CHAPTER 1

A young Japanese woman, Kyoko Tanaka sat sobbing silently in a dim hospital room reeking of antiseptic. Her mounting fears had just been ratified by the impersonal white gowned doctor merely by a flick of his clip board and the solemn announcement that her mother, Chieko, was dying.

Although she had been expecting it for days as her mother’s condition worsened, when she was actually confronted with the news of Chieko’s impending death, Kyoko could not accept it and she clutched at the doctor’s arm and implored, “But this is 1970, we have advanced medical treatment, surely something can be done to save my mother! She is only 60 years old!”

Dr. Hayashi shook his head, the first flicker of emotion showing in his cool medical face. He gave an inward sigh, this was the third death sentence he had pronounced to grieving families that day and it was emotionally draining even for a seasoned doctor like him. He hoped there would be no more at least for the rest of the day.

Aloud he said, “Yes, of course there are new treatments but your mother’s cancer was detected too late and she is not responding to any of our procedures. I am really sorry that there’s nothing more we can do.”
Kyoko nodded silently, not trusting herself to speak.

A slight movement from the bed behind her interrupted the silence that followed and a hoarse but surprisingly clear voice said, “Kyoko, can I speak with you alone?”

“Yes, of course, mama,” Kyoko replied tearfully. She went over to where her husband, Masao, was sitting with their daughter, Mayumi and whispered,” Masao, can you take Mayumi chan to the candy bar in the cafeteria downstairs? I think Mama wants to talk to me alone.”

Masao nodded and scooped up the squirming little girl beside him. “Come on, Mayumi chan. Your mother says you can have a candy bar so let’s get going before she changes her mind!”

Kyoko waited for the door to close on Masao and Mayumi before hurrying over to her mother’s bed, her heart contracting painfully at the sight of Chieko’s pasty white face and the dry, cracked lips that were trying so hard to speak.

“I know I don’t have much time left and if I don’t speak now, this secret will die with me. Forgive me, my child, but I have kept you from knowing the truth about yourself all these years. “

The effort of speaking had been too much and the dying woman on the white hospital bed stopped for a moment then fell back on the pillows, breathing heavily.

“Water,” she whispered. “Give me water.”

As Kyoko held a tumbler of water to her mother’s lips, her heart was pumping furiously with fear. She sensed the weight of the secret Chieko was struggling to disclose even in her dying moments and was deeply worried that the effort of speaking might kill her mother.

“Please, mama, don’t do this to yourself, “she begged. “Whatever secret you think you kept from me, it really doesn’t matter. You have to stop talking and rest.”

But Chieko shook her head with surprising energy and continued,” No, its time you know the truth. I should have been honest with you from the start but I was afraid that if you found out, you would love me less and then the years went by and it became harder and harder to tell you.”

For the second time, Chieko fell back on the pillows, gasping for air, her face now a bluish mask with the shadows of death etched on every line. Holding back her tears, Kyoko stroked her mother’s hand tenderly and pleaded with her to stop.

“No, “she whispered. “Let me finish.”

Her voice barely audible now, Chieko continued, “Behind the picture of Emperor Hirohito in my room, there is a secret compartment ..You will find a tin box there … That box contains your history and a piece of the life that I stole from you, Kyoko chan, and I am returning it to you.”

Kyoko felt a slight pressure on her hand as her mother battled death to utter her last words, "Promise me you will go and look for the box when I am gone. There is so much I want to tell you but I am so tired…”

The tears were pouring down Kyoko’s face as her mother’s voice trailed off and her thin blue veined eyelids fluttered and then closed. The nurse who had been hovering discreetly outside the room appeared to take Chieko’s pulse and confirm that she had slipped into a coma.

Kyoko could not believe that her mother was almost gone and she would never again see the light and twinkle of those expressive eyes again. All through the night she sat with the dying woman torn by the sound of her shallow breathing and her struggle to stay alive. Twice she saw Chieko’s dry cracked lips moving but nothing came out, she could no longer speak. Only the tiny tear that oozed out of her tightly closed left eye showed the excruciating pain of some unfinished business that would not let Chieko die in peace. Kyoko started to cry helplessly because she did not know what was tormenting her mother and she could do nothing to ease her suffering.

To stay calm she distracted herself by thinking of the tin box and the picture of Emperor Hirohito her mother had mentioned. After they got married, Kyoko and Masao had moved in with Chieko as the house was too big for her to stay alone and the young couple could not afford their own home. Masao had been intrigued by the ostentatiously ornate frame of the picture of Emperor Hirohito in Chieko’s room but Kyoko had never cast a second look at it. She was surprised at her mother’s reference to the picture now. Disorientated thoughts flitted in and out of her exhausted mind throughout the night and just before dawn, she slumped over her mother’s bed in exhaustion and passed out.

As the first light of morning started to stream into the room, Kyoko woke up and realized with great consternation that she had fallen asleep somewhere in the course of the night. How could she have slept so soundly while her mother lay dying? She gazed at Chieko’s smooth silent face, wiped clean of all the cares and worries of life and realized with a sinking heart that her mother was dead. Kyoko could not believe that she had slept through Chieko’s dying moments and not been there for her as she drew her last breath.

Sobbing inconsolably, Kyoko rushed out of the room to break the news to Masao who was sitting on the visitors’ sofa outside his head buried in his arms. Mayumi lay on a blanket beside him, her little chest heaving in deep sleep, a picture of youth and life.

