"My dear brother Antonio... for the first time on this journey, I've sat down to write a letter." "I sincerely hope that these words will be of a greater exactness... than the hundreds of photographic plates I've made." "It is the first time I put greater faith in a few paltry words on paper... than in the veracity of images fixed by acid and chemicals." "Where to begin?" "I sold my camera back in Port Said." "I'd had enough of travelling with a piece of glass before my eyes." "It took my steamer six weeks to trudge its way to Nagasaki." "My departure was sudden... but you won't be surprised to hear I've returned here." "As usual, Nagasaki was melting under a stifling blanket of wet heat." "With the sun at its height even the leaves on the trees seemed reluctant to move." "Of course, it was O-Kiku that I hoped to find." "I crossed the city, sweat pouring under my heavy coat." "I followed the river and counted the bridges." "I found our old house, hidden away in the foliage at the foot of the hills." "Felice-san...!" "What a surprise to see you again!" "Welcome back!" "O-Take, say hello to Felice-sen." "Don't be so shy, welcome the stranger." "I'd like to go upstairs." "But that's impossible!" "You should have announced your visit, I could have aired the house." "But, you are still wearing your shoes!" "Look O-Take, Felice-sen is still wearing his shoes." "I hope everything in the house has been left as it was?" "You've been gone such a long time..." "We wondered where you were." "I imagined that O-Kiku was still here." "That she would laugh at the sweat on my forehead... and pour me a glass of tea, as though nothing had happened." "As though I had never left." "Please, Felice-san, don't enter the house." "Why?" "Has something changed?" "You must let me make you some tea first." "No." "I'm going in." "O-Kiku had left." "I realise how foolish it was to think she would still be here." "O-Kiku had everything removed." "Except the screen." "She gave it to us." "My husband can put it back, if you wish." "No, it's fine." "I understand." "We are not related." "We could not forbid her to do as she liked, please understand." "Come, O-Take." "Please excuse my disturbing you!" "I'll prepare you a bath." "I can go to the bathhouse." "Please don't go to any trouble." "Felice-sen, I cannot let you go to the bathhouse!" "We have a bath of our own." "Well, thank you." "Come O-Take, help mother prepare Felice-saws bath." "No." "Put it down." "Give it back!" "Give it back!" "Mamma!" "Mamma!" "Really, did you have to scare the child so?" "O-Kiku is gone." "She didn't wait for your return." "She said: "Felice Felice is gone." "He won't come back."" "My husband told her:" ""How can you know?"" "She said: "I know." That's what she said: "I know."" "Someone like you deserved a better wife." "But you should have known." "Her father is a fisherman." "No good could ever possibly come of that." "She gave everything away, everything in the house, I tell you." "She could have sold it for you..." "But no, she had to give it away." "She wouldn't take a cent for it!" "Let my husband find another woman for you, one that can cook." "A man cannot live alone." "O-Kiku..." "Where is O-Kiku?" "Where is O-Kiku?" "Where did she go?" "Tell me where she is." "O-Kiku..." "left." "She left us nothing but the screen." "Really, it's all she left behind." "She must have gone home, back to her parents." "My husband brought her to Moji." "He simply could not accompany her any further." "She crossed the channel by herself." "I'm sorry." "Moji, the first large station on the 1000 miles of road... between Nagasaki and Tokyo." "The dusty road, etched into my memory plate by plate... the road O-Kiku and I had so often taken." "She might be in any inn, any tea house... or, I hardly dared to think, in any brothel..." "I had to find O-Kiku." "She'd be lost without me in this huge, pitiless country." "I had to find O-Kiku, but where?" "I had resolved to travel slowly." "I only rarely took rickshaws." "Travelling by foot, I looked like a poor pilgrim." "The children ran after me down the road." "I paid them no heed." "I'm looking for O-Kiku, I told myself." "Who could possibly understand?" "Please excuse my disturbing you, sir!" "You had ordered some sake?" "Shall I pour your saké?" "Perhaps