When
Hoshito was five years old, he was playing swords with his friends in the
shrine near his house. He wore a furoshiki hood and mask to look like Kurama
Tenngu, a masked samurai hero. He wielded his sword the moment Yoichi attempted
to slash him. He moved a step backward and cocked his sword over his head and
said sneeringly with a dramatic tone, “You are a competent swordsman, but not
an expert.” The hood had come loose. He held his sword with his right hand and
tried to adjust the hood with his left hand. That instant Mitsuo slashed him
from shoulder to hip from behind. Hoshito groaned histrionically, “You, dirty
coward!” and fell onto the ground.
The yellow ginkgo leaves
were shining brightly reflecting the setting red sun. It was the fall of 1946.
Yoichi’s mother came to
the shrine and shouted, “Come back home, Yoichi. Supper is ready.” Yoichi threw
away the stick on the ground and went home saying, “See you tomorrow.”
Mitsuo’s mother also came to
call him back. The other boys said, “I’ll go home,” or “Me, too,” and all the
boys went home leaving Hoshito alone in the spacious shrine ground.
Left alone, Hoshito took the furoshiki hood off from his head and jammed
it into his shorts pocket. Then he walked in the shrine cutting the air diagonally
on his either side alternatively with his stick sword as if he were trying to distract
himself from his loneliness. Two crows were flying above him toward the setting
sun cawing.
Hoshito’s mother died of subarachnoid bleeding when he was two years
old. His father, Jyunji, remarried Takako when he was four. She had a snub nose
and her lips were as fat as bicycle tires. Takako got rid of all Hoshito’s
mother’s belongings: her chest of drawers, mirror stand, kimono, obi-belts,
footwear, hair sticks made of turtle shell. She threw away even her photographs
and notebooks. So, Hoshito had no way to figure out what his mother looked like
or what her handwriting was like.
He was passing through a tunnel made of about 30 red torii shrine gates
which stood in succession. He walked hitting each torii gate pillar with a
stick in his hand making a rattling noise.
Suddenly a gust of wind blew; the
sunset was covered with dark clouds and looked threatening. Hoshito rushed and almost
reached the end of the tunnel. He had only a few torii gates to pass through,
when he stumbled on a tree root and fell on his buttocks.
“Ouch” he said and looked at his dirty kneecap. It was bleeding. He
wiped the dirt and put saliva on the cut. The dirt and blood mingled. When he
stood up, he happened to see the torii pillar on his right hand. It was
inscribed in black ink with the contributor’s name, Mitsuo Mochizuki. “Mochizuki
is the same as my family name,” he thought.
Then, thunder cracked and the lightning flashed. The thirty torii gates blazed
white. Sharp thunder rumbled again as if it would split the earth into pieces.
Hoshito crouched down with his eyes shut covering his ears with his hands. The
wind whirled taking innumerable gingko leaves high up in the dark sky. Relentless
lightning brightened the gingko trees, the shrine, and the graveled ground. Hoshito
was motionless.
Ten seconds….twenty seconds….
Gradually the thunder abated. Hoshito opened his eyes and looked around.
It was foggy. He looked through the fog to find about 30 torii gates standing
in front of him. He wondered, “I was almost at the end of the tunnel before the
thunder, but why are there still many torii gates in front of me? Have I been
blown backward by the wind?” He stood up and looked at the torii gate pillar
just beside him. It had the name, Mitsuo Mochizuki. “This is the place where I
stood when the thunder clapped,” he wondered and looked forward again
carefully.
He saw a boy standing about three meters away from him in the foggy
tunnel. He was just like Hoshito. He looked about the same age as Hoshito,
wearing the same light blue sweater and the same brown shorts, with
close-cropped hair. His kneecap was slightly bleeding. A stick of the same
shape and length with Hoshito’s lay just beside him. Everything about the boy
was the same as Hoshito.
This was an illusion. There shouldn’t be a giant mirror in the tunnel,
he thought and as an experiment he raised his right hand. Then the boy raised
his “right” hand (on the observer’s right) just like in a mirror. Hoshito was
startled. He tilted his body to the right. Then the boy tilted his body to the “right,”
too. This must be the Shrine Fox trick, he thought, and jumped twice. Then the
boy jumped at the same time and landed at the same time with Hoshito. He was
scared, but boldly advanced three steps. Then the boy also advanced three steps.
Hoshito thought if he advanced some more, he would collide with the boy.
