She was always there when I got off the train in the morning, sitting under one of the many cherry trees in Ueno Park. I’m not quite sure why she stood out; her clothing, which was so drab as to defy classification into a defined color, blended neatly into a blurred grayish-white cement tone, as if she were part of the landscape. Somehow this made her stand out against the backdrop of gaudily dressed tourists, elegant Gothic Lolita cosplayers, stiff-collared sararimen (salarymen) and teenagers with X-Japan hair. Everyone wanted to stand out in Japan; she seemed to want to disappear.
Her hair was cropped short, black flecked with white, defining her round, age-indeterminate face, and she carried a bamboo staff. In her casual jinbei top and leggings, she looked as if she had stepped out of the narrow streets of 19th century Edo into the modern milling metropolis of 21st century Tokyo. She resembled no one so much as a distaff version of Shintaro Katsu’s blind masseur, Zatoichi, from the old chambara films of the 1960’s. This was appropriate, I suppose, because she was, in fact, blind.
Her unusually wide eyes would stare through me when I caught them; and yet I was sure she could tell I was watching her. Perhaps she could smell or feel the presence of another person in close proximity. The blind often have other, finely developed senses.
I saw her every day, as I disembarked from the train at Ueno Station, and she was there when I returned in the evening. She had even been there when I returned late, long after dark, when even the neon of the city dimmed for the night. One late night I watched her to see if she could sense me, but I must have been too far away, because she did not turn in my direction.
Her attention was focused in shadows even my working eyes could not penetrate. But her head tilted much like a dog’s at high-pitched sound. I thought I saw her nose wrinkle for a moment, and everything after that happened too quickly.
A darker piece of the gloom broke towards her, and she was suddenly lifting her arms and the bamboo cane, her movements so fast I could not follow them. The shadowy being became a lump of black against the light gray nighttime grass of the park. He groaned and lay still.
In the distance, I fancied I saw an indefinable shape disappearing into the trees. I did not stay to investigate; I had to work in the morning.
The next morning, the papers carried the story: “Yakuza Lieutenant Found Dead of Sword Wound in Ueno Park.” So her bamboo cane was a sword? Was she a vigilante, some sort of modern-day ninja warrior? I thought the authorities would have sniffed out such an obvious accoutrement as a sword cane in a public place like the spacious Ueno Park, but obviously they had not in this case. I shook my head and debarked.
She sat there, same as always, her eyes open in the bright dew of morning, staring at something. I started when I realized her blind eyes were focused directly at me. How is that possible, I remember thinking. Does she feign blindness? She rose and walked toward me, her cane leading the way in the manner traditionally associated with the blind. She brushed against a cherry branch, obviously having not seen it. She was coming straight for me; I steadied myself and remembered it was daytime in crowded Tokyo. I wouldn’t be in danger yet.
She walked fast, stopping abruptly alongside me, as if she had suddenly thought better of passing me by.
“No one sees me here, except you. I am a hinin, a non-person, just like in the old days of rigid class distinction when Tokyo was called Edo. So I cut my hair and wear a simple jinbei like the invisibles of the Edo period. My name is Kazu; you write it as a single horizontal line, the simplest name there is. No one else ever sees me; the police have never even talked to me. You are the first one.”
I didn’t know what to say; I wanted to nod to let her know I understood, but I remembered her blindness.
“How did you know I saw you? You are blind, aren’t you?”
She nodded slowly. “My eyes do not see, but the rest of me sees more than you suspect. I smelled your attention; I heard your breathing patterns change. I even felt the unique vibration your stiff shoes make upon the grass near me. I knew the same person came here every day and stopped near me. It was enough.”
“Do you live here?”
“I have lived here almost my entire life; eating discarded tourist food, picking the pockets of the rich, sometimes even redistributing a little into the pockets of people who needed it. You might call me a ninja of sorts, but I don’t serve any master or follow any code. I am simply invisible by my nature.”
“How can I see you then?”
“I don’t know; I must think about that.”
As she replied, her voice trailed off, and her eyes lowered slightly; I realized that she had moved away from me. In a split-second, her eyes sparkled sharply and caught mine in a definite focused gaze. While she held me there with her eyes, she was the entire universe. And then she was gone, all in an instant; I never saw her again. Kazu had vanished before my eyes in front of thousands of people who milled about, carrying on their own business, perpetually unaware of the extraordinary things happening right under their noses.
I felt somehow I had looked into another dimension for a split-second. Kazu had taught me to be aware. Perhaps it is not such an awful thing to be invisible, simple and unadorned, to see everything as if for the first time. Every time I see something unusual, I can’t help hoping it is Kazu returning to me. Would I even be able to see her again?