In this introduction, Brautigan explained how his interest in and attachment to Japan developed following the 1942 death of his Uncle Edward, killed indirectly by injuries suffered when the Japanese bombed Midway Island just prior to America's entry into World War II.
READ this introduction.

Watching Japanese television,
two young women in kimonos
are standing beside a biplane.
     That's right:
     an old timey airplane.

A man is interviewing them.
They are having a very animated
and happy conversation.

I wish I knew Japanese because
I will never know why they are
     standing next
     to a biplane,

but they will stand there forever
in my mind, happy pilots
     in their kimonos,
     waiting to take off.
                    Tokyo
                    May 13, 1976

Textual References
"Kitty Hawk": Kitty Hawk, North Carolina where Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first powered airplane flight in 1903.

This morning I was wondering
when I would see my first bird
     in Japan
I was betting my mental money
on a sparrow when I heard
     a rooster
     crowing
from a backyard in the Shibuya District
     of Tokyo
and that took care of that.
                    Tokyo
                    May 14, 1976

I just spent the last half-an-hour
watching a Japanese children's program
     on television
There are millions of us here in Tokyo.
     We know what we like.
                    Tokyo
                    May 14, 1976

A brown cat lies
in front of a Chinese restaurant
in a very narrow lane
     in Shinjuku.*

The window of the restaurant is
filled with plastic models
of Chinese food that look good
     enough to eat.

The afternoon sun is pleasantly
     warm. The cat
     is enjoying it.

People walk by, very close to the cat
but the cat shows absolutely no fear.
     It does not move.
     I find this unusual.
     The cat is happy
     in front of plastic Chinese
     food with real food
     waiting just inside the door.
                    Tokyo
                    The middle of May, 1976
*a large district in Tokyo

I just ordered my first meal
     curry and rice
all by myself in a Japanese restaurant.
     What a triumph!
I feel like an infant taking its
     first faltering step.

     Watch out Mount Everest!
                    Tokyo
                    May 16, 1976

Textual References
"Hillary": Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008), New Zealand explorer, who, with Tenzing Norgay, was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest and return.

A warm Sunday afternoon rainy
4 o'clock back street Ginza
     is closed.

Thousands of napping bars,
their signs are like brightly-colored
     kites.

Wound ball-like narrow streets
and lanes are string.

     quiet
     only a few people
     no wind
                    Tokyo
                    May 16, 1976

Tall, slender
dressed in black
perfect features
Egyptianesque

She is the shadow
of another planet
being photographed
in a totally white room

Her face never changes
her page-boy hair
looks as if it were cut
from black surgical jade

Her lips are so red
they make blood
seem dull, a
useless pastime
                    Tokyo
                    May ?, 1976

I just spent fifteen seconds
staring at a Japanese fly:
     my first.

He was standing on a red brick
in the Mitsui Building Plaza,
enjoying the sun.

He didn't care that I was looking at him
He was cleaning his face. Perhaps he had
     a date with a beautiful
     lady fly, his bride to be
     or maybe just good friends
     to have lunch a little later
in Mitsui Plaza
at noon.
                    Tokyo
                    May 17 or 18, 1976

I feel wonderful, exhilarated, child-like,
     perfect.

I just won two cans of crab meat*
and a locomotive**

What more could anyone ask for on May 18,
     1976 in Tokyo?

I played the game of pachinko
/ vertical pinball /
My blade was sharp.
*real
**toy

Japan begins and ends
     with Japan.

Nobody else knows the
     story.

. . . Japanese dust
in the Milky Way.
                    Tokyo
                    May 18, 1976

Recorded
In 1983 Brautigan read this poem duing an interview for Swiss TV. Watch this interview.

Drunk in a Japanese
     bar
     I'm
     OK
                    Tokyo
                    May 18, 1976

Dreams are like the [the]
wind. They blow by. The
small ones are breezes,
but they go by, too.
                    Tokyo
                    May 20 or 26, 1976

. . . . .
. . . . . . .
The twelve red berries
                    Tokyo
                    May 22, 1976

Every time I leave my hotel room
     here in Tokyo
I do the same four things:
     I make sure I have my passport
     my notebook
     a pen
     and my English—
     Japanese dictionary.