He was a hero swordsman, Kurama Tengu. He shouldn’t be afraid. He advanced
further. When the distance narrowed down to 50 centimeters between the two
boys, Hoshito adventurously extended his hand to touch the boy. The boy also
extended his hand. As soon as the distance between the two hands was about five
centimeters, thunder struck the shrine again. Hoshito shut his eyes petrified.
Thunder roared and lightening flashed. It became foggy.
Ten seconds….twenty seconds….
Gradually the thunder abated. Hoshito opened his eyes and found that the
boy had disappeared.
The roof of the shrine was shining, reflecting the setting sun as if
nothing had happened. The gingko leaves were waving in the breeze. The bell of
a temple tolled in the distance.
Hoshito did not want to go back home. His new mother, Takako, had had a
baby a year after she married his father, Jyunji. Hoshito thought that she had
changed after she gave birth to his brother.
When Hoshito got home, Takako rebuked him in a gravelly voice, “What
time do you think it is now? How many times have I told you that you must come
back after the sunset?”
At supper Hoshito talked about the strange incident he had experienced
in the shrine.
“Dad, I saw a strange boy in the shrine.”
“A strange boy?”
“Yes. Do I have a twin brother?”
“No. You don’t, but what are you talking about?”
“I saw a boy just like me in the shrine.”
“What nonsense! Have you gone mad?” Takako snorted.
“But I SAW him. He was wearing the same clothes as me.”
“It’s your imagination, isn’t it?” Jyunji ignored Hoshito.
“I know what I saw,” Hoshito protested.
Hoshito felt disappointed to hear his father. Dad had been kind enough
to listen to him more attentively before he remarried. Hoshito bit his lower
lip slightly.
Since that day, the strange boy never appeared again. After Hoshito
entered elementary school, he continued to play with Yoichi and Mitsuo in the
shrine. After his friends went home in the evening, Hoshito walked through the
torii tunnel to the pillar which was inscribed with “Mituo Mochizuki.” He
thought he might meet the boy again, but he never appeared again.
When Hoshito was a first grader, he asked Yoichi, “Have you ever seen a
boy who looks like you?”
“What do you mean? Are you talking about my twin?”
“No, not your twin, but he looks just like you.”
“Like me? And not my twin? A ghost?” Yoichi responded like Hoshito was a
stupid.
“Not a ghost. I saw him. I saw a boy who looked exactly like me.”
“Impossible.”
“I know, but I . . . .”
Hoshito asked the same question
of Mitsuo, but he replied, “You must have dreamed it.”
Since then he stopped asking the question of his friends lest he should
be treated as a fool.
After graduating from elementary school, he went to a local junior high
school. He commuted to school walking along the road near the shrine. Once in a
while he walked through the tunnel. What was the boy? Was he an illusion? Did
an illusion raise his hand just like me? Did it jump together with me?
The junior high school classes were not interesting at all for Hoshito.
Takako always criticized Hoshito for his bad grades.
“Why are your grades so poor? You should follow the example of Hideki,”
Takako praised his brother. Hoshito was frustrated. Would his real mother say
such a disappointing thing? He faintly said to himself, “Mom….” He was not able
to remember anything about his mother: her face, voice, smell, and feeling. He
wished he had her picture, even only one single picture.
His grades in senior high school were bad. One day he was in physics
class. The teacher’s hair looked like Einstein’s. It grew long in all directions
as if it were an exploding bomb. He wore black-framed round glasses and a white
lab coat. His name was Furuta, but his nickname Old Fox prevailed among the students.
Hoshito thought his class was tricky. When Old Fox was confronted with a
difficult question, he seemed to throw up a smokescreen by giving seemingly
correct answers. Hoshito thought that not all of his lectures were scientifically
based. Hoshito thought Old Fox were trying to attract the students’ interest in
his class by saying extravagant things such as: a boy and a girl are pulled by each
other by an unseen force; everybody would be able to go to space by using an
elevator in the future; and theoretically speaking time travel into the past
was impossible but into the future it was possible. In one of his classes, Fox
said that the Bermuda triangle was the entrance into another dimension and that
the other entrance should be on the other side of the earth. Hoshito did not
believe what Fox said, but he looked for the other entrance by consulting the
world globe in the school library just for the fun of it. It seemed like the
entrance was located in Japan, or more precisely speaking, in the central part
of Japan, where Hoshito lived.
