Hirai Tarō (1894–1965), known to the literary world as Edogawa Ranpo, was a Japanese author and translator commonly acknowledged as a master of crime and mystery fiction. Ranpo even created the Japanese Gothic mystery, influenced by the work of Edgar Allan Poe. He was the first Japanese author to ever pen a story about a vampire in one of the books of his Akechi series, Vampire (1930). In 1955, the Mystery Writers of Japan decided to give an award in his honor. The Edogawa Ranpo award is presented annually to an unpublished mystery novel. “The Man Traveling with the Brocade Portrait” is one of the most unusual fantasy stories in this volume and showcases Ranpo’s mastery.
IF THIS STORY IS NOT A DREAM of mine or a hallucination brought on by a temporary state of insanity, then surely the man traveling with the brocade portrait was himself insane. Yet, like a dreamer who is permitted to peek at a world other than our own or a lunatic who hears and sees what the rest of us cannot, it may well be that I happened to catch a glimpse—if only for an instant—of something that lies beyond the field of vision in our world, and by using the bizarre mechanism of the atmosphere as my lens, I peered into a corner of a realm that exists outside our own. The date escapes me, but it was a warm, overcast day. I had set out to see the famous mirages at the seashore at Uozu. Now I was on my way home.
Close friends always interrupt me when I get to this point in the story.
“Hey, wait a minute,” they ask incredulously. “When did you ever go to Uozu?”
Well, put it that way, and I suppose I can’t produce evidence to demonstrate categorically I was there on such and such a day. Maybe it was a dream after all. But never before had I experienced a dream in which the colors were so vivid. The scenes in most dreams are, like those in black-and-white movies, devoid of color. But the one from that night when I took the train home alone from Uozu to Tokyo is burned into my memory as vividly as one might remember the eye of a snake. And at the heart of that dream is the gaudy portrait I saw that night, brocade puffed up and stuffed from inside, fabric woven in brilliant hues of purple and red. The dream was so powerful that it makes me wonder if we’ll be able to see the dream of films made in color come true.
The trip was the first time I had ever seen a mirage. I imagined a mirage would look like an old-fashioned painting in which the beautiful Dragon Palace of the God of the Sea floated majestically among bubbles rising from a giant clam. But seeing the real thing took me completely by surprise. It came to me as a shock. The experience bordered on fear, and it made me break into oily sweat.
A breathless throng had gathered among the stretch of pine trees that ran along the sandy beach. People looked no bigger than dried beans scattered on a tray as they stood there taking in the expanse of both sea and sky that filled our field of vision. I had never seen the sea so quiet. It was silent as a deaf-mute. The calm was all the more unexpected since I had always thought the Sea of Japan as being terribly rough. The gray sea, which was smooth and without a wave or a ripple, reminded me of a vast marsh that stretches on and on without end. Unlike the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan has no horizon. Instead the water seemed to meld into the sky and become an identical, indistinct gray haze of indeterminate thickness. So that, just when I thought I was looking at the upper reaches of the haze—that is, what I mistook for sky—all of a sudden a large, white sailboat floated across it like a ghost wing through a mist. I was startled to realize I was staring at the surface of water!
The mirage looked like drops of India ink, dripped one by one on a piece of milky white film. Slowly but steadily the black droplets spread across the surface of the film until it became a gigantic movie screen projected on vast, open sky.
Viewed through these two different layers of sky, each with its own refracting lens, the distant forests of the Nōtō Peninsula were like a black-bug that one examines through a microscope yet to be adjusted and brought into focus. An indistinct yet grossly enlarged image appeared to be suspended over the heads of the spectators on the beach. It resembled a strangely shaped black cloud, and it really did appear to exist there in the sky. Yet, oddly enough, the distance between it and the spectators was indistinct and impossible to gauge. At first, the mirage was a big cumulonimbus floating high above the sea. But then it seemed to change. It became a weird sort of haze that pressed within a foot of the viewer’s face. Or still closer—like a blur that flits across the cornea of the eye. What was important was the indistinctness. The inability to gauge distance was what gave it the air of something unimaginable…of something weird…of something insane.
The vaguely shaped, giant jet-black triangles of the mirage were piled on top of the other, but then, in the blink of an eye, they fell apart and arrayed themselves horizontally as if they were a row of box cars linked together like a train. In turn they broke into smaller pieces, becoming the treetops in a stand of Lebanese cedars. They stood there, still and immovable, until they transformed themselves again—abracadabra—into radically different shapes.
If the magic of a mirage possesses the power to drive a person insane, then surely I was under its spell as I boarded the train in Uozu and headed home for Tokyo. Having spent more than two hours riveted to the spot as I watched a series of seductive and unearthly transfigurations in the sky, there was no question I was not fully myself that long night I spent on the train. My state of mind was completely different from what it would have been on an ordinary day. Perhaps it was akin to temporary insanity—like the hysteria that sets in when a phantom spirit or robber accosts one out of the blue and leaves one in fear for one’s life.
I boarded the train at Uozu Station bound for Ueno Station in Tokyo at about six p.m. I don’t know if it was by strange coincidence or merely a normal event on trains in the area, but the second-class car where I sat (at the time there were still first-, second-, and third-class cars) was, save for myself, as empty as a church. Only one other passenger had boarded ahead of me, and he was hunkered down on a seat in the far corner of the car.
