WHEN I LOOK through the glass I immediately notice banana trees1 wrapped in devices to protect them against the frost, branches of holly that have sprouted red berries and electricity poles standing up straight and bold, but hardly anything else worthy of note enters my field of vision. From the office where I am seated, the view that I am offered is remarkably monotonous—and remarkably limited.
Furthermore, as the cold which I caught at the end of last year makes it almost impossible for me to go out, I just sit behind this window pane every day and have not the slightest idea of what goes on in the rest of the world. I am not in good form and do hardly any reading. Day after day, I spend the greater part of my time seated or lying down.
But at times when my mind is at work, my mood varies a little. Small though my world remains, things occur within its narrow confines and then, from time to time, on this side of the glass that separates my insignificant self from the great wide world, I receive visits. They are from unexpected people, with unexpected gestures and conversations. It has even happened that I have welcomed them and seen them on their way with a look full of curiosity.
I should like to write a little about this. I fear this kind of writing may prove somewhat boring to anyone who leads an active life. When I think of all the readers who take their newspapers out of their pockets in the train and are satisfied merely by running their eyes over the bold headlines I feel ashamed to fill the page with such idle thoughts as mine. For they have so little leisure that they see no need to hold a newspaper in their hands except in order to inform themselves of those events of the day which they consider sufficiently serious or read reports sufficiently titillating to stimulate their nerves, that is to say, those concerning fires, murders, robberies... while waiting for the train they purchase a daily paper at the station and afterward in their carriage, they learn of the changes that have taken place in the world. On reaching their offices in some public department or business concern they are so busy that they forget all about the newspapers they have slipped into their pockets.
In what I now write I brave the contempt of these people who only have such tiny scraps of time to spare.
A great war broke out last year in Europe.2 It certainly seems that people do not know how long it will last. Japan itself decided to play a certain part in it, although an extremely small one, after which the Diet was dissolved. The legislative elections present the politicians with a major problem. The price of rice has fallen to such an extent that farmers' coffers are empty and everybody is complaining of the recession. Where the seasonal festivities are concerned, the spring sumo wrestling will soon begin. In a word, everyone is bustling about. I feel that for me, constantly immobilized behind my windowpane, there is no rightful place in a newspaper. If I write I shall be struggling to make my way forward between politicians, the unliterary, businessmen and sumo enthusiasts, alone; I lack the required strength. It has simply been suggested to me that I should commence my account as from the New Year. This is why I shall be approaching subjects so tenuous that they are doubtless of interest to nobody but myself. As for how long I shall hold out, this will depend both on the durability of my brush and on the editorial department of the paper: for the present, therefore, I have no idea at all.
I WAS TOLD that somebody was asking for me on the telephone. I picked it up and asked the reason for the call. The caller was the editor of a magazine who wanted a photograph of me, and he suggested calling on me to take the photograph when it would be least inconvenient for me. I replied that I did not much like being photographed.
Up to then I had had no contact with this publication. I remembered, however, that I had got hold of a number once or twice in the course of the last three or four years. I had found that it made a speciality of publishing a great variety of smiling portraits. This was all I could remember of it. All that remained in my recollection was the unpleasant impression of numerous faces with affected smiles. This is what led me to refuse.
The editor explained that it was for the January number in the year of the Rabbit and that he would like to photograph personalities of this sign. It was true that I was of the Rabbit, as he said.
"But surely", I objected, "for the photographs you publish in your magazine one has to smile?"
"No, not necessarily," he replied without hesitation. His attitude suggested that I was mistaken as to the nature of his periodical.
"If you are satisfied with just my face, I will force myself to do it."
"Yes, that will be perfect, I assure you."
We agreed on a certain day in the week and hung up.
Two days later, at the agreed time, he entered my office, elegantly dressed and armed with a camera. I had a brief chat with him about the magazine which he represented, after which he took two snaps of me. For the first I was seated at my desk as usual. For the other I adopted a natural pose, standing in the frost-laden garden. As the light in the office was bad, as soon as he had fixed his camera in position he ignited the magnesium. But just before it flared up he leaned towards me and said, "Forgive me for going back on our agreement, but could you not smile a little?"
I suddenly felt slightly strange. At the same time, however, I said to myself: "The silly things he manages to come out with, this man!"
"Is that all right?" I asked.
From then on I no longer took any notice of his instructions. When I took up my position in front of the trees in the garden and he directed the lens towards me he repeated the same words in the same deferential tones.
"Forgive me for going back on our agreement, but could you not...?"
This made me even less willing to smile.
Four days later he sent me the photographs by post; now in those photographs I was smiling exactly as he wanted. Thoroughly astounded, I then looked intently at my own face. I could not believe that I was posing with a smile.
To set my mind at rest I showed these photographs to the four or five people who came to visit me. They all thought, as I did myself, that it was a "manufactured" smile.
Since the day I was born I have had to smile in public several times without having the least desire to do so. Perhaps the photographer had thus taken revenge on me for my deception.
It is true that he was good enough to send me these photographs in which I exhibited a bitter and disagreeable smile. But I never received the magazine in which they were supposed to appear.
NOW I COME to think of it, three or four years have gone by since Mr H presented me with Hector.
When Hector was still a puppy a pupil of H came by tram to see me, bringing the little dog in a bundle. That evening I put him down for the night in a corner of the lean-to. To protect him from the cold I made him a bed of straw, as comfortable as possible, and then closed the door. As soon as evening arrived he started whining. As night drew on he tried to come out, scratching the door with his paws. He certainly must have been pining at having to sleep in the dark by himself and did not seem to have closed his eyes all night.
This misery continued the next night, and the one after. It was a good week before he was at last able to sleep peacefully on that straw. Until then, however, I worried night after night.
My children became consumed with curiosity about him and made him their pet, playing with him at the slightest opportunity, but as he still had no name they did not know what to call him, and a living playmate certainly has to be given a name. They therefore begged me to baptize him as soon as possible. I gave their companion the heroic name of Hector.
This is the name of the greatest Trojan hero who appears in the Iliad. He was killed by Achilles in the war between Greece and Troy. Achilles thus avenged the death of his friend, a victim of Hector. When Achilles, in his fury, rushed ahead of the rest of the Greek host, Hector was the only man not to retreat into the fortress. He circled the citadel three times, avoiding the tip of Achilles' lance. His adversary then rode three times around the city in pursuit, but in the end killed him with his lance. He then bound Hector's remains to his chariot and dragged them around the city three times.
It was the name of this hero that I gave to the puppy brought to us in a bundle. My children, in their ignorance, found this choice ridiculous. In the end, however, they grew used to it. As for the dog, he joyfully wagged his tail whenever the name Hector was uttered. It then lost all its flavor of antiquity, becoming as ordinary as Christian names such as John and George. And at the same time the members of my family no longer bestowed on him the same loving care as before.
Hector had to go to the animal hospital owing to an affliction common with dogs: Carre's disease. The children paid him frequent visits, and I went to see him as well. He welcomed me with joyful tail wagging, raising his homesick eyes towards mine. I crouched down with my face close to his and caressed his head with my right hand. To express his gratitude he licked my face all over. For the first time, in my presence, he drank a little of the milk prescribed by the vet.
"He may come through it then," said the doctor, who until then had seemed doubtful.
Hector was duly cured. Back at home he recovered his vitality, scampering about in all directions.
SHORTLY AFTERWARDS he made a few friends. The most intimate was a little rascal of the same age belonging to the doctor across the way. For all that he bore the most Christian of names, John, he had a far less civilized nature than the heretic Hector. He would bite people right, left and centre and in the end had to be put down.
Hector would exasperate me by welcoming this undesirable visitor in our garden and getting up to all sorts of mischief. They continually dug up the earth around the trees and disported themselves by making big holes for no particular purpose. They deliberately lay down on pretty flowers, crushing them and pitilessly scattering their stems and petals.
After John had been put down Hector took to playing games day and night to allay his boredom. When out walking I often found him sunbathing near the police station. At home the slightest suspicious unfamiliar occurrence set him barking. His favorite target was a tenyear-old child belonging to a group of street dancers from the Honjo district. He was constantly knocking on our door to greet us. He was determined not to go away before we had given him a crust of bread and a one-sen piece. It was in vain that Hector went on barking: the child took root. It was usually Hector himself that beat a retreat towards the lean-to, continuing to bark but with his tail between his legs. In a word, Hector was a coward. As for his behavior, it was almost as depraved as that of a stray dog, yet the affection typical of his breed never forsook him. Now and again, on catching sight of me, he immediately jumped towards me, wagging his tail. Or else he would rub his back ceaselessly against me: my clothes were soiled by his muddy paws time and time again!
Last year, between summer and autumn, I was taken ill. For a whole month I had no chance to see Hector. When I at last recovered and was able to get up, I went out to sit on the veranda of the living room for the first time. I noticed his silhouette in the twilight. I immediately called his name. But he stayed in a crouching position by the hedge, and even though I went on calling him he did not respond to this sign of affection. He did not move his head or wag his tail, he just crouched by the fence like a simple white mass. I told myself that after a month's absence he must have forgotten his master's voice, and this caused me some sadness.
We were still at the beginning of autumn. The shutters were not yet closed and it was an evening when the stars could be seen very clearly even from inside the house. Two or three members of my family were seated on the veranda. However, they did not turn towards me when I called Hector. Just as Hector had forgotten me, they in turn no longer seemed to think of him.
I returned to my room in silence and lay down on my couch, which had been unfolded. As I was convalescing I was wearing a patterned silk dressing gown of black velvet, unsuitable for the season. Lacking the courage to get up, I stretched out on my back in that same garb. I folded my hands on my chest and gazed at the ceiling in silence.
THE NEXT morning when I went out on to the veranda of my study to view the garden this early autumn day, I chanced to notice his white shape on the moss. For fear of risking the same disappointment as the day before I refrained from calling him. Nevertheless, rooted to the spot, I could not help observing him. He was leaning over a stone basin at the foot of a tree and lapping the rainwater that had collected in it.
Nobody knew the origin of this basin. When we moved in it was lying somewhere in a corner of the garden. Then we asked the gardener to move it to its present position. It was hexagonal in shape, and the moss with which it was covered made it impossible to decipher the inscription on its side. However, I remembered having been able to read it quite clearly at the time it was being moved; my recollection of the actual words was only vague but had left me with a strange feeling. An aura of temples, Buddha and inconstancy seemed to envelop it.
Hector left his tail hanging down limply, turning his back to me. As he came away from the basin I noticed the froth around his mouth.
"Something has to be done. He is ill," I said, turning towards the nurse. At that period I had a nurse in constant attendance.
The next day I found him asleep among the rushes and I repeated my remark to the nurse. Later, however, he disappeared and never came back.
"We thought of taking him to the vet," said my wife, "but we looked for him everywhere and could not find him."
I remained silent. Deep down, however, I remembered the moment when he had been given to me. I remembered, with rather a funny feeling, that when I had registered him my entry under "breed" had been "mongrel", while under "coat" I had put "with reddish brown spots".
A week seemed to have passed since his disappearance when the maid from a house a hundred or two hundred meters away called on us. She told me that they had seen the body of a dog floating on the pond in their garden. They had fished it out and seen our name on its collar. She had at once run over to let us know.
"Do you want us to bury it ourselves?" she asked me.
I then sent a rickshaw to fetch it.
I did not know the exact address of the family who had taken the trouble to send their maid over to us. I simply thought it must be a house next to the old temple which I could remember from my childhood. This contains the tomb of Yamaga Soko;3 in front of the door stood an old nettle-tree, as if intended to recall the past era of the shogunate. I could clearly see it across the many roofs from the north veranda of my study.
The rickshaw returned with Hector's remains wrapped up in a piece of straw matting. I preferred not to approach it. I sent out for a little funeral card of whitewood, which I then inscribed with the following haiku:
I did bury him
Where the wind of autumn bid
I gave it to my wife so that she could place it in the ground where Hector lay. His resting-place lies to the northeast of the cat's: they are about two meters apart. From the north veranda of my study, so poorly lit by the cold sunlight, I can clearly see both spots when I look through the glass towards the back garden where the frost has wrought havoc. Compared with the cat's, already blackened and partly eaten away, Hector's is still shiny, yet in a little while they will both take on the same sheen of age and neither will be any longer noticed....
ALTOGETHER I must have seen her four or five times.
On the first occasion on which she called to see me I was absent. She was advised to return with a letter of introduction. She took her departure after replying that she did not know anyone she could ask for it.
Two days later she wrote to me directly to ask me to decide on a day that would be convenient for me. On examining the envelope I saw that she lived only a few steps away I immediately replied and fixed a date for the meeting.
