Notebook Outside the Window: A Record of Opening It and Still Not Knowing

I learned from the evening news that the container in Fukagawa had been opened. Inside: a liquid resembling water, of no identifiable lineage, with no explanation for why its surface refuses to follow the vessel's tilt. Hearing that, I couldn't help laughing. Nearly thirty years in this trade have taught me that no report is more honest than "we opened it, and we still don't know."

A younger reporter might call the result an anticlimax. But reading the review board chair's comment from the scene, I found myself thinking about my own work instead. My books, in the end, are mostly the same kind of book. I've interviewed several hundred people about the Nine-Day Fog, and what remains unknown still outweighs what's been learned. And yet I keep writing. Today's paper seemed to be saying the same thing: the opening itself is a record, and so is the not-knowing that followed it.

The part about the engraving excited me a little — the line about it "resembling" the symbols on the provisional Lineage 148 metal post. The center wouldn't commit to anything, but an amateur like me can't help wanting to draw the connecting line anyway. The post in Kameido, the container in Fukagawa, the Nine-Day Fog — wouldn't it be something if they were all linked? But thirty years in this business have taught me that the interesting hypothesis is usually the wrong one. The moment I feel the urge to draw that line is exactly when I put the pen down. It's become a habit.

I still haven't gone to see subject number 62. I've put it off two weeks running now. Reading today's article gave me a small push, I'll admit, but in the end I pushed it to next week again. Maybe all I'm doing is granting myself more time to hold something without knowing it. Still, today made one thing clear: there are things that can't begin without opening them, and things that don't end even once you do.