A Gesture Life

“For I should say that I know from experience that the bearing of those in extreme circumstances can sometimes by untoward and even shocking, and we must try our best to understand what is actual and essential to a person, and what is by any indication anomalous, a momentary lapse that is better forgotten than considered time and time again, to little avail.” 

Mr. Hickey acts malevolently towards Hata, as he believes he sold them a business while knowing it would go under. However, he foreshadows the telling of past experiences where he himself, or others close to him, have acted shockingly in extreme circumstances. He most probably has spent time considering such actions to no avail and has learned it is better to forget such anomalous acts.  

“I was more than grateful. And I knew even then as a boy of twelve how I should always give myself over to its vigilance, entrusting to its care everything I could know or ever hope for. My Sunny, I thought, would do the same. Not be so thankful or beholden to me, necessarily, but at least she’d be somewhat appreciative of the providence of institutions that brought her from the squalor of the orphanage—the best of which can be only so happy—to an orderly, welcoming suburban home in America, with a hopeful father of life-enough race and sufficient means.

The core of Hata’s life of gestures is a deeply embedded sense of gratitude for not just his adoptive parents but for the opportunities he has had throughout life. He seems to mistake an orderly and welcoming life for love and acceptance. Because of this, he expects Sunny to be as grateful as he was for being adopted into better circumstances.

“You make a whole life out of gestures and politeness. You’re always having to be the ideal partner and colleague.” 

Although Hata admits early on that many have said he seeks approval and consensus too keenly, Sunny confronts Hata directly about his nature and the kind of life he has set up. Rather than giving his daughter the love and acceptance she truly needs, he tyrannically prioritizes reputation. 

“It is ironic, of course, that I should have been the one who caused a near-conflagration, and put my beloved house in danger. But as with everything else, I have begun to appreciate—perhaps like my old friend Fujimori—the odd aspects of things, unsettling as they may be.”

Hata’s precious home is a clear symbol of his orderly and renowned life of gestures. Despite his obsession with maintaining the “house” he crafted, the fire was likely one of his own making. Considering the dark, unsettling aspects of things, Hata realizes that this life of gestures has no true meaning or substance, and perhaps he desires for it to all go up in flames.

“The water [in my pool] appears nearly lightless, whether in bright sun or dusk, and the feeling sometimes is that you are not swimming in water at all, in something material and true, but rather pulling yourself blindly through a mysterious resistance whose properties are slowly revealing themselves beneath you, in flame-like roils and tendrils, the black fires of the past.” 

Hata’s routine swimming seems to be a harmless activity outside of maintaining his reputation. However, what he admires about his pool is not what most would—the water appears lightless, a mysterious resistance that slowly reveals itself as he swims. The act of swimming is a desire to unveil the truth and face it. 

“And it’s almost too much for me, too felicitous perhaps, to imagine the fantastic idea of what Sunny Medical Supply might be instead of half-emptied and shut, what kind of vital, resplendent establishment could have been built, not for pride or for riches but a place to lease each night and glance back upon and feel sure would contain. For isn’t this what I’ve attempted for most all of my life, from entering the regular school with my Japanese parents when I was a boy, to enlisting myself in what should have been the glorious war, and then settling in this country in a most respectable town, isn’t this my long folly, my continuous failure?” 

Hata desires for Sunny Medical Supply to live on not as something of reputation and wealth but to have something that he could call his own. After living a life of erasing past identities and assimilating to new ones, he attempts over and over to make a place for himself and continuously fails. Hata’s lifelong desire is to finally belong someplace and have a life of true meaning.

“And the idea entreats me once more, to wonder if something like love is forever victorious, truly conquering all, or if there are those who, like me, remain somehow whole and sovereign, still live unvanquished.”

Meeting Sunny after 13 years and seeing her unconditional love for her son causes Hata to wonder if love truly conquers all, or if it is possible for people to live without being swayed by it. Both with K and Sunny, Hata is unable to prove the worthiness of his love, remaining hollow and without substance. 

“The girl remained there, under the veil, unmoving for some time. And as I sat parked in the mostly empty lot in the long shadow of the mall, I felt I understood what she was meaning by her peculiar act, how she could repel his insults and finally him by making herself in some measure disappear. As if to provide the means of her own detachment.” 