The train ran on and on, its monotonous, mechanical sounds reverberating along the lonely shoreline with its steep cliffs and sandy bays. A dark, blood-colored sun floated lazily over the depths of the haze as it set over the marshlike sea. A white sail, which appeared to be abnormally large, scudded through the haze as if it were moving in a dream. It was a windless, stiflingly hot day, and windows in the car were open here and there. Yet even the gentle breeze, which slipped in like a legless ghost, did little to stir the air. The many short tunnels and the thin slats on row after row of snow fences broke the endless gray expanse of sky and sea into stripes as we passed them.
By the time we passed the cliffs at Oyashirazu, the lamplight in the car and the light left in the sky appeared to cancel each other out, and darkness closed in on us aboard the train. It was then that the only other passenger in the car, the man sitting in the far corner, abruptly stood up and spread a large black cloth over the seat. Then he took an object of two to three feet in length—it had been turned toward the window—and began wrapping it up in the cloth. His actions gave me a decidedly eerie feeling.
I felt certain the flat object was a framed picture, and it appeared there was special significance to the fact the man had propped it up to face toward the train window. I was convinced that earlier he had deliberately removed the object from the cloth and placed it in the window to face the outside. Based on the quick glimpse I stole when he rewrapped it, I could tell the picture, which was executed in the most brilliant combination of colors, had a marvelously raw, vital quality to it. There was something not of this world about it—or at least not of our everyday world.
I took a second look at the bearer of the strange package. As peculiar as the object in his possession may have seemed, I was more surprised by its owner, who looked very strange indeed. He was an old-fashioned type the likes of which one sees only in faded photographs from our fathers’ youth. He was dressed in a black suit with a narrow collar and pointy shoulders. Yet the suit looked strangely appropriate given the man’s height and his long legs. It even made him look dapper. He had a long, narrow face, and aside from his eyes that seemed to burn a tad too brightly, he was handsome and his features well proportioned. His neatly parted hair shone with a black, luxurious sheen, making me think at first glance he was about forty years old. Upon closer examination, however, I noticed a considerable number of wrinkles on his face. He seemed to age twenty years in a single leap. He could have been sixty easily. The contrast between his pitch-black hair and the maze of wrinkles etched across his pale face was striking enough that it took my breath away. It struck me as most peculiar and unsettling.
As the man finished carefully wrapping up the picture, he happened to look in my direction just as I was observing his every move. Our eyes locked. The corners of his lips turned nervously upward into a faint and awkward smile. Without stopping to think, I returned his greeting by nodding in his direction.
During the short period of time it took the train to race through the next two or three local stations, we sat in our respective corners of the car, repeating the game of nervously looking out the window if our eyes happened to meet. Outside everything was pitch black. Even if I pushed my face against the window, there was nothing to see but darkness, except for the occasional running lights of fishing boats that bobbed at a distance on the sea. In the endless dark, our long, narrow car rattled on and on as if it existed in its own little world. Inside the dimly lit compartment I felt as if every living being in the world had disappeared without a trace, leaving only the two of us behind. No passengers boarded our second-class car at any station, and neither porter nor conductor appeared. Now that I think about it, this too strikes me as most bizarre.
I grew increasingly leery and frightened of the strange man who looked, simultaneously, both forty and sixty and who possessed the demeanor of a magician from the West. Fear has a way of growing infinitely and overtaking one physically when there is nothing to dispel it. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and no longer able to bear the suspense, I finally stood up and boldly walked over to the man sitting at the opposite end of the car. The more detestable and fearsome he became, the more I wanted to approach him.
Without so much as a word I lowered myself into the seat directly opposite him. As I drew nearer, a strange, tumultuous feeling welled up inside me. If he seemed not-of-this-world, then I too might be a phantom. My eyes became narrow slits, and I held my breath as I studied his odd, heavily wrinkled face.
The man seemed to welcome me with his eyes from the instant I left my seat, and as I stared at his face, he gestured with his chin at the frame sitting beside him. It was as though he had been waiting for me. He eschewed the usual preliminary niceties and asked, as if it were the most natural question in the world,
“Is this what interests you?” His tone was so matter-of-fact that it gave me pause. “Would you care to take a look at it?” His manner was very polite.
I sat there in total silence. I was at a loss for words. He repeated the question.
“Would you be kind enough to show it to me?” I was enchanted by his manner and found myself uttering this odd request in spite of the fact that I had left my seat intending not to look at the man’s picture.
“I’d be delighted. I have been wondering when you would ask. I felt certain you’d come and take a look.”
As he spoke, the man—perhaps it would be more appropriate to say “the old man”—deftly undid the large cloth with his long fingers and propped the framelike object against the window. But this time he turned it to face the inside of the car.
Why was it that I unconsciously closed my eyes after taking a quick glance at the picture? To this day I do not know why, but I felt an inexplicable, overwhelming urge to do so. I closed my eyes for a mere second or two, but when I looked again what I saw was a vision so strange that it was unlike anything I had ever seen. Even now I do not have words to describe what was so eerie about it.