The rest of life is a total mystery.
                    Tokyo
                    May 26, 1976

Textual References
"Dashiell Hammett": American detective story writer (1894-1961).

When dreams wake
     life ends.
Then dreams are gone.
     Life is gone.
                    Tokyo
                    May 26, 1976

I'm depressed,
haunted by melancholy
that does not have a reflection
     nor cast a shadow.
12,000,000 people live here in Tokyo.
I know I'm not alone.
Others must feel the way
     I do.
                    Tokyo
                    May 26, 1976
                    1 P.M.

Listening to the Japanese night,
the window is closed and the curtain pulled,
I think it is raining outside.
It's comforting. I love the rain.
I am in a city that I have never been before:
     Tokyo.
I think it is raining. Then I hear a storm begin.
     I'm slightly drunk:

     people walking by in the street,
     a bicycle.
                    Tokyo
                    May 26, 1976

All the possibilities of life,
all roads led here.

I was never going anyplace else,
     41 years of life:

Tacoma, Washington
Great Falls, Montana
Oaxaca, Mexico
London, England
Bee Caves, Texas
Victoria, British Columbia
Key West, Florida
San Francisco, California
Boulder, Colorado

all led here:

Having a drink by myself
in a bar in Tokyo before
     lunch,
wishing there was somebody to talk
     to.
                    Tokyo
                    May 28, 1976

Textual References
"Bee Caves": Bee Caves, Texas, a small town (population 50 in the 1970s when Brautigan visited) twelve miles west of Austin.

Sand is crystal
like the soul.
The wind blows
     it away.
                    Tokyo
                    May 28, 1976

If there are any unattractive
     Japanese women
they must drown them at birth.
                    Tokyo
                    May 28, 1976

There is no difference
between Tokyo and New York.
These men do not look
like their photographs.
These are different men.
I'm not being fooled in the
least. Complete strangers drive
     these cabs.
                    Tokyo
                    May 28, 1976

A Japanese woman
     age: 28

lives seeing darkness
     from eyes

that should see light
     at night.
                    Tokyo
                    May 30, 1976

Don't ever ever forget
     the flowers
that were rejected, made
     fools of.

A very shy girl gives the
budding boy pop star a bouquet
     of beautiful
     flowers

between songs. What courage
it took for her to walk up to
the stage and hand him the
     flowers.

He puts them garbage-like down
on the floor. They lie there.
She returns to her seat and watches
     her flowers lying there.
Then she can't take it any longer.

     She flees.
     She is gone
     but the music
     plays on.

     I promise.
     You promise, too
                    Tokyo
                    May 31, 1976

Ah, June 1, 1976
     12:01 A.M.

All those who live
after we are dead

We knew this moment
     we were here
                    Tokyo
                    June 1, 1976
                    12:01 A.M.

Recorded
In 1983 Brautigan read this poem duing an interview for Swiss TV. Watch this interview.

I am the only American in this bar.
Everybody else is Japanese.
     (reasonable / Tokyo)

I speak English.
They speak Japanese.
     (of course)

They try to speak English. It's hard.
I can't speak any Japanese. I can't help.
We talk for a while, trying.

Then they switch totally to Japanese
     for ten minutes.
They laugh. They are serious.
They pause between words.

I am alone again. I've been there before
in Japan, America, everywhere when you
don't understand what somebody is
     talking about.
                    Tokyo
                    June 1, 1976

A beautiful Japanese woman
     / age 42

the energy that separates
     spring from summer

     (depending on June)
     20 or 21
—so they say—

Her voice singing sounds
just like an angelic chainsaw
     cutting through
     honey.
                    Tokyo
                    June 1, 1976

The cab takes me home
through the Tokyo dawn.
I have been awake all night.
I will be asleep before the sun
     rises.
I will sleep all day.
The cab is a pillow,
the streets are blankets,
the dawn is my bed.
The cab rests my head.
I'm on my way to dreams.
                    Tokyo
                    June 1, 1976

It's just one of those things.
When you need cobalt
     nothing else will
     suffice.
                    Tokyo
                    June 2, 1976

I have emotions
that are like newspapers that
     read themselves.

