The shape of 五 delights me: hard and square like a gem, sitting on a pedestal like a monument. In my mind, the Arabic numeral 5 is sky blue, but 五 and its Chinese-derived reading, “go” (which is used when it stands alone as a number) are somewhere between jade and swamp green.
I have to resist the temptation to deepen and lengthen the vowel in “go”; unlike “kyū” (九, “nine”) and “jū” (十, “ten”), this word isn't meant to be lingered over. But I can spend as long as I like looking at the kanji.
*****
“Laura,” my father said from the front seat of the car, “why is five your favourite number?”
It was the first time either parent had spoken on this particular drive home from my grandparents’ house, which meant the visit must not have gone all that badly.
I stopped humming, which I'd been doing to keep from throwing up, and thought for a moment. “I don't know,” I said.
My father didn't say anything else, and I never knew what prompted him to ask that question. As an adult it occurred to me that if I was feeling carsick, we were probably on U.S. Route 250. Maybe that number – five fives with a zero, enough to scratch the itch if the exact number 5 wasn't available – reminded him of my insistence on doing everything in fives. Maybe he even felt that same attachment to 5 himself.
Maybe that's why he always took 250, even though I wouldn't have thrown up on Interstate 79.
*****
Before I started learning Japanese, I'd studied Russian and Ukrainian. The first thing I learned to count in Japanese was money. When I learned that to say “100 yen” you simply said the word for “100” and the word for “yen,” no faffing about putting the noun into a different case, I felt a sense of cruelly misguided relief.
Then I learned about counter words. It turns out that only measurement units, like money and time, can be counted in the straightforward way I'd learnt. For everything else, the word you use for the number depends on what you're counting. If you want to say “five people,” the word for “five” isn't simply “go,” but “gonin” (五人). For five things (of unspecified type), it's “itsutsu” (五つ; the native Japanese reading of 五, “itsu,” is used here). For five books, it's “gosatsu” (五冊). For five squirrels, it's “gohiki” (五匹) and for five cows, it's “goto” (五頭). In short, the act of numbering a thing can't be separated from its nature.
Sometimes I wonder if this makes it harder to reduce things, or people, to cold quantities. Does “The bombing of Iran has killed 1,255 people” sound different if the number itself forces you to remember the victims’ humanity?
Maybe not. Japan once fought its share of wars.
*****
Before the numeral 5 became an ally to search for on the battleground of subtraction worksheets, before I even started proper school, I was attracted by the quincunx. The arrangement of five dots seen on dice seemed reassuringly complete and somehow friendly. It was another 30 years before I learned it was called a quincunx, or that it had symbolic or mystical meanings in various cultures. (I first read about this in W.G. Sebald's book The Rings of Saturn; then, following Sebald's lead, I read The Garden of Cyrus by Thomas Browne. I felt very smart when reading both books, but no longer remember much about either.)
It was tempting to think that kindergarten-aged me had tapped into primordial wisdom. I'd been encouraged to think of myself as precocious, and that idea had become a refuge: if I had to be strange, at least I could be special. But now, I find it more inspiring to think that I had the same ordinary response to a pleasing pattern as many other people in many other times and places. The true meaning of the quincunx is what humans have chosen to make of it.
*****
On bad depression days, I sometimes tell myself: Just do five things. Listen to a new song, write a kanji, clean the birdbath, do some laundry … sometimes brushing my teeth is the fifth thing.
Why five? I don't know. It feels right. It's a box I can be comfortable in the centre of. A group of five can be close enough to be companions, but spaced enough to form a pattern where I belong.
*****
One of my favourite Fukuyama Masaharu albums is called 5年モノ (Gonen Mono), which basically means “things from the last five years.” The fifth song on it is それがすべてさ (Sorega Subetesa), meaning “That's all there is to it.”
In Japan it's common for a pop song to make its debut in an advert, and as you might have guessed, this one was originally used to advertise Pocari Sweat.
The lyrics aren't what you might expect from a song promoting a sports drink, but then again, Pocari Sweat was originally developed for people dehydrated by illness.
You're smiling, but you're crying.
You're putting on a brave face, but you're hurting.
You're not broken, but you're on the verge of collapsing.
You're moving, but you're on the verge of stopping.
But even though you're anxious, you're fighting.
You're lonely, but you're free.
Yes, you're beautiful!
Yes, I love you! …
Let's get started!
You have to start walking
It's all about feeling
That's all there is to it!
Thanks, Masha. I'll take it five steps at a time.