5

As Patron had said, Ikuo had one concrete proposal regarding a job for Kizu as they prepared to move the church to Shikoku. While rushing here and there, laying the groundwork for the move, Ikuo discovered that the art supply firm that had sponsored the contest he'd entered when he was a child, the contest for which he'd made his complex plastic model, still had an office and store in the heart of Tokyo. With Kizu a specialist in art education, and this company having pioneered a market in Tokyo, Ikuo came up with a plan for having the company provide art supplies to Kizu, who would then open a model art school for children in Shikoku.

Legally, the buildings the church was to occupy belonged to the Kansai headquarters. The village where these buildings were located had merged with other communities to become a town, and the people from the Kansai headquarters in charge of the buildings met with officials from the town to discuss the transfer. With the outstanding way the Kansai church had main- tained the buildings, plus the fact that the elderly woman supervising their upkeep was from an old established family in the area, the two sides soon reached an official agreement allowing Patron's church to use the buildings as its base of operations.

Memories of the troubles with Aum Shinrikyo around its satyan at the base of Mount Fuji were still fresh in people's minds, however. The local people also couldn't forget that the buildings had originally belonged to another religious organization, which had started there and then dis- banded, causing a huge uproar. Even with the agreement, then, Patron's people had to prepare themselves, once they actually began moving in, for possible resistance from the townspeople. As one way of smoothing the path, Ikuo proposed holding concerts of Morio's music and having Kizu teach art classes.

Kizu found out the address of the art supply company and set off for the Ginza. The first and second floors of the building were a spacious gal- lery; the atmosphere of the place was unlike any stationery shop or art supply store you'd normally find in Japan, and to Kizu it felt like the kind of super- market you'd find in a college town in the United States. He stood there for a while, nostalgically taking in the scene. He noticed some American women among the customers, residents of Tokyo. In one corner near the watercolor paper and painting supplies he saw a rheumatic-looking woman sitting on the floor, legs to one side, checking out various types of sketchbooks; for a moment Kizu was struck by the illusion that she was someone he knew in New Jersey.

Among the Japanese customers were everyone from stylish-looking pri- vate junior high students, with their mothers, to younger children, all leisurely enjoying the paintings on exhibition. Kizu found them totally different from the students he'd taught in Japan some thirty years before. They were so ob- viously affluent and, even if you brushed close to them, they showed no in- terest in others around them.

The American general manager was still quite young; he said he'd first come to Japan as a Mormon missionary. Not to imply, he went on, that he was solely a Japanophile; he was interested in developing markets in China, too, and was studying Mandarin. He was a pleasant, serious young man, and since Kizu was well-known in art education circles, he said that as long as the head office gave the okay he could supply, free of charge, the twenty watercolor sets Kizu wanted, each with over a hundred colors, as well as a hundred inexpensive sketchbooks for children. He promised to ship these to Kizu's new address in Shikoku.

When they'd reached this stage, Kizu felt a bit anxious. He'd already explained that he belonged to a new religious organization, soon to be estab- lished in the countryside, and was planning to hold art classes for the local children. But as he listened to Kizu, the manager seemed blasé.

"Believe me," Kizu said, "I'm not trying to use these painting sets and sketchbooks as inducements to convert new followers."

The manager wasn't perturbed.

"I take the subway to work that was gassed with sarin gas," he said, "and I'm pretty interested in these new Japanese religions. As long as the church you belong to isn't like some fundamentalist sect in the States where every- one commits mass suicide with their leader, I don't see how it could be nega- tive publicity for my company. But even with things like this sarin gas attack, don't you think that in general Japanese aren't very religious? When I was doing Mormon missionary work I already had that impression. Our company aims its goods at the children of well-heeled urban families. But I want to branch out beyond that. That's why I like your idea of opening an art school for children in the countryside."

They exchanged a firm handshake, something Kizu experienced rarely in Japan, and said goodbye, and Kizu strolled off toward the Ginza subway station-also something he hadn't done in a while-pleasantly anticipating his new art school. The children he'd teach probably had never seen such paints, and when he went through the names of the colors with them this simple process would be a real education about the world around them. The countryside they'd be moving to was near the central mountain range in Shikoku, and as the children looked at the changing seasons in the forest, giving the name of a particular color to what they saw and then reproducing the scene on paper, their awareness of the forest that surrounded them would be transformed. They'd come to know and grasp the world in a way they'd never experienced before.

Kizu realized that his life as an art instructor, which had begun in a high school in the countryside near a forest, was now about to end in a similar way, opening an art class in a place surrounded by a deep forest, albeit a place he'd yet to lay eyes on. He was deeply moved that his life was coming full circle.

Together with a strangely calm sense of fulfillment, he found himself in high spirits as he accepted the fact that he was about to be thrust into a life that promised some startling twists and turns. As long as cancer didn't floor him, he knew he could make it.

Kizu's subway car passed one of the stations that had been attacked with sarin gas.

6

With the scheduled move to the buildings in the forests of Shikoku fast approaching, the one urgent personal matter that Kizu had to solve was the question of finding a replacement in Shikoku for the doctor who had taken on the responsibility of overseeing his own self-centered way of dealing with his cancer. This was Kizu's one concern about leaving Tokyo for good. Com- pletely at a loss as to what he should do, he went again to the clinic in Akasaka.

Kizu hadn't mentioned it before, but now he told his doctor how he had no intention of returning to his university in the United States, and would be moving to the forests of Shikoku as a member of a church; the doctor seemed surprised to hear this but didn't ask any questions. He seemed to be weigh- ing the connection between the new signs of cancer and Kizu's dramatic lifestyle changes. Done with that, he questioned Kizu in detail about practi- cal matters such as the distance between this village in the woods and the nearest city hospital, the conditions of the nearest clinic, and so on. But Kizu hadn't gathered any such information. Hard put to reply, he told him there would be one doctor, a Dr. Koga, among the followers, who'd all be living a communal life. "I'm not sure if he's still practicing," Kizu added, "but he's fairly well known."

"Kanau Koga?" said his doctor. "He is indeed a well-known clinician.

Of course he's still practicing medicine. If he's going to quit his practice and move, it'll be a blow to whatever hospital he's been working for. You're very lucky to have him with you."