ABSTRACT
The older I get, the more sentimental I feel. New York’s weather doesn’t help – the gray skies, the icy winds, endless winter, no patch of green. And that’s dangerous for an historian, whose very life-blood must course with detachment and objectivity. Emotion constricts the scholar’s arteries and veins. Despite my training and discipline, age and art draw me to cemeteries, both figuratively and literally, in a yearning for community, for continuity, for certainty. There, on stone, an economy of words bears the burden of lifetimes, however brief, of thought and activity. “Ichiro Fujii, September 15, 1918, died at 33.” “Isokawa, 25 years.” “To meet together in one place,” the grave marker reminded – the past on common ground.