The artist’s exaggerated use of perspective allowed the viewer to peer into a series of rooms inside a palace the likes of which one sees on the stage of the Kabuki theater. It was quite a spectacle—the tatami mats were brand-new and still somewhat green; the paneled ceiling stretched into the depths of the painting; the tempera colors, especially the indigo, had been applied quite heavily—even grossly. In the foreground to the left, the window of a room constructed in the style of a shoin, or gentleman’s study, was roughly sketched in using heavy black brush strokes. A writing desk, also in black, was drawn in beneath the window. It too was done in a hand unconcerned with getting the angles correct. Perhaps you’ll find it easier to understand if I describe the backdrop as done in the style typical of votive plaques one sees at a temple.
Two figures, both about a foot high, floated against this background. I say “floated” because they were the only part of the painting not done in tempera paints. Instead they were constructed of silk brocade that had been applied a layer at a time to create two raised or padded figures. An elderly gentleman, who had white hair and wore an outdated Western suit made of black velvet, sat stiffly at the center. (I noticed he was, oddly enough, a perfect match for the man who carried the painting, even down to the cut of his suit.) Meanwhile, his companion was a smooth-skinned beauty of seventeen or eighteen who had her hair done in the yuiwata style and who wore a black satin sash over a red long-sleeved kimono dyed in a dappled pattern. She was leaning coquettishly against the old man’s knees. The two of them looked like they belonged in a love scene on the stage.
It goes without saying that the juxtaposition of an old man with an amorous-looking young maiden struck me as most peculiar, although that was not what made me call them “eerie.” No, it was the elaborate craftsmanship of the brocade that had been carefully executed and stood in stark contrast to the artlessness of the background of the portrait. White silk had been used to create a feeling of depth and to depict even the tiniest wrinkles on the man’s face. Strands of human hair had been woven one by one into the material for the girl’s hair, which was coiffed like that of a real person. Doubtless, the hair on the old man’s head was also genuine and had been applied with equal care. The seams of his suit were realistically cut and sewn, and the buttons—not one of them bigger than a grain of millet—attached in all the right places. The swell of the girl’s bosom, the elegantly sensuous curves of the area about her thighs, the splash of scarlet crepe, the glimpse of flesh tones, the nails that grew from her fingertips like sea shells—all in all, the raised brocade was so meticulously crafted that, were one to inspect it with a magnifying glass, he’d see the craftsman included every pore and dewy hair.
I had seen raised brocade work only once before in the shape of faces of Kabuki actors mounted on battledores used at New Year’s. While some of the actors’ faces were elaborately designed, they were no comparison for this portrait, which was so minutely crafted. The brocade portrait of the old man with the pretty young girl was probably the work of a true master of the art. Still, that was not what I found eerie.
Given the age of the painting and the paint flaking here and there, the materials used to make the girl’s red kimono and the old man’s black velvet suit had faded to the point where they were a pale shadow of how they originally looked. Nonetheless, the two figures retained an indescribable—indeed almost lethally poisonous—quality about them. Their faces possessed a vitality that glowed like a burning flame and seared its way deep into the viewer’s eye. Still, that is not what was particularly eerie about it.
Forced to describe it, I would have to say I felt the two people in the portrait were still alive.
There are only one, maybe two, moments in a performance of the Bunraku puppet theater when a master puppeteer succeeds in breathing the breath of a god into a puppet and making the doll truly come alive. Even then, such moments last for a mere second or two. Just like the puppet that comes momentarily alive on the stage, the brocade figures appeared to have been affixed to the backdrop of the painting at the very moment when they were most alive and before the breath of life could escape from them. It looked as though they would go on living there forever.
When the man on the train saw the startled expression on my face, he gave a shout for joy. He sounded so confident about what he had to say. “Aha, I think you are finally getting my point!”
As he spoke, he took out a key and carefully unlocked a black leather case that hung from his shoulder. He removed an ancient pair of binoculars from the case and offered them to me.
“Take a look at the painting through these. No, you’re too close where you are now. Excuse me for ordering you about, but would you mind trying it from over there? Good. That should be about right.”
It was a most peculiar request, but I did as I was told because curiosity was getting the best of me. I did as the man asked. I got up from my seat and walked five or six paces. The man grasped the frame in both hands and held it up to the overhead light in the car so that I could see it better. As I look back on it now, I think what a strange spectacle it was! Why, it was sheer madness.
The binoculars appeared to have been imported to Japan thirty or forty years earlier. They resembled the ones we often saw depicted on signs at the optician’s office when we were children—drawings of magnifying glasses with irregularly shaped prisms. Much like the suit of clothes on the old man in the painting, they had a classic, nostalgic look about them. The brass backing on the case shone in places where the leather was worn from frequent use.
I turned the binoculars over in my hands and fiddled with the adjustments out of sheer fascination. By and by I raised them to my eyes with both hands. It was then that all of a sudden—and I do mean suddenly—the man on the train gave such a shout that I almost dropped them.
“No! Don’t! You’ve got them backwards. You mustn’t look through them backwards. You mustn’t.”
He was white as a sheet. His eyes were as big as saucers, and he was frantically waving his hands. Why was it so awful to look through the binoculars backwards? I was puzzled by the old man’s strange behavior. It made no sense.