She arrived at the agreed time. The first thing that I noticed was that she was wearing a crepe jacket in loud colors, emblazoned with a three-leaved emblem. She appeared to have read most of my books. It was therefore these that formed the subject of our conversation. Now to receive praise from a stranger on one's own writings may seem gratifying; in reality it is extremely embarrassing. To be truthful, I was annoyed.
After a week she called again. Once again she fulsomely praised my achievement. Deep down, however, I wanted to avoid the subject. Now, on her third visit, something appeared to have moved her, as she took a handkerchief out of her pocket and desperately wiped away a tear. She then asked me whether I was prepared to write the sad account of her past. Not knowing a single detail of her life, I was obviously unable to give her an answer. Just to be on the safe side I asked her whether there was not some risk that this narrative, assuming that I consented to write it, would cause somebody embarrassment. In more decisive tones than I had expected she answered that there was nothing of the kind to be feared if we avoided using people's real names. At all events, I arranged to find the time to listen to what she had to recount.
On the agreed day she arrived in the company of another woman who said that she wished to see me; she therefore asked me to postpone the meeting for the purpose of telling me her story. I was naturally unable to reproach her for this failure to keep her promise; we all three had a chat and they then left.
Next evening she took a seat in my study for the last time. Before embarking on the recital of her sad existence, poking the ashes in my little paulownia warmer with the end of the brass poker, she spoke as follows while I remained silent.
"The other day I was so excited that I asked you to write down what I was going to tell you of my life, but this is no longer what I want from you. I merely ask you to listen to me. You understand...."
"You may be reassured," I replied. "If there is anything about which I should like to write I should never do so without first asking your consent."
Regarding this as an adequate guarantee, she started to relate the preceding seven or eight years of her life. I watched her face in silence. But most of the time she averted her eyes, continuing to gaze into the inside of the heater. Then she seized the brass poker with her pretty fingers and placed the tip in the ashes.
From time to time, when points arose that were not clear, I put some brief questions to her. She enlightened me with simple replies. Most of the time, however, she proceeded in a monologue, so that I was content to remain as motionless as a wooden statue.
Then her cheeks became flushed and heated. Probably it was because she had no make-up that the colour of her burning cheeks attracted my particular attention. As her head was lowered my attention was naturally focused on her black hair.
HER CONFESSION was so harrowing that it almost choked me. She asked me the following question:
"If you make a novel out of it, what will be the ending for this woman?"
I did not know what to answer.
"Do you think it better that she should die, or will you keep her alive?"
I replied that I could imagine both possibilities and awaited her reaction. She seemed to require me to take a more definite stand. All I could then reply was:
"If one considers that the essential thing for a human being is to live, there is no harm in leaving her as she is. But if one judges a human being by the yardstick of beauty or nobility, the problem could be defined differently."
"Where you personally are concerned, what will be your option?"
I hesitated once more. There was no doubt that I had remained a silent listener.
"I foresee with great fear how the fine feelings that rule me at the moment will become dull with the passing of time. When I imagine the future, when these memories will fade away and I shall live like one completely withdrawn, the mere remains of a human soul, I am overwhelmed with sadness and dread."
I then knew that this woman was all alone in the great wide world and found herself in a position that made it impossible for her to move a single inch. I also knew that her horizon was obscured and that I was of no help to her. I was a motionless and impotent witness of another's sorrow.
I was in the habit of keeping my fob watch close by me, without worrying about my visitors, in order not to forget to take my medication at the required times.
"It is already eleven o'clock," I said. "Perhaps it is time for you to go home."
She rose without taking umbrage.
"It is late—I will see you part of the way home," I suggested.
I went down with her as far as the hall. That evening was lit by a brilliant moon: there was not a single cloud in the sky, and the night was calm. Outside there was no tapping of shoes to be heard on the pavement. I followed her, my hands in my pockets and my head bare.
"It was most kind of you to come with me as far as here."
"There is nothing kind about it. We're on an equal footing."
At the next street corner she said:
"It is really a great honor that you do me."
"Do you really think it's an honor?" I asked seriously.
"Yes," she said without turning a hair.
"It is better to remain alive than to die, then."
I do not know how she interpreted those words. A hundred meters farther on I turned round in order to come home.
After I had listened to these sad, depressing narratives the night struck me as a welcome contrast, as a welcome breath of fresh air such as it had not fallen to my lot to experience for some time. I noticed that it was the same kind of feeling that one gets on reading some great literary work. I recalled the evenings on which I would proudly set forth for the Yuraku-za Theatre and Imperial Theatre, and my own shadow then seemed to cut a sorry figure....
I AM struggling along in an existence dogged by setbacks and consequently thinking of a stage that I shall one day have to reach: death. I feel that what is called death is sweeter than life, and the thought strikes me that it is the highest state to which a man can aspire.
"Death is more precious than life."
For some time now these words have haunted me unceasingly. Yet at the present moment I am certainly living. I still do not break the bonds of this life, for I cannot, by my own efforts, cast off this habit which has been fixed since the days of my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents and for yet longer: a hundred, two hundred, a thousand, ten thousand years.
This is why it seems to me that within the limits allowed by this life I ought to offer advice to others. A human being such as I am should not assert himself except in the narrow sphere around the question of "how to live". For as soon as one recognizes oneself living an active life and observes that there is another human being who lives and breathes it is logical to consider that the principle which each assigns himself must belong to this very same life, sorrowful and ugly though it be.
"If you suffer from being alive, all you need to do is die."
Such words are these would not be heard even from the one who finds the world most unkind. The physician, for example, by means of the hypodermic needle, contrives to prolong, even for a moment, the life of the patient who is on the very verge of his eternal sleep. When we realize how this device, so akin to torture, is regarded as a blessing to mankind, we can readily understand how tenaciously we cling to life. Therefore, I could not urge her to choose death rather than life.
Her heart was so broken that she was incurable. At the same time this wound, transformed into a beautiful memory that ordinary people would never be able to experience, made her radiant.
She wanted to keep this beauty, like a jewel, stored in her heart forever. Her misfortune was that the self-same beauty was that very wound that caused her greater suffering than death. The two elements were as inseparable as the two sides of a piece of paper.
I had told her to allow herself to be borne along by "time", which cured all things. She objected that if she thus surrendered her precious memories would gradually fade away.
"Time", which was impartial, would gradually heal her wound, though it wrested from her grasp the treasure that was so dear to her. Even while causing life's supreme joy to become dimmed and blurred like a dream it unfailingly removed the sharp sorrow by which this joy was accompanied.
It was my wish that "time" should wipe away the blood from her wound, thus making up for depriving her of the impetuous memories bound up with a passionate love. For in my view life, however humdrum, suited this woman better than death.
I myself, who have always considered death to be more precious than life, have in the end never been able to transcend what we call life, fraught with all its troubles, in the hope that I harbor or the counsel that I proffer; nor have I been able to help thinking that this would reveal me to be, in practice, a mediocre naturalist. To this day it is still not without skepticism that I examine my heart.
WHEN I was at preparatory school my circle of more or less close friends included a certain O. Since even at that early age I was not lavish in my friendship I saw him fairly often. I visited him once a week. In one year, during the summer holidays, I called for him at his boarding house in Masago-cho every day without exception so that we could go bathing in the Okawa River.
O. came from the north and thus, unlike me, his diction was slow and drawling. His speech struck me as a reflection of his character. We argued about things more than once, but he never got angry or flew into a rage. For this alone I recognized him as a virtuous boy worthy of respect.
Just as he exhibited a generous nature, so were his intellectual abilities superior to my own. In his little corner he reflected on matters which I was far from capable of addressing. Although he intended from the outset to study scientific subjects he liked to read books on philosophy. I have never forgotten how one day he lent me an essay of Spencer's entitled "First Principles".
Beneath a clear sky in pleasant autumn weather we often took walks at random, talking about this and that. On such occasions one could often see, through branches that stretched across the hedges, little yellow-tinted leaves that flitted about as they fell without a breath of wind. One day when this spectacle chanced to meet his eyes he gave a muffled cry:
"I have had an inspiration!"
For me, content to enthuse on the melancholy enchantment of the autumn tints, his exclamation had a mysterious undertone, as if containing some encoded secret. When later on he murmured, as if to himself, and in his usual slow tones:
"It's a strange thing, inspiration." I did not know what to reply.
He was a poor student; when he rented a room near Ogannon he prepared his own meals. He often invited me to share his frugal repast of salted salmon, which he grilled. One day he bought cooked beans in place of rice cake: we nibbled them from their bamboo wrapping.
As soon as he had obtained his degree he was appointed to a college in the provinces. I was filled with pity for him. But to university lecturers who did not know him it seemed perfectly natural. Apparently he himself did not care. A few years later he was given a three-year contract, if I remember rightly, by a school in China. As soon as his term there was completed he came home and was appointed principal of a college. From Akita he was transferred to Yokote. He is now the principal at Sakhalin.
Last year, during his stay in Tokyo, he took the opportunity of calling on me. I sat down before he had even entered. Coming from the corridor, he appeared at the door and, as soon as he saw me ceremoniously seated on the cushion, said to me:
"You look very formal!"
Without giving him time to continue I muttered in agreement. How was it that this reply, which amounted to acceptance of his mockery, could issue from my lips with such naturalness, detachment and lack of concern? I felt within me a revival of clarity and good humour.
O. AND I sat down opposite one another and first of all studied each other's face intently and we found that there remained within us certain traces of bygone times, like memories of a nostalgic dream. But it was as if an old feeling hovered uncertainly in a new atmosphere, subjecting us to mist and shadow. We both found it impossible to rediscover, by overcoming the malevolent power of "time", the boys we had once been. Yet neither of us could refrain from recollecting that curious thing called the past that remains firmly imprisoned between our separation and our reunion.
O. used to have apple-red cheeks, eyes as large and round as eyes could possibly be and a dimpled countenance that would have suited a woman. Now he still had red cheeks, round eyes and features not in the least bony. But it was quite different from before.
I drew his attention to my beard and side-whiskers. And he drew mine to his head by scratching it. Mine was hairy and his bare.
"When a man has already gone as far as Sakhalin, what further exile can he suffer?" I asked mockingly.
"That's more or less what it is," he replied. He told me about Sakhalin, where I had never been. But I have since completely forgotten the details. The only thing that remains in my memory is that the summer there is very pleasant.
After such a long absence we went out. Over his frock coat he wore an overcoat that was too big for him. While we were on the tram, holding on to the straps, he took from his pocket an object wrapped in a handkerchief and showed it to me.
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's a chestnut bun," he answered.
Chestnut buns were the very things we had been served shortly before in our own home. I was stupefied at the idea that he could have spirited one away with him without my noticing it.
"You took one of those buns?"
"I might have."
After this reply, by which he seemed to be making fun of my astonishment, he put the package away again.
That evening we went to the Imperial Theatre.4 I bought two tickets and tried to enter the south side without noticing the sign on the north entrance. "This way," he said.
I stopped and thought for a bit.
"One certainly acquires a sense of direction in Sakhalin," I remarked.
We retraced our steps towards the right entrance.
He declared right away that he knew this theatre. However, when we returned to our seats after dinner, he confused the first floor door with the ground floor door, like everybody else, at which I could not help laughing.
From time to time he took a pair of gold-framed spectacles out of his pocket in order to read the program which he was holding in his hands. But he looked at the distant stage without taking them off, as if it were of no consequence.
"But they are not distance spectacles," I said in surprise. "How do you manage to see so far?"
"Well, cha bu duo."
I had no idea what he meant by "cha bu duo". He explained that in Chinese this meant "no great difference".
After we had taken leave of each other that evening on the return tram he had to leave for the extreme north of Japan, cold and distant.
Whenever I remember him I think of his first name, Tatsujin5 and I feel this name must have been chosen for him by the heavenly powers. I then remind myself that this expert is still a college principal in the far north, imprisoned in snow and ice.
A WOMEN WAS introduced to me by a friend. "She has written something she would like you to read."
This aroused in me a great number of reflections. People had frequently submitted manuscripts to me before then. Some of them were one or two inches thick. I had tried to read them as far as my spare time allowed. I was naive enough to imagine that as long as I had read them I had fulfilled my duty. Now the authors were in the habit, after I had done so, of asking to be published in a newspaper or magazine. Their only purpose was to make money out of their writings, and the reading of them was just a means to this end. I found it an ever greater burden to read strangers' not easily decipherable manuscripts with a good grace.
However, compared with the period of my life when I was teaching, my time had become more flexible. But once I set back to work I became fully absorbed by it. Even if I had promised to read a manuscript out of kindness, it was by no means certain that I would find the time.