The sight of a girl covering herself with a black cloth as an attempt to disappear and detach herself from the present situation brings Hata to a flashback of his days with K. The black flag was a signal of warning at the infirmary to prepare K for Captain Ono, marking the end of their days together and her brutal murder. Hata associates the black flag with K’s desire to disappear and detach herself from the hopeless situation around her, something he does not realize until it is too late. 

“What he had determined as the sign, the black flag, was of course meant for me. Hata is, literally, ‘flag,’ and a ‘black flag’ or kurohata is the banner a village would raise by its gate in olden times to warn of contagion within. […] Captain Ono’s choice, of course, was intentionally belittling […].”

Hata finds it belittling that a black flag should be used as a signal for him to prepare K for Captain Ono. A warning of contagion that would keep soldiers away from the infirmary, it symbolizes a different kind of disease for Hata that traumatizes the rest of his days. Ironically, the black flag in his name reflects his own belief that terrible things happen to all those who are near to him.

“If someone had asked me then what I felt, I would have been unable to answer. But if I can speak for that young man now, if I can tell some part of the truth for him, I would say that he felt himself drawn to her, drawn to her very presence, which must finally leave even such a thing as beauty aside. He did not yet know it, but he hoped that if he could simply be near to her, near to her voice and to her body—if never even touching her—near, he thought, to her sleeping mind, he might somehow be found.” 

Hata’s connection to K is not easily interpreted due to the bias in his own perspective. Though K does not believe he truly loves her, Hata believes his feelings are beyond the physical. K sees who he truly is, and by even being near her, he can be found. She was the only person to recognize his Koreanness and still value him as a person after a lifetime of belittling his Korean identity to assimilate to the “superior” Japanese culture. 

“The doctor will come here tonight. Tonight! Will the war end before then? This afternoon? Will you spirit us away before the dusk falls, Jiro? Because if not there is nothing more to talk about in a real way. There is dreaming and dreaming talk and little else, which is happy enough, and maybe all that remains to us. But please don’t try to make things sound real anymore. It makes me feel desperate and mad.” 

Hata survives on hopes and dreams that are hollow and impossible. Though he believes it enough to rely on it, imagination is not enough for K with the circumstances she is in. For K, trying to imagine their dreams of a life after the war is too difficult to consider, as there is no true escape for her except a quick death to save her from a worse fate. 

“You, Lieutenant, too much depend upon generous fate and gesture. There is no internal possession, no embodiment. Thus you fail in some measure always. You perennially disappoint someone like me.”

Just as Sunny does years later, Captain Ono confronts Hata’s life of gestures and lack of substance. When he desires to prove his love for K to the doctor, Hata is unable to stand for himself or convince the doctor of any passions that he may have. He will inevitably fail in all parts of life because of his reliance on the formalities of things—reputation, fate, and gesture—rather than on the truth and depth of passion and emotion.

“…I realized then that it was a travesty and I was not a surgeon, that I had never cut into living flesh. That I was a fraud and a coward and should not have coveted and accepted as I had done the confidence of people, their singular regard and trust.”

In his waking nightmare of performing a caesarean section delivery on an adolescent, Hata comes face to face with his fraudulent reputation. Throughout the years, he has earned the confidence, regard, and trust of people without truly having the substance they believe him to have. He had not realized the danger such fraud could pose to others until it was too late.

“But I have to wonder, why being here is so abhorrent to everyone but me? We have everything that we require. And much more. We have an impressive house and property in the best town in the area, where we are happily known and respected. We have ample time and quiet and means. I have tried as hard as I can to provide these things, and have been welcomed as warmly as anyone can expect. Everything is in delicate harmony. And yet still you seem dissatisfied.”

When imagining K returning to him one night enrobed in a black flag, Hata is frustrated with her desire to move on from that house and that place. He still relies entirely on gesture and reputation, not understanding that anyone could desire anything other than this orderly, curated, harmonious life.

“‘But I am anxious, Lieutenant. I do hope we might move on from this place. Nothing is wrong with it, nothing at all. But I know I will not die here. I cannot die here. And sometimes, sir, I so wish to.’ Her words at first confused me, as I thought she was saying this wouldn’t be a suitable place for her to pass over to the next life. But then I realized she meant that it wouldn’t be possible, as if this house were some penultimate trap of living, sustaining her beyond the pale.” 

The memory of K connects to Hata’s house and the life of gestures that he has built, and she cannot peacefully move on until he moves on from this life as well. Just as the house is a trap for her soul, Hata’s life of gestures is a trap that prevents him from experiencing the true, raw emotions of life.  