That day Hoshito was taking Fox’s class absent-mindedly. He wanted it to
end soon. Mr. Fox was yelling the words “antiparticles” repeatedly.
“Therefore, every chemical substance is made of atoms, which are made of
particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons. Interestingly enough, there
exist counterpart particles that have the same mass as protons, neutrons, and
electrons, but have a negative charge. They are called antiprotons or positron,
antineutrons, and antielectrons. Therefore, antiatoms, which I have often
mentioned before, are substances consisting of positrons, antineutrons, and
antielectrons. Well, do you have any questions so far?”
“Yes, I have a question,” Yukawa, who sat beside Hoshito, raised his
hand. “You say there exist antiatoms. Then, does it mean that there also exist
antimolecules?”
“A good question. You are right. For that matter, there exist
antiprotein and antiameba. And, ultimately speaking, antihumans could exist.”
Hoshito was staggered to hear the word, antihumans, and raised his hand
despite himself.
“OK. Hoshito,” Mr. Furuta said.
“What kind of thing is this antihuman?”
“Well, it is an exact counterpart of a human being. In the antihuman
world, everything is reversed. Our right side is their left side, so is our
left side. Time flows backward. Incidentally, my students, I would like to
introduce an interesting theory about the birth of the universe. According to
this theory, when the universe was made by the big bang, a counterpart universe
was also made at the same time caused by negative force. In that counterpart
world, time flows in reverse. Unlike this universe which is expanding, the
antiuniverse is deflating.”
Hoshito did not fully understand what Fox was talking about. He
was afraid that Fox was making some tricky lecture. However, when Fox mentioned
“anti-human,” Hoshito instantaneously remembered the strange boy he met in the
shrine years ago.
Hoshito continued to ask questions.
“If there is an anti-universe, does it mean there is an
anti-earth? Then, is there an anti-boy exactly like me?”
“Yes, you are right. Theoretically speaking, there exists your
anti-boy, your duplicate.”
Hoshito was overwhelmed by Mr. Furuta’s answer. His classmates were
surprised to see Hoshito, who never asked questions, asking questions
earnestly.
“Mr. Furuta, can I, can I meet my anti-boy?”
“No, it’s impossible because the anti-universe exists in a different
dimension. However, some scientists claim that there are warp holes on earth
that lead to different dimensions. You know, such as the one at the Bermuda triangle
zone.”
A vivid image of the strange boy in the shrine revived before Hoshito’s
eyes.
“Mr. Furuta, to tell you the truth, I have…, I have met my anti-human.”
That moment, all the students were taken back. The next moment, they
roared into laughter.
Mr. Furuta was different. His eyes sparkled and said, “Really? When?
Where?”
“At Takakura Shrine. When I was five or so.”
The next Sunday, Hoshito took Mr. Furuta to the shrine. It was an
affiliated shrine of Atsuta Shrine, and was famous for its power to help
child-raising mothers. Walking along an approach to the shrine, Mr. Furuta
said, “Hoshito, do you remember that I predicted that there might be a warp
hole at the other side of the earth from the Bermuda triangle zone? It’s here.
I’m amazed. So, a tremendous thunder must have roared immediately before you
saw the boy, I guess.”
“Yes, it was ear-splitting.”
“I thought so. When the right conditions were met, the anti-boy,
or I should say, the negatively charged Hoshito was positively charged by the
thunder, and appeared before you. It means that the anti-universe momentarily
broke into this universe.”
“I see,” Hoshito said, although he did not follow Mr. Furuta at
all. “But, Mr. Furuta, doesn’t the anti-universe exist billions of billions of
light-years away from this universe?”
“Not at all. The anti-universe seems to exist at the farthest
place from this universe, but it exists at the nearest from our universe.”
“What do you mean?” Hoshito asked, confused.
“Well, let me give you a metaphorical example. This is called Möbius
strip. Take a paper strip and give it a half-twist, and join the ends of the
strip together to form a loop. Now, if you were to stand on the strip and start
walking along its length, where would be the farthest from the starting point? Well,
it would be the point on the other side of the starting point. But if you make
a hole at the starting point, the point on the other side is the nearest.
Therefore, the farthest is the nearest. The hole is the warp hole. Do you
understand?”
Listening to Mr. Furuta, Hoshito thought he was bewitched by a fox, but
on second thought, he concluded Mr. Furuta was telling the truth. He had said
that there would be a warp hole at the other side of the Bermuda triangle, and just
as he had predicted, he was standing at the very spot where he had met his
anti-boy.
