Frog

What caused a welter of feelings was learning that Pingdu Garrison Commander Sugitani during Japan’s invasion of China was your father. Because of that, you represented your deceased father by apologising for his offences to my aunt, my family, and the people of my hometown. Your attitude in facing up to history and assuming responsibility for certain actions moved us deeply. Apparently, you too were a victim of the war. In your letter you wrote about how you and your mother suffered fearful pangs of anxiety throughout the war and debilitating cold and hunger when it was over. If you want the truth, your father was a victim too. As you have said, if there had been no war, he would have been a surgeon with a brilliant future. The war changed all that; his life and his nature would never be the same again. A one-time saver of lives, he became a taker of lives.

I read your letter to my aunt, to my father, and to many of the people here who lived through the war. They reacted emotionally, even tearfully. You were no more than four or five years old when your father was the Pingdu Garrison Commander, and you are not culpable for his crimes. But you shouldered his crimes and demonstrated a willingness to expiate them for him. By doing so, you have endeared yourself to us, for we know how precious that sort of attitude is. It is an attitude too seldom seen in today’s world. If all people could reflect on history and on their own lives, mankind would not display so much idiotic behaviour.

My aunt, my father, and my fellow townspeople are eager to welcome you again as a guest to Northeast Gaomi Township. My aunt would like to accompany you on a visit to Pingdu city. She took me aside to tell me that she harbours no ill will towards your father. There is no denying that there were many cruel, vicious, and ill-mannered Japanese officers who participated in the invasion of China, the sort we see in movies about the war, but there were also cultured officers, like your father, who treated people with courtesy. My aunt judged your father this way: He was far from the worst of the lot.

I returned to Gaomi in June, more than a month ago. While here I’ve done a bit of research for the play I plan to write, focusing on my aunt. I’ve also continued relating the story of Gugu’s life in letter form, as you asked me to do, and, as you requested, included in those letters as many of my own experiences as possible.