you would like the company of a geisha, sir?" "Oh no, don't go to any trouble..." "I thought, since you are here all alone... perhaps I might pour your saké?" "Don't you still make photographs?" "You have no luggage." "Didn't you use to make photographs?" "No." "I no longer make photographs." "Those were made long ago." "Have you... ever had your photograph taken?" "You, Felice-sen!" "You took my photo." "In front of the inn... with two guests, and you took one of me alone... standing in front of the inn." "You photographed the harbour, the ships, us." "You were so very famous, everyone wanted to see you at work!" "Once, you even hired someone to chase us off... but everybody came right back and crowded in front of your camera!" "You were forever getting angry at us." "But that was a long time ago." "You must have forgotten." "Was I alone?" "I don't believe you were ever alone here." "No..." "O-Kiku was just like a girl friend." "She helped us cut the vegetables... and she used to always get your sake herself." "O-Kiku never let herself be sewed." "By no-one." ""I can do it myself", she would say." ""I'm one of you", she always said." "We used to laugh." "After all, O-Kiku was married to you." "We loved to hear her stories." "You took her everywhere." "She'd travelled so much and seen so much." "She liked to travel?" "O-Kiku?" "You were very good to her." "That's what she always said:" ""Felice Felice is very good to me."" "Typhoon!" "A typhoon's coming!" "Close the shutters!" "A typhoon!" "Shall I not close your shutters?" "No, thank you." "I like the wind." "Will I ever be able to forget the day I spent... at that ragged bit of beach at Onomichi?" "I used my last plate to photograph a couple of girls." "Then I looked up from the camera and saw O-Kiku." "But O-Kiku wasn't in the photograph." "I only noticed it after I'd developed the plates." "I'd overlooked her." "Plainly and simply overlooked her." "How often that photo has come to life in my dreams... for only a fraction of a moment... just long enough for O-Kiku to wander into view." "Excuse me." "The wind is a poor friend to love, they say in Japan." "From the very day I took in O-Kiku... a strange, erratic wind began blowing in my head." "I travelled the road to Onomichi in a great, silent void." "I didn't speak with anyone." "No-one spoke to me." "Sometimes the farmers would give me some fruit." "I thanked them like a deaf-mute." "I could let them think I didn't speak their language." "Their gossip was sympathetic enough." "They laughed about the gaijin who'd walk rather than hire a rickshaw... that would rather be silent than speak." "And in that emptiness, I tried to forget O-Kiku." "I avoided the inns where we used to spend the night." "I avoided the well-known paths, everything that reminded me of her." "And yet, she never left my thoughts." "Walking is a peculiar way of thinking, Antonio." "It exhausted me." "I don't see why you keep on feeding me." "Because you pay for it!" "The innkeepster is my niece." "You can have all of it." "It would be a good thing if you remained sick for a while." "My stomach is prospering." "My niece complains... that she doesn't want any dead foreigners in her establishment." "The police have already come around asking why you haven't registered." "I said: "He is deathly ill." "He'll come as soon as he's able."" "They said: "A dead foreigner is just a pain in the neck."" ""Send him on his way."" "I said: "if he leaves now..."" ""he'll never reach the border of this prefecture alive."" ""Then you'll certainly have a dead foreigner on your hands!"" "If you die you'll cause a lot of people a lot of trouble." "No-one will be happy in the least." "Thank you so very much..." "I shall postpone my death a while." "Ah!" "What beautiful Japanese!" "I always thought that our language wouldn't fit the mouth of a foreigner." "You are a miracle!" "How did you learn to speak Japanese like that?" "From a woman." "I finally dropped in an inn in Onomichi, like a sick animal in its tracks." "I wasn't waiting to be rescued." "It was all over." "I was prepared to die." "I didn't mind losing myself for good in this foreign place... with its inaccessible inhabitants." "They're yours." "Mine?" "They are a gift." "Would you like to know what they are?" "Memories." "Of