When they came to the Torii inscribed with the name, Mitsuo Mochizuki,
Mr. Furuta took out a terrestrial electromagnetic wave sensor out of his bag,
and switched on it.
“Oh, it’s abnormally high,” he said looking at the indicator.
“So, there is a warp hole here,” Hoshito said.
“I can’t say for sure, but this is a most likely spot. If conditions
are met, you could go to the anti-universe.”
“Conditions? What conditions?”
“Oh, there are many. When solar storms generate a great level of
radiation that affects the earth's magnetic field, or when positive electrical
charge is replaced with negative charge due to tremendous thunderbolts, or when
the planetary alignment takes place, I mean, when the planets form a straight
line from the sun outward disturbing the magnetic field.”
Mr. Furuta gave several conditions so spontaneously that Hoshito reasured
that the teacher had not been throwing up a smokescreen before the students. He
believed what Mr. Furuta said.
“Then, if the conditions are fulfilled, can I go to the anti-universe?”
“Sure. If you study the nature of
anti-particles and negative electrical charge fully, you are most probably
capable of entering another dimension. If you are interested, I recommend you
to study it.”
Since that day, Hoshito’s attitude during Mr. Furuta’s class changed dramatically.
He began to read books on universe, electrical charge, atoms, and particles. He
often asked questions of Mr. Furuta. He had given up going to university, but
thanks to his hard work, he entered the department of science, Kyoto
University, two years later.
After graduating from the university, he went on to the graduate school
of science and studied anti-particles in the elementary particles research
laboratory in Kyoto University. Then after finishing his PhD, he studied terrestrial
electromagnetic wave and cosmic electromagnetic system in Massachusetts
Institute of Technology as a visiting researcher.
Hoshito married at the age of 31, became an assistant professor at
the age of 42, and professor at 53. After retiring from Kyoto University at 65,
he continued his study and experiments as an emeritus professor at Nagoya
University, but years passed without any concrete progress from his studies. His
father passed away from heart failure at the age of 67 and his step mother,
Takako, died when she was 77.
In July 2012 when Hoshito was 78 years old, he flew to Geneva, Switzerland,
as a research associate for the European Organization for Nuclear Research to
attend the experiment to discover Higgs or God particles inside the Large
Hadron Collider. He was overwhelmed by the discovery, but that was only the
starting line for his life’s work.
When he was 80, his son who lived in a condominium in Tokyo suggested to
him that he should live with his family, but he declined because he did not
want to leave his home city of Nagoya, where he was born and bred. He was
thinking only of meeting his anti-boy, or now his anti-old man in Takakura
Shrine. He had almost given up meeting him. Although he had mastered astrophysics,
cosmophysics, planetary electromagnetics, particle physics, space-time geometry,
atmospheric electricity, and other fields of physics, he had not yet detected
even an anti-H2O molecule.
Hoshito was alone on his 82nd birthday, but he was not so
feeble to have to ask his son to support him. After taking breakfast, he went out
for a walk to Takakura Shrine routinely. He had given up meeting his
anti-human. As he was walking in the Torii tunnel, he wondered what had made
him work so hard. Why had he wanted to meet his anti-human so much?
Then, he realized that he had long desired to meet his mother. Mr.
Furuta had said that time flew backward in the anti-universe. So, if he met his
anti-human in the anti-universe, he would see him grow younger and younger
until he would meet his mother.
When he was five years old, he envied Yoichi and Mituo when their
mothers came to call them back home for supper. On the morning of the
enrollment ceremony for elementary school, he was chided by his stepmother,
Takako, “Why can’t you walk faster, you, blockhead.” Whenever he was playing in
a park or walking along a street, he saw children accompanied by their mothers.
Such scenes hurt his heart. His elementary school teacher had said, “When you
tell a lie, your heart gets a black stain. The more you tell lies, the darker
your heart becomes.” Hoshito thought his heart had gotten tainted with dark blue
stains which, in his mind, were the signs of sorrow and loneliness.
When his heart was saturated with such stains, loneliness showed on his
face. However cheerful he looked or however loudly he was laughing, his eyes betrayed
his motherless sorrow. Takako looked kind to Hoshito before her husband, but
behind his back she took only Hideki under her wing. Hoshito saw her give candy
and money to Hideki, saying in a small voice, “This is only for you. Don’t tell
your brother.” Even after he grew up to be a high school boy, he craved for his
mother who would embrace him warmly. Even after he became a man, and married,
and became 40 or 50 years old, his loneliness lingered in his heart. If you carefully
looked at his face, you would notice a slight blue mark under his eyes. His
face reflected his motherless heartache.