“Oh, I see….Yes, I’ve got them turned around.”
I did not give much attention to the peculiar expression on the man’s face because I was so intent on looking through the binoculars. I turned them around, quickly lifted them to my face, and examined the people in the brocade picture.
As I focused the lens, and the two circles of light slowly blended into one, the image, which initially was like a vague rainbow, grew sharper. The upper half of the girl’s torso from her breasts to the top of her head loomed surprisingly large. It filled my entire field of vision, as if there were nothing else in the world to see.
It is difficult for me to convey the manner in which the image presented itself because I have not witnessed anything like it before—or since. The best I can do is to describe a similar kind of feeling. Perhaps it can be likened to viewing a pearl diver from the side of a boat after she dives into the sea. While at the bottom, her naked body looks exactly like swaying sea grasses on account of it being filtered through the complex undulations of the layers of blue water. It moves in unnaturally supple ways. The outline of it is out of focus, and the woman diver takes on the whitish figure of a ghost. But as she rises smoothly and quickly toward the boat, the layers of dark blue water fade and lose their rich color. Her shape becomes clearly visible and distinct, and when her head finally pops above the surface, it is like one’s eyes have suddenly opened after a deep sleep. The white ghost of the watery depths reveals herself in her true form as a human being. That’s how the girl in the painting looked to me as I peered through the binoculars. She began to move like a life-size human being.
Another world existed at the opposite end of the old-fashioned, nineteenth-century prism of the binocular lenses. It was a world quite apart from anything we might imagine today. It was the world in which the erotic young woman with the yuiwata hairdo and the white-haired man in the old-fashioned suit lived out their strange lives. I knew it was wrong of me to spy on them, yet I felt compelled to. It was as if I were made to do so by a worker of spells and magic. As I look back on it now, it was with the strangest, most inexplicable feeling that I gazed upon the bizarre world I saw in the painting. It was as though I were possessed.
No, it was not that the girl moved physically. But my overall impression of her was drastically different from what I had seen with my naked eye. Seen through the lenses, she brimmed with life. Her pale face was slightly flushed with a touch of peach, and a heart beat within her breast. (I actually heard it beating.) It seemed to me that she generated a vitality so intense that it penetrated through the layers of her kimono.
After I let my eyes run the full length of her body, I turned my attention to the happy-looking, white-haired man. He too was alive inside the world of the binoculars. He looked pleased to have his arm around a young woman who looked forty years his junior. At the same time, it was strange that the hundreds of wrinkles on his face were born, it seemed, not of happiness but of sorrow. That may have been because I was standing too close—a distance of a mere foot away. As a result, his face looked excessively large. But the longer and more carefully I studied it, the more convinced I became that the peculiar expression on his face was one of fear and bitterness.
I began to feel I was having a nightmare. To look through the binoculars any longer became unbearable. Without thinking, I lowered them. I let my eyes run wildly over my surroundings. Yes, I was still aboard the railway car of a passenger train as it made its way through the lonely night, and the brocade portrait and the man who held it looked just as they had before. Outside the train window everything was pitch dark. I heard the monotonous repetition of the wheels on the train tracks—just as before. I felt sure I’d awakened from a nightmare.
“You, my good sir, have a very peculiar look on your face, if I may be so bold as to say so.”
The man put the picture by the window, sat down, and then motioned with his hand for me to sit in the seat across from him. He looked deep into my face.
“Something’s gone wrong with my head,” I said. “It’s gotten all fogged up.” I meant my reply to serve as a cover for my feelings of awkwardness.
He was hunched in his seat, and he let his long, thin fingers fidget atop his knees as if he were tapping out a secret code as he thrust his face closer to mine. In the faintest of whispers he said,
“They’re alive, aren’t they?”
He bent still farther forward as if he had another, even more important, message to impart. He looked into my face with eyes so wide open and glimmering I thought they might bore their way into my head.
“Would you care to hear their story?” he asked in a whisper.
I wondered if the swaying of the train and the clatter of the wheels kept me from hearing him correctly.
“Did you say ‘their story’?”
“That’s right—‘their story,’ ” he replied in a whisper. “Although it’s really the story of only one of them, the white-haired old man.”
“A story from his youth?” I found myself saying the most uncharacteristic and odd sort of things that night.
“He was twenty-five at the time.”
“I’d be honored if you would share it with me.”
I did not hesitate. I urged him on much as one asks to hear a story about a real, live human being. The wrinkles on the man’s face deepened. He seemed delighted at my reply.
“Aha, then you will listen to it, won’t you?”
With that he began to tell his singularly strange and wondrous tale.
“I remember it precisely because it was the most unforgettable moment in my life. My older brother got to looking like that,” he said, pointing to the old man in the picture, “on the night of April 27, 1895. That was the spring of the twenty-eighth year of Meiji. At the time my brother and I were still living with our parents. The house was in the third chōme of Nihonbashi-dōri. Our father was a merchant who ran a dry goods store. The events of the story took place not long after the ‘Twelve-Story Tower’—that’s what people called it in the vernacular—was erected in Asakusa, the site of the famous temple, arcade, and amusement district in the old part of Tokyo. The tower’s real name was Ryōunkaku, ‘The Cloud Scraper,’ and it was the tallest building in Japan at the time. My brother loved to climb the steps to the top of it every day. He was one of those people who never tired of newfangled gadgets, especially exotic items imported from abroad. Take this pair of binoculars, for instance. He found them in the storefront of a strange-looking curio shop in Chinatown in Yokohama. He was told they once belonged to the captain of a foreign ship. He paid what at the time, he said, was an exorbitant sum to get hold of them.”