I go for days at a time
trapped in the want ads.

I feel as if I am an ad
for the sale of a haunted house:

     18 rooms
     $37,000
     I'm yours
     ghosts and all.
                    Tokyo
                    June 2, 1976

One word

waiting . . .

leads to an
avalanche
of other words

if you are

waiting . . .

for a woman
                    Tokyo
                    June 2, 1976

                    For Guy de la Valdène

Looking casually
through my English-Japanese dictionary
I can't find the word frog.
     It's not there.
Does that mean that Japan has no frogs?
                    Tokyo
                    June 4, 1976

Textual References
"Guy de la Valdène": writer and filmmaker, part of the "Montana Gang" to whom Brautigan dedicated The Hawkline Monster.

A Caucasian gets on at
     the 17th floor.
He is old, fat, and expensively
     dressed.
I say hello / I'm friendly.
     He says, "Hi."

Then he looks very carefully at
     my clothes.

I'm not expensively dressed.
I think his left shoe costs more
than everything I am wearing.

He doesn't want to talk to me
     any more.

I think that he is not totally aware
that we are really going down
and there are no clothes after you have
been dead for a few thousand years.

He thinks as we silently travel
down and get off at the bottom
     floor
that we are going separate
     ways.
                    Tokyo
                    June 4, 1976

First Published
Quest/77, Nov./Dec. 1977, p. 108.
Learn more

Everything shines like black jade:

     The piano (invented
     Her long hair (severe
     Her obvious disinterest (in the music
          she is playing.

Her mind, distant from her fingers,
is a million miles away shining

     like black
     jade
                    Tokyo
                    June 4, 1976

A warm thunder and lightning storm
tonight in Tokyo with lots of rain and umbrellas
     around 10 P.M.
This is a small detail right now
but it could be very important
a million years from now when archaeologists
sift through our ruins, trying to figure us
     out.
                    Tokyo
                    June 5, 1976

Recorded
In 1983 Brautigan read this poem duing an interview for Swiss TV. Watch this interview.

I'm here in a bar filled with
young conservative snobbish
     American men,
drinking and trying to pick up
     Japanese women
who want to sleep with the likes
     of these men.
It is very hard to find any poetry
     here
as this poem bears witness.
                    Tokyo
                    June 5, 1976

                    The night is now
                    half-gone; youth
                    goes: I am

                    in bed alone
                    —Sappho

My books have been translated
     into
Norwegian, French, Danish, Romanian,
Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish,
Italian, German, Finnish, Hebrew
     and published in England
          but

I will sleep alone tonight in Tokyo
          raining.
                    Tokyo
                    June 5, 1976

Textual References
"Sappho": Greek poet of the 7th-6th centuries B.C.; these lines (as acknowledged on the copyright page) are from Mary Barnard's Sappho: A New Translation (University of California Press, 1958).

The distances of loneliness
make the fourth dimension
seem like three hungry crows
looking at a worm in a famine.
                    Tokyo
                     June 6, 1976

1. Have dinner by yourself.
That's always a lot of fun.

2. Wander aimlessly around the hotel.
This is a huge hotel, so there's lots of space
to wander aimlessly around.

3. Go up and down the elevator for no reason
     at all.
The people going up are going to their rooms.
     I'm not.
Those going down are going out.
     I'm not.

4. I seriously think about the house phone
and calling my room 3003 and letting it ring
for a very long time. Then wondering where
I'm at and when I will return. Should I leave
a message at the desk saying that when I return
     I should call myself?
                    Tokyo
                    June 6, 1976

I look out the car window
at 100 kilometers an hour
     (62 miles)
and see a man peddling
a bicycle very carefully
down a narrow path between
     rice paddies.
He's gone in a few seconds.
I have only his memory now.
He has been changed into
a 100 kilometer-an-hour
memory ink rubbing.
                    Hamamatsu
                    June 7, 1976

The actresses without their makeup,
their costumes, their roles
are returned to being mortals.
I watch them eat quietly in a small inn.
They have no illusions, almost plain
     like saints
     perfect in their
     re-entry.
                    Gifu
                    June 7, 1976

Speaking is speaking
when you (The next word is unintelligible,
written on a drunken scrap of paper.)

speak any more.
                    Tokyo
                    Perhaps a day in early June

For Tagawa Tadasu

     The Bullet Train is the famous Japanese express train that travels 120 miles an hour. Lazarus is an old stand-by.