long-lost things." "Things that vanished like spirits from a bottle." "And you are giving them to me?" "I want to forget them." "But I'm only an old fisherman." "It's for your kindness." "I'll come get them at the appropriate time." "I'll leave them here with you for the moment." "Ah, you've gotten up!" "Yes, at last." "You're late today." "I had to get past the maids." "They want me to make you leave." "No-one is looking for shellfish?" "It's not the season." "Besides, there are hardly any shellfish left here." "They've retreated." "Just like the fish." "Can that happen so suddenly?" "Yes, every bit of coast has its good and bad times." "Now it's bad here." "They have to go further and further out to fish." "That's a catastrophe for people here, isn't it?" "Life is as it is." "Do you also go so far out to sea, Matsukichi-san?" "No, I'm too old for that now." "At my age, you only go to sea to die." "You take a boat too far out to sea, you step out of it and the waves take you." "Felice-sen..." "I want to tell you a story." "Shall I send for some saké?" "I can tell you my story without saké." "It all happened long ago, the saké would only muddy the waters." "I'm old now." "Once, I was young and stupid." "I used to live close by here." "I was married to a good woman, whom it was not difficult to love." "But she was weak." "She gave me three daughters." "All still-born." "At each birth, I thought: she'll die, too." "She was simply too weak to bring children into the world... you understand, Felice-sen, too weak." "For ten years, I didn't sleep with her." "I feared that another child would be the death of her." "What else could I do?" "But for a fisherman, it's intolerable to die without a son." "Then you're no-one at all." "How could I hold up my head in the village?" "How could I go to the market with my catch?" "So I brought the fish to a market in another village." "And I began staying out longer and longer." "Sometimes, I didn't return for days." ""Why?", she once asked me." ""Why don't I ever see you anymore?"" ""Make love to me and I'll give you a son."" "I beat her bloody." "But you loved her." "Yes, because I loved her." "At last, I slept with her." "For nine whole months, she said it would be a healthy son." "She died in childbirth." "Peacefully, without pain." "It was a son?" "A daughter!" "When she was old enough to be married, I told her the story of her biflh." "I wanted her to understand my sadness." "What a disgraceful father she had..." "Perhaps I wanted her to know why I was afraid of her eyes." "She had beautiful eyes, Felice-san..." "After I told her about her mother's death... she swore that she'd stay with me forever." "That she would never leave me." "She said she would always stay and take care of me." "It was not difficult to love her, Felice-sen." "She didn't keep her word?" "Life is as it is." "She married and never returned." "Maybe she feared my anger... because I refused to meet her husband." "But I felt no anger at all." "I accepted the money for her marriage, that says enough." "If she wanted to be that man's wife, then that was her place." "What use is an ageing father?" "That is how I saw the thing." "How things turned out for her..." "I hope she's not unhappy." "The old man went out in his boat." "It came back empty." "He must have drowned." "Yes." "Matsukichi-san chose his own way." "The old man was O-Kiku's father." "It can't be true." "The old man was O-Kiku's father." "It hurt him that you didn't recognise him." "When will you be leaving?" "Today?" "Today." "Be assured." "In Onomichi I found O-Kiku's father." "He told me about her." "She has never been closer to me." "He could have convinced me that she loved me." "It gave me courage to continue travelling." "Yes, don't move!" "That's right!" "Cheese!" "Oh, madam, please!" "I asked you not to move!" "For a photograph one must remain still!" "We must hurry, the sun will soon be out." "I'm sorry that you have to wait, Master." "However strange it may sound, the sun is our greatest enemy." "I visited our good friend Ueno." "He now has a studio in Hakone, at the foot of Mount Fuji." "Everyone wants to have their portrait made... with the holy mountain in the background." "It's made him a man of means." "Who'd have thought: our old pupil, who