I plan to write this story in a single sitting tonight in time for the deadline I’m facing tomorrow. No, I don’t “plan” to write it: I absolutely have to write it. So, then, what am I going to write about? All I can do is ask you to read what follows.
In a café in Jinbōchō, the used-bookstore neighborhood of Tokyo, there is a waitress named O-Kimi. They say she is only sixteen, but she looks more mature than that. And although the tip of her nose tilts up a little, her light complexion and limpid gaze definitely qualify her as a beauty. To see her standing in front of the player piano in her white apron, her hair parted in the middle and done up with forget-me-not hairpins, you would think she had stepped out of one of Takehisa Yumeji’s illustrations1 for a novel. Which seems to be one reason the café’s regulars long ago decided to nickname her “Potboiler.” She has other nicknames, too: “Forget-Me-Not” from her hairpins; “Miss Mary Pickford”2 because she looks like the American movie star; “Sugar Cube” because the café can’t do without her. Etc. etc.
There is another, older waitress who works at the café. Her name is O-Matsu, and her looks don’t begin to match O-Kimi’s. The two girls are as different as white bread and black bread, and the difference in what they earn in tips is also huge. O-Matsu is, of course, not happy about that, and as her dissatisfaction has mounted, it has led her to harbor some unkind thoughts.
One summer afternoon, a customer at O-Matsu’s table—apparently a student at the foreign language school—was trying hard to move the flame from his match to the tip of his cigarette. Unfortunately, the flame kept getting blown out by the powerful fan on the table next to his. O-Kimi happened by just then and stopped for a moment between the customer and the fan to block the breeze. It became clear that the student appreciated her thoughtfulness when, after managing to light his cigarette, he turned his suntanned face to her with a smile and said, “Thanks.” This happened just as O-Matsu, standing by the counter, picked up the dish of ice cream that she was supposed to carry to that table. She glared at O-Kimi and said, “You take this to him,” in a voice fuming with jealousy.
Complications like this happen several times a week, as a result of which O-Kimi rarely speaks to O-Matsu. She stations herself in front of the player piano, offering her silent affability to all the customers, who—because of the café’s location among the bookstores—tend to be students. To the furious O-Matsu, however, O-Kimi offers only her wordless triumph over the hearts of all these young men.
O-Matsu’s jealousy is not the only cause of their strained relationship, however. O-Kimi is also quietly contemptuous of O-Matsu’s lowbrow taste. She is convinced that O-Matsu has done nothing since graduating from elementary school but listen to naniwa-bushi, eat mitsu-mame,3 and chase after boys. But what of O-Kimi herself? What kind of taste does she have? To discover the answer to that, we should depart this bustling café scene for a moment and peek into a room over a beauty parlor at the far end of a nearby alley. O-Kimi rents this room, and this is where she spends most of her time when she is not waiting on tables at the café.
It is a low-ceilinged six-mat room. The western sun shines through its only window, from which there is nothing to be seen but tile roofs. A desk draped in printed cotton is set against the wall beneath the window. I call this piece of furniture a “desk” for convenience’s sake: in fact, it is just a worn old table with stubby legs. Atop this “desk” sits a row of books in hard Western bindings, which are also old-looking: The Cuckoo, Collected Poems of Tōson, The Life of Matsui Sumako, The New Asagao Diary, Carmen, and High on the Mountain Looking Down in the Valley.4 Next to these are some women’s magazines. Unfortunately, there is not a single volume of my stories to be seen. Next to the desk is a tea cabinet from which the varnish is peeling, and on top of that is a slender-necked glass vase in which is gracefully displayed an artificial lily that is missing a single petal. I’d guess that if the petal were still attached, the lily would still be decorating a table in the café. Finally, on the wall over the tea cabinet are tacked up a few pictures that seem to come from magazines. The one in the middle is Genroku Woman by our dear Kaburagi Kiyokata.5 The little one below and overshadowed by it is probably a Raphael Madonna or some such thing. Meanwhile, above the Genroku beauty, a woman sculpted by Kitamura Shikai6 is making lascivious eyes at her neighbor, Beethoven. This particular Beethoven, however, is just someone whom O-Kimi takes to be Beethoven. In fact, he is the American President, Woodrow Wilson, which is really too bad for old Kitamura Shikai.