You listened to the ranting and raving drunken
American writer on the Bullet Train from Nagoya
as I blamed you for everything that ever went
wrong in this world, including the grotesque
event that occurred that night in Gifu while
     you slept.

Of course, you had done nothing but be my good
friend. At one point I told you to consider me
dead, that I was dead for you from that moment on.
I took your hand and touched my hand with it.
I told you that my flesh was now cold to you:
     dead.

You silently nodded your head, eyes filled
with sadness. I even forbid you to ever read
one of my books again because I knew how much
you loved them and again you nodded your head
and you didn't say anything. The sadness in your
eyes did all the speaking.
The Bullet Train continued travelling at 120
miles an hour back to Tokyo as I ranted and raved
     at you.

You didn't say a word.
Your sadness filled the Bullet Train
with two hundred extra passengers.
They were all reading newspapers
that had no words printed on them,
only the dried tears of the dead.

By the time the train reached Tokyo Station,
my anger had turned slowly and was headed in all
directions toward a deserved oblivion.
I took your hand and touched my hand again.
"I'm alive for you," I said. "The warmth has
     returned to my flesh."

You nodded silently again,
never having said a word.
The two hundred extra passengers
remained on the train,
though it was the end of the line.
They will stay there forever riding
back and forth until they are dust.
We stepped out into the early Tokyo morning
     friends again.

Oh, thank you, Tagawa Tadasu,
O beautiful human being for sharing
and understanding my death
and return from the dead
on the Bullet Train between Nagoya
     and Tokyo the morning of June 8, 1976.

Later in the evening I called you
on the telephone. Your first
words were: "Are you fine?"
     "Yes, I am fine."
                    Tokyo
                    June 9, 1976

Textual References
"Lazarus": See John 11-12.
"Tagawa Tadasu": Japanese music critic and writer. He and Brautigan met at The Cradle bar in Tokyo. Tadasu invited Brautigan to travel with him to Osaka, where they attended a performance by the Black Tent Theater Group. That night, Brautigan was drunk and apparently something happened between he and Tadasu. The events of the next day, on the bullet train back to Tokyo, are recounted in Brautigan's poem (William Hjortsberg 569).

I just visited Kazuko at the hospital.
She seemed tired. She was operated on
     six days ago.
She ate her dinner slowly, painfully.
It was sad to watch her eat. She was
very tired. I wish that I could have
eaten in her place and she to receive
     the nutriment.
                    Tokyo
                    June 9, 1976

Textual References
"Kazuko": A possible reference to Kazuko Fujimoto, the female translator of Brautigan's books into Japanese.

Before flying to Japan
I was worried about jet lag.

"My" airplane would leave
San Francisco at 1 P.M.
     Wednesday
and 10 hours and 45 minutes later
would land in Tokyo at 4 P.M.
     the next day:
     Thursday.

I was worried about that,
forgetting that because I suffer
from severe insomnia I have
     eternal jet lag.
                    Tokyo
                    June 9, 1976

                    For Shiina Takako

People stare at me—
There are millions of them.
Why is this strange American
walking the streets of early night
     carrying a broken clock
     in his hands?
Is he for real or is he just an illusion?
How the clock got broken is not important.
     Clocks break.
     Everything breaks.
People stare at me and the broken clock
     that I carry like a dream

     in my hands.
                    Tokyo
                    June 10, 1976

Textual References
"Shiina Takako": owner of The Cradle, a bar, gathering place for artists in Tokyo. Several poems in this collection are dedicated to her.

