蝗之寓言 (Parable of the Grasshopper)

[ruth]

I know the story is unbelievable to natives of this world, but the idea of a person travelling across a dozen millitary dictatorships so non-nonchalantly has got me rolling.

Click to shrink...

"Look, there's absolutely no reason you can't do a backpacking trip if you want to. You just need to get really good at dodging bullets."

 

[Brainarius]

Minor correction: Singapore under Japanese occupation was called Syonan-To (light of the south) and that is likely the name that will be used ITTL. Wow this timeline sucks. Hopefully she can find a way to get back to our time.

 

[ruth]

第13章

The ablution has been done,
but not yet the offering:
all this the worshiper shall do
with the appearance of dignity.

I Ching (The Book of Changes)
䷓: Hexagram 20 (觀, Contemplation)

____________________________________​

When Simon finally spells it out, I don't know whether to jump for joy or scream in despair. All of my fears and doubts that I had convinced myself of a false reality are whisked away, replaced with the despair that I truly don't belong here, and that knowing doesn't give me any greater insight into how to escape this prison dimension. Even the thought that I might not be alone in this doesn't fortify me, but just fills me with a thin horror. There are no words I can squeeze through my throat, so I just nod to him, let him continue, hoping that maybe he'll know more than I do.

"I think, maybe…" he continues. "I think that there's something wrong with our history. Not just the usual suspects, the normal distorting to shit they do in the textbooks, but with what actually happened, like everything flipped on its side, or like the causes and effects don't line up," he points back at the physics book he set on the table, "or like we've all been on this ride with a pair of particles, and now that the two have collapsed into one, it's like the world has always been this way…even though it wasn't."

"Do you…" I begin, almost not believing that the words can cross my lips. After all that fruitless searching, have I found a confidant? A path back to the reality I know? "Do you remember? How the world was before?"

Just like that, my hopes are dashed right away by his answer. "It's not like that." He shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut, like he's trying to call something to mind, or maybe exorcise it away. "Not like a 'slider' or anything. It's more like…in these last few weeks, I looked at at my jukei [1] and my history books and my notes with fresh eyes. I knew everything I was reading—hell, I remembered how I'd taken down my notes—and yet I couldn't shake the feeling that none of it was right. I'd never felt like that before. At least," he says, eyes snapping back to meet mine. "not until I met you."

I thought I'd be relieved if someone noticed that nothing was right with this world. But hearing a native describe his struggle with accepting that what was written into history in this alternate universe could really have happened…somehow it almost feels worse. As if the absurdity of it all strains credibility, and yet every moment there's some other imposition from on high reminding you that it's all too real. "I—" I start, not even knowing what I can say to him, before I cut myself off with a sharp laugh. "I need another drink."

He laughs with me and waves to the bartender for another round, though even now, I think he doesn't understand the depth of his own insight, nor just how far his suspicion that we've experienced some kind of quantum universe intersection goes. "So," he says slowly, eyes lolling over to me, "how about you? Do you…remember?"

"I do... I mean, I think so." As much as I want it what my mind remembers to be the truth, I haven't fully exorcised the thought that that might be the delusion, and the world around me the true one. "I remember my life…before a few months ago. In a world where Japan lost the war against America, and the Pacific States didn't exist."

Simon's eyes go wide, like I've just deconstructed his world in a heartbeat and I guess I have, because in me he's found evidence to believe that the life he's led thus far is void of meaning, in the service of a universe that may never have existed. Or that somehow, despite all hope, in a universe that never existed, up until the day where it has existed all along. He shakes his head in disbelief, looking as sobered up as I feel. "So then, you're from…"

"A parallel universe?"

"It sounds absolutely cashy [2] when you put it that way," he smiles thinly. "But I think it might explain something. Something about meeting you disrupted what I knew about the world, like what happened wasn't supposed to happen…but it obviously did, because the two of us are sitting here, now, which would be impossible unless it did, right?"

"I don't know what to believe," I answer, suddenly weary of his shock now that I know that he's as much in the dark or more than I am. "I just want to go back home. But I don't know why I'm here, or how to get back. Or if I even can."

"You just showed up here one day, then? How?"

"I'd tell you if I knew for sure, but I don't know that either. I was coming back to San Francisco from Japan, and I got into this meditative state, and when I woke up the world was…different." I gesture out at the bar's décor. "Like it is now."

