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YAMAMOTO’S DECISION
A Play in Four Acts by Sherwood Ross
ACT ONE, SCENE TWO
ILLUMINATED SCREEN: (Painting Toilet Mirror by Kumisada, 1823.)
Setting: Geisha house, overlooking Tokyo harbor.
(At rise: Samisen and flute music to establish mood. Soft light illuminates Yoko who is seated facing the audience, making up her face as though looking into a mirror. She is a woman in her late Thirties who retained her youthful allure. She works on her eyebrows, applying various pencils. Her long lustrous black hair spills down her back. She wears undergarments only. On a clothes rack in the sparsely furnished bedroom hangs her ceremonial kimono. Along the back wall, paper panels begin to glow, signifying the sun rising behind them. There is a large sleeping mat on the floor at the far right, several wooden pillows and stuffed feather pillows, and a space heater. Yoko begins to hum the popular love song, "China Night." Tokuko enters smiling from the left and bows. Tokuko is a slender and attractive woman in her early Twenties. She has just come in from the street and wears street dress. She carries a mesh shopping bag with various food parcels that she holds up for Yoko to see.)
Tokuko
Mistress Yoko, see here!
Yoko
Ah, success!
Tokuko
Very fine pork chops!
Yoko
Well, the Army has got to leave something for us civilians.
Tokuko
(Lifting large salmon out of mesh bag.)
And salmon, sea urchin, crab, shrimp for the rice cakes, and pickled eel.
(Yoko kisses Tokuko’s cheek and flicks her tongue over the salmon, at which they both laugh. Tokuko replaces salmon.)
Yoko
We must have everything ready tonight, precisely at eight. I want dried sardines served with the Johnny Walker Black Label, three-colored dumplings with the entrees, and seafood custard for dessert.
Tokuko
The Admiral’s favorite.
Yoko
And who told you who is coming?
Tokuko
You were singing when I came in.
Yoko
You heard the wind. Now do my hair, in the old style.
Tokuko
(Abashed)
Yes, mistress.
(Tokuko sets bag down on floor and coming up behind Yoko lifts her long hair up and piles it upon her head, working on it with silver combs. They face the audience, Yoko seated, Tokuko standing behind her.)
Yoko
The Admiral is bringing his boyhood friend, Akio, the one he grew up with. He was an Admiral, too, but now retired.
Tokuko
Should I be excited?
Yoko
Of course. You will be his dinner companion and, afterwards, if it comes to that.
Tokuko
Ah, how long has he been retired?
Yoko
(Laughs) Ah, you want to know how old a man he is, don’t you? The fact is, he was forced to resign in mid-career. (Pauses) Oh, you want to know about that, too? All right. The Army wanted him to bombard Shanghai and he wouldn’t do it because he’d kill civilians. They called him a coward.
Tokuko
It was brave of him to resist the Army.
Yoko
My! Aren’t you the clever one! When I got you, I got more than a pretty plum blossom, didn’t I? Anyway, they put Akio in charge of a big shipyard.
Tokuko
Not so bad.
Yoko
Now these two speak freely. You will hear them talk about persons in high places, even the Emperor. And you will remember nothing of what you hear. Understood?
Tokuko
Hi!
(Yoko senses that Tokuko is troubled as she pauses in her work on Yoko’s hair.)
Yoko
Does that bother you? What is it?
Tokuko
I didn’t know if to tell you–
Yoko
Yes?
Tokuko
Well, at the butcher shop just now, old Soemu, he said two men stopped in asking questions about you.
Yoko
(Struggling for control.)
The Kempetai?Tokuko
They asked when you make a special party.
Yoko
(Attempts to laugh it off.)
Why, I am certainly not going to invite them!
Tokuko
They wanted to know when you entertain the Admiral.
Yoko
So that’s how you guessed!
Tokuko
Oh, mistress, I told him nothing!
Yoko
You know what the times are like. Say nothing, not to anybody. The Kempetai has a million ears.
Tokuko
Kempetai, very bad people.
Yoko
And what would you know of them?
Tokuko
I know of a schoolgirl arrested for what she said in class. They kept her in custody three days, then pushed her out of a car on her doorstep. No one knows what they did to her in jail because she has never spoken a word to anyone since. Her Mother cries all day and her family is disgraced.
Yoko
Ah, we don’t know all the circumstances.
Tokuko
A schoolgirl, mistress. What could she have said?
Yoko
Ai! Let’s try to have a pleasant evening tonight! There, you’ve got my hair just right! Now, hand me the photo album and I’ll show you our guests.
(Tokuko picks up album from small table and gives it to Yoko, taking a seat next to her. The women, now both seated, face the audience. As they discuss the pictures, we see them illuminated on the screen. Yoko holds the album, flips a page or two.)
ILLUMINATED SCREEN: (Photograph of Admiral Akio Matsushita with Yoko.)