A few weeks ago a middle-aged taxi driver
started talking to me in English. His English
     was very good.
I asked him if he had ever been to America.
Wordlessly, poignantly he made a motion
with his hand that was not driving the streets
     of Tokyo
at his face that suddenly looked very sad.
The gesture meant that he was a poor man
and would never be able to afford to go to America.
We didn't talk much after that.
                    Tokyo
                    June 11, 1976

                    For Shiina Takako

It is amazing how many people
you meet when you are carrying
a broken clock around in Tokyo.

Today I was carrying the broken clock
around again, trying to get an exact
     replacement for it.
     The clock was far beyond repair.

All sorts of people were interested
in the clock. Total strangers came up to me
and inquired about the clock in Japanese
     of course
and I nodded my head: Yes, I have a broken clock.

I took it to a restaurant and people gathered
around. I recommend carrying a broken clock
with you at all times if you want to meet new
friends. I think it would work anyplace in the
     world.

     If you want to got to Iceland
     and meet the people, take
     a broken clock with you.
     They will gather around like flies.
                    Tokyo
                    June 11, 1976

Textual References
"Shiina Takako": owner of The Cradle, a bar, gathering place for artists in Tokyo. Several poems in this collection are dedicated to her.

Fish rise in the early summer evenings
on the Nagara River at Gifu. I am back in Tokyo.
I will never fish the Nagara. The fish
will rise there forever but the Yellowstone River
south of Livingston, Montana, that is another
story.
                    Tokyo
                    June 11, 1976

Alone in a place full of strangers
I sing as if I'm in the center
     of a heavenly choir

     —my tongue a cloud of honey—

Sometimes I think I'm weird.
                    Tokyo
                    June 11, 1976

The young Japanese woman cashier,
     who doesnt like me
     I don't know why
     I've done nothing to her except exist,
uses a calculator to add up the checks
at a speed that approaches light—

clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick
     she adds up her dislike
          for me.
                    Tokyo
                    June 11, 1976

I have the five poems
that I wrote earlier today
     in a notebook
in the same pocket that
I carry my passport. They
are the same thing.

                    For Shiina Takako

     Meiji Shrine is Japan's most famous shrine. Emperor Meiji and his consort Empress Shôken are enshrined there. The grounds occupy 175 acres of gardens, museums and stadiums.

Meiji Shrine was closed.
We snuck in the hour before dawn.
We were drunk like comedians
climbing over stone walls and falling down.
We were funny to watch.
Fortunately, the police did not discover us
     and take us away.
It was beautiful there and we staggered
around in the trees and bushes until light started.
We were very funny and then
we were lying sprawled in a small meadow
of gentle green grass that was sweet
     to the touch of our bodies.
I put my hand on her breast and started kissing
her. She kissed me back and that's all the love
we made. We didn't go any further, but it was
perfect in the early light of Meiji Shrine
with the Emperor Meiji
and his consort Shôken
somewhere near us.
                    Tokyo
                    June 12, 1976

Textual References
"Shiina Takako": owner of The Cradle, a bar, gathering place for artists in Tokyo. Several poems in this collection are dedicated to her.

                    For Shiina Takako

I woke up in the middle of the afternoon, alone,
our love-making did not lead to going to bed
together and that was OK, I guess.

Beside the bed were my shoes covered with Meiji
mud. I looked at them and felt very good.
It's funny what the sight of dried mud can do
     to your mind.
                    Tokyo
                    June 12, 1976

Textual References
"Shiina Takako": owner of The Cradle, a bar, gathering place for artists in Tokyo. Several poems in this collection are dedicated to her.

Starting just a single world

start (start) v.i. 1, begin or enter upon an action, etc; set out.

to end with.
                    Tokyo
                    June 12, 1976

Sometimes I take out my passport,
look at the photograph of myself
     (not very good, etc.)

     just to see if I exist
                    Tokyo
                    June 12, 1976

I have sixteen more days left in Japan.
I leave on the 29th back across the Pacific.
Five days after that I will be in Montana,
sitting in the stands of the Park County
     Fairgrounds,

watching the Livingston Roundup
     on the Fourth of July,
     cheering the cowboys on,

     Japan gone.