He leans back in his chair, heaving a sigh. "Shit, I'd say it's unbelievable…but I guess we're already in uncharted territory here." Sitting back up, he points towards me. "So, what are you gonna do?"

"Honestly?" I ask, shoulders slumping. "I have no idea. I've been trying to figure it out on my own, but nothing I've tried has gotten me anywhere so far, and the longer I go without any progress, the more I think that maybe I should give up."

He wags a finger and clicks his tongue. "That's where you're wrong. I may not remember the world you're talking about…but even if I don't know why, I know that somehow, it's real. That's more than you knew before. It might not be much, but at the very least, you aren't alone in this anymore."

____________________________________​

I'd been all ready to spurn the supernatural, to take Simon's explication of quantum entanglement and the intersection of universes as gospel. I've said before and I'll say it as many times as I need: I'm not anyone's idea of a spiritual person. So the thought, no matter how unlikely, that all this came down on me for no reason, that it wasn't laden with some kind of cosmic significance but that it was just the random oscillations of a quark that have me sitting here in another world—well, weirdly it was more comfortable than the alternative. Because the alternative was this great big numinous theodicy implying there's a reason for all this, some greater structure to the universe that's singled me out to get thoroughly boned by fate.

So it's not exactly a comfortable feeling when I wake up the next morning, with a nasty hangover and not nearly enough sleep, and the first thing that enters my mind among the heavy haze and the early-dawn light and the stinging incandescent desk-lamp light is that damn book on my table reminding me that for weeks, I've been following the recommendations of a spiritual canon—at every stage, when faced with a decision, I've let the I Ching guide the way, and it's brought me to accede to my mother's recommendation, to apply for the job at Nishimura Tandai, to set aside a search for escape in order to insinuate myself in this life, to meet and befriend Simon, to bring me to the point where I'd share my greatest secret with someone from another world. I can't tell if I should be angry with myself—whether for becoming this superstitious, or for being proven wrong by an unbroken chain of the supernatural encompassing my life with casual totality.

Don't think of me as an eager convert. If I felt like there were some other way I could explain what's happened, then I wouldn't be at this juncture, hand trembling as I reach out for the I Ching, worried that by taking this final step in abandoning my skepticism, I've abandoned some core of my identity, and in a sense committed myself to existence in this world not just in body and mind, but in spirit too. But what other choice do I have? It's not like I'm in any position to jump head-first into a particle accelerator, and anything else at this point is just indulging in a different kind of fantasy. So I take the book in my hands, flip the coins, let the old yang and yin lines transform where they may, and accept its sacred and unknowable divination.

Yin-yin-yin: earth below. Yin-yang-yang: wind above. Together they make up hexagram 20, "Contemplation":

The ablution has been done,
but not yet the offering:
all this the worshiper will do
with the appearance of dignity.

Heaven speaks nothing to us, reads the explanation, yet the four seasons go on as they always do, with an unfathomable, eternal rhythm, like the wind blowing across the earth, like one does with the rituals of good government and piety: this is the spiritual way. With the turning of the seasons, people have established a system dividing the days into those of labour, those of learning, those of peace, and those of observing the holy and the sacred, but as a manner of duty, without true insight or knowledge as to why. Following the spiritual way of heaven, thus, means helping others along a righteous path, and being trusted by them in return.

In other words: once again I'm better off not knowing, simply following, following, following, achieving action without thought and performing the rites allotted to my assimilated shadow aspect. That's where dignity lies, in the waiting room of fate, preparing myself for the next offering and never once wavering in resolve. Have I been too impatient, too ready to pitch a fit at the injustice of my destiny, however it might ultimately unfold? Is patience something other than the pliancy I've chided myself on? I sit with the thought for a few silent minutes, though it feels easily longer, the sun seeming to stand in place on the horizon, its first rays filtering into the room, but I'm struck by no revelations and eventually I give up meditating on it, and a few moments my alarm clock kicks in to remind me that I have another day of work to return to.