This, then, should tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the artistically rich coloration of O-Kimi’s cultural life. And in fact, when O-Kimi comes home from the café late at night, she invariably sits beneath the portrait of Woodrow Wilson alias Beethoven, reads more of The Cuckoo, gazes at her artificial lily, and indulges in an artistic ecstasy far more steeped in sentimentalisme than even the famous moonlit-shore scene in the movie version of the Shinpa tragedy based on The Cuckoo.7
One spring night when the cherry trees were in bloom, O-Kimi was alone at her desk almost till the cock’s first crow, writing on page after page of pink letter paper. She did not seem to notice when one finished page fell under the desk. It remained there after the sun came up and she left for the café. The spring breeze then blew in through the window, lifted the sheet of paper, and carried it down the stairs, where the hairdresser’s two mirrors stood in their saffron cotton slipcovers.8 The beautician downstairs knew well that O-Kimi often received love letters, and she assumed that this sheet belonged to one of those. Out of curiosity, she decided to read it, but she was surprised to find that the handwriting seemed to be that of O-Kimi herself and that it was addressed to a woman: “My heart feels ready to burst with tears when I think of the time you parted from your dear Takeo.” Takeo was the hero of The Cuckoo! So O-Kimi had stayed up practically the whole night writing a letter of condolence to Namiko, the heroine of the novel!
I have to admit that as I write this episode I can’t help smiling at O-Kimi’s sentimentalisme, but my smile contains not the slightest hint of meanness.
In addition to the artificial lily, the Collected Poems of Tōson, and the photo of Raphael’s Madonna, O-Kimi’s second-floor room contains all the kitchen tools she needs to survive without eating out. In other words, these kitchen tools symbolize the harsh reality of her life in Tokyo. Yet even a desolate life can reveal a world of beauty when viewed through a mist of tears. O-Kimi would take refuge in the tears of artistic ecstasy to escape the persecutions of everyday life. In such tears she need not think about her 6-yen monthly rent or the 70 sen it cost for a measure of rice.9 Carmen has no electric bill to worry her; she only has to keep her castanets clicking. Namiko does suffer as she lies dying of tuberculosis, deprived of her beloved husband by her cruel mother-in-law, but she never has to scrape up money for her medicine. In a word, tears like this light a modest lamp of human love amid the gathering dusk of human suffering. Ah yes, I imagine O-Kimi all alone at night when the sounds of Tokyo have faded away, raising her tear-moistened eyes toward the dim electric lamp, dreaming dreams of the oleanders of Coérdoba and the sea breeze of Namiko’s Zushi, and then—damn it, “meanness” is the least of my sins! If I’m not careful, I could just as easily be swept away by sentimentalisme as O-Kimi! And this is me talking, the fellow the critics are always blaming for having too little heart and too much intellect.
O-Kimi comes home from the café late one winter night, and at first she sits at her desk as usual, reading The Life of Matsui Sumako or some such thing, but before she has completed a page, she slams the book down on the tatami-matted floor as if it has suddenly come to disgust her. She then turns sideways and leans against the desk, chin on hand, staring indifferently toward the portrait of Wils—uh, Beethoven—on the wall. Something is clearly bothering her. Has she been fired from the café? Has O-Matsu turned nastier? Has a decayed tooth begun to ache? No, the trouble now gripping O-Kimi’s heart is nothing so mundane. Like Namiko, like Matsui Sumako, O-Kimi is suffering from love. Who, then, is the object of her affections? Fortunately for us, O-Kimi is apparently going to remain quite still, staring at Beethoven on the wall, and so, in the interval, let me give you a quick introduction to the lucky man.
The object of O-Kimi’s affections is a young fellow named Tanaka, an unknown—let’s say—artist. I call him that because he writes poetry, plays the violin, paints in oils, acts on the stage, knows the Hundred Poets card game inside out, and has mastered the lute for the martial music of Satsuma.10 With so many talents, it’s impossible to say which is his profession and which are mere hobbies. As for the man himself, he has the smooth features of an actor, his hair glows like the surface of an oil painting, his voice is as gentle as a violin, the words he speaks are as well chosen as a poem’s, he can woo a woman as nimbly as he can snatch the right card in the Hundred Poets game, and he can skip out on a loan with the same heroic energy he brings to singing with his Satsuma lute. He wears a broad-brimmed black hat, inexpensive tweeds, a deep purple ascot—you get the picture. Come to think of it, Tanaka is a well-established type, two or three of whom are always scowling at the masses in any bar or café in the university district, in any concert at the YMCA or the Music Academy (though only in the cheapest seats), and at any of the more stylish art galleries. So if you would like a clearer portrait of young Mr. Tanaka, go to one of those places and have a look for yourself. I refuse to write another line about him. Besides, while I’ve been sweating over this introduction to Tanaka, O-Kimi has gotten up from her desk, has opened the shoji, and is now looking out at the cold moonlit night.