Whenever the man said “my older brother,” he would cast a glance in the direction of the man in the painting, or he would point to him as if his brother were sitting next to him. He had confused his actual brother, who existed in his memory, with the white-haired gentleman in the picture. In fact, the way he talked made me feel as if a third party were present—and that the brocade figures in the painting were alive and listening to him tell their story. Still stranger was the fact that I didn’t find this the least bit odd. Somehow or other we had transcended the laws of nature and had entered a different world altogether—a world out of sync with our own.
“Did you ever climb the Twelve-Story Tower? Ah, you didn’t! That’s too bad. I wonder, what magician of an architect built it. It was a truly remarkable and unusual building. An Italian engineer designed the facade, you know. Think about it. Back in those days the amusement park in Asakusa was known for the Human Spider Sideshow…the Women Fencers…acrobats who balanced themselves on large balls…tops that danced on fountain sprays…and all kinds of peep shows. The most exotic exhibit was a model of Mount Fuji called ‘The Maze,’ and then there were the ‘Hidden Cedars of Yajin’ too. But that was the ultimate in what the park had to offer, in those days. And that’s why, my friend, you’d have been taken by surprise to find an unbelievably tall brick tower had suddenly shot up into the air one day. At over ninety feet, it was almost a city block long in height. It was incredibly tall, and on top of the tower was an octagonal platform shaped like a pointed Chinese hat. All you had to do was find a slight rise anywhere in Tokyo, and you could see what everyone called the ‘Red Ghost.’
“As I was saying, it was in the spring of 1895 that my brother came into possession of the binoculars. Not long after that, a change seemed to come over him that affected him both physically and mentally. Father would say, ‘Why, the fool’s gone mad.’ He was quite worried. As you can imagine, I too was devoted to my older brother, and his odd behavior also drove me to distraction. Perhaps I should explain that he virtually stopped eating. He never talked to anyone in the house. He shut himself up in his room and did nothing but brood. He became terribly gaunt, and his face took on the gray pall of someone suffering from tuberculosis. Only his eyes moved—he watched us like a hawk. Of course, he didn’t have the best complexion to begin with, but it was sad to see him grow so pale. But even in this weakened state, he left the house every day without fail as if he were going to work. He left around noon and stayed out until dusk. He wouldn’t say a word if we asked where he was going. Mother got quite upset. She tried every possible means to get him to reveal the source of his depression, but he never said a word. Things continued like this for almost a month.
“Then one day I secretly followed him to find out exactly where he was going. We were all so worried, and I did it at my mother’s request, you see. The day was overcast and unpleasant like today. My brother left shortly after noon with the pair of binoculars slung over his shoulder and wearing a new Western-style suit made of black velvet. He himself had the suit tailored, and black velvet was considered extremely fashionable or ‘high collar,’ as people said in those days. He ambled toward the horse-drawn tramway that ran on Nihonbashi-dōri. I followed him so as not to be seen. Are you following me, my friend?
“My brother waited for the tram bound for Ueno and leapt aboard it when it arrived at the stop. I couldn’t follow him on the next car like you can do today because there weren’t many streetcars back then, you see. I had to use a bit of money that Mother had given me to hire a rickshaw. It is no great feat for a rickshaw runner to keep a tram in sight if he has any strength at all. That’s how I was able to follow my brother.
“When he got off, I left the rickshaw and went on foot for a distance. Wouldn’t you know, he led me to the famous Temple of the Goddess of Mercy in Asakusa. He passed through the gate to the temple—with its two big, glaring guardian kings—but then he skipped the temple altogether and headed straight into the crowd that swirled around the sideshow stalls behind the main hall of the temple. It was like he was parting the waves as he walked. He passed under the stone gate of the Twelve-Story Tower, and paying the admission fee, he disappeared under the sign at the entrance that read ‘Ryōunkaku—the Cloud Scraper.’ Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought he was coining here day after day. I was flabbergasted. I wasn’t even twenty at the time. I still thought like a child. I got the crazy idea in my head that my brother had gotten bewitched by the Red Ghost of the Twelve-Story Tower.
“Our father had taken us there once, and we had climbed the steps to the top. But I had never gone back. I had a strange feeling about the place, but there was my brother, and he was climbing the stairs. What could I do but follow him, staying one dimly lit story behind? The windows along the stairs were tall and skinny, and the brick walls very thick. That made the tower as cold as a cellar. Japan was in the midst of a war with China, and oil paintings of the principal battles had been hung along the walls in a long, endless row. At the time oil paintings were still quite rare in Japan. Japanese soldiers yelled as they charged, their faces as fearsome as wolves. Using bayonets affixed to their rifles, they gouged out the innards of the enemy. The writhing purple-faced and purple-lipped Chinese troops used both hands to staunch the heavy flow of blood that spurted from their bodies. Decapitated pigtailed heads flew through the air like balloons.