So much has changed in twenty-four hours—enough that I consider throwing caution to the wind and calling in sick—but I figure that once I get back, I can talk to Simon again and regroup, even if it means to simply each other on whatever progress we've made thinking through the issue in our own heads. Heaving my aching body up off the bed and towards the bathroom, I prepare myself for the day, stripping down, taking a quick shower, brushing my teeth, and putting on just enough makeup under my eyes so I don't get asked who punched my lights out. My guts and my head protest with each motion that brings me closer towards leaving, but eventually I will myself to down some coffee, a bit of omelette and rice, and pair up with my mother to the take the subway downtown to work.

As we're departing, she gives me a glance and raises an eyebrow. "Tough night?" she asks, though in a more judgment-free than I'd expected.

"I went out with some of my new coworkers," I explain, more or less forthrightly. "They don't really take 'no' for an answer."

"I hear you." She nods sympathetically, and now I feel a little bad, imagining my mother going through several decades of the same mandatory team-building at the hands of the morass of Japanized middle management. "Well, with any luck you won't need to do that so much longer, right?" she says, giving me a wink.

Fuck, Eijiro. I'd almost managed to forget about him for a night, and now my mother's sly, subtle dig has me feeling queasy all over again, a burrowing nerve that wraps me up once again in barbs and throat-catching fatalism, that no matter what I do or say, within a few weeks he'll be here to bring the life I knew to a swift, sharp, and brutal end. The routine of work does nothing to temper that feeling, and to top it off I can't find Simon in his office or in any of the classrooms.

At the end of the day, I do a couple rounds of the library, hoping I might find him in the same place that I ran into him the first time, but I've got no luck in the computer room either. Thoroughly deflated, I settle into a seat at one of the consoles, killing time by going back to my e-mail. To my surprise, there's a new message in my inbox from Yuka, though, I chide myself with a quick reminder, she's your best friend, Hannah, why wouldn't she be sending you regular unsolicited messages? But more than just a regular friendly catch-up e-mail, her byline names a time and a place, and an event whose purpose sends a chill lancing through me. "June 30th, 3 pm, Futayama Jinja, offerings for Nagoshi no Oharae! Come dressed this time!!!" she's written to me, like a helpful sticky-note reminder. I'm briefly thankful that Hirayama could be as much of a space cadet as me sometimes, but more than that…here the offering that my divination mentioned has been made as immediate and explicit as possible, a supernatural signpost highlighted in neon for my consumption, proof positive whether I like it or not that I'm a pawn in games of power far greater than I can ever know.

Whatever vague gestures at free will seem so distant from me now, so I hardly give it a thought as I send her a reply, telling her I'll be there—dressed, this time.

____________________________________​

And then days pass yet again, with a maddening lack of finality. After a moment where I let myself believe, breath held, that I'd finally made a breakthrough, what follows is a backsliding into the monotony of daily life that makes me panicked all over again that it was a flash in the pan. For one, Simon is nowhere to be found, and when I ask the administration what's happened to him, they simply tell me that he's on leave, without describing how or why or how long, to the point where I'm wondering if something terrible has happened, that he's been caught up in a dragnet of criminal suspicion for the kind of offhanded lèse-majesté I can totally see him doing. That kind of paranoia wracks my brain for useless hours, since I don't know whether my conversations with him—certainly not those about the insane possibility that some quantum fluctuation might have turned the world upside down—could get a police dispatch snooping around my own life. And then what? Get my diaries ransacked by the Kenpeitai, committed for insanity for putting this story to paper?

It's actually at this point that I start feeling some perverse relief from the weird spiritual run-around that Yuka has me caught up in, because I'm run ragged worrying about the ins and outs of picking the right yukata to meet her exacting standards and learning via osmosis the exact procession of rituals and traditions that we're supposed to partake in. Compared to the ominous rumblings in my heart that something awful has befallen Simon, or the insistent ticking of the clock closer to the day that Eijiro sweeps in and ends my search for freedom, the sheer volume of things that Yuka has planned out for us in the ramp-up to the holiday season—Nagoshi, then Tanabata scarcely a week later, and Obon the following—are a surprisingly effective distraction.

Not wanting to seem strangely uneducated about the minor holiday the two of us have apparently been sticking together on for a decade, I take to the library a couple times over the next few days. It earns me more information about the holiday itself—a midway mark in the year, observed as a way to purify oneself of the misdeeds of the first half of the year, and ask for blessings for the second half—as well as the location of Futayama Jinja, which sits atop a well-reforested Twin Peaks Park, replacing a heavily-touristed sightseeing spot with one of San Francisco's most spectacular monuments to State Shinto.