couldn't tell the chemicals apart!" "Very good, just on time." "Anyone want to be photographed in front of the real mountain?" "Oh no, nobody." "This one is much prettier." "Mount Fuji is covered with clouds most of the year." "The contours of this one are much sharper." "Don't you think?" "Master..." "In America and France... they're working on making a camera for taking living pictures." "I read about it in a journal." "Soon we'll be able to photograph life itself." "In our photographs everything will move... even the leaves on the trees." "Our photographs will lose their silence." "That will be the end of our profession." "Master, after so many years..." "I thought you'd forgotten Ueno." "No, Ueno, I hadn't forgotten." "But I was gone from Japan for many years." "You are travelling?" "Alone?" "Yes." "Alone." "That's why I'm here." "I'm looking for O-Kiku." "I lost track of her during my absence." "Maybe you know where I can find her." "O-Kiku was a proud person." "She wouldn't take anything from me... because you were my Master." "She said that she'd left you and thus had no right to my help." "So she was here?" "No, that was in Yokohama." "One day I saw her in the street." "I asked her if you were in Yokohama, too." "It took me a long time to persuade her to come with me to the studio." "I told her a woman would be lost without a husband." "That she'd end up an old vagrant..." "Or a servant in a brothel." "Perhaps that was going too far." "Please forgive me." "In Yokohama..." "O-Kiku left this." "She said: "if you see the Master, give him this." "I shouldn't have taken it."" ""Felice Felice will miss it."" "My album..." "Yes, geishas and prostitutes, your models." "Did you make a portrait of O-Kiku?" "She wouldn't let anyone take her picture." "No, there is no photograph of O-Kiku." "If only I had living photographs of her, she'd be with me forever." "The future is always too late, Ueno." "It's getting harder and harder to remember O-Kiku's face." "Every day I have to dig deeper into my memory." "I wonder if the image I have of her now is anything like what she was." "Her face is no more than a vague smudge... but I can still hear her voice clearly." "The way she said "Felice..." "Felice...", as only she did..." "Do you remember how I taught her to say my name?" "She turned the words over on her tongue carefully... like someone trying a spicy dish:" ""Felice..." "Felice..."" "Always twice." "As though she didn't quite trust the first one on its own." "And even if I asked her to say "Felice"... she stuck to her fashion of saying it twice." "Why didn't you take her into your house?" "I always thought you secretly loved her." "You were the same age." "I haven't seen any woman here." "Is it because of O-Kiku?" "Aren't you obliged to answer your Master honestly?" "O-Kiku... respected you." "There was no one she respected more." "Why wasn't it enough?" "You wanted..." "What did I want?" "What you wanted..." "I don't know." "Maybe you wanted something that was impossible for her like wanting photographs to move." "You killed something in her." "It caused her enormous sorrow." "I know..." "I'm a selfish Westerner... a foreigner who understands nothing, a barbarian." "One can serve a foreigner, but not love him." "You Japanese do only as you want." "It's a national disease." "Why?" "Why couldn't she just love me, as a wife?" "She loved you." "Anyone could see that." "But it was you who left her." "I sent her money, regularly." "I kept my obligations." "You left O-Kiku alone in Nagasaki... where she had no relatives... and didn't know a soul." "You left her... without even a word." "Did O-Kiku..." "Did O-Kiku tell you that?" "No." "She didn't say anything." "She never answered me, no matter what I asked." "Yes." "Keeping her mouth shut, that she was good at." "If I say anything more..." "I will certainly overstep the boundary between Master and pupil." "I'm sorry... but I'd rather you left." "Too much... has been said already." "I've taken far too much liberty." "Please excuse me." "Antonio, Ueno sends his warm regards." "We can be proud of him." "He has become a real businessman." "O-Kiku didn't like Yokohama." "She hated the bowler hats and black shoes under grey Kimonos... hated the seamen and the brothels, the bright kimonos of the