowly to reappear again
in their mystical signals of “off” and “on”, a language, a dance, or both at once, signals and motions
unknowable beyond the narrow velvet universe of their dark riverbank. They have lights, it is true, but they
are nowhere plugged in, as they sail through the air. I had learned to admire them for that.
People come to the riverside to study, informally, the language of the fireflies. Crowds appear at night,
the smell of sake wafts in the air, couples murmur on the little footbridges, children address the fireflies
directly with a hypnotic, trancelike song supposed to draw the insects closer, since it tells the story of bitter

water that is ‘over there’ versus the sweet water that is ‘here’:
Hoi, hoi, hotaru, hoi
Achi no mizu wa nigai zo, kochi no mizu wa amai zo
Later, there is laughing, shouting, talking as people flooding out from the local bars stop by to observe
the esoteric communications of the fireflies, but the observations are never analyzed, lost amid laughter,
touch, and song.
In Tsubame, at the beginning of June, for two evenings, we have a well-known Hotaru Matsuri ------
“Firefly Festival”--------on a green near the river, a few stalls sell bananas dipped in chocolate sauce, yaki
soba (fried noodles), tako yaki (octopus fritters), broiled squid, balloons and popcorn. In a nearby local
community center, pottery from Hagi is sold at a tenth of its usual price. The clay in Hagi is sandy and
rough, from the piney mountains along the shore of the cold Japan Sea, and the famed pottery is
commensurately sandy and rough too, painted with a milky, rice-based glaze. I looked forward to the
discount sale, these Hagi yaki dishes had slight imperfections that were either unnoticeable or added charm.
Living right next to the river, Zenji, Kaoru and I visited the hotaru every evening. Walking Teru, we
loitered on the footbridges; I even, perhaps unconventionally, made wishes on the little lights. Zenji caught
the bugs in his hands and let them go again. Since returning to Tsubame, our lives had followed the seasons
more closely, and we sometimes, day or night, spent entire minutes watching the river tumbling along under
the footbridges. Slow and satisfying, with nothing much accomplished by the time the sun set over the
mountains, life in Tsubame was perfect I thought.

Kazuo arrived on Saturday afternoon, the first night of the Hotaru Matsuri.
He drank a cup of tea, then, energized, investigated My Housekeeping. According to him, there is dust
everywhere. Why are Seiji’s books and toys arranged so badly in a heap on the shelf? Why are the cats not
in their cage? Can’t I clean the sink a bit better than that?
Ahh. So sorry, but I am not here. I am invisible!
Expertly, I fade away, or fly away, into the margins of the very marginal tiny house---Kaoru has
mentioned insects flying around her room recently that look suspiciously like termites ----, which would be
the farthest away space on the south side of the kitchen.
The ogre stumbles around after me. Where is his cell-phone charger? What are the newspapers doing
there in a pile without a string tied around them? What have I been doing, anyway all this time? Do I not
know where the brooms are? Why does Zenji read only comic books? Why is Kaoru not studying?
But I digress.
Kazuo has two sides; a professional one that a professor, any normal and reasonable and modern
professor may have.
The other side, more private, is the side which burns hotly with a flame of fear and shame.
Fear of living in a house that has a speck of dirt, fear that everyone else has educated children and only
yours are not going to get into college, fear that your wife is not good at cleaning, or worse, doesn’t care
that much. The house should be perfect, the apron always clean and fresh, the housewife must be on duty,
the children are studying sums and equations. Or else they are practicing the piano.

Kazuo was not like this when I married him. But somehow, having children has persuaded him to be
quite fearful, nearly all the time, elementally and profoundly so, about appearances and convention. It is
like a disease of some sort, ravaging him. The disease seemed to have started when we moved to
Kurumachi, but I think, looking back, that it was incipient all the while that he was unhappily teaching at
Tsubame University, which is number 51 in the academic rankings in Japan, and therefore, as he always
said, Not Good Enough.
Yet I fear, judging by the beautiful cars, fancier outfits, and expensive lifestyles of people in their 50s
and 60s, people ten years older than Kazuo and me, that the fancy mold he aspires to was firmer and more
intact before his time. Maybe that is one reason it is so attractive to him. Because of the bursting of the
economic bubble in Japan in 1990, just as we came of age, our generation aspires to an ideal that we cannot
quite manage, however fast we run, to attain. Women must work now, and cars are smaller. And nuclear
refugees such as I must work quite hard and I have no car even, and no financial possibility to buy one even
if I could drive. And driving, moreover, is a skill I have long-ago forgotten. The recent happy and attractive
suburban material ideal has become, for my generation, a twisted grimacing sneering visage in a fun-house
mirror whose very presence but cruelly mocks the seeker, the aspirant, the acolyte, my own Kazuo.
Deny thy father and refuse thy name….
Impossible.
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love….
Hah!

Romeo! humors! madman! passion! lover!
(silence……)
Kazuo, Kazuo, tonight there is a festival.
I saw them setting up the stalls just now coming here, do you not think I know why? Do you think I am
so baka?
Chapter 14
Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish,
A vapor sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon ‘t that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,
They are black vesper’s pageants.
Kaoru left to wander the narrow, lantern-lit streets with Chika-chan and Tamami-chan. Zenji and Kazuo
decided to go down to the area set up with food stalls and buy some yaki soba.
Left thankfully on my own, I drifted over to the community center where, outside, a long table was set
up with the discounted and donated imperfect Hagiyaki pottery, and I rummaged around, one of a large
crowd there. Soon I had selected two creamy-toned rice bowls and a light brown tea mug, quite large.
Under a striped awning in the small parking lot, a small brass band played Supai-no-dai-sakusen (“The

Juliet is the sun

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