Hans Reiter—Noburo Nisamata

Hans Reiter’s friendship with Noburo Nisamata—called Nisa by Reiter and Hugo Halder—belongs to a stretch of Berlin life built from factory shifts, late-night excursions, and conversation. Nisa is one of Reiter’s closest companions in the city, yet the friendship’s warmth is set against an abrupt departure: shortly before Reiter leaves for basic training, the three go out together, and afterward Reiter hears nothing from Nisa or Halder and leaves Berlin without their farewell.

Meeting in Berlin

At this point Reiter has more free time. He works nights as a factory watchman and spends some afternoons with Halder, walking or visiting cafes and restaurants. Halder’s best friend besides Reiter is Nisa, a twenty-eight-year-old Japanese man working as assistant to the official in charge of agricultural affairs at the Japanese legation. The three usually meet at the Stone Virgin Cafe, a short distance from Alexanderplatz. Halder and Reiter tend to arrive first and eat; Nisa joins them later, impeccably dressed. After a drink, they leave together for the Berlin night.

The group’s outings move through sharply contrasting settings. Halder takes charge of the route: first the Eclipse, a cheap cabaret whose performers are known for their lack of talent, where the friends find an out-of-the-way table and can talk; then the Cafe des Artistes, where Nisa enjoys sharing a table with figures from the Reich’s art world. Around three in the morning they may continue to the Danube, a more fashionable cabaret. Reiter’s poverty and clothes sometimes make it difficult for him to get inside. On weekdays he has to leave his friends by ten to catch the tram to his night-watchman job, while the others may linger over dinner and Halder’s schemes for inventions he hopes one day to patent.

Conversation and Silence

Nisa speaks relatively little, whether from discretion or because he is reluctant to offend with his heavily accented German. What he does say, however, gives the friendship an intellectual and playful texture. He describes Zen as a mountain biting its own tail, says that he studied English and was stationed in Berlin through a mistake by his ministry, and offers unconventional reflections on samurai history. He also tells them that his father knew a Christian monk who lived for fifteen years on Endo, a waterless island of volcanic rock near Okinawa.

Halder often teases Nisa with extravagant claims about him: that he is a Shintoist, that he likes only German prostitutes, and that he can speak and write a long list of European languages. Nisa answers such provocations with a slow, amused laugh. His laughter can become so intense that it involves his whole body. Once, after Halder explains a proposed machine for making artificial clouds, he suddenly asks whether Nisa’s work in Germany is really diplomatic or whether he is a secret agent. Nisa is initially taken aback; when Halder seriously explains what he means, Nisa laughs until he faints onto the table. Reiter and Halder carry him to the washroom, splash water on his face, and revive him.

The friendship is not sustained by talk alone. Sometimes, while the three are sitting on a cafe terrace or at a cabaret table, conversation gives way to a prolonged, unexplained silence. The narrative presents these pauses as a temporary withdrawal from the everyday world of people and speech. They belong to the trio’s shared experience as much as the jokes and excursions do, marking a form of companionship that needs no continuous exchange.

Reiter’s Departure

A week before Reiter is due to leave for basic training, Halder and Nisa take him to a farewell dinner that ends at a brothel. They urge him to lose his virginity in honor of their friendship. Reiter does not do so that night, although he later tells them that he did; he returns the next day and loses his virginity then. He makes two further visits before leaving. The episode marks the friends’ last shared celebration before his military departure, but it does not become an occasion for a lasting farewell.

When Reiter finally leaves, he goes alone. He notices that nobody has come to the station to see him off. He had said goodbye to the woman he visited the previous night, but he has heard nothing from Halder or Nisa since his first visit to the brothel. He thinks that Halder has been living in Berlin as though he had already left. The only person he actually bids farewell on the day of departure is his landlady. His kit bag contains only a few clothes and his book, Animals and Plants of the European Coastal Region.

Significance of the Relationship

Nisa’s friendship gives Reiter a place in a small, vivid social circle while he remains poor and works nights. The contrast between the group’s elaborate nocturnal circuit and Reiter’s need to catch the tram to the factory keeps that companionship grounded in his material circumstances. Nisa’s stories, Halder’s inventions, the cabarets, and the trio’s shared silences make the Berlin interlude feel expansive; its ending is spare. Reiter’s departure exposes a limit in the friendship: the affection and intimacy of their shared nights do not translate into a farewell at the station. Nisa is thus both a genuine companion in Reiter’s life and part of a world he leaves without ceremony.