whores... their silent gaze from behind the grilled windows of pleasure... the syphilis hidden beneath the whiteness of their makeup." "In Yokohama the Europeans still act as if the town is theirs." "That is how we are, Antonio." "And the Japanese are trying to act like us." "Nothing here is real, everything a lie." "I sincerely hoped not." "to find O-Kiku here." "O-Tae, come along!" "Tee..." "Where are you?" "Are you in Felice-saws room?" "Come!" "Come here!" "I'm sorry, Felice-san." "The child is simply impossible!" "She shouldn't come upstairs." "She should stay in the kitchen." "Hasn't she got the most beautiful little face...?" "In a couple of years, there'll be many men... ready to pay a fortune to deflower her." "Felice-sen..." "Shall I keep you company?" "Hey, honey..." "You've been drinking again." "Is my photo in it, too?" "In Yokohama I took a room above our old studio." "The ground floor is a brothel now." "Like every house in the old neighbourhood." "Japan was at war somewhere." "Each victory was met with loud cheers in the streets..." "Japanese flags all over the place." "The harbour was crawling with soldiers." "I avoided the place." "The new Japan." "How can I begin to understand it... not understanding even the old?" "Do you remember O-Koma?" "I had a couple of pictures of her in my collection." "They sold badly, but she was easy to work with." "She made no demands." "When she hadn't drowned the bottomless pain in her eyes in sake... she was one of the few memories in Yokohama I could still bear." "Come along, Tae." "For just a moment, I thought of buying another camera." "O-Kiku wouldn't allow herself to be photographed." "Ever." ""I'm always here, Felice..." "Felice..." "Why would you want a photo?"" "Maybe only a photographer can know it, Antonio... but to take a photograph is an act of love, a caress." "O-Tae?" "O-Tae is here." "She's keeping me company." "I'm sorry, Felice-san." "Madam is asking for O-Tae." "She must help in the kitchen." "Tell Madam that there's a while yet before the ritual offer of her virginity." "Leave her in peace till then." "She's still a child." "And you are a man that ought to know better than that." "She'll soon be a woman." "May I keep you company for a moment?" "O-Tae, please fetch O-Koma and me some tea." "It's nothing... my hair is pulled back a little too tightly." "Where do you come from, O-Koma?" "I'm not a sentimental old whore, Felice-sen." "The day my father brought me here, I swore I'd forget him." "I wouldn't recognize him if I saw him in the street." "O-Koma..." "Why do you go on living in this hole, that stinks of sweat?" "Why do you never go out?" "Why do you wear a summer kimono three sizes too small?" "You look ridiculous, do you know that?" "Why do you muddle little O-Tae's head with idiotic stories?" "She's too young to receive clients... but she is not too young to know that she won't have an easy life here." "She thinks that she can go with you, away from here." "You may be a man of some means... but Madam will never allow you to take away that little money-maker." "You're playing a losing game, Felice-sen." "Is it because of O-Kiku?" "I feel sorry for you, Felice-sen." "You know..." "I'm rather fond of you..." "It was nice posing for you." "You took so many photographs of me." "I am..." "I'm almost free." "My time in the trade is nearly over." "I could go with you." "I won't be any trouble." "Thank you, O-Tae." "I think the Madam is waiting for you." "You'd better go." "What's wrong?" "Are you ill?" "I've said too much." "Please forgive me." "O-Koma, please wait." "O-Kiku... did she ever return here?" "Why did it take you so long to ask?" "I was afraid... of finding O-Kiku here." "You understand?" "Was O-Kiku here?" "Yes, she was here..." "Alone." "She wanted to work in the kitchen." "But Madam was mean and merciless, she sent her away." "She thought that O-Kiku had run away from you." ""The foreigner will demand payment if he finds her here", she said." "Do you also think she ran away from me?" "You know what I think of you." "Why would she run away from you?" "She was your wife." "What more... could she want?" "O-Koma..." "O-Koma, I want to tell you something." "I've never told it to anyone." "I never laid a finger on O-Kiku." "Because I respected her." "I just