I confided this quite frankly to my friend. She understood me perfectly and left shortly afterwards. However, the woman who had a manuscript for me to read was seated in my living room. While looking through the windowpane at the sky, with its menace of a depressing shower, I addressed my visitor as follows:
"A truce on formalities. If they have to be preserved between us, then we shall talk in vain and be of no use or interest to each other. You must decide to be open. If you are sufficiently frank with me I shall understand perfectly the stage you have reached and at what you are aiming. Only then shall I be able to consider that you have made it possible to guide you. If you object to my remarks in any way, do not on any account keep it to yourself. If you hold back for fear of making yourself ridiculous, of appearing embarrassed or of annoying me with your presumption—in a word, if you strain to dissimulate with your interlocutor, I shall be firing useless arrows despite the best will in the world.
"I earnestly ask you to bear that in mind. But neither shall I ever conceal my feelings. There is no other way to teach you anything than to show myself as I am. If there is a flaw in my thinking and if you discover it, thus detecting a weakness, this will be a setback for me. It is wrong to believe that only the pupil must be open about himself. The master too must reveal himself to you. Both must do this, casting aside all the reticence of convention.
"That is why, when I come to read what you have written, I may make some caustic remarks, but you must not bear me any grudge on that account. Their purpose will not be to offend you. In return, if it is you who are dissatisfied with something, do not spare me. Insofar as you understand my intentions I shall have no reason to be annoyed.
"In brief, all this has no connection with social conventions, of which the sole object is to maintain the status quo and of which the supreme value is superficial smoothness. Have I made everything clear?"
She acquiesced and made her departure.
THERE ARE people who ask me for pieces of calligraphy of poems. And even before I have agreed they send me cards or pieces of fabric for the purpose. At first I was reluctant to disappoint them and wrote the things they wished me to write, even though I was aware that I wrote a mediocre hand. But it is difficult to continue indefinitely with kindness of this sort. I tended increasingly to see that these requests were eliminated altogether.
Sometimes I feel that all men are born to cover themselves in shame day after day. And it is not impossible for me to present other people with pieces of calligraphy that are all askew, if I really wish to do so. But when I am ill or am snowed under with work I hardly feel like engaging in such occupations; orders then accumulate, landing me in a situation from which it is impossible to extricate myself. Most of the applicants appear to be complete strangers and hardly seem to concern themselves about how painful it is for me to send them back the pieces of calligraphy which they have sent me.
The one among them who really infuriates me is a certain Iwasaki, who lives in Sagoshi in the Province of Harima. A few years earlier he had on several occasions sent me postcards asking me to write haiku on them. I had granted his request. Some time later he sent me a thin square package. As I had no desire to open it I left it in a corner of my study. The maid had slipped it in between two books while doing her chores; in other words, I had mislaid it.
At more or less the same time I received a box of tea from Nagoya. But I could not imagine who could have sent it to me, or why. I had duly treated myself to some of it. Shortly afterwards the man who lived in Sagoshi wrote and asked me to return the picture of the ascent of Mount Fuji. I could not remember receiving any such present from him and did not fulfill his request. But he persisted, asking me three or four times for this picture of the ascent of Mount Fuji. "He's probably a madman," I told myself. I decided to make no further reply to his requests.
Two or three months passed by. As far as I remember it was at the beginning of the summer. As the disorder which surrounded me in my study was proving depressing I started some half-hearted tidying up. To get my books in order I restored the usual ones, my dictionaries, until then piled one or top of the other, to their correct positions.
It was then that the package from the Sagoshi man suddenly came to light. I was astonished to discover this present, which had completely slipped my mind! I immediately undid the package and found it contained a picture which, when folded, occupied very little space. It depicted just that very ascent of Mount Fuji, which increased my amazement still further.
The package also contained a letter asking me for a poetic caption for the picture, saying that my reward would be a box of tea. My stupefaction reached its climax.
But I really did not have the courage to write a poem on a picture of the ascent of Mount Fuji. Nothing could be further from my mind than such concerns, and I was in no mood to compose a haiku suited to the occasion. I was nevertheless embarrassed. I wrote him a polite letter asking him to forgive my casualness. I also thanked him for the tea. I wrapped up the picture of the ascent of Mount Fuji and sent it back to him.
THINKING THAT the episode was over, I had forgotten the man in Sagoshi. Then he once again sent me a card. This time he asked me to compose a haiku on the Forty Seven Ronin. I replied that I would do so some time or other. But I allowed time to pass without finding any opportunity. He was too obstinate to realize that he was beaten and became more persistent. His requests reached me once a week or once a fortnight. He always wrote to me on postcards, which never failed to begin with the words: "I am extremely sorry to trouble you, but...." The sight of his postcards became more and more troublesome to me.
At the same time, his insistence took on a strange aspect which I had not expected. He began by making a point of his gift of tea. As I had not reacted to this argument he demanded that I return his present. I felt like writing and telling him that I would be happy to return it to him but that, as it would cause me trouble to send it to him, all he needed to do was to come to Tokyo and fetch it himself. In the end I refrained from writing such a letter, feeling that it would place me in an undignified light. Still receiving no reply, he returned to the attack. He wrote that he was prepared to let me off sending it but that I should at least send him a yen in compensation. My feelings towards him became more violent. I ended by losing all control of myself. I wrote and told him that I had drunk the tea and lost the card and that from now on it would be absolutely pointless for him to send me postcards. In my heart of hearts I felt very bitter. I told myself that the man in Sagoshi had driven me into a trap in which I was compelled to resort to these crude devices. At the idea that because of him I had had to endure to some little extent a decline in my dignity or respectability, I felt myself to be totally pitiable. But he would not be beaten. He sent me yet another postcard saying:
"That's really going too far—drinking my tea and then losing my card!" As always, he started off with "I am extremely sorry to trouble you, but...."
I then decided to have nothing more to do with him. My decision had no effect on his attitude. He kept up his requests. He then informed me that if I would write to him he would send me some more tea. He added that there was every reason for me to write a haiku, in view of the nobility of the subject of the Forty Seven Ronin.
Just as I had come to believe his postcards had come to an end he started on letters. He used cheap greyish envelopes, like those used in town halls, and deliberately omitted to stamp them. He did not put his name and address on the back. I therefore had to pay double the postage. In the end I gave the postman his name and address and asked him to return the letter to him unsealed. This cost him six sen, which appeared to deter him from continuing.
Then after two months he sent me a perfectly normal letter of greeting. This inspired in me a certain amount of admiration, and I inscribed a piece of cardboard with a haiku and sent it to him. Claiming that the piece of cardboard was creased or soiled he insistently asked me to do it again. And last New Year a fresh request arrived on January 7th or 8th: "I am extremely sorry to trouble you, but...."
I have never met another such person in my whole life.
THE OTHER day I received a forceful reminder of the story of how, some time ago, a thief broke into our house.
It was at the time when my two elder sisters were not yet married. It must have been about the time I was born. Crude slogans such as "Loyalty to the king!" and "Down with the shogunate!" were in fashion.
One night the elder of my sisters got up to go to the toilet, and, in order to wash her hands, she opened the service door. She suddenly thought she could see a light at the foot of an old plum tree that stood in the corner of the little courtyard, as it it was leaning hard against the wall. Without even stopping to think she immediately reclosed the service door. After having done so, however, she thought about the light she had unexpectedly seen.
I have a clear memory of my sister's face as I saw it in my childhood. However, this image was that of my sister after her marriage, when she had dyed her teeth. I thus find it very difficult to remember my sister in the bloom of youth, as she was when she stood on that veranda.
With a wide forehead, a tanned skin, a small yet well-formed nose and larger-than-average eyes, and so sweetly named Osawa.... I can only call her to mind as a complete whole and picture to myself the silhouette of my sister in this situation.
For a moment she remained thoughtful and motionless, and it occurred to her that a fire might have broken out. She then decided to reopen the door and glance outside, but just then a sword gleaming in the darkness appeared in the doorway. Stupefied, my sister drew back. Taking advantage of her surprise, a crowd of masked men carrying lanterns, their swords unsheathed, poured in through this narrow opening. Unless I am mistaken there were eight of them.
They threatened my father, telling him that they had not come to take life and that provided he did not resist no member of the family would be harmed. They wanted to extort money from him for a "fighting fund". My father said he had no money. But the robbers did not give up. They said they had come from the sake shop at the corner of the street, the Kokuraya. The shopkeeper had advised them to call on us. It was therefore useless to pretend, they said, and refused to go away. My father reluctantly put a few coins in front of them. They must have considered it too little and were still unwilling to go. My mother, who until then had remained in bed, advised my father to give them what he had in his wallet. It seemed that it contained fifty ryo. When the robbers had disappeared, my father bitterly reproached my mother for not having held her tongue.
After this incident my family made a pillar, which could be opened up as a container for savings. But we never had a fortune to put in it. In any case, no more black-garbed robbers ever appeared. Furthermore, after I had grown up nobody any longer knew what pillar it was that contained the hiding place.
On their departure the robbers had expressed admiration, saying: "You have a well-guarded house!" Now, Hanbei, the owner of the Kokuraya shop, who had directed them to this well-guarded house, had the very next day shown signs of more than one wound. We were told that it was because whenever he had claimed to have no money the robbers had pricked his head with the tips of their swords, protesting that they could not believe this was so. Yet Hanbei had proved inflexible. "I have absolutely nothing here. But at the Natsumes' close by, there's a pile of money! Just go and see." That is how he avoided losing a single coin.
This is the story that my wife told me. It was my brother who had told it to her, like a fireside tale.
LAST NOVEMBER I delivered a lecture at the Gakushuin College. After a short time I received an envelope marked "Modest token of gratitude". It was secured with a handsome braided cord. On untying it I found it contained two five-yen notes. This sum has always weighed on my conscience. I thought of giving it to an artist friend and secretly awaited his arrival. But before this artist came a different opportunity to give it away arose of which I duly availed myself.
In a word, I did not find this money completely useless. By society's customary standards this sum was undoubtedly expended for my benefit, as was right and proper. From my point of view, however, since I had had the idea of presenting it to someone else, it was certainly a sum to which I attached no value. I must confess that rather than receive such a reward I should have found it simpler to have received nothing at all.
When Kaishu Kuroyanagi came to see me to suggest that I should give a lecture to the Chogyu Association, I told him about it in the course of our conversation.
"In that case I did not set out to sell my labors. As I accepted the proposal out of sympathy, they should have repaid me in the same coin. If they intended to remunerate me they should have stated the amount at the outset and then asked me whether I was prepared to come on those terms."
Kuroyanagi did not seem convinced.
"Oh, you know, the yen did not imply the purchase of your labors. It would have been a sign of gratitude towards you. Can you not see things that way?"
"If that had been an object I would have had no hesitation in interpreting it accordingly. Unfortunately the thanks were expressed in the clumsy cash that usually serves for business transactions. So it remains ambiguous."
"If it is ambiguous, you can conclude that they acted with the best of intentions."
I allowed myself to be persuaded, nevertheless adding: "Since I live, as you know, on my royalties as an author, I cannot be said to have made my fortune. But I manage to live. I am therefore convinced that with people who follow different occupations from mine one should act with the maximum of sympathy. If I receive money, I feel that this margin that enables me to work for others—and in my case this margin is an extremely narrow one—this precious margin has eroded."
Kuroyanagi still did not seem convinced by my arguments. I held fast in my views.
"When one asks millionaires like Iwasaki or Mitsui6 for lectures, does one thank them afterwards with sums of ten yen? Or, in order not to appear crude, is one content to reward them with words of gratitude? In my opinion one does not pay them."
"Er-," Kuroyanagi muttered, avoiding any actual reply.
I still had something to add.
"Perhaps it is a sign of pride on my part, but if I am not as rich as a Mitsui or an Iwasaki, I am undoubtedly better off than an ordinary student."
"Certainly," agreed Kuroyanagi. "If it would be a crude action to reward Iwasaki or Mitsui with ten yen it is just as much so in my case, is it not? And if at least this ten yen in some way improved my material circumstances the problem could be reconsidered from a different point of view, but since I allowed somebody else to benefit by it... this ten yen has had no noticeable effect on my financial situation."
"I will think it over," said Kuroyanagi with a smile before taking his departure.
GOING DOWN the gentle slope in front of my house you come to a bridge across a stream two meters wide. On the opposite bank, to the left, there is a little barber's shop. I have been there for a haircut only once.
The interior is usually hidden by a white percale curtain hanging behind the glass. Until I had entered the salon and sat down in front of the mirror I had no idea what the barber looked like. On seeing me arrive he put down his newspaper and immediately greeted me. I could not help thinking that I had met him somewhere. When he started clicking his scissors behind me I started a conversation. As I expected, he had formerly had a salon near the Tera-machi7 Post Office.
"Mr Takada," he said, "was one of my best customers."
I was surprised to hear him mention my cousin.
"Oh really? You know Takada?"
"I certainly do know him! I was in his good books, and he called me by my first name."