The light of the moon over the tile roofs shines down upon the artificial lily in its slender-necked glass vase, the little Raphael Madonna, and O-Kimi’s upturned nose. It does not, however, register upon the girl’s limpid gaze. Neither do the frosty tile roofs exist for her. Young Tanaka walked her home from the café tonight, and the two have agreed to spend tomorrow evening in each other’s pleasant company. Tomorrow is the one day that O-Kimi has off this month. They are to meet at the Ogawamachi streetcar stop and go to see the Italian circus that is presently set up in Shibaura. O-Kimi has never gone out alone with a man before, so when she thinks about stepping out with Tanaka like a pair of sweethearts going to the circus at night, the sudden realization sets her heart aflutter. To O-Kimi, Tanaka is like Ali Baba after he has learned the magic spell that will open the treasure cave—what kind of unknown pleasure garden will appear before her when the spell is uttered? For some time now, O-Kimi has been gazing at the moon without seeing it, for what she has been picturing in her throbbing breast—throbbing like a wind-swept sea, or like the engine of an accelerating bus—is a vision of this mysterious world-tocome. There, on avenues buried in blooming roses, lie numberless cultured-pearl rings and imitation-jade obi clasps scattered in profusion. Like dripping honey, the gentle voice of the nightingale has begun to sound from above the Mitsukoshi Department Store banner. And in a marble-floored palace, amid the fragrance of olive blossoms, the dance of Douglas Fairbanks and the lovely Mori Ritsuko11 seems to be entering its most wonderful passage…
Let me add something here in defense of O-Kimi’s honor. Across the vision that O-Kimi was picturing for herself just now, ominous dark clouds would pass from time to time as if to jeopardize her entire happiness. True, O-Kimi loves young Tanaka. But the Tanaka she loves is a Tanaka on whose head her artistic ecstasy has placed a halo—a Sir Lancelot who writes poetry, plays the violin, paints in oils, acts on the stage, and is skilled at both the Hundred Poets card game and the Satsuma lute. Nevertheless O-Kimi’s fresh, virginal instincts are not entirely unaware that her Lancelot has something highly dubious at his core. Those dark clouds of anxiety cross O-Kimi’s vision whenever such doubts come to mind. Unfortunately, no sooner do the clouds form than they melt away. Mature though she may appear, O-Kimi is but a girl of sixteen or seventeen—a girl flushed with artistic ecstasy. No wonder she rarely takes note of clouds except when she is worried about having her kimono rained on, or is exclaiming in admiration for a picture postcard of a Rhine River sunset. How much less does she do so when on avenues buried in blooming roses, numberless cultured-pearl rings, and imitation-jade obi clasps… the rest of this is the same as in the passage above, so please just reread that.
Like Puvis de Chavannes’ St. Geneviève,12 O-Kimi stood there for a long time, gazing at the tile roofs in the moonlight until she sneezed once, banged the window’s shoji closed, and went back to sitting sideways at her desk. What did she do until 6:00 p.m. the following day? Unfortunately, not even I know the answer to that. How can the author of the story not know, you ask? Well (tell them the truth now!), I don’t know because I have to finish this thing tonight.
At 6: 00 p.m. the next day, an unusually nervous O-Kimi made her way toward the Ogawamachi streetcar stop, which was already enveloped in the gloom of evening. She wore a deep purple silk crepe coat of dubious quality and a cream-color shawl. Tanaka was there as promised, waiting beneath a red light and wearing his usual broad-brimmed black hat low over his eyes. Under his arm he carried a slim walking stick with a nickel-silver cap, and the collar of his wide-striped short overcoat was turned up. His pale face glowed more handsomely than ever. That and the light smell of his cologne told her that he had taken special pains with his grooming tonight.
“Have I kept you waiting long?” O-Kimi asked, a little breathless as she looked up at him.
“No, forget it,” he replied with a magnanimous flourish, fixing his gaze on her, his eyes hinting at a somewhat inscrutable smile. Then, with a quick shiver, he added, “Let’s walk a little.”
But he did more than say the words: he was already walking down the crowded avenue beneath the arc lights toward Sudachō. Strange—the circus was in Shibaura. Even if they were going to walk there from here, they should be heading toward Kandabashi. Still standing in place, O-Kimi held down her cream-colored shawl, which was flapping in the dust-laden wind.
“That way?” she asked, looking puzzled.