looked at her." "You never touched her..." "Our first night together, she lay beside me." "I told her that I expected nothing from her." "I told her that I would wait until she loved me, as a wife." ""I love you sincerely", she said." "But I had bought her." "How could she really love me?" "But O-Kiku really loved you." "Some people looked down on her." "After all, she was a foreigner's wife." "But she wasn't afraid of anything or anybody." "I only asked... if I could look at her." "She carefully concealed her nakedness under her kimono." ""I'm not a photograph", she said." "I could have demanded her naked body." "I had paid her family." "But I... crazy fool that I was..." "I wanted it to be a gift from her." "You understand?" "She never gave in." "Why in the world was she so stubborn?" "One day I became furious and threw some coins down in front of her." "Like I did for my models in the studio." "She took the money and rolled down her kimono." "I understood that I'd lost her for good." "The next day I left Japan." "Love... respect..." "You foreigners live in a dream world." "What a luxury!" "Don't you understand how deeply you hurt her?" "She looked down on us... the women that posed for you, who sold their bodies for money." "It was different than in prints:" "in the pictures it was really us..." "You paid us well... but we became everyone's propefly." "Poor O-Kiku..." "I couldn't bear it." "I wanted a sign that she loved me..." "that she really loved me." "Not just like a whore, you see." "Yes, I see." "O-Koma, you're a friend, please don't get me wrong." "Can O-Kiku still be found?" "There's no point." "Is she like you...?" "You don't know her at all." "She left for Tokyo." "That's all I know." "Tokyo... is a big city, O-Koma." "I know, Felice-sen." "Felice-sen, wake up!" "O-Koma is sick!" "Please help!" "Calm down!" "It's nothing serious, I'm sure." "She's probably just had too much saké." "No!" "Come, please!" "Wait for me here." "All that saké is bad for you!" "Go downstairs." "Get some water, quick!" "Why didn't you tell me?" "It's our own illness." "What could I have said?" "I could have helped you." "I could have asked for some medicine at the consulate." "Medicine?" "Only compassion can save us." "But I've never known compassion." "O-Koma..." "You should not have left O-Kiku." "I know." "I could also have loved you." "O-Koma..." "O-Koma, don't die!" "Please don't die." "The night before I left for Tokyo, O-Koma died." "Syphilis had eaten her head up." "I promised the Madam that you could come this far." "I am going back to my country... very far from here." "I can't take you with me." "Do you understand?" "Good-bye." "Felice-sen..." "Good-bye." "I've told you everything." "I've recorded everything as truly as I could." "More honestly than I've ever printed a photograph." "It's a losing battle." "I haven't found O-Kiku." "Tokyo is the city of forgetting." "Nothing is permanent." "Even when you stand still, everything moves." "A good place to disappear into oblivion." "I've promised myself that I'll book a passage to Port Said tomorrow." "My suitcase is packed." "O-Kiku has slowly turned into a memory without an image." "I don't think I'd recognise her now if I ran into her in the street." "Felice." "A whole month in Tokyo and not a word." "At least say that you're happy to see me." "Where's your little servant girl... what was her name again?" "Come on, help me remember." "O-Kiku." "Yes." "O-Kiku." "Charles sends his regards." "I think he really is angry." "You disappointed him, Felice." "I'll be frank with you." "Antonio made some inquiries with Charles." "He's worried, he hasn't heard from you in months." "He wrote something about an affair with your mistress." "My wife." "Where is she?" "Gone." "Oh dear!" "Should I be able to find O-Kiku here?" "No." "I took that plate too soon... or too late... as you wish." "But you found her there, didn't you?" "With her ankles in the water, her kimono tied up... the sun high and bright in the sky." "A pretty picture." "Did you come to haul me over the coals?" "Oh, Felice..." "Why did you never get in touch at all?" "Who else but us do you have in Tokyo?" "It's really unforgivable." "I didn't dare meet you." "She's really got her hooks into you, that little O-Kiku of yours." "I