His way of expressing himself was quite polished for an artisan.
"Takada is dead."
He gave a cry of surprise.
"He was a true gentleman. What a pity! When did he die?"
"Not very long ago. It's two weeks now, I think. No, perhaps not even that."
He then related a number of anecdotes concerning my deceased cousin before adding, "But when one comes to think of it, time passes by quickly, doesn't it Sir? It seems as if it was only yesterday. And yet it was nearly thirty years ago"
The hairdresser continued. "He lived near the Kyuyutei Restaurant, you know."
"Yes, it was a house with more than one story."
"Certainly. There was an upper floor. I remember that when he moved in there was a real celebration and he received all sorts of presents. It was after that, wasn't it, that he moved to a place in the Gyoganji Temple enclosure?"
I was unable to reply. It was really going back too far, and I had completely forgotten it.
"I believe that enclosure has now changed a lot. It is true that I no longer have occasion to go inside it."
"It certainly has changed! Nothing there now but just houses of assignation!"
Whenever my walks took me to the Sakanamachi quarters of the city I noticed that the narrow passage that led from a sock shop to the temple was full of square lanterns. But as I had never passed the time by counting them I had not noticed the one of which the barber spoke.
"Now that you mention it, it is true that in that street I saw a sign reading 'Tagasode'."8
"Yes, there are a great number of them. Really, though, it's only natural that it should change. It's nearly thirty years now! You too, Sir, know that at that time there was only one geisha house in the enclosure. It was called 'Azumaya', just opposite Mr Takada's house, you see. That is where the talisman lantern of the geishas' house hung."
I REMEMBERED this "Azumaya" very clearly, for my cousin's house was opposite and the two families were sufficiently well acquainted to greet each other if they met going out or coming in.
At that time my second elder brother was staying with my cousin. This brother had the annoying habit of purloining our paintings on rolls of paper and our swords in order to sell them for next to nothing. I do not know why he was lodging at my cousin's at this period, but now I come to think of it he had probably been temporarily turned out by us for tricks like that. In addition to my brother there was another lodger hanging around there, a certain Sho, a cousin on our mother's side.
When those three, always together, chatted about this and that, stretched out or seated on the veranda, a greeting reached them through the bamboo trellis window of the geishas' house.
"Come over here for a little bit, there's something amusing to tell you!"
As the geishas, for their part, had nothing to do during the day, they responded to their invitation one time out of three.
At that time I was only seventeen or eighteen years old and was also considered incurably shy. Despite their company, I sat in a secluded corner without uttering a word. However, I chanced to accompany them into the geisha house to play cards. As the loser had to pay for the meal I made a pig of myself with sushi and cakes at other people's expense.
A week later my lazybones of a brother took me to that house again, and as Cousin Sho was there conversation was quite lively. A young geisha called Sakimatsu recognized me and suggested another card game. That day I was dressed up to the nines and wore a thick cotton hakama9 but did not have as much as a coin on me.
"I don't want to," I said. "I'm penniless."
"That doesn't matter," she replied. "I have some money."
She must have been suffering from some eye trouble. While talking she rubbed her big eyes, already reddened, with the back of her pretty under-kimono.
Later on, at my cousin's, I heard a rumor that Osaku had been bought by a client. They did not call her Sakimatsu at my cousin's but only Osaku. When I heard that I felt deep down that I would never have a chance to see her again.
Then still later, when I happened to enter a big store in the Shiba quarter with O., whom I have already mentioned, chance brought me face to face with Osaku. I was wearing the student's uniform, while she had been transformed into a real lady. Her protector was by her side.
All these old memories were suddenly reawakened by the mere name "Azumaya" on the barber's lips.
"Did you know a girl called Osaku who worked in that house?" I asked.
"Know her? Why, she is my niece."
"Oh, really?" I said, stupefied. "And where is she living now?"
"Osaku is dead, Sir."
This was a still greater shock for me.
"But when?"
"When? A long time ago. I think she was twenty-three."
"Really?"
"She died, by the way, in Vladivostock. As her protector worked for the Consulate she went there with him. She died shortly afterwards."
And sitting at my window after my return home I had the impression that only this barber and myself were left over from those times.
A YOUNG WOMAN who had been introduced into my study asked me the following question: "I cannot manage to get my life in order. What ought I to do?"
She lodged with a relative. It was a cramped house, and the children were noisy. I therefore gave her a very simple answer.
"You ought to look for somewhere quieter to live."
"But I'm not talking about my room. What worries me is that I can't manage to get my thoughts in order."
I noted the misunderstanding but no longer knew what she meant. I asked her for a more detailed explanation.
"From the outside everything goes into my head, but it does not harmonize with the centre of my heart."
"What do you mean by the 'centre of your heart'?"
"Well, it's a straight line."
I knew she was a keen mathematician, but I naturally could not understand how the "centre of the heart" could be a "straight line". Neither could I very well grasp what she meant by "centre".
"Everything has a centre, does it not?" she said.
"But one can say this of objects which one sees with one's own eye or measures with a ruler. Has the heart a shape? Then show me its centre."
Without answering, the woman merely looked at the garden or rubbed her hands on her knees.
"Is not the 'straight line' of which you speak a metaphor?" I asked. If this is the case, you can just as well say 'circle' or 'square'."
"It's possible. But while shapes or colors vary unceasingly there is a thing that remains immutable."
"If you assume both the variable and the immutable, this amounts to saying that basically there are two types of heart. Do you not find that disturbing? According to your logic the variable should be the immutable".
After which I reverted to the question of leaving.
"There is probably nobody for whom every external thing enters his head and immediately becomes coherent, orderly and rigorous. Excuse me for saying so, but at your age, with your education and after the studies you have completed, it strikes me as impossible that everything should fall so easily into place. If that is not what you mean and if you really wish to clear your mind completely without recourse to study, I am not really the one to advise you. Go and see a bonze!"
The woman stared at me.
"The first time I saw you I thought that in that respect your heart was in better order than the others."
"That is impossible."
"But that is how I saw it. It is certain that even your intestines are in good order."
"If that were the case I should not fall ill so often!"
"I never fall ill," she said suddenly, reverting to herself.
"That shows you are more worthy of respect than I am," I answered.
She rose from the cushion, and she departed, saying: "Please take good care of your health."
THE HOUSE where I was born is four or five hundred meters from the one in which I live, in the "Babashita" quarter. I say "quarter", but in my childhood it was so desolate and depressing that it seemed to me more like a little wayside village. Babashita originally meant "below the Takata riding school": on the plan dating back to the Edo period it was on the borders of the town.
However, there must have been three or four houses built in the shape of a warehouse in this little quarter. The Omiya pharmacy, up the hill on the right, was one of these houses. Then down at the bottom of the hill there was the Kokuraya sake shop, with a wide entrance. Although it was not built like a warehouse it had a long history: it was said that Yasubei Horibe, when he went to take vengeance on the Takata riding school, had passed through there and drunk sake from a flask. I had learnt this story when I was very small but had never seen the receptacle from which the samurai had drunk and which had been lovingly preserved by the family On the other hand I had more than once heard the song of the girl, Okita.10 I was too young to know whether she had sung well or badly. But coming out of the hall and walking along the flagstones in the direction of the street I heard Okita's voice very clearly. I remember often standing motionless on a spring afternoon, allowing my enraptured soul to be suffused with a radiant light and listening abstractedly to Okita's lessons, leaning up against the white wall of the storeroom of my house. This is what enabled me to commit to memory the words of the song: "The journey's heart is on the hempen jacket."
There was also a manufacturer of wooden handles and a blacksmith. A little further on, towards Hachimanzaka, there was a vegetable market covering a vast piece of ground protected by a roof. In my family we called the owner Sentaro the wholesaler. It would seem that he was a distant relative of my father, but the association between them had become practically non-existent. It went no further than a few casual remarks on the weather when they met in the street. I had heard Sentaro's only daughter had become the mistress of the storyteller Teisui and that she had threatened suicide. But my memories of this were only vague. To the little boy that I was it seemed more a musing to look at Sentaro installed on a raised seat holding an account book and brush, looking down on the many faces asking in stentorious tones:
"Any advance on that?" And below him twenty or thirty hands were raised in unison, their owners all shouting their bids at Zentaro, like insults, in a secret code. It was exciting to see the baskets of ginger, eggplants or cayenne pepper carried off one after the other by the same muscular hands.
As always in the country there was also a bean curd shop. The braided straw curtain at the entrance smelt of the oil with which it was impregnated. The waste water, flowing near the door, however, was as clean as in Kyoto. When one had walked round this establishment and continued for some fifty meters one could see a little farther up the door to the Seikanji temple. Behind this door, painted red, was a dense bamboo grove completely blocking the view from the street. But the sound of the bell right at the back, ringing night and day, still echoes in my ears. It was particularly the sound of the bell— ding-dong!—continuing from the mists of autumn to the squalls of winter that brought cold to the heart of the little boy that I was, as if to fill it with an icy sadness forever.
I STILL REMEMBER, as if it were a hallucination, the storytellers' room next to the bean curd shop. My memory must be clouded by the idea that a theatre auditorium cannot be found in such a district, and whenever I recall it I am prey to a curious sensation: my astonished eyes generally open wide when I remember that distant past.
The owner of this place of entertainment was the captain of the local fire brigade. From time to time he wore an indigo blue waistcoat and jacket with red stripes. It was thus that he paraded in the street, wearing sandals. He had a daughter called Ofuji, and I remember that people often commented on her beauty. Later on she married a man who took her name, and I felt surprised, for he was a good-looking young man with a beard. It was whispered that she was very proud of her husband; it subsequently became known that he was a simple secretary at the Town Hall.
At the time of their marriage they were no longer running this establishment and the premises had become an ordinary residence. However, in the days when a faded, dejected-looking signboard still hung over the entrance I often went there to hear a storyteller with the pocket money I was given by my mother. His name was something like Nanrin. Curiously enough he was the only one to appear in that hall. I do not know where he lived, but wherever he had come from it must have meant quite an expedition compared with the present, when the thoroughfares are properly laid out and the houses aligned in rows. The audience, by the way, always numbered fifteen or twenty. However prolific my imagination, it can only be a dream, that strange rejoinder: "Tell me, courtesan," at which Yatsuhashi turns around and asks, "What do you want?" At these words, a gleaming sword pierces her body. I do not know whether I am remembering it from Nanrin's narrative at that time or whether I learnt it at a later period, listening to singers who imitated storytellers. My mind is now confused and I am no longer in the least clear about it.
At that time, to go from our house to a quarter worthy of the term, one had to pass a tea plantation, or a bamboo grove, or take a long road between the rice paddies. For major items of shopping one generally went as far as Kagura-zaka. I was hardened by this enforced journey and did not find it too onerous, but that road of five or six hundred meters which after the Yarai Slope led past Lord Sakai's "watchtower against fire" and ended at Tera-machi was gloomy even in broad daylight and constantly dark as if the sky had been covered with clouds.
As numerous giant trees rose from this embankment and the smallest space was blocked by equally well-grown bamboo there could not have been a single moment in the course of the day when one would have enjoyed the sunshine. If one had the idea of proceeding to the centre of the town wearing flat clogs there is no doubt that one would have been inviting difficulties. I shall never forget that the thaw in this place was more to be feared than the rain or snow.
Not only was this quarter inconvenient; there were also fire risks. In one corner high ladders had been stored. An old alarm bell hung there, as if for form's sake. These scenes often come back into my mind. I picture the little eating-place just below that bell. Nor can I forget the aroma and steam from the stew, wafting through the braided straw entrance curtain and mingling with the twilight mist in the street while Shiki was still alive. It was in memory of that alarm bell that I composed the following haiku:
Neatly all aligned
Close beside the warning bell
Trees of winter stand.
MY MEMORIES of my house are generally of a rustic nature. They also include a touch of desolation and melancholy, to such an extent that the other day, when my only surviving brother reminded me of the time when our sisters used to go to the theatre, I was stupefied at the idea that there could have been a period when we had led such a dazzling life. I really thought I must be dreaming.
At that time all the theatres were concentrated in Saruwaka-cho. There were as yet no trams or rickshaws, and it was no trifling undertaking to proceed from below Takatanobaba to beyond the Kannon of Asakusa in the small hours. My sisters got up in the middle of the night to prepare. The road was not very safe, and they always took the precaution of getting a servant to accompany them.
They went down through the Tsukudo quarter, passing through Kakinoki-yokocho, reaching Ageba, with an inn on the riverbank, where my sisters went on a pleasure boat that had been reserved for them. I can imagine the impatient expectation with which they sailed slowly past the Armory and then past Ochanomizu before arriving at Yanagibashi. This, however, was not yet the end of their voyage. Those former days, when time did not count, were still more memorable.