                    One
of the bad things about staying at a hotel
is the thin walls. They are a problem
that does not go away. I was trying to get
some sleep this afternoon but the people
in the next room took that opportunity to
     fuck their brains out.
Their bed sounded like an old airplane
     warming up to take off.
I lay there a few feet away, trying to get
some sleep while their bed taxied down the
     runway.
                    Tokyo
                    June 14, 1976

     Orson Welles does whisky commercials on
Japanese television. It's strange to see him
here on television in Tokyo, recommending that the
Japanese people buy G & G Nikka whisky.

     I always watch him with total fascination.
Last night I dreamt that I directed one of the
commercials. There were six black horses in the
commercial.

     The horses were arranged in such a position
that upon seeing them and Orson Welles
together, people would rush out of their homes
and buy G & G whisky.

     It was not an easy commercial to film. It
had to be perfect. It took many takes. Mr. Welles
was very patient with an understanding sense of
humor.

     "Please, Mr. Welles," I would say. "Stand a
little closer to the horses."

     He would smile and move a little closer
to the horses.

     "How's this?"

     "Just fine, Mr. Welles, perfect."
                    Tokyo
                    June 14, 1976

Textual References
"Orson Welles": American actor and director (1915-1985) best know for the movie Citizen Kane and the radio dramatization of H. G. Wells' novel, The War of the Worlds (1938).

I saw a decadent gothic Japanese movie
this evening. It went so far beyond any
decadence that I have ever seen before
that I was transformed into a child learning
     for the first time
     that shadows are not always friendly,
     that houses are haunted,
that people sometimes have thoughts
made out of snake skin that crawl
toward the innocence of sleeping babies.

The movie took place in Tokyo
just before the earthquake on September 1, 1923.
In a gothic Japanese house a man was hiding
inside a large stuffed red chair while a beautiful
woman wearing exotic costumes made love
to other men sitting in the chair.
The men did not know that somebody was hiding
     inside the chair,
feeling, voyeuring every detail of their passion.
It took a long time in the movie
before I realized that there was a man inside the
     chair.

The film went on and on into decadence
after decadence like a rainbow of perversion.
I can't describe them all.
You would have trouble believing them.
The red chair was only a beginning.

I sat there transfixed
with a hundred Japanese men.
It was as if we were the orgasm
of spiders fucking in dried human
     blood.
                    Tokyo
                    June 15, 1976

                    I'm
sitting here awkwardly alone in a bar
with a very intelligent Japanese movie director
who can't speak English and I no Japanese.

We know each other but there is nobody here
to translate for us. We've talked before.
Now we pretend to be interested in other things.

He is listening to some music on the phonograph
with his eyes closed. I am writing this down.
It's time to go home. He leaves first.
                    Tokyo
                    June 15, 1976

I set the alarm for 9 A.M.
but it wasn't necessary.
The earthquake at 7:30 woke
     me up.

From the middle of a dream
I was suddenly lying there
feeling the hotel shake,
wondering if room 3003
would soon be a Shinjuku
     intersection
     30 floors below.

It sure beats the hell
out of an alarm clock.
                    Tokyo
                    June 16, 1976

I found the word having written sideways,
     all by itself
on a piece of notebook paper.
I have no idea why I wrote it
or what its ultimate destination was,
but I wrote the word having carefully

     and then stopped

     writing
                    Tokyo
                    June perhaps, 1976

Sleep without sleep
then to sleep again
     without
     sleeping.
                    Tokyo
                    June 17, 1976

I like this taxi driver,
racing through the dark streets
     of Tokyo
as if life had no meaning.
I feel the same way.
                    Tokyo
                    June 17, 1976
                    10 P.M.

I am a part of it. No,
I am the total but there
is also a possibility
that I am only a fraction
     of it.

I am that which begins
but has no beginning.
I am also full of shit
right up to my ears.
                    Tokyo
                    June 17, 1976

As these poems progress
can you guess June 24, 1976?

I was born January 30, 1935
in Tacoma, Washington.

What will happen next?
If only I could see June 24,
    1976.
                Tokyo
                June 18, 1976

Waiting for her . . .
Nothing to do but write a poem.
She is now 5 minutes late.