should never have left her." "You left her?" "If going away and not returning is the same thing as leaving someone... then I left her." "But why, Felice?" "There is much I don't understand..." "Among other things, how you people love each other." "Not so very differently than you people, Felice-sen." "Except that you make more noise about it." "As though it wasn't cold enough." "We Japanese put these things away in winter." "They make it cooler in the summer." "You foreigners don't understand the seasons at all." "You look at us like one big puppet show... a parade of curiosities." "My big impossible Felice." "You haven't changed at all." "Only grown older and even sadder." "Lonely, shy Felice." "What happened?" "She had to love me... really love me." "Why do you think she didn't love you?" "So you're a hopeless romantic." "You travel halfway around the globe for a love you don't understand." "What did you see during all those years here?" "Didn't you learn anything at all, behind your camera?" "You should forget her, Felice-sen." "That would be best." "Spilled water does not flow back into the vessel, we say." "Leave well enough alone." "Charles and I are expecting you for dinner tomorrow." "Have your suit pressed." "You can't show up like that." "There's no point, but go see for yourself." "She's married to a cloth dealer." "Charles has his suits made there." "Welcome." "Please come in, sir." "You sell cloth?" "English cloth!" "Top quality English cloth!" "You won't find better quality." "This has just arrived." "Special order for the American consul." "His wife gave me your address." "Ah, I'm honoured." "Please be seated." "Warm yourself at the stove." "Thank you." "Please excuse my disturbing you." "And what son of cloth might you be looking for, sir?" "I believe I could use a new suit." "I've made a long journey." "I took the road from Nagasaki." "Ah, from Nagasaki..." "Perhaps I could show you a few samples." "You are Mr. Kurosu?" "Why, yes." "I think your wife may have been an acquaintance of mine." "A long time ago, in Nagasaki..." "or Yokohama..." "My wife comes from Onomichi." "I would very much like to see her again." "O-Kiku!" "O-Kiku!" "Yes!" "Could you come here a moment?" "YES, I'm coming!" "I'm certain she'll be happy to see you again." "Felice..." "Felice..." "Welcome to our shop." "It is a long time since we last saw each other." "I feel honoured." "I'll have the girl make tea." "Let me." "My wife is having the girl make some tea." "How is business?" "Western fabrics are much in demand." "I prefer a kimono, myself." "My wife is a great help." "She helps take the orders." "My clients are very fond of her." "That's not very difficult to believe." "You are a lucky man." "Please excuse me." "There is some material that must be wrapped." "O-Kiku..." "Welcome back to Japan." "It is because of you, O-Kiku." "You were always very good to me." "I feel indebted to you." "Thank you." "I have bad news for you." "Your father died this summer." "I know." "He was good to me." "I was very fond of him." "My father... must have been happy to see you." "We're fine..." "I found this in Nagasaki." "Do you understand what went wrong?" "I sold my camera." "It was a great relief, O-Kiku." "Then I am happy for you." "Genuinely happy." "Is Kurosu-san good to you?" "Yes." "When I came to Tokyo without knowing a soul... he took me into his home as his wife." "I'm grateful to him." "He treats me very well..." "I love him sincerely." "Can you forgive me?" "Yes, of course." "Do you wish things had gone differently?" "Life is as it is, Felice..." "Felice..." "Good-bye." "Good-bye, Felice..." "Felice..." "Thank you very much for your visit." "It is the 28th of December, 1895, and evening is falling here in Tokyo." "A day like any other." "Who will ever remember it?" "Today I found O-Kiku." "She said: "Life is as it is, Felice..." "Felice... "" "When I walked back to my hotel after visiting O-Kiku... it was as though the sound of the world reached my ears... for the first time in years:" "The rattling horse tram, the shouting of pedlars... a shamisen in a teahouse, the clop- clop of wooden geta in the streets." "What a relief!" "Everything was moving, everything was alive!" "Antonio, our profession is a futile one." "Our photographs should be alive."