The boat came out on to the Sumida, and continuing on its way passed beneath the Azuma Bridge and moored near the Yumei Restaurant at Imado. There my sisters disembarked, walking as far as the teahouse of the theatre, from where they were ushered into the auditorium. Finally they took their seats, which were reserved, as always, in the dress circle. It was the most convenient place from which to invite admiration of their faces, hairstyles and clothes: anybody with a fondness for showy ornaments fought to secure one of these seats.
In the interval the assistant of one of the actors went to see them and offered to take them to the boxes. Following this man, who wore a patterned crepe kimono and a hakama, my sisters then paid a visit to their favorite actors, who were called Tanosuke and Tossho, returning after these latter had autographed their fans with drawings. It was doubtless done to impress the crowd. And one had to be well off to enjoy this luxury.
They returned home by the same route. And they travelled to Ageba on the same boat. By way of precaution a servant went to meet them, bearing a lantern. They finally reached the house towards midnight. The expedition had thus occupied the whole of the time from one night to the next, and that is what it cost them to be able to go to the theatre....
When I heard of this lavish episode I wondered whether it had really taken place in my own family. One would have thought that it was the past life of some wealthy household in the centre of the city that was being related to me.
We were not a family of Samurais. My father was a local councillor who had to mix socially. I knew him as a bald old gentleman, but it seems that in his youth he had learnt singing and had presented a mistress with crepe bedclothes. As he owned rice paddies in Aoyama the harvest was sufficient, we were told, to feed us all. My third brother, who is also older than me and is still living, tells me he constantly heard the sound of husking operations. As far as I remember, everybody living in that quarter called our house "the hall". I did not know why this was so at that time, but, now I come to think of it, the reason was probably that it was the only house to have an entrance worthy to be so-called and provided with a floor. In that part of the house, old police weapons and an antiquated carriage lamp hung on the wall, and this remains in my memory.
FOR THE last two or three years I have fallen ill about once a year, and when I have to take to my bed it is about a month before I can get up.
As for my illness, it is always a stomach problem which means that in the end there is no medicine for me other than simply fasting. This is imposed on me not only by the doctor's instructions but also by the nature of the malady. It is during my convalescence even more than during the actual period of sickness that I am thin and tottery.
It is when I am in a condition to go around as I like that a card with black borders is often placed on my desk. With a bitter laugh at the irony of fate and wearing a top hat I hurry by rickshaw to the scene of the obsequies. Those who have died include elderly men and women, but some have been younger than me and proud of their good health.
Back at home, seated in front of my desk, I think about the strangeness of human life. I wonder how it is that I, who am such an invalid, still survive and why so-and-so has proceeded me to the Beyond.
Where I am concerned it must be said that it is quite normal that I should engage in reflections of this nature. But I have a tendency to forget my situation, my body, my capabilities—in a word, my entire person—and most of the time I live with the idea that it would be natural for me not to die. Even during the reading of the sutras and the offering of the incense I usually remain completely indifferent, finding nothing strange in this carcass which has survived death and which is mine.
Somebody once said to me: "It seems natural that other people should die, but one never admits the possibility of dying oneself."
Another time I asked a man who had been through the war: "When you saw your comrades fall one after the other, were you able to remain convinced that you yourself would not be killed?"
"Absolutely," he answered.
"There is no doubt that one must think one will not die—up to the moment when one does die."
And then, when a university scientist spoke to me of airplanes, I remember having the following conversation with him:
"Knowing that airplanes crash so often and one does not survive it, one must in the end become afraid to board an aircraft. One must be saying to oneself: 'It's my turn next.' Do you not think so?"
"Apparently not."
"Why?"
"Because it seems one is ruled by the opposite psychology One has to tell oneself: 'He crashed, yes. But I myself am not afraid'."
It is doubtless thanks to this state of mind that we maintain a relative calm, and with good reason. Everybody is alive until his death.
Strangely enough, while I am bedridden I receive hardly any funeral notices. Last autumn it was after I had recovered that I attended three or four funerals. Among the deceased was Mr Sato, a colleague on the newspaper. I remember that one day in the course of a celebration he had handed me sake in a silver goblet which had been given to him by the paper. I also remember a weird dance he performed on that occasion. I, who attended the funeral of such a strong and vigorous man, do not see it as at all strange that he should die and that I go on living. Yet, thinking it over carefully, what is not natural is that I should be the one to survive. It is then that I find myself wanting to ask whether Fate is not deriving amusement from making fun of me.
NEAR MY house there is a quarter called Kikuicho. As I was born there nobody knows it better than I. But on my return from a long pilgrimage I found this quarter had been extended considerably, continuing as far as Negoro.
My association with the name Kikuicho is very deep, but as I have heard it too frequently it is totally devoid of the nostalgic undertone which might awaken memories of my past. However, when I am alone in my study, resting my chin on my hand, and I give free rein to my reveries like a boat following the current, there are moments when, at this name of Kikuicho, I pause in my thoughts.
When the capital was still called Edo, this quarter probably did not exist. But it was when Edo was renamed Tokyo or perhaps even later—in any case I do not exactly remember—that my father created it.
As my family's coat of arms is a chrysanthemum (kiku) on a background representing the coping of a well (i), the name Kikui-cho was coined. I do not know whether it was my father or somebody else who told me of this, but I still remember it. After the council for the quarter had died out, my father held the post of mayor of the district, which enabled him to take this kind of liberty. The vanity with which he boasted of it has long ceased to arouse any unpleasant feeling but rather makes me want to smile.
Furthermore, my father gave the long slope that could not be avoided when going north his own surname: Natsume. Unfortunately, it was not so readily accepted as Kikui-cho and people simply called it "the slope". Yet the other day somebody told me that when examining a map in order to familiarize himself with the toponymy of the quarter he had lighted on the name Natsume-zaka. So it may be that the appellation selected by my father is still in use.
How long is it since I left Tokyo and returned to Waseda? Before moving into my present house, while I was looking for accommodation, or simply returning from a stroll, I chanced to find myself in the vicinity of the house in which I was born and which I had not seen for such a long time. Looking from the street at the old roof tiles of the upper story I noticed that it had survived after all, and then I continued on my way.
After having taken up residence in Waseda I went back past the door of that house. Seen from the street it hardly seemed to have changed, but the door unexpectedly bore the sign of a boarding house. I wanted to admire the rice paddies of Waseda as in former days. But the place had been urbanized. I also wanted to take a look at the tea plantation and the bamboo grove at Negro. However, I could find no trace of them. I assumed that they must have been thereabouts, without being quite sure.
Dumbfounded, I remained rooted to the spot. Why was my house the one to be left, like an empty shell from the past? In my heart of hearts I told myself that it would have been better if it had fallen into ruin.
"Time" was the force. Last year, when I went for a walk near Takada, I found myself in that quarter and noticed that my house had been demolished and was being replaced by a new boarding house. Beside it there was already a pawnshop. In front of the shop there was a sparse hedge, while behind it there were a few trees. Three pines had been pruned and rendered unrecognizable, looking like malformed children, but to me they looked familiar. I wondered whether it was not about these pine trees that I had written the following haiku:
Shapes uneven stand;
Pine trees, three in number, list
By the moon at night.
And filled with these thoughts I returned to my abode.
"HOW HAVE you coped with it up to now, after having lived in a place like that?"
"I cope with it as best I can."
By this expression "cope with" we meant the absence of love between a man and a woman; in short, it was the opposite of passion. But my curiosity did not feel satisfied by this reply.
"It is often said that if someone who likes sugar apprentices himself to a pastry cook he very soon ends up by hating pastries. You need only watch people preparing ritual cakes at the time of the higan: they just pile them into a receptacle and are completely nauseated by them. Perhaps that is the case with you?"
"Not exactly. For until I had passed twenty I remained absolutely indifferent."
This man, in a certain sense, was a fine fellow.
"You were, perhaps, but the others did not necessarily share your indifference: under those circumstances it was natural for you to be the target of attempts at seductions."
"When I recall it now, there certainly were things that make me think that this or that gesture or this or that word had this or that meaning."
"But did you notice it at all at the time?"
"No. There was nevertheless something that I noticed. But I was never fundamentally attracted by them."
I expected the conversation to end there. The New Year dishes had been placed in front of us. Now as my guest hardly drank any sake and my lips too did not approach the goblet, we never, so to speak, served each other.
"So up to now nothing outstanding has happened to you?" I asked, to set my mind at rest, while sipping my soup.
My guest suddenly declared:
"When I was still an employee there was a girl I happened to see regularly for two years. Needless to say, she was a 'professional'. She is no longer living. She hanged herself. She was nineteen. We had not seen each other for ten days: that was when she died. She had two protectors, and each raised the bid in order to buy her. Each had obtained the support of elderly geishas who had put pressure on her in one direction or the other...."
"But you were unable to save her?"
"At that time I was hardly more than an apprentice. That was all beyond my means."
"But that geisha died because of you."
"Well ... it was impossible for her to satisfy two protectors at once ... she and I had promised each other that she would not go anywhere."
"So one could perhaps say you had indirectly killed that girl?"
"It may be so."
"Do you find it hard to have no guilty conscience?"
"It is never very easy."
In my living room, which on New Year's Day was full of people, it was quiet the next day. It was during that sad year that this visitor, who had come to give me his good wishes, told me this melancholy tale. He was such a solid and straightforward character that his story was practically free of all flowery turns of phrase.
IT WAS during the period when I was still living in the Sendagi quarter; in other words many years ago.
One day, after a walk in the Kiridoshi quarter and just before coming out on to the Hongo-yon-chome crossroads, I went down a little street leading northwards. At that time there was a beef restaurant on the corner and a sign advertising a storytellers' hall.
As it was a rainy day I was naturally carrying an umbrella. It was dark blue with steel-grey "highlights" and had a frame of eight curved whalebones, and the raindrops that ran down it started to wet my hand, sliding over the handle of natural wood. This comparatively deserted alleyway was spotlessly clean, as if the rain had washed away all its mud, and the heels of my clogs never encountered any dirt. When I glanced upwards, however, I saw that the sky was overcast, while when I looked down it was depressing. Perhaps it was because I went that way quite frequently, but there was nothing around me that attracted my attention. My mind was in unison with that weather and those surroundings. A "block of trouble" seemed to persist within me, eating away at my soul, and so, in a sullen mood, I wandered in the rain.
Having arrived in front of the Hikagecho storytellers' hall I suddenly noticed a hooded rickshaw, in which, there being nothing in the way to block my view, I could see a woman passenger. Celluloid windows had not yet been introduced, so that I could clearly see her light complexion.
She looked extremely beautiful in her pallor. Continuing to walk along in the rain, I gazed at her in fascination. At the same moment it occurred to me that she might be a geisha, and this idea took hold of me as a certainty. Then, as soon as the rickshaw was within two meters of me, the beautiful object of my admiration courteously greeted me and continued on her journey. It was only then that I noticed from her smile that it was Madame Kusuo Otsuka.
When several days later I saw her again Kusuo said:
"I am sorry about the other day."
This aroused in me a desire to reveal to her all the thoughts I had had at that time.
"To tell you the truth," I confessed, "I wondered, when I saw you, who that pretty lady could be. I even wondered whether you were not a geisha."
I cannot remember exactly what Kusuo replied to this, but her cheeks showed no signs of a blush. Not did she appear indignant. She seemed to receive this confession in the most natural way in the world.
A long time afterwards Kusuo took the trouble to pay me a visit in Waseda. On the day in question, unfortunately, I was having a heated argument with my wife. I had shut myself away in my study in a foul temper. Kusuo contented herself with a ten-minute chat with my wife and then took her leave.
On that occasion things went no further, but a few days later I went to Nishikatamachi to apologize to her.
"To tell you the truth, we had quarreled. My wife too must have struck you as not very welcoming. As for me, I thought it would be wrong to inflict my ill humour on you. I preferred to hide myself away."
After all this time Kusuo's reply has become buried in a corner of my memory from where I am no longer able to disinter it.
It seems that I was in a gastro-enterological clinic when I learned that Kusuo had died. As regards the notice of her death, I remember that somebody telephoned me to ask whether they could mention my name. At the clinic I wrote a haiku in her memory.
Those chrysanthemums
That you find, cast them all down
In the coffin deep.
A haiku lover to whom these lines appealed asked me to paint them on a piece of card which he brought me. But all this now belongs to the past.
I DO NOT know why Masu had fallen so low. When I got to know him when he was a postman. His brother Sho, for his part, had got himself settled down in our house after he had gone bankrupt, but his social position was better than Masu's. Masu often spoke of something that had happened to him when he was a child. He was apprenticed to a pharmacist in Honcho; a Westerner took a liking to him and offered to take him away with him; now that he thought about it, Masu bitterly regretted having refused the offer.
