I don't leave the house as often as I used to, but on Wednesday afternoons I'm driven out by the noise of the gardeners. I usually end up in a local coffeeshop, and often bring my kanji book and fude pen to practice calligraphy.
For me, writing kanji is all about the process: the order of strokes, the methodical building of a structure that will house a concept. Since my breakdown, it's been one of my few reliable refuges. In a cafe, though, it can feel like a performance, and I wonder if people think I've set my table up for Instagram.
One Wednesday my ear caught some familiar syllables, and I realised the two people at the next table were speaking Japanese. I resisted the urge to approach them. They didn't have to make space for me just because I was learning their language, and these aren't good times to let strangers know you've clocked them as foreign.
Then one of them noticed I was writing kanji and beckoned me over. 45 minutes later, I had their life stories, their phone numbers and an invitation to the sushi restaurant one of them owned.
One of my new friends was reading a Japanese translation of Hamilton Fish's FDR: The Other Side of the Coin. This book, he explained, made plain it was America's fault, not Japan's, that the two countries went to war in 1941. I thought America had little to be proud of in that war, but that it was hard to get past the fact Japan had bombed Pearl Harbour.
Never mind. History, like other weapons, can be put down.
When I went to the sushi restaurant (for one of the best meals I've ever eaten), I brought him the shodo at the top of this page. I was relieved when he could read it: “Heiwa. Peace.”
*****
For years I said I'd join the Quakers if only they weren't opposed to just war. When the appeal of just war wore thin, I said I'd join if only they weren't teetotal. After I lost a friend to alcoholism, I said I'd join if only they had music. Then I came out as bisexual to my church and the choir master's wife tried to have me thrown off a committee. After that I decided I might as well try my local Friends meeting.
At my first meeting I wept. The silence was like nothing else I'd experienced; it was a silence I could feel. And then I heard the Holy Spirit say, “Welcome home.”
After my second meeting, we rearranged the benches for group's regular discussion session. Someone suggested that as a newcomer, I should go first. “Just talk about anything that's been on your mind.”
I said I was signed off from work with depression caused by witnessing transphobia and being harassed for my trans allyship.
A man responded by telling me his thoughts on the “trans issue.” It was important for me to remember, he said, that women's safety and women's spaces were important too.
“Trans women have never been a threat to me,” I said, “and I don't care about women's spaces. Women's spaces were created because it was easier to segregate women than get men to behave themselves. I want to be safe in all spaces.”
“Well, my wife feels differently,” he said.
During my third meeting, a woman stood up to speak. She worked for an Anglican church, she said tearfully, and they'd been broken into earlier that week. Could we pray for their staff?
At the end of the hour we were invited to contribute any final thoughts. I stood up and said, “Of course I prayed for you and everyone affected by that awful situation. But I also felt called to pray for the people who broke in. I don't know what's happening in their lives or why they've ended up breaking into churches to steal petty cash, but they also need to be held in the light.”
There was a silence rather different from what had gone before, then someone said hurriedly to the woman, “But just to say again, we do really feel for you.”
When we were having tea afterward someone said to me, “I suppose you're right that we should see the other side too.”
“I don't think there are sides,” I said.
Another silence.
A few days later, someone broke into the meeting house. I didn't go back after that. They might have thought I was a spy in their camp.
*****
My favourite pop star and actor, Fukuyama Masaharu, comes from Nagasaki. Both his parents survived the atomic bombing as small children, although he didn't discuss this publicly until his fame was well-established. His song Kusunoki (Camphor Tree) is about the 500-year-old trees at the city's Sannō Shrine. They were burnt black in the bombing, and people thought they had died. But the next spring, they put out new leaves, becoming a powerful symbol of hope.
The trees also brought the teenage Fukuyama comfort when his father was dying of cancer. After visiting him in hospital, he would go to the shrine and spend time beneath the trees, feeling they were watching over him.
Kusunoki was originally recorded for Fukuyama's 2014 album Human, and this sparse version with piano, voice and guitar is still my favourite.
But it was re-recorded in a choral version for the 80th anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing. Proceeds from the song go to the Nagasaki Kusunoki Project, which preserves and promotes the appreciation of hibakujumoku (atomic-bombed trees) throughout the city.
A lovely English-language documentary from NHK World Japan explores the story behind the song and the meaning that the hibakujumoku have for Japanese people today.
I have a tattoo on my left forearm with a camphor tree and a line from the song meaning: “My soul will never be taken away.” It reminds me that peace is found growing in burnt-out places.