“Such were the scenes portrayed in the unspeakably garish and blood-drenched paintings that glowed in the dim light that filtered through the windows of the tower. Meanwhile, the gloomy set of stone stairs continued to wind like a snail’s shell endlessly up and up alongside the paintings and windows.
“There were no walls to the platform atop the tower. There was only the octagonal railing that created a walkway with a spectacular view. When I finally made my way to the top of the stairs and the darkness suddenly gave way to bright light, I was startled at how much time I had spent in the dark before reaching the platform. The clouds in the sky appeared low enough to reach out and touch. As I looked at the city, the roofs of Tokyo were like trash that had been raked together into a big pile. Meanwhile, the battery along the bay at Shinagawa reminded me of tiny landscape stones arranged in a bonsai tray. I felt dizzy as I dared to look down. I could see the great hall of the temple at the bottom of the tower. The sideshow stalls looked like small toys. All I could see of the people walking below were their heads and feet.
“Ten or so sightseers with a most uncomfortable look on their faces were huddled together whispering anxiously and looking at Tokyo Bay in the direction of Shinagawa. There, alone and apart from them, stood my brother. He was looking intently through the binoculars at the temple grounds down below. Seen from behind, his black velvet suit stood out all the more distinctly against the sea of clouds in the whitish, overcast sky. Moreover, at this height there was no danger of him being confused with the teeming masses down below. I knew it was my brother standing across the way. He looked so heavenly sublime—like the subject in a Western oil painting. I hesitated to say anything to him.
“But I was on a mission for my mother. I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. I approached him from the rear.
“ ‘What are you looking at?’
“He spun around in a state of shock. There was an embarrassed look on his face, but he said nothing.
“ ‘Mother and Father are terribly worried about you. They don’t understand where you disappear to every day. So this is it? And can you tell me why? Just tell me the reason. We’ve always been pals.’
“Fortunately, nobody was close by. I pressed my case.
“He was silent for the longest while. But, when I pressed him again and again, he finally gave in and told me the secret he had kept hidden for the past month.
“As for the source of the anguish in his heart—well, that too is another equally strange story.
“About a month before, while he was looking at the temple grounds with his binoculars from the top of the tower, he said he caught sight of a girl’s face in the crowd below. She was unbelievably beautiful—a real ‘out-of-this-world’ beauty—and he felt strangely moved by the brief glimpse he had of her in the binoculars. As a general rule, he had been indifferent to the opposite sex, but this girl was the exception. So overcome was he at the sight of her that a great chill passed through him.
“He had caught only a single glimpse of her that day. In fact, he was so taken by surprise at the sight of her that he inadvertently pulled the glasses away from his face. But, when he went to take a second look—and he went nearly crazy trying to find her—the lenses never chanced on her face again. You see, objects are really far away even if binoculars make them look very close. Moreover, given the size of the crowd down below, there was little likelihood of his finding her again. Although you find something once, there’s no guarantee it can be found a second time.
“He said he could not forget her. Being a terribly introverted type, he began to suffer from a case of old-fashioned love sickness. Modern people may laugh, but people back then were more sensitive and genteel. It was an era in which men frequently fell head over heels in love after only one look at a woman they’d seen on the street. It goes without saying that the business of finding the girl became his sole occupation. He stopped eating, and every day he dragged his weak and undernourished frame to the temple grounds, climbed the stairs of the twelve-story tower, and spent his time peering through the binoculars in the vain hope of seeing the girl again. Love is a strange and wondrous thing, isn’t it?
“No sooner did he tell me his story than he began looking feverishly through the binoculars. I found myself in complete sympathy with him. Although he had less than even one chance in a thousand, and his efforts were a waste of time, I did not have the heart to tell him to give up. I was moved to tears by his sad state of affairs. And then.
“Aahh, even to this day I can’t forget how seductively beautiful the spectacle was! If I close my eyes, it comes back to me, even though it happened thirty-five years ago. The image is so vivid. It’s like a dream, and all of the colors rush into my head.
“As I said before, all I could see was the sky as I stood behind him. His thin, suited frame set against the hazy layers of clouds seemed to rise to the fore like a figure in a painting, and as masses of clouds swept over the tower, his body seemed to float in space. Suddenly, as if fireworks had been set off, innumerable spheres of red, blue, and purple rose into the white sky. They were soft and round, like bubbles, each competing to fly higher into the air. Words don’t do it justice, but it really was like a painting—if not some kind of omen or foreshadowing. In any event, I was filled with a strange and indescribable sense of wonder. I quickly looked down to see what had happened. I discovered a vendor had carelessly allowed his rubber balloons to escape into the air all at once. Back then, rubber balloons were relatively rare. It seemed odd to see so many of them all at once even though I now understood the reason why.
“My brother became very agitated. It was most peculiar, and I don’t think it was on account of the balloons. His pale face flushed bright red, and his breathing grew more rapid. He stepped toward me and grabbed my hand.
“ ‘Come on, let’s go! We’ll be too late if we don’t hurry!’