“I did not want innocence so much as I did an erasure reaching back, a pre-beginning, and if I could trade all my years to be at some early moment and never go forward again, I would do so without question or any dread.” 

Hata does not desire to start over without knowing the impact of certain decisions, but the ability to make a change at a critical moment in time. Referencing his short time with K, it is clear he wishes to return to the moments before her death to be able to prove his love for her and thus prove his life is more than just gestures, and that he does indeed have substance within him. 

“All I wished for was to be part (if but a millionth) of the massing, and that I pass through with something more than a life of gestures.” 

Although Hata seems mostly satisfied on the outside with his life of gestures, he wishes for a life of substance that is more than what it appears to be the outside. He hopes for this after experiencing love for K, wanting even the smallest bit of feeling to truly be a part of reality and of the world. 

“I never wanted your help. […] You think you love me but what you really want you don’t know yet because you are young and decent. […] You are a decent man, Lieutenant, but really you are no different from the rest. I’m sorry I gave myself to you, not for me but for you. Perhaps it was a second’s hope. […] But if you loved me, Lieutenant, if you truly loved me, you could not bear to be with me. You could not see me like this, you could not stand for one moment longer the thought of my even living.” 

Before her death, K confronts Hata about his love, exposing his actions as selfish and childish. She believes if he truly loved her, he would not let her live in this way and would end her misery by killing her quickly and painlessly, rather than subjecting her to the inevitable horrors that lie ahead of her. This haunts Hata as the moment he wishes he could return to, a place and time to prove once and for all that the substance within him is more than just gesture. 

“Yet I could not smell or hear or see as I did my medic’s work. I could not feel my hands as they gathered, nor could I feel the weight of such remains. And I could not see that other, tiny, elfin form I eventually discovered, miraculously whole […] And I could not know what I was doing, nor remember any part.”

The traumatizing sight of K’s remains scattered in the woods do not register clearly in Hata’s mind. Whereas another person would mourn the loss and be unable to face such remains, Hata does his medic’s work mindlessly with hollowness inside him. His denial of K’s pregnancy, and the insinuation that he was not her first love or sexual encounter, leads him to ignore the fetus he finds. Hata continues on with his life through gesture and decorum—he motions without truly feeling.

“…I came to think of that first interlude with a somewhat sorrowful fondness, for I saw that our days together were perhaps sullied from the very beginning and all the way through, right up to the last.” 

Hata stops short his first almost-sexual encounter with Mary Burns, possibly for fear of ruining the relationship as he felt he did with K. This time, however, his hesitation in fully giving himself in to emotion and passion is what prevents him from having any relationship with true substance and meaning, his relationship with Mary ending up as nothing but cordial and passive all throughout. 

“There are those who would gladly give up all they have gained in the world to have relented just once when it mattered.” 

Hata advises Renny and Liv that it is important to relent when it matters, thinking of K and Mary and the times he could have relented to prove his love and thus proven his substance. Hata would gladly give up his carefully curated life for another chance at proving his substance and having a heart of emotion. 

“Too much now I’m at the vortex of bad happenings, and I am almost sure I ought to festoon the façade of my house and the bumpers of my car and then garland my shoulders with immense black flags of warning, to let every soul know they must steer clear of this man, not to wave greetings or small-talk with him or do anything to provoke the hand of his agreeable, gentle-faced hubris.” 

After Thomas almost drowns, Anne Hickey’s death, and Mr. Hickey’s injury at his wife’s funeral, Hata starts to believe that he truly is a black flag for bad happenings. He believes the façade of his house reputation, and life of gestures needs to be covered to warn others to stay away from him before they too meet a terrible fate. 

“For what I saw that evening at the clinic endures, remaining unaltered, preserved. And if in my life I’ve witnessed the most terrible of things, if I’ve seen what no decent being should ever look upon and have to hold in close remembrance, perhaps it means I should be left to the cold device of history […] But it is not. And I do not live in broad infamy […] I have not yet been banished from this earth. And though nearly every soul I’ve closely known has come to some dread or grave misfortune, I instead persist, with warmth and privilege occurring to me unabated, ever securing my good station here, the last place I will belong.”

Hata believes that the terrible things he has witnessed would deem him unworthy of good reputation in his life. Both the brutal murder of K and Sunny’s dangerously late abortion are embedded into his memory as things he could have easily prevented if he had considered raw truth. Hata acknowledges that even with the lack of internal substance, he lives a life of reputation and high regard; the only place he will ever belong.