Before I know it, that's where I'm standing, done up to the nines in what I'm slowly catching onto as a forecast for my Tanabata début for the sake of my would-be boyfriend. Yuka cheers me on ahead as we shuffle up the long staircases in constricting, tight-wrapped yukata, periodically crossing sets of small torii gates until we reach the grand arcade immediately before the temple. A hundred of the small arches spit us out onto the highest point of the mountain, and a crowd of people—couples, old people, families with children, singletons alike—mills about the plaza. The centre is crowned with a chinowa grass wreath, and a priest waves worshipers through as they perform a series of loops through it to be ritually purified.

"Ready?" Yuka asks me, and I nod.

As we approach the priest and prepare for the ritual of purification, I can't help but notice the weight of the gazes of the people around me pressing down on me, making me feel more visible than ever in an outfit that—even in the heights of my awkwardly Japan-obsessive teenage years—I wouldn't ever have worn until I was thrust in the position of assuming my otherworldly twin's identity. A flowered, silver-ornamented updo, sunburst yukata, brilliant blue obi, tabi and sandals; it'd sure make for a good joke if everyone else around me weren't taking it dead serious.

And for a while, I thought that a performance like this had become normal, an expectation that anyone who had the skills and the knowledge to assimilate would do so, obliterating any hint of Old America and diving neck deep into kimonos and calligraphy. But after seeing my students, Simon and the other teachers, and how they've carved out their own culture in the ruins of the country that came before, I've been realizing that all along it's who I am in this world, the one who's taken compliance with the ruling class to the extreme among a world of sometimes-reluctant compatriots. Like, not to put too fine a point on it, but Hirayama's the kid they film in those weird North Korean parades chanting 'Death to America', not because she could never have known any different but maybe, just maybe, because she believed it.

So when the gruff-looking middle-aged Japanese man in his shōzoku [3] vestments steals a second glance at me while he shepherds a young couple through the giant wreath, it's maybe not because I'm an interloper, not because I'm transgressing onto his culture's sacred ground, or that I look ridiculous playing at being the Japanese woman I could never really become. Maybe instead, he looks at me done up to fit like a puzzle piece with the girl at my side, as a gaijin who's managed to turn out all sixes in living up to the Nadeshiko ideal, who's managed to turn what could easily be an intrusive, unwelcome blare into a song of harmony, and he thinks: well, she's one of the good ones. And this time I don't have Hirayama to blame, because the one he's looking at is me.

Well, fuck.

Mercy comes in the visage of Yuka, who motions to me to follow her, and drags my mind away from the brink of madness and forward into the spotlight. We walk up to the wreath crowning the walkway, bow before it, walk through and turn to the left, walk through and turn to the right, and walk through one last time, and finally, go forward to present ourselves at the haiden [4]. Now her eyes are on me, a little smile flashing across her lips, expectant as we approach the offertory to drop off a handful of coins and make our prayers known to the gods. At first I don't know just who I should be praying to—Adonai, or Amaterasu, or some divine Bodhisattva out of time and place, or even the farcical constructed 'protector of America' that this shrine is dedicated to, 米國土國魂大御神 [5], but then what I want is so simple, and someone's got to be right about their grand cosmology.

So I squeeze my eyes shut and address them all; if reading the patterns from an ancient Chinese classic can't bring me home, then these guys are my last line of defence against a future lived in a land not my own. All my skepticism of the divine is history, and I'm pretty much taking Pascal's wager by the horns and crossing my fingers. Whatever force out there greater than me, if you hear my prayers, whatever mountains you might have to move, whatever sacrifices you require of me, bring me the home that I remember, and I'll remember you.

"Think they hear us?" I lift my head, and Yuka's there giggling slightly like we're sharing an inside joke.

"God, I hope so," I tell her dryly, and laugh myself, because it's true—whatever it takes at this point, I'll need the supernatural on my side. "Hey, Yuka?"

"Yeah?"

I take a deep breath, or at least as deep as I can while this belt crushes everything between my boobs and my belly button down flat. Maybe Simon wasn't the only one who could tell? Maybe I wasn't as alone as I thought? "You ever feel like…something isn't right with the world? Like our reality…was turned sideways or something."