They were both cousins of my mother. For this reason, and also in order to see his brother and pay his respects to my father, he came to us nearly every month, as far as the very end of Ushigome, loaded with presents such as rice biscuits.
At that time he was lodging at the end of Shiba, or near Shinagawa. As he lived the life of a carefree bachelor he often spent the night at our house. On the rare occasions on which he expressed a wish to leave, my elder brothers crowded round him with threats of "If you go, just see what happens to you".
My second and third brothers were attending the Propaedeutic School. That was what would nowadays be called a Higher School; once one had obtained one's certificate one could enter the University. When evening came they sat round the paulownia tables and studied their text for the following day. It was very different work from that performed by the students of today They took books like Goodrich's History of England, read a paragraph, turned the book over on the table, and recited from memory what they had just read.
When this exercise had been completed it was the moment when Masu's presence was needed more than ever. He always arranged to be there. My elder brother likewise, when he was in a good mood, left his bedroom specially and came to the front door, and they all joined together in teasing Masu.
"Masu, you have to deliver letters to Westerners, don't you?"
"Oh well, it's my job. What can one do?"
"So you speak English?"
"I suppose you think I'd enjoy myself doing a job like this if I could speak English?"
"But you have to call out 'mail!' or something like that, don't you?"
"That one can just say in Japanese. Nowadays, you know, foreigners understand Japanese."
"Oh, really? And do they say something to you?"
"Of course. For instance, Mrs Badaboom greets one in excellent Japanese: 'Thank you, that's very kind of you!'"
After having made fun of him as far as that they burst out laughing. They then repeated their question: "What was her name again, that 'missus'?"—giving themselves a chance to laugh even more. Masu ended by laughing wryly at himself and ceasing to repeat "Thank you, that's very kind of you!" Then someone suggested:
"Now Masu, give us 'The lone cypress on the plain'."
"Oh, that's not something one can recite straight off to order."
"That doesn't matter. Go to it! 'On reaching the lone cypress on the plain...'."
Masu still did not react and was content to smile. In the end I never had a chance to hear "The lone cypress on the plain" from Masu's lips. Now I think of it, this must have been a passage from a historical or melodramatic recitation.
After I came of age Masu no longer came to see me. He must have died. If he had still been living we would have heard from him. But, assuming he is dead, I do not know when he died.
I AM NOT very familiar with the theatre. In particular I do not understand Kabuki. I think it is because I am ignorant of the scenic conventions which have developed since ancient times and am thus incapable of identifying with the curious world that evolves on the stage. But that is not all; what strikes me as strange when I attend a Kabuki performance is the way the actor switches from the natural to the artificial and back again. This certainly must be the reason why he imparts a feeling of instability and unease.
However, when a child appears on the stage and says touching things in a high voice, my eyes become misted with tears in spite of myself. But then I immediately regret having given way. I find myself wondering how I can have been so sensitive.
"Whatever happens," I said one day to a keen theatre goer, "I am terrified at the idea of being tricked into shedding tears."
"But," my interlocutor pointed out, "it's at that moment that you're in your normal state. On the other hand, at normal moments, when you hold back your tears, is it not then that you are putting on an act?"
I did not agree with his theory and tried by every possible means to convince him. Our conversation strayed to the subject of painting. He was very moved by the picture by Jakuchu11 which had been exhibited at the Fine Arts Association, and I knew he was going to publish an article on this painting in a journal. Now it was just this very painting, with farmyard cocks as its subject that I disliked intensely, and a heated argument ensued like the one about the theatre.
"But after all," I exclaimed, none too gently, "What gives you the right to hold forth about painting?"
In the face of my invective he started to advocate the theory of artistic monism. By this he meant, broadly speaking, that all arts sprang from the same source and that if one immersed oneself in one of them this was sufficient to enable one to understand all the others. At the assembly he harvested a certain amount of support.
"So when one writes novels one becomes a judo expert?" I asked him in order to tease him.
"Judo is not an art," he replied, smiling in his turn.
The arts do not have a common origin. Even if that were the case, an art does not flourish until it becomes distinct from others. If any art, whether it is painting, sculpture or literature, is reduced to its original state, it once again becomes nothing. What then, can they have in common? Supposing that they do have something in common, this would be of no real effect: nothing concrete shared by them would be discovered.
Such was the argument that I put forward. It was far from complete. But I had enough room for manoeuvre to take the opposite thesis into account and analyze it in detail.
Then somebody at the meeting took up my argument of his own accord and launched his attack. I was weak enough to let him do so. However, the man who spoke on my behalf had had more than enough to drink. He held forth without pause—now on art, now on literature. His delivery became more or less of a babble. At first the audience laughed, but finally they remained silent.
"We must fall out, then!" The tipsy fellow cried.
"If you have to fall out, please do so outside, not here."
"Well then, let's go out!" He said to my interlocutor.
But as the latter did not react the matter was dropped.
All this took place at the New Year. The man who drank too much came again on several occasions but without ever reverting to this quarrel.
ON SEEING our cat somebody asked me: "How many generations have your cats so far covered?"
Without stopping to think, I replied:
"This is the second generation."
Thinking it over afterwards, however, I realized that it was actually the third.
The first cat, although originally an alley cat, become in one sense quite famous!12 The life of the second, on the other hand, was so short that his own master forgot it. I no longer even remember who brought it or where it came from. But I still remember the time when it was so tiny that I could hold it in the hollow of my hand, and its smallness enabled it to find its way in everywhere. The poor little animal met its end one morning when my wife crushed it while folding the bedclothes. Hearing the cat moaning she pulled it out at once and lavished all possible care on it, but it was too late. It died the next day or the day after. Its successor is the black cat living with me now.
I neither love it nor hate it. He, for his part, does nothing but roam about the house and has never shown any affection by coming towards me.
One day he edged his way into the kitchen cupboard and fell into a casserole. It was full of sesame oil. All of a sudden his body went shiny as if it had been coated with a cosmetic, and in this state he lay down on my manuscript. The oil penetrated the pages to the very bottom, leaving me beside myself with anger.
Last year, just before I fell ill, the cat himself contracted a disease of the skin. His forehead gradually peeled off, and as he incessantly scratched away at it with his claws, little bits came off, leaving reddened sores. One day, while I was eating, I had to witness this disagreeable spectacle, which exasperated me.
"If he goes on spreading his scabs," I said to my wife, "he will end by infecting the children. It would be better to take him to the vet right away and have him seen to as quickly as possible."
Deep down, however, I felt that, in view of the nature of his disorder, he would never be completely cured. I clearly remembered what happened to a Westerner I used to know: his dog, which had been given to him by a certain nobleman and of which he was very fond, suffered from a similar disease. He was so sorry for the animal that he had asked a vet to put it to sleep.
"One might as well save it any further suffering by dispatching it with chloroform or some such means."
I repeated that three or four times, but before the cat could suffer this fate I fell ill myself. During that time I had no chance to see the cat; my own suffering took over, relieving me of any responsibility for him.
It was in October that I was at last able to get up. I saw my cat again, black as always. The strange thing was that fresh black fur was growing on his frightful bare red skin.
"Well, well," I exclaimed. "It means he will be cured."
My gaze, that of an idle convalescent, rested constantly upon him. As I recovered my strength his fur become even denser. When he once more had a normal coat he began to get bigger than before.
When I compare the course of his illness with that of my own, it occurs to me that there is some obscure link between them. Immediately afterwards, however, I tell myself that this is absurd and I smile. As for the cat, since he does nothing but mew, I have absolutely no idea of his state of mind.
I AM WHAT is known as a little last-born, whom my parents conceived in their mature years. Even now one still sometimes hears it said that my mother felt ashamed to have become pregnant at her age.
This is certainly not the only reason, but my parents put me out to nurse as soon as I was born. Needless to say, I do not remember my foster family, but I learned later, when I grew up, that they were a poor couple who made a living by selling second-hand furniture.
Every evening I was exposed in a little basket of bamboo in the midst of their higgledy-piggledy nocturnal display on the Yotsuya Grand Avenue. One evening my elder sister, who happened to be passing that way, brought me home in the folds of her dress, probably having taken pity on me. I could not get to sleep and cried the whole night through. My sister was given a severe scolding by my father.
I do not know when I was taken back from that nurse, but I was adopted by a certain family not long afterwards.13 I think I was four years old at that time. Until the age of eight or nine, when I became aware of things, I grew up in their house. But owing to problems that arose in the household into which I had been adopted, I was taken back by my natural parents.
From Asakusa I then moved to Ushigome. But I did not realize that I had returned to the house of my birth, as I took my parents for my grandparents and always called them "Grandpa" and "Grandma" without wondering about it. They for their part must have thought a sudden change of habit would be strange and let me address them thus without demur.
Unlike most youngest sons I was in no way pampered by my parents. There were various reasons for this: I was not of an obedient nature and had been kept apart from my parents for a long time. Above all, I have never forgotten how severely my father treated me. However, during the period following my return from Asakusa to Ushigome, I felt very happy for some reason or other. And I made this happiness so obvious that everybody noticed it.
I must have been decidedly stupid; how long was I convinced that my true parents were my grandparents? I do not know the answer. Anyway, there came an evening when something happened.
While I was sleeping alone in the living room, I heard a frail voice at the head of my bed incessantly calling my name. I awoke in astonishment, but as everything was plunged in darkness I could not easily grasp what was going on around me. As I was still a child, I lay there without moving and went on listening to that voice. In doing so, I realized that it was the maid's. In the dark she told me in a murmur:
"The people you think are your grandfather and grandmother are your real father and mother. I heard them say just now. 'That's no doubt why he likes this house better. It's curious.' And that's why I am telling you in secret. Don't let anyone know I've told you. Agreed?"
I was content to reply, "I'll not tell anybody."
In my heart, however, I was very happy. It was not because the truth had been revealed to me but because the maid had been nice to me. Yet I have completely forgotten the name and the face of this maid who had made me so happy. All I remember is her kindness.
WHEN I am seated at my desk like this many visitors ask me, "Well, are you cured?"
The same question has been put to me on several occasions, but each time I have hesitated in my reply. And in the end I have always answered with that curious phrase, "Oh well—I'm so-so."
I have long used this formula, yet every time I have thought it inappropriate and told myself that I ought to give it up. Now, I could not find any other suitable expression to describe my state of health.
When T. came to see me the other day I told him all this; I did not know whether I was cured or not and could not think what answer to give him. T. immediately replied, "Well, one can't say you are cured, seeing how often you have a relapse. One could say your illness persists."
On hearing this word "persists", I felt I had heard something favorable. From then on, instead of saying "so-so", I started saying "my trouble persists". To explain the meaning of this verb, I always referred to the war going on in Europe.
"Just as Germany is at war with the Allies, I am at war with the illness. And if I am able to sit facing you, it is not because peace has been restored but because I have gone to ground in the trenches for a hand-to-hand fight with the illness. My body is engaged in out-and-out warfare. I do not know when an incident will occur."
Some of my listeners burst out laughing, some remain silent and others assume a fitting expression.
After the guests have departed, I reflect. It is no doubt simply that my affliction drags on. Those who laugh at what I say and take it as a joke, those who say nothing, because they do not understand it, and those who exhibit pity, being filled with compassion—do they not conceal in their hearts an infinity of things which persist unnoticed by me and which even they themselves do not perceive? If it were all suddenly to explode within them, what would they think of it? It is probable that their memory would no longer serve them. Their consciousness of the past would have long disappeared. Recognizing no causality between past and present or within the past itself, how could they interpret themselves once they had reached that stage? In the end, is not what we are doing simply carrying, each of us in his own way, a bomb that we have manufactured for ourselves in our dream—and proceeding without exception, despite our carefree chatter, towards a distant place called Death? It is fortunate that nobody knows what he is carrying and that this knowledge is also hidden from others.
Aware of the persistence of my malady I have thought how long the war in Europe had already raged. But as to how it started and what turns it is to take, I am completely ignorant and I envy the ordinary mortal who does not suspect the implications of the word "persists".
WHEN I was still at school I had a friend of whom I was very fond and who was called Kiichan.14 Since at that time he was living at his uncle's at Nakacho and it was not very close to where I lived, I could not go and see him every day. Generally, it was not I who went to see him: I waited for him to visit me. For it was not necessary for me to go there: he was certain to come. The fact is, he went to Matsu, who was one of the tenants in some huts which he owned and who sold paper and paint brushes.
Kiichan did not appear to have any parents, but I, child that I was, did not see anything at all strange in this. I probably never questioned him on the matter. I therefore remained ignorant of the reasons why he went to Matsu's place. I was to learn much later that Kiichan's father had once been an official at the Mint and had been jailed for forgery and died in prison. His wife, left alone in the world, had then married Matsu, leaving Kiichan with her first husband's family. It was therefore only natural that Kiichan should from time to time go and see his real mother.