It was a fine May day. Hoshito walked to Takakura Shrine for a walk. He threw
money into an offertory box in front of the shrine, clapped his hands twice,
and bowed. He walked to the torii tunnel. The green leaves were shining. As he
was walking in the tunnel, he thought his anti-boy was 82 years old, too.
A gust of wind blew. A dozen of birds flew away from the trees in all
directions chirping noisily. Black clouds invaded the sky, threatening to rain.
Hoshito hurriedly passed through the tunnel for fear of the rain. His legs did
not move smoothly because of his age. When he reached the torii inscribed with Mitsuo
Mochizuki, ear-splitting lightning struck. Hoshito crouched down and put his
hands over his ears. Fog hung thick and low.
Ten seconds….twenty seconds….
When the thunder faded, Hoshito opened his eyes. The fog had cleared and
the black clouds had disappeared, revealing a clear blue sky; dozens of birds flew
to the trees from all directions chirping noisily and a gust of wind stopped
blowing; he walked backward in a haste with tottering steps in the torii tunnel
under a threatening dark sky; he saw green leaves shining under a fine May sky;
he bowed and clapped his hands twice; a coin jumped from the offering box into
his hands.
Why had the coins jumped out of the box, Hoshito wondered. Why had he bowed
twice even though he had bowed a short time ago? Just then, Hoshito realized
that he had entered the anti-universe. Time was flowing backward. He was
looking at himself like a dying man’s spirit was looking at his body.
He was watching a rewinding movie. His past events were unreeling before
him. He became younger and younger. Now he was eighty years old. He saw his wife’s funeral. Six men in mourning dress were dragging
a coffin from a hearse; carried it back to a funeral hall and put it in the center;
a man opened its lid, and a dozen of sobbing people in black were taking
flowers out of the coffin.
Ten years flew backward, then another ten years. Now he was 70 years
old, reading a physics book at home; now he was 60, giving a retirement commemorative
lecture on “The Symmetric Balance of Particles and Anti-particles”; then he became
a professor and then an assistant professor. Another ten years flew back and he
saw the scene of the first date with his would-be-wife in a restaurant. He was
wiping the spilt coffee on the table; he took a napkin; coffee spread on the
table and spilt out from the cup; it tumbled and his hand knocked it down; he put
it on the table and was sipping coffee talking with her.
Now he was watching Mr. Furuta’s class. His classmates burst into
laughter and Hoshito said, “Boyantimymethavei.” Yukawa, putting down his hand, said
Questionahavei.” Mr. Furuta said, “?farsoquestionsanyhaveyoudo.”
Now the scene was showing a five-year-old Hoshito facing his anti-boy
clad in the same clothes as Hoshito’s, when the fog cleared and then thunder
rumbled. Both of them drew back their hands, walked backward a few steps, and
jumped twice.
The scene changed into the torii tunnel, where Hoshito was walking
backward hitting the torii pillars with a stick. Yoichi left the shrine with
his mother, and said, “Tomorrowyousee.” Now Hoshito was sword fighting with Yoichi
and Mitsuo. His furoshiki hood covering
his head loosened and then it tightened.
Now he was two years old. He was sitting in his mother’s lap. He
saw his mother for the first time in his life. He cried, “Mom!” Her sloe-eyes and
eyelids without a fold; her neat nose and lips; and her soft round cheeks. She resembled
a beautiful woman in the Edo era ukiyoe
woodprint. She was smiling at a one-year-old Hoshito. While he was looking at
her, he felt warm, happy, and shy. His motherless sorrow and loneliness had dissolved.
He wanted to jump to her bosom and be hugged by her. He heard her saying, “Hoshitomouthyouropen.”
He heard her voice for the first time, but he thought he had heard it before.
When his mouth was about to shut, she slowly pulled a spoon with
some food in it from his mouth. How tenderly, he thought.
He became six months old. Now she
was changing his diaper; now he was suckling from her breast; at last he saw the
moment he was born with a sharp cry. That instant, Hoshito died.
His body lay beside the torii pillar inscribed “Mitsuo Mochizuki.”
The dark blue sorrow mark under his eye had completely disappeared. He looked
content, peaceful, and fully secure.
The end