Yuka cocks her head in confusion. "What's gotten into you now, Hanna? Couple two many cracks at the old books of wisdom?" My shoulders slump in faded hope; it figures I couldn't be so lucky. Still, her arm wraps around me in reassurance. "Hey, don't get so caught up in that stuff, Hanchan. I know things are about to change with your guy showing up and crashing the party. It's natural to get antsy when it means your life might never be the same again." She pulls away, standing across from me and holding eye contact as she wags a finger. "But, you didn't pluck him out of a lineup for no reason. Hey, maybe things go crazy and plans change. Something tells me though, the two of you go off, make a home and a couple of kids, and you'll be thanking your lucky stars the day came when your life changed completely."

She smirks with satisfaction, like she's just schooled me on a life lesson. I've been here before, a world away, Kanako chiding me on my cynicism, and I would laugh and feel a twinge of comfort, because she would tell me all the things I wanted to hear, that the world was a sweeter and more tender thing than my polemics would have me believe. This time, though, there's a stewing fear, not that Yuka could be wrong, that not everything would be okay, but that she could be right. That five years from now, I could be a loyal housewife with a couple of children and a salaryman husband living in a comfortable sukiya-zukuri house, and every morning I'd broil a mackerel and serve it up with rice and miso soup every morning, beat out the futons, and lay out the tatami, and we'd go to Shinto shrines and Buddhist funerals, and I'd send off the kids to kindergarten do flower arranging or something to pass the time, and all in all we'd be good little Imperial subjects.

And the scariest part of imagining it isn't really the immediate horror this whole thought experiment strikes in me, though it's easy enough to summon up a heavy helping of disgust at the idea of it all. It's that, despite everything I've been through, and against every tenet of the beliefs in equality and justice I hold dear, that I could withstand it all, be debased before the heavy hand of the Empire, and still be happy. It would be easier, maybe, if I could push down the bile I feel for that, in case it really is my fate.

But like everything else in my new life, what happens now is out of my hands. I've said my prayers—now all I can do is wait.

____________________________________​

[1] From an abbreviation 授業計画 jugyō keikaku, "syllabus".

[2] From おかしい okashii, "funny/weird". In the San Francisco dialect, this has shifted in meaning to be closer to "crazy" (in the sense of unbelievable to the point of absurdity).

[3] A general term for the traditional dress of Shinto priests.

[4] The oratory of a Shinto shrine, where ceremonies are conducted and worshipers can pray.

[5] Ready for a little religion worldbuilding? Beikokudo no Kunitama no Ōmikami, 'Great Protector God of the American Realm', is a kunitama or protector deity of a specific region of land. The most worshiped of the 'new' kami of the Americas, if only because it's the one with the broadest geographic designation. Other smaller local kami—many loosely adapted from local Native American mythology—have been sanctioned for worship by the authorities; some of these are an (awkward) effort on the part of the Japanese to indigenize Shinto practice enough that Americans will feel it has some kind of connection to them, while others are the product of canny locals who figure that sanctifying a local mountain or lake will bring tourism, and money, to the area. Among others, a couple of the 'new' kami:

• 英佐初上仁大神 (Eisa no Shoshōni no Ōkami), god of Sawtooth Forest, Idaho, based on the Shoshone wolf spirit Esa
• 建夢義和湖神 (Kenmu no Giwa no Mizūmi Kami), god of Crater Lake (known as Giiwas in Klamath), Oregon and the neighbouring Mt. Mazama (魔樣山)
• 浄霊矢熊大神 (Jōrei no Yakima no Ōkami), god of Washington, based on Yakima purification/exorcism ritual.
• 助巃社寿多大神 (Sukeru no Shasuta no Ōkami), god of Mount Shasta, California, named after the Klamath sky god Skell.
• 國寿美奥大神 (Kokusu no Miwoku no Ōkami), god of the Bay Area, named after the Kuksu religion of the local Miwok.

Because of the natural beauty of many of these locations, their shrines are a local fixture, and visiting them and buying fortune or longevity charms for your coworkers makes for a socially-acceptable way of vacationing without seeming like you're slacking off in your duties. Maybe we'll hear about some of these other guys sometime…!