invited by an old schoolfriend whom she was anxious not to offend. It was my

father who supplied me with the details as we drove from the airport to his

house in the

 

Kamakura district. When we finally arrived, it was nearing the end of a sunny

autumn day,

 

'Did you eat on the plane?' my father asked. We were sitting on the tatami floor

of his tea-room.

 

'They gave me a light snack.'

 

'You must be hungry. We'll eat as soon as Kikuko arrives.'

 

My father was a formidable-looking man with a large stony jaw and furious black

eyebrows. I think now in retrospect that he much resembled Chou En-lai, although

he would not have cherished such a comparison, being particularly proud of the

pure samurai blood that ran in the family. His general presence was not one

which encouraged relaxed conversation; neither were things helped much by his

odd way of stating each remark as if it were the concluding one. In fact, as I

sat opposite him that afternoon, a boyhood memory came back to me of the time he

had struck me several times around the head for 'chattering like an old woman'.

Inevitably, our conversation since my arrival at the airport had been punctuated

by long pauses.