Until then I knew nothing of all this, but when I learned of these circumstances they had no particular effect on me, all the more so since I enjoyed Kiichan's company so much and never gave his family situation a thought.
We were both fond of Chinese studies and found it entertaining to discuss the classics, even without understanding them at all. I do not know where he derived this knowledge, but he often surprised me by quoting very complicated titles.
One day he sat down in our hall, which I used more or less as a bedroom, and he took from his pocket two books bound together in a single volume: it was obviously a manuscript. Furthermore, it was in Chinese. I took it from him and glanced through it at random. To tell the truth, I did not have the slightest idea what it could be. But it was not Kiichan's way to ask me whether I knew it.
"It is the original manuscript of Ota Nampo.15 A friend of mine wants to resell it, and I preferred to show it to you first. Wouldn't you like to buy it?"
I did not know who this Ota Nampo was.
"Who is Ota Nampo?"
"Shokusanjin,16 of course! The famous Shokusanjin!"
In my ignorance I did not know this name either. But now that Kiichan gave me all these details the manuscript struck me as very valuable.
"How much does he want for it?" I asked.
"He is hoping to get fifty sen. How does that suit you?"
I thought for a bit. It struck me that first of all I ought to bargain.
"I'll take it for twenty-five sen."
"All right, twenty-five sen. That's settled then."
So he took my twenty-five sen and once again enlightened me upon the virtues of this book. Since I could not understand any of it, I was obviously not particularly moved. But at least I had the satisfaction of knowing that I had my money's worth. That evening I left the book on the table by my side: if my memory serves me right it was entitled Nampo Yugen.
THE NEXT day Kiichan came back without letting me know in advance.
"It's about the book you bought yesterday."
After that he contented himself with staring at me without plunging in. I looked at the book I had left on the table.
"You mean this book? What has happened?"
"The boy's father finally found out about it. He flew into a terrible rage. I have been implored to get it back. I have told them there can be no question of that. I had already sold it to you. All the same, I could not avoid coming here."
"To get the book back from me?"
"Well, not exactly, but if it is not too much to ask, could you not let him have it back? They think twenty-five sen is too cheap."
This last statement left me fully aware that, behind the satisfaction I had hitherto experienced at having secured a bargain, there was a vague unpleasant feeling—the kind that is due to having acted badly. On the one hand I reproached myself for the ruse I had employed, while on the other hand I bore Kiichan a grudge for having sold me the book for twenty-five sen. How could I cool these two resentments at the same time? I remained silent for a moment with an expression of discomfort on my face.
I am analyzing this psychological state at the age I am now while remembering what I was, a child; everything thus falls into place with comparative clarity, but at the time I did not understand the situation very well. Where I was concerned, I was hardly conscious of anything but the bitterness which I felt; as for Kiichan, he did not of course see things any more clearly than I did. Let me say in passing that even now, when I have reached a certain maturity, I do not escape this phenomenon; this is liable to give rise to misunderstanding.
Noticing the expression on my face, Kiichan replied:
"He says twenty-five sen is giving it away."
I immediately took the book off the table and put it in front of Kiichan.
"Take it back, then."
"Forgive me, but as it doesn't belong to that moron Yasu, there is no other way. His father had it for a long time. And Yasu thought he would make himself a little pocket money by selling it."
I sulked in silence. Kiichan took twenty-five sen out of his pocket and put it down in front of me. I did not touch it, however.
"I shall not take that money."
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Oh, really? But it's idiotic just to give back the book. If you return it, you must take back the twenty-five sen."
I could stand it no longer.
"But the book belongs to me," I said. "Once I have brought it, it is obvious that it is my book."
"That may be, but they're very annoyed over there."
"I repeat that I am returning it to them. It is simply that I do not want this money."
"Do not talk nonsense. Take this money."
"But I am giving it to them! It is my book, and if they want it I will make them a present of it. Since I am giving it to them, just be content to take it."
"If you insist, I will do what you want."
Finally, Kiichan went away, agreeing to take the book with him. That is how I lost twenty-five sen of pocket money for no reason.
SINCE I live among the human beings here below, I cannot resolve to isolate myself completely I do have to have dealings with other people for one reason or another. New Year greetings, business in progress, comparatively delicate problems: despite leading a secluded life I find it difficult to avoid them.
Am I to take everything people tell me literally and give their gestures and words the meanings they seem to have? If I did not give enough thought to this naive temperament that has been mine from birth, I would from time to time be duped by people from whom deceit would not be expected. I am thus dogged by constant mockeries and gibes. In the worst cases, I myself experience unbearable humiliation.
But could I then decide that other people were all arrant liars and decline from the outset to pay any attention or give any credence to their words? Could I even merely assume the opposite of their words to be the truth, regarding myself as intelligent on that account and thus finding a haven of peace? I should thus risk misinterpreting other people. Furthermore, I should have to be prepared, from the outset to face the possibility of committing a frightful mistake. And the inevitable consequence of this attitude would be that sometimes I would have to be brazen enough to insult an innocent person, failing which the logic of my position would not hold up.
If I have to decide on one or the other of these attitudes, I once more find myself tormented by doubt. I do not wish to confide in anyone who is bad. But nor do I wish to cause hurt to anyone who is good. The people with whom I come in to contact are not all malicious-nor are they all good people. My attitude must therefore vary according to the people with whom I am dealing.
This variation is necessary for everybody and is also practiced by everybody. But can one really proceed along a delicate uniform line where no error is permitted, in perfect accord with the other person? This, for me, is the key question.
My rancor apart, I remember, not without bitterness, how many people have deceived me in the past. At the same time, I feel that, on several occasions, instead of accepting the words and actions of other people without thinking twice about it, I have deliberately interpreted them in such a way as to arouse something akin to humiliation in the other person.
My attitude towards other people is governed in the first place by what has been my experience hitherto.
Then it is also affected by circumstances and the environment. Finally—and this is ambiguous—some little part is also played by my innate intuition. Thus I am sometimes duped by other people and sometimes it is they who are duped by me, while on rarer occasions I assess them correctly
Now when I refer to "what has been my experience hitherto", it would seem to be vast and yet in reality it is very restricted. When one transposes to a certain part of society an experience that has been frequently repeated in another, it often becomes totally ineffective. I have referred to "circumstances" and to "environment", but since there are infinite variations, they are not only limited in their application but also, if one fails to take this into account, become useless. In most cases, moreover, there is neither sufficient time nor sufficient material available to enable these data to be taken into account.
All this induces me, when judging others, to keep my intuition to the fore, although I do not know whether or not it exists, and it is any case very uncertain. Furthermore, I have not usually had an opportunity of ascertaining objectively whether my intuition has discerned matters clearly or not. Here again, doubt constantly settles like a fog over my heart and causes it to suffer.
If in this world an omniscient and omnipotent god existed I would kneel down before him and ask him to endow me with an intuition so clear that not a shadow of doubt would remain and to deliver me from these torments. Or I would ask him to transform all those impenetrable people with whom I am faced into transparent and honest beings and thus to give me a happiness such that my soul and theirs would be in perfect harmony. At the moment I am so stupid that there is only one way open: I am deceived by others, and my distrust is so great that I cannot accept my fellow beings. I am at the peak of disquiet, obscurity and discomfort. If this is to persist throughout my lifetime, how unhappy I must be!
A LITERATURE researcher who had been one of my students when I was teaching at the University came to see me.
"I hear," he said, "that you gave a lecture at the Higher School of Industry."
"That is true."
"It seems that people did not understand it."
I was all the more surprised at his words since up to then I had never imagined that the lecture in question could give rise to problems of this sort.
"How do you know that?" I asked.
His explanation was a simple one. The son of a family whom he knew, or to whom he was related, and who attended the school mentioned, had been present at my lecture and had said that he did not understand any of it.
"But what was your lecture about?"
I gave him a summary.
"Surely it was not as difficult as all that? What do you say?"
"Do you think they did not understand that?"
"I think they did not understand it. They most certainly did not understand it."
This categorical reply surprised me. I was still more conscious of the reluctance which I had felt when giving this lecture. I must confess that the school had invited me on several occasions and that each time I had refused. So, when in the end I agreed to deliver it, I hoped from the bottom of my heart that I would give my best to the audience, a hope which was shattered by the words "They most certainly did not understand it." I could not help thinking that I had not the least need to go to Asakusa.
It is an old story: an incident that took place a year or two ago. Last autumn, however, I found I had to deliver a lecture at another university. I suddenly remembered that a year before I had been cursing myself for having agreed. Furthermore, as the theme of my lecture included material that could lend itself to misunderstanding on the part of a young audience, I said, before leaving the platform, "I assume I have been sufficiently clear, but if you still have doubts concerning what I have said, do not hesitate to come and see me. I will give you all the possible explanations to convince you."
At the time, I had no idea of the repercussions these words could have. The fact remains, however, that four or five days later three young men entered my study. Two of them had telephoned in advance to ask whether I was free. The third had sent me a polite letter to ask for an interview.
I welcomed these visitors with a good grace. I then asked them exactly why they had come. One of them, as I had expected, questioned me on the contents of my lecture. The other two, however, raised an unexpected subject, asking me for advice on the family life of a friend of theirs. In other words, they explained to me a problem which caused them concern and which called for the application of the principles of my lecture.
From these three visitors' point of view, I believe I said what I ought to say and explained what I ought to explain. I do not myself know of what use this was to them. But this meeting with them was sufficient to give me a feeling of satisfaction: far more so than the remark, "It seems your lecture was not understood."
(Two or three days after the publication of this text I received four or five letters from students of the Higher School of Industry. They had all attended the lecture and disproved the disappointment which I have described. Thus all these letters showed good will towards me. None of them reproached me for any over-hasty generalization concerning the entire audience on the basis of the opinion of one individual. I should therefore like to take this opportunity of apologizing for my lack of clear-sightedness and also avail myself of the opportunity of thanking those who rectified my mistaken analysis for their kindness.)
WHEN I was little I often went to listen to storytellers in the Isemoto Hall, which was in Setomono-cho in the Nihonbashi quarter. On the other side of the present Mitsukoshi there were always placards to be seen announcing the daytime entertainment, and after turning the corner and walking a mere fifty meters one came to the hall.
As there were only variety artists in the evening, it was always by day that I went to this hall. At all events it is the one I frequented most. At that time I was no longer living in the house in Takatanobaba. It is true that I had moved closer to the district, but I now wonder how I managed to find the time to go and listen to the storytellers so often; I find it hardly believable.
It is partly because the period which I am recalling was so long ago, but for a storytellers' hall this place was designed to give the public an impression of refinement. On the right of the stage there were two partitions set at an angle, like the protective grill around the cashier's desk in a shop: it was there that the seats were reserved for the regular visitors. Behind the stage there rose a veranda, and beyond that there was a garden. In the garden an old plum tree slanted downwards over a well, leaving a sufficiently vast piece of clear sky over the rest, so that one could admire the veranda. There was also a kind of pavilion, to the east of which the garden was situated.
The occupants of the seats for the regular visitors were rich people who did not know what to do with their spare time. They were all in ceremonial garb and from time to time nonchalantly took depilatory pincers out of their kimonos and patiently removed the hairs from their noses. It was on such a peaceful day that one really had a feeling that a nightingale was settling on a branch of the prune tree in the garden and singing.
In the interval, a tea vendor would walk up and down between the rows offering pastries. They were in a shallow rectangular box, arranged so that it would be easy for anybody wanting one to reach it. There must have been about ten in each box. People took one whenever they wanted. It was an unwritten rule that one left some money in the box after doing so. At the time I considered this custom curious, but now that this easy-going and happy-go-lucky attitude no longer prevails in any place of entertainment my nostalgia for the old days is all the greater.
It was in this hothouse atmosphere that I listened to out-of-date recitations by old storytellers. One of them used strange words such as 'sutotoku', 'nonnon', 'zuizui'. His name was Tanabe Nanryu, and it seemed that at one time he had been a footwear keeper. His sutotokos, nonnons and zuizuis were renowned, although nobody knew the meaning of these words. Apparently, he used them to describe the attack of an army.
This Nanryu has long been dead. Most of the other storytellers are also dead. I do not know what happened later and hardly know who are the survivors of this period in which I experienced so much pleasure.
Now the other day, reading the program of the end-of-year performance of the Classical Music Association, I found the name of an old acquaintance of that period, between that of Yoshiwara the clown and some other name which I have forgotten. I then went to the Shintomi Theatre in order to see him. I heard his voice. I was surprised to find that neither his face nor his timbre had changed in any way. His style of storytelling was exactly the same as before. He had neither progressed nor deteriorated. I who am only too painfully aware of all the dramatic upheavals of the twentieth century assailing us from all sides, I gave myself up, once I was seated in front of him, to a kind of meditation, constantly comparing him with myself.