I have a feeling that she will be at least
     15 minutes late.
It is now 6 minutes after 9 P.M.
     in Tokyo.

—NOW exactly NOW—
the doorbell rang.

She is at the door:
6 minutes after 9 P.M.
     in Tokyo

nothing has changed
except that she is here.
                    Tokyo
                    June 19, 1976

Stop in /
write a morose poem /
leave / if only
life were that easy
                    Tokyo
                    June 19, 1976

The umbilical cord
cannot be refastened
and life flow through it
     again.

Our tears never totally
     dry.

Our first kiss is now a ghost,
haunting our mouths as they
     fade toward
     oblivion.
                    Tokyo
                    June 19, 1976
                    with a few words
                    added in Montana
                    July 12, 1976

speaking is speaking

We repeat
what we speak
and then we are
speaking again and that
speaking is speaking.
                    Tokyo
                    June sometime, 1976

     / 1

Travelling along
a freeway in Tokyo
I saw a woman's face
reflected back to us
from a small circular mirror
on the passenger side
of the car in front of us.
The car had a regular
rearview mirror in the center
of the front window.

I wondered what the
circular mirror was doing
on the passenger side of the car.
Her face was in it. She was directly
in front of us. She had a beautiful
face, floating in an
unreal mirror on a Tokyo
     freeway.

Her face stayed there for a while
and then floated off
forever in the changing traffic.

     / 2

She moves like a ghost.
She is not alive any more.
She must be in her late sixties.
She is short and squat
like a Japanese stereotype.

She takes care of the lobby
of the hotel. She empties
the ashtrays. She dusts
and mops things. She moves
like a ghost. She has no human
     expression.
A few days ago I was standing
beside three Japanese businessmen
peeing in the lavatory.
We each had our own urinal.
She walked in like a ghost and started
mopping the toilet floor around us.
She was totally unaware of us,
standing there urinating.
She was truly a ghost
and we were suddenly ghost pee-ers
     as she mopped on
          by.
                    Tokyo
                    June 21, 1976

in a garden of
     500 mossy, lichen
     green Buddhas

a sunny day

     these Buddhas
     know the answer
     to all five
     hundred other Buddhas.
                    Never finished
                    outside of Tokyo
                    June 23, 1976
                    except for the word
                    other added at
                    Pine Creek, Montana,
                    on July 23, 1976

We did not play the game.
We played the rules perfectly,
no violations, no penalties.

     The game is over
     or is it just
     beginning?
                    Tokyo
                    June 28, 1976

Playing games

playing games, I

guess I never

really stopped

being a child

playing games

playing games
                    Tokyo
                    June 28, 1976

Selected Reprints
Hjortsberg, William. Jubiliee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan. Counterpoint, 2012, p. 561
Learn more

     Love / 1

The water
in the river
flows over
and under
itself.

It knows
what to do,
flowing on.

     Love / 2

The water
in the river
flows over
and under
itself.

It knows
what to do,
flowing on.

The bed never touches bottom.
                    Tokyo
                    June 28, 1976

I guess I moved to Texas:
Bee Caves on the map.
The map means nothing
to you sitting here watching
     me.
                    Tokyo
                    June 29, 1976
                    Very drunk
                    with Shiina
                    Takako watching
                    me

Textual References
"Bee Caves": Bee Caves, Texas, a small town (population 50 in the 1970s when Brautigan visited) twelve miles west of Austin.
"Shiina Takako": owner of The Cradle, a bar, gathering place for artists in Tokyo. Several poems in this collection are dedicated to her.

     sayonara

Flying from Japanese night,
we left Haneda Airport in Tokyo
four hours ago at 9:30 P.M.
     June 30th
and now we are flying into the sunrise
over the Pacific that is on its way
     to Japan
where darkness lies upon the land
and the sun is hours away.
I greet the sunrise of July 1st
for my Japanese friends,
wishing them a pleasant day.
The sun is on its
     way.

June 30th again
above the Pacific
across the international date line
heading home to America
with part of my heart
     in Japan