My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin (most read book in the world TXT) 📕

of pretty girls who loaded us with presents. The effect, as they stood waiting in their kimonos, was like a flower show. In Tokyo an estimated crowd of forty thousand waited to greet us at the station. In the rush Sydney stumbled and fell and was almost trampled upon.

The mystery of the Orient is legendary. I had always thought we Europeans exaggerated it. But it was in the air the moment we stepped ashore at Kobe, and now in Tokyo it began to envelop us. On the way to the hotel we turned into a quiet part of the city. Suddenly the car slowed down to a stop near the Emperor’s palace. Kono looked back anxiously through the limousine window, then turned to me and made a strange request. Would I get out of the car and bow towards the palace?

‘Is this customary?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said casually. ‘You don’t have to bow, just step out of the car, that will be enough.’

This request somewhat bewildered me, because no one was around except the two or three cars that had followed us. If it were customary, the public would have known and a crowd would have been there, if only a small one. However, I got out and bowed. When I got back in the car, Kono looked relieved. Sydney thought this was a strange request, and thought Kono had acted strangely. He looked worried ever since we arrived at Kobe. I dismissed the matter and said that perhaps he had been working too hard.

Nothing happened that night, but the following morning Sydney came into the sitting-room very excited. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said; ‘my bags have been searched and all my papers have been disturbed!’ I told him that even if it were true it was not important. But nothing would allay Sydney’s apprehension. ‘There’s something fishy going on!’ he said. But I laughed and accused him of being overly suspicious.

That morning a Government agent was assigned to look after us, explaining that if we wished to go anywhere we should let him know through Kono. Sydney insisted that we were being watched and that Kono was holding back something. I must admit that Kono was looking more worried and harassed every hour.

Sydney’s suspicions were not unfounded, because a peculiar thing happened that day. Kono said that a merchant had some pornographic pictures painted on silk which he would like me to come and see at his house. I told Kono to tell the man I was not interested. Kono looked worried. ‘Supposing I ask him to leave them at the hotel?’ he suggested.

‘Under no circumstances,’ I said. ‘Just tell him not to waste his time.’

He hesitated. ‘These people don’t take no for an answer.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked.

‘Well, they’ve been threatening me for several days; there’s a tough element here in Tokyo.’

‘What nonsense!’ I answered. ‘We’ll put the police on their tracks.’

But Kono shook his head.

The next night, while my brother, Kono and I were dining in a private room in a restaurant, six young men entered. One sat down next to Kono and folded his arms, while the others backed up a pace and remained standing. The seated man began talking in Japanese to Kono with suppressed anger. Something he said made Kono suddenly blanch.

I was unarmed. Nevertheless, I put my hand in my coat-pocket as though I had a revolver, and shouted: ‘What’s the meaning of this?’

Kono, without looking up from his plate, mumbled: ‘He says you’ve insulted his ancestors by refusing to see his pictures.’

I sprang to my feet and, keeping my hand in my pocket, looked fiercely at the young man. ‘What’s all this about?’ Then I said to Sydney: ‘Let’s get out of here. And you, Kono, order a cab.’

Once we were safely in the street we were all relieved. A taxi was waiting for us and we drove away.

The culmination of the mystery came the following day when the Prime Minister’s son invited us as his guests to the Suomi wrestling matches. As we sat and watched them, an attendant tapped Mr Ken Inukai on the shoulder and whispered something. He turned to us and excused himself, saying that something urgent had arisen and that he had to leave, but he would come back later. Towards the end of the wrestling he returned, looking white and shaken. I asked him if he were ill. He shook his head, then suddenly covered his face with his hands. ‘My father has just been assassinated,’ he said.

We took him back to our rooms and offered him some brandy. Then he told us what had happened: six naval cadets had killed the guards outside the Prime Minister’s palace and had broken into his private quarters, where they found him with his wife and daughter. His mother had told him the rest of the story: the assassins stood over his father for twenty minutes pointing their guns, while the Prime Minister tried to reason with them, but to no avail. Without a word they were about to shoot. But he begged them not to kill him in the presence of his family. So they allowed him to take leave of his wife and daughter. Calmly he got up and led the assassins to another room – where he must have tried to reason with them again, for the family sat in agonizing suspense before they heard the shots that killed their father.

The murder had occurred while his son was at the wrestling matches. Had he not been with us, he said, he would have been killed with his father.

I accompanied him back to his home and saw the room in which two hours previously his father had been murdered. The stain of a large pool of blood was still wet on the matting. A battery of cameramen and reporters were there, but they had the decency not to take photographs. They nevertheless prevailed upon me to make a statement. I could only say that