The Death of Emperor Meiji

We’re in class, pens poised over looseleaf, fingers hovering over laptop keys, eyes turned momentarily from the professor to the projection of a sleek overhead sheet she’s laid out for us. Its heading, in neutral text:

DEATH OF EMPEROR MEIJI

We scrawl and tap mechanically while the professor stands, breath bated as though momentarily frozen in time, waiting for the movement of her students to cease so that she might continue her lecture with our full attention. At long last, a hush falls over the assembly. Suddenly unfrozen, the professor looks up at the screen she stands before and folds her hands behind her back, letting out a simple, thoughtful “hm.” In our ready positions once again, we wait now for the ensuing onslaught of information, the apathetic details on why this death would be significant to Japanese history. Most of us don’t give two shits about the life or death of this puppet emperor so revered; we’re here simply to engorge our scholarly mosquito brains or, even more detached, to continue our course to academic success by way of three hours credit.

The professor narrows her eyes. “Tell me,” she begins in that condescending voice of hers, to our complete surprise breaking from her habit of diatribe to pose a question, “How many of you have ever witnessed an event that, at that very moment, you knew was history in the making?”

A completely different kind of silence overtakes us. From the back of my mind and the usually hazy grips of memory comes the half-heard sound of a radio in another room, the cold feel of a spoon balanced in my hand, the fiercely unnatural light of my kitchen, the clock beneath the cabinet reading seven forty-eight am. My father’s TV in a dark room, my mother perched at the edge of her bed in her nightgown, face in her hands as the television flickers the same colours over and over again reflecting on her face. She is sobbing, swearing, praying for safety and for retribution all at once. I stand above her silent, tugging at the cuffs of a brand new navy shirt, overpriced. Numbers read by solemn voices rise, rise, rise, pulsing in my head like an oral thermometer under a fevered child’s tongue. Resolution not to cry, to be strong for her sake before a moment of realization that sends me hurtling, tripping down the stairs and throwing myself before the computer. A hastily typed email: “Hi. Where are you? I’m praying.” And then later, the dim cafeteria of my junior high, three hundred sets of eyes focused on a television that normally was reserved for music videos or cartoons. Utter silence. A paper airplane tossed in the hallway that swoops, spinning, to the ground, greeted by a plethora of horrified glances. In class, anger on my part at the normalness of things, the mimicry of routine. A screaming fight with a friend that ends with flight, crying openly now. A brisk walk home in the autumn air, a cup of tea in the bright kitchen, a quiet, apologetic phone call with the school secretary. Finally, a red and black instant message: “Hey. Yeah. Thanks for the email; I got a lot of them today. The skyline’s changed.” A brief sense of relief followed by a wash of sadness, another realization that this exchange will not be typical. Finally, the overwhelming comprehension that the world has changed.

“Well?” the professor prompts in annoyance. As one, her students blink back the glaze in their eyes, drawing in their awareness like a kite on a string and returning to current surroundings. There is no question as to the nature of the distraction. The professor folds her arms over her chest, tapping an impatient foot. For a moment, nobody says anything, not quite yet returned from four years ago to respond. Finally, a boy in the front raises his hand. He says what we’re all thinking tentatively, his voice fearful.

“September Eleventh.” It’s more of a question than a statement by the intonation of his voice, the way he leans forward in his seat to be more clear. It feels like everyone in the class breathes in all at once, treating his statement with reverence like some divine revelation. At the same time, the affirmation of our innermost thoughts feels intrusive.

“Yes,” the professor says, approving the answer. We all breathe out again as though we ourselves had been the ones who’d suggested the idea and waited for the professor’s affirmation of its validity. “Anything else?” she asks, surveying the confused faces of her class. We are mute, returning to the dragged up memories, each of us lost in visions of fire and crash and fall, albeit viewed through different lenses. “How about Watergate?” she prompts. The same boy in the front row replies to this, a small smile lingering on the corners of his lips.

“Most of us weren’t born when Watergate happened,” he notes with that smile making an obvious jab at the professor’s age. An uneasy chuckle ripples through the class in response to this and the professor puffs up her shoulders like an irritated cat, mouth twisted in helpless amusement at the undertones of the statement. The curtain of tension lifts somewhat.

“The death of Emperor Meiji signified, to the Japanese people, the end of an age.” Pens scrawling and laptop keys tapping, rushing to catch up, the lecture resumes its pace.

“It’s weird to drive over the bridge to Manhattan and not have them there,” said the instant message window that day. My own pen lashes across the page in barely legible script, three words behind and guided by a purely mechanical hand. Perhaps those events had signified the end of an age too.