The performer in question was Bakin. When he acted as the "curtain raiser" at Isemoto by preceding Nanryu, he was still a beginner named Kinryu.
MY ELDER brother was engaged in the foundation course, which did not yet count as part of the university course, when he developed lung trouble that forced him to abandon his studies. As we were so far apart in our ages, my memories are not so much of a brotherly relationship but rather of that which exists between an adult and a child. It was particularly when he reprimanded me that I had this impression.
He was a good-looking young man with a light complexion and a well-shaped nose. Yet his features and his expression both gave him a severe appearance that prevented him from being particularly approachable.
When he was a student it was still in the days when some students were selected from the noble houses, and this seems to have led to an atmosphere which young men of the present time could not imagine. My brother once told me that a student of a superior social class had sent him a love letter. He was a boy a good deal older than my brother. What could he do with that letter, having been brought up in Tokyo where this practice no longer existed? My brother told me that whenever he came across him in the university's common bathrooms, he felt embarrassed.
When he abandoned his studies he was so stiff and constantly inhibited that my parents did not know how to relate to him. Also, probably owing to this illness, he had a grim expression and shut himself away at home.
Now there came a time when he relaxed and his personality became more liberated. He took to going out frequently in the evening, wearing a tozan kimono with a lined ceremonial belt. From time to time one came across a violet fan with a tortoise-shell design from Kamesei's which he had left in the living room. This much could be accepted, but then he took to sitting by the brazier and declaiming witty rejoinders from theatrical performances. In my family, however, we did not seem to be too perturbed about this. As for me personally, it left me completely indifferent. In addition to his declamations, he took up tohachiken. Fortunately, as he needed a partner for this, he could not practice it every evening. At all events, he occupied himself by raising and lowering his awkward hands. The role of partner generally fell to my third brother. I was merely an impassive spectator.
Finally, my elder brother died of pneumonia. I think this was in 1887. Now when the funeral and the commemorative services were over and the arrangements were more or less completed, we had a visit from a woman. She was received by my third brother and asked him:
"Your brother never married, did he?"
It is true that owing to his illness my brother had remained unmarried all his life.
"No, he remained single to the end."
"Well, I am relieved to hear that. Even if someone like me cannot live without a protector."
She asked for the name of the temple where my brother's ashes had been interred and then left us. She had come specially from the Province of Kai, but it was only then that I learned that she had been a geisha at Yanagibashi and had had a liaison with my brother.
Sometimes I experience a wish to see this woman again so that she can talk to me about my brother. But I tell myself that if I see her now she will already be old and that her thoughts will no longer be the same as at that time. And that her heart will be as crushed and dried up as her face. If this is the case, it is probable that if this woman came once again face to face with the brother of her one-time friend she would experience nothing but pain and sadness.
I SHOULD LIKE to write something here in memory of my mother; she has not, alas, left me much material with which to do so.
She was called Chie. This name Chie is among the words which arouse the greatest nostalgia in me. It even seems to me that it belongs to her alone and to no other woman. Fortunately, I have never met a second woman with this name.
She died when I was thirteen or fourteen, but the image which I call up from my distant past is always that of an old lady, no matter how far I think back. She was no longer young when she gave birth to me, and I have not the good fortune to hold a young image of her in my memory.
In my mind's eye she is wearing large spectacles and plying her needle. The spectacles have an out-of-date steel frame, and the lenses look as if they are over six centimeters in diameter. My mother stared at me over her spectacles, her chin drawn well back against her neck: not knowing anything about the characteristics of long-sightedness, I thought it was just a funny little way which she had. I also remember the sliding door at the back. Among the old gummed papers which made up the covering of the door I can still clearly see a lithograph bearing the words: "One must acquaint oneself with death—so rapid is the world's inconstancy," etc.
When summer came, mother would always wear a plain dark blue silk gauze kimono, with a narrow black satin girdle. Strangely enough, the picture of my mother which remains in my memory always presents itself to my mind in this summer garb alone. And if I eliminate the plain dark blue silk gauze kimono and the narrow black satin girdle, all that remains is her face. The figure of my mother, once, out on the veranda playing chess with my brother, is the only memory I possess of the two of them together; but here also she was sitting in the same kimono with the same girdle.
As I had never been taken to the house where mother was born, it was a long time before I knew to what family she had belonged. And I felt no curiosity that urged me to question her on this point. It is a subject on which I am completely hazy But I have learned from a reliable source that she was born in the Yotsuya-Oban-machi district. It appears that her family had a pawnshop. I think somebody told me that her parents owned more than one warehouse, but I have never so far explored Oban-machi and have therefore forgotten all the details. Even if it is true, there is no home with warehouses among my memories. Her family probably went bankrupt before she was born.
I also vaguely remember a rumor to the effect that my mother, before marrying my father, had been in the service of a nobleman. But in what noble household and for how long? As I do not even know what the duties are in such a household, it makes the same impression on me as incense that has been extinguished and leaves nothing but a faint odor—in other words, a fact that is almost indiscernible.
It is true that in the lumber room I once caught sight of a Kimono covered with bright designs, such as that which would be worn by a lady's companion depicted in a colored engraving. The red silk lining of this kimono was dotted all over with cherry or plum blossoms accompanied here and there by gold and silver thread embroidery. It was probably the ceremonial garment of the period. But it is in vain that I try to imagine my mother dressed in this fashion, as the mother I knew was already an elderly lady wearing large spectacles.
Furthermore, this beautiful garment was later remade into a dressing gown, and I saw it spread out over an invalid who came to our house.
A WESTERNER who was my tutor at the university left Japan, and as I wanted to give him a parting present I took a handsome writing case of gilded lacquer with a red cord out of our lumber room, but this all belongs to a distant past. Although I did not notice the fact when I took it to my father to ask him to let me have it, I believe that at the time the writing case had a close association with my mother's youth, just like the kimono with the red silk lining that had been transformed into a dressing gown. It seems that my father never gave my mother a single kimono. But does that mean that her trousseau contained enough kimonos to take it unnecessary for her to have any made for her later? Were the light plain indigo kimono and the narrow black belt which I remember already in her dressing table at the time of her marriage? I wish I could be reunited with my mother so that I could ask her in so many words.
I was too insubordinate and obstinate to have been pampered by my mother as youngest sons usually are. And yet I have always had the impression that she was the member of our family who cuddled me most frequently. Love and hate aside, my mother was certainly a woman endowed with dignity and grace. To everybody she seemed to surpass my father in intelligence. My elder brother himself, despite his grumpy temperament, felt a certain respect for her.
"Mother is not saying anything, but there is something about her that frightens me."
Such was my brother's comment concerning her. And even today I clearly recall these words from the mists of time. But they are just fragments from my memories, as fragile as words which melt in the water and are carried away by the current and which one has desperately tries to reform in one's mind. In all else, however, my mother, for me, is simply a dream. No matter how painstakingly I gather together little trifles in my memory, I am far from able to call her to mind in her entirety. Moreover, the fragmented past which remains with me is dulled, and I cannot take hold of it with any certainty.
One day I went up to the first floor by myself for a siesta. At that period my siestas were often accompanied by strange hallucinations. My thumb would get bigger and bigger without stopping, the ceiling above where I lay started to descend little by little, suffocating me, or my body would become dull while I saw it around me, my eyes open as usual, and no matter how I struggled I no longer had any control over my limbs. Afterwards I often wondered whether I had not been delirious. And on this particular day, too, I fell prey to a strange phenomenon.
I do not remember when or under what circumstances, but I had spent a large sum of money which did not belong to me. I did not very clearly understand the purpose for which I had used this amount; at all events, child that I was, I had no hope of being able to refund it, and in my anguished frame of mind I started to suffer terribly in my sleep. In the end, I let out a loud cry, calling to my mother downstairs for help.
The staircase which led up to the first floor was just behind the sliding door bearing the lithograph saying "One must acquaint oneself with death—so rapid is the world's inconstancy"—the door that was inseparable from my mother's big pair of spectacles. As soon as she heard me, my mother ran up to the first floor. She looked at me while I told her what I was suffering and asked her to help me.
"Don't worry," she said with a smile. "Mother will give you as much money as you need."
I was very happy. Reassured, I went to sleep again.
Was this incident entirely a dream or was it half true? Nowadays, I have my doubts. But I cannot help thinking that I did in actual fact let out a great cry, calling my mother to my aid, and that she appeared before me to comfort me. And my mother was wearing, as she always does in my memory, the light kimono of plain indigo silk and the narrow black satin belt.
IT IS Sunday: as the children do not go to school the maid has less to do and she seems to have got up later than usual. At a quarter past seven, however, I was already up. After I had washed my face I had toast, a boiled egg and milk, as usual, and then wanted to go to the toilet, but as it unfortunately smelt of drains I went out into the back garden. The gardener was doing something in the shed. My attention was attracted by high flames that rose from a pile of straw bags around which three of my daughters were warming themselves, apparently with great delight.
"If you stay close to the fire like that," I said, "you'll get your faces quite black."
My youngest daughter replied, "Oh no-o-o-o!"
Above the little stone wall I saw the roof tiles, wet with melting frost and shining in the morning sun. Then I went back inside the house.
While waiting for the girl who did the housework, and who was related to us, to finish my study I took the table out on to the veranda. In this sunny spot, leaning against the balustrade, my hand supporting my cheek, motionless, I let my mind wander freely.
From time to time, the long leaves of the potted orchid were shaken by the breeze. In the garden the nightingales sang awkwardly and intermittently in the branches of the trees. Having remained seated behind the window pane day by day, I had thought it was still Winter, but Spring began to touch my heart.
However long I remained seated, my thoughts did not stagnate. I had a feeling that if I started to write I should have something to write about forever. But because I hesitated between one subject and another, I told myself, not without a certain nonchalance, that whatever I wrote would be devoid of interest. So I wrote nothing and in the end felt that there was no sense in what I had written up to then. Why had I written all that?
This contradiction provoked me, as if someone were making fun of me. Fortunately, my nerves had been calmed. I took pleasure in allowing myself to be carried away by this self-criticism and in rising into the sphere of meditation. I wanted to laugh, contemplating my stupidity from on high: I was just a baby in a cradle, allowing himself to be soothed by his own mockery.
Up to now I have been writing at random on other people and on myself. When referring to others I was haunted by the fear of embarrassing them. When referring to myself, on the other hand, I was able to breathe freely. However, I have not succeeded in ridding myself of a certain complacency. If I am not enough of a poseur to deceive people with lies, I shall in the end have avoided revealing the worst and pettiest aspect of the faults by which I could have lost face. Someone once said, "The Confessions of Saint Augustine, the Confessions of Rousseau, the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater ... if one were to trace them back to their origins, the real truth would be absent and people could not restore it." Besides, what I have written is not a confession. I suppose I have disclosed only the brighter side of my sins if they can be so described. To certain readers this may be unwelcome. But now, indifferent to this reaction, I look around me, view Humanity in general, and smile. It is the same look that I bestow on the trifles that I have written hitherto; with a feeling that they come from someone else, I continue smiling.
Once again, the nightingales in the garden are singing in disjointed snatches. The Spring breeze is repeatedly shaking the leaves of the orchid. The cat, half asleep, is basking in the sun, exposing a wound caused by a severe bite. The children, who a little while ago were noisily playing with their ball, have all gone to the cinema. Now that tranquillity has returned to the house and to my heart, I shall open the window wide and finish off this piece of writing, taking pleasure in my task and enfolded in the calm light of Spring. And then I intend to have a nap on the veranda, my cheek resting on my hand....
(13TH JANUARY 1915-23RD FEBRUARY 1915)
1 Bashō, Japanese banana trees bearing sparse dwarf fruit.
2 World War I.
3 A seventeenth-century Confucian scholar.
4 This theatre, in the "Italian style", which had just been officially opened in 1911 in Sōseki's presence, was a great novelty at the time. It has already been mentioned earlier.
5 The first name means "virtuoso".
6 Two major multimillionaires in Japan till 1945.
7 Like most of the following names, this refers to part of a district of a town. It should be remembered that in Tokyo the streets have no names.
8 Name of a scent vase, here indicating a house of assignation.
9 Trousers with wide flaps.
10 The same episode is told differently in Chapter VII of Three Cornered World, where Okita is rebaptized Okura.
11 Famous animal painter (1716-1800). Sōseki mentions him in Ch. Ill of Three-cornered World.
12 It was the model for his novel I am a Cat.
13 As related by Sōseki in The Grass of the Wayside.
14 Child's diminutive of Kiichi
15 Essayist and poet (1749-1823).
16 The pseudonym by which he is better known.