LITMIR.BIZ

      As you look at this arrangement, noting the ordinary names of Noe's children by Jun Tsuji and the extraordinary names of her offspring by Sakae Osugi, you will be startled by the amazing life force with which she continued to conceive almost without rest.

      Osugi had the greatest affection for his eldest daughter Mako, to whom he gave the strangest name of all his children—Mako meaning "Demon Child"—and he often mentioned her in his works. Even when Noe took her other children back to her hometown to give birth to another infant, Mako was the only one Osugi did not allow to go. And on those trips related to his work, he did not think it an inconvenience to take her along.

      Late in 1922 Osugi had himself smuggled out of the country, and disguised as a Chinese, he tried to participate secretly in the International Anarchist Conference in Berlin. Because he delivered a speech in Paris on May Day before proceeding to Berlin, his identity became known and he was arrested. He was sentenced to a three-week confinement in Paris's La Santé prison. In his record of that time, "My Escape from Japan," in which he described the whole episode, Osugi commented:

      No doubt by now they know about my arrest, thanks to the telegram sent by that newspaper. Adults will merely think I have finally done what I have been intending all along, but even though I have not spoken of my plan to any of my children, they must be worried about me, especially my eldest daughter Mako, for she would instinctively know my condition, despite the fact that she was not told. In my wife's letter the other day, she noted that when Muraki (Genjiro), who has been living in our home, was wrapping books to send to some prisoners, Mako said to him in a low voice, "Don't you have anything to send to Papa?" Since I disappeared after forcing her to spend a few days away from home in order to deceive her, Mako took it for granted that I was again in prison. And even when someone asked her, "Where is your papa?" she either remained silent, not answering at all, or smoothed everything over by talking about something else, but especially at night she speaks casually with her mother about the rumors concerning her father. I thought of sending her a telegram. I actually sat down at my table to try to jot down some simple sentences. But I could not come up with any wording cheap enough. The following strange items came from what I had tried to compose in various ways:

      Mako! Mako!

       Now Papa's

       At La Santé, Paris,

       A world-famous prison.

      But don't worry, Mako,

       For I'm eating delicious European food,

       Licking chocolate,

       Puffing cigars on a sofa.

      And so

       Thanks to this prison,

       Be joyful, Mako!

       Papa will soon return.

      So many souvenirs, too heavy in my bag,

       And cakes and kisses for my baby!

       Dance and wait!

       Wait, Mako! Mako!

      I spent the entire day loudly reciting these poemlike lines while walking around my cell. Strangely enough, even though I did not feel the least bit sad, large tears emerged from my eyes as I was reciting. My voice trembled, and the tears flowed incessantly.

      The passage suggests the figure of a devoted parent writing openly about the daughter he loves.

      The collection of Sakae Osugi's complete works, published two years after his and Noe's deaths, contains more photographs of Mako than anyone else. Since almost all the pictures serving as the frontispiece for the volume were snapshots of the day of Osugi's return from Paris on July 12, 1923, only two short months before his final days, Osugi is shown with Noe and Mako, who both came all the way to Kobe to welcome him. He appears totally worn from his travels, despite the bright look on his face, and Noe reveals a lifeless expression, her stomach swollen in just about her ninth month with Nestor, her third child in three years. Only the six-year-old Mako makes the big round eyes she inherited from her father glitter, and no matter which photograph she is in, she looks happy and intelligent.

      Mako's fashion was far too chic for those days. Her clothing was European, her hat stylish, and her hair cut in a pageboy bob. Photographs of her give the lively impression of a child in an intellectual urban family that delights in modernity. I realized that very cute little Mako was now almost fifty years old.

      It was just about noon when we arrived at the newspaper office. The building, which had escaped damage in the war, had excessively high ceilings, wide stairway landings, and sturdy wooden handrails painted to look like mahogany, all of which made me feel I was in an old-fashioned European manor house. The scene was much too perfect for meeting Mako, the illegitimate child of parents headed for one of the most dramatic fates of the Taisho era, the building itself having remained as it had been at that time. As I was exchanging greetings in the reception room with a few of the men on the newspaper staff, I sensed that someone was at the door, and I looked back just as a woman came quietly into the room.

      The face of the small middle-aged woman was fearlessly staring directly at me. Her long thick eyebrows and the remarkably large pupils in her eyes—with their double eyelids glittering as if burning near those eyebrows— pressed down on me with an intensity that suggested those eyes and brows were all the face contained. Her cheeks were hollow, and because all the lines were gathered into her short narrow chin, her face looked for a moment neat and heart-shaped. But I could easily overlay upon that face, so small it could be enclosed completely in both of her palms, the image of the cute little round-faced Mako, whose large button eyes and long eyelashes I remembered from the photographs.

      Her age was most apparent around her mouth, her teeth somewhat visible as a result, but the youthfulness that made it impossible for me to imagine that she was nearly fifty was not due to her small size only. Though her features at a glance had in them a trace of sadness, a sudden sign of gentleness, which forced the tight lines of her mouth to immediately soften, flickered in her eyes with a strong light that did not flinch as we exchanged looks, a friendliness and innocent shyness overflowing in ageless freshness in her eyes. Her rich black hair, her dark-blue woolen kimono closed tightly at her slender throat, and her long gray fur overcoat to protect her hands and legs from the cold finally came into view. An intense atmosphere radiated from the unshrinking glitter in her eyes, and the vitality of her small body had a freshness only an intellectual can possess.

      The moment before she arrived, I overheard one of the newspaper staff say, "Actually, Mako is notorious for hating to be interviewed. She's a plague to newspaper reporters. She doesn't want to talk about her parents at all, and she even turns away from NHK's microphones, telling them that she had no real connection with her parents. So to get anything out of her..." From the very start of my trip, I had no real intention of pumping Mako for various details, so I was moved merely to see before my eyes this fifty-year-old child of a pitiful fate. Mako was the same age as my elder sister, and Louise had been born the same year as me. This amounted to saying that these sisters and I were women who had tasted both the sweet and the bitter of life during the very same generation. When I thought about this fact, I felt in Mako a common, practical housewife of the world seen along any street, the practical wife of a practical man of the world, and I suddenly sensed some intimate attachment to her.

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