That’s your dinner companion, Admiral Matsushita, (smiles, relishing the word) retired.
Tokuko
A regular Clark Gable! I wouldn’t mind retiring with him!
Yoko
Until that China business, he was gray only at the temples. They say his hair turned to silver overnight.
Tokuko
I think he looks very manly.
ILLUMINATED SCREEN: (Photo of Akio, Yoko, and Yamamoto together, arms linked, toasting.)
Yoko
And that’s the three of us in happier days, before the war on China.
Tokuko
The Admiral looks just the same today in his newspaper pictures.
Yoko
They were boys together. They ice-skated on the river. Since they were poor and had no proper coats, they were often sick but as he grew older, Isoroku exercised to turn his body into steel –
Tokuko
(Laughs)
Steel, Mistress? Like Superman?
Yoko
(Slaps Tokuko’s hand playfully.)
Yes, in every way. In fact, when he was forty years old and in command of naval aviation, he entered the cadets’ marathon run and finished second.
Tokuko
O-o-h, he must be something.
ILLUMINATED SCREEN (Picture of Yamamoto and Yoko side by side, smiling broadly.)
Yoko
They are both self-made men, and both very proud -- but very different in temperament.
ILLUMINATED SCREEN: (Picture of Yamamoto and Akio together.)
Tokuko
Akio has a kindly face.
Yoko
Yes, as far as the Army in China was concerned, too kindly. Since he was forced out, he, ah, drinks heavily, you understand? And he hates the Army, especially General Tojo.
Tokuko
It’s so awful, mistress. My sister says her boy comes home from school chanting, ‘Stinka Chinka! Stinka Chinka!’ And when my sister told him it was wrong, he said, ‘Teacher makes us say it!’
Yoko
That teacher’ll change his tune when he’s conscripted. China is no apple orchard. Just before you came to us we had a colonel back from Nanking who woke up screaming from nightmares. He had dreams from making his soldiers tie Chinese men and women to stakes and bayonet them so the Army doctors could practice on belly wounds.
Tokuko
They say more and more boxes of ashes coming home from China these days.
Yoko
(Beat) Now! Now! Help me into my kimono.
(Tokuko helps her. Close and intimate, Yoko kisses Tokuko on the cheek. )
I’m so glad you’re with us.
(Tokuko puts the album back in its place.)
Am I not still beautiful, you think?
Tokuko
Oh, yes, mistress, very.
Yoko
Please, sit here by me. Some days, I miss Isoroku terribly. His letters are so full of passion.
(She produces a letter.)
This came yesterday. See here, he calls me "my sister and sweetheart" and he says, "I want to be of help to you and to relieve your loneliness. As a man I feel ashamed for letting you down. This makes me still more miserable and I want to cry weakly on your bosom."
Tokuko
Perhaps it would be better to dwell on the wonderful times you’ve had with him.
Yoko
Yes, once he took me to the deerpark and we walked among the fawns, listening to the tinkle of their bells in the twilight going kwu kwu, kwu kwu. We have known such peace together. When he was a rising star I used to go to his office in the Admiralty nights. I’d bring him his favorite delicacies: cold spinach, salmon skin rolls and cheeses, how he loved exotic cheeses! But then one day they put him in charge of an aircraft carrier and he sailed off, so his visits became fewer and fewer.
Tokuko
Perhaps what they say about sailors is true: a woman in every port.
Yoko
Oh, I thought so once. He keeps a little black book and one night while he slept —
Tokuko
You read it?
Yoko
I just opened it a little, you know?
Tokuko
And?
Yoko
Not a single woman’s name in it. It’s a record of all the pilots under him who were killed during training, and the dates and places where they crashed. One night, when fog covered the ocean, a whole squadron of fliers could not find their way back to his carrier and they all were drowned, to the last man. They say he cried on the bridge. Afterwards, he gave orders to make instruments for planes to fly at night.
Tokuko
Our lives pass like sunset on the water.
(Yoko cries.)
Oh, Toku, I hear so little from him now. I fear I am falling out of his heart.
(Yoko hugs Tokuko. There is something more than a motherly embrace to this and Tokuko breaks it off and walks to the window.)
Tokuko
Mistress, look down there and you will see two men standing across the street. They were there when I returned from shopping and I think they are watching the house. As I passed them, I said, 'What are you doing here?’ and they gave me such — I don’t know -- a terrible look! Do you think they are Kempetai?
Yoko
(Going to the window and looking out, she says bravely)
Whoever they are standing out there, I fancy they are cold. Take them a pot of hot tea and cups with my compliments.
(Tokuko nods and leaves. Yoko, wringing her hands and facing audience)
Ai! What is Japan coming to? BLACKOUT
"Yamamoto's Decision" by Sherwood Ross IS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND MAY NOT BE DOWNLOADED, TRANSMITTED, PRINTED OR PERFORMED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR
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