“I asked him the reason why as he pulled me pell-mell down the stairs of the tower. He said he had found the girl. She was sitting in a room—the sort of large room where one received or entertained guests—and there were new tatami mats on the floor. She was right where he expected her to be.
“The place was a large house to the rear of the temple. A large pine tree marked the spot. When we arrived, the tree was there all right, but no building was in sight. It was as if a mischievous fox spirit had been at work, and it had bewitched us into coming. I felt sure my brother had let himself be deluded by his hopes. Still, he seemed so pitiful, looking wilted and full of despair, that we went around and made inquiries at the neighboring teahouses in order to make him feel better. The girl was nowhere to be found.
“We became separated while we were searching the area. After making the rounds of all the teahouses, I went back to the pine tree where I had seen different vending stalls. Among them was one that offered a stereoscopic picture show, and the proprietor was cracking a whip in the air to drum up business. Who did I see crouched over the viewing glasses used to peep into the stall but my brother?!? He was totally absorbed in watching the scenes of the story as they appeared one after the other in front of the stereoscopic lenses. When I tapped him on the shoulder and asked what he was doing, he whirled around with a look of total surprise written across his face. I’ll never forget how shocked he looked. How shall I put it? It was as though he were lost in a dream. The muscles in his face had gone slack, and his eyes were set on a faraway place. Even his voice sounded strangely vacuous.
“ ‘She’s in there,’ he said, pointing to the inside of the peep show mechanism.
“I immediately paid the fee and looked through the viewing glasses. Inside were a series of panels that illustrated the story of the infamous O-shichi. She was the greengrocer’s daughter who, smitten with a handsome young man, lit her parents’ house on fire so that the family had to evacuate to nearby Kisshōji temple, where the acolyte named Kichisa resided. I came in on the episode in which O-shichi was now ensconced at the temple. The panel appeared, and it depicted her leaning coquettishly toward Kichisa in the temple lecture hall. I shall never forget it. At precisely that moment, the proprietor and his wife raised their husky voices in unison, and cracking the whip in time to the narration, they sang the line in the story that goes ‘now knee to knee, she spoke to him with her eyes.’ It seems this peculiar line of narrative had special appeal for my brother. He appeared to repeat it over and over to himself in his head.
“The figures mounted on the panel were done in brocade relief, and they were surely the work of a master. The vitality evident in O-shichi’s face was amazing. I too thought she was alive. For the first time I completely understood why my brother had been so taken with the girl. It made perfect sense.
“With a far-off look in his eyes, he said, ‘I can’t give her up even though I know she’s the work of an artist and made only of brocade. It’s sad, but I can’t let her go. Even if it’s only once, I want to step into the picture and talk to her like her companion Kichisa.’ He stood rooted to the spot and made no attempt to move. Come to think of it, the top of the picture show stall was open to the sky to allow light to flow inside and illuminate the panels. My brother must have been looking down from the top of the tower at just the right angle when he saw the picture of the girl that was inside the peep show mechanism.
“The sun was going down, and fewer people were about. Two or three children in pageboy haircuts were loitering about the stall as if they had a lingering desire to take a peek inside. Around noon the sky had turned gray and overcast. By now low clouds hung over the horizon. It looked as though it might rain at any minute. It was the sort of unpleasant weather that makes one feel pinned down by the weight of the sky—yes, just the sort of weather calculated to drive one crazy. Deep inside my head, I heard a low, rumbling noise. It was like someone beating a big taiko drum very slowly. Meanwhile, my brother stood there simply gazing into the distance. He looked as though he could stay that way forever. We must have stood on the spot for over an hour.
“When the sun set and the gas lamps on the stage for the acrobats began to flicker bright and beautiful farther down the arcade, my brother suddenly seized me by the chest. The expression on his face was that of a man who has awakened from a deep sleep. He said something most peculiar.
“ ‘I’ve figured it out! And it means I have a favor to ask. Take the binoculars, turn them around, and put the larger end of the lenses to your eyes. Now look at me.’
“I asked him why.
“ ‘Don’t fuss about it. Just do it, all right?’
“The truth be told, I never cared much for lenses, glasses, and the like. Whether it’s a pair of binoculars or a microscope—to bring distant objects right up to your face or to make tiny bugs look as big as beasts does not appeal to me. There’s something spooky about the whole business. I hadn’t looked through my brother’s prized pair of binoculars very often, but on the rare occasion when I toyed with them, I always felt there was something weirdly magical about the way they worked. Here we were, standing in the middle of a deserted spot behind the temple, and my brother was asking me to reverse the binoculars and look at him!?! The whole thing struck me as slightly demented, if not as tempting fate. But he desperately wanted me to do it. I had no choice. I looked at him through the large end of the binoculars. Although he was no more than eight or nine feet away, he appeared about two feet tall. The smaller he became, the more distinctly his shape floated in the gloom. There was no way to include anything else in the frame of the lens but him. All I could see was my brother in his natty black suit in miniature form. He grew progressively smaller because he was backing away from me step by step. Finally, he was about the size of a cute-looking doll that was a foot tall. He seemed to float in space until—before I knew it—he had melted into the darkness and disappeared.