“Uh-huh,” he called out over his shoulder, continuing on toward Sudachō. O-Kimi had no choice but to hurry and catch up with him. They stepped gaily along beneath a row of leafless willows. At that point Tanaka got that inscrutable smile in his eyes and peered sidelong at O-Kimi saying, “I’m sorry to have to give you the bad news, but the circus in Shibaura ended last night. So let’s go to this house I know and have dinner or something. What do you say?”
“That’s fine with me,” O-Kimi said in a tiny voice that trembled with hope and fear as she felt the soft touch of Tanaka’s hand taking hers. Tears of deep emotion came to her eyes just as they did when she read The Cuckoo. Viewed through such tears, of course, each neighborhood they passed—Ogawamachi, Awajichō, Sudachō—took on a special beauty of its own. The music of a band luring shoppers to a big year-end sale, the dazzling lights of an electric billboard for Jintan breath freshener, Christmas wreaths, a fanned-out display of national flags of the world, Santa Claus in a show window, postcards and calendars laid out on street stands—to O-Kimi’s eyes, everything seemed to sing of the magnificent joys of love and to stretch off in splendor to the ends of the earth. Not even the gleam of the stars in heaven looked cold on this special night, and the dusty wind lapping now and then at the skirts of her coat would suddenly change into a warm spring breeze. Happiness, happiness, happiness…
Soon O-Kimi saw that they must have turned a corner and now were walking down a narrow back street. On the right-hand side there was a small grocery store open to the street, its wares displayed in piles beneath a bright gas lamp: daikon radishes, carrots, pickling vegetables, green onions, small turnips, water chestnuts, burdock roots, yams, mustard greens, udo, lotus root, taro, apples, mandarin oranges. As they passed the grocery, O-Kimi happened to glance at a thin wooden card held aloft by a bamboo tube standing in the pile of green onions: “I bunch 4 sen,” it said in clumsy, dense black characters. With prices for everything surging upward these days, green onions at 4 sen a bunch were hard to find. In O-Kimi’s happy heart, which until that moment had been intoxicated with love and art, the sight of this bargain instantaneously—literally, in that very instant—awoke latent real life from its torpid slumber. Her eyes were swept suddenly clean of images of roses and pearl rings and nightingales and the Mitsukoshi banner. Crowding in from all directions to take their place in O-Kimi’s little breast, like moths to a flame, came rent payments, rice bills, electricity bills, charcoal bills, food bills, soy sauce bills, newspaper bills, make-up bills, streetcar fares—and all the other living expenses, along with painful past experience. O-Kimi’s feet came to a halt in front of the grocery store. Leaving the flabbergasted Tanaka behind, she forged in among the green mounds beneath the brilliant gaslight. And then, extending a slender finger toward the pile of green onions among which stood that “1bunch 4sen” card, she said in a voice that might well have been singing “The Wanderer’s Lament,”13
“Two bunches, please.”
Meanwhile young Tanaka in his broad-brimmed hat, the collar of his wide-striped short overcoat turned up, slim walking stick with nickel-silver cap under his arm, stood alone on the dust-blown street like an abandoned shadow. In his imagination he had been seeing a lattice-doored house at the end of this street—a cheaply built two-story structure with a freshly washed stone platform for shoe removal in the entranceway and an electric sign on the eaves. Standing out in the street like this, however, he had a strange feeling that the image of that cozy little house was beginning to fade, to be replaced by a mound of green onions with a “1 bunch 4sen” price card. Then suddenly, all such images were shattered as, with the next puff of wind, the very real stink of green onions—as penetrating and eye-stinging as real life itself—punched Tanaka in the nose.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Poor sad-eyed Tanaka stared at O-Kimi as if he were seeing a wholly different person. Hair neatly parted in the middle and fastened with forget-me-not hairpins, nose tilted slightly upward, O-Kimi lightly pressed her chin down on her cream-colored shawl as she stood there holding her 2-bunches-for-8-sen green onions in one hand, a happy smile dancing in her limpid gaze.
I did it! I finished the story! The sun should be coming up any minute now. I hear the chill-sounding crow of the rooster outside, but why do I feel depressed even though I’ve managed to finish writing this? O-Kimi made it back unscathed to her room over the beauty parlor that night, but unless she stops waiting on tables at the café, there’s no saying she won’t go out with Tanaka alone again. And when I think of what might happen then—no, what happens then will happen then. No amount of worrying on my part now is going to change anything. All right, that’s it, I’m going to stop writing. Goodbye, O-Kimi. Step out again tonight as you did last night—gaily, bravely—to be vanquished by the critics!
(December 1919)