responsibility for the former, and I had told my wife, who called later with
condolences, to pass the message on. The widow had replied that she did
not want a death mask, but would appreciate photographs.
But when the time came I quite lost confidence. It was a heavy duty I
had taken upon myself. And the shutter of my camera had a way of
catching, and the chances of failure seemed great. Remembering that a
photographer had been brought from Tokyo to cover the festival, I asked
him to photograph the dead Master. The widow and the others might object
if I were suddenly to introduce a photographer who had been nothing to the
Master, but it was certain that the pictures would be better than any I
myself might take. Objections came instead from the organizers of the
festival: they had brought the man for the festival, and it would be a great
inconvenience to have him dispatched elsewhere. They were of course
right. My feelings about the Master had been mine alone, and I was
unconsciously at odds with the other participants in the festival. I asked the
photographer to look at my camera. He said that I should open it to
voluntary timing and use my hand as a shutter. He changed the film for me.
I went to the Urokoya in a cab.
The night doors were closed in the room where the Master had been laid,
and the light was on. The widow and her younger brother went in with me.
“Is it too dark?” asked the brother. “Shall we open the doors?”
I took perhaps ten pictures. I was careful that the shutter did not catch,
and I tried the technique of using my hand as a shutter. I would have liked
to take pictures from all sides and angles, but out of respect for the dead
man I could not bring myself to wander through the room. I took all my
pictures from a single kneeling position.
Presently they came from my house in Kamakura. My wife had written
on the back of the envelope: “These have just come from the Nonomiya. I
have not opened them. You are to be at the shrine office by five on the
fourth.” The last message had to do with the spring rites at the Hachiman