“I was so scared. (You think I’m too old to say such a thing, but at the time I felt my hair stand on end.) I jerked the binoculars away from my face, and running in the direction from which my brother had disappeared, I called after him. ‘Nii-san.’ ‘Nii-san.’ I could not find him no matter what. I looked high and low. He could not have gone far. There hadn’t been enough time. Yet he was nowhere in sight.
“And that, my friend, is the story of how my brother disappeared from the face of the earth. Since that time I have grown more and more wary of touching these magical binoculars. I have no idea who the ship captain was who originally owned them, but there is something about them and the fact that they once belonged to a foreigner that gives me a special dislike for them. I don’t know about other binoculars, but as for this pair—never, ever turn them around and look through the larger end. I firmly believe terrible misfortune will be the inevitable result. Now you’ll understand why I was so brusque with you when you started to hold them the wrong way.
“But, getting back to my brother, I returned exhausted to the picture show stall after searching for him for quite a long time. That was when it dawned on me. He had put the magical powers of the binoculars to work on account of his passion for the girl in the panel. He had reduced himself to her size and quietly slipped into the world of the raised brocade figures. At least that is my theory. I asked the proprietor, who had yet to close shop for the evening, to show me the scene of O-shichi and Kichisa in the lecture hall at Kisshōji temple. Exactly as I had predicted, my brother was in the panel, mounted on it in raised brocade. Using the light cast by a kandelaar hand lamp that I held over the panel, I could see he had taken the place of the handsome young acolyte Kichisa. My brother was smiling contentedly to himself as he held O-shichi in his arms.
“But I was not sad. In fact, I was so happy that I wept tears of joy for my brother, who had finally attained his heart’s desire. I had the proprietor make me a hard and fast promise that he would never sell the panel to anyone but me—I would buy it regardless of the cost. (Strangely enough, he never noticed that my brother, dressed in a natty Western suit, had taken Kichisa’s place.) I ran home as fast as I could, but when I explained what happened in detail to my mother, she scoffed at me. Both she and my father wondered if I had lost my mind. They would not believe me no matter how hard I pleaded with them. ‘Now isn’t he being funny?’ they said, and then they laughed at me. ‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha.’ ”
The man on the train began to laugh as if he had told a joke. Oddly enough, I found myself sympathizing with him. We both had a hearty laugh together.
“They had it in their heads that a human being could never be transformed into—of all things!—a piece of raised brocade. But doesn’t the fact that my brother was not again seen on the face of the earth prove he had become part of the painting? They came to the grossly mistaken conclusion that he had run away from home even though it made no sense at all. In the end, I wheedled money out of my mother, and in spite of protests from the family, I obtained the painting and set out on a trip. I traveled to Hakone, and from there I went to Kamakura. You see—I wanted to give my brother a honeymoon. When I ride a train like I’m doing now, I can’t help but think of those earlier days. I prop the picture in the window, just as I did this evening, to show my brother and his lover the scenery outside. I can imagine how happy he must feel. And what about her? How could she reject such a true expression of love? They blush in embarrassment like real newlyweds. They press closer and closer to each other and engage in endless pillow talk.
“Father closed his shop in Tokyo after my brother disappeared and retired to his hometown near Toyama, where I have lived all this while. It’s been over thirty years since the day we were last at Asakusa Park, so I wanted to take this trip with my brother to show him how much Tokyo has changed.
“What’s saddest of all, my friend, is that because the girl was the work of human hands, she will never grow old no matter how long she lives, but my brother is doomed to age like you and me, his transformation notwithstanding. It was too extreme a change, and only so many years are allotted to the human lifespan. See for yourself. My brother, who was once a pretty young lad of twenty-five, now has a shock of white hair on his head and a face covered in unsightly wrinkles. He must be bitterly unhappy. The girl beside him will always remain young and beautiful, where he continues to age so foully. It’s frightening. The expression on his face is terribly sad. He has been looking unhappy for the past several years.
“I am overcome with pity whenever I think of him.”
Already growing old himself, the old man on the train tearfully looked at the old man in the picture. But then, as if suddenly awakening from a reverie, he added—
“Ah, I see I’ve talked far too long. Yet you understand me, don’t you? You won’t be like other people and say I’m crazy. If I’ve convinced you, then it was worthwhile talking with you. By now my brother and the young girl are probably very tired. I dare say I’ve embarrassed them by making them sit in front of you while I told their story. Well, I shall let them take a rest.”
With that, he quietly wrapped the frame in the large black cloth. Perhaps it was a figment of my imagination, but in that instant, it seemed as though the faces in the painting softened however slightly. The corners of the lips moved ever so subtly, and the two of them gave me a shy parting smile.
The old man sank into silence. I too fell silent. The train continued to chug toward Tokyo in the darkness.
After about ten minutes, the wheels began to turn more slowly, and two or three lanterns came into view outside as the train pulled into a small station in the middle of the mountains. Who knew where we were? There was only one station attendant, and he was standing on the platform by himself.
“Well, I will be spending the night here with a relative,” the old man traveling with the brocade portrait announced.
He stood up abruptly with the picture under one arm and got off the train. As I looked out the window, I saw his tall, thin frame (was it not identical to that of the old man in the painting?) move toward the exit and hand his ticket to the station attendant at what passed for a wicket at the small station. With that, he disappeared, melting into the darkness.