“Masao,” she wailed. “I fell asleep so I didn’t get to say Goodbye to Mama! What kind of daughter am I? I couldn’t even stay up to be with her in her final moments!”

Masao shot up, rubbed the sleep vigorously from his eyes and said, “But that is what your mother would have wanted, to slip away silently and unobtrusively, causing as little trouble to anyone in death as she did in life. “

Kyoko nodded and went back to the room. Even as she stood weeping over her mother’s shadowed face, Kyoko realized with a deep sadness that Chieko had always kept a part of herself from her daughter. No matter how good a mother she was, there was always a part of her Kyoko could not reach. On her deathbed, she had tried to let Kyoko into that secret part of herself at last but it was too late, she had died before her daughter could enter.

Chieko’s mouth was slightly ajar as if she had tried to say something before she drew her last breath and Kyoko bent over and gently closed it for her mother.

“Be at peace, mama,” she whispered. “I promise I will look for the tin box.”

All through the funeral preparations, her mother’s last words haunted Kyoko reminding her of the tin box she had mentioned with her dying breath. The force of those words grew stronger each day as if Chieko was there beside her urging her to go and look for it.

Chieko had left instructions that she was to be cremated and as the simple oak coffin was pushed into the furnace, Kyoko had to stuff a handkerchief into her mouth to stop the cries of anguish and denial as the flames leapt and crackled to finally reduce her mother’s body into a pile of ashes. Unable to bear the sight any longer, she slipped out of the funeral hall and ran all the way home, not stopping till she reached the beautiful wood panelled front door Chieko had been so proud of.

The airy tatami room that Chieko had slept in for the last thirty years looked exactly the same as she had left it, the futons neatly folded and piled up in the closet and her favorite yukata still hanging in its usual place behind the narrow standing mirror.

Kyoko had never really attached much importance to the picture of the emperor in its thick gold frame occupying pride of place above the small rosewood dressing table in her mother’s room. She saw it now as if for the first time and noticed how unapproachable the bespectacled emperor looked, as if he were guarding a deep mysterious secret. If Chieko did in fact have a secret she wanted to hide, she had indeed chosen a good guardian for it. The Emperor’s stern face certainly did not invite any unwelcome intruders.

Reluctant to invade the sanctuary guarded by the stern emperor, Kyoko stood, hesitating, in the middle of the room for a long moment but her mother’s persistent presence pushed her on. She told herself that it would turn out to be nothing but her poor mother’s delirious deathbed ramblings as she rushed across the room and lifted the heavy picture from its place.

Kyoko’s hands started to tremble violently as a deep dark roughly cut hole appeared before her just as her mother had said there would be. There was a crash and she realized that in the shock of her discovery, she had dropped the picture and it lay now at her foot in a glistening cluster of broken glass and splintered gold painted wood.

Mesmerized, Kyoko reached into the gaping hole and her hand came into contact with something cold, hard and metal. It was the old tin box her mother had urged her to find, covered in dust and rusting at the edges. She stared at it for a long time willing herself to shove it back into the hole and walk away. Her life was peaceful and orderly and she didn’t need any old family secrets or skeletons to mess it up.

But her fingers would not do her bidding and Kyoko knew that for better and for worse, her mother had drawn her into this secret and she could not escape. The tin had been tightly closed and left untouched for so many years that it did not open easily and it was only after a broken nail and several attempts with a pair of scissors that it finally flew open.

Inside the tin was a small bundle of papers tied together with a faded red string. Hardly able to contain herself now, Kyoko untied the red string that held the sheaf of old yellowing papers together and spread them on the floor. There was a letter which she placed aside to read later but it was the identity card with an old faded picture of her mother that caught her attention. She could not understand it but the ID card was issued in a place called Singapore in the year 1942, where was Singapore and what had her mother been doing there? Why had she never mentioned this place Singapore or spoken of having been there to her or anyone else before?

A faded photograph from the bundle of papers stared up at Kyoko, it was a picture of two couples posing with a little girl and an older boy smiling expectantly into the camera. When Kyoko held it to the light and peered closely at the picture, she realized with great shock that one of the couples were her parents. She had never met her father but she recognized that familiar face immediately because Chieko had shown her pictures of him and on a small table beside her futon, there was a tiny portrait of him in a silver photo frame. Kyoko had gazed so often at the framed picture of her father that she had his face imprinted in her mind. The little girl looked vaguely familiar but she could not place her and it was obvious even from the faded print of the old photograph how close the two couples and the children were. Kyoko’s head was buzzing with disquieting questions, who were the people in the photograph with her parents? If they were so close, why hadn’t her mother mention anything to her? Why had Chieko led her to these people only as she lay dying? What secret stories lay behind the six smiling faces in the photograph?

There were some tiny letters in a corner of the picture but they had been blurred and almost blotted out by a long forgotten drop of water and were difficult to read. After several attempts, Kyoko finally made out the words.

“Singapore March 27th 1945 The Day Before Departure,” she read slowly squinting at the water stained characters. They told her nothing except that on the 27th of March 1945, her parents had posed with these people in the picture before they left for a journey.

The mystery was deepening and Kyoko was disturbed by it. She wanted to run to her mother for answers to these questions that were slowly unsettling her world but Chieko had become nothing more than a pile of ashes in a marble urn, silenced forever. Kyoko realized with a heavy heart that it was up to her to put together the enormous puzzle of